When You Don't See Me (3 page)

I reached into my pocket to see if the condoms had miraculously turned into money. No luck. “Hey,” I said, “as long as you're in a spending mood, why don't you buy me a cup of coffee? I'll stay here and keep your bear company.”

“Sure.”

Roberto headed off. I leaned on the railing and watched the bear, who was playing with a plastic barrel. He seemed to be having the time of his life. I wondered what Roberto thought about when he came here. I wondered if he wanted me to ask him. Maybe that was why he'd brought me here in the first place.

The barrel flew from the bear's gigantic paws and into the water. Without hesitation, he got up, did a belly flop on top of the barrel, then held it in his paws while paddling around his personal swimming pool.

“Nice job, if you can get it,” I mumbled.

“His name is Gus,” a voice said.

“Huh?”

“The bear. His name is Gus.”

I looked at the man who stood next to me, but not too close. Not bad. Not really my type—a little too neat around the edges. But cute. Maybe in his late twenties.

“I'm Mark.”

“Nick.”

We shook hands. I sniffed and wiped my nose on the sleeve of my jacket before I could stop myself.

“Got that cold that's going around, huh?” Mark asked. It beat
Nice weather we're having, huh?
Plus it was more accurate.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

Mark looked back at the bear and said, “They're becoming extinct, you know. Because we're fucking up the climate and their habitat.”

“Figures,” I muttered, staring at the doomed bear. “Nothing lasts.”

Before Mark could answer, I heard Roberto say, “Here's your coffee. Hot and black, just the way you like your—”

“Roberto, this is Mark,” I said. “Mark, Roberto.”

“—bears,” Roberto finished. The two of them exchanged a look I couldn't decipher. Maybe Mark thought Roberto was my boyfriend. Maybe Roberto was assessing whether he should get lost and leave me with Mark.

“Roberto's my roommate. One of them,” I said. Then I sneezed four times in rapid succession, sloshing coffee all over the place.

Mark smiled—he had great teeth—and said, “You really should do something about that.”

“It's just a stupid cold,” I said.

Except I was starting to wonder, because what happened next made me think I might be hallucinating. Roberto and Mark closed in on me a little, so that when they started walking away from the bear exhibit, it was automatic for me to fall in step between them. It was only when we left the park and Mark hailed a cab that my senses returned.

“Are we going somewhere?” I asked.

“We are,” Mark said.

“All three of us?”

Whatever expression I wore made Roberto say, “It's chill.”

It was the last thing any of us said until we were in the back of a cab and Mark gave the driver an address. I considered the ache in my muscles and the wooziness of my thought processes. It didn't seem like a good time for my first three-way, even if I did have two condoms in my pocket.

I closed my eyes and let my head fall on Roberto's shoulder, indifferent to a din of mental voices that sounded suspiciously like my uncle and his friends. Wherever we were going, it couldn't be for anything too sinister if Roberto was part of it.

An hour later, I was putting my clothes back on and Mark was dropping latex in the trash. Latex gloves.

“If Roberto wanted to pay for a doctor, he could have just told me,” I grumbled, gingerly sliding into my pants because of the penicillin injection Mark had given me.

“He's not paying. It's a free clinic. We avoided the red tape and saved you hours in the waiting room. Just thank him for calling me before that sinus infection and tonsillitis got worse. Since it's bacterial, I'll prescribe an antibiotic. Take the full dose as ordered until the pills are gone. Do you have a job?”

“Yes.”

“I'll write you an excuse from work while you're contagious.”

I wished he could write me an excuse from Morgan while I was contagious. At least now that I had her check.

“It's useful to have a roommate who knows a doctor,” I said. My grandmother the hypochondriac would have been thrilled that I'd met a doctor, if only the doctor wasn't sporting a penis. Following up on that thought, I added, “It's been a memorable first date, anyway.” Mark's grin encouraged me. “Will there be a second? Or do I have to be stricken with another disease to see you?”

He slid the prescription into my shirt pocket, patted it in place, and said, “If you happen to take my phone number from the prescription and call me sometime, we can talk about a second date then.” My face must have shown that I didn't really believe him, because as he nudged me out the door, he said, “You should rent the movie
Casablanca.”

“Huh?” I asked, wondering again if I was delirious.

