Chapter 8

 

 

October

 

I DIDN’T sleep well at all last night. Rex’s face kept drifting into my head—that expression he got when I yelled at him. As if he were holding out something to share with me and I knocked it into the dirt like a bully with an ice cream cone.

I mean, is it, like, a requirement that just because he builds things professionally I’m not allowed to fix my own table? God, I can only imagine my brothers or my dad if they saw me calling my boyfriend for help because I couldn’t even fix a simple table.

Wait. Did I just think of Rex as my boyfriend? How do you know if someone’s your boyfriend? Oh Christ. This is why I don’t date.

I just need to have a quick meeting with a student and then I can get the hell out of here. I can’t wait to be gone. I definitely need a break. And a huge coffee.

 

 

“HI,” I say to Marjorie at the counter of Sludge. “Can I get—?”

“Don’t you want to look at the board before you order?” she cuts me off, smiling a little too wide.

“Uh, no. I know what I want.”

“Come on, just a peek?” She’s twisting her hands together in a way that makes her look like a twelve-year-old girl, not a grown-ass woman.

I look at the board so she’ll leave me the hell alone.

“What am I supposed to be—oh shit.”

“Language, dear,” Marjorie giggles.

On the Specials board, in bright green chalk, it says “The Daniel: 3 shots of expresso in a large coffee.”

“Wow,” I say. “That’s…. Wow. I’m honored. It’s espresso, though, just so you know; no x.”

Oh Jesus, this is so embarrassing. Ginger is going to laugh her face off when she hears this. Marjorie looks a little pissed that I pointed out the spelling mistake, but she fixes it with the chalk. Then she looks back at me.

“Well,” I say, trying to move things along. “Thanks again. So, I guess you know what I want, then.”

Marjorie still says nothing, just looks at me expectantly.

“Uh….” I smile, like maybe that’s the magic sign she’s waiting for.

“Order it!” she says.

“I… did?”

“No, order it by name.”

“You want me to order my own drink—the one you already know I want because you named it after me?”

“Well, no one else is ever going to order it,” she says, clearly exasperated.

“Then why did you—Oh Jesus. Okay, I would like one ‘Daniel’ to go, please.”

“Coming right up, Daniel,” Marjorie says sweetly.

 

 

JAY SANTIAGO steps through my door just seconds after my student leaves.

“Hey, Daniel,” Jay says with a smile.

“Morning,” I say.

“You leaving soon?”

“Yep. On my way out.”

“Listen,” Jay says, sliding easily into the seat my student just vacated. “I really enjoyed our conversation last night. It was lovely getting to know you a bit better.”

“Me too, Jay. I mean, you too.”

Jay smiles warmly, then leans across the desk toward me.

“Look, Daniel, I don’t know what your situation is, but would you be interested in doing it again?”

“Again, like, dinner again?” I say stupidly.

“Yes. I wonder if you’d like to have dinner with me again. If we enjoyed one another’s company, that is, and it seems like we did.”

Oh crap, crap, crap. I can’t believe it. Rex was right.

“Like, as… friends?” I try, in a last ditch effort.

“No, as in on a date,” Jay says.

“Oh wow,” I say. “Um, well, thanks, Jay. I’m really flattered, I just—um, I’m seeing someone, though. Sorry.”

“The man I met last night?” Jay asks, seeming unperturbed.

“Yeah. Rex.” God, even saying Rex’s name almost makes me smile, even though I’m still mad at him.

“Of course,” he says. “I understand. Well.” He stands and reaches his hand across the desk. “Enjoy the conference, then. The offer stands, if you’d ever like to take me up on it.” He squeezes my hand once, lets it go, and, smiling, walks out the door.

Damn. That was the classiest ask-out I’ve ever seen.

My first thought is to call Rex and tell him he was right about Jay—both the gay thing and the into-me thing. But then what? I don’t want to apologize. I doubt he thinks he did anything wrong. No, better to just take the weekend and cool off.

 

 

LEO’S BEHIND the counter when I walk into the music store I never knew existed. I think the reason I never knew it existed is because the sign out front says Mr. Zoo’s Rumble. I don’t even want to know. He looks up when the bell tinkles my arrival and breaks into a big, excited grin, which he quickly twists into a wry smirk, but not before I see how genuinely glad he is to see me.

“Daniel! Hey, man,” he says. “You came!”

“This place is… something,” I say, looking around. The whole front of the store is second-hand instruments of every sort that parents would kill to keep out of the hands of their kids: recorders, clarinets, dented brass things that might be cornets, cheap bongo drums, and one very sad-looking ukulele. Around these, in boxes, are old music magazines, sheet music, and stacks of broken jewel cases. On the other side of the counter where Leo sits are crates of CDs with signs written on the backs of cardboard flaps hung from the ceiling with fishing line, a few flapping in the breeze of the air duct above them. The crooked black Sharpie lettering spells out “World Music,” “Rock ’N Roll,” and “Country,” but also “SoundTrax,” “Mrs. Perelman’s House,” and “Busted/Take.”

