We sit side by side. Silent. Reading. He, Genet. Me, Colette. Graffiti
spit across the inside of the subway car. A bright yellow ad for hemorrhoid
medication across from us, in Spanish. Train rattling. Screeching, as
it pulls into the station. We drop our books into our packs and follow
the noisy crowd, parents and children, mostly, into the bright Coney
Island light. So different from the narrow Village streets we live on.
Most of the crowd heads toward the amusement area. We walk to the boardwalk.
Skyfull and wave loud. Stop for food. Sit, waves crashing, on beach,
on breakers, teeth sinking into knishes, kasha, potato. We share a cherry
cheese for dessert. Crimson clings to his teeth and I want to lick it
off. Don't. This isn't our turf. Vapor of a distant silent jet cuts
the sky, heading off from JFK. He points to it as it fades. Lets his
hand brush my thigh for an instant, then pulls it away.
We walk to the aquarium. Pay. Wander, duck into dark spaces to nuzzle
and look at fish. Indigo, opalescent, darting through the undulating
seagrass. Find out we missed the last trained dolphin show, which we
both wanted to see. Paint is peeling on the curved walls. Crumpled candy
bar wrappers and sand, gritty beneath my sandals, his heavy black shoes.
The day is cloudless, bright. His clothing, down to underwear, even
his sheets, towels, washcloth, is black. But his kissing is luminous.
His pierced tongue a surprise. My first time. There are thirteen years
between us. No one my age does their tongue. Ears, nipples, cock, maybe,
as he has. But not nose, eyebrow, eight or ten gold rings in each ear,
as he has also done. His piercings catch the light as we turn. Heads,
both of ours, shaved, catch the light too.
We met at an East Village play that a mutual friend of ours was in.
Saw each other during the intermission. Liked what we saw. Found each
other when the play was over. Exchanged numbers. He came to my place
a night or two later. We were kissing before the door closed behind
him and have spent several nights together since, but this is our first
time out in the world. We walk up a long ramp. He taps me on the shoulder.
"Daniel!" and points, to a huge circular tank, painted Florida turquoise
on the bottom. Two belugas circle within it. We circle around it, trapped
on two dimensions. They, free to rise, fall, circle, spiral in all three
dimensions, trapped in a different way. Then they see us in the crowd
and come right toward us, dark, enormous. He and I kneel on the concrete
walk, our packs sliding off, pressing our shoulders together, as if
by accident.
They come right toward us. They press their huge bald domed heads right
up to the glass, their dark eyes boring deep into us. And we fall into
those huge dark eyes, pressed to the glass too, