“Congratulations.”
He stares at me. I feel a little embarrassed for him.
“Were you high when you went and pillaged Whoville?” I ask, with a sweeping gesture toward all the decorations.
“Yes.”
“Well, it looks nice.”
More silence.
“Gonna stay a while?” I ask finally.
“Maybe.”
“Well, I’m getting sick of taking out the trash myself every time.”
“I want to stay. I have a plan.”
“It’s your place,” I say.
He starts to cry. I’ve never seen him anywhere near tears. I’ve never seen his eyes even well up.
“Do you love me?” he asks.
The fear in his voice crumples me.
“Yes.”
He puts his head in his hands.
More silence.
I hear a couple laughing out in the hallway. Our neighbors. I hear their keys jingling, and their deadbolt click, and their voices recede as they step inside their apartment. All these people in boxes.
“Yes.” I say it again.
“I need to be able to smoke here for a little while,” he says, looking up.
“It doesn’t seem like you’ve been holding back,” I respond.
“I just want to be able to smoke here without you not liking me,” he continues. “I just want it to be us…I want to get through Christmas…I just want you for Christmas.”
His voice catches on nearly every word.
“I can’t stop now…not right now…New Year’s…I’m going to Baja Peninsula for a month…by myself…New Year’s. I bought a ticket.”
Cactuses.
“I just need to go to the desert…when I get back I’ll be clean…we’ll start over,” he continues. He’s having a hard time getting any words out. “I just want to give you your Christmas.”
He’s shuddering.
“Please let me smoke here till Christmas…I want to give you Christmas.”
The difficult part of having been raised by popular culture is that when confronted with a melodramatic situation, I flip through hundreds of similar sitcom plots and movies of the week to try to find an appropriate response. Is it time for the “very special tough love” episode? Or the weepy abused codependent spouse speech. Unfortunately, there’s no commercial break time to sort it out.
“You can smoke here. I’d rather that you did,” I say.
Jack’s relief is physically visible. I slide down next to him and take his head in my hands. His lips are burnt, and his eyes so deep set I’m not sure if they’re ringed in black or have receded so much that they’re in shadow.
“I can’t stop it here. I have to get away.”
“I know,” I say. “It won’t work here.”
Jack turns away from me and looks out the window. The winter sun is setting, sending shadows of skyscrapers halfway across the island and out into the East River. There’s a moment as the sky grows dark each day over Manhattan when the light from the streets and buildings is equal in luminescence to the fading light in the sky. It’s a fleeting second, but all at once everything has the same dull sickly orange glow. It’s the city after the sun’s cleansing brightness and before the evening’s artificial sparkle. It’s simply a city without any makeup.
“Do you like the trees?” Jack asks after he’s composed himself.
“They’re beautiful. How did you do all that?”
“That’s what happens when you get an idea while you’re tweaking,” he says, sheepishly.
They are beautiful. Positioned at either side of the room, they reflect in the wide expanse of windows against the dark glass, making the room appear as if there were dozens of sparkling trees.
The truth is, there’s no movie of the week about a drunk drag queen and a crackhead hooker in love. There never has been. It’s not the kind of thing people would care about. People would flip right by the channel, either unbelieving or uncaring. Who’s the good guy? Who’s the bad guy? Aren’t they both bad? If they didn’t get what they deserved by the first commercial, it’d be on to the breast cancer movie.
“You’ll be gone for a month?” I say finally, breaking the awkward silence.
“Yeah. I’m just going into the desert.”
“Will you call me?”
“No.”
“Can I stay here?”
“Of course. When I get back, we’ll figure things out.”
I’m petrified of losing him. At Thanksgiving someone asked Jack how long we’d been in our relationship. He’d said we weren’t in a relationship. We were in a conspiracy. We were. Are. As damaged as we may be, I know we have more going for us than any couple in any box in this city. If we can find a way not to damage ourselves beyond repair, we will make others doubt themselves as much as they doubt us.
