Little Boy (31 page)

“I’ve never seen
this
opera before. I
went to another one with my seventh-grade class over four years
ago. I don’t even remember the name of it.”

“Don’t you understand? I wanted to show you
something new today. I wanted you to experience something you’d
never had before.”

She looked at me with this face that had
“fuck you” written all over it. “You want to show me something I’ve
never seen before, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, hesitating. “Don’t you
understand?”

“Well then why don’t you act like an adult?
Stop acting like a fucking child! I’ve never seen that before!” She
said it so smugly, and that’s what killed me so much. She didn’t
have to say that, or say it in that way. She didn’t understand, and
that’s all that mattered. I started envisioning her little goddamn
elementary school friends, laughing at some goddamn opera,
wondering what the fuck it was. I hated the opera already. And I
hated every one of her goddamn little friends.

Well, as they say, the show must go on. And
so did we. I dragged Maria down Broadway and entered the
Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center between 62
^nd
and 66
^th
streets. The beauty of the Opera House calmed
me. A giant structure of glass and marble, it sat amidst the
mammoth apartment buildings of the Upper West Side. I remember
thinking that it looked like a jail for the rich, a massive marble
jail with a colonnaded facade. Yellow flames of light were piercing
the bars from within, beaming onto the elevated plaza, reflecting
in a rectangular pool of water in the center. Standing not twenty
yards from the front door, on the Broadway edge of the concrete
common, listening to the din of the traffic behind me, I squinted
intensely, striving to see what was inside.

Nothing.

The jail is flanked by two equally impressive
buildings that didn’t look at all like jails, Avery Fisher Hall and
the New York State Theater. As large as the plaza between them was,
I felt ominously trapped, almost as if I were in an elevator stuck
on the 13
^th
floor.

Once inside, we quietly settled into our
seats in the balcony and the opera commenced. I was so lost in
confusion and despair and nausea, that the actual show is a blur.
Nothing induces nausea more than knowing exactly how much you’ve
fucked up, and precisely what you’ve done wrong, but being
absolutely unable to reverse the inertia of your sin.

Fifty-nine bucks a ticket—a lot of money for
a seventeen-year-old—and I have no fucking idea what The Barber of
Seville was about. Based on the audience’s reaction—whistles,
applause, cheers—the story line was gripping, the singing superb,
Rossini’s music exhilarating. I don’t remember, however, whether
Maria enjoyed it or not.

What do I recall vividly is the emotion I
felt, sitting on the edge of the balcony section, way up high over
the stage. It must have been five stories up, at least. Peering
over the railing, I was as close to plummeting to the ground as I’d
ever been. My mind and body separated and drifted through the air
and left all reason behind. I ached to pull myself together, to
tear my ass of the seat, and take a nose dive over the balcony,
smashing head first into the expensive seats like a B-52 whose
engine had failed. For the briefest of moments, as Maria watched
the stage and as the thunderous orchestra synchronized with my
drumming heartbeat, suicide at the opera was my perfect wish. For
the briefest of moments, I’d be flying... flying... flying...
feeling the greatest rush imaginable...unstoppable and purely
free.

But I could hardly stand up. Perhaps it was
the sheer brevity of that kind of moment which prevented me from
fulfilling my craving. Or perhaps a
real
man would have
faced the inevitable despondent reality of his existence and leapt
over the side, putting an end to his misery.

Not me, though. Back then, I wasn’t a
real
man.

I started to cry. I didn’t have to cry, but I
just forced myself to do it. When Maria didn’t notice, I cried a
little louder. Then she noticed, I know she did, but she didn’t
respond.
What a bitch
, I thought.
What kind of person
doesn’t feel sympathy when someone she loves cries?

Halfway through the intermission, standing in
a broad, fancy room in front of a bar hocking champagne for seven
bucks a glass in dead silence, I told her I was going outside, and
that I didn’t want to see the rest of the show. I got outside and
smoked cigarette after cigarette, all alone on Broadway. People
kept looking at me as they walked by the theater. Maybe they were
wondering what the hell a teary-eyed, disheveled teenager was doing
smoking butts in front of the grandest jailhouse in America. I know
what I was wondering. Hell, I was freezing my ass off out there,
and she was in the theater, protected and warm, and she didn’t even
bother to come outside and check up on me.
Fucking bitch!
Lonely on Broadway—that’s where I was until the opera ended. I
figured if I looked really cold and depressed when Maria finally
came out, she’d feel some goddamn sympathy. But she didn’t.

