The Romanian (15 page)

For the first time her face shifts into clear focus in my imagination, plain and oval, an oatmeal complexion with steel-blue eyes and a slightly bulbous nose, the kind of potato-faced girl who looks like a chambermaid until she's lightened her hair and painted her lips a glistening pink to become a disco queen, a flashy trophy with long, lithesome legs, pert breasts and a high ass.

Four days ago, from Syracuse, I'd overnighted letters of invitation from the Lithuanian professor and Moldovan actor, with instructions for Romulus to go to the American embassy in Bucharest to apply for a visa. Now I call his cell phone and he answers distractedly, with a television baying annoyingly in the background. He's in Bucharest, he claims, as I instructed, staying at a cheap hotel near the embassy. But something about the incessant puffing of his cigarette, interrupting our conversation, hints of disconnection and disappointment. The embassy is demanding papers to prove his residence and his income, he tells me sadly. Is he really there? I squelch the doubt. Don't worry, I tell him, we'll find another way. What astonishes me is the tone of his soft, caring voice, his obvious comfort in hearing mine. It washes away all the paranoia, until Mom's abrasive voice barges in on the conversation, demanding to know immediately where I am and what I'm doing.

Instead of anger, a tenderness for her, overlaid on a sweet, sentimental need for him, washes over me and floats me into her bedroom. Her cool, waxy hand grasps my arm weakly, and she whispers into my ear that she approves of him if that is what will make me happy. But her voice can't lead me into the world into which she's rapidly sinking. Perhaps not so strangely, her failing is intensifying my Romulus fantasies. I seem to be substituting some harder, crueler comfort for what was once so soft and protective. All my life, from infancy to now, bodies have been my most cathectic points of signification. I never believed that the mind was any more important. Now I feel my own body calmed by fantasy, floating on Mom's touch, the conversation I've just had with Romulus and the white codeine pills I brought back from Romania.

Later, an unspecific distrust and fears about my exploits return, bringing back, for some reason, a memory of that last day in Bucharest. I'd awoken with him in my arms and that splitting headache that comes from a codeine hangover, feeling sudden regret about having neglected the city in favor of his body. As he lounged in front of the television with the curtains drawn against the afternoon light, I decided to separate from him for the first time, even though our nights had been saturated with more and more intimacy and physical pleasure. What cinched it as far as I was concerned was that I couldn't take the sound of another day's soccer marathon on TV.

Having become as accustomed to my constant touch as I was to his, he was startled at my decision to venture out alone; he sat up in bed and insisted on going with me as guardian. But separation seemed the healthy thing to do, so I left alone, ignoring his worried face and assuring him I could take care of myself.

Guidebook in hand, I headed for Bucharest's Village Museum, an outdoor exhibition of rural architecture that features thatched roofs, wooden houses, woven-twig fences and other authentic peasant productions. The feel of Romulus's embraces still hovered around me, like an article of clothing that has just been shed. The headache had dissipated, and I felt deeply relaxed. At the museum, as I neared a romantic clay cottage painted in vivid blue-wash, I heard devilish giggling coming from inside. This confused me, because the building was surrounded by a rope fence with clear indications forbidding trespassing. Out of it stumbled a gorgeous teenaged couple, an elfin girl in tight pink pedal pushers whose waistband she struggled to button, and an almond-eyed boy in tank top and too-large red athletic pants, the fly of which gaped open. Still giggling, they glanced at me in humorous complicity, then leaped over the roped fence and ran away. They were a far cry from Carol in his natty English suits or his mistress Lupescu in her black silk Chanel dresses, yet somehow they recalled the thrill of those illicit trysts I'd been reading about. A happy excitement shot through me like an injection, as I realized that the world was full of spontaneous sensuality always in reach if you had the courage to spit in the face of convention. Or at least that's what I thought. Months later I would read in a newspaper that guards were arrested for taking up to three dollars in bribes from such lovers and letting them use the cottages in the museum to shack up, but on that day the scene had the aura of a romantic comedy.