“Who’s Mrs. Perelman?” I ask Leo.

“Oh, she was this old lady who lived above the store, and last year she, like, died, and so Mr. Zoo got all her music—I guess her kids didn’t want it—and he didn’t want to file it because it’s old and didn’t fit in his categories, so he just left it together.”

“Mr. Zoo is a real person?”

“Oh yeah, Mr. Zuniga. He owns the place. So, what’s up, Daniel? It’s cool you came by!”

“Do you sell tapes?” I ask.

“Tapes.”

“Yeah, you know, cassette tapes, the plastic rectangles with two circles in the middle.”

“Um, right, yeah, we have some, but….” He runs a hand through his messy hair.

“What?”

“Just, there’s nothing good on tape. Just crap people donate.”

“That’s okay. I just need a few. I’m driving to Detroit and I don’t have a CD player in my car and I broke my tape adapter.”

When I say I don’t have a CD player in my car, Leo’s face fills with intense pity, as if I’ve just confessed to him that I live on the streets and would like a warm meal and someplace to sleep.

“Yeah, man, of course, come on.”

He’s right, the tapes are mostly crap. They’re shoved every which way into a bunch of shoeboxes under the counter. I sit down on the floor and pull a few out. Leo plops down across from me.

“Hey,” I say to him suddenly, “shouldn’t you be at school?”

“I already graduated,” he says, looking down.

“Wait, how old are you?”

“Eighteen,” he says. “And a half,” he adds like a little kid. “But I did junior and senior year last year because I wanted to get out of there.”

“Wow,” I say, “that’s awesome. You must be really smart to have been able to do that.”

He smiles at me again, what I’m coming to think of as his real smile. He reminds me so much of myself in high school I can’t believe it. And for the first time, I wonder if what Ginger said is true. If I seem totally different with her than I do when I’m with other people.

“So, how’re you liking Holiday?” Leo asks.

“Um, it’s nice,” I say, setting aside a John Hiatt tape. “Really different from what I’m used to. I lived in Philly all my life, man, never thought about living anywhere else. It’s just an adjustment, that’s all.”

He nods sagely.

“You’re totally having a Buffy, early season four moment, that’s all,” he says.

“Sorry?”

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You know?”

“Never saw it.”

Leo’s eyes go wide. “What? Insanity! Aren’t you an English professor? Who would ever listen to you talk about literary analysis if you haven’t consumed, like, the greatest text of popular culture?”

“I’m not actually convinced that anyone does listen to me talk about literary analysis,” I say.

“Okay, anyway, the point is, Buffy, right? In high school, she was at the top of the food chain. Pretty, popular, friends who worshipped her and had nothing better to do on a Friday night than follow her around on patrol. I mean, sure she had her problems, what with the whole Angel going dark thing—oh shit!” He stops, hand flying to his mouth. “Spoiler alert. Major spoiler alert. I am so sorry.”

When I don’t say anything he continues.

“So, yeah, she takes her hits and all, but basically she’s queen bee. Then she starts college and it’s like, all of a sudden she’s not a big fish in a little pond anymore, you know? Like, Willow’s super smart, so she meets people and is all into school and stuff—let’s all just pretend she would ever actually go to UC Sunnydale, yeah, right—and Buffy kind of feels abandoned. Also, her roommate’s a demon, no big deal. Plus, let’s be honest, girlfriend is not really that smart, okay? Good under pressure? Totally. Wicked clever at outsmarting monsters? Sure. But college-smart? Um, not so much. And she feels out of sorts, you know, which is very un-Slayer-like.

“And that’s you. Just out of sorts because you’re in a new place and you don’t quite know where you fit in.” He pauses, nodding to himself. “But don’t worry. No spoilers—because, obviously, the Slayer has to go back to being a badass—but Buffy totally finds her footing at college, and she starts dating Riley, and, okay, that actually doesn’t work out that well, but the point is that you’ve just got to fall back on your own superpower and you’ll be fine!”

 

 

“MY ONLY friend isn’t even old enough to drink and Michigan named a coffee after me,” I moan to Ginger when I’m five miles out of town, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell in my tape deck. I’m feeling particularly in tune with “Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back” at the moment. God, Jim Steinman, you are a genius.

Ginger does, indeed, laugh her face off when I tell her about The Daniel.

“Oh my god, pumpkin. I am going to go into every coffee shop in Philly and order The Daniel.” She starts laughing again.

“Jesus fucking Christ, I am so glad to just get out of here for a little while.”

“Won’t you miss the lumberjack? How’s it going? I need an update.”

I sigh.

