The town of babylon, p.11
The Town of Babylon, page 11
Then again, a colleague of mine researches the ability of humans to carve out exceptions from entire populations. This is how he explains the anti-Black racists who voted for Obama. Apparently people are capable of turning their racism on and off; they just haven’t figured out how to make “off” the default.
In any case, my parents love Marco, and they’re right to be concerned about us being apart at the moment. I was supposed to be in Namibia with him, but we got into an argument a couple of weeks ago, and I canceled my tickets. Initially, the bickering was about adopting children—he’s ready; I’m not—which then led to a rehashing of a few texts I’d seen on his phone between an ex and him, which then spiraled into him rebuking me for my trust issues and for my lack of respect for his privacy, which culminated with my dredging up his infidelity from last year.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go on this trip with you.”
“Maybe,” he responded.
The next day, we made peace, but I used my father’s health as a pretext to stay home.
* * *
Your mother and I have never spent more than two nights apart in almost fifty years,” says my father. “Amor de lejos, amor de pendejos.”
“We’ll be okay. A little break never hurt anyone.”
“You know your relationship best,” my father says before extending his arm and pointing toward his side of the windshield. “¡Aquí! Get over to the right lane! Next exit!”
I don’t know why he’s telling me this. Or why he’s shouting. I know exactly how to get there.
9
BASEMENTS
Jeremy lives on a block of two-story homes with small lawns, vinyl fences, driveways, and sickly maple trees, not far from St. Pete’s—the elementary school. One block over is the street where a van full of teenagers opened fire on us with eggs and Super Soaker guns full of piss one Halloween. Our small group was unprepared for the onslaught of yellow. Mikey C., Paul, and I dove behind a hedgerow and only caught a bit of splatter on our costumes—Mike and I were Ghostbusters; Paul was Duff McKagan, the bassist for Guns N’ Roses—but the rest of the pack had to run home to wash off the liquid detritus. I didn’t recognize the assailants. Paul said they attended McKinley, the middle school named after the US president who’d been shot by an anarchist. Public school kids were, back then, mythical creatures that I’d hear about in passing and sometimes meet at a block party or parking lot carnival. They were usually the poorer or less devout cousins and neighbors of my Catholic school classmates. Troublemakers who peed into water guns.
Most of the houses in this part of town have clapboard siding, and they’re painted off-white with red trim, dull blue with white trim, or beige with brown trim. There are no curbs or sidewalks in sight; lawns end abruptly where the street’s pavement begins. Small children bike loops or dribble basketballs on their driveways. Every few houses, flowers droop in their beds beneath bay windows. Occasionally, there’s an American flag. Always there’s one house that’s in disrepair. That’s where the kids with the ratty uniforms and slovenly parents tended to live. Nowadays, there are two of those houses per block. I’ve also noticed another trend: bigger, more ostentatious homes (mini-McMansions) stuffed betwixt the older constructions. Whether this reflects wealth or non-union labor or materials made elsewhere for less, I don’t know.
Jeremy’s lawn is small, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in verdancy. Water guns, a pedal-less tricycle, and Wiffle balls and bats are strewn about the recently mowed swath of green. A sprinkler oscillates, one hundred eighty degrees: one side, straight up, then the other side. I park in front of his house, on the street, behind an angled black Nissan Altima. Three of its tires are on the pavement; the fourth rests on the short cobblestone perimeter that encircles the lawn.
I can’t see what lies beyond the white fence that encloses the side and back of the two-story house. It comes up above my forehead, and there is no visible space between the pickets. I imagine a small patio and an unkempt yard peppered with dog shit.
My mouth is dry. It feels small and inutile. I shouldn’t have taken a hit of the old pot—a dime bag that my sister-in-law, Ellie, slid into my stocking during our first Christmas together after Henry died, nearly nine years ago. I’ve wedged it between two books (The Count of Monte Cristo and Summer of My German Soldier) in our old bedroom. The brittle, grayish herb retains some of its potency and most of its secondary effects; I’m hungry in addition to cotton-mouthed.
