Текст книги "The Fuck-Up"

Автор книги: Arthur Nersesian

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

“You mean that he might just pop in at any moment and bang, I’ll have to split?”

“Unfortunately.”

“No matter what hour of the night?”

“It’s not like that. He’s extremely formal. If he comes to the city once a month, I’d be amazed. And actually I guarantee that he’ll notify you well in advance.”

“Sounds good.”

“Good, but he’ll have to meet you first. Understand that nothing will be in writing; all arrangements will be verbal.”

“Which means I’ll be unprotected. He’ll be able to chuck me out any time.”

“Unfortunately yes, but Sergei is a decent guy.” Eisenstein had died in the forties. What other great directors were named Sergei?

“Keep in mind,” Marty continued, “that in essence you’re getting something for nothing.”

“What country is Sergei from?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Listen,” Marty continued. “This might sound a bit strange, but if you really want this place, a word of advice is look now.”

“Now?”

“He’s very taken by those who are very gay and very fashionable, very ‘now.’”

“You do look more ‘then.’ For a posh loft,” Miguel stated, “looking ‘now’ is a pretty small trade.”

“All right,” I replied, without the slightest notion of how I was supposed to transform into this ideal image. But if there was indeed an apartment in the balance I’d certainly try to tip the scale to my favor somehow. I agreed to find the proper attire, and then trying to contain the excitement amidst all the noise and cigarette smoke, I pardoned myself for a brief suck of air.

Although it was chilly outside, I slowly became intoxicated over the spectacular windfall. It was like winning a lotto without even waiting on the long line with losers; a poem published and a loft in SoHo. Standing in the iciness, outside looking in, a fanatical fantasy unfurled: palls of hashish and marijuana smoke streamed from the loft skylight, dust bunnies of cocaine gathered trembling in the chandelier. The permanent temperature of my abode would never breach above or below the mid-eighties so that nude bodies would never be made self-conscious by the cold. There would be no more hard or edgy surfaces to fall against. I: a sultan who had finally found his harem, a thick juicy nerve in search of well-deserved stimuli. Poetry would be written between orgasms. Tonight long-deserved rewards had finally toppled into my lap. I returned to the moment, reentered the restaurant and resumed my seat and pose.

“So who is my patron going to be?”

“Please don’t ask me that,” Marty responded.

“Why such a big secret about his identity?”

“Sergei is very nervous about his privacy being invaded.”

“And what exactly is his need for a gay?”

“Well, other than the fact that he thinks they’re cleaner, I think his girlfriend might be coming to town. I’m not sure. He might feel insecure about that.”

“So he wants a court eunuch?”

“I guess so,” Marty replied with a grin. “But you’re gay, so all that is settled.”

In his mind I was gay and in this instance that meant I was invincible. I could witness the interlocking of the sexes and remain unfettered. So after I had polished off my pierogis, Marty explained that the celebrated but insecure Sergei would be notified and we’d all have a meeting.

SEVEN

The long rideto Brooklyn that night seemed much shorter. When I got in, Helmsley was deep asleep. He had slept silently during my voyage to and from Manhattan. Silently I undressed and cuddled to sleep with the thought that this hard couch under me would soon be replaced by a king’s bed. Sleep came quickly.

The lights were suddenly flipped on. Through squinted eyes I made out the figure of Angela.

“Hey! Turn off those lights,” I moaned, and then pulled a pillow over my face.

“I oughta throw you the fuck outa here!” she yelled back drunkenly. “Who the fuck you think you are?”

“What is going on?” I heard Helmsley say, and looking up I could see him knotting a bathrobe over his pajamas.

“This cocksucker cursed me out and I’m gonna teach him who’s dumb,” Angela said, pointing at me.

“Christ, Helmsley, she’s drunk.” Looking into Helmsley’s puzzled face, I knew he was in for a tough one.

“Ya just gonna stand there?” she addressed him.

“Look Angela, I didn’t give you my key so that you could barge in here like a lunatic.”

“You faggot! God wasted a dick on ya.”

“Let’s go to bed,” he replied. Grabbing both her shoulders, he slowly tried to steer her into his room.

“I oughta get my brothers to kick the shit out of ya. That’d put hair on yer chest.” In a moment Helmsley succeeded in enclosing her in his room, but several seconds later, I heard a scream—hers. A moment later, a cry, his, and once again the door smashed open and she reemerged, stopping before me.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I want you out.”

“This ain’t your house,” I replied.