“I heard a sigh and I can hear Meat Loaf in the background, which I am considering an official cry for help.” She pauses. “Is ‘Paradise in the Dashboard Light’ on this album?”

“Ha! You love the Loaf. No, that’s on the first Bat Out Of Hell.”

“Damn it. Okay, commence update.”

“We got in a fight.”

“Oh my god, you got in a fight? That would require actually talking with him about something that matters to you. That is major, sweetie!”

“Jeez, you sound like the imitation you do of your mother when you told her you got your period.”

Ginger giggles. “You’ve entered the cult of womanhood! Congratulations!” she says in the weird mom-voice she always does.

“So, what happened?”

“It’s just, I had dinner with a colleague. It was nice, you know, just talking about the department, about our research. He’s from Phoenix, so Michigan’s been culture shock for him too. Anyway, he was helping me with this committee I’m on because he was on it last year, so we met for pizza. Then Rex was telling me that he could see that Jay was interested in me, which pissed me off because, you know, it was for work. And then Rex got all mad at me because I didn’t ask him to fix my table. I mean, I can fix a fucking table, you know? I don’t need him to do it for me.”

“Doesn’t he fix things as his job, though?” Ginger asks.

“Yeah, but so what? Doesn’t make me any less capable of taking care of it myself, does it? What, like I’m required to ask him just because he’d do a better job?”

“Whoa, babycakes, whoa. Slow down. Let me ask you a question. If you wanted a tattoo, who would you ask for one?”

“Is this a trick question?”

“Just hear me out, Daniel.” Ooh, she’s serious if she’s using my name. I sigh.

“You.”

“Right. Now, if I had to write some copy for the shop’s site and I wanted someone to proofread it, who would I ask?”

“Me.”

“Right. So, it’s not like I can’t proofread things. I mean, I’m not as good at it as you, but I can write a sentence. And you know ten other tattoo artists in the city. But you come to me because?”

“You’re the best, obviously.”

“And?”

“You’re my best friend, idiot.”

“Exactly. Look, sweetie, I know you’re not actually a sociopath, but I’m also not the one trying to date you, okay? Sometimes you’re totally dense about this shit. When you like someone and you respect their talent, you ask them to do things for you because you think of them first. Because the second you think of that thing, you think about them. Rex wants you to think of him first when something is broken. If he needed help writing something wouldn’t you want to be the first person he thought of?”

“I guess,” I mumble.

“And I’ve said it before, but it’s obviously time you started listening. Sometimes people do want to help you and you get closer by letting them. That’s what happened with you and me, remember?”

I smile.

“I remember.”

“Good. Now what was the deal with Rex getting all caveman over this guy you had dinner with? That’s so shitty. Though, good to know the lumberjack has at least one flaw. It was starting to disgust me, picturing him as some kind of buff Michigan Marlboro Man.”

“Weeeell,” I say.

“No!”

“Yeah. I thought it was totally professional and Rex was being crazy, but then this morning Jay asked me out. It was weird—he was so calm about it. Super suave.”

“Wait, he and Rex met last night, or you just told Rex about him?”

“No, they met. Rex came to the restaurant after dinner to meet me.”

“Did you introduce Rex as a friend or something?”

“No.” I don’t think I said he was anything, come to think of it.

“What a player!” Ginger says.

“What do you mean? Jay? He was really nice about it.”

“He could totally tell you were with Rex and he asked you out anyway!”

“Well, you don’t know that. And even if he did, it’s not like he would know if we were monogamous or not.”

“Come on, pumpkin, that is classic slimy moving-in-on-you-because-he-thought-your-boyfriend-wasn’t-good-enough behavior.”

“Don’t say the b-word!”

“Be-havior?” Ginger laughs. “God, you’re a fucking mess, kid.”

I’m on the highway now, and “Out of the Frying Pan (And into the Fire)” is playing.

“The nightmares are back,” I say softly.

“Shit. Bad?”

“Nah, not as bad as before. I had one the other night, though, and it was… weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Well, I was really… happy? Rex gave me this amazing massage and we, you know, had sex, and I fell asleep with him and it was just, like, kind of perfect. But then I woke up in the middle of the night with the nightmare. And I’ve had it every night since.”

“Did you tell Rex?”

“No. He didn’t wake up, fortunately.”

“You should tell him, Dandelion. Tell him about Richard and about the dreams.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Did you tell Rex about your colleague asking you out yet?”

“No, it just happened. Besides, he probably doesn’t want to talk to me. He’s mad at me.”

“What are you, five? You hurt his feelings last night, and he was jealous. He might be upset, but you have to talk it through. Now, hang up the phone, blast Meat Loaf with the windows down, and relax. Call Rex when you get to Detroit. Okay?”

“Yes, mother,” I say.

“God, you’re so lucky I even speak to you.”

“I know I am,” I tell her.

