When the number two train jolted to a halt and the lights went out at the same moment, the sound of an amplified and inhibited gasping filled the crowded subway car like the unrolling of an arpeggio, and then all was silence. It was not anything out of the ordinary on the subway for a train to stall, even for an intolerable duration. So no one panicked, even if everyone was a little scared but still pretty sure that it was only routine.
And it was, for after nearly ten minutes, the lights returned and the movement of the train resumed.
Among the swarm of passengers who pushed themselves through the doors and out onto the platform when the train finally stopped at the Sheridan Square/Christopher Street station, there was a young man, I'd guess around nineteen, in black velvet trousers and a brown bomber jacket of supple leather and lined with sheep's wool. His collar was up.
I had been looking at him throughout the ride every chance I could. I knew he noticed it.
He was at my side as we took the steps together up to Seventh Avenue. He smiled at me.
I smiled back and gave him my hand to shake. His skin felt right pressed to mine.
Do you live around here? I said.
By the river, he said.
In one of the new towers?
No, an old tenement, two rooms and kitchen.
He smiled and winked.
I like the way you look, he said. I want to feel what it's like to have you in my arms.
I took a deep breath and put my arm around him.
Do you want to come back to my place now?
I shook my head yes.
You noticed me?
Of course I noticed you.
I'm shy about looking at people.
Looking at them is like stealing something from them, but to gaze on someone who permits you to gaze...
His words ended in a kiss. The kiss became a prelude. The embrace that followed led us through the mountains of desire where we met like two of the Olympians who have no need for mortals and join ocean, sky, stars, earth, sun, and moon when they stand in each other's arms.
The old tenement turned out to be a three storey brickfront from the Federalist period. The two rooms -- each with a door to the landing -- were gorgeously restored examples of the Federal style with nooks and molding, even on the ceiling, and large windows with many panes, and prominent fireplaces protruding from the walls. Over marble slabs, embossed at their edges with scrolls and cords, oval mirrors in beveled frames were hung, embedded into the plaster.
One of the rooms was his bedroom, which besides the very large bed, also had in it an authentic roll-top, desk made of oak, an office chair, probably from the thirties, made of a grainy yellow/gold oak, and several oak cabinets. The walls were lined with bookcases, floor to ceiling, and there was a rolling ladder with wheels, which slid along its runner mounted right above the bookcase.
The other room was a sitting room. It was actually two rooms separated by heavy wooden doors, with inlaid brass handles, that slid apart or shut against each other. One side of the double room was quite large. The other was slightly smaller and had a domed ceiling.
The kitchen was on the floor below and was sizeable with windows that gave onto a pebble-pathed garden. Adjacent to the kitchen was a small pantry.
I was in another world.
He smiled at my delight.
What do you do? I asked, while I stroked his forehead, his cheek pressed to my chest. It was dawn and it was snowing outside, the window making it look like a scene in the movies. I sat propped against the carved oak head board, half uncovered, holding him.
You are forward, sir, he said, straining a southern accent.
You don't have to answer if you don't want to, I appended meekly.
Oh, I'll answer, he said. I teach literature...at Columbia. And you?
I draw stories.
You draw stories?
I write pictorial novels. "When We Look Back at the Life We Didn't Live" -- that's the last one I did.
You wrote that?
You know it?
Very well, he said. I love it. The pain and the loss you manage to express while everyone is frantically trying to be in love. It's terrific. He turned his head upwards and looked at me as he spoke. And with lifted hand stroked my cheek.
Aw shucks, I said, acknowledging my pride by pantomiming modesty.
How do you know it? I said.
Must I show you my dog-eared copy? he said, scampering to his knees, and enclosing me within them. He drew nearer to me and snapped at my lips with his teeth, causing me to open my mouth to protect my lips and received his tongue.
It pays well, I said.
They tell you what to write?
They definitely set a frame, but inside that.... You know, 'Nuns fret not...." I often discover thoughts which might not have come to me otherwise, and I get to express them.
And you, I said, taking a bite out of the piece of sushi, gripped, steady and precarious, at the end of the chopsticks I was holding between my thumb, first, and middle fingers.
