Famous Builder (23 page)

I step through the kelp on the shoreline. The smell of the water, the tolling of church bell and foghorn. How intricately lovely the world seems, how precise and expansive. Who knew what I’d been holding back? I see things more deeply; clouds tower; even the pale pink roses outside Billy’s apartment window seem to vibrate. I’ve already written thirty pages of a new novel; I’ve already made more friends in two weeks at the Fine Arts Work Center than I’d made in the past ten years. My shoulders ease backward; I hold my head higher as I walk into yet another party. I speak more fluently, expressively, not afraid to display my silly side, the cast of selves I’ve kept expertly hidden for too long. One minute I’m the “Sissy Priest,” the next I’m a comic-strip character, “Fancy Boy,” the next I’m devising theme nights for a fictitious nightclub:
Lola Falana! Jack Wrangler and his Corn Cob! Star Boy in Flames!

And yet?

Why is love still missing from my life? I haven’t been in town all that long, but I don’t understand why I haven’t been asked out. And why is it that every time
I
ask someone out, he only seems to be interested in fooling around? Not that I have anything against sex, but I’m frustrated that the boys I’ve slept with don’t seem to be much interested in anything more. While we certainly say hello to each other on the street the next day, it’s all a bit casual. I think, if it was good that time, well, wouldn’t it be even better the next? My hints at further explorations seem to be appreciated but it stops at that. Is something wrong with me? I tick off all possible permutations—body type, body chemistry, smell—and kick myself for even entertaining such common thoughts. Or does it have something to do with New England culture, where the direct, forthright expression of desire seems unseemly, if not low-class, even among those who are convinced they’re above all that? Obviously it would be mistaken to expect an extravaganza of everlasting devotion from the aforementioned guy who biked up to you on the street with a lit joint between his fingertips, but
still.
I wake up in the morning, groggy, a bar of sunlight blinding my eyes. I feel hope—what will happen today?—before the melancholy settles: dust beaten from a mop. If only someone’s face were on the pillow next to mine. If only to watch another man sleeping, his mouth twitching as he dreams.

I am thirty-one years old. Do I already sense my future creeping up on me: the narrow bed and the Crock-Pot, the smell of cooked cabbage wafting up from the one-room apartment below?

I certainly can’t live in Provincetown forever.

I try not to fret. Maybe it’s just that what I want is too specific and my desire is caving in on itself, the roof of my soul buckling under that weight. Or maybe it’s this
place
: maybe there’s no point in being coupled if there’s so much fresh “talent,” as Hollis says, waiting to be discovered at the town version of Schwab’s every weekend. Still, I’m not ready to let go. One night, I walk into Gallerani’s with my friend, Polly, and see two handsome men, obviously a couple, sitting along the opposite wall of the restaurant. Their faces are underlit by the candle between them. One reaches across the table for the other’s hand, and in that easy, intimate gesture, I know everything I need to know about them. We’re not talking about Idea here, but something earthier and sexier than that. I just know: you can see it in their eyes.

“Who are they?”

“That’s Mark and Wally,” says Polly. “Let’s go over and talk to them.”

“No, no, don’t bother.” I stay seated in my booth, stopping her. “They’re so sweet together.”

The food is brought to the table. I lift my wineglass to my lips. And Polly reaches over to touch my hand, as if she realizes that I can see suddenly, in the deepest sense, what I’ve been missing.

***

I decide to be practical. Billy has already indicated an interest in joining the gym with me. He’s been spending far too much time inside, he says, and his doctor thinks working out would be good for his health. So one day, after squeezing my paltry biceps before the medicine-cabinet mirror, I give him a call: “Let’s do it.” If I cannot find a boyfriend, then I can control other aspects of my life.

Yet joining the gym is a bigger commitment than I first realized. It entails entering into a complex relationship with the body in which nothing is ever good enough, in which one’s always examining one’s failings. I’m not sure I’m ready for this intensified scrutiny. Doesn’t my body already take up far too much of my attention? And aren’t bodies succumbing to illness all around me? At certain moments I can’t help wishing I were born something other than human, mammal. I look down at the gray-beige pebbles around the shrubs outside my window and think how much more reliable to be stone—not to worry about temporality, perfection, and the mucky place where love and lust meet. At least not to be goaded by these hormones, which prickle the skin, and lead me to all sorts of charged, complex situations in which I’m not even sure I want to participate.

