What's Important Is Feeling: Stories (4 page)

“The picture of ethnic harmony,” said Elizabeth. “If only you two were the leaders of nations.”

The evening went as planned. After ten minutes of #2’s valiant but futile cunnilingus, he stroked my hair and said he understood. He’d seen my face; he knew it wasn’t easy to leave the tribe. “Nikil knows he’s a hypocrite. He would be stoned to death in Pakistan. The best thing that ever happened to him was being sent to that boy’s school in London.”

The word
lover
is ridiculous—perhaps even redonkulous—and it speaks to my state of generational denial that I referred to #2 as my lover, and refused to acknowledge that
redonkulous
was a word. That fall, when I was sharing a place in Greenpoint with Jenny and the Piñata Artist, I used the word
redonkulous
to describe, among other things: piñata art, Elizabeth, the Prince Street apartment, and Mr. #2 himself.

My lover was exactly twice my age, and from Omaha, but he lived like a British bachelor, surviving on Heinz beans, bodega tomatoes, and Earl Grey tea. He owned neither mop nor broom, and was constantly reshaping his redonkulous goatee.

The situation wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but Elizabeth seemed so happy about the match, and I liked the way he knew what I was going to say before I said it, and that he read poetry as well as theory, and his furry gut, which I found refreshing after years of envying Clarke’s smooth six-pack. Elizabeth said it was always a good idea to date someone uglier than yourself, though she’d broken her own rule with the objectively hot Mike.

#2 had a poorly self-assembled Ikea bed frame, so we spent most nights that week on an air mattress at Elizabeth’s—the Cousin had rented decorative furniture to display to potential buyers, but not beds. We shared a spare room the Host used for stashing his children when they’d visited from L.A. The rooms had not been repainted, and ours bore a safari mural on all four walls. Giraffes, monkeys, and lions watched over as we screwed and talked and slept.

The sex had improved considerably since Elizabeth and I had bought matching vibrators. I could get off in mere minutes if I used it while he entered from behind. For her part, Elizabeth said Mike refused to incorporate the object out of masculine insecurity. She said it like she was impressed.

In the mornings I would head to my internship, dressed in clothes from Elizabeth’s closet, plus a pair of heels from Barneys that she’d bought me on the Amex and that raised me to an appropriate height for a SoHo intern.

The work was tedious and brainless—light administrative stuff and the maintenance of a couple Excel spreadsheets—but I was happy there, bitching with the other interns about the idiocy of our bosses and of print advertising in general. None of us planned to stay past summer. Print was dead, digital was here, and these old-fashioned agencies would be razed to make way for startups that better appreciated our web-heavy résumés.

I went along with this talk, though I was privately a print nostalgic, fantasizing about using the gig as a gateway to glossy magazines. Anything seemed possible. The others were from Reno, Gainesville, and Iowa City, and I came to understand that the SoHo aliens I’d initially found threatening were only posers like me, that in fact all of
real
New York was itself a simulacrum of the somehow
realer
New York of our Hollywood-assisted imaginations.

Happy hour was upon us. Jenny said, “Ugh, I hate my arms,” code meaning either “Compliment my arms” or “Criticize a part of your own body in solidarity.” She was a fellow intern, an FIT grad from Seattle with an upturned Irish nose, prominent American breasts, straight blond hair, and impeccable fashion sense. Jenny complained ad infinitum but registered these complaints in the knowingly jocular tone of one who understands the relative triviality of her issues. I could tell she thought I took myself too seriously.

“My neck makes me look like a bird,” I said, and waited for someone to disagree. No one disagreed. We sipped vodka tonics, vodka-tinis, and marga-Tito’s, which were like margaritas, but with Tito’s brand vodka instead of tequila, plus a splash of Red Bull.

“Your guy’s in the news again,” said Jenny.

“What guy?” I imagined #2 on the front page of the
Post
, led away in handcuffs by campus security. A girl points an accusatory finger. She’s wrapped in a blanket and looks like a less birdlike me.

“The talk-show host. Dude’s been getting crunk since the breakup. Plowing through B-listers. He’s supposedly throwing these parties every night. It’s super sad. You gotta get your skinny ass up there.”

“Perhaps,” I said, and checked my cell. I was supposed to meet Elizabeth, Mike, and #2 for dinner in twenty minutes.

“Can’t you ditch?” said Jenny.

