Assisted Loving (17 page)

W
hen I get back to New York, I find myself doing something unheard of—taking my father's advice. I decide it wouldn't be a bad idea to e-mail an attractive lesbian couple I know who were recently joking with me about having a baby. Or should I say “gay-by”? Only how do I word it?
Sperm with your eggs?
I end up with something a little more straightforward.

Hi Girls! Seasons Greetings! Hope this doesn't seem weird, but I want to let you know that if you ever do consider having a child, I'd love to help. Let's talk, ok? Bob

Their reply appears in my inbox two days later. Is this the e-mail that will change my life forever, adding meaning and maturity, all without much responsibility? With some trepidation, I double-click for the answer.

Bob! That's so sweet! But just so you know, yours is the fourth solicitation we've had this month from a gay male friend. What's with you people? Anyway, we're flattered and thank you for thinking of us in that way. We'll keep you on file. Happy New Year!

What happy New Year? My mother is gone. My father is insane. My brother and his wife and kids are away at some expensive Caribbean resort. And I'm alone in their apartment on the oh-so-parental Upper West Side (sippy cups! double-wide strollers!) without a date for New Year's. There are two cats and one guinea pig to look after. The cats pretty much avoid me. They can see I'm in a bad mood. I look out at all those other apartment windows out there, full of couples and families, fanning out from here into New Jersey and on to Pennsylvania and then eternity. All those lives. Sometimes I see couples arguing in kitchens or rushing in foyers, getting ready to go out. I tell myself that life is unpleasantly noisy and complicated in all those apartments, in all those families and relationships. Those lives—listening to each other, worrying about each other—are just so full of conflict and compromise. I tell myself I'm lucky I'm free. But to do what?

Most friends are out of town. I don't feel like seeing the ones who are around. I file a column about the conundrum of how to break off boring friendships. I order in and read the daily papers. I think about calling Ira, but don't. How is it possible to have this privileged life and be so miserable?

One night I get a call from Dad. I haven't heard from him since I got back from Florida. Now I know why. He's met someone. Or perhaps I should say re-met some
one. The first time they were introduced at the home of friends across the road, he didn't given her much thought. After one date, he wasn't feeling anything. A few weeks later, in the aftermath of Florence and Edie, he found the strength to give this woman another try. Suddenly, things are happening between them, all kinds of things. So many things, I feel like I'm listening to a kid at camp describing a really good week.

“Her name is Doreen,” he says. “She's a very cultured lady, well read, sociable, and very active. Also Jewish-minded, but not overbearing about it.”

They are going out together every night, he's telling me, to concerts, movies, lectures, and dinners with each other's friends. Better yet, she has been cooking for him, something he loves, not just because it saves him the expense of paying for their dinners, but because it gives him comfort to be eating homemade meals at a kitchen table.

“Her cooking is almost as good as Mom's,” he says.

My mother's cooking was anything but good. She was certainly not the gourmet my brother would have liked. That would entail spending money on fine ingredients and taking a more sophisticated approach to cuisine than is possible in a kosher, microwave-driven home. And like so many housewives of her time, she had the added onus of trying to cut back on both our sugar and cholesterol. My brother and I ended up snickering at recipes made with artificial ingredients of unknown provenance. Generic instead of name brands. Cyclamates instead of sugar. Diet margarine instead of butter. Artificially flavored gelatin and tubs of nondairy whipped cream that might have been better suited for waxing the station wagon.
“Love Canal pie,” we dubbed one such dessert. Mom just laughed. “You two are such critics,” she said. We never gave much thought to how hard she worked on what she prepared. But my father loved everything she served him, which is not to say he didn't doctor things once she placed them on the table. He poured salad dressing on her lasagna, applesauce on her casseroles, and had a handy bottle of artificial raspberry syrup for many of her well-meaning confections. I can still see him sitting at our round kitchen table, puppy-dog-happy with all there was to eat in his bowl.

“Step on his foot and he opens his mouth,” my mother used to cluck.

