The Lost Language of Cranes (26 page)

He was heading toward Christopher Street, where streetlamps shined brightly and people seemed still to be out. His gloveless hands were getting numb. Snow was piled on the sidewalks. A cab roared past and nearly splattered him with cold, muddy water. He only barely jumped out of its way, twisting his foot, and went sliding along another icy patch of sidewalk. This time there was nothing to grab onto, and he fell and landed hard on his behind. Cold water seeped through his pants. He cried out in shock, but no one heard. After sitting cross-legged in the wet snow for a few moments, he got up, and stumbled toward a pornographic bookstore incongruously decorated on the outside to resemble a ladies' lunch restaurant, with elaborate latticework and pillars embedded in green walls. Inside, a few men milled around, looking at the plastic-wrapped magazines, and the videocassettes, and the giant veined dildos. His entire backside was soaked. Unsteadily he gave two dollars to a man behind a bulletproof partition. The man, who was wearing a T-shirt with the letters E.T. and a picture of Elizabeth Taylor on it, pushed a button, admitting him through a small turnstile. Instantly he was engulfed in darkness. A smell of urine assailed him. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he became aware of two or three men standing around him, leaning against walls, caressing prominent erections through their pants. He headed past them into one of the booths. There was a hard wooden bench inside and a small television screen on which a large black penis was fucking a white rump to the sound of jazz music and moans. Philip fell back on the bench, which was sticky. He closed his eyes. Only a few weeks ago he would have been curled with Eliot at this hour, on the futon. In his memory the radiator whistled.

Well, at least here it was warm.

Eliot was really gone. "To Paris," Jerene told him. "Apparently he'd been thinking about it for a while. He was lucky to be able to do it. He flew to Rome, and now I guess he's making his way north. God knows I'd like to take off like that someday."

Since Eliot's departure, Philip had seen a lot of Jerene, a lot of many people he hadn't spoken to for months or even years. Suddenly he was calling Sally from work to make a dinner date. "I'm sorry I've been so out of touch," he said. "I've been busy."

"So I understand," Sally said. "Just let me check my book. Well, I'm free Tuesday the week after next. Is that okay?"

Philip, who had no plans for the rest of his life, said it was fine. Two weeks later, on Tuesday, at a sushi bar on Third Avenue, he was telling once again the story of Eliot's leaving. Sally shook her head in sympathetic agreement with every word he said. "Men are assholes," she concluded. "I could've told you that." She then asked him why he didn't fall in love with Brad Robinson, who was so nice and with whom he would make such a cute couple. Sally's social life still revolved primarily around their friends from college; it was natural she would think of Brad.

Philip tried to explain that he was hoping to branch out in his life.

"I don't see why that should stop you from thinking about Brad," Sally said, "who no matter where he went to college is a super guy, really the best. And I hear he's looking."

Philip thought about it. Brad was all right; Brad was wonderful. But in spite of the blush of lust that had come over him when he was with Brad that night at the Kiev, the thought of sleeping with anyone who wasn't Eliot was still more than he could stomach right now. He feebly explained this to Sally, who shook her head and said, "That'll pass in a week." He was giving up a good thing in Brad, she told him.

Well, he promised Sally, he would think about it. He would give it a try. He called Brad up, nervous, because he remembered the way he had said "anything" that night on his stoop, and they went for a drink at Boy Bar. The actor, Gregg, had taken another lover, Brad explained. They leaned against a wall, and Brad's eye roved the room, which had recently taken on a second identity as an art gallery and was filled with murals depicting the deconstruction of the smiley face. "Perhaps the boy of my dreams is out there somewhere," Brad said. There really was a boy of Brad's dreams. "Is the boy of your dreams out there somewhere, Philip?"

Philip surveyed the crowd, thought of Paris, and weakly shook his head no.

Sometimes, at night, Eliot really was the boy of his dreams. Together they rode a train through lush Alpine hills, past villages as tiny and perfect as those in Advent calendars. There was a smell of ginger in the cold air, a tinkling of chimes. Philip could feel the chugging of the train as it rolled along toward Zurich, toward Venice.

