The Fuck-Up

SIX

I wearily walked up the stairs to Helmsley’s apartment and found the door unlocked. When I opened it and flipped on a light, I wished I was back on the train. His house had been busted up. Clothing was tossed, dishes were broken. I noticed that some of his prized books had been damaged. No one was home. My first guess was that a struggle had occurred. Where the hell was Helmsley? Maybe he too had been brutalized.

His first German printing of Spengler’s The Decline of the West had declined into shreds. His nineteenth century folio facsimile of Shakespeare’s tragedies was tragic. His autographed first edition of Being and Nothingness was now the latter.

When most of the harvest was in, Helmsley walked through the door. Wordlessly he dropped onto the couch and threw his head back, closing his eyes. I immediately noticed that his reddened nose had a new angle to it, his hair was tousled and his old clothes were tugged and ripped.

“What the fuck happened?”

“I got into a fight,” he replied with a nasal honk. He was a mess.

“Well, I’m back from work,” I replied furiously. And putting a letter opener that might serve as a weapon in my pocket, I said, “Let’s go kick some ass.”

“We can’t.” There must have been too many of them.

“Then I’ll call the police.” I started dialing.

“Put it down—it was Angela,” he said and didn’t look at me. I didn’t know what to say. I wrapped some ice in a towel, brought it to him, and inspected his nose. Considering his nose was broken and a chunk of his precious collection had been mauled, he seemed to be taking it well. Perhaps he was just fatigued.

“Well, I suppose that ends that relationship,” I finally said, not knowing what else to say.

He looked to the ground and began whimpering that he didn’t know how to deal with this. He tried discussing it rationally, but she had kept pounding at him. When he pulled his shirt off, I saw welts and bruises zebraed along his lower chest, his ribs bruised, probably cracked.

“Exactly what happened?”

“Well,” he started, as his fingers ran across the lumps rising out of his scalp. “We were lying in bed this morning, just a couple hours ago, and she said that it was time for me to arise. I explained that there was no reason to get up, but she insisted that she wanted to go out for breakfast immediately. Maybe she’s hypoglycemic.”

“What happened next?”

“I said that I wanted to sleep for another hour.”

“What happened next?”

“That’s when she shoved me hard with her foot.”

“And how did you respond?”

“I told her violence was the language of animals.” I waited for him to tell me more, but he volunteered nothing. “What did you do next?”

“She laughed and made some weird reference to colleges and called me a wimp and that’s when I told her to stop laughing, and she slapped me.”

“Did you hit her back?” I yelled at him.

“Of course not. I told her that if she was angered over something it should be discussed.”

“And was it discussed?”

“No, I told her she was acting like a simpleton.”

“A simpleton, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s when she started tearing up the books, and when I tried to stop her, she hit me on the nose with an ashtray.” No wonder he didn’t want to volunteer anything; what a pathetic tale.

“Maybe you should go to a hospital; I think you’ve got a broken rib.”

“They don’t tape ribs anymore.”

“Your nose is bent to one side.”

“I never cared for symmetry,” he tried joking, “and it isn’t worth seven hours in a waiting room to look harmonious. Just help me into bed.”

I helped him into his room and laid him on his bed. Then silently I unknotted his shoes and helped him off with his clothes. He dropped the ice pack to the floor and laid quietly with his aches and pains.

“What happened to you?” He pointed to my shoulder from his supine position.

“Nothing, I’ll tell you when we’re awake,” I replied and pulled down the shade, concealing the morning light. He quickly drifted off. I kicked my shoes off and laid on the couch. As the sun rose high in the Brooklyn sky, I listened to Helmsley’s newly acquired snore, thanks to the newly angulared nose. I also thought of last night’s silly date and slowly slipped into asleep.

When I awoke, it was pitch black outside; it was seriously late. Helmsley was still soundly sleeping. I tiptoed into the bathroom, where I showered and carefully peeled off my arm bandage. I should have insisted on stitches, because the scar was crisp and permanent. I prepared a new bandage, dressed, and left. It was about midnight and Brooklyn, unlike Manhattan, still had that old duration of time labelled “late.” Places were closed and mass sleeping was in effect. People obeyed the sun’s ebb. But I was now too corrupted by the irregular cycles of Manhattan time; I was irrevocably awake.

I dressed and went to the F train and paced the empty station. I looked along the tracks covered with filth and followed them as far as I could up the dark tunnel. Looking in the other direction, I could see the sky. At this stop the elevated track poured its rails purgatorially into the ground.

