All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found (17 page)

In this rank potpourri of erroneous speculation, dubious reasoning, and calculated propaganda, about the only thing in the back pages of the A section that felt true was Seidel’s monthly poem. All the opinion columns calling for “total war,” targeted assassinations, the bombing of madrassas, and the American occupation of countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Iran, and Syria—“The Answer to Terrorism? Colonialism,” a headline proposed a month after the attacks—all of it seemed unhinged and delusional next to eight stanzas of Seidel’s verse, which, by adopting a voice as twisted and chilling as that of Osama bin Laden, seemed to get much closer to the heart of the matter.

I like the color of the smell. I like the odor of spoiled meat.

I like how gangrene transubstantiates warm firm flesh into rotten sleet.

When the blue blackens and they amputate, I fly.

I am flying a Concorde of modern passengers to gangrene in the sky.

Needless to say, some of the paper’s more sensitive readers were not impressed; several wrote letters to the editor calling for Seidel to cease and desist.

Post-attacks, I heard a noticeable increase in traffic on the talk line. I called often with the hope I’d get lucky.

One night I did.

Her greeting was ambiguous, almost shy:
Hi, this is Christine. Just looking for something interesting. . .
. Her voice had a quality of innocence unlike the moaners, the nasty talkers, the men in their girlfriends’ lacy underwear.

I pressed two and recorded my Clark Kent Calling from a Phone Booth routine—professional journalist, late twenties, looking for a smart, sexy woman to share bedroom superheroics.

She responded. She laughed and said she liked my voice. She was a photographer and was intrigued by writers, especially writers with superhero powers. She wondered where I was calling from, where I was from originally. I didn’t sound like a native New Yorker. She couldn’t place the voice, but it wasn’t New York.

We traded polite messages for a few minutes—I lived in Queens, she lived in Manhattan. I was from the Midwest, she was from the South. I was twenty-nine and single, she was thirty-seven and separated from her husband. We shared a taste in music: blues, jazz, country, gospel.

Finally I made the move. I pressed three and recorded my pitch: Hey, listen, you sound really cool and I was hoping you might want to talk directly. I hope so. . . .

Your connection will be arranged shortly. Please hold. . . .

Please hold for a live connection. . . .

We’re about to connect you one-on-one with another talk line caller. If you hear a chime, that means another caller has sent you a message. To disconnect from your live chat, just press the star key. Now, prepare to speak to caller number 32.

For a moment I was speechless. I had no idea what she was after, but there was a seductive quality to her voice that made me want to figure it out and give it to her, whatever it might be. Mercifully, she untied my tongue with humor. She teasingly called me Clark and wondered why I wasn’t out in the city, saving damsels in distress. She speculated that I was recovering from an encounter with Kryptonite, and when I confessed that, like most superheroes, I was taciturn, not at all a smooth talker, she had great fun with the irony—a not-so-smooth talker on a talk line. Our laughter led to candor, and soon we were exchanging confessions of embarrassment: two urban professionals, not repulsive in any obvious way, reduced to seeking sexual gratification through a telephone line. Maybe my faux-humility charmed her, but all of a sudden she said, Listen, Superman, do you want to come over?

I stammered in reply—
Uh, you mean, uh, now? Tonight?
—and my hesitation must have made her wonder what I’d failed to disclose. The wife? The felony rap? The prosthetic hook for a hand? Because she began to backtrack, saying she’d never done this before, it was crazy, she didn’t know me at all, I could be a stalker, some sadistic weirdo.

I suppose I could be, I said. But I’m being honest when I tell you I’m not. I’m a shy boy from a little house on the prairie. I make my bed every morning. I pay my bills on time.

We went around and around like that. Having extended the invitation, she felt a need to explore every single reason it was a bad idea. But I wasn’t going to let it slide. I had a hunch I could convince her.

Eventually, I did.

We don’t have to do anything, she said. If we don’t find each other attractive we can just, I don’t know. Talk. Or do nothing. Walk away.

Okay.

Just one thing. What’s your real name?

Phil. Is yours Christine?

No. It’s Molly.

Molly. I’ll see you soon, Molly.