And now, he has finally found someone to feed him the same way. A Doreen. And I can tell it's serious. There is none of the tentative quality in his voice he's had with so many other women he's fished up and tossed back this year. She cooks for him. He sings to her. They dance in the elevator. They are excited about New Year's Eve tomorrow night, with plans to attend a synagogue dinner dance. This could finally be the one. But I want to know what we're getting into here.

“I have a few questions,” I say.

“Of course,” he replies. “Be my guest. I'll be happy to tell you what I know.”

I sit down on the window ledge, looking out over Manhattan as it falls into winter dusk. I'm holding a pencil and tapping it on a pad, as if I were a reporter on a crime case.

“Where does she live?”

“Her building is called the Seacrest. It's south of the Lake Worth Bridge.”

“South? That's not as nice as where you are. Is it a good building?”

“Very nice, on the ocean side. And she has a huge apartment.”

“Really? Ocean view?”

“No. Ground floor, a three-bedroom.”

“Ground floor? Oh. And where does she live in the summer?”

“She stays in Florida.”

“Really? She must not be so well off then, huh? And is she attractive?”

“Fair, not bad. She wears a wig, I think.”

“A wig? What is that, Orthodox?”

“No, she has some minor condition, not serious.”

“Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not sold, Dad.”

“Why? She's a lovely person with a good figure. And we're having a ball. I don't think I've been this thrilled with a woman since your mother was well.”

“Oh,
really
now!”

“I wish you wouldn't be so cynical.”

“Me? Cynical?”

“Doreen isn't perfect, but she's perfect for me. Listen, it's a decision to see how wonderful someone is, flaws and all. That's what it takes to find a match. Love is a decision, Bobby. But what about you? Do you have a date for tomorrow night?”

“I don't need one. I'm staying in.”

“Did you call this Ira fellow, like I suggested?”

“No. But you'll be pleased to know that I did e-mail some lesbians about making a baby.”

“You did? Good for you!”

Such delight in his voice. He's not used to hearing that I've taken his advice.

“But they turned me down.”

“Too bad. At least you asked, you tried. Now what about this Ira?”

“I'm sure he's moved on from me by now.”

“You don't know that. But you have to let your guard down. Call him, see if he has a New Year's date. And don't be so quick to judge this time. Give him a chance. You have to stop looking for perfection, Bobby. That's the only way you'll find it.”

“What is this, Dad? Tuesdays with Morris?”

He laughs. I can see his smile as if he's in the room, as dopey as it is dazzling.

“Listen, I have to get off now,” he says. “I've got an errand.”

“Where you off to, lover boy?”

“I have to go pick up my white dinner jacket. I'm renting it for tomorrow night.”

“Dad! Isn't a white dinner jacket for summer?”

“I don't know, and I don't care. I love white dinner jackets. So does Doreen. We'll take a picture so you can see how nice it looks. But listen, I'm going to make her late if I don't get off the phone. Happy New Year! Over and out!”

He hangs up on me. And I sit there listening to the dial tone. I'm a little thrown. I'm always the one rushing the old man off the phone. He just hung up on me? Yes, because he has too much to do to chew my ear off tonight. Twenty floors below, the traffic signals go from red to green all the way down Broadway.
Stop looking for perfection, that's the only way you'll find it.
Did he just cough up
the hairball of meaning I've been looking for from him my whole life? I place the phone back on the wall. His words resonate in my ears. I once heard that when you know how to listen, everyone's the guru. Could Joe Morris actually be so wise? Am I single because I don't know how to love who loves me? And is it actually possible that you really are nobody until somebody loves you?

I
pace around the apartment all evening. I can feel something pushing me, as if I'm guided by Dad's voice, possessed. He may not be so worldly. But he's been so brave about love. Why have I spent so much of my adult life afraid of it? I take a deep breath, then march to the phone and call Ira. “Hey, what's up?” he says, just like that. Our conversation flows easily. It isn't hard to ask what he's doing for New Year's Eve.

