Britical

 
        NYC

 

People Let You Know. My dead friend Martin used to tell me that all the time. He wouldn’t mind my saying “dead friend” either. He always appreciated my juevenile attempt at subversive shocktactics, and would laugh.

 

I wish I had appreciated him more back then. He was several years older than me, a gay man with a glorious sense of the absurd and late stage HIV. We used to take long walks through the city, often in the middle of the night when neither of us could sleep, yammering away about physics, astrology, politics, and the minute chemistry of the torturous drug cocktails he was forced to take on a rigorous timetable every single day. The combinations were complicated, the medication needing to be switched out every couple of years as the virus, ever clever, changed and adapted. I used to think of the process of trying to outwit the wily thing as like one of those lengthy, white knuckle scenes in a movie where someone, fleeing some unstoppable foe, deperately slams doors each side of them as they run down a long, empty corridor, hoping to fool the enemy and buy some time. Of course, it never works for long, not in Hollywood nor for Martin in the end.

People let you know. Martin firmly believed that in the very beginning of any romantic relationship, people let each other know what they’re really like underneath; what, as a friend of mine would say, their “chat” is. He also held that most of us, in thrall to endorphins, are simply not interested in listening to the bad bits. We hear, and duly alerted, we immediately put our hands to our ears and hum loudly while simultaneously making excuses, only to realise the awful truth when it’s much too late. Damage ensues. Of course I would hear all this from Martin and take absolutely no notice. What the hell was he on about, I used to think. I was, to paraphrase a cliche, far too young and way too silly to realise he was onto something. (Of course, it’s an iffy theory too because it assumes someone is not throwing tricksy red herrings in your path, keen maybe to weed out the timid and those too unperceptive “get” you, as the icky phrase goes. But this is information too, of a sort. It’s also tiresome, but I know I’m not the only guilty one.)

Early last summer I was reminded of Martin’s dictum when I met an interesting guy at a fundraiser I was hosting. He was arrestingly handsome, and seemed sharp in that rare bantering way that is like Kryptonite to me. Congratulating ourselves for escaping the party, we walked a little way down Fifth Avenue. It was the hottest night of the year, the city boiling unpleasantly around us, so we walked slowly, stopping to look in shop windows and comment snarkily on this or that unaffordable object, as you do in New York when you want to appear terribly superior. Or insecure, our sour grapes attitudes showing.

Somewhere between Bergdorf’s and Prada (believe me I know) we noticed a little black Playboy plaque on a door. “Oh, look!” he said, “I wonder how many people have taken a picture of themselves in front of this? Ha ha!” Stupid tourists, he meant, or so I thought he meant. Since I had my camera with me I jokingly suggested he do the same. Surprisingly, he immediately jumped, overjoyed, into the frame and stood posing, arms folded, huge Cheshire Cat grin, in front of the door. “Can you see the Playboy sign O.K?” he asked anxiously. “Are you sure?.” I was. The camera flashed. He looked thrilled. Still, I was only half listening, and not really looking.

The following week there was a date in which he acted both gauche and weirdly calculating, lavishing compliments where they were perhaps due (!) but in a slightly insincere way, like a bad, rictus grinning soap actor. The quick wit so fatal to me had faded or lost its allure - I wasn’t sure which. He kept mentioning restaurants or places “we should go to sometime!”. Of course, this is merely basic “future events projection”, a transparent attempt to soften you up with gauzy images of weddings, babies, happily ever after, things that I, alas, don’t really understand. He insisted on walking me home and I told him he could come up for five minutes. I meant it. It was a school night, and I had things to do, insomnia to have, and exactly five minutes later I nudged him towards the door. What did he expect? But the look on his face was more than dismay; it was actual disbelief, that and a doggy posture of how-could-you-throw-me-out-like-this? I almost laughed, but was stopped dead in my tracks as I was shutting the door, when he must only have assumed he was out of eyesight. I just caught his expression change as he turned to leave. It was, chillingly, one of disgust, fury even.

A bit surprising then when a week or so later he rang to invite me to his birthday party. I had plans that night, but he sounded so earnest, and I decided to call by first for half an hour, somewhat curious really as to why ever he would invite me, what I had seen in him, and what, in the end, his deal was. Perhaps I’d been mistaken in what I’d seen at my apartment door, but I wanted to be sure. I have no doubt Martin was spinning in his grave at this point.

There was a group of people standing about awkwardly in his tiny studio apartment, a few spilling out into a scruffy backyard - festooned with the usual fairylights - beyond. I mouthed inanities with this and that one, as you do, bored by myself and finding no one else very fascinating either. Things got more interesting, though, when I was cornered by a very earnest and talky obviously gay man who plonked himself down on the bench next to me in the garden. He imediately asked me how I knew his friend, and maybe noticing that I answered in a casual, offhand way, must have felt it safe to plough right in with a speech that sounded suspiciously well-practiced, the informative stream regularly punctuated by admiring exclamations. “What a player he is!” he said. “I just love it! Him and all his friends, such players, Oh my God it’s so funny to watch then in action with women!” And so on. I waited in vain for the comma. When he got to the bit about “no woman ever, ever refuses” to sleep with birthday boy on the first date I didn’t have the heart to disabuse him of the notion. He was saying it with a straight face, after all, his tone almost evangelical. I guessed this guy had a big gay crush on our friend and since mine had been smothered at birth it seemed only gracious to keep my mouth shut. Nodding politely one last time, I looked at my watch, made my excuses, and said goodbye to my new best friend.

I wondered what had made this man inform an anonymous woman at such length on the playerish qualities of the host. I mean, my God, what sort of wingman was he?? Was he was kindly warning me, or jealously scaring me off, or, flatteringly, had he been put up to it by the scorned host? Probably it was something less sensational: I think he was simply oblivious, if badly in need of a leash. I realised I didn’t really care. Whether the birthday boy was a “Playah” or not hardly mattered because I had had all the information I needed that night right on my literal doorstep. So I went to say goodbye to the host. As I thanked him for having me, I thought about how different he seemed to me now, the banter just meaningless conjealed smarm, his good looks curdled into caricature.

I had thrown the telling Playboy photo in my bag earlier, intending it as a birthday card. On my way out, I propped the picture of birthday boy on his messy, Kleenex strewn desk. There he is, grinning proudly, ridiculously, but oh so appropriately in front of the Playboy logo - a veritable flashing, neon sign right over his head. I left, thinking of Martin and how he would have laughed at such a literal playing out of his favourite theory - and in pictures, yet!

 

 

Copyright Britical 2006