2

For the first part of the train ride to New York City I was alone in my set of seats. There was a gay couple on the train, in the set of seats in front and across the aisle from me. I didn’t keep my eye on them because they were attractive, because they weren’t really, except maybe in a homosexual way -- both were skinny with then girl arms, maybe lower thirties.
I kept watching them because of how effortless they were, how real. I wished I could take a picture of him as he looked out the window, his friend asleep against it; his fingers were lightly pulling on his hair where it met the back of his neck. His angular fore finger and thumb abstractly playing with each clump of short, brown hair. He wasn’t doing it affectedly, but absent mindedly instead. The way he did it was so effortlessly gay it was still masculine. That can’t be taught or learned.
As we neared Washington D.C. a young woman sat beside me. As soon as she sat next to me, wide-eyed and energetic, I knew I could make her laugh, and we did. She was one of my kind, three sheets to the wind she was so ballsy and confident.
I asked her if she wanted to join the game of Monopoly that I had brought up on my lap top. She said yes, as I figured she would. She acted like the existence of the game on a computer was amazing, she talked up a storm. She referred to her girlfriend as her ‘girlfriend’ without batting an eye, as if there was nothing more normal, more natural. Her name was An__.
I told her the story of how I had blurted out I was gay at Sunday dinner at an Italian restaurant, because it was all I could think of to get out of an awkward social situation. They didn’t believe me at first, but I went on with it, and it lasted two weeks before I finally confessed the truth.
_I don’t know if you could ever pass for gay,_ An__ said. I think the gay guy overheard the story I had told and when An__ said her comment he turned his head just slightly, as if in reflex to what she’d said, and I swear I saw him smile slightly.
I wish I could’ve talked to him, gotten a feel for him. Ask him questions he might not have answered but for the anonymity of the situation. I wanted to know what it was like to have the beauty that is innocent sexuality, without the horrific-ness of child rape as the context.
An__’s girlfriend got on in Washington, and the gay couple got off. Je__, the girlfriend, was definitely attractive; a dirty blond with freckles and muscular thighs. An__ had her sit beside me so that Je__ could play Monopoly.
The train broke down out in the woods in Pennsylvania. I guess it was kind of dangerous: no electricity, no air conditioning, elderly people getting weak, the attendants not letting us out, not wanting us to hurt ourselves or get even more lost in the woods.
I didn’t mind the delays much. Found it all to be adventurous, but really it meant I could spend more time An__ and Je__. I liked being accepted. I felt like I was socializing well. Maybe it was less about my skills and more about my liking them, and the rest came naturally.
The dull hum in my head hadn’t gone away, even though I’d gotten the drug out of my system. I suppose it never will. It’s relaxing, like the way the dull hum of a refrigerator or air conditioner will put you to sleep. Maybe the dull hum had something to do with how well I did with them.
An hour later another train pulled up beside us and picked us passengers up. I got separated from my friends but as I walked through the box cars suddenly I heard An__’s excited voice:
_Chuck!_ she said motioning me over to a seat she had saved.
We finished watching Avatar, sharing a set of headphones. It felt like I was deployed again, with K__ or W__ or House right there all the time, the easy intimacy of it.
The train ride was ironic because the weekend had been planned online as a kind of big gay adventure. A courageous showing that I didn’t mind bisexuality -- otherwise known as sexuality -- that I had no qualms with it. I only had qualms with rape, and when I was younger the two were so confusing, especially with the lack of memory, and the lack of maturity to go along with the horrific.
Once we got to Penn Station a crowd formed and got in the way of me and my new friends. But at the top of two flights of stairs I saw An__ turn around, look around, and say to Je__: _I want to say bye to Chuck._ We shook hands, grinned and waved.
I hadn’t noticed how old they were -- lower thirties -- they seemed so young to me. I guess that’s because I’m getting older. I guess I’ll always register me and those around me who are my age to be young, even if we’re living in a retirement community. I didn’t know youth worked like that.
I got to the hotel at one in the morning and ended up at an all-night diner for a cheeseburger. I wondered if I was normal, getting some kind of enjoyment out of sitting in a restaurant alone, listening to the ongoing conversations around me. It wasn’t that they were anymore relevant than the ones I listened to down South, it was that they were so different.
My roommate was one of those over-grown nerd guys -- cordial and nice but with that look of annoyance about him. He told me he was staying there every night indefinitely. He said he’d gotten a new job and had to move back to the city. He was apartment hunting.
I asked him about any family, though I already knew the answer -- he wasn’t acting gay but it was hard to imagine someone who always had that air of annoyance about him having a loved one. My chest cringed at the idea of turning out like him.
The hotel is so small and I come here so often it’s like we’re family: the staff and regulars. I feel more comfortable, preparing food in the little kitchen, putting the French Open on in the common room. I guess this place is the closest thing I’ve got to a home right now.
I slept till noon the next day. I still have sex dreams about women. I can’t figure myself out. I know the last person I’d trust with a child is a woman. Even if she were the mother of my child I’d have to watch her for a few months with the child, to make absolutely sure the child wouldn’t be telling me horror stories of its childhood once it had grown to be an adult.
Maybe that has something to do with it, something to do with why I can‘ be normal. Bisexuality feels dishonest, as if it would be impossible to truly commit to anyone. I see a good looking girl and I want to jump her bones, I see a good looking guy and I want to jump his bones. This is just like when I was a kid with Trevor and El__.
_You know, the best way to learn sexuality is to have sex,_ House told me once.