“What are you doing?” he responds. Effortless. Direct. He doesn't need to be coy or play games. Despite the fact that he's younger, better looking, and more accomplished than I am, he's still interested in me. And he doesn't feel he has to hide it.

We decide I'll make dinner, then we'll go out to some parties.

The following night I open the door in my black velvet jacket to find him with flowers, champagne, and appetizers, rosy-cheeked from the cold. He steps inside and takes off his topcoat to reveal a burgundy sharkskin suit. His loafers are Gucci, patent leather. It's an outfit that dares to outshine mine, and a little loud for winter, I can't help thinking. In less than a minute, he is all over my kitchen, running around doing this and that, with a happy and officious abandon. “How are you preparing that lamb?” he barks. “Don't overcook it! That's the worst thing you can do!” He nudges me aside to get to my oven and sticks his nose in it. Then he goes off to lay out the gravlax and crackers he brought from Dean & Deluca. I would never shop at such an expensive food store, not for myself or anyone else. But along with his fixation on quality clothing, hair products, and linens, he is obsessive about food. It has to be of the highest quality, the freshest, the leanest, the most expensive. When he brings me a slice of his gravlax, impeccably garnished with capers and a dollop of crème fraîche on pumpernickel, I swoon.

I take the lamb out of the oven and start carving it. Ira hovers. I'm anxious. I don't need anyone in the kitchen, looking over my shoulder like a culinary conscience, judging what a lazy, clueless chef I am. “Hey! That's not how you slice a lamb,” he says. “Give me that carving knife and get out of my way!” I laugh a nervous laugh and step aside. Who is this person in my kitchen? A pushy personality with a loud voice, loud suit, hair and nose almost as large as my own, and shtick so shticky I call him Shecky.

“What do Michael Jackson and Kmart have in common?” he asks, as I pop the champagne he brought. “Boys' pants—half off!”

“Oy” is all I can manage in reply.

Later, he is very attentive to my three dinner guests, old college pals whom I don't see often. We made last-minute plans to get together, and I worried they wouldn't connect with Ira. But everything flows wonderfully. He's a great conversationalist. Well, who wouldn't be amused to hear him talk about becoming a donor dad? It turns out a couple of his good lesbian friends sought him out for the job. So Ira went through the proper medical tests, signed some papers giving up paternity to keep things simple, and then, one night not long ago, with a full moon shining, he got their call to come by, and delivered his goods in a baby-food jar that he had boiled to be sterile.

“And now my friend is three months pregnant,” he says. “I hit it on the first try.”

My guests laugh. And I find myself beaming at the possibility of a little child in our lives. The idea of becoming some kind of a new uncle with Ira is delicious. I know I'm ahead of myself. But it's New Year's Eve, the first one that I'm not alone for in years.

In the kitchen, he moves so expertly that serving dinner is effortless. I feel relaxed in a way that I never am when I entertain. He's so capable, energetic, and amusing—my friends are charmed. So am I. I sit back and, without having to do a thing, watch everyone enjoying one another in a way that strangers rarely do on New Year's Eve. It's as if we've been entertaining as a couple forever.

Later, we drop by to see his friends around the corner.

Then we hit a posh New Year's Eve party at Trump Tower. It's a raucous crowd of wannabes and already-
ares, guests in their thirties and forties. Dapper men, thin women with plump lips. Actor here. Author there. It girls. Implants. Veuve. And every bartender looks like an underwear model, lifting bottles at the bar like barbells. The apartment is TV-money glamorous, with views of Central Park and a high ceiling smothered in black balloons that resemble giant mounds of caviar. I'm pleased with myself for taking Ira to a hot New Year's party. And he's smart enough to know how to enjoy it.

When he talks to people, his hybrid Bronx/London lockjaw puts me on edge. But everyone he meets seems delighted. As I watch him talk to a journalist he knows, I feel proud to be with him. So what if he's wearing a shiny suit? Who cares if he looks more like me than any man I ever imagined I could be with? We complement each other well.