She met me outside; her stare was as icy as
the air. “You missed a beautiful opera, A.J.,” she said. We rode
the R train back to Long Island City silence. I dropped her off at
her house, got back into my car, and revved the engine. As she
sprinted toward the door, frantically looking for her keys, I
peeled out away from the curb. A worried neighbor peered out the
window to see where all the noise came from.

I didn’t understand exactly why Maria had
acted that way. Sure, I made a mistake, but why didn’t she
empathize with my sadness?
It was obvious
, I thought. It was
so obvious that it sickened me to think of her.
She’s just like
my mother
, I thought. Driving along, down the jam-packed Grand
Central Parkway toward Fresh Meadows, I realized that Maria could
be a real goddamn bitch sometimes. Shit, she didn’t even bother to
thank me for bringing her to the opera.

Chapter 16

Maria’s Bed

We rebounded the next day, as usual. But
first Maria had to vent, so she called me early in the morning and
began yelling and screaming.

“Look,” I said, “I was just upset that I
wasn’t the first guy to bring you to the opera, that’s all.”

“But you
were
the first guy!”

“What I mean is, you’d done it before. I’m
sorry, okay? I love you. Let’s not ruin the rest of Christmas
vacation.”

“I’m starting to think that no matter what we
do, it has to be my first time ever, with anyone, or you’ll go
crazy.” I refused to respond.

It’s funny how normal that conversation
seemed at the time and how, looking back on it now, how it embodied
our relationship to a degree. When she ruined a date, it was
forever discussed; when I ruined a date it was seldom mentioned
again. Business as usual. In retrospect, such a habit seems sick
and twisted and obsessive. There was, I cringe to admit now, little
difference between me and murderer. The only difference between us
is that, unlike a killer, I was too much of a coward to choke a
person’s spirit in one fell swoop; instead, I preferred to smother
it, allowing it to slowly suffocate and die, like a baby trapped
under a pillow.

But, hey, I was seventeen years old, for
Christ’s sake. I was jealous. Being a girl’s first everything was,
I thought, a possibility. Back then, reason was my reluctant foe,
compulsion my persistent ally. Not to mention my best friend of
all: short-term memory.

Customarily, I’d forgotten all about the
opera fiasco by the next day. So it was over. Everything was pretty
much okay after that for a while. We went back into the city a few
days later and I waltzed Maria through my famous Christmas tour. I
did this each year, no matter what girl I was dating. And I always
did it the exact same way. The only difference each year was the
girl.

First, we took the F train to the
47
^th
-50
^th
Street/Rockefeller Center stop.
That brought us to the famous Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. We
entered the plaza from Fifth Avenue and made our way through the
crowd, past the row of my old friends, those white angel
sculptures, flanking the shrubbery that divided the crowd.
All
you need is love
, they trumpeted, though only my ears could
hear them.

As we pushed our way toward the tree, I
recalled the other girls I’d brought on my famous Manhattan
Christmas Tour. The year before I went with Maria, I’d taken a girl
named Leslie, and the year before that, Rachel. It had taken me two
boring girlfriends and two uneventful tours to find The One. Maria
grabbed my hand, and pulled me excitedly toward the base of the
tree.

At that moment, I realized that the tree grew
smaller each and every year, as the gray Rockefeller skyscrapers
towered above the tree higher and higher. I looked at it,
despondently aware of this.

A lone Santa Claus stood in Rockefeller
Center. Occasionally, he paced between one half of the giant tree’s
bottom and the other. “Ho, ho, ho!” he bellowed. “Get your picture
taken with Santa.” A small black tripod sat nearby, as well as an
even smaller person dressed as an elf.

“Maria, let’s get our picture taken with
Santa!” I exclaimed.