 

 

I DID try Rex when I got to Detroit, but he didn’t answer and I didn’t leave a message. I called him this morning too—no answer. I texted Ginger. Called twice, no answer. Told you he’s mad.

She wrote back. Sometimes ppl have lives & its not all abt YOU. Xoxo.

I know she’s right, but I can’t concentrate. My paper this morning went pretty well anyway, though, and I got some good questions that’ll be useful if I want to try and turn the piece into an article down the line. It’s been the usual sideshow of macho academic posturing, panels claiming to name the next turn in analysis, and badly concealed anxiety. Everyone’s trying to make a good impression and pretend they don’t care what anyone thinks. Everyone’s trying to look like the smartest one in the room while acting like what they’re saying is totally obvious. I hate conferences.

I’ve been looking forward to the last panel of the day, at least, because Maggie Shill, a nineteenth-century Americanist whose work I’ve always really admired, is going to be giving a paper about gilded age architecture and its influence on literary aesthetics of the time. Professor Shill teaches at Temple now, but she was hired after I left, so I’ve never worked with her. Her first book totally blew me away, though.

I slide into a seat just as the moderator is introducing the panel. I make a habit of never arriving to panels early and never sitting directly next to anyone so I can avoid any awkward small talk with other people in the audience who only ever want to know what you’re working on and whether you’re more successful than they are. The room’s crowded, though, so I have to sit right next to a woman in an ill-fitting skirt suit who looks like she’d rather be anywhere but here.

“Sorry,” I say as I accidentally brush up against her shoulder while I get myself situated.

“No problem,” she says, and smiles at me.

When the first panelist gets up, she immediately begins to ramble on about how panels are designed to stifle thoughts and make ideas digestible and prepackaged; that’s why they’re called panels, like the containing squares in a comic book.

“Is that Maggie Shill?” I ask the woman next to me. I’ve never seen her speak, but the other panelists are a man and a woman who looks Latina.

“Oh yeah,” the woman says, sounding embarrassed.

I’m shocked. This rambling mess is Maggie Shill.

“As I completed my paper,” Professor Shill is saying, “I realized that it wouldn’t do the world any good—no good at all.”

“Oh Jesus,” the woman next to me mutters.

“What’s the deal?” I ask. “Her work is so good?”

The woman scrunches down in her seat like she’s trying to avoid being seen.

“She’s totally losing it,” she says. She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. “She’s my dissertation director, and—” She looks left and right to make sure no one’s listening. “—she told me that she was too busy to write her paper so she was just going to wing it. I don’t have any idea what she’s doing, but I’m supposed to have drinks with her after this. Maybe I’ll be struck by lightning instead.”

Up at the podium, Professor Shill is still talking, her tone manic, her gestures wild. She’s talking about interdisciplinarity and the role of the humanities, but saying nothing about the topic her paper was supposed to be about. Finally, she starts talking about how being a mentor is all she ever wanted and how her graduate students make it all worth it. The woman next to me slides down farther.

“Oh my god, this is not good,” she says.

“So, she has no paper?” I confirm.

“Nope,” the woman says. “It’s so fucked-up. I was on the same flight as her coming here and when we got in last night she went to the hotel bar to meet some friends and got wasted. I saw her staggering around the lobby at, like, midnight, flirting with some business-looking guy. Then before the panel she grabbed me and told me to come to her talk and we’d have drinks to celebrate after. What was I supposed to say?”

Professor Shill is now denouncing the conference itself, claiming that she had the idea for the conference theme years ago and no one listened to her, but now no one will acknowledge her role. She sounds nuts.

“Dude, she’s lost it,” I say. Man, talk about disillusioned. I can’t believe this is the same Maggie Shill whose work I’ve read all these years.

“Oh, she never had it,” the woman says. “All she does is work and she, like, doesn’t care if you have a life. She basically lives at school and does nothing but read and write. She’s a machine. But she’s off her goddamned rocker.”

Maggie Shill reaches over to the panelist at the end of the table and picks up his paper. She tears it in half down the middle and drops it on the floor.

“In the end, it’s just words on the page,” she says, staring out at us, eyes blank. “Just words on the page that vanish into the air.” Then she walks out of the conference room.

“Kill me,” the woman next to me groans.

 

 

I DECIDE to get one drink at the hotel bar before I go back to my room and indulge in watching some shitty TV and zoning out.

“Daniel, hey.”

I look up to see Andre, a cute grad student I’ve known for a few years. He started at Penn a year or two after I did and then transferred to University of Michigan when his dissertation advisor took a job there.

“Hey, Andre, good to see you.” He gives me a hug and sits on the stool next to mine. “I should have known you’d be here—U of M’s really close, right?”

“Yeah, Ann Arbor’s only about a half hour from here. You’re in Michigan too, now, right?”

“Yeah, up north of Traverse City. Crazy.”

“Ooh, already saying Up North. Very Michigan of you.”