“Elizabeth would kill me. She had to pull strings to get the reservation.”

“Or at least meet up later? Party tonight at Aaron’s. Maybe find a boy your own age, sucka.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Maybe next time.” I pounded my Tito’s and left a twenty on the table.

The line at the restaurant spilled onto the street. Mike stood apart from us, smoking, giving off a moody vibe.

“What’s his deal?” I asked Elizabeth.

“Probably his period,” she said.

#2 let out a giggle, but I felt bad for Mike. He and Elizabeth got along in private, but she treated him terribly around other people. My favorite night so far was Sunday, when the three of us had watched a movie on Elizabeth’s laptop. The film was plotless and opaque. Instead of paying attention I’d focused on Mike, whose body lay beside mine, Elizabeth’s head in his lap. Mike’s fingers curled around her bony biceps, closing so thumb met fingertips. I could tell that Mike too had lost interest in the film—only Elizabeth followed the action on-screen—but he wasn’t bored. He looked perfectly peaceful stroking her hair with one hand and her arm with the other, the weight of their bodies sagging the air mattress, making my side rise up like a small, cresting wave.

At dinner, when the plates had been cleared, Elizabeth made an announcement.

“I’ve decided to write a screenplay,” she said. “Get out of academia once and for all.”

“Get out of academia?” said #2. “That’s devil talk, lady. Blasphemy. Universities are the last safe places for ideas in this capitalist oligarchy.”

Universities were also the last safe places for #2. They accommodated his perpetual adolescence—the drinking and fanciful facial hair and impressing girls like me—and he took offense at Elizabeth’s insinuation that his kingdom was a ghetto. That Elizabeth had tenure made it more annoying. #2 adjuncted at Baruch and City College, mostly freshman comp. He blamed his failure to rise on the fact that Jews weren’t the beneficiaries of affirmative action. This was a good thing for society, he made a point of pointing out, but bad luck for him as an individual.

“Academia,” said Elizabeth, “is just so academic.”

“So what’s the screenplay about?” I asked, horrified. Why wasn’t I privy to this information before she’d made the announcement? Why hadn’t she asked me to collaborate?

“Postmodern incest,” said Elizabeth.

“As opposed to the other kinds of incest?” said #2.

“As opposed to bullshit,” said Elizabeth.

“This should be good.” Mike’s tone was sarcastic. He’d finished four bourbons during dinner. Mike slumped in his chair, pulled at his open collar.

“I don’t follow,” said #2.

“It’s the last taboo,” said Elizabeth. “The film is about a brother and sister who announce themselves as a romantic unit. Their parents don’t understand. Their friends don’t understand. Even you all at this table, my closest friends, my most”—air quotes—“
enlightened
friends, look at me like I’m sick for uttering the word.”

Mike didn’t look at her like she was sick; he looked at her like he was sad. He had a pained wrinkle between his eyebrows that reminded me, for a moment, of the Lebanese man lying injured in the rubble.

“Stop talking,” Mike said.

“No, I want to hear this,” said #2. “Please enlighten us, Elizabeth.”

“The shrink thinks the girl has Stockholm syndrome. That it all leads back to childhood trauma. Truth is, brother and sister are incredibly attractive, and they want each other. They”—air quotes—“
love
each other. The love”—air quotes—“
that dare not speak its name
.”

“And what about kids?” said Mike. “What about the . . . the . . .” His arm made a circling motion.

“Genetics?” I said.

“Genetics,” Mike repeated. “What about the goddamn genetics?”

“They don’t plan to have children. They see themselves—their lifestyle, really—as the end of the evolutionary line. They are the last generation. It’s a de-evolution, a return to amoeba sexuality, the final frontier for humans.”

Mike made a fart sound with his mouth.

“I think what Mike means,” I said, trying to diffuse the tension and make myself indispensable, “is that it seems unbelievable for them to be American characters. But what if you made them German? Could that work? I think that would make a lot of sense.”

“But I still don’t understand what it’s
about
,” said #2.

“She wants to fuck her cousin,” said Mike. “That’s what it’s about.”

“And that makes it postmodern?”

“I slept with my cousin years ago,” said Elizabeth. “That has nothing to do with it.”

“You said you only did second base,” said Mike.

“And that doesn’t
count
? Is that what you’re saying? That the sex act is only complete once the man has come to climax?”