When I came up the stairs she was leaning half out of her doorway, hoping to see me before I saw her. We looked at each other and smiled, a wave of mutual relief—
thank goodness he/she isn’t hideous!
—washing over us.

I can’t believe I’m doing this, she said.

She wore a white blouse and blue jeans. Her hair was long and curly, the color of cinnamon. Her lips were darkened with fresh lipstick. She looked younger than thirty-seven. Her jeans clung tightly—but not too tightly—to her hips. She’d obviously spent some time—but not too much time—primping for a visitor.

I guess you should come in, she said.

We sat at the kitchen table. A stick of incense smoked in an ashtray. The place looked dramatically uncluttered for a Manhattan apartment. Then I remembered her husband had just moved out, him and all his things.

She set two beers on the table, lit herself a cigarette, offered the pack to me. I wondered how long we would pretend this was a date.

She told me her husband had left two months ago. He’d given no precise reason. He felt them drifting apart, he needed some space, a bunch of vague clichés. At first she was devastated. She hadn’t seen it coming. Then he left, and that was it. She was alone. She told herself she’d better get used to it. On September 11, he’d come back and spent the night—
the world is ending, at least we have each other
—but it felt wrong. She indulged him for forty-eight hours because she was fearful too. Then she told him to get out. He said he was ready to try again, but she wasn’t. It hurt, goddamn it hurt, but she had to do it. You don’t just walk out on a marriage and walk back in when the world makes you scared to be alone. It couldn’t be the same, not after what he’d done. He now held all the power—
I want to go, I want to stay, I want I want I want
. She couldn’t let him have that. She couldn’t let him have that and still respect herself. She knew that if she let him back in she’d live in constant fear of the next departure, the final departure, and she knew the fear would disfigure her, make her crazy with dread.

Seventeen years! she said, shaking her head. Gone. Just like that.

After we stubbed our cigarettes, I reached across the table and brushed my thumb across the tan line where her wedding ring used to be. Our fingers interlocked, and I slid my chair closer to hers across the kitchen linoleum. We kissed very softly on the lips.

I haven’t been with another man since I was a teenager, she said. I
feel
like a teenager.

Me too, I lied.

With our clothes off, we chose to make what we were doing count. There was no need to be bashful. She told me what she wanted, mouth here, hands there, and I did as she said. The erotic geometries aligned very nicely. Seen from above and behind, her body had the elegance of a double helix—arms thrust forward and crossed, back in the shape of an hourglass, her spine a dotted line. She wanted it rough and loud, as if to shatter all memory of her husband, so we wrestled with the ferocity of quarreling lovers overcoming the quarrel, then we rested and did it again, more tenderly this time.

We smoked a cigarette in bed, and the talk turned to our families, as I’d felt sure it would—her mother dead of cancer far too young, my brother dead of a bullet in the brain even younger. I didn’t belabor the point, and neither did she. We mentioned these facts only briefly, in passing, as if the specifics weren’t required because we both already knew them, had known them all along. She rose and straddled me. She seemed to know what I wanted without my even saying it. She wanted to taste me, she said, she wanted to taste herself on me, and I offered her everything.

Don’t go, she said. Sleep here. Just a few hours. I have to be up for work at six. We can get coffee from the deli on the corner.

Once in the night she rolled over, and amid the gauzy confusion of half sleep I remembered I was lying next to a stranger, an attractive stranger, and I smelled her hair and the smell of sex. I moved on top of her, and she woke and moaned and arched her back.

At six her alarm went off. While she showered, I dressed and went for coffee. We shared a cigarette at the kitchen table, exhausted and guarded, unsure of how to say goodbye.

We kissed in her doorway, and she watched me leave, leaning out into the hallway just as she had when I’d arrived. Outside, the predawn streets were nearly empty. The light was cold and lunar, the sky the color of a daguerreotype. I bought a newspaper for the subway ride home, but when the train came I couldn’t read. I stared out the window at the darkness of the passing tunnel.

Each time I called the talk line, I hoped to hear Molly’s voice; every time I was disappointed. I had her cell phone number, she had my home number, but neither of us made the move. Something about the way we’d met made a friendly call—unmediated by four menu prompts and the perky-bimbo voice—too intimate, too presumptuous.

