I'd finally had it.
It was a sultry day in the middle of July and the air conditioning in the office was busted.
I went into Lonnie and said, It's crazy. People can't work in these conditions.
What am I supposed to do Barr? he said, without taking the unlighted cigar out of his mouth. It was sloppy with spittle by his lips, as usual.
For one, I said, you ought to be on the phone right now to every repairman you can find to get one over here pronto and not wait till Thursday for FresherVents.
There's a contract which stipulates...
There are people in the office who are more important than the stipulations of that contract or saving fifty bucks.
When I hear you talk like that, he answered with a sneer, I understand why you're still fielding customer complaints all day on the phone and I'm the General Manager.
Well you're not managing so well, Lonnie, and a couple more blow-outs like this and your place may not be so secure.
Should I take that as a threat, Barr?
Don't be an asshole, Lonnie.
Is that all, Barr? he said, turning his swivel chair to the window. In his office there was a window, and it opened.
No, it isn't, Lonnie. Send everyone home for the day. Give us a break.
Do you know you have an entitlement problem Barr? Do you know that? This is work. It's not a picnic. It's not the back room of a gay bar. It's work. You get paid to work, not to get the day off for some pansy-assed bitching.
You're a bigger slob than I thought, I said.
I walked out of his office into the small, windowless office where our "team," the six of us, worked.
Cowed but hopeful my coworkers looked at me, each face a question.
I'm going, I said.
Lonnie said it's ok? Natalie asked.
I didn't say anything of the kind.
Lonnie was standing in the doorway now, before I had a chance to answer. His voice was soft and threatening.
I took the last swallow of the iced-coffee which had grown tepid in the Styrofoam cup on my desk.
Ciao, I said.
Go now, Lonnie said, and you don't come back.
Anyone care to join me for a cold beer? I said and got into the elevator.
It was hot outside and I was exuberant.
My bike was chained to a parking meter.
I undid my tie, tucked it in my jacket pocket, took off my jacket, pulled off my shirt, folded everything neatly, secured the lot in the basket with a hasp, and biked down to the Lower East Side on Second Avenue in a sleeveless undershirt, the wind cooling my sweat and my heart flying with the wind.
I was one of the lucky ones. I had a small inheritance from my grandmother and I'd been able to squirrel away most of the money from my job, and through some conservative investments in socially responsible mutual funds, I had, at thirty, enough to live on, poorly it is true, but decently enough, nevertheless, for several years.
Now the issue was what I was going to do with myself. The problem at work had not really been the air-conditioning. The problem was the work itself. Boring, tedious, socially useless, personally devitalizing, it was the twenty-first century version of slavery. Instead of whips they used wages to keep us bowed under a wearisome load bearing other people's burdens. The plantations were now called corporations, and the overseers were called supervisors.
The whole system was the problem, not Lonnie. He was just a pathetic guy who got off on being on top of everyone else. He was propelled by the fear that if he wasn't on top he'd be on the bottom. He was an inevitability of a hierarchical, non-egalitarian system. He was the spirit of market-economy capitalism, Adam Smith's self-interested man at his most devolved.
I guess the difference between now and earlier forms of slavery was that now you could quit. Except most people couldn't! I mean they could if they didn't care about not eating or having a roof over their heads and being social outcasts scrounging garbage and sheltering in abandoned places. But then again slaves could run away. Maybe they'd make it. And if they didn't, they'd be castrated or killed. So we were making progress.
Inside my apartment, it was cool. I didn't have air conditioning. I actually don't like it. I live on the top floor of an old tenement walk-up. I get a lot of sky and a good breeze from the open windows. Three in the front look out onto the street. Two in the back look onto a disappearing sight in New York, backyards with fences, clotheslines, sparrows, and ailanthus trees.
I stripped and showered and slept until it was just getting dark when I woke to a storm that had broken the day's sultriness. Thunder and lightening, slashing rain, a wet floor in the front room. I shut the windows.
The phone rang.