Waiting for a train in New York requires more than just patience; it also demands a defensive outlook. During the early eighties, the city cordoned off “designated waiting areas.” They were encased in yellow overhead signs and usually they were within view of the token sellers, so if you were beaten to death within this section, your benefactors might have a good case at suing the city.

Despite the wolf-pack gangs and the doubtful worth of the overpriced token, I had nurtured a perverse pleasure in riding the subways. I would get a ninety-cent thrill out of pressing against the front unwashed window, leaning next to the conductor’s booth and straining into the near darkness as the train whipped between the ribbed support beams through the enigmatic bowels of the great city. What subway riding in New York offers that far surpasses a train ride anywhere else is the wonderful relief upon arriving safely at your destination. I experienced this relief an hour later.

I got off at Fourteenth Street and walked across it, past the many cheap storefronts that were all covered with metal pull-down gates at night. Past the old Luchow’s and the Palladium, I walked. From the corner of Third Avenue, I could see the Zeus Theater flag snapping in the wind. Why the theater had a proud flag, I wasn’t sure. The theater lights were still on and I had no particular place to go, so I decided to stop in and see Miguel. When I got to the corner of Thirteenth Street, I noticed the crowd out front. But then I remembered, the vanguardists Hans and Grett were premiering their film tonight. As I approached the NYU film students and punks flocking outside, I waited as gaggles of gays slowly filtered through and out, and then I pushed in. Hans, who was acting as a doorman, let me in. I walked rapidly through the theater.

“Hey!” the Cambodian porter Thi yelled.

Accidentally I had stepped into a pile of condoms, Kleenex and tiny squeezed out tubes of KY-Jel. Thi had marshalled the garbage together with the blowing machine, which was strapped to his back. Quickly he shovelled the pile into a black multi-plied garbage bag and sealed it. In the office I found Miguel chatting with a bunch of skinheads. He greeted me with a lapse of silence. I felt compelled to say something managerial, so I asked, “How’s business?”

He pointed thumbs down. “It must be the nice weather.”

I nodded and left the office; I didn’t mention that I had just seen enough gays exiting to start a gondolier’s union; he had to be stealing money. I decided to keep hushed and wait. Soon, Miguel left his office, the skinheads scattered, and he joined me in the lobby. The crowd was now entering, and as the guests filed past the box office, Hans and Grett handed everyone a plastic cup filled with champagne.

“They sure must’ve put a lot of money into this,” I mumbled to Miguel.

“No,” Miguel confided, “a generic case of Astor Home Champagne on sale from the New Year’s Eve surplus. Anyway you got to be a little zonked in order to truly relate to the full cinematic reality.” He wasn’t smiling, so I guess he was serious.

After all had entered, I started mingling with the crowd. There were several cute intellectual-type girls flapping about, but to judge the semiology of their then-pop semiology books, I feared an insincere impregnability One girl, who came alone and also seemed to know nobody, seemed to be pretty prey. As I approached her, I noticed something that might give me some leverage; there was a green booger just above her nostril. I discreetly whispered this into her ear, feeling assured that she’d feel forever indebted for saving her much embarrassment.

“It’s a jade nose ring, asshole!” And she marched into the theater, out of my life forever.

Slowly after all the free champagne was gone, all gravitated into the theater where they assumed seats. Even though all were ready, certain crucial professors and daring small independent producers had not yet arrived, so the boys were still delaying the screening.

Not knowing anyone and sensing that most people preferred it that way, I retreated up to the projectionist booth. Miguel was up there explaining to our projectionist the few idiosyncrasies that this screening would require; at certain moments the volume had to be turned up all the way, and on three occasions she had to sneak into the theater and whack cymbals together. He then gave her an envelope of money, which she quickly counted. Since our theater hours were what the projectionist union termed an “eleven hour” booth, and since Miguel didn’t want Ox to detect the undesignated overtime on the payroll, Hans and Grett had to bear the projectionist’s fee themselves. When all the details were ironed out, Miguel turned to me with a wide and mysterious grin asking, “So?”

“So what?”

“So how was it?”

“How was what?”

“I don’t want to violate your space,” he replied, “but last night you went home with one of the prize trophies off Muscle Beach.”

All of last night fell back into my lap and accordingly I snickered and said, “I don’t kiss and tell.”

“It’s not the kissing I want to hear about.”

“Let me put it this way. I didn’t get any sleep last night.” That much I could say on any polygraph machine.