“Are you two brothers?” one drunk blonde asks while we're getting our coats.

“Of a sort,” Ira says.

“What an obnoxious question,” I say after we've left the party and are walking up Central Park West. “Why would you even answer her?” I weave along the sidewalk, high on too much champagne. The branches above us are shining, coated in ice. The trees outside Tavern on the Green are coated with tiny blue and white lights. Out of some window high above us, I hear noisemakers and singing, corks popping.

“I hate that,” I say. “I hate that someone would think we look alike.”

“We don't look alike. We're both Semitic, that's all, with salt-and-pepper hair.”

“Do people actually think I'm dating you because you
look like me? I don't want to go out with myself! Do they actually think I could be that much of a narcissist?”

“Don't take this the wrong way, but aren't you?” he says. “Anyway, what do you care what some drunk woman at a party thinks of us?” He shakes his head. He smiles, then bursts out laughing, which makes me laugh.

“What's so funny?” I ask.

“You, Bob Morris, are the most untherapized Jew I have ever met.”

He's right about that. He sounds so knowing, this prince from the kingdom of the Bronx, spawning ground of Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. There is something both dignified and funny about Ira. Something a little Seinfeld and a little Leonard Bernstein, both men of Central Park West, where we're walking right now. The fact that I have to stop to relieve myself behind a tree next to the Museum of Natural History doesn't fluster him. He just shakes his head and slows his walk so I can catch up when I'm through. At the corner of West Eighty-first Street, couples in black tie hail cabs. Others step out of buildings, with high heels clicking against frozen sidewalks. I have never loved New Year's Eve like I am loving it tonight. We pass a grand old entrance to a towering doorman building that Ira stops to admire.

“You know what? This is the building of my first therapist,” he says. “I was fifteen when I came here.”

“Fifteen? That's young for therapy.”

“When my mother found out I was gay, she thought I should go. I chose this particular psychotherapist because I liked her building. She was a Jew with skis and tennis rackets in the closet, and I found that attractive.”

“You're worse than I am,” I say.

“But I'm not self-hating like you are,” he replies.

Later I'll find out about his various addictions and rehabs through his twenties—a night in jail for trying to buy cocaine, interventions when he was taking heroin—that sort of thing. For now, I feel titillated by how much more there is to know about this man who's younger than me by several years. We are alone as we walk west on Eighty-sixth Street. But I feel a lot of eyes upon us now. There are the eyes of all my friends, who have seen how carelessly and cluelessly I have treated love in the past. There are the eyes of my ex-boyfriends, every one fair-haired and attractive to me, but none nearly as capable as Ira of making me feel comfortable. I wonder if my mother is watching us tonight, too, from up above. And what about my father? He must be home by now, after his white-dinner-jacket night with Doreen. Are they sleeping together? Banish the thought. But bless the man. It is his eyes more than anyone's I feel on me right here and now, in the first hours of this New Year. He insists I'm capable of loving. I stop and throw my arms around Ira.

“Happy New Year,” I say. “I'm going to become a better person on your back!”

“On my back?”

“On your clock, on your dime!” I'm staggering on the sidewalk. “I'm going to learn to be a better boyfriend and a better person!”

“You're obnoxious when you're drunk,” he says. “But kind of sweet.”

Then he leans in and nuzzles me with his big nose.

It ends in a kiss. Our noses negotiate like horses in a field, snout to snout.

A few flakes of snow drift down from the sky as we reach home.

I wake up the next morning to a sky of slate gray clouds and a bright feeling in my soul. Ira breathes softly beside me. He looks so innocent asleep. His skin is rosy. I am hungover. Which means I was snoring last night. But I guess he didn't mind. I guess he slept right through it. Many in the past have complained about my snoring. Maybe we really are meant to be together.

I can't wait for him to wake up so we can start the day.

This man who isn't who I thought I wanted is exactly what I needed.