Before I knock, I prepare myself for the possibility of meeting Jeremy’s wife. I wonder if she knows that her husband and I spent the last year of high school having sex in his parents’ basement and occasionally in my bedroom. Does she know that we loved each other? If they’ve been together for ten years, it stands to reason that she’s asked him about his adolescence, his first time, his first love. These are things that married people know about one another. I know them about Marco—a college friend who’s now a well-known theater actor; they remain friends; I’m uncomfortable with it—and he knows them about me. But maybe Jeremy hasn’t told his wife. He isn’t a particularly loquacious or forthcoming person, or at least he wasn’t. An onion with endless skins is what I remember. And maybe she suspects and doesn’t want to risk the tears.
Jeremy was always attracted to women and men. I pretended to be, but he actually was. His bi- or pansexuality made me uneasy, primarily because I wanted both of us to feel the same way about everything. But he had a way of making me feel like the center. It didn’t matter if we were with friends or in class or at the prom, I knew that his eyes were trained on me, following me around the room, ready to wink in my direction. He was, at least in that way, the abiding star. In retrospect, it’s unbelievable that our carelessness didn’t betray us more often. I recall one time. He kissed me in an empty hallway, in the moment after the warning bell rang and our classrooms were sealed shut. As Jeremy ran away, down the long blue corridor, I spotted Ms. Van Estren standing in the frame of her door, her face ruddy, nearly apoplectic. She said nothing to me about it, but then misgraded my physics exam a few days later. She claimed to have miscalculated, but I convinced myself I was being sanctioned.
Frankly, I didn’t care. I was infected.
Jeremy’s confidence was my first sexually transmitted illness. He made me, in a way, carefree. His affections and attentions transformed me into another person. I was popular, but he was cool. A cool kid with good looks and rough edges, who’d been in fights and played baseball, whose reputation cloaked our sins. If our ships sank, at least they would sink together. In the meantime, I spent senior year with outsized self-belief, feeling more attractive, funnier, taller even. One of the best-looking people I’d ever clapped eyes on cared as much about me as I did about him. For adolescent me, that was enough.
Also unique was that Jeremy seemed assured about his feelings for me.
“I love you,” he said, as we were lying on his bed one Friday night in January, senior year. Both of us were in boxers, staring up at a 1986 Mets poster on his ceiling.
He said the words without turning to face me. I remained quiet for at least ten seconds, focusing instead on Mookie Wilson’s name, forcing myself to wonder about its origins, buying time, trying desperately to control how quickly and loudly I might respond, but the ball of fire that had traveled up from my stomach was detained only briefly in my throat.
“I love you, too.”
“Yeah,” he said, as if he were confirming what he’d already known.
* * *
The four-thirty northern-hemisphere sun strikes a wide angle in the summer, warming my neck and calves and lighting the modest house. I count three small, beige sparrows with mustard beaks perched along the roof’s gutter. I knock once for each bird, instead of ringing the cracked buzzer. It crosses my mind to run back to my car. What, after all, will we talk about? I compiled a list of questions on the way over here, most of them silly. Icebreakers, really. Through the living room window, I see a shapeless figure move between shadows before I hear its footsteps.
Jeremy appears behind the mesh of his screen door. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
His hair is darker and neater than it was last night. His pale face has a reddish tinge, as if he just showered with hot water. He’s wearing jeans pulled high on his waist and an unappealing lilac-colored polo shirt. He looks like a dad and a neighbor. He opens the screen door and steps forward, in the process allowing the sunlight to restore his humanity. “Gimme a sec.” Jeremy inspects his mailbox and dislodges from it a few envelopes that have been forced into an opening that’s too small.
“Come in.”
“Should I take my shoes off?” I ask after crossing the threshold.
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. Germs?”
“It’s fine. Whatever you want.”
Jeremy bisects a narrow, rectangular living room and enters an equally circumscribed kitchen. “Something to drink? I got water, milk, orange juice, or pink wine,” he calls out, with his head inside of the refrigerator.
Pink wine. Who doesn’t know rosé? I suspect he’s uncomfortable saying the word, as if it’ll emasculate him.
“I thought you didn’t drink,” I say.
“I don’t. The wine is Tonya’s.”
It stands to reason that Tonya is his wife, but I don’t ask for confirmation.