“Don’t tell me what the fuck house this is, I’ll bash ya.” Helmsley now limped out of his room, cupping his testicles over his pjs.

“Angela!” he winced. “Stop this now!”

But she was beyond him. Her eyes were targeted toward me now. Helmsley proved himself ineffective as a protectorate. I looked to the floor and saw my shoes and pants. Glancing toward the window, I noticed it was almost dawn.

“I want you out of this fuckin’ house,” she repeated as she stared at me.

“I ain’t going.”

“Please,” Helmsley appealed. “Go.”

“I ain’t going.”

“I’ll give you money for a hotel,” he implored.

“No.”

“I’ll get him out for you,” Angela said, taking a step forward.

“No,” Helmsley commanded.

“Then call the fucking police!” Angela yelled. Helmsley stood still and looked about miserably. She screamed louder this time, “Call the fucking police!”

Helmsley went over to the phone and looked at me pleadingly. “For God’s sake, please go. Just for now.”

“No, Helmsley,” I replied. “If you can’t rule your own house you should go into your room and let me handle it.”

“YOU DIAL THE POLICE GODDAMN YOU!”

Helmsley snatched up the phone nervously and started dialing. As he did, a victorious sneer smeared over the bitch’s face.

“I got your own friend calling the cops on yer, yer a pair of fucking faggots.”

“I thought you were going to bash me,” I taunted.

Her face started lacing back and tightening. Before I knew it, she jumped forward and tore the bandage off my right arm. When I stood up, she clipped me, a right cross to my head. Falling backwards, I reached out to grab her, trying to regain my balance. Accidentally I shoved her. She fell backwards right through the old oak coffee table. Now she was screaming and hollering.

“He hit me! The bastard hit me!”

“It was an accident,” I replied as I tugged on my pants. Helmsley hurdled over his fallen lover and was punching me all over. He was bigger and stronger than I, so I tried running, but he pinned me down with his knees on my shoulders. All the anger that she had generated and he had stored was punching out on me. I tried to talk to him, but suddenly I felt the hem of my pants being pulled up. Catching a glimpse beyond Helmsley’s anchored torso, I saw Angela drunkenly yanking up my bare leg, and I howled as her molars pierced deep into my calf.

Quickly and instinctively I kicked her in the face, catapulting her against the wall and onto the floor in a heap. She lay still now. Helmsley saw that she was badly hurt. He bolted off and attended his beloved maniac. Grabbing my shirt, shoes, and coat, I wobbled out the front door.

Several yuppies walking in an unintentional formation must have thought it a strange sight on their way to work, when they saw me wearing little else but pants, madly limping down Clinton Street. Suddenly a police car with sirens blaring turned a corner and screeched in front of Helmsley’s door. The son of a bitch had actually called them. Goose pimples or not, I wasn’t going to dress until I was a couple blocks clear of the serpent’s love nest. I dressed in a doorway and inspected my leg. Both the upper and lower bridge of her teeth had sunk deeply into my calf. Upon careful inspection I noticed a tiny patch of flesh and sinew ripped off altogether. It was probably sitting in the bottom of Angela’s leathery stomach. I tied a tourniquet around my knee and hobbled to the F. Not knowing where else to go, I got off at Broadway/Lafayette and walked up Broadway, finally ending up at the Loeb Student Center at NYU. I limped my way to a booth in the cafeteria downstairs. There, I recuperated over four cups of tea squeezed out of a single tea bag. My jaw had a deep bruise, my neck and chest pulsated and everything else swelled. But the bloodiest gem of my lacerations was the tear in my right leg. With napkins and rubber bands, I was able to sop up and control the ooze of blood, but I was still worried about infection. I finally decided to go to one of the most merciless and dreaded places in the city, a hospital.

Since I owed Saint Vincent’s money for repairing the cut arm, I started hobbling northeastward toward Beth Israel. As I walked, the wound reopened. I kept stopping and trying to curtail the bleeding.

I wasn’t in pain, but by the time I reached Second Avenue I was numb and dizzy. I paused a moment in front of the Saint Mark’s Cinema, just to catch my breath. I didn’t recognize anyone inside. By the time I finally arrived at Beth Israel, the self-applied battle dressing along with the hem of my pants and right shoe were all soaked in blood. I staggered into the emergency ward. Quickly a novice nurse laid me on a gurney and started cutting away at the pants.