Suddenly the intercom buzzed. Grett announced that cinema history could no longer be delayed. The lights dimmed, the projector was started, and Miguel and I took seats among Han’s and Grett’s alumni. After the credits, which were thunderously applauded, a muddle of images and colors flooded the poor screen. Racing down the sound track came metallic screeches and oblong howls, and then an interjection of urgent radio news broadcast started crackling out of a wall of static, which was overlaid with quasi-images of the tumultuous and the tranquil. It was all carefully disjointed and painfully abstract. It ushered in a host of whispered yet supportive clichés, of which I could hear a couple behind me whispering: “Post-expressionistic…prehensile…atonal…”

Peeking about, I noticed Miguel was nowhere to be seen. Discreetly I abandoned my seat and slipped off to the office; maybe there’d be something painless on TV.

Opening the door, I saw Miguel seated at the desk, talking with two older guys. The air was thick with smoke. A cup that was torn into a makeshift ashtray was filled with Gitanes cigarette stubs.

“No, I don’t think it’s fair,” said the more dashingly dressed NYU student. “You charged Hans a fraction of what you’re charging me.”

Miguel threw me a quick glance, and putting down the pizza he was eating, he replied, “Look, me and my partner simply don’t feel that staying here for that length of time is profitable for any less than a hundred a piece.” I was an instant partner in some leery deal.

“Well”—the young filmmaker arose—“I have only a hundred dollars budgeted to this screening. Beyond that I’ll just have to look elsewhere.”

Before he left, Miguel replied, “When you find that it gets no cheaper, swallow your pride and come back.”

The young director left the office, and his sidekick closed the door behind him.

“Hungry?” Miguel took an angle of pizza from a cardboard box that was sitting on canisters behind him. “It has a whole wheat crust.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, and then bit into the slice.

“I’m supplementing our income a bit, is all.”

“Well,” I said as I gorged myself, “I don’t want to play the devil’s advocate, but can’t you settle for a hundred less? I mean, a poor student like that can’t have much more to spare.”

“Trust me when I say that I know what I’m doing. I’m a sweetheart. In fact, I didn’t charge Hans and Grett a cent. I just said that so I could get money out of this guy.”

“What’ve you got against this kid? His film has got to be better than that…cinematic havoc now on the screen.”

“Did you ever hear of the Owensfield Complex?” It sounded at first like a Freudian term, but I remembered reading about it. The Owensfield Complex was a glamorous group of midtown co-ops that had been in the news recently because they had remarkably reinterpreted certain building codes and zoning laws.

“Who is that guy?”

“Nigel Owensfield, grand-nephew to the tycoon-founder Clarel.”

“The guy that just left here?” I inquired.

“Yep. Do you know the Harrington Quarterly!”

“I’ve heard about it.” Helmsley had gotten stuff accepted there.

“What did you hear?”

“That it recently gained a lot of prestige, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Prestige came with a cost. The only thing that separates mainstream culture from subculture is a budget. Owensfield bought an editor position and at the same time pulled the quarterly from the level of the Sleazoid Express and put it on rank with The Hudson Review.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I heard,” Miguel replied, lighting up another cigarette. “In short, he could spare another hundred bucks.”

“Am I really your partner?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it. I have a lot of connections and I need your help.”

“Fifty-fifty split?”

“Well, sure,” he replied benevolently, only to add, “but half of nothing is nothing, isn’t it?”

“What exactly does Owensfield do at this magazine?”

“Part owner and some kind of editor. Why?”

“Just curious. You wouldn’t mind if I talk to him alone, would you?”

“What are you going to say to him?”

“I’m not sure, but I promise I won’t ask for a cent less than you want.” Miguel smiled and jumped out of his chair. He dashed through the theater, hunting for the heir-editor. I sat in the swivel chair and in another moment the heir was sitting alone with me in the office.

“I think I can deliver this place to you at the fee you want, but there are two provisos.”

“Continue.”

“Before I continue, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.” I told him my name and explained that I was an obscure visionary poet from the East Village.

“Another obscure visionary poet,” he muttered bored.

“Not another,” I corrected, “one that has control of a theater you need, and frankly I’m hoping to be less obscure.”

“That would leave just the visionary.”

“Right, and I envision that we can help each other.”

“You’re jesting.” He quickly understood the direction in which I was heading.

“I’ve been writing poetry all my life and, other than in school, I’ve never been published. All I’m asking is that you look at a poem of mine. If you don’t like it, nothing lost. But if you do like it, you gain a poet and a theater.”