The next weekend Brad's phone rang and rang, and no one answered; Sally went away on business; there were no parties; he could reach no one. He was alone. He considered calling his parents, then changed his mind. Since he had come out to them, they had become more private than ever, avoiding the topic of his sexuality in conversation, rarely phoning him. And (he had to admit) he was probably avoiding them as much as they were avoiding him, for he had counted on Eliot's presence in their living room to justify all he had said to them, to justify his life. Without Eliot, Philip felt his mother looking at him, narrowing her eyes, tapping her foot. She could prove him wrong. And that he couldn't bear.

Bored, he made his way downtown. By midnight he was at the southern tip of Manhattan, where funny little nautical gift shops glinted like the seashells and model ships they sold among the huge towers of commercial and investment banking. He wandered back uptown, and it got colder, and still he could not bear the thought of going home. It seemed appropriate that at the end of the night he should find himself in a booth in the porno shop on Christopher Street, crying. As at the coffee shop with Jerene, no one seemed all that surprised that he was crying. A lot of people apparently came here to cry.

About a half-hour after he arrived, the door opened and a man in his thirties stood in front of Philip. He was wearing blue jeans and a brown leather jacket. "Howdy," he said. Then, throatily: "Are you coming or going?"

Philip, who was sitting with his elbows on his knees, nodded vaguely.

"Mind if I join you?" the man said.

Philip said nothing. The man entered the booth, closed the door, and sat down next to Philip on the little bench.

"Oh baby," he said. Soon his hand was kneading Philip's groin. "Yeah," he said, extracting a tube of K-Y jelly from his jacket, and unzipped Philip's fly. He began to jerk Philip off with one hand and himself with the other. Philip came all over his sweater; the man, more wisely, on the floor; on the screen, the young army private came while being strip-searched by his corporal.

Finished, the man wiped his hands off with a handkerchief, patted Philip on the thigh, and went out. Philip thought he might throw up, so he got up and went toward the door. The light of the bookstore interior blinded him at first. Outside on the street, he had to squint. Dawn was breaking. A surprisingly bright sun rose somewhere above the gray sky. It was like a giant egg that had cracked and was bleeding, yolk and white together, against the clouds.

In Eliot's absence, Philip found himself possessed of an unprecedented, raging libido. Unable to concentrate, acutely sensing his aloneness, he returned to his old habit of buying pornography, and wondered how he'd been able to manage it when he was a teenager, the magazines were so expensive. Every few nights, when he was sitting down to thumb through his magazines, he would find that the images had lost all their potency and then, like a junkie in need of a fix, he would have to head out to find fresh images to fuel his need. He avoided the back booths in the porno shops and the movie theatres only because he didn't trust himself, and because the news about AIDS was so frightening. But he did allow himself to make frequent nocturnal excursions to an Upper West Side bar that was decorated in a plumbing motif and that featured two video screens on which pornographic films were perpetually shown. The repertoire was the same night after night, and soon enough Philip had it memorized. One night—it was March by now, and the first tentative spring buds were cracking through the ice of Central Park—a fight broke out at the bar. It took place somewhere behind where Philip was standing, and he was aware of it only as a lot of shouting and a pushing in the crowd, the ripples of which nearly knocked him off his feet. When a pudgy, bearded man in a suit was carried out, blood dripping from his nose, eyes closed in rage, Philip found himself pressed against the wall and against an affable-looking young man with dark, straight hair, big brown eyes, wire-rimmed glasses very much like Eliot's. "Excuse me," he said.

"It's all right," the young man said. "Do you know what happened?"

"A fight, I guess."

"Jesus."

Philip stood on his toes to see if there were any police.

"I'm Rob," the young man said, and held out his hand to shake.

Surprised, Philip turned and saw that he was still pressed firmly against Rob's blue sweater.

"Philip," Philip said.

They shook hands. "Nice to meet you, Philip."

"Nice to meet you, Rob." Philip laughed.

Rob was a junior at Columbia. His declared major was history, but he was thinking of switching to English. He seemed to Philip to be terribly, terribly young, though in fact he was twenty—only five years younger than Philip himself. They talked some more, amicably, about being an English major, and how Rob's father was pressuring him to go to law school. The chaos that had been touched off by the fight subsided. Muscled men in white T-shirts mopped up the blood and glass. Then Rob just stood there, not moving, glancing at his feet, glancing at Philip, turning away whenever Philip's eyes met his.