One night I connected with a woman named Ashley seeking a horny young stud from my particular neighborhood. She was bossy, and her bossiness turned me on. She ordered me to take off my clothes, and I did. She ordered me to put on a pair of running shorts, and I did. She told me she wanted me to go to a certain street corner in Queens, pretend I’d been out for a run when I realized I’d locked myself out of my apartment, and ask her boyfriend, who would be waiting there smoking a cigarette, to use his telephone, and, once inside the boyfriend’s apartment, first make a pretend call to a friend with a set of spare keys and then, profoundly grateful for the use of the telephone, submit to the boyfriend’s wish to get down on his knees and go to work with his mouth. Then she repeated her instructions, beginning to end. I confessed I was only interested in meeting her. She said that would come later: first, the boyfriend. She wanted to hear all about my cock from her boyfriend. When I told her no, she became petulant, and I noticed a slight burr in her voice.

This ain’t no boyfriend-girlfriend thing, I said. Your voice is too breathy, too nasal, like you’re pretending to be someone you’re not. You sound like—

He didn’t let me say it. He pressed star and was gone.

One weekend afternoon a “cute little uptown Dominican, 36-C, all natural, no implants” sent a message. She said she needed to get off before she rehearsed that night with her rock band. We connected, exchanged vitals. I gave her directions to my place. It was all very straightforward, simple as summoning a plumber.

When she arrived, she said, Some guys think I look underage. I can show you ID if you want.

I didn’t think she looked underage, nor did I want to card her as if she were buying cigarettes. Her hair was shoulder-length and shiny, like delicate strands of obsidian, and her skin smelled of lavender. She seemed incapable of looking me in the eye but made up for it by being very frank. I offered to make us tea, or a whiskey Coke, whatever she wanted, whatever would help her relax. She shrugged and looked at the floor. After a moment, she said, Why don’t we just, like, fuck?

When we were through I offered her a cigarette. I lit one for myself and reclined on the bed next to her. She said, Most guys I’ve met only last, like, five minutes at the most. They don’t like to look at my face. They bend me over and do it and then they want me to leave.

I wanted her to leave but I knew it would be callous to say so.

I only lasted five minutes, I said.

Yeah, but at least you know something about foreplay.

How many guys have you met off the line?

Oh, I don’t know. Maybe, like, a dozen. Maybe more.

Why?

Why do I do it?

Yeah.

I don’t know. I suppose I shouldn’t.

She was quiet for a moment.

It’s just that nothing’s, like, permanent. So why not admit it and stop trying to find someone to be with forever? I guess my dad’s death made me realize everything can be gone tomorrow. Might as well enjoy today.

Her voice became inflectionless, deadly matter-of-fact.

He was hit by a drunk driver when I was six. Right down the street from our house, right in the middle of the day. When I heard the sirens I came out of the house. There was blood, like, everywhere. I saw a body in the street. The head was barely attached. The cops told me to go home. In a little while they came to the door and told us it was my dad. I didn’t even recognize him when I saw him in the street.

I told her about my brother killing himself with a semiautomatic assault rifle, about how I’d gone to the police and had them make copies of the crime scene photos for me, the gun and the body and the blood on the walls. This seemed to make her feel better.

Before she left, she said, You know, I never do this twice with the same guy.

That’s okay, I said.

But take care and good luck and stuff.

You too, I said.

For days afterward, the words of the cute Dominican girl resounded in my mind, a prod to my imagination.
Body, blood, head barely attached . . .
I could only escape them by stepping into the streets and walking for hours through the vastness of Queens, past the all-night bodegas and the empty factories, the ill-lit rail yards and the derelict waterfronts. I dressed in a suit and tie, a flaneur of the city’s dark edges—inviting curious glances and the possibility of violence—and I often ended the evening by climbing the fire escape of an old factory in Long Island City, watching from the roof as the elevated trains crawled below me like silver caterpillars. I smoked and tossed my cigarettes onto Northern Boulevard, seven stories below, where they exploded in a flower of sparks. I thought of the tower jumpers, twirling in the air like my cigarette, their quick and poignant plunge to the pavement, their escape from life an escape from pain.