From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant: A Novel (12 page)

I talked about Manila, my dying city. Cancerous, metastasizing, degenerate. Funny, I never harbored such feelings growing up there. My chief objection then was that it wasn’t a major fashion contender like New York, London, or Paris. I couldn’t give a crap about what went on in my country politically. Terrorism, the
NPA,
¹⁰
government corruption—none of these could make me bat a lash. Suddenly I was telling Michelle that what Manila needed was a Giuliani type. “Someone who can keep his hands out of the cookie jar for a single political term and clean up the poverty.”

She, in turn, told me about New York when she was a kid in the eighties, a time when no one went out on the Lower East Side, and SoHo didn’t even have a Prada store yet.

I complimented her on her vintage frock. “YSL?”

“What are you gay?” she joked.

“No, I’m a designer. The color seems like YSL, late seventies. But I could be wrong.”

“That’s my favorite YSL period. But I think this is Dior.”

“That would have been my second guess.”

“You’re a
straight
fashion designer? That is so ironic.”

Soon we were off the train, and I was carrying Todd Wayne Mercer’s backpack for her along Joralemon Street. I confessed that I had seen her before. I described what she had been wearing to a T that day at the museum, the green DVF wrap dress. Michelle was not at all taken aback. She was flattered that someone had paid attention and found her to be something she’d never considered herself to be: memorable. Only much later would she admit that she remembered me also as the small Filipino guy in tight jeans with the cute backside.

We walked on. She showed me the Brooklyn promenade, the waterfront of a tree-lined Everytown, USA. She pointed out where Arthur Miller, her favorite American playwright, had lived. This
was a neighborhood so picturesque, so literary, so quaint, so
white
, that on any other day, with anyone else, it would have made me uncomfortable. I felt far more at ease on the corner of McKibbin and Graham among the drug peddlers and Puerto Ricans and blacks and hipsters, right in the heart of Bushwick—all immigrants in some way, encroaching on each other’s turf. But on this first foray into Brooklyn Heights with Michelle, I wasn’t thinking about any of this. Through the open collar of her frock, I could see her pale skin, the ridges in her chest, and where the plumpness of her small breasts began. Then there was her long freckled neck—a branch. How intoxicating. Her face a ripened piece of fruit! Take a bite, it said. I resisted this compulsion to sexualize her, I swear. Oh, but how I lusted for a body! Still, I knew I needed patience and self-control if I wanted to get together with a girl of Westchester stock. I wasn’t going to kiss her yet, I decided, and so in my head I recited a bunch of American clichés: easy does it, early bird gets the worm. “I find you to be fascinating,” I told her. At my compliment she smiled and seemed to fold over like a lily whose petals were too heavy. (Why do we go floral when it comes to love?) God, how I remember her at first, so easily swayed by flattery, regardless of how crude and domineering she would become. Michelle was a sledgehammer but could melt in your arms like lead if you said the right things.

From the waterfront we walked back to Henry Street, and then parted at the corner. I found it strange that she didn’t want me to walk with her all the way to Nana’s door. I suppose she realized that I was still a man she had only just met. After all, it was a city where anything could happen. You could be blindsided by a stranger and wind up on the Brooklyn promenade. I watched
Michelle trail off along a row of oil street lanterns with Todd Wayne Mercer’s knapsack slung over one shoulder. I watched his initials fade away.

Everything I did in my studio that fall I did with the intention of impressing Michelle. I sketched her from memory, putting her in dresses I hadn’t yet completed. She was both a muse and a curse. I was productive, but I wasn’t working for myself. Sometimes there isn’t a difference. I make clothes for women, so who cares if I was making clothes for one woman in particular.

