Brooklyn skyline, I pressed my hands, still oily with cherry ChapStick, against the glass. The only time I’d been high up like this was once when I visited the top of the Empire State Building on a trip, but all I could ever remember about it was the chain links that caged me, keeping me from chasing the imp of the perverse over the edge. Now I exhaled onto the glass: in an instant, fog covered the East Fifties.
“Which bridge is that?” I asked. There was a moment of silence, followed by a warm breath in my ear.
“Queensborough,” the Santa-man whispered, making the word sound like a term of endearment. His tongue followed, snaking around my outer earlobe and burrowing into the hole. I felt his hands grip my waist as he greeted me again. “Hello, friend.”
“Come,” Frank said, directing me toward a bed that I barely noticed was in the center of the room. I paused, then proceeded stiffly toward it. He moved his hands over my clothes, and then under them. “Does this feel good?” I nodded blankly, in the manner an amnesiac might if he’d been asked a question about himself and were guessing at the answer.
As Frank reached for my belt buckle, I reckoned with the thought that this event was, no doubt, what he had in mind ever since I told him about the audio guide at 9 a.m. Of course it was. And here I was, being peeled out of my shoes and fancy pants in the bed of a diplomat. I opened my mouth to say something. The words wrong impression and sorry weighed in my throat like coins. But Frank was already on all fours with his shirt unbuttoned half way. He was breathing fast and his breath smelled like broth. My face fell onto the comforter, which was impossibly soft.
I must admit, I was simply not attracted to male seniors. Perhaps I was not attracted to “men” at all, really; I seemed to like boys my age, with long hair, who carried forth some inexpungible sense of juvenility and delinquency, and girls who skewed lesbian and wore tight clothing. Might I pretend Frank was one of these? I closed my eyes and tried as his beard scraped against my thigh.
Retreating into my mind, I remembered similar incidents from my past. Did I conceive of my body as a musical instrument that belonged to no one in particular—banged up and out of tune, the property of some hospital’s activity parlor, available for anyone to pick up and strum a vulgar ditty on? I once let a very unwashed urban nomad girl whose mind I admired have her way with me. I wasn’t feeling it, but it felt like a small price to pay to hear a few more pearls of her drunk wisdom. And then once in a Traverse City karaoke bar some clown named Larry busted into a bathroom stall and grabbed my urine-spurting penis. I was slow to respond, failing to say, “Hey, stop that!” because I was fascinated by his brazenness.
Frank was now pulling down his pants, still panting.
I wondered if I might lack what are popularly termed “good boundaries.” My father perceived this when I was little—he was troubled watching me at age eight out on the soccer field: I was lolling around back by the goal post, looking up at the sky (to find shapes of creatures in the clouds, of course) and never looking at the soccer ball. He called me to his “study,” a messy uninsulated room in the corner of the house, to have a talk with me about protecting my space in the world. But I showed up to our meeting wearing a green tinsel wig, leprechaun hat, and sunglasses, with a holster around my waist. I drew a microphone from the holster and held it to my father’s mouth, as though interviewing him, as he tried to make his points.
I did have boundaries, I realized. They were hard, cold, and invisible like the glass walls of this room. It may appear that I do not belong to myself. In fact, I view myself not as a person but as a place, or more precisely, as a trap. Frank walked into my story and he is my captive, haha! I thought, a new sinister air gathering around me as I lay on the bed, now receiving Frank’s attention with all the erotic gratitude of a twitching cadaver.
“This … feels a little forced,” Frank said, finally pulling back. His face, crimson from the sexual rush, changed to a rouge of embarrassment.
We put on our clothes and got back into the elevator, each carrying our own special disappointment. I bid farewell to people I had met on my way to the door. “See you next time,” I waved to the woman in the dashiki.
“You better!” she hollered, laughing.
Frank walked me out of the building. The air outside had become strangely tropical. We strolled down the street for a while, silent, in the dark. Occasional bodegas cast a sickly glow on the sidewalk.
“What did you think when we met?” I asked suddenly, surprised to hear the words come out of my mouth.
“Well, you …,” Frank responded, eventually, “told me about the audio.” Struggling to come up with something more to say, he added, “and you were very pleasant.” In my innocence, or was it staggering arrogance, I had imagined he’d been as struck by me as I was by him, and that he might report that he’d felt as though he were being offered an audio guide by some figure outside of the ordinary—a baboon, for instance, Audrey Hepburn, or a poltergeist. “Then of course there was the look.”
“The look?”
“Yes, the look that made me know we would be …,” he glanced around and lowered his voice, “compatible.”
A look. Was there such a look? I asked myself. Was I unwittingly speaking in some arcane code? Might my irises be flashing these “looks” all the time? Perhaps I was like the Marvel Comics character Cyclops, who must wear special goggles to prevent lasers from shooting out of his eyes. Perhaps my wild peepers were firing off lust beams, willy-nilly, leading to misunderstandings left and right. Maybe bedroom eyes were the only eyes I had? Maybe my way of being in the world was essentially flirtatious.
I entertained such possibilities. But in truth, Frank and I simply misread one another’s interest. I had conceived of him as a Socratic, high-culture grandfather who wouldn’t likely be cruising at the museum before noon, and he had envisaged me as a bushy-tailed audio tramp.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye,” I replied, reaching out my arms to give him a hug. He did not hug me, and seemed to feel damned by the mere invitation, looking nervously around to see who might be watching us.
The next day was slow at the Guggenheim. Nadine had called in sick, though I knew her to be a good-time gal and imagined she simply had a later and wilder night than I. Thelma and Cookie stood behind the Info desk. “How are you?” I asked them. Thelma simply nodded her head, brushing a wrinkle from her de Sadean romper.
“I’m fine!” snapped Cookie. She said this as though I kept offering her a blanket when she wasn’t cold! Thelma gestured towards me, as to perfunctorily ask and you?
“I’m fine,” I replied. “I went to my first New York party last night. At an ambassador’s house.” Cookie raised an eyebrow. Just then I heard the sounds of rustling. Suddenly, up rose Florence like a swan, between Thelma and Cookie, with a stack of Frank Lloyd Wright brochures in her hand. Miracle of miracles: she had resumed her throne behind the Info desk.
Florence set the stack on the counter and straightened them with her long nails. “An ambassador’s house?” she asked, turning to face me. “Well go on, dear. Sounds interesting.” She gestured, like a teacher, calling on me for an answer. “How did this come about?” she pressed. “We want details. Don’t we, ladies?” Thelma and Cookie didn’t respond, but continued to flank Florence, like absent-minded backup singers. I knew she wasn’t the type to humor anyone or express interest if she hadn’t any—clearly, Florence believed that I had Info.
All around us I heard a soft crackling of