“He hasn’t been admitted yet,” I heard the head nurse remark. Someone questioned me, and then the young nurse returned to the wound. She cleaned it out and brought over an intern, a young Indian woman. She quickly stitched all the frayed flesh ends into an integrated calf, and dashed off to the next impatient patient. As a final fuck you to that wimp bastard, I told the hospital people I was Helmsley and gave his location as my billing address.

After a couple of hours of recuperation, it was time to go. The Zeus Theater was only a couple of blocks away, and it was already late afternoon, so I slowly staggered there for work.

I arrived a half hour before my scheduled time. Today was going to be my first solo flight. I was supposed to manage the theater alone. But when Miguel saw me his mouth fell open in disbelief.

“Are you a masochist?”

“No.”

“What’s with you? Every time I see you you’ve been wounded.”

“Fate’s a sadist.”

Miguel offered to cover that night’s shift, but I could tell that he was looking forward to having the night off. He had been working every night for the past two weeks, ever since the manager whom I was replacing had quit. I was equally eager to see if I could handle the job. He planted a thankful kiss on my cheek, promised to call, and left.

All I had that day was the watery tea at the NYU student center, so I appropriated some money from the petty cash drawer, and I went out to get some food. I went over to the Korean greengrocer, which had just opened a salad bar, and put together a complex salad. Then I hobbled back to the theater, and slowly ate it down. I began my first inspection of the theater. Toilet paper was stocked in the bathroom. All the fire codes were being observed. Checking the screen, I noticed that all the acts of fellatio and sodomy were correctly in focus and all the grunts and moans were distinctly audible. Along some of the seats, I saw the dark silhouettes of pleased patrons in rhythmical motions. Life was following art in the theater. I was about to dip back into the office when I heard someone address the box office lady, “Is Miguel here?”

“Miguel?” she replied. I turned to see the oily subway kid who was initially recommended the job by Tanya. Before the box office lady could tell him that Miguel wasn’t here, I stepped up and spoke to him.

“Can I help you?”

“Are you Miguel?” he asked. Silently I went around to the turnstile and opened the door for him.

“Why?” I said.

“Tanya sent me for the manager’s job.”

“I needed someone a week ago. Where the hell were you?” I replied, and then concluded, “I filled the spot.”

“Shit,” he replied.

“Sorry,” I replied. He vanished back into the night.

Proceeding back into the office, I took out the portable TV to forget the dirty deed. The kid shouldn’t have taken so long. I turned on the TV.

The only time I had ever watched TV in the recent past was when I was depressed. After about five minutes of watching a sitcom, the funniest part of which was the laugh track, I lost reception.

Finding nothing else to do, I started cleaning the accumulations out of my pockets. Other than soiled tissues, I found a “Be A Cashier In Six Weeks” mail order coupon, which in my former unemployed despair I had pulled from a subway advertisement. The bottom of my pocket was impaled with broken toothpicks and lined with pulverized after-dinner mints that I had taken from the Italian restaurant where Helmsley had treated me, pre-Angela. Finally I came across an unknown phone number scribbled on a loose piece of paper. This I threw into the garbage with everything else. But no sooner did I drop it than I remembered that it belonged to the career woman I had met during the hold-up. I push-dialed her number, but got a recording mandating use of the newly implemented 718 area code. I remembered that she said she lived in Brooklyn Heights, and I dialed the number again, properly. This time I got a mellow “hello.”

“Hi.” I tried to sound at ease. “I hope this isn’t a bad time to call.”

“Who is this please?”

“I’m the guy you took to the hospital the other day, after the hold-up.”

“The would-be poet.”

“How did you know?”

“How did I know what?”

“That I got a poem published. You didn’t see it in print, did you?”

“No,” she replied. “I mean, I don’t know. I only remember your mentioning Hart Crane. Where did you get a poem published?”

“In the Harrington Quarterly,the upcoming issue.”

“Congratulations, best of luck with…” A clicking sound interrupted. “Oh excuse me, I’ve got call waiting.”

She clicked her phone and talked to some other party for a while, giving me time to locate a target. I decided that I would ask her for lunch the next day.

“I’m sorry for keeping you,” she finally said, “but I’ve got a long distance call on the other line, and I’m going to be a while, so I’ve got to go.”

“One request. Can we go for lunch tomorrow?”

“Look, I’m about ten years your senior.”

“Maybe, but you’re a lot younger than your age and I’m a lot older than mine.”

“Ten years is ten years.”

“All it really means is that you’ll have more to say than me.”