A week after our chance meeting on the 4 train, we had our first date at a Polish diner in the East Village, an old-world place, narrow and heavy on the linoleum. We sat at the counter and ordered from a chalkboard of specials. Michelle introduced me to borscht and challah bread. We split a grilled cheese cut from the lofty Jewish loaf that reminded me of the
pandesal
rolls back home. She dropped a teaspoon of sour cream in my borscht and stirred until it became a milky fuchsia, like a thick bowl of Pepto-Bismol, though still quite appetizing. She told me it was her favorite color.

“Your favorite color is borscht?” I teased. She laughed and punched me in the side. Michelle was so strong, with big hands and slender, soft-tipped fingers covered in antique rings. Those hands could grip my whole being and hold me close. I felt safe whenever she put one on me, as she did at the counter while we slurped our borscht. I placed mine on top of hers and we interlaced our fingers. What warmth! That first breach: My hand touching hers, her hand touching mine, my thigh in her hand, her hand on my thigh. The first time two lovers touch intentionally is always more memorable than a first kiss or a first time, at least for
me. It’s that rare singular jolt that can never be replicated. When the time came to split the grilled cheese, we were forced to let our hands go, and yet we craved that touch like addicts. So we faced each other to eat the sandwich, interlocking our legs under the counter. My knee was gripped by her two thighs, close enough to feel her inner warmth. It was our first date, but in the mirror behind the counter we already looked like a couple who couldn’t be separated. When I called for the check, she put her hand on my lower back, just under my shirt, and we waited.

On Division Street in Chinatown we shared a bubble tea and ate sweet rice out of a banana leaf. I confessed that I didn’t want her to leave and asked her to spend the night with me in Bushwick. It was a Sunday, and to get to school the next day, she needed to take the train from Grand Central Station back to Bronxville. We hadn’t even kissed yet.

“Of course,” she said without hesitation. “I hadn’t even thought of leaving.” And then she gave me a kiss, partly on the mouth, partly on the cheek, but wholly wonderful. I kissed her again. A breeze came and went. I felt the moisture she’d left on my face evaporate. I was a marked man from then on.

Michelle came home with me and we made love, but I’ll spare you the details, except for this:

Naked, we bare our souls to each other. There are no pretensions. It is the antifashion. Whenever I show skin in one of my dresses—an open chest in front of the heart, or a slither of exposed back—I feel I am providing a peek at the truth. Michelle’s body, naked, was like truth serum. I melted at the sight of her bare shoulders, lightly freckled from a summer spent on Nantucket Island; her breasts, two matured handfuls of pale white flesh,
outlined with a bikini tan line. I’d get down on my knees and breathe her in just below the navel until her white stomach fuzz stood on end. American women are so wonderfully hairy. Oh, how I fell apart before everything down there! The scent of young womanhood, so unmistakable! Her ass was tremendous—I still dream about its two halves. And what her buttocks held within its dark shadow was the God’s honest truth! It was His work, revealed. Go tell it on the mountain.

Lately I’ve been thinking about mistakes. That’s all I have the chance to do these days. There were times during the course of our two years together when I would ask myself how could I have gotten involved with a girl like this. Looking back now, isn’t it obvious? I did it for love.

By mid-November I was putting in serious time in the top bunks of Sarah Lawrence, with its communal kitchens, RAs, visitor slips, damp halls, pot smoke, cut grass, big oaks, track and fields. I would take the Metro-North to Bronxville to watch Michelle endure the hardships of college life in a pastoral setting with lots of ivy on brick.

On the commute from Grand Central Station each weekend I’d see faces from my neighborhood—poorly dressed hippies, musicians, privileged brats such as myself. I learned that many Sarah Lawrence alums had flocked to Bushwick after graduation to hold on to their American collegiate squalor. They went back on the weekends to see their girlfriends and boyfriends, youth holding on to youth, as if there existed some underground pipeline between the two places. Discovering this made me determined not to be mistaken for one of them, even though one of them was upending all my happiness and fulfillment.