We sign up at Betty’s. Although Billy has promised to suggest a program for me (he’s worked out at other times in his life), he immediately wanders off toward the free-weight area and leaves me on the floor like a seventh-grade girl with braces and thick, thick glasses who’s just been publicly dumped at the junior-high canteen.

“What should I do?” I call out.

“Try the leg machine.”

Well, thank
you
, Mr. Forlenza. I plop onto some Frankensteinian contraption, then lift my legs feebly. Dumbbells thump and chime; everyone’s focused; everyone seems to know exactly what he’s doing. Unlike me, who’s too ashamed to let anyone see how inept I am. It’s one thing to look like a big old sissy among straight boys, quite another to earn that distinction among men you want to look sexy for.

“What in Christ’s name are you doing?”

Is that man with the shaved head talking to
me?
I swallow hard.

He steps toward me. “You’re cheating. Make sure you squeeze your legs at the top. Go for the full range of motion. There, there, that’s right.” And he stands beside me as I execute a perfect rep.

There’s something lulling about the authority of his voice. I can’t help but be drawn to its parental quality: that conflation of concern and control. I’m partly flattered, partly offended: who asked for his help? I let him watch me. Without my realizing it, his face (half hard: mouth, brow; half soft: eyes, nostrils) imprints itself in my consciousness like a deer paw in clay.

“I have to go, honey,” says Billy, huffing, his hand to his chest. “I’m exhausted.”

“Are you okay?”

But he’s already hurrying down Commercial Street to his apartment.

***

The doorman’s a big black fellow in a floor-length duster and a red, rubbery hat with points like a jester’s crown. He makes me think of an oversized, overage Little Rascal. If only he were so charming, though. Does he grimace at everyone else the way he seems to grimace at me? He seems to take particular offense at my desire to be admitted into the A-House for free. Five dollars, he barks. But aren’t all Work Center fellows allowed in for free? I squeak. Five dollars, he says, more softly now, and jabs my chest with his finger. I fork over my cash, hurrying past him, a little pissed, but still hoping that one day soon I’ll be recognized by him as the townie I truly am.

I’ve worked hard all week on a book that makes me deeply uncomfortable, if only because I’m writing about things I’d rather avoid feeling. I’ve been waiting for this night the whole week. I order a Rolling Rock from Ken, the bartender, and practically shotgun it. The voices around me are booming, baritone. The boys stand around the postage stamp of a dance floor, heads nodding to the beat, clutching their bottles to their chests or belts. The fireplace roasts the room. Everyone’s waiting for something to happen. I’m all loose and woozy, as if the beer has dripped down into the emptied cave of my stomach. I stroll onto the floor. Perhaps I’m lucky that my eyesight is so poor, that I still have on the same pair of gummy, protein-coated contacts I’ve worn for the past three and a half years; otherwise, I’d feel self-conscious if I could see those faces looking back at me. But my body feels right tonight, that pleasant combination of tensile and supple. I’m ready for trouble. I chug my arms and I shimmy, focus on the bass line rumbling the floorboards.

I raise my head. I’m unnerved to see that the man from the gym is dancing not two feet from me, his palms facing outward at his collarbone, eyes closed. His grin is sly, the left corner of his mouth turning upward. For the first time I see how muscular his body is, how thick across the chest, and for the first time I see that he’s attracted to me, which quickens my heart, in part because I hadn’t known it before. He grasps my hand, drags me off the floor, and buys me another beer. It’s too loud to talk. He puts his lips to my ear, says something wickedly cutting about the boy to our left, and I laugh, pretending to understand every word, though all I can think of right now is the warmth and weight of his shoulder through his sweat-drenched T-shirt, its dense, meaty quality.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says finally with a controlled triumph. As we walk past the boys at the bar, I try to maintain a look of cool composure. My pulse beats inside my back teeth. I tell myself: Of course,
of course.