“Water is fine.”
“Ice?”
“Yes, please.”
He hands me a glass dripping with condensation and sits on a teal sofa across from the armchair I’ve already claimed. The blues and purples of his clothing and furniture are disorienting, as if his white arms and white face are floating, disembodied.
“So, where are—”
“Do you want—Sorry,” he says. “Go ahead.”
“No, nothing. I was just wondering where your family is.”
“Oh. Tonya took the kids to the pool. At the high school.”
“Garfield?” Another assassinated president.
“Yeah. They have swim classes every day in the summer.”
“How old are they?”
“Ford is seven. Lincoln is four.”
“Like the presidents or the cars?”
“What? Oh. Tonya named them both,” he says with a restrained smile. Maybe I’ve embarrassed him with my penchant for trivia.
“Will they be home soon?”
Jeremy reaches for his phone and glances at its screen. “The class just started. And she usually takes them to Athena’s after.”
“They remodeled,” I say. “I noticed on the way over here.”
“Yeah, but it’s still the same old diner. Same menu.”
“I remember the french fries.”
“Still great.”
We both smile until it becomes awkward. I look down at the ring of water on my shorts. I wipe the glass with the end of my shirt.
“It’s hotter up here. Let’s go down to the basement,” he says.
* * *
My childhood home didn’t have a basement. “The land here wasn’t made for basements,” my dad has claimed. “But for a few hundred dollars more, we could have had a garage. I’ll regret that for the rest of my life.” My mother, however, is grateful for the simplicity. “Who would have cleaned the garage? They get moldy and fill up with junk. I’ve never seen a clean garage. I think it’s a garbage, but they forgot to add the B.”
All my friends had basements—carpeted, low-ceilinged, wood-paneled, plush-couched dens. It’s where everything happened—drinking, darts, dates. I had sex for the first time in a basement. The second time, too. Dozens of times, actually. Jeremy’s basement had been designed at some point as a refuge for his father—small kitchen, well-stocked bar, projector, lazily hidden collection of porn on VHS, pull-out couch, bathroom with a tiny shower—but the space became our own whenever his parents were out, which was often.
I went to Jeremy’s house for the first time on a Friday in March. It was cold out, but not so cold that I couldn’t ride my bike to his place. Jeremy invited me to sleep over because his parents went out on Fridays, and his grandmother didn’t care who came by. That first time, I went because he’d been talking to a girl from the neighborhood, and this girl had a friend who, sight unseen, had agreed to be my date for the night. Jeremy said we’d all watch a movie and he’d make screwdrivers and we’d end up making out with our dates, side by side, on the couch. He’d thought it through, he said. By that point, I was a junior who hadn’t had sex and I was desperate to catch up to my friends.
The girls didn’t show up that night. The one who was meant to be my date got her period, or so said the one who was supposed to be Jeremy’s date. Instead, he and I ordered pizza, watched Friday, and smoked pot. We became otherworldly and giddy almost immediately, before I entered the familiar paranoia loop. This high is going to pass. Don’t say anything stupid. Don’t forget your track meet tomorrow! This high is going to pass. Don’t say anything stupid. Don’t forget your track meet tomorrow!
Jeremy, for his part, turned playfully aggressive. He flicked my earlobe whenever I looked away, which only heightened my paranoia. When he tired of that, or maybe because he could tell I was uncomfortable, he began pinching my nipple over my shirt, all the while howling with glee. My guy friends did these kinds of things to each other and to me, but it never occurred to me to do them.
When I got up to use the bathroom, Jeremy smacked my backside and laughed. When I returned, he tried to trip me as I stepped over his legs. When that didn’t work, he pushed me onto the couch. I laughed, half-heartedly and artificially, to mask the mix of confusion, anxiety, and arousal that I was feeling. In retrospect, it was rather obvious that he was flirting or trying desperately and unnecessarily to get attention that I would have given freely. It was easier, however, to believe that he was messing around, that my sublimated queerness left me inadequate to the task of being an adolescent boy fluent in the language of horseplay. Whatever I might reciprocate would result in my being pinned beneath him in a wrestling match that I was certain to lose. Jeremy and I were of similar height and weight, but he was fit, while I was nearly malnourished. Every exit pointed toward embarrassment. And still, I was high. The liminal haze allowed me to entertain all possibilities. Was he waiting for me to make a move? Was he as desperate for my unambiguous touch, embrace, or kiss, as I was for his?