What’s that, you ask? How does a young man veer from love to resentment in a matter of weeks? Well, as I’ve said, I wanted no attachments. And within two months of starting my new life I had found just that: an attachment. But this is a young person’s dilemma, not something to waste the precious pages of my confession on when there is so much dirt in the filthy air that needs
clearing. The last I will say on the matter is that when one does fall in love, there is always a dose of resentment that comes along with it. They go hand in hand. Things get put on hold when two people fall for each other. I was spending all of my earnings on trips to Westchester and mediocre dinners for two, even though my presence was actually needed at parties and events in the city. Without my presence, the dream could easily slip away. The dream of Bryant Park. New York Fashion Week. You see, whenever I found myself on Forty-second Street I liked to walk over to the square plaza and take in the way the light came through the London plane trees and down upon the stone balustrades and trim lawn. Oh, how this small green enclave would be transformed twice a year into the center of my world! I felt a connection to this space. The bustle that surrounded the park—the offices and revolving doors—made no real impression on me. In the park I was in my zone. It’s where I planned to make my splash. To be remembered in the tent during fashion week is to be made immortal.

Michelle, just by being with me, was steering me away from all of this. She was keeping me down and out in Bushwick. Ahmed’s three thousand was nearly gone. Between the puffy coat I had to buy for winter and the train fare back and forth each weekend, Williamsburg was being completely squeezed off my horizon. All the hip, artistic people—my people—were thriving in the industrial colony that was Williamsburg without me, foraging their bohemian urban dream out of the lost grounds of SoHo and Greenwich Village before it. Each time I rode past Graham and Lorimer and Bedford on the L train, the neighborhood called to me. Behind every garage door was a sculptor, a painter, a band practice, a recording‑in‑session, a designer, a fashion shoot,
altogether united in the common pursuit of trying to one‑up each other in their respective areas of focus.

Where was my label in all of this? Without the proper funding, there was no label. Just a man in a room making women’s clothing. How sad. I had all the right friends ready to help—Vivienne Cho, Philip Tang—but what I didn’t have were the investors. And so, while doing everything myself—designing, sewing, creating—I was my own headhunter too. My plan had been to finish a small collection, secure a proper studio in Williamsburg, have Vivienne and Philip fall in love with my line, and get them to introduce me to the right people willing to invest, all in the name of high fashion.

The Friday before Thanksgiving, as I was hurrying home to grab my weekender, I realized I was being followed. Outside the Kosciuszko warehouses, where many of the SLC graduates took up residence in packs, I turned to look into the glare of the headlights of an idling car behind me. When I slowed my pace, this car didn’t pass, just coasted alongside of me. As anyone with good American street sense can tell you, this meant bad moons were rising.

“Boy!” someone shouted, and I immediately recognized the voice. It was Ahmed. He pulled over to the curb in a small hybrid vehicle, a Toyota Prius. “I thought that was you. I know that walk anywhere. I said to myself, that’s the walk of a Filipinni. That ragtag bunch of opportunists! They’re everywhere at once. How the hell are you?”

I went over to the car door and shook his hand. He was dressed in one of his new suits. The double-breasted gray plaid. He wore the jacket buttoned without a shirt underneath. His open chest reminded me of the TV actor Philip Michael Thomas, whose style I’d grown up emulating from the show
Miami Vice
.

“Check out my wheels,” said Ahmed. “It’s a Zipcar.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s kind of like a rental, only it’s not. This one’s a hybreed. You should see the mileage I get on this fucker. Astounding. Get in. I’ll take you around the block.”

“No thanks. I’m in a hurry.”

“All the more reason.”

Just then I heard a bottle smash somewhere nearby, and so I scampered around the front of the car and got in.

We rode along Broadway under the overpass of the el. This was Brooklyn’s Broadway, a series of replicated blocks on which each shop was named after its service—Hair Braided, Checks Cashed, Jewelry Bought and Sold—and where young men huddled outside of Chinese takeouts, congregating with their dinners in white Styrofoam platters.