Conjugations
Prelude
I walked into the chilly Manhattan night leaving my office after another grueling day, my mind spinning from the amount of information I had processed and dispersed throughout the course of the day. My mind wobbled; my back ached. My heart was somewhere else, where I could not find it.
I took a cab down to Benny's. Maurice was at the bar and started mixing a vodka sour when he saw me.
Don't you ever stop? he said putting a coaster on the zinc bar top and my drink down on it.
Hey buddy, I said in place of an answer.
Maurice turned his head to the right where the bandstand was and with a wriggle of his index finger and a shake of his neck asked the piano player to come over. The set hadn't begun. He was sipping a martini.
I want you to meet someone, Maurice said to me.
John approached. Maurice gave him a warm smile and reached over the bar to caress his neck. He indicated me with a toss of his head.
John, Christopher, he said, introducing us.
I want you to listen to him play tonight; just listen; let your mind get empty.
Then he turned to John and pointing at me said, he's not a bad looking guy for someone who spends his days litigating over who owns what percentage of which corporation.
John answered him but looked at me with a smile that lit me up.
He'll do, he said.
We'll see, Maurice said and he winked at me.
He did not only play the piano. Occasionally he sang too. There was Chet Baker and Billie Holiday in it, but something else, also, something I had never heard before but instantly recognized it, and then my heart stood still.
I lost my train of thought and followed the cool swing of his strides over the piano and the icy warmth of his voice.
He played Slow Boat to China and I saw the ocean balance dazzling bangles on the tips of its ripples. And then there was a gorgeous horn on Love for Sale. He turned Easy to Remember into a sad night alone. It ended with over the top melodrama in a Stormy Weather that wrung tears from my heart.
The set ended and he walked back to the bar and before I could think about it I embraced him driven by the need to bless him for the power of his art.
He giggled and kissed me.
That's what I wanted, he said.
We walked back to his place. I felt lighter than I had in longer than I could remember.
You are one of the few guys I have ever seen, John said, who looks good in a suit.
I grinned and gulped.
You don't know, I said. This is not me. It is who I have become. You could call it my protection.
Where the hell was this coming from?
I felt like pouring myself out to him as he had poured himself out to me earlier when he was playing.
Protection from what? he said, puzzled.
I breathed out.
I don't know about you, I said, but I have had to protect myself from the intrusions of people who wanted to possess and process me and shape me to be how they wanted me to be as if I had no prior existence since early childhood.
It was not the tone I thought I would have preferred to have at a time like this.
Affection, attraction, connection...those things, the stronger they are, the more fragile they are.
I was so good at breaking connections even before they could get started.
Yes, he said, politely waiting for me to say more.
I shook my head. I'm sorry, I said.
For what? he asked.
My mind spins sometimes, I said.
He put his arm around me, pressed me to him, and whispered, That's what it's supposed to do.
Liebestodt
The bar was empty and I was hanging around waiting for John. I was finishing a vodka sour and Maurice was drinking Drambouie.
John came over grinning and bit my ear and scratched my nipple.
Good dog, he said, waiting patiently for its master.
Arf! I said. You were good tonight.
He winked at me.
You know why, he said.
I cast my eyes down in a parody of modesty.
You do, he said, but not enough. And you he said to me almost in a whisper, are you still as melancholy.
Melancholy?
Come on, he said.
We did not walk. He hailed a taxi and we headed east. He took me in his arms and drew me to him and kissed me. I was melting all over him, dearly attuned to every nuance of his energy by the vodka I had drunk.
I lay naked softly on his bed, on my back, my head resting on my cradling palms. The only light was from two candles in brass holders on a side table.
He touched my forehead with the palm of his hand and my lips with his lips and drew me into him. I clung softly to him becoming a vapor, evaporating into him. I raised up my rump as his caressing hands guided me and welcomed him with a soft receptivity as I felt the completeness of his penetration.
I took him into me and held him there and grabbed at him each time he pulled himself out and received him with gratefulness each time he returned his thrust into me.
I kissed him with open mouth and told him that I loved him and called him master and felt myself exploding in bursts of euphoria and held tightly afterwards as we were still plummeting and joy sang in our bodies like an ache.
I wish it could always be this way, he said.
What terrible secret was there that could make him say so strange a thing at so solemn a time?
My heart felt itself in the grip of something cold. Memory's gold was turning into deception's lead.
Why can't it? I said quietly, afraid to hear whatever he could say, wanting to jerk myself free of him and have him out of me.
I rose in disgust before he could answer.
All he could say was, O Jesus. I hoped so much this time there would be an understanding.
This time! I said my voice suppressing fury.
He looked at me without understanding. To me it seemed because he did not want to.
Finally he was like everyone else, a guy dominated by his own needs. He'd played a set with me and that was it.
Should I clap? I said, pulling on my clothes.
What? he said.
Never mind, I said, buttoned my coat, was out the door, and running down the steps, propelled by anger, regret, and righteousness.
Entr'acte
I could not believe the empty feeling I had inside me with its icy center in the pit of my stomach the next morning when I opened my eyes after fitful sleep and realized that I was alone in my own bed and that it was a Sunday and I could not even go into work.
Alone in my own bed after what might have been. I could not figure out what had happened, how it turned. If none of it had ever happened, if I had never met John, it would have been ok. But now after what had really existed for a moment, as if just to show what I would be without, now everything was gone and life was awful again. That brought on the ache.
But I could not stay with it. In a long hot shower, I let the steamy rays of water hit my chest. I felt myself drawing breaths and my body expanding. I shaved more carefully than usual. My hair was just right. My jeans had faded to just the right tinge. I gave in and made myself a strong sweet cup of Greek coffee and looked from my terrace out at the park blazing in the fresh green of spring's incipience.
I put on my Pea Coat and a slouchy hat and hitting the street crossed over into the park.
If you don't live in New York City, you don't know what Central Park means. It is the city's secret. It is the place that guards the forbidden, as the woods often do. In a happy world, it is the place where love lurks. In our world, unhappy from so many causes, in our power-driven, hate-producing world, it is a place where danger lurks, too, sometimes intertwined in a mad partnership with love.
I crossed the street. It was sunny. I left my coat unbuttoned and walked through the opening in the low stone wall that edged the park. I took the steps, old slanty stones twisting in an inviting spiral. At the top the path opened. In the distance was the bright sky of Fifth Avenue. I stood still and surveyed the growing green world and filled my chest with invisible blue air and emptied my lungs of used up breath and breathed some more until I was standing on my toes.
Such a feeling of rapture I had known long ago, before...well before such faith became impossible for me.
Was that inevitability? Or did something wear down in me, get worn down?
I had been ruined by ill use.
I yawned heartily, pulled my sunglasses on, and walked towards the museum.
Was he there leaning against the wall outside, his face bathed with sun waiting for me?
Of course not.
I looked at the Rembrandts and the Rodins and then I went for a cup of coffee in the garden.
He was there, reading Art As Experience.
John Dewey, I said, passing his table.
He looked up at me first quizzically but quickly grinned.
John Dewey, he said. Is that alright?
Of course, I said.
Would you like to sit down? he said.
Sure, I said.