And so it begins for real. All of it, the full, unchecked heart-on-your-sleeve, foot-in-your-mouth experience of real love. He harangues and I hock. He hisses and I spit. Then we laugh and make up and keep going.

He hates that I leave cabinet doors open and make a mess when I cook.

“That's not the way to make a bed,” he barks.

“Why are you so compulsive? And how do you know anyway?” I ask.

“I learned it in rehab. We had to make our beds army style.”

He doesn't like it if we can't sleep together every night, even though our relationship is still very young, and I want to keep things on a medium burn.

“You're an addictive personality,” I complain.

Well, what he loves he loves. At night he wants to sleep entwined. For a while, it makes me laugh, how he scrambles around under the sheets to be in my arms. I can't sleep. “You have to give me a little space,” I say.

“You'll learn to share,” he says.

Will I? I start polling couples to see if they sleep entwined. One day I ask my friend Amanda, an easygoing young wife, and she tells us there's no way she can fall asleep with her husband wrapped around her. “It just doesn't work for me,” she says.

“See?” I tell Ira. “I'm not afraid of intimacy. I'm just a normal sleeper!”

He doesn't argue. But he also doesn't give me more space. He's aggressively affectionate. He needs me to turn over so he can hold me this way or that way. Sometimes he needs his back rubbed. His feet rubbed. I have to fight all my selfish urges to accommodate him. And to my surprise, it feels good to try. But it also makes me incredibly anxious. Are we in this too deep?

Who is this man, and how did we settle in so fast?

I worry about his health. He has to take Nexium every day. And what's with all the sleeping pills? Is he healthy enough for me to take on? It's been a year and a half since my mother died, but I'm still not as sure as I'd like to be about the in-sickness-and-in-health aspect of commitment. I want the healthiest possible specimen.

The real problem with Ira is that he is such a big presence. He calls on the phone all day when I need quiet to focus on work. He questions every one of my emotional blunders. He makes me tell him why I love him when he knows I never talk like that.

“Maybe you're just incapable of being in a couple,” he says.

“Maybe you're incapable of ever being alone,” I reply.

I think of my parents, and the conflicts they had in their good-enough marriage. Was it worth giving up all
those parts of themselves to have a life together? Then I think of all my own failed attempts at relationships, all the men who'd take forever to even use the word
boyfriend
to describe me, and then we would only want to be together once or twice a week, so we could have our space. Is there even such a thing as being cautiously in love? With Ira it is immediate and total. I am never alone now; even when he's at the office, there are e-mails and calls to me at my desk at home. What I've got on my hands is a pushy, high-strung, needy, knowing, amusing, and terribly generous man who is making my life—even with Dad out of my hair now with his new love—into a big, sweet, sticky, out-of-control thing that scares me to death.

It's Valentine's Day weekend, our first trip together. Bal Harbour, Miami. City of old Jews, reflux, and retail. Our hotel room is chic and modern, but very small for two big personalities. Ira scurries around unpacking every single piece of luggage, laying out all the bottles of pills and all his overpriced hair and skin products on the bathroom counter. I would prefer someone more rugged, into nature, not Neutrogena. He's being kind of fussy, slamming drawers and complaining about the quality of the linens and towels. It makes me more anxious than I already am, and I start wondering if the traffic noise on Collins Avenue is going to keep me awake tonight after he finally calms down. Then I wonder if the combination of a small hotel room and four days with nothing to do but find fault will make me revert back to being the naturally impossible person I don't want to be in a couple. I'm desperate to relax. Stepping out onto the balcony and looking out at the ocean, I think about want
ing to embrace all of Ira, not just the parts I like. I want to be more accepting and less critical of this man who's a better partner than I deserve. But how do I love his loud voice, wiry hair, and irritability? He can be so high-strung and sensitive, and that can be hard for someone like me, who is used to spouting off callous things without much thought. He doesn't miss a goddamn trick. And it drives him crazy when I don't shut every single closet and cabinet drawer.