She giggled and told me to give her a call in the mid-afternoon, and that ended the conversation. I toured around the theater a bit and returned to the little office. I tried watching TV again but soon lost reception again. Eventually I buzzed the projectionist booth and announced I was coming up. When I arrived, she swung open the door and asked what I wanted.

“Just checking to make sure everything’s okay.”

“Well I would have notified you otherwise, wouldn’t I?” she replied.

“Sorry for bothering you,” I said and turned to leave.

“Hold on there. There is one thing.” She led me into a back room. “Look at this.” She pointed out a large rusty pot filled with stagnant water.

“Why don’t you dump it?” I replied, not knowing what else she might have wanted.

“Because the roof’s leaking, stupid.”

“Okay I’ll make a report of it.” And again I turned to go.

“Hey stupid, how are you going to make a report on something you haven’t seen?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you think you should check the roof? It might just be a leaky pipe or something.”

“It’s not necessary,” I said. I didn’t want to go up to the roof.

“Check the roof!” she insisted. Then she led me to a steel ladder that was bolted into the wall. I climbed up the ladder that led into darkness. In the darkness I realized that a metal hatchcover was tied down with thick hemp ropes. I undid the ropes, shoved up the hatch, and continued up to the roof. Outside it was dark and drizzling. I walked around the roof awhile. It was dirty and littered. I accidentally kicked through a rusty tar can. At the very rear of the roof I noticed a rattly old fire escape. But it was too dark to see any cracks in the tar so I climbed back down the ladder and reknotted the ropes.

“Yep,” I told the projectionist, “there’s definitely a leak.”

“Well, get on the ball and fix it or expect a grievance from the union.”

I hurried downstairs, away from the projectionist and out of her testy domain. It was a flash lesson in the value of warm secure boredom. When I went by the box office, the lady told me that I had two calls: one from Miguel checking to see that all was well, one from Marty. He left a number. When I dialed it, an older male with an accent answered. I introduced myself.

“This is Sergei,” he only gave his given name. “So you are the young man whom Marty recommended.”

“Yes.”

“Well, when can we meet?”

“Whenever you like.”

“Tomorrow at noon then.”

“Perfect.”

“Do you know Caramba?”

“On Broadway.”

“Very good, brunch. It will be my treat.”

“Wonderful.”

“Oh,” he suddenly exclaimed. “I’m looking at my appointment book and I realize that I have a conflict. Damn, damn. And that would have been perfect, too. Let’s see…” I could hear him flipping through small pages. “Damn, I’m overbooked. Meet me at Caramba for a quick meal, and if we haven’t resolved things you’ll just have to accompany me on my next appointment.”

“I don’t mind,” I replied, as if I’d been asked.

“Wonderful,” he replied, and that was that; I still didn’t know this “celebrity director.” No sooner did I put down the phone than I realized the upcoming problems. I had no money, no clothes, and nowhere to spend the night. I had already borrowed what little petty cash could be spared for dinner, and I had already borrowed against my first paycheck from Miguel.

If worse came to worst, I could spend the night in the theater, on the office floor, and scrub my clothes clean in the sink so that I could look half-presentable tomorrow. But I was looking more and more raggedy. The right sleeve of my jacket and the left bottom leg of my pants were cut off.

Paradoxically all I could do to fight off the anxiety was flip through Miguel’s Village Voice,a paradox because the Voiceusually gave me anxieties. First, there were the cartoons, Feiffer’s and Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies. Arthur Bell had just died and Musto had not yet put the edge to his column. With Newfield, Hamill, and Hentoff it had a solid crew of writers, but they usually left me feeling politically incorrect. Then there were the film reviews; this week both Sarris and Edelstein found something subtle to attack in blatantly bad films. And then the Literary Supplement and eventually you wound up in the classifieds. The personals were fun, but apartments were foremost in mind. If Sergei’s apartment fell through, the only chance I would have of staying within a half-hour radius of the Village was a roommate situation. I quickly skimmed the prices, but even the shares were above my impoverished means. I did notice two relatively low rentals. But upon reading the specifications, I saw I didn’t fit in. The first one read: “SWM 40 successful architect seeks SF age 20 to 32 to share bedroom of luxury West Village Condo, rent $210/month. Send photo to P.O. Box 878…” The other went: “Companionship and good times, WM willing to share one bedroom upper West side low rent in exchange for light duties, candlelight breakfast for two.” Getting an apartment in the city was serious business.