“When you get back, will you want me?” I ask.
“I want to want you.”
It’s not the answer I want to hear, but getting any type of answer is an improvement over the last few weeks.
I look out over Jack’s head in my arms at the skyline beginning to light up, sparkle by sparkle. It’s impossible to conspire by oneself. Secrets that reside only in the mind of one person aren’t really secrets. They’re unspoken fears. It takes two to conspire. I kiss his hair, soft and brown, and breathe in deeply, smelling pine sap, and honey, and desert, and worry. I may be foolish, but I’m not stupid. I’ve learned a lot from Jack. Mostly to take things as they are at the moment they happen. And right now, this moment, I’m happy to be invited back into the conspiracy. I want to memorize his presence because I know what it’s like when it’s gone. I want to never not know this moment.
24
Isn’t it Boxing Day or something? Shouldn’t you be home waiting on your butler?” I ask Houdini as I open the door to greet him.
“Merry Christmas, little tart,” he says, smiling, handing me a large white shopping bag. “It’s for Lady Aqua.”
He stomps the snow off his boots in the hallway and steps inside. He unwraps his plum-colored cashmere scarf and pulls off his black leather gloves.
“Here,” I say, taking them. “Give me your coat.”
“How was your Christmas?”
“Brilliant,” I say.
It was. If there’s ever a good time to have a boyfriend high on crack, my vote would be for the holidays. Especially if it’s a boyfriend who feels a little bit guilty for ruining your life.
One night when Jack and I first began dating, deep in the swamp of summer, I’d gone on and on in a drunken ramble about how much I was looking forward to my first New York Christmas. It had always been a fantasy of mine to move into the Plaza right after the Thanksgiving Day Parade and take part in every bit of New York Christmas right up until the Times Square ball drop.
Jack remembered my mentioning this, and for the week leading up to Christmas, Jack had a different activity planned each night. Skating in Central Park. Caroling at Washington Square Park. A hired car took us from department store to department store so that we could see every holiday window display in the city. On Christmas Eve, he took me to St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church for midnight mass. When the service was over and the congregation spilled out onto Fifth Avenue, the bells of St. Patrick’s, St. Mark’s, and St. Thomas’s were pealing simultaneously. If it had started to snow softly, I would have been twirling, arms out, down the middle of Fifth Avenue.
I haven’t even been in New York a year yet, but I’ve seen enough for cynicism to take a strong root. Jack’s tour of the New York holiday season broke all that down, and gave me the wide-eyed innocent Christmas story I’d always dreamed of.
I’d taken a break from Aqua, turning down all holiday gigs. Jack and I went to bed together each night, though just as I would relax, that moment when I felt like I was falling, Jack would slide out of bed and head into the kitchen. I would hear the cupboards and the lighter flicking, and it was unexpectedly comforting. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of
the night and hear muffled voices with him. Trey, Marcus—another escort I’d met, strange voices. It didn’t matter. The conspiracy had survived. The voices, and the auditory ritual rhythm of his getting high, relaxed me. Habit. Tradition. Home.
Occasionally I’d get up and join him, or them, in the kitchen just long enough to pour a juice glass of vodka. They were high, and sometimes nervous around me. But then they’d follow Jack’s cues and relax. We’d smile and exchange pleasantries, and I’d head back to the bedroom to watch Barney Miller, or Cheers, or an infomercial.
On Christmas Eve Jack slept with me the entire night. We woke curled together exactly as we’d fallen asleep.
“Stay in the bedroom a second,” he said. “I’ll come get you.”
I turned on the TV and watched the Today show. I was offended momentarily when Katie and Matt were absent, replaced by some second-tier substitute local anchors roped in by an unfair holiday clause in their contracts. These two people are in our homes every morning of the year and then abandon us on the most important holiday? It didn’t seem fair. I think of how I’m not at home, my first Christmas away in twenty-six years. My mother told me that of course she would miss me, but that she was happy I had Jack and would be thinking of us both.