“It’s a joke to you,” said Mike. “Everything’s a joke.”

“Darling,” said Elizabeth. “I’m dreadfully serious.”

“You’re ruining . . . ,” said Mike. “You’re ruining . . . and you’re so fucking noncha . . . noncha . . .”

“Nonchalant,” I said, though I’d lost the thread.

“Nonchalant,” said Mike. “So fucking nonchalant. You’re ruining your life.”

“By writing a screenplay?”

“You know why,” said Mike.

Elizabeth barred her arms in an
X
across her body. “This is not your decision,” she said.

In bed I asked #2 why he’d never dated Elizabeth. I’d assumed he wasn’t up to her intellectual standards.

“Are you kidding? She’s a psycho.”

“Eccentric.”

“Psycho. You know she was in the nuthouse, right?”

“You mean rehab. For heroin.”

“That JAP’s never shot heroin in her life. Maybe she snorted it once or twice.”

“Don’t call her that. It’s an ethic slur.”

“But I’m Jewish.”

“That makes it worse,” I said. I rolled over, checked my cell. There was a picture text from Jenny. She posed beside a pyramid of White Castle burgers. A tattooed dude leaned toward the pyramid with his mouth wide open. The way they’d shot it made it seem like he had a giant mouth, big enough to fit all the burgers at once. Jenny looked like she was laughing.

“You don’t like me much,” said #2. “Do you?”

“No,” I said. “I guess I don’t.”

The roof overlooked Manhattan from across the river. A film crew was set up on the street below. A fifty-foot crane lit the neighborhood, sharing long beams of light like a small, near sun, giving the city in the distance a surreal mystic shimmer, as if it weren’t there at all but were only a hologram sprung forth from the crane’s godly glow. Jenny held her phone over the edge to snap a photo. The photo came out blurry, black with a dot of white light at its center. “Ill,” said Jenny.

There were no more dudefriends or lovers. Elizabeth had ignored Mike’s calls for three days. #2 hadn’t even texted.

Jenny took my arm. We crossed the roof and then descended the ladder back into the party. A dozen donkey piñatas hung by tinsel from the ceiling. The piñatas were decorated with Polaroids of battered women. Every hour, the artist would ceremoniously smash one with a Wiffle bat, spilling an assortment of loose pills onto the partygoers. A group sat Indian style on the floor, sifting for Adderall among the Advil and CVS-brand antihistamine. The installation was called
Mules
.

Some dancers made a circle at the room’s center. Jenny said, “I love this song,” and pulled us in. Her style of dancing approximated jumping. She bounced farther toward the ceiling with each upbeat, mouthed the words. It looked like Jenny was speaking in tongues, perhaps in prayer to the great lord of gravity, asking to be lifted, weightless, above us all.

Jenny’s eyes were closed. The other dancers looked around as they jangled, trying to match each other’s moves, or gauge the aptitude of their own. A dude made exaggerated air-humps in my direction, buffering against rebuff by pretending to be joking. I pictured Mike on the dance floor, pre-accident. In my head he was confident, fleet-footed. He wore a fedora, tap shoes, a white tuxedo.

I thought about leaving the party and showing up at his apartment. Mike in a bathrobe and day-old stubble, pleasantly surprised when he opened the door. We would not say a word. He would open the robe, and I would press my body against his, head to heart. He would close the robe around us.

I knew I was not someone who would show up at Mike’s apartment. Not out of loyalty, but because I was afraid. At some point, I let the air-humper hump my leg.

The clinic was just around the corner. The magazines were either in Spanish or stupid, so I stared at the TV while I waited for Elizabeth. The UN had urged both states to ceasefire, but Hezbollah refused to stop sending rockets and Israel refused to stop dropping bombs. CNN’s aerial camera circled over northern Lebanon, zooming in and out on devastated areas. From above, the region looked like a beat-up map, with certain sections so heavily creased and worn they’d become literal gray areas, topographical erasures.

In a few days, the current conflict would end, but I remember thinking, as I sat in the Planned Parenthood waiting room, that both parties were too stubborn and hateful to ever truly change, and so were condemned to an eternal cycle of murder and mourning, with occasional respites in between. Sometimes the respites were brief—a month, a year—but occasionally there would come a long in-between, long enough for the people to forget their grief and enjoy the prevailing peace. And I remember thinking that this state of being—the long in-between—was the best life had to offer.