With the buzz of the intercom, I was informed by the box office lady that the last show had begun. It was time to calculate the final balance. In the box office she counted out the money in the till. It came to five hundred and twenty-four dollars. It was a good night.

Touching the stack of cash sent a jolt through me. Over the past two years, I had learned the fullest value of money. The American Dream for me wasn’t leisure, just day-to-day survival. Soon I was told the film was over. I cosigned the cashier report, turned on the inside lights, turned off the front marquee lights, locked the turnstile, and said good night to the box office lady.

I took the cash into the office, locked the door and recounted it. It was then that I noticed the tremor in my hands. There was something very philosophical about money. I filled out a deposit slip, bound the whole thing together with a rubber band, and stuffed it into a night deposit bag. I was about to zip and lock the bag, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I opened the bag and took out the money. It was tightly stacked and banded—it felt like a truncheon. I held it in my hand for a moment, just weighing the heaviness of it, the power. I unbanded the bills and put them in my pocket. It wasn’t close enough to me. I put the money between my shirt and my chest. But then a sound or something awoke me. The money wasn’t mine, it was a piece of costume. I took the money out of my shirt, rebanded it, and with the deposit slip zippered it back into the night deposit bag.

The automatic turnstile dial amount was framed in the wall; I transcribed the number and checked to make sure the amount was correct. Every time a patron entered the theater, through the turnstile, the digit increased one. A speck of dirt was caked over the tenth digit. Using my fingernail, I scratched off the dirt, the tiny square of glass moved just a bit. Jotting down the figure, I subtracted it from the matinee figure; it came to one hundred and thirty-one, the number of patrons that had come tonight. Multiplying that by four, the amount came out correctly to five hundred and twenty-four bucks.

What prevented me from taking that money? Or at least part of it? First, there were the Spanish-speaking cashiers, but their memories were always a clean slate the next day, never remembering or reporting anything of yesterday. The only real safeguard was that dial in the wall.

It started as a curiosity that crystallized into a hunch. When I scratched the tiny frame of glass and realized it was a little loose, I found that with a great deal of tedious angling the glass could slip up just fractions of an inch. But this was just enough space to wedge a straightened paper clip. The paper clip caught into the tiny teeth of the right cog. I flipped the clip up and the small dial turned back a digit. Each time it turned back a digit, it meant four dollars were mine. It was like turning back the very hands of time.

A sudden knock at the door shattered everything. “Who’s there?”

“Day’s done, see you tomorrow.” It was the irate projectionist.

I realized that it was time to lock up the theater so I quickly inspected the place. Although no film was on the screen and the lights were turned up, there were still guys doing it downstairs and in the auditorium, so I turned the house lights up full and yelled that the theater was closing. I could hear pants being buckled and, slowly, guys filed out. After a moment, I checked the place again: empty. I turned off the lights, pulled down the drop gate in front of the theater, and locked the glass doors. I returned to the office and locked the office door.

With a tempting money supply before me, I needed something other than my own desire to calibrate the flow of cash into my pocket. On the day-to-day desk calendar it was procedure to dash down the amount of money we totalled each night. I spent the next hour summing up two averages. I summed up the average amount that we had brought in every night for the past month, next I figured out the average amount we took in every day this week. It took me about an hour before I realized that sitting in front of me was approximately two hundred dollars above the average amount earned each day that week, and approximately a hundred dollars above the average amount earned that month. I decided to pocket two hundred bucks, and dismiss it as an unprofitable night. I rewrote a new cashiers report, and reforged all the signatures. While in the middle of this, there was a soft knock at the door.

“Who is it?”

It was only Thi, the night porter, another false alarm. After leaving, I walked to the night deposit on Fourteenth and Broadway and made the drop. Heading up Broadway, I made a left on Twenty-third and walked over to the fashionable George Washington Hotel, just north of Gramercy Park. It was a far cry from either the filthy YMCA or Helmsley’s hell house.

Even though rooms were cheaper by the week, I wasn’t sure how long it would be before I could move into Sergei’s house. Money was still a handicap, but I had recuperated much since earlier that evening. At the bar in the lounge, I had a couple of whisky sours and relaxed. After a while, I took the elevator to the tidy room; there I stripped and slipped between clean, cold sheets. I tried but couldn’t sleep.

I thought about Helmsley and his twisted beloved one. Trains of thought jumped tracks while I waited for sleep. Eventually I ended up at that old and familiar terminus. I always ended up thinking about death. Looking up at the strange shadows along the clean ceiling, I thought about how one day my awareness and everything about me would be no more.