“Sorry?”

“You know, Up North?” At my vacant expression, Andre says, “Up North is the northern lower peninsula, like where you live. Of course, everyone in Michigan will make a different argument about where exactly you can draw the line that indicates where Up North begins. It can get very heated.”

I smile and shake my head.

“Fucking Michigan,” I say.

“How’s the conference treating you?” Andre asks.

“Dude, I just saw someone totally go off the deep end,” I say, and tell him about Professor Shill.

“Oh wow,” he says. “Well, that’s what being a workaholic with no personal life will get you. You invest that much in paper and ink that can’t give anything back to you and you end up losing your shit by forty.”

Shit, when he puts it like that it sounds so depressing.

“Speaking of which,” Andre says, his hand brushing my thigh, “are you here alone?”

“I am.”

“You wanna…?”

Andre and I slept together at the last two conferences where we saw each other. He’s sweet and really cute, with dark skin and long eyelashes and an adorable way of squeezing his eyes really tightly closed when he comes.

I shake my head. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Andre grins. “Whoa, did Dr. Mulligan actually meet someone?”

“Never mind that,” I say. “Thanks, though. It was good to see you.” I kiss him on the cheek and leave cash on the bar. He winks at me and finishes my drink.

 

 

BACK IN my room, I sink onto one of the beds without even taking my shoes off. I want to go to bed, but I had the nightmare again last night, so I turn the TV on and start flipping channels.

It’s always the same. I’m walking to the subway from the bar after I get off work. It’s dark and I can see the orange light of the subway entrance a block in front of me. Then, in that way dreams have of making fears concrete, the space doubles, then doubles again, until with every step I’m getting farther away from the subway, like I’m on one of those moving sidewalks at the airport and it’s pulling me backward. Then the street narrows into an alleyway and every step I take is like walking through tar, every movement exaggerated.

I see their shadows before I see them, even though there’s no light. They’re cast long on the walls of the alley and the sound of their laughter echoes down to me. I turn around to go back the way I came, but it’s a dead end—a crumbling brick wall that goes up and up until it disappears into the night sky.

When I turn around they’re right there, two of them in front of me and one to my right. They’re bigger than me, bigger than real people. I come up to their stomachs. They start saying things, silly dream things and scary dream things and things they really said.

The first punch splits my cheek to the bone, then a shove knocks the wind out of me when my back hits the brick wall, snapping my head back with a wet clunk. My vision goes double, but dream double, so now there are six of them, a sick tessellation of swinging fists and kicking legs and pain. I fall into one of them with a punch to the gut and he steps back in disgust, letting me fall to the alley floor. Only, now, instead of the filthy concrete, used condoms, needles, and fast food wrappers, the floor is made of Pennsylvania schist, the rock sparkling with flecks of mica. All I can think is that it’s beautiful, like a spill of dark glitter. Then they’re gone.

I breathe out, my ribs protesting sharply. My body, too weak with relief to move, slumps to the schist. A hot tear runs down my cheek, burning as salt slicks a bloody scrape, and I start to sob. Through tears, I see something moving on the wall. At first I’m grossed out, thinking it’s a roach or a rat, but it’s too big and blocky. Then it falls. It’s a brick. Then another slides out of the wall and crashes to the ground next to me. I try to push myself up to run, but the alley shifts and what was the brick wall is now the ceiling, its bricks falling down on me as the wall crumbles apart. I get to my knees and more bricks rain down. One hits my shoulder and I hear bone crunch. I slump back down as more fall, the alley collapsing around me.

The bricks hit every part of my body except my head, busting my bones to dust, pinning my limbs to the ground like the frog I dissected in high school biology. Then brick hits brick, burying me, leaving only my head untouched. Then, finally, they cover my head, my face, and I’m in darkness, feeling each excruciating shock as more fall. I’m alone in the dark as my air runs out. Then I hear a voice, far away and echoey. I try to call out but can’t, and the voice recedes. How long I’m stuck there depends. It’s just darkness and pain as my breath runs out. Then I wake up gasping, my body tensed against the pain.

I know. It’s just a dream and I’m a grown man. But it leaves me shaky every time because though the bricks collapsing didn’t really happen, of course—Ginger jokes that I’ve listened to The Wall too many times—the rest of it did.

 

 

WHEN I started grad school I had no idea what to expect. I hadn’t taken the college classes the rest of my cohort had, or read the books. I’d never heard of the literary theorists they mentioned and when one friendly girl with a shiny blonde braid asked if I was a deconstructionist, I told her I worked demolition in the summers if she needed something deconstructed. She laughed with me, bumping me companionably on the shoulder, except that I wasn’t laughing because I had no idea what the joke was. Then she blushed. I thought I’d said something offensive and opened my mouth to apologize, but she looked offended and walked away, muttering something about anti-intellectual posturing.