I'm a professor at Columbia. I teach Shakespeare and Milton and Spenser.
I nodded that it was impressive. And added, I don't really know Spenser.
Few do, he said.
I remember when there were long stretches of nothing on Hudson Street, I said as we walked south away from Chelsea back to his place.
So, shall we? he said, pressing close to me as we walked. After all these months of almost?
It was good to feel that great body connecting with mine. Every time we made love I felt blessed.
Hey, he said, taking me out of my reveries, which were all about him.
Hey, yourself, I said and saw how he looked at me with soft and desiring eyes. But oh how they were also soft and desirable.
And, of course, I said yes.
Goodie! he said gleefully mocking his own excitement.
Of course, I moved into his place. There was no question. I truly lived in a dump of a slowly disappearing variety, on the Upper East Side, but I had a studio in an old loft on Thirty-second and Tenth. I kept that and hardly had anything to move. I didn't much spend the money I earned, just had the bank put it in some safe and slow investments. Nothing fancy or risky. I don't like risks.
You really will? he asked again after we'd walked a minute in silence.
I really will, I said, and stopped on the street there, and backed us against a building wall and took him in my arms and kissed him with all the meaning I could muster.
You want to begin tonight, I growled after a kiss.
Yes, he said as our mouths met and bit into each other.
For the third anniversary of our meeting, we stayed in Amsterdam for two weeks.
We met Hans there, a Dutch boy with a German name. His great grandfather was a German Jew who fled to Holland in the late thirties from the Nazis and managed to get through everything, find a bride, and prosper.
We were sitting in a cafe drinking espresso and smoking the house's premium hashish, and he walked in. We both noticed him and looked at each other in appreciation, and he saw us just at that moment and broke out in a shy and modest smile directed entirely to us.
Hello, we said laughing. Join us.
He was just under six feet with wavy blonde hair and sky blue eyes. He wore faded jeans, work boots and a faded olive green t-shirt that hung loosely on his well-knit frame.
We introduced ourselves. He ordered a hot chocolate and some more of the hash we were smoking.
My grandfather revered his father, he explained in the course of a rambling conversation. He was a socialist and a Jew. A real prize for the Nazis. Freedom was everything to him. But by freedom he meant social freedom, the climate, the ambiance of freedom. It is an environment. It allows people to live. Individual freedom he called a misnomer. There really was no such thing. What is called individual freedom depends on force and the dominance of one and the submission of another, or of many to one.
Beautiful and brilliant, Michael said. All you need to be perfect is gay.
I am whatever the moment excites me to be, he said with a lovely, open smile.
And what does this moment excite you to be? I asked.
Whatever you like, he said with inviting innocence.
Michael and I looked at each other.
Please, he said after we had finished our second coffees, I wish to invite you to see where I live.
We walked together along one of the canals to a free-standing, long, red brick wall. At a right angle to it a long corridor led from the street into a court yard and then to an old brick building with large double wooden doors. We climbed three flights and entered a large, well-scrubbed kitchen with a red tile floor and a wooden table. It seemed to serve as a common room, too, for after a small hallway there was only one other room, his bedroom, a large room with wood floors and windows that looked out over the canal.
He took his shirt off and stood in the center of that room, his jeans falling slightly below the black latex band of his boxers, a young man who obviously worked out -- but for a lean and limber litheness, not for bulk.
He told us that later.
Come, he laughed. You are in Holland. Enjoy yourselves.
We returned to New York mid-September, in time for Michael to begin teaching again and for me to begin work on a sequel to "When We Look Back at the Life We Didn't Live." I actually did not look forward to that. I'd drawn half a dozen successful books since that one, but the publisher was still barraged by a steady stream of requests for a sequel to that one. I thought of Borges and wondered if the best sequel might just not be re-inking the original, pictures and text and putting it into a new binding.
So I kicked around in my studio for weeks, sometimes not even going home at night and wandering the streets, talking to -- well, actually, listening to -- everyone I met, but always going back to my studio loft to sleep alone.
When I was ready to emerge from my cave of the winds, Michael would be at home to welcome me back. My darling Michael!
[When you write to me, please put the name of the story in the subject slot. Thanks.]