“Why in God’s name do you think that I can get you published?”

“Everyone knows that you are to the Harrington what Delmore Schwartz was to the Partisan Review, what Mencken was to American Mercury and what Perkins was to Harper & Row.”

“Perkins was with Scribner, and that wasn’t a magazine.”

“I thought Bartelby was with Scribner’s.”

“Oh, God!” He sighed and rose to go.

“Look! All we’re talking about is a couple of well-crafted lines, one stanza that describes the mechanism of the East Village.”

“The mechanism of the East Village?” He smiled. “What’s your poem about, a car?”

“Call it what you will.”

“Is this machine rhymed or free verse?”

“I rhyme, but…”

“Narrative, confessional, free association…?”

“Essentially narrative.”

“Where is this sacred poem?” he asked. Apparently I had passed the multiple-choice part of the quiz.

“I’ll have it for you in a week.”

“A week! Tomorrow is our final editorial conference. Then we go to print. Next week is my first vacation in two years.” He rose again and said, “That ends that.”

“Wait a second.” I stood up. “I can have it for you before the film ends.”

“All right, fine,” he replied, prepared to go.

“Then you’ll do it?”

“I’ll consider it if you get the poem here before the film ends, but I’ll tell you right now, don’t expect much.” He opened the door to leave.

“One last thing,” I requested before he departed. “Miguel’s a bit of a barbarian. In order to get you your price I would like you to tell him that you’re paying the whole two hundred. I’ll cover the deficit.”

“You mean if I accept your poem,” he added. Then we shook hands, and he went back into the auditorium.

I swiftly went through the office collecting necessities to write poetry with, a beer from the fridge, a clock, two sharpened pencils, paper. Calling the projectionist, I asked her how long the film would last.

“Another reel, about twenty minutes,” she replied, curiously free of any antagonism.

I snuck into the bathroom stall, and for the benefit of any curious eyes that might check the exposed underpart of the partition, I dropped my pants around my knees and sat.

I hadn’t written a poem in years, and was not sure of why I was doing this. Occasionally opportunity was prompting enough. I thought hard about nonsense and started scribbling. First, I started just jotting out recollections of New York, but then I dashed down little slogans and aphorisms that I had heard over the past few months, then I rhymed them into a quick poem, while offering my own criticism in alternating verse:

Stop Aids not Gays.

It wasn’t well rhymed

No entry for gentry

A graffitied wall chimed.

Only niggers pull triggers

There’s a strong verse,

Drink, Drive and Die—Alliteratively terse

Mug and Goetz what’s coming

A pale little pun.

I’ll stick to free verse

Couplets are done!

But then I remembered that I specifically said it would be an East Village poem, so I started thinking about each street, from First to Fourteenth. I drew up a small map and noted every established hangout and local institution; the poem had to be short, cute, and simple. I sensed that this was all the silver-spooned editor could digest.

There were no revelations in that refuge for defecators and lovers. Sitting upon that unwashable and ancient toilet, I toiled, tinkered, and versified. When seated in that position too long, something is bound to fall out and soon the bowels moved; a cheap little stanza complete with all the squalid neighborhood emblems. For no clear reason, I entitled it “Cowboy Streets, Indian Avenues”:

Third Street bikers

At Seventh Street bars

Met Twelth Street whores

Screwed quick in cars

Are busted by cops from Fifth Street way

Who drive them all off toward Avenue A

It was forced and trashy and I hoped that one day I would be a writer talented enough to repudiate it. Outside the stall, I could hear someone pacing, and then more feet. The film must have ended. After quickly writing a final draft, I flushed the toilet for effect and abdicated the chair.

Entering the theater in the middle of deafening applause and brightening lights, I saw no sign of Owensfield. But then I heard a bunch of giggly punk boys and girls and spotted the patron in their midst. Silently I watched them giggle and react to his every movement. Wealth, like fame, provided incredible leverage to one’s character; an adequate mind seemed brilliant if it belonged to a star. Not-repulsive looks made a blue blood stunningly handsome; mild sensitivity catapulted one into heights of sexiness; basic decency made them rivals of Mister Christ. Owensfield and his lucky entourage were about to skip out the fire exit when I intercepted him.

“Here.” I shoved the poem in his face. With nothing more than a rise of his eyebrows, his group was signaled to linger outside. As he mumbled the poem aloud, Miguel appeared from the other side of the theater and started approaching.