A moment later fresh morning light poured into the room, and I was aware only of being in a strange room. I had this sudden panic. I needed to know the time. I called downstairs and the desk clerk said it was nine A.M. While dressing, I considered the two appointments of the day. The first appointment was with the director, and then I had to try to get a lunch date with Glenn. The trick was looking both punkishly gay for Sergei, but afterwards older and responsible for Glenn, the career women. It was still early and I didn’t have to evacuate the room until noon. I checked my key with the desk clerk and left to hunt for a punk wardrobe. In the clothing shops of Twenty-third Street, I purchased all those styles of clothes that I had always ridiculed—black, torn, tight, and aggressive looking. Even in the early eighties they were passé. I saw a line of male cosmetics while passing by a drugstore. The counter girl gave me profuse advise on what mascara to buy, then applied it thickly and held up a mirror before me. I looked like a vampire, but it was probably exactly what Sergei was looking for. She also sprayed me with a new body scent called Truce and put a touch of a cologne called Bondage gently behind my ears.

Hair was still one of the most important canvases of fashion, and in order to be convincing, I needed an authentic haircut. I got to a pay phone and called the Astor Place Hair Cutters; that was thehaircut place. A couple of years ago, the Astor Place Hair Cutters was just a couple of older barbers going out of business like most other old-fashioned barbers, but apparently one of them snapped his fingers one morning and learned how to pander to the fashions. Some guy on the phone said they had an hour’s waiting time. It was too long.

I walked around the area until I passed one salon, which had a sign in the window. It read, “Special, this week only, $25 for any fashion plus a free nipple piercing!” The walls of the place were lined with posters of punks, and all the barbers were ambisexual punks. Squeamishly I rubbed my chest and entered. Until now, I had only patronized the barber college on the Bowery where a haircut cost only three bucks. I put haircutting on the same parallel as fingernail clipping and tooth brushing. Twenty-five-buck haircuts seemed ludicrous, but I rationalized it as down payment for Sergei’s apartment. I chose the flashiest barber, a guy who had the colors of the spectrum running down his mohawk and, sitting in his chair, I nervously asked him for his most daring concept.

“Daring concept?” he asked. “Heel and sit.”

“I’m just a bit nervous,” I confessed. He leaned the chair back and fitted my head into a sink. He shampooed my hair, wrapped it in a towel, patted it dry, and then started clipping. Initially I watched him in the mirror, but after a while, I couldn’t bear it. I looked away at the shelf where he kept all his accessories. After about ten minutes, he started up his blow drier. Fashion, which I had neglected so long, was finally taking revenge on me.

“Finished,” he finally said. “Now remove your shirt for the piercing.”

It could have been worse. I looked like Billy Idol. My hair stood on end, electroshock style. All that junk he kept pouring into my scalp was peroxide. I was bleachy blond.

“Divine, no?” He displayed me to the other hair virtuoso who, due to the absence of any other clients, inspected.

“What about the nipple piercing? It comes free.” With a tiny, long acupuncture-type needle he pointed to some kind of local anesthesia.

“No, thanks.”

“How about a nose piercing?” He wanted to stab some part of my flesh. An ear piercing, I thought, would erase any final doubts Sergei might have in his terrified little mind. A dangling earring would be a banner of my fashion-at-all-expense attitude. “How about an ear pierce?”

“Fine.”

“I’d like it done with a new needle,” I requested.

“Course.”

After the stylist numbed my ear, he took the needle to my lobe. I closed my eyes, bit my cheek and while counting to ten, felt a pinch. Then I opened my eyes again. He was swabbing away a drop of blood.

“We have a little training post. But what I want you to do, is clean your lobe tonight with soap and water.”

“I will.”

“Promise me.”

“I swear,” I assured him. I then put twenty-five bucks in his hand and picked up my bags.

“I accept tips you know,” he said.

I gave him a dollar and left. I felt the tiny gold drop in my lobe and, passing by a cheap jewelry joint, I bought an earcuff from an Indian salesman. While trailing back to the hotel, I was aware of someone walking behind me staring. I blushed so hard that I felt feverish. Dashing into a department store, I bought a pair of sunglasses. When I went to the cash register to pay, I noticed a bunch of preteen girls giving me the eye. One of them finally said, “Hi there.”

I wasn’t sure if they felt my androgynous look was free of sexual threat, or if they regarded me as a child might regard a clown. I silently paid and left.