To this day I can’t even recall the route to this house: did we walk, ride bicycles? Was it cloudy, or did the moon silver the surface of the harbor? All I know is that we’re inside his living room. He latches his fingers together, stretches his arms overhead, and to his shock, I tear up his shirt out of his waistband and fix my mouth to his left nipple. “Oh, Jesus,” he says, as his knees weaken.

Soon enough I’m leading him to
his
bed (how sexy, how profound this feels), just the way he led me off the dance floor. We lie down for a minute, still, a little shy, then all at once we’re on each other, thrashing, voracious. He lifts his face from mine after a while. “That’s one fierce mouth on you, boy,” he laughs.

I lick my way down to his tight, tight stomach. I am hungry for forgetfulness, greedy to be an animal.

I’m still awake at four-thirty in the morning. The bedroom is too cold, the floodlights outside shine through the blinds, throwing slatted patterns on the ceiling. V. sleeps beside me, absolutely calm and contained. He snores delicately. What is it about me when I have sex with someone I’m excited about? Why can’t I sleep afterward? Why do I feel this lump in my throat as if I’m about to have a heart attack, but a satisfying heart attack?

“I have to kick you out,” says V. affectionately.

Sunlight pools on the floor. As I focus, V.’s face is just inches above my own, the tiniest thread of spit jeweling the space between his open lips. “What time is it?”

“It’s ten,” he says, glancing at his watch. “You have to leave before my boyfriend gets home.”

I sniff. I almost say it:
Boyfriend?

His voice is calm and rational as he explains the situation to me, how he and and his boyfriend of three years spend one night apart each week to sleep with other people, even though they’re deeply devoted to each other. The sincere expression in his eyes suggests that he doesn’t think he’s hurting me and that there’s no reason in the world why I should be offended. And while I know in my heart that it’s his absolute right to be in an open relationship, I wish I’d had access to this news a little earlier. And yet it would seem indelicate to express such feelings, akin to wearing sneakers at a Park Avenue dinner party hosted by the princess of a long-gone republic.

I step into my jeans as expertly as I can.

“Well, bye,” I say, extending my hand at the door.

A tinge of sorrow flickers in his eyes (the color of tea leaves in this light) as he pulls me close to him. His hug is tight, unguarded. His shirt collar smells of fabric softener, a hint of shaving cream. “I had a wonderful time,” he says.

A branch cracks outside. “Me, too.”

I walk home. Sunlight shines on the shards of a broken Coke bottle by the street.

***

Danella thinks it’s time to lie low. We’re in her Work Center apartment with its knotty-pine paneling, its sweltering fireplace. She stirs the contents of an enormous pot, preparing one of her low-fat soul food recipes she’s trying out on me. (A dud of a cook, I couldn’t be more grateful.) She’s on vacation from men after having ended a long, exhausting relationship with someone with whom she shared a Kings Croft condo in my hometown of Cherry Hill, of all places. This hard-won detachment gives her a special assurance, a self-effacing, Zenlike wisdom. We adore each other like brother and sister. (She calls us Laurel and Hard-on.) I walk over to the stereo and put on our favorite music of the day: first De La Soul, then Queen Latifah. Before long we’re moving our arms, dancing casually around her apartment. I’ve never been at such ease with my body, and it pleasures me no end that she doesn’t make fun of my white-boy moves. Later, slouching on her bed, we’ll watch John Waters’s
Desperate Living
until we laugh so hard that the tears run hot down our cheeks.

For now, we sit down to eat. The greens are fabulous: zesty, spiked with lemon and garlic: church bells on the tongue. Once again, I’m talking about my lovelornness, a topic that must tire the patience of even the best of my friends.

“You’re kicking and fighting,” she says.

I lift my head. Do I detect the slightest hint of scorn in her voice?

She salts her corn, takes a spoonful, then cocks her head. She salts it again. “You’re going to get what you want, honey. But you can’t force it. It will come to you.” She has a way of investing these tired, New-Age expressions with such freshness. But why am I so unwilling to have faith?

“There’s not very much time.”

“You’re
young
,” she insists.

But then a tender recognition settles inside her gaze. We’ve just been talking about how many people are sick in town, how so many of them are not going to make it through the winter. Even her beloved younger brother has been in and out of hospitals for years. As far as I know, I’m healthy, but, like most of my friends, I’m scared to death to go to the doctor.