It was sunny and breezy as I strolled down Bulevardul Kiseleff, among stately lime trees, wisteria vines and dilapidated mansions, full of hope and excitement about my future with Romulus; then, out of curiosity, I turned into a tiny street with brown gabled houses and prim little gardens. Almost immediately, a sunken-eyed man appeared from nowhere. There was a sensual, almost desperate tension in his piercing expression that at first I took as sexual. He asked me where the InterContinental was, which is an inane question, since you can see this high-rise hotel from practically anywhere in central Bucharest. He wanted to change money, he claimed. Did I have any dollars he could buy?

Before I could refuse, two burly plainclothesmen in black suits had surrounded us. They flashed badges and meaty arms and began accusing us of buying and selling money on the black market. When I tried to protest, they raised their fists toward my face. They roughed the man up and tore his shirt a bit, while explaining to me that they were sure he was the instigator but that I was implicated as well. When they demanded my passport, some instinct told me to keep a grip on it as I showed it to them. What resulted was a tugging match worthy of the Three Stooges—to which they finally succumbed. Then one grabbed my nearly empty wallet and began sniffing in the tiny recesses, supposedly for drugs. I thought of explaining that I was just an innocent American fag here to pleasure one of their country-men, but fortunately, kept my lip buttoned.

After I returned to the hotel, Romulus's face was swept with relief about the fact that I hadn't disappeared. Then his attention was again glued to the soccer game; however, my story about what had happened became the first ever to distract him from it, perhaps only because the story was connected to soccer in his mind. It turns out that the whole plainclothes routine was a con well known in the streets of Bucharest. Two guys pose as cops and another as a perpetrator. The object of the game is to nab the tourist's passport and then, as he pleads, sell it back to him. “It's a trick we call a ‘Maradona maneuver' ”—Romulus chuckled—“after Diego Maradona, the ace Argentine soccer player.” His eyes filled with comic irony. I could tell he admired the subtlety of the ruse.

XII

THE CONTINENTAL SUN is mocking my folly through a hole in the ozone layer, beating me down in my jet lag. It's the middle of May. This marks the sixth month of my relationship with Romulus. I'm waiting desperately for him in front of the InterContinental in Bucharest. I'm fresh from Paris but I haven't given my Beaubourg presentation yet—it's a month away. After our failure in getting an American visa, I've deemed it best to bring Romulus to France myself for the Beaubourg appearance. I have, luckily, come to my senses about the idea of projecting nude images of him on the wall behind me, but I still want him to be there. Then and hopefully, we'll stay together in Paris for a few months. So I've flown to Bucharest to try to take care of the French visa. The only trouble is, he isn't showing up.

Three hours later, when the sun is lower but just as scorching, when anger and humiliation are leaking through all my pores with the perspiration, he arrives with his gym bag, grimy from an interminable, local-stop bus ride from Sibiu. The bus took nine hours to get to Bucharest, delayed by a flat tire, a lazy driver who took hourly breaks and an unbudging Gypsy caravan on the road. But as usual, Romulus's manner is composed and uncomplaining, too dignified and soldierly to express any frustration. Because we have nowhere to stay, he persuades one of the many idle cabdrivers to take us on an exhausting trek through the city in search of a hotel room. After one night in a moldy hotel near the post office, we discover Hanul Manuc, a country-style Romanian inn built in the early nineteenth century by an Armenian merchant, Manuc Bey. It sits like an anachronistic hallucination across from the ruins of the royal court in a corner of the old quarter. Our cab bounces across the uneven road into a large, tree-lined space surrounded by intricate wooden balustrades. A couple of homeless dogs are prowling around the straw-filled covered wagon in the immense cobblestone courtyard. Romulus extends his hand to one of them, who lunges to bite it.

The place is magical, full of scalloped Moorish arches over wooden galleries, reminiscent of the rural Romanian world in Panaït Istrati's novels, two of which are in my suitcase. Our spacious suite has two rooms, a bedroom and a Romanian-style sitting room, with a Deco-ish dresser, high-backed wooden chairs and a wrought-iron candlestick with electric bulbs. We eat an enormous, tasty meal under the roofed gallery, with all the traditional dishes:
sarmale,
stuffed cabbage;
cascaval,
a kind of hardened cottage cheese;
ciorba de burta,
the tripe soup that Romulus chokes with sour cream; and
mititei,
an oblong meatball, which, despite its lamb and pork content, is served rare. Lackadaisical, overdressed waiters with very little to do hover over us, then lose attention and don't come when they're called—to Romulus's great displeasure.