“Come out,” Jack called, cheerfully. When I emerged into the living room, I noticed how bleak Jack looked. Not having gotten high the night before, his body, his entire being radiated a sort of wired exhaustion. An empty nervousness that made me hollow just looking at him. But his smile was genuine as he gestured at the pile of presents he’d assembled under both trees.
“Oh, Jack,” I said, “it’s too much.”
“Come here. You need to open them in order.”
He explained to me that he’d been collecting gifts since last summer when I’d told him about my New York Christmas dream. One gift from each section of town.
He handed me a lumpy package wrapped in red foil decorated with gold dragons.
“From Chinatown,” he said. I carefully peeled back the tape from the folded ends, and an assortment of candy and intricate small toys tumbled from inside with colorful Chinese characters on their packages.
Dozens of packages followed. Versace jeans from Fifth Avenue. A photography book from SoHo. Silly gay toys and skimpy decorative underwear from Christopher Street. Museum passes from the Upper East Side. Opera tickets from Lincoln Center. There were endless gifts. And a card with each one, with drawings and poems about the neighborhood of origin and its significance to us.
As I reached the end, I couldn’t bear the thought of it stopping any more than any child around the world opening presents at the same moment. Each gift was tangible proof that I was loved and thought about and cherished and worthy. Christmas is not about giving; it’s about feeling deserving, the warm innate joy of knowing good things will come to you, that forever someone will provide.
Jack was lost in my world with me as I opened the presents. He opened my presents to him and professed the appropriate amount of surprise and excitement, but there was nothing I could give him to equal my satisfaction with his gift of my first New York Christmas. Neither of us were prepared for the last gift to be opened, for the last ribbon to be undone, and paper to be discarded. Neither of us wanted to face the enormity of the vacuum of what was left in front of us, Christmas afternoon and beyond, the empty uncertain distance between this scripted moment and the rest of our lives. This was the end of our plans, the edge of our cliff. But we had made a promise to each other, and we kept it. Perhaps for the first time ever. It felt good.
When we were finished, we sat crosslegged in our underwear on the cold parquet floor. No noise came from above or below or beyond the windows. The city on holiday—frozen, suspended, empty. The skyline outside, clear in the gray winter sun, frozen like a backdrop in an empty theater. It was easy to believe we were the only two who had been celebrating at all, and as soon as we were done, the crushing void moved in.
“Aren’t you going to look inside?” Houdini asks me. I’d been lost in my Christmas memories.
I open the white bag and peer inside.
“Lush! My favorite store!” I say.
“I know, it’s all you talked about last time,” Houdini replies.
Inside the bag were dozens of soaps and creams and bath bars from my favorite London store.
“Thank you,” I say, reaching one arm around him and kissing him on the cheek. Houdini briefly stiffens against my embrace, but then reaches an awkward arm around to pat my back.
“Where’s Aidan?”
“He knows you’re coming, right?”
“I phoned him on the way to Heathrow.”
“He’ll be back shortly,” I say, without any idea if I’m telling the truth. After a brave attempt at spending Christmas afternoon together reading the paper, watching TV, and dancing around to the new Celia Cruz CD I’d bought him, he’d slipped away as the sun set and I hadn’t seen or heard from him since. I guess I owe him one last binge.
“Come on in. Can I get you something to drink or eat?” I ask. “I don’t think we have any coke yet. I haven’t seen any around.”
“No worries. I’ll just wait for Aidan.”
We spend the next half hour talking about his Christmas, and his daughters’ presents, about his business, and European politics. Jack’s absence is beginning to grow uncomfortable, and I wonder if I should start bossing Houdini around and telling him to undress. The guy’s come a long way to be stood up. I’m trying to remember where Jack stores the restraints when I hear his keys in the lock.
I jump up to meet him at the door.
“Houdini’s here,” I whisper.
Jack looks terrible. The same white T-shirt he wore as he left the apartment Christmas evening is now filthy with yellow stains under his arms. His lips are chapped and bleeding, and the acrid stench of burnt cocaine and butane rises from his skin. He walks past me into the living room, his hollow eyes having never looked directly at me.