“You said nothing lasts,” Mark said. “Listen to the song in
Casablanca.
”

Roberto gave me a quizzical look when I found him outside the clinic. I grunted at him, then sneezed again. “You gonna live?” he asked. When I nodded, he thrust out his arm to hail a cab and said, “You can thank me when you're feeling better.”

“People always expect you to be grateful when they run your life,” I said. I mimicked his accent when I added, “I ain't your bitch.”

“I took you to the zoo,” he said, opening the cab door for me.

“I ended up getting a shot,” I said, sliding inside.

“I'm paying for your cab fare home,” he said, slamming the door.

“To an apartment full of snakes.”

“You win,” Roberto conceded.

“You know any place we can rent movies?” I asked.

“You got anything to watch 'em on?”

“Damn,” I said. We stared at each other a few seconds. “Maybe Morgan has something to watch them on,” I suggested.

Roberto pulled my hood over my eyes. I didn't push it back, pretending that it made me invisible.

February 23, 2003

Dear Nick,

It was strange to get back from my trip and find you gone. I knew you were moving out, but it was weird when it actually happened. I hope you're settling into your new place okay.

I know my reaction to all this hasn't been great. I can be stubborn and worse when engaged in a contest of wills. (You hold your own just fine, too.) I've probably been smothering or controlling or overbearing. I've heard I can be that way from time to time.

Fortunately, Daniel reminded me that really, none of this is about me. It's about you making your own decisions. And why shouldn't you? That's part of being your own man.

One thing worried me. You took so little. You left your computer and most of the other stuff in your room. I hope that wasn't because I bought it. Those things are yours, and you can take them any time you want. Maybe you left them here on purpose. Maybe you want to know you've always got a room here. That goes without saying. If you need to use anything here, or come here to crash occasionally (everybody has roommate problems from time to time), you have a key and you're always welcome.

That's all I guess I can say except that I love you.

Uncle Blaine

T
here were many advantages to getting horizontal in bed with a man. Mainly, I appreciated the way my flaws weren't as noticeable under covers. If a cop brought a guy to a lineup and asked him to point to the man who screwed him silly the night before, odds were good that the person singled out would be a muscular hunk, not some scrawny twink. I wasn't like my beefy brothers—or my beefy gay brothers in the larger sense—and it mystified me when people felt compelled to point out how thin I was. Only the nagging mother of an overweight person would dwell on the obvious. But total strangers would tell a slender person to eat because he was too skinny. Or they'd use code words to express their criticism. Rangy. Lanky. Wiry. Gangly.
Wasting away.

I wasn't as thin as my height made me seem, and I had big bones. But even I had to admit that being sick had left me looking borderline emaciated. Still, no one ever complained about being wrapped up in my bony arms and legs in bed, Mark included.

I went to see Mark because my boss, Benny the Whiner, wouldn't let me come back to work without a release from my doctor. I figured the clinic was closed on Sunday, but when I called the number from my prescription, I got the option of paging Mark. A couple cell calls and a brisk walk later, and I was at his apartment near Columbia University.

“I'm not sure you've had enough bed rest to go back to work,” Mark said after he let me in. He looked more appealing than he had on the day I'd met him. Kind of rumpled. Like he had no plans for Sunday except parking himself on the couch and eating junk food.

“Are you coming on to me? Shouldn't you be worried about doctor-patient ethics?” I asked.

Ethics didn't seem to be an issue. An hour or so later, the sheets were twisted around and between us like Morgan's snakes. Which wasn't an image I wanted in my head at that time. I started to tell Mark about my bizarre roommate, but he already knew from Roberto.

“How do you know Roberto, anyway?” I asked. “Is he a patient?”

“My current breach of ethics notwithstanding,” he said, while tracing my sternum with his finger, “if he were a patient, I wouldn't talk about him. He's a friend. How do
you
know him?”

“We went to school together,” I said. “Broadway High School for the Arts.”

“Right. I forgot how young you are,” Mark said.

He didn't look too bothered by it, but if he was beginning to dwell on my flaws, he'd soon be stressing over my weight and shoving food down my throat. To head him off, I said, “I'm not young. I'm nineteen. Why? How old are you?”

“In gay years, I'm ancient. In doctor years, I'm young.”

“Gay years,” I mimicked. “I hate that. Sounds like dog years.” He only shrugged as a response, so I asked, “How young?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Ugh. It's like I'm in bed with my uncle.”

“I can think of worse things,” Mark said.