That night the Romanian news hour is chattering on the television screen when Romulus gets up to take a shower. It seems that Ceauşescu's daughter is trying to repossess some of the jewels that belonged to the family. The climate is turning since the murder of the dictator. What seemed a pure act of patriotism is slowly becoming tinged, yet again, with corruption. Romanians are just beginning to realize that those who killed the dictator were also oppressors, who belonged to his inner circle. Now these same people are seizing political and economic control, after constructing new democratic identities for themselves.

Romulus's body is even leaner and more rippled than the last time we spent together, his ass like two polished rocks. But why that concave, crouched posture permanently stamped into him? His cock curls out from it like an angry garter snake, against the shields of his thighs. It's a sign of the rigidity and defensive-ness that will get clearer as time goes on.

The next day is tinged with fatality, like a myth or ritual. It certainly provides a lot of evidence against that utopian cultural interfacing we sometimes talk about in America. What global village? The ironies of class have only grown more glaring in the über-capitalist age. As soon as I tell Romulus that he should dress up for his appearance at the French embassy, our tastes start clashing. I suppose it's the timeworn story of Pygmalion. At the moment, he has on tight maroon jeans, a two-toned polyester T-shirt and blunt-toed platform shoes. It's a look I associate with the underclass chic of Manhattan's Fourteenth Street shops. The likelihood of his overstaying his visa is written all over it, ready to be read at the French embassy.

The pleated wool-and-nylon slacks, the conservative gray viscose shirt with just a touch of pearly iridescence and the thin-soled dress shoes I'm trying to buy him, at a price that could be used to furnish an entire wardrobe, would really please my mother, but they fill him with stony alienation. It's the same angry sense of being excluded that he exhibited at the club Byblos. This time it's worse. He's a trapped pigeon in an airshaft, struggling against the realistic formulas of success. My insistence on these boring clothes threatens his lifelong fantasies about luxury and power. Can success really be a question of being this accommodating? He'd thought money was power, speed, color. With terminal bitterness he puts on the stodgy clothes. Maybe there are flashes of excitement when he gets to put his papers in the computer case I lend him to carry, but he knows the act will soon become tired. He dreads a life like this in France, full of quality fabrics and sensible shoes, energy spent seeming inoffensive. He's already waxing nostalgic for the easy girls, big-screen TV and quick money of his recent past and glaring like a whipped animal. Even worse is the emasculating effect. He'd rather look like rough trade—whose straight sexuality is obvious—than like the possible well-behaved member of a bourgeois gay couple. I can feel him cringe as we walk down the street toward the embassy and he fearfully scrutinizes my step, wondering if it gives us away.

Our audience is quick. Aside from the letters from Marianne Alphant at Beaubourg and Elein Fleiss of
Purple,
I have a more informal letter from another friend who is French, Victoire, inviting him to visit her in Tours. You'd think these documents were big guns, but the low-level clerk barely glances at them, looks neither of us in the eye and coolly requests a notarized letter of financial support from Victoire. I just can't ask her to go out on a limb like that. It's settled. If I want to be with Romulus, I'd better find a way to stay in Romania.

The inevitability of it makes me feel close to him, fills me with sentimentality. In a small way, I've become part of his curse of limitation. Like him, I'm trapped in Romania. We have to start looking for an apartment, so we head away from the embassy and trudge up a wide boulevard in the crushing heat.

As we do, the rhythm of his footsteps opens some door, plunging me closer to his reality. I can sense his relief at not having to bother to emigrate to France. He's sick of traveling and feels at home in his own country. Now that I've committed to it, our walk, in perfect time with each other, feels pastoral, like a dreamy tango with death and doinas, the music said to represent the emotional consciousness of Romania.