I didn’t speak in class because it quickly became clear that I had no idea what anyone was talking about. I read the books and the journal articles. Sometimes I read them twice. I knew I understood them because I noticed in class when someone misrepresented an idea or got a minor plot point wrong. The part I was missing, I realized little by little, wasn’t the brains or the memory—or even the creativity. It was the language of academia with which my classmates seemed to come preloaded. They had gone to Ivy League schools and large research universities. They named the professors they’d taken classes with in college and the others nodded, as if they were talking about rock stars.

At first I didn’t admit that I’d gone to community college for my first two years’ worth of credits, working two jobs to pay for them over the course of four years. That it was only on the strength of one of my professors’ recommendation that I was able to transfer to Temple for one final year. That I’m pretty sure the only reason I got into Penn for grad school to begin with is because I was a first generation college student who’d made good. Not that admitting anything was much of an issue because I didn’t have any in-depth conversations with anyone. I could never go to their parties because I was always working. I often couldn’t go to department lectures and guest panels for the same reason.

Finally, in May, I had a meeting with Marisol Jett, the chair of the department, to discuss how the year had gone, one of the requirements of my first-year scholarship. I’d had a class with Marisol that semester, but I didn’t know her well. She intimidated me. At first I told her everything was wonderful, I appreciated the opportunity, I was thankful for the assistance—all the crap I’d learned to say to the people who bankrolled things I could never afford otherwise over the years.

But she snorted and smiled and called bullshit. She was straight with me—told me I had to start attending lectures and going to departmental functions, had to start speaking in class and getting involved. When I tried to explain how behind I felt—trying to find a way to express it that didn’t make it seem like they shouldn’t have taken a chance on me—she told me that she’d read my written work and that I had no reason not to be speaking in class. And she wouldn’t hear any more about it. In fact, she seemed to have a pretty good idea what was going on with me in general. Without my needing to say anything, she told me that if a job was interfering with my attending functions, then I needed to reconsider my schedule or think about a loan. She told me that my fellow classmates would benefit from my perspectives just as I had learned from theirs. And she told me something that shaped everything that happened after.

She told that I might think of my background and my unfamiliarity with academic discourses as weaknesses, but that I should, instead, think of them as the greatest tools I had to do innovative, personal, and meaningful work. She told me to trust my perspective, and it was the greatest gift she could have given me. That summer, I worked sixty-hour weeks when I could get them, doing demo at construction sites and working every night at the bar, saving up against the coming academic year when my fellowship would mean that I had to teach classes at Penn to get tuition remission and a stipend, and wouldn’t be able to work as much.

My second year was better. Much better. I started speaking more in class and made a few friends. I didn’t see them much, since I was still working nights at the bar, but I felt more comfortable there. My third year, I finished course work and began studying for my Masters exams, which meant deciding what I would specialize in and what kind of project I wanted to undertake for my dissertation, which would get me my PhD. I was swamped all the time, trying to read everything that might help me with my work.

Then, that spring, I met Richard. He wasn’t the kind of person I’d ever been around before, and, while I can see it for what it was now, at the time it felt like a compliment that he was interested in me. He asked me questions about my research and seemed interested in some of the theorists I was writing about. He always said, “Thank god you have the good sense to write about something real instead of all that fiction.” It was a compliment to me but a dig at studying English in the first place. And, as Ginger later pointed out, it wasn’t really a compliment to me.

The thing about Richard was that he didn’t take any effort. He was never uncertain or insecure. He never asked me where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. He’d say something like, “Italian okay?” And when I said sure, he’d say, “I know you’re going to love this place,” but never asked me later if he was right. He made it clear, after that first embarrassing date, that he’d pay when we went out. It made me really uncomfortable, but he also made it clear that if I didn’t go where he wanted to go, he’d go without me. And he was never rude about it. On the contrary, he was always exceedingly gracious, explaining things logically and making it seem like it was strange that I cared, since money was no big deal. Of course it isn’t, if you have it.

And he’d make light of it when he paid, joke around about how he liked that he could be the first one to take me for sushi or to a Korean steak house, even as he laughed at the faces I made as I tried raw eel for the first time. Then we’d go back to his apartment and he’d tell me exactly how he wanted me to fuck him. He liked it hard and fast and clean, and he’d come with me behind him, catching his own release in his hand so it wouldn’t get on the sheets. Something about the fact that he wanted me to fuck him made it feel less like I was a charity case or a kept toy. Ginger said that was a fucked-up way to think about it, but it made a difference. I’m not exactly sure why.

I never spent the night; Richard was always at the lab by 8:30 a.m. because he said any later than that and the best equipment was taken. He never came to my apartment, which he referred to as “the crack house,” even though he’d never been in my neighborhood, just heard things on the subway and read things in the online police blotter, which he checked religiously, as he did the weather. He was one of those people who truly believed that forewarned was forearmed—he taught me that proverb, along with “he who pays the piper calls the tune,” which he trotted out in response to my embarrassment when he sent his food back twice at a restaurant on a busy Saturday evening.

