Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(8)

I remember O had no idea who Michael Jackson was. “What is Michael Jackson?” he asked me the day after the news—not who but what—which seemed both a very odd and a very apt way of putting it, given how much the brilliant singer had transmuted from a human into an alien being. O often said he had no knowledge of popular culture after 1955, and this was not an exaggeration. He did not know popular music, rarely watched anything on TV but the news, did not enjoy contemporary fiction, and had zero interest in celebrities or fame (including his own). He didn’t possess a computer, had never used e-mail or texted; he wrote with a fountain pen. This wasn’t pretentiousness; he wasn’t proud of it; indeed, this feeling of “not being with it” contributed to his extreme shyness. But there was no denying that his tastes, his habits, his ways—all were irreversibly, fixedly, not of our time.

“Do I seem like I am from another century?” he would sometimes ask me, almost poignantly. “Do I seem like I am from another age?”

“You do, yes, you do.”

For me, this was part of the fascination with, part of my attraction to, him. I was seeing a few other men during my first summer in New York, but dates with O were completely different. We didn’t go to movies or to MoMA or to new restaurants or Broadway shows. We took long walks in the botanical garden in the Bronx, where he could expatiate on every species of fern. We visited the Museum of Natural History—not for the dinosaurs or special exhibitions but to spend time in the often-empty, chapel-like room of gems, minerals, and, especially, the elements—O knew the stories behind the discoveries of every single one. At night, we might walk from the West Village to the East, O talking excitedly nonstop, to have a beer and burger at McSorley’s Old Ale House.

I learned that not only had he never been in a relationship, he had also never come out publicly as a gay man. But in a way, he’d had no reason to do so—he hadn’t had sex in three-and-a-half decades, he told me. At first, I did not believe him; such a monk-like existence—devoted solely to work, reading, writing, thinking—seemed at once awe-inspiring and inconceivable. He was without a doubt the most unusual person I had ever known, and before long I found myself not just falling in love with O; it was something more, something I had never experienced before. I adored him.





Oliver and the Crabapple Trees





NOTES FROM A JOURNAL

7-09-09:

O’s 76th birthday:

After I kiss him for a long time, exploring his mouth and lips with my tongue, he has a look of utter surprise on his face, eyes still closed: “Is that what kissing is, or is that something you’ve invented?”

I laugh, disarmed. I tell him it’s patented—he’s sworn to secrecy.

O smiles.

“And if I hold you closely enough, I can hear your brain,” I tell him.

_____________________

8-18-09:

We talk about a scene in Roman Elegies in which Goethe taps out hexameters on his sleeping lover’s back: “Fingertips counting in time with the sweet rhythmic breath of her slumber,” O recites from memory.

“Or his slumber,” I add.

_____________________

9-29-09: Sometimes people recognize Oliver. Tonight, a young man approached our table and introduced himself. He was very flirtatious, which O enjoyed but did not reciprocate. “I already have one delectable addition to my life,” he said later. “That should be enough.”

_____________________

9-30-09:

Funny:

I like to get kind of verbal in bed sometimes, but I am finding this does not work well when you’re having sex with someone who’s practically deaf: “What was that? Were you saying something?” O will ask in the heat of things with great sincerity.

“Oliver! Don’t make me repeat it!”

At which point, we both dissolve in laughter.

“Deaf Sex,” we affectionately call this.

_____________________

10-24-09: Taking a C train from Seventy-Second to Fourteenth: I dash into the crowded car, reach for a pole to steady myself. The pole is still warm with heat from other riders’ hands.

“Did it hurt?” I hear.

I turn in the direction of the voice. Seated beneath me, a young Latina—maybe nineteen or twenty—meets my eyes. “Did that hurt?” she asks pointing to my arm. “Your tattoo?”

I smile. “Yeah, it did actually. The skin there is really thin—lots of nerve endings. But it was worth it.”

She nods.

“What do you want to get?” I ask her.

“A fairy—a little fairy—and then the Egyptian hieroglyph for destiny.”

She is wearing a copper-colored wig, cut into a blunt bob with severe bangs. She looks a like an Egyptian princess. She is the Cleopatra of the C train.

“That sounds wonderful,” I tell her. “Go for it.”

Cleopatra smiles and settles back into her seat.

_____________________

10-31-09:

O: “I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life.”



Undated Note—October 2009: Visited O in the hospital—a total knee replacement (alas, all those years of super-heavy weightlifting). At first, he looked mortified because a friend, who doesn’t know about us, was visiting him. But then, I could tell, he was happy I came.