"Well, it's getting pretty late," Philip finally said, after they had stood there for five minutes without saying a word.

"Yes," Rob said.

"I should be getting along."

"Yes. I should, too."

"Shall we walk out together?"

He smiled, grateful. "Sure," he said. "Just let me get my coat."

As they waited at the coat check, Philip watched Rob close his eyes once, twice, open them, turn, and say, "If it's not too late for you, would you like to come back with me to my room for some tea or apple juice or something?"

Why had Philip made him go through that? Had he enjoyed withholding the offer that would have been for him so much easier to make? Perhaps. "That would be nice," he said, and relief suffused Rob's face. Philip recognized that for possibly the first time in his life he was the more experienced, the older partner, expected to carry the show. He wasn't at all sure that he could live up to the expectations of a boy who was clearly very inexperienced, maybe even a virgin, who probably wanted to be taught what to do.

They took a cab uptown; Philip paid. Rob's stuffy single room was familiarly messy; there were clothes and underwear tangled among the bedsheets, copies of
Rolling Stone
, crumpled sheets of paper strewn on the floor. "I'm sorry this place is such a wreck," Rob said, frantically picking things up and pulling sheets straight. "I'm usually neater."

"Don't worry," Philip said. He sat down on the regulation college bed underneath a big poster, a variation of a famous
New Yorker
cover, showing Venice from an insider's point of view—there was San Marco, the Lido, Milan, Paris, San Francisco. Rob bustled about, picking things up, throwing things away. Then he disappeared into the hall and emerged a minute later with a hot-pot full of water, which he plugged into an overburdened extension cord. "Were you in Venice?" Philip asked.

"Yes," Rob said, "just this summer. Have you been there?"

"Not since I was a kid."

"Venice is beautiful," Rob said, arranging one tea bag in a Garfield mug, another in a mug sporting a picture of a comically ugly man in jail-stripes; it said underneath the picture, "Mug mug."

"A good friend of mine is in Venice right now," Philip said, although he actually had no idea where in Europe Eliot was at that moment.

"Really," Rob said. He poured the hot water into the mugs. "Here you go," he said, and handed one to Philip. Uncomfortably, he slid onto the bed next to him.

They sat for a few moments drinking tea, and then Philip moved closer to Rob, put an arm around him, put a hand on his knee. Rob was shaking violently. "Are you okay?" Philip asked.

"I think I probably just had a little too much to drink," Rob said. "You know, when it's cold, alcohol thins the blood."

"Lie down on your stomach and I'll give you a backrub," Philip said.

Rob obliged. Philip rubbed his shoulders, pounded his back, untucked his shirt and sweater and reached under to touch warm skin. Rob's shaking subsided. He turned over, and Philip kissed him. Rob hugged back and let out a little gasp.

He was right. He had to take the lead completely. Rob just lay there. When Philip's penis approached his mouth, he took it in, no questions asked. When Philip lifted Rob's hand and placed it where he wanted to be caressed, it caressed in a nervous circle, but never of its own volition. The night wore on toward dawn. Rob was enormously excited, much more excited than Philip himself. Philip thought this to be impolite on his part. In his opinion, when one made love to someone for the first time, one was obliged to exhibit a healthy erection and at least feign great enthusiasm. But he had masturbated twice today and could probably do neither. When Rob came, it was with incredible force. A drop landed on his chin; the rest pooled on his chest. Philip brought himself, by furious and concentrated masturbation, to a climax of sorts about ten minutes later.

"A football player lives next door," Rob whispered just before Philip came. "Try to be quiet."

By the time they had mopped themselves up, Rob was shaking again. "Do you want me to stay or go?" Philip asked.

"Don't go," Rob whispered, his voice edged with panic. "Please don't go."

"I'll stay then," Philip said. He rubbed Rob's back some more, then wrapped himself around him from behind and tried to go to sleep. But Rob was not sleeping. Philip could feel his heart throbbing against him. He was lying awake, astonished, and Philip was moved by the spectacle of this boy, who reminded him so much of himself only a few months ago, the first night he had slept with Eliot and hadn't been able to get to sleep the whole night. And he thought of the Jumblies, the rhyme his mother had taught him as a child, and how Eliot had recited it to him, urging him on toward sleep.