“Sure.” She smiled and clutched my hand.

We walked over toward Santa Claus. The closer
we got, the more I realized that he was not a jolly old St. Nick,
but a filthy wop in a red suit. He was supposed to be covered with
chimney soot; instead he was coated with urban grime. The elf that
accompanied him was even worse. He was a short, pudgy black man,
and held a rotten cigar between his lips. His face was as purple
and wrinkly as a prune. His pot belly had split his green vest
open. I could see his stomach as it hung down like a pregnant
woman’s ten seconds after she broke water. I didn’t know which was
worse: the stench of the burned out cigar or the odor of two bodies
that hadn’t seen a shower for weeks.

“Do you two lovebirds want to get your
picture taken with Santa?” they asked. “It’s only twenty
dollars.”

“Twenty dollars! Twenty dollars! It’s
Christmas, and you’re charging little kids and couples twenty bucks
to get a stupid picture taken!?” I lifted my head and gazed at the
undersized tree.

“Fuck you, Santa!”

Fuck you Santa!
God, that line rings
in my mind to this day. It reminds me of how I met Mike: “Go fuck
yourself, Mike!” Ha! I love it!

Maria wasn’t as entertained as I was. She was
so embarrassed by my outburst that she swiftly grabbed my shoulder
and yanked me away. Her face said “Bad dog! Bad!” But her mouth
remained closed.
Good
. A fight had been avoided. As planned,
we exited the plaza and walked up Fifth Avenue toward St. Patrick’s
Cathedral.

St. Pat’s looks as though it was constructed
with lofty upside-down granite icicles. I’ve always loved St. Pat’s
because it’s even more out of place in midtown than the tree. And
yet, Manhattan wouldn’t have been the same without it. I’ve always
loved anything that looks out of place but still seems like it
belongs.

After sitting on the steps for a few minutes,
just holding hands, we decided to go inside. More trouble ensued as
Maria and I walked through the cathedral’s giant iron doors. Some
old guy—I don’t even know if he worked there or not—tapped me on
the shoulder and asked, quietly, politely: “Would you mind removing
your Yankees cap in the presence of the Lord?” Startled by his
request, I turned my head as he repeated the question. The second
time around I noticed an Irish brogue, and smelled whiskey on his
breath. “Why, are you a Mets fan?” I asked. He ignored me, but I
thought I was pretty funny. He but continued to gaze in my
direction as Maria admired the cathedral’s lavish ceiling. She
firmly clutched my bicep as if to say, “Hey, A.J., take off the
fucking cap.”

There were plenty of little friggin’ kids in
the place wearing their hats, so what the hell was wrong with mine?
Cocked and ready to challenge this old bastard, Maria pulled me
away, this time before I could get in a word edge-wise. I took off
my baseball cap. If you ask me, my messed up hair was more
offensive than my goddamn hat. Christ, there’s a fucking gift shop
in the cathedral. My cap’s no more offensive than the archdiocese
hocking plastic Jesus figurines for $12.99 a pop.

Now angry for all sorts of reasons, I dragged
Maria out of St. Pat’s and walked up Fifth Avenue toward Central
Park. I ached for the spring when, for some reason, I had complete
control over our dates. With each passing month since then,
however, my authority had weakened. I was once the pilot, co-pilot,
and navigator of a beautiful Caribou C-7A, but now I was its
helpless cargo, stowed away beneath its belly, blind to its
destination.

Cursing out Santa Claus had given me back the
ability to command my destiny, if only for a brief moment. But now
I was a sad ghost once again, floating down Fifth Avenue, flitting
to and fro, above everybody and everything, watching the pavement
pass beneath me and being noticed by none. I wasn’t walking down
Fifth Avenue; I was drifting. Mentally, I was directionless.

It was the exact opposite of flying a jet,
because when you fly, you’re in command. Its your sky to drill
through. You pick a spot and you make a beeline toward it. Your two
little hands guide tons of steel through the clouds. It has to be
that way, or else the aircraft would spin out of control and crash.
But with Maria that day—and most of the days before it, and all of
the days after—there was little order to my actions. I wanted so
badly to be in control once again.