“Do you know him? Is
he
your patient?”

“Roberto told me that Blaine Dunhill's your uncle. You can't be my age and gay in Manhattan without knowing who he is. Also, I've been part of AIDS and HIV fund-raisers with Daniel Stephenson.”

My uncle's boyfriend, Daniel, was a C-list actor who'd been the focus of a very public outing a few years before. Even though it was old news, for a while he and Blaine had been
the
celebrity gay couple, constantly pictured or interviewed in
Advocate, Out,
the
New York Blade, HX,
and for some reason,
Martha Stewart Living
magazine.

“Their fifteen minutes were nearly over around the time I moved in with Blaine,” I said.

“When was that?”

“October”—I had to think a second—“of 2000.”

“Where's your family? Or is that an insensitive question?”

“They're in Wisconsin. I came out to them that fall. My father was completely not cool with it—he still isn't—and my mother just hoped it would go away. My brothers are big jocks. Actually, my older brother was away at college, but Chuck—my twin—couldn't deal. When our fights got physical, it seemed like a good idea for
me
to go away.”

Mark was a good listener, lying on his side and absently running his thumb up and down my arm while I talked. The swing I'd taken at Chuck came after years of dealing with my family's crap. What made it different was that in the aftermath, I'd impulsively blurted out to my parents that I wanted to move in with my uncle.

When they sent me to my room so they could discuss the idea, I jumped online and researched art schools in Manhattan. I downloaded and printed a brochure from Broadway High School for the Arts. Next, I Googled Uncle Blaine. We'd spent a little time together and exchanged e-mails, but I thought it would be a good idea to see what I was attempting to get myself into. I knew he was an advertising executive for Lillith Allure Cosmetics, but I'd never bothered to check out his work.

With a few clicks of my mouse, I found his company's Web site and saw pages of ads with beautiful photographs of models in extravagant settings. It was good stuff. Everything popped. My mind wandered, imagining the effort that went into putting together even a simple ad. The models, props, costumes, lighting, photographers, location, poses, product placement. The final result.

I wanted to be in the middle of that kind of creative buzz, surrounded by artistic energy and innovative people. I didn't think I wanted to get into advertising, but if I was going to be sent away and hoped for a life in art, Uncle Blaine and his friends seemed like the kind of people I needed to be around. Plus they were a thousand miles from my family.

A few weeks later, I was in Manhattan, in public school for a couple months until the new term started at BHSA.

“Then I met Roberto,” I told Mark. “Our group of friends stayed tight even after graduation. When I moved out of my uncle's place, Roberto was looking for a roommate, too.”

“What are you doing now? Are you in college? Art school?” Mark asked.

“I was at Pratt for a semester. Then I dropped out. Now everyone in my family is pissed at me.”

Mark's phone rang, and while he talked a patient through some crisis, I thought about my confrontation with Blaine. I'd chosen to break the news over dinner in a restaurant, sure that my uncle wouldn't make a scene in public.

“What do you mean you dropped out of college? Your second semester started two weeks ago. Are you telling me that you've been pretending to go?” Blaine hissed.

“It wasn't for me,” I said in a way that I hoped sounded offhanded, as if I had everything under control. “It was boring. I want to start my life now.”

“Oh? How? Do you have a job lined up? A career?”

“Kinda. I got a job with I Dream Of Cleanie.”

“The gay maid service? You're going to be a maid?” Blaine laughed and looked around, as if he expected Ashton Kutcher and a cameraman to jump out from behind a ficus. “That's not a career, Nick.”

He was right. It wasn't a career. Then again, I hadn't said I intended to slave for I Dream of Cleanie the rest of my life.

Plus—I liked the job. It got me inside some really cool apartments, places I'd never get to see any other way. Not to mention that it gave me surprising insights into the dirty underbelly of human nature. The stuff you found under people's beds….

It was that night, with Blaine at the restaurant, when I'd run into Kendra. She was our server. Her uniform was stained and slightly disheveled, like it realized it wasn't up to par with the ritzy décor and was rejecting its wearer. She'd gotten the order wrong and begged us not to tell her manager.

“You're not a vegetarian, are you? Thank God. I'm this close to being fired, and I really need this job. Even though I also work at Manhattan Cable. I'm looking for an apartment that I can afford in the city.”

“You are? Me, too.”