As we started to come down, he asked if I wanted to smoke again.
“Nah, I’m good. I have to be up at five-thirty tomorrow and to school by six-thirty. I should probably get going.”
“What? C’mon, dude. I thought you were staying over.”
“The girls didn’t show up, and honestly, it’ll be easier to get to school from my house.”
“I’ll give you a ride. My parents left me a set of car keys in case of an emergency.”
“You don’t have a license.”
“Yeah I do. I got the temporary last week. The new one is coming in the mail.”
When it became clear to him that I was resolute, Jeremy started bouncing around me, like a little kid or a desperate puppy.
“You’re just down cuz you didn’t get any pussy tonight,” he said.
“No, I’m not. I’m legitimately tired, and I have to get up early.”
“Legitimately?”
“Shut up.”
“Fine. You can go, but hang a bit longer. I got something for you. Chill here.”
Jeremy vanished into the spare room in the far corner of the basement. Meanwhile, I lay out on the enormous couch, running my fingers against the grain of the soft fibers, gripping the shaggy carpet with my toes, well into the tactile portion of the high. When Jeremy returned, he was holding two nondescript rectangular black boxes. “Which one?” he asked. “Right or left?”
“What are they?”
“Right or left?”
“I don’t know. That one,” I said, pointing to the one on the right.
Jeremy opened one of the boxes and stuffed the cassette into the VCR. “It’s from my dad’s collection,” he said. Then he walked back to the couch and stood over me. His baggy gray sweatpants were taut from the wide stance. He wore a black tank top, and as he tapped his fists against each other, his bare biceps throbbed. He kneed my thigh. “Move over.”
Jeremy and I had gotten to know one another well over the previous months. Ms. Cardinale, our English teacher, had forced us to study together for state exams. I hadn’t wanted to pair up with Jeremy because I sensed that I’d be doing the lion’s share of the work. I’d also been wary of him since our near fight at the beginning of the school year. During our first study session, Jeremy was effusively recalcitrant: “Dude, I’m not an asshole,” he whispered in the library, “I swear. Really, I’m not.”
A few times over the next couple of months, he mentioned his dad’s porn collection, as if this moment were inevitable. I’d seen porn magazines and porn video catalogs before, but I’d never watched a proper movie. I was, without a doubt, curious, but I was also embarrassed at the thought of watching other people have sex in front of someone else. To make matters worse, I hadn’t bothered to change out of my school uniform before coming over. I was wearing thin charcoal-gray slacks, which couldn’t, under normal circumstances, hide an erection. I didn’t want Jeremy to see me aroused, but neither did I want this time with him to end.
There was a stockroom full of empty boxes in the back of a store. A mustachioed man with enormous arms and legs wore tight clothes. A buxom blonde with similarly tight-fitting clothing appeared without a plausible explanation. Who was she? What was she doing there? After some terse, stolid dialogue, they were naked. I did my best to stay focused on the gyrating bodies, but I couldn’t help side-eyeing Jeremy, who periodically adjusted the crotch of his pants and declared his affinity for the synthetic actress, whose artful moans undercut, for me, any semblance of arousal. “She’s so fucking hot, man,” Jeremy repeated. My eyes rested upon the equally plastic man, whose strength and intensity gave him an almost reddish tint. Physically there was scant difference between the man on the screen and the brawny men my brother and I watched wrestle on television. But whereas the wrestlers appealed to me in the same way that soap operas did, the naked man with the enormous chest, bare ass, and engorged cock awoke the thing inside of me that I spent most of my waking moments trying to quell, the thing I feared more than anything might one day be discovered, the thing I gave myself permission to feel under my bedsheets or in a locked bathroom. When I realized that I wouldn’t be able to hide anything, I, too, began talking back to the screen: “So fucking hot. I’d love to bang her.” The inauthenticity in my voice was apparent, I believed, and I felt further shamed because of it.