“Hey,” he says to Houdini in his lower than normal escort voice. “Take your fucking clothes off, pussy.”
I step softly into the bedroom, suddenly feeling like an audience member who’d accidentally found himself onstage after coming back from the bathroom.
The rest of the afternoon passes outside my closed bedroom door, marked by Jack’s gruff barking of commands, and Houdini’s high-pitched pleading and muffled struggling. I flip through the channels, trying to find anything that will hold my attention more than a few minutes. By sunset I’ve decided to put on Aqua and go out, even though I have no paying gig and can’t find anyone left after the city’s holiday exodus to go out with me.
“See you boys later,” I call, traipsing through the living room wearing a red vinyl catsuit with white fur trim around the collars and cuffs, so skintight that I begin to sweat before reaching the door.
Jack doesn’t even look up from the magazine he’s reading, and Houdini is too afraid to break his victimized character to respond. But I see through the restraints and the bound naked fatty flesh, and wink at the husband/father/executive lying on his side on the floor. His eyes dart back and forth between me and Jack, who’s so exhausted he’s paying almost no attention to Houdini at all. Finally Houdini winks back at me, piercing through the makeup and wig, and making me glow underneath it all. We’re double agents. Conspirators against the conspiracy.
I’m amazingly undrunk when I return at the remarkably responsible hour of four in the morning. The clubs were fairly empty, and the post-holiday vibe was relaxed and relieved, the few people that chose to remain in the city coagulating into a sort of adoptive family unit.
Jack stands in the kitchen, still in his stained T-shirt, pulling together the ingredients he’d need for the next day’s high.
“Hello again,” I say.
No response.
“Hey,” I say.
He continues measuring out the rubbing alcohol into a small juice glass.
“Fucker. Look at
me.”
He does.
“What the fuck? You asked if you could smoke here; I said yes. You asked if I’d not hate you for it, and I haven’t. You said we’d just ride it out till New Year’s, then you’d disappear and clean up, and I was cool. The least you can do, the very fucking least you can do, is be civil.”
I am not getting back on the roller coaster.
“Sorry,” he says, turning back to his methodical task. “You’re right.”
I feel completely unvindicated, and a little ashamed at my outburst. He gave up too easily. Sighing, I put my bag down next to the sink and lean against the counter, watching him work.
“When do you leave for Baja?” I ask, breaking the silence.
“New Year’s Eve Day,” he says.
Two days away. I watch him pouring and measuring. Tipping the ingredients into one of the spoons from the set my mother gave me when I went to college.
I loosen my corset and take a deep breath. The kitchen is full of his musky unshowered scent and I want to bury my face in his back and hold his arms at his side to stop him from what he’s doing. Instead, I take another breath and hold it as long as I can.
“Jack?” I say after a few minutes have passed.
No answer.
“Do you want me here when you get back?”
I hadn’t planned on asking this. Not out loud, at least. I’d been asking it in my head constantly since the afternoon he’d revealed his plan to me, but I’d never meant to say it out loud.
“I don’t know,” he says finally. “Do you want to be here?”
Yes! I want to scream, Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! over and over again until my throat dries out and bleeds out over my tongue. Yes, I want you to come back and be clear, and bright, and stunningly perfect. I want you to tell me what I’m doing too much of, and not enough of, and convince me that we’ll go down for all eternity as the perfect couple. This isn’t all about you.
Instead, I tell him that I don’t know where I’ll be when he returns. It’s more of a show of bravado than any version of truth. I know I’ll be here. Unlike Jack, no matter how beneficial a disappearing act might be for me, I could never tear myself away from a show in progress. Even when the plot’s tragic ending is apparent to the entire audience. Perhaps there’s a deus ex machina that will lower from the ceiling and turn the whole debacle back into a romantic comedy. Never can tell. Paid the full ticket price, might as well stay.