“Well,” he uttered as he crinkled the page into his pocket, “to buy this much space as an advertisement would cost you about a hundred and fifty dollars and frankly we’ve published a lot worse.”

“Is that an acceptance?”

“No, it’s a deal.”

“What’s a deal?” Miguel entered in the middle of the conversation.

“Your friend drives a hard bargain.” Owensfield seemed to yield. “He got what he was after.”

“Wow!” Miguel marvelled as he looked at me.

“I’ve got people waiting,” the well-to-doer replied. “We’ll discuss all the bindings later. Au revoir.” And he was gone.

“How the Tao did you do that?”

“I knew what appealed to him. It turned out I had read his latest piece, a study on Bobby Musil. We talked about that awhile, until the next thing I know we’re both reliving Hapsburg, Vienna, Wittgenstein, Karl Kraus, and Saint Stephen’s. My God, first we were in tears and then in stitches.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Kindred spirits!” I exclaimed. “Elective affinities. For the moment we were the same person. Hell, when I finally popped the request it was like I was asking myself for something.”

“And you’re telling me he just gave in.”

“It was more like I gave it to me.”

“Amazing. And I always thought the richer they were the poorer they were. I was ready to take his offer.” Miguel looked perplexed. Only the speech pattern and mannerisms remained of the Miguel who was once the sincere earth child. The money and the vulgarity had made its breach; Miguel knew he couldn’t walk nude along the streets or hand out dandelions, and he knew that rhetoric was just rhetoric, but in his heart of hearts I think he really wanted to believe that the right words could precipitate the correct actions. He nodded, still perplexed, and went into his office.

People poured into the street, coagulated into lumps, which broke away and dissipated. I waited outside for Miguel to lock up. When he was finally done, a bunch of people had collected, waiting for him, or waiting for the few people who were waiting for him. I was about to bid him goodnight, when he asked me if I was hungry.

“Yeah, but I’m broke.”

“I’ll advance you,” Miguel offered. “You made us a tidy bundle tonight.”

So a group of us walked over to Second Avenue and south toward the Kiev where the cuisine was a mix of Eastern European and American greasy spoon, prepared by Indian short-order cooks. The waitress pulled together a bunch of small tables and after we took our seats, she quickly took our orders. I got a mixed pierogis with sour cream and a side of fries. Fragmented conversations started. I ate and listened to one group in front of me yapping about the film. When one guy called it “a low budget 2001,” I turned to my left and started eavesdropping on snatches of conversation in that direction, “Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X’s mentor, was the one who had him assassinated…and when Mayor Laguardia died they found that all he had was eight thousand dollars in war bonds…I’ve heard that both Roddy MacDowell and Uncle Miltie have the largest penises in Hollywood…” Although the details were interesting, they were difficult to follow.

One guy that Miguel had casually introduced to me earlier that evening, an older, responsibly dressed fellow named Marty, was whispering excitedly to Miguel at my right. Keeping my eyes fixed on the bore who was talking about the film, I leaned into Marty’s direction and listened:

“Well, he’s only in the damned place like once every two months or so. Particularly now, since he’s working in Paris.”

“Do you think burglars were watching the place?”

“I’m sure of it. Anyway, it was all insured but now the premium is going through the roof.”

“Well, I only wish I needed a place.” Carefully I propped my right elbow up on the table so that my hand was against my right ear limiting the peripheral noise.

“It is too bad,” Marty replied, “because you’re just the right type. I only wish I was gay.”

“Now what’s this compulsion he has with gays? Is he?”

“No, it’s just the opposite—he’s an insecure heterosexual. Also I think he thinks they’re clean or something.”

“Well, I’m a pig myself.” Miguel giggled. “What kind of rent is he charging?”

“I’m not sure, but it’s not a money question.”

“What are you guys talking about?”

“Nada,” Miguel replied tiredly. “What’s new with you?”

“Nothing, I’ve been spending all my free time apartment hunting, and it’s really frustrating.”

“Rents are ridiculous.” Miguel replied.

“It’s not that. Frankly I think that they’ve been deliberately restricting me because I’m gay.”

Miguel glanced over to Marty.

“What exactly are you looking for?” Marty asked casually before taking a sip of his fruit compote.

“Oh, I’m not very selective. Heck, I don’t even mind room-mating with someone so long as they’re clean.”

“It sounds preordained, Marty,” Miguel said outright.

“Preordained?”

“I think I might be able to help you,” Marty started.

“How?” I asked wide-eyed.