I saw Richard maybe twice a week, and honestly, I didn’t think about it that much. If I wasn’t at the library, I was at the bar, and if I had any found time I was hanging out with Ginger at the shop, reading behind the counter with the comforting buzz of tattoo machines inking the words into my memory. Ginger hated Richard. She only met him twice. It’s not that I was trying to keep them apart… exactly. More that I didn’t even think of them as existing in the same universe, much less as able to interact.

I brought her with me to meet Richard and some college friends of his for a drink. I was only stopping in for one drink because Richard had asked me to, and then I was on my way to work. Ginger was going to the show at the bar that night, so I convinced her to tag along. It was a mistake. Richard was running late and wasn’t there when we arrived and the bar—excuse me, cocktail lounge—had a ten-dollar cover. Ginger offended the bouncer and amused me by muttering about it being a pay-to-play, and when we walked in it was clear we were extremely underdressed. I was wearing black jeans and boots and a red T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off because I made more tips the more skin I flashed, and though Ginger was wearing a tight black tube dress, the tattoos that cover every inch of her arms, legs, chest, and back made her the center of attention.

We got drinks (twelve-dollar martinis flavored with herbs and served in tiny glasses) and stood at a table, waiting for Richard. The place was crowded, so I didn’t think much when Ginger’s shoulders tensed. She was constantly getting people coming up to her to touch her tattoos and ask her what they meant—or, less flatteringly, tell her that she’d be so pretty if she didn’t have them—so I’d grown accustomed to running interference. I swung around to sit next to her, but she waved me back across the table and started talking about a tattoo she’d done that afternoon.

Later on she told me she’d sat down just in time to hear a man with an upper crust-y New York accent say, “I can’t wait to clap eyes on Richie’s rough-trade trailer trash. Richie says he’s like a jackhammer.” The table behind us had been, of course, Richard’s college friends. Needless to say, we didn’t have much to talk about and I was relieved when it was time for us to leave so I could get to work.

Richard walked us out and kissed me. “Thanks for putting up with those guys,” he said. “You know how it is. They were probably nervous around you because you’re so hot.” He winked at Ginger and she just walked away.

After a year and a half or so of dinners and fucking that I thought of as dating, though I guess I never used the word to Richard, I stopped by Richard’s apartment on my way to work because I’d left a book there the night before. I stepped out of the elevator—Richard lived in one of those posh buildings in Center City with a doorman and everything—and jogged down the hallway. I don’t remember why I didn’t call first. As I turned the corner to knock on Richard’s door, I saw him standing in front of it. At first, I thought I was catching him just getting home and had a moment of being thankful for my good timing. Then I saw the arms wrapped around his neck.

Richard was making out with another guy right in his doorway. I must’ve made a sound—coughed, or gasped, or said his name—because Richard turned around. What I remember most about the moment his eyes met mine is that there wasn’t any surprise in them. Not even a microsecond of shock, or guilt, or shame. His hair was mussed and the collar of his shirt askew, and he just smiled at me.

“Hey, Dan,” he said. “Not a great time.”

The man he was with was the opposite of me in every way: a gorgeous little twink, thin and blond, with big blue eyes and apple cheeks and an arm slung around Richard’s waist with the casualness of long habit.

I had no idea what to say or do and, suddenly, what seemed like the absolute most important thing was that Richard not have the slightest inkling that I cared at all.

“I need my book,” I said, and my voice came out scratchy and high. The twink shifted a few inches to the left, so I could squeeze through the doorway.

At work that night, as I mechanically poured drinks and stared at the lights strobing over the crowd, I played the conversation Richard and I had over and over in my mind, trying to make sense of the pieces.

Things Richard said:

“Well, it isn’t as if we’re exclusive,” and, at my shocked expression, “I’m sorry if you thought that, Daniel, but we never had that conversation.”

“Don’t look at me like I’ve betrayed you. I would never cheat on a boyfriend, but when did we ever decide that’s what we were?”

Socking me softly in the shoulder, “Come now, if you were my boyfriend you would’ve had to spring for a real birthday present.” In fact, I’d spent more money on Richard’s gift, a first American edition of John Dalton’s A New System of Chemical Philosophy, than on any other gift I’d ever given.

Months later, I learned that I was about the only one at Penn who didn’t know Richard and I hadn’t been exclusive. Months later, I learned that Richard had been fucking his way through the entire city of Philadelphia and everyone had known. Months later, too, I realized that I hadn’t ever even liked Richard that much, that the reason I’d never noticed that he saw other people or cared that we spent so little time together was because I was fairly indifferent to his company. Months later, I mostly felt incredibly stupid to have it pointed out so clearly that I had no idea what it was to be in a relationship, and quite ridiculous to realize how easy it was to be living a life completely different than the one of the person in bed beside you. But that night, I just felt shocked.