My uncle dropped his fork, but I refused to look at him. He could've offered to get me a job in Lillith Allure's art department, but he didn't. Fuck him.

“Sorry,” Mark said. “Where were we?”

I wanted to change the subject. “I rented
Casablanca.
Their world was crumbling around them. Their romance was sacrificed for a greater cause.” I made air quotes around “greater cause,” even though people who made air quotes annoyed me. “I don't get it. How does
Casablanca
prove that anything lasts?”

“Forget the movie. I told you to listen to the lyrics of the song,” Mark said. “People will always fall in love. The world always welcomes lovers. You did hear the song, right?”

“The world welcomes lovers if they're straight. The rest of us they'd sacrifice right along with the polar bears.” When Mark opened his mouth, I said, “Don't tell me I'm too young to be cynical.”

“Actually, only the young can afford to be cynical,” Mark said.

“Yeah, you old dudes are always swooning over romance,” I said.

Mark attacked me to prove how young and energetic he still was. By the time I finally left, I was feeling less cynical but no older, since I was bearing my permission slip for Benny the Whiner as if I was still in grade school. In a brighter development, Mark and I had scheduled a movie date to see
How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.
I tried not to see the title as a bad omen.

Especially when I came face-to-face with another bad omen on my walk home.

 

Even though I shared an island with a million and a half New Yorkers, there were certain people I saw over and over. Sister Divine was one of them. The first time I spotted her, I was with my friend Fred, who'd just paused outside St. John the Divine to light a cigarette. A woman shrouded in layers of dark fabric that resembled a medieval nun's habit appeared in front of us. She pointed at Fred and yelled, “Your body houses twenty of Satan's lieutenants! Cast them out and do God's work!”

I made an effort to act indifferent and not gawk at her, but Fred was the real thing. He didn't even blink. I fell into step next to him as he walked away from her.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

He shrugged and said, “Twenty cigarettes to a pack, I guess.
Do God's work.
I wonder what God pays. If there's overtime. Just think about calling in sick to a deity. God would be all, ‘You're not sick. You're hungover. Get your ass to work. Stop stealing Mrs. Vela's newspaper. And I wasn't joking about that masturbation thing, mortal.'”

The first boy I dated after I moved to New York was Pete. Pete was also the first person who broke my heart, when he had a fling with Fred. Not because I was in love with Pete. Because I wished I'd gotten to Fred first.

Although I'd jeered about romance to Mark, I wasn't against the idea. I just wasn't the kind of person who constantly sized up the boyfriend potential of every guy I met. I didn't make mental lists of what I did and didn't want. But if I did, it would be easy to think of reasons why Fred
shouldn't
be a boyfriend.

He smoked too much. He was always late. He thought monogamy was outdated. Actually, he practiced serial monogamy. Fred treated boyfriends like most people treated fashion: seasonally. Hot summer love migrated south at the first nip from autumn. And the man who blanketed Fred's bed in winter would melt away like snow in the spring.

Fred was one of my few friends who had no inclination to do anything artistic. A year ahead of Roberto, Pete, and me at BHSA, he'd gone there only because the tuition was free. His uncle was the headmaster. He'd sneered at the school's creative programs. Fred's classes focused on the technical: set design or sound or lighting. He managed BHSA's photo lab, although he had no interest in photography.

Now Fred worked at Starbucks, which in itself wouldn't disqualify him as a boyfriend—after all, I bleached people's bathroom grout—except that he enjoyed brewing java for the evil empire. He said the benefits rocked. He liked leaving the job when his shift was over and not thinking about it again until he went back. And if he felt like it, he could abuse the customers. Fred said they expected it, because most Starbucks employees were miserable and looking for a gig as an actor, musician, model, writer, illustrator—anything, it seemed, as long as it was creative and far from the grind of coffee beans.

Fred's disinterest in all things artistic could be conversationally limiting. And he didn't atone for it by having a flawless face or a great body. He wasn't ugly, by any means. Just an average guy, the kind who played the sidekick in movies or was friends with your girl cousin.

But Fred had one habit that turned me on, even when it wasn't directed at me. In a place where you could see or hear anything, so you tended to tune out everything, Fred paid attention. No cell phone, headset, or handheld anything ever got between him and another person. When he spoke to you, he looked at you. When you spoke to him, he heard you. His ability to completely focus on someone was erotic in a way that was beyond sex.