I met Ruben later that night at Phoebe's. I said yes because I had nothing else to do, and sometimes I think he's ok, but I usually regret it because, finally he's a waste of time. He draws on me, loading me with tales of his troubled relationship with his girlfriend, and coyly suggesting that maybe he's really gay. As if I cared! I won't go on. And that night, I blew. It was the day for it.
I don't give a fuck, I said quietly. I've heard these stories before. They're all about you, and for all your complaining, I get the feeling that somehow you're boasting -- or maybe flirting. Frankly, my dear, I don't care if you're queer or straight or neuter. I've had enough. It's not interesting. I threw a five dollar bill on the table to cover my two beers and I left.
Outside, the rain had stopped, and I was breathing deeply when a nearby voice behind me said, Hey, that was cool.
I looked and saw a skinny, well wrought, curly headed guy in a floppy over shirt, jeans and sandals grinning a big smile.
Thanks, I said.
No, he said, thank you.
So saying, he took me by the hand and kissed my cheek. I slid my lips across his cheek and when our lips met, he greeted me open-mouthed with a passionate display of desire.
Locked in our embrace, we stumbled up against the lamppost. Our hands searched our bodies, groped, caressed -- nipples, chests, necks, cocks, buttocks, thighs.
You are fabulous, I said, jolted by his electricity.
I live down the block, he said.
Arms around each other, sides pressing sides, we headed east on Fourth Street.
I'd thought he was skinny, but when I saw him stripped of his clothes he was taut, lean, and muscular. After a day of rebellion and disgust, finally here was something I could worship and adore.
We approached each other slowly and I dropped to my knees before him, circled my arms around his thighs and held the muscular cheeks of his wonderful ass. I moved my mouth towards his rigid cock and slowly, working it with my lips, took it down gently to the depth of my throat and began to worship by sucking with a steady pulsation of the throat. I rolled my tongue around him. He grasped my hair with one hand and with the other he pinched my nipple. My cock was as stiff as his, and in my mind a mantra had formed of itself and was singing to me: my adorable boy, I adore you. The tension increased and my throat began convulsing. So did his cock, and hot gusts of semen, his seed, shot through me and filled my belly with a heat I had never known. I came without touching myself. Our erotic convulsions overwhelmed us. We lurched and fell to the floor vibrating in each other's arms.
Gently, teasingly, we began kissing each other all over our faces until our mouths again met and we breathed through each other like one organism.
I woke before he did the next morning in his bed and watching him as he slept wondered how in the world I had found him and if he was going to be just another passing trick or a friend who would stick. It sounds absurd, I know, but I was not only overwhelmed by the delicate beauty of his body, but I felt the pulse of his mind beating inside my own.
A ray of sunlight fell athwart his naked chest. I kissed his nipples. He opened his eyes and smiled.
Good, he said. You're still here. Spend the day with me. I have to go to work at four, and I get off at ten, but I'll meet you afterwards.
What do you do? I asked.
I'm the projectionist at the Bleecker Street. It pays the rent, and I get to see a lot of movies.
I was quiet and he continued.
But what I really do is make movies. I've just finished a documentary on America's rotting infrastructure. It's opening at Sundance this fall. I got several grants which allowed me to take a crew across the country. We've been to schools, hospitals, prisons, subway tunnels, housing developments, gated communities, electric generating plants, reservoirs, bridges -- all over.
It's always the same story, he continued. The infrastructure in America is rotting while people are out of work with nothing to do or wasting their time and resources in useless jobs.
I know about that, I said.
We keep the economy going through advertising. It's hypnotsis. They create consumer demand for unnecessary and shoddy commodities. And the government wastes billions of dollars on war and war technologies. And the best brains are engineering creepier forms of destruction and mind control.
The only thing I could do was kiss him. He kissed me back. Then, smiling gently, he said, Why'd you do that?
Because I think I've fallen in love with you, I said.
[When you write to me, please put the name of the story in the subject slot. Thanks.]