Marty told me in slow detail about a famous film director who was in his prime during the sixties but since then, due to a series of profitless films and subsequently a broken marriage, had been convalescing. Yet during the last five years or so, while hunting down backers, he had been slowly producing his last film, a real swan song.

“What’s his name?” I asked. He didn’t want to tell me just yet: this only whetted my appetite all the more.

“Orson Welles?” I asked, knowing that at the time Welles was desperately trying to make a swan song film and had trouble getting backing.

“No,” Marty replied, only adding that the filmmaker had no immediate plans to live steadily in New York. The great director had lived his life in several countries and probably spent more time in lofty transit than anywhere else, keeping an operation center/bachelor pad in almost every glamorous world capital. In New York, for instance, he had purchased a spacious SoHo loft when lofts were still just warehouse space flooding the market. He stocked his large space with many valuables, captured after long and great safaris in endless auctions, galleries, boutiques, and curio shops.

“Is it Zeferelli?” I asked, knowing that he had a fear of wide open spaces.

“No,” Marty replied, rambling on about how over the years the great director had fallen from lofty metaphysicist to staunch empiricist. Marty explained how other renegade materialists had appropriated his goods. In other words, he had been burglarized three times this year alone.

“Huston?” I asked.

“No.”

“Kubrick?”

“No.”

“Capra?”

“Capra? No!” Suddenly I felt Miguel nudging me under the table. My catlike curiosity was getting the better of me. I apologized and listened.

“He wants a house sitter. That’s all you’ll need to know now.”

“What sort of rent range does he have in mind?”

“He’ll probably only be asking for a nominal rent to see that you’re responsible. But the catch is that occasionally he does come to the city, and during those few times he’ll probably want the place to himself.”

“You mean that he might just pop in at any moment and bang, I’ll have to split?”

“Unfortunately.”

“No matter what hour of the night?”

“It’s not like that. He’s extremely formal. If he comes to the city once a month, I’d be amazed. And actually I guarantee that he’ll notify you well in advance.”

“Sounds good.”

“Good, but he’ll have to meet you first. Understand that nothing will be in writing; all arrangements will be verbal.”

“Which means I’ll be unprotected. He’ll be able to chuck me out any time.”

“Unfortunately yes, but Sergei is a decent guy.” Eisenstein had died in the forties. What other great directors were named Sergei?

“Keep in mind,” Marty continued, “that in essence you’re getting something for nothing.”

“What country is Sergei from?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Listen,” Marty continued. “This might sound a bit strange, but if you really want this place, a word of advice is look now.”

“Now?”

“He’s very taken by those who are very gay and very fashionable, very ‘now.’”

“You do look more ‘then.’ For a posh loft,” Miguel stated, “looking ‘now’ is a pretty small trade.”

“All right,” I replied, without the slightest notion of how I was supposed to transform into this ideal image. But if there was indeed an apartment in the balance I’d certainly try to tip the scale to my favor somehow. I agreed to find the proper attire, and then trying to contain the excitement amidst all the noise and cigarette smoke, I pardoned myself for a brief suck of air.

Although it was chilly outside, I slowly became intoxicated over the spectacular windfall. It was like winning a lotto without even waiting on the long line with losers; a poem published and a loft in SoHo. Standing in the iciness, outside looking in, a fanatical fantasy unfurled: palls of hashish and marijuana smoke streamed from the loft skylight, dust bunnies of cocaine gathered trembling in the chandelier. The permanent temperature of my abode would never breach above or below the mid-eighties so that nude bodies would never be made self-conscious by the cold. There would be no more hard or edgy surfaces to fall against. I: a sultan who had finally found his harem, a thick juicy nerve in search of well-deserved stimuli. Poetry would be written between orgasms. Tonight long-deserved rewards had finally toppled into my lap. I returned to the moment, reentered the restaurant and resumed my seat and pose.

“So who is my patron going to be?”

“Please don’t ask me that,” Marty responded.

“Why such a big secret about his identity?”

“Sergei is very nervous about his privacy being invaded.”

“And what exactly is his need for a gay?”

“Well, other than the fact that he thinks they’re cleaner, I think his girlfriend might be coming to town. I’m not sure. He might feel insecure about that.”

“So he wants a court eunuch?”

“I guess so,” Marty replied with a grin. “But you’re gay, so all that is settled.”

In his mind I was gay and in this instance that meant I was invincible. I could witness the interlocking of the sexes and remain unfettered. So after I had polished off my pierogis, Marty explained that the celebrated but insecure Sergei would be notified and we’d all have a meeting.