until it thinned out, as such flings inevitably did. That seemed like sound advice.
And so Erich and I started dating. Since he worked nights, we usually met after eleven. We’d have a drink or two in a bar, and go to his place.
I did not learn many particulars of his life. He had a singular ambition, an ill-defined but persistent one: to be recognized. The means by which he’d achieve recognition were uncertain—he was simply looking for a break, trying to position himself for discovery. He’d audition for anything. He tried out for Broadway musicals though he couldn’t sing. He’d work fourteen-hour days as an extra in any movie being shot in New York, and at Christmastime willingly played a life-sized mechanical soldier at F. A.O. Schwarz. He took endless acting classes, spoke convincingly of his ambition to become a better actor, but as I knew him longer, I began to realize that acting wasn’t really the point. Acclaim was the point, and his gig at the toy store provided roughly the same mix of satisfaction and anguish he’d have derived from playing the lead in a Broadway show. He enjoyed methodical pursuit and he worshipped attention; he did not dream of accomplishment per se. In his ordinary life he was all but invisible—he wore jeans and polo shirts, stammered his way through the simplest conversations, lived alone in a barren apartment. But at Schwarz during the Christmas season he never fell out of character, never ceased his stiff-limbed robotic movements during the whole of an eight-hour shift. In gym shorts on a 30° day he jogged forty-five times down the same block of Bleecker Street for the sake of being a shadowy, background figure in a movie that would never be released. At night, with the lights off, he was great in bed.
Although I saw him once or twice a week, I didn’t get to know him. I suspect he worried that if I—if anyone—came to know him too well, the motion of his life would somehow wind down—his obscure destiny would be confirmed. I myself worried that he lived on the brink of total surrender to another person’s will. I thought that when he finally, fully despaired of achieving fame he would make himself into a fan, find a lover and cheerfully relinquish every vestige of his will. Maybe I’d sensed it the first moment I saw him, nodding eagerly at an old man’s barroom conversation. He was practicing his powers of attention. I didn’t want them focused too ardently on me.
When we were together, we emphasized the local details: anecdotes from our working lives, the movies we’d loved or hated. Finally, on what may have been our tenth or fifteenth date, as we lay quietly sweating onto one another’s flesh, he said, “So, um, who are you, anyway?”
“What?”
His ears reddened. I suspected it was a line he’d picked up from a movie.
“What I mean is, I don’t really know anything about you,” he said.
“I don’t know much of anything about you either,” I said. “I basically know you’re an actor working as a bartender, you want to change jobs but aren’t doing anything much about it, and you loved
“Well, I grew up in Detroit,” he said.
“I’m from the Midwest, too.”
“I know. From Cleveland.”
After a pause, he said, “Well, this is very interesting. We’re both from the Midwest. That really, you know, explains a lot, doesn’t it?”
“No, it doesn’t explain much of anything,” I said. I believed this conversation was the beginning of the end for us, and I didn’t entirely mind. Goodbye, Doctor Feelgood. Set me back on the street in my own skin, with my old sense of a limitless future.
After a moment he said, “I used to be a musician. When I was a kid. I was crazy for it. I dreamed about it. I had dreams that were just music, just…music.”
“Really?” I said. “What did you play?”
“Piano. Cello. Some violin.”
“Do you still play?”
“No,” he said. “Never. I wasn’t, you know, good enough. I was pretty good. But not really good enough.”
“I see.”
We lay together for a while in uneasy silence, waiting to see what would happen next. We were neither friends nor lovers. We had no natural access to one another outside the realm of sex. I believed I could feel the weight of Erich’s unhappiness the way a diver feels the weight of the ocean, but I couldn’t help him. This was the price we paid for sleeping together first and getting acquainted later—we shared an intimacy devoid of knowledge or affection. I couldn’t listen to Erich’s confessions; I didn’t know him well enough for that. I remembered Clare’s admonition—ride it until it thins out.
“Listen,” I said.
He put a finger to my lips. “Shh,” he whispered. “Don’t talk. This isn’t really, you know, a very good time to talk.” He started to stroke my hair and nibble his way along my shoulder.
Our relations retained their halting, formal quality. Each time we saw one another, we might have been meeting for the first time. Months later, when I asked Erich about his old love of music, all he would say is “That’s over. That’s just, you know, ancient history. Have you seen any movies?” Our conversation stalled sometimes, and the ensuing silences refused to take on an aspect of ease. He never came to my apartment, never met Clare or any of my other friends. I left my life to visit him in his. In Erich’s company I developed a new persona. I was tough and slightly insensitive; a bit of an object. Our communion took place only at the bodily level, and that came to seem right for us. Anything else would have been sentimental, forced, indiscreet. Our relations were cordial and respectful. We did not infringe. I believe that in some way we despised one another. Because I brought nothing but my nerves and muscles to the affair, I found I could be surprisingly noisy in bed. I could walk unapologetically across the floorboards, my boots ringing like the strokes of an ax. And I could be a little cruel. I could bite Erich’s skin hard enough to leave red clamshell marks behind. I could fantasize about him—an unknown man—manacled, humiliated, stripped naked and tied to a Kafkaesque machine that fucked him relentlessly.
In my other life, I went out nightly with Clare for falafel or barbecued chicken or Vietnamese food. We argued over how much television a child should be permitted to watch. We agreed that the sterner reality of public school was an education in itself, and would balance the shoddy educations of the teachers. Sometimes handsome young fathers would stroll by the window of whatever restaurant we sat in, pushing strollers or cradling their sleeping children on their shoulders. I always watched them pass.
That was my life in the dead center of the Reagan years.
Then Bobby came to live in New York.
BOBBY
I STAYED in Ned and Alice’s house for almost eight years. The urge to do nothing and not change caught up with me; for eight years I squeezed roses onto birthday cakes and thought of what I’d make for dinner. Each day was an identical package, and the gorgeousness of them was their perfect resemblance, each to the others. Like a drug, repetition changes the size of things. A day when my cinnamon rolls came out just right and the sky clicked over from rain to snow felt full and complete. I thumped melons at the grocery store, dug walnuts from the bins with my hands. I bought new records. I didn’t fall in love. I didn’t visit my family’s graves, three in a row. I waited for asparagus and tomatoes to show up again, and played Dylan’s
The doctor announced it: Ohio air was too heavy with spoor and lake water for Ned’s tired lungs. It was go to the desert or start planning the funeral. That’s what he said.
At first I thought I’d go with them. But Alice sat me down. “Bobby,” she said, “honey, it’s time for you to get out on your own. What would you do in Arizona?”
I told her I’d get a bakery job. I told her I’d do what I was doing now, but I’d do it there instead.
Her eyes shrank, pulled in their light. The singular crease, one deep vertical line, showed up in her forehead. “Bobby, you’re twenty-five. Don’t you want more of a life than this?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I mean, this is a life, and I like it pretty well.”