It seemed impossible to let anything less than a saint touch me. Especially a woman. Her potentials for horrific-ness toward children would make me feel the need to keep her beaten all the time, to make absolutely sure her strong tendencies remained in check. I’d feel the need to become my own monster.
I walked all the way to the village to see a photography exhibit called ‘Risque.’ It was supposed to be part of the fearless-sexuality-despite-the-horrific theme. The idea of the exhibit was that the photographer had gotten strangers off the street to pose sexually or in sexual situations with partners.
I figured if he had a showing the photography must be stunningly well-done, considering the not-so-aesthetically-pleasing nature of its subject. I found the location tucked between two storefronts and down a staircase leading into a basement.
The photographs were terrible, cheesy. Only one was risky: a black and white of a young fat woman masturbating, her chin angled up as if her eyes were rolling into the back of her head, her saucer-like nipples in the foreground.
As I walked through the city, I understood the art of the place, including the bodies sculpted. Everything is art, because everything is manipulated, chosen, the fashion, the architecture, even the affected way they talk.
I understood what the New Yorkers were doing. I’ve been doing it to my own life for a long time. It’s seductive, but maybe not seductive enough. Maybe I don’t want to be that way anymore, maybe I have no reason to anymore. Maybe what they find so ugly they are forced to manipulate it, I find pleasing. Maybe what they find horrifically Real I now see as beautiful. I don’t want to be an artist no more. I want to live my life. That’s true art: the How.
I kept passing the same advertising poster for a vampire television show. The photograph was erotic and the caption read: _do bad things .. _ Implying lust. The poster acted as a regular reminder as I made my way through the streets.
I walked across Central Park to get to the Guggenheim, though once I got there and saw it was the same exhibits as last time, I decided not to go inside. In the park there was lots of skin showing due to the heat. I hadn’t realized my body was aesthetically competitive. Back when I was numb and without memory I just assumed everyone else was better looking than me, though I hadn’t actually looked.
There are better looking people than me all around but I’m not ugly. Sexuality gets me all the way on the ground and its opposite -- numbness -- keeps my head in the clouds, a safe place full of literature and characters I’d cut a finger off to meet in real life, to be comforted by them in real life.
Everyone’s wearing white V-necks now. A woman might thing it a fashion trend among men but really it’s because Hanes and Fruit of the Loom are making them better, more comfortable, more form fitting. I’m wearing one.
In keeping with the overall theme I had wanted to do the ‘theatre thing’ as I called it in my mind. I got tickets to a cabaret act called Naked Boys Singing and an ‘interactive theatre experience’ where you are given a location and not much more information. An adventure begins as characters show up and incidentally lead you through the streets of Manhattan, while encouraging a plot you don’t really understand until the end.
W__ told me a story once of how when he was training for his MOS he would prank the freshman class shortly after they had moved into the open bay barracks by stepping out of the shower room in nothing but shaving cream, singing a song, and doing a little dance. It was a big hit.
I thought Naked Boys Singing was a cabaret act intended for bachelorette parties and ogling gays to attend. I experienced it as blunt, hilarious, bathroom slash shower room humor.
I felt no attraction, plus I was laughing a lot, but it was nice to get a good, authorized look. The gym-enhanced bodies didn’t necessarily look better. They were overly-veiny, superficial looking.
If I had to choose a body I’d take the littler guy’s. He still had the male form and muscles to match but they were natural looking, easy, genuine.
It’s true that I’m big. Even the big guy in the role of ‘the hung guy’ had one smaller than mine. I was also surprised that when they were clothed, you wouldn’t guess that the ones with the best bodies had the best bodies. With clothes they just looked normal. The ones who worked out showed through their clothing, but they didn’t have the best bodies.
I felt better about having lost so much weight, especially muscle tone, during the long, tumultuous detox.
I thought I had gotten there early, but had actually gotten there very early. I didn’t know that off Broadway acts don’t really start at the time specified, instead they simply let the audience in at that time. There was this guy in the hall, messing with his phone. He kept stealing looks at me and my defenses went up, so I matched his too-tough-for-school look as I walked by to the restroom. He looked Mediterranean; dark hair, olive skin, small frame. He reminded me of House, especially in attitude.
A guy who likes me treats me totally different than a woman. I see the woman doing the math in her head -- the kind of job I have translated to how much money I make, siblings? Do they have children yet? Parents alive or dead, etc. etc. Then comes the next list of all the things I’m supposed to do for her and how trainable I am. Maybe all women aren’t like that, just the ones I have known. I know all guys who’ve liked me weren’t decent.
The guy who likes me reminds me of Trevor the way he treats me, acts in awe of me for some reason, sheepishly appreciative, wide eyed in the freedom of possibility.
I didn’t want to write it, turn it into some finite thing when that’s the opposite of the possibility the moments implied. It felt special, just as special as that guy looking at me as he walked past. I got farther this time, actually speaking, got farther than just a look of approval and a smile.
_Do they always take this long?_ I finally asked him. His whole demeanor changed, that vulnerable, sheepish look quickly balanced with a deep voice and calm attitude. _I don’t know,_ he said.
His face went from tough guy to relieved smiling eyes as soon as I spoke to him. I remembered the way House would reach into my pockets to grab cigarettes or a piece of paper without saying anything first, as if it were nothing, even my pants pocket against my thigh, even while I was chatting with someone else. The way he was allowed to put the center of his forehead against the side of my shoulder, and did, because he was tired and wanted to express it to me without words. He liked being special.
The guy went as far as checking the board for me, though I hadn’t asked him to, and didn’t really care what exact time the show started. It was just all I could think to say to a young guy who kept looking at me.

__________