And it was probably because I felt shocked that I didn’t pay better attention as I was leaving work and walking to the subway. The bar paid us in cash—one of many reasons I liked working there—and I had years of experience being careful walking around with it late at night. It usually helped that I didn’t look like I had anything to steal: shitty old iPod, disposable pay-as-you-go phone, and my keys.

They might have seen me move the cash from my wallet to my front pocket outside the bar, they might have seen a bulge in my pocket and hoped it was a nice phone, or they might have just jumped me randomly. I don’t know. But when I was a block away from the subway entrance, its awning awash in friendly light, two guys grabbed me and dragged me into an alley where a third man waited with a knife. They punched me in the face so I knew they were serious, and threw me against the wall where the guy with the knife leaned, looking on dispassionately. Gang initiation? Debt paid? I don’t know. They found the money in seconds and broke a few ribs anyway. They shoved my face against the dirty wall and even took the time to rifle through my wallet, dropping it when they found nothing worth taking. Took one look at my ancient iPod and shitty phone and didn’t even bother once they had the cash in hand.

I called Ginger and she came and picked me up, silent tears running down her face as she drove me back to her place and put me to bed under her covers.

And when I told Ginger about Richard the next morning, she said I should go to the police.

“Nah,” I said. “I don’t want to deal with it. What’s the point anyway? They were probably just kids.”

“No,” she deadpanned. “Not about the mugging. About Richard. You should see if you can file an incident report for rampant douchebaggery,” because she is the best friend in the history of the world. We both started laughing, which killed my ribs, so I tried to push Ginger, who, in trying to dodge me, fell off her chair. A regular Three Stooges routine.

I had nightmares about it for months afterward—no surprise there—but they went away for the most part, and I hadn’t had one in two years.

So why the fuck am I having them again, especially starting on a night when I was really happy? My brain supplies a flash flood of answers, most of which are automatic analysis: you feel like Rex stole something from you, you feel like your world has been turned on its side, everything’s collapsing, etc.

Before I can settle on any one of them, I turn the volume on the TV up and click over to the food channel that Rex mentioned liking, and I fall asleep to the sound of chiffonading, creaming, emulsifying, and zesting—or so the narration tells me.

 

 

THE NEXT morning, I wake up with the television still on and am greeted by a plump, motherly looking chef making some kind of breakfast feast of challah french toast and something called shirred eggs. My stomach gives a growl and I fumble around for the tiny coffeepot. I didn’t eat much yesterday. My stomach was in knots every time I thought about my fight with Rex.

There are two sessions I should attend at the conference this morning, but I can’t do it. I’m exhausted from all my socializing yesterday, from the fight with Rex, from all of it. And I can’t help but think that I owe Rex an explanation. That, like Ginger said, I need to just tell him some shit about me and let him decide what to do with it.

And I think, maybe, I need to have the conversation with him that I never had with Richard. I’m not interested in Jay, but if Rex thinks I am then that must feel shitty. I never really thought of myself as jealous, but when I had that moment of thinking that maybe Rex used to date Jay and that’s how he knew Jay was gay, my stomach definitely felt the way people always describe jealousy feeling in books. Besides, what if he thinks I don’t care and he meets someone else? And, with that thought, I’m back on the jealousy wagon. The idea of Rex smiling his soft smile at another man makes me want to punch through the hotel wall. The idea of him cooking dinner in his kitchen with another man or finishing another man’s food makes me want to throttle someone—anyone. And at the idea of Rex kissing someone else, black creeps into my periphery.

I fumble with my phone and call him again. Again, there’s no answer. He’s really mad. I know Ginger’s right and he might just be busy, but I can’t believe he could be so busy he missed every call and couldn’t call me back. That’s just not Rex. He has to be avoiding me on purpose. And I guess he has every right to be mad. I did yell at him when he was just trying to be nice.

So, that’s that, then. I’m going to skip the morning sessions and just get the hell out of here. Go home.

Wow, I can’t believe I just thought of Holiday as home. But, actually, the picture that flashed in my head as I made my decision wasn’t of Holiday, or of my shitty apartment. It was of Rex’s warm cabin, the windows glowing with sunlight or firelight, the full kitchen where Rex looks so hot cooking, the cozy living room with Marilyn snoozing on the hearth, and the bedroom where Rex makes me feel things I’ve never felt before.

Christ, I’m such a sap. Ginger would be grinning so hard right now if she could see this train of thought; my brothers would beat the shit out of me.

I throw my stuff into my duffel, not bothering about my wrinkled jacket, pull on some jeans, and splash the weak, hotel-room coffee into one of their to-go cups. And then I do exactly that. I need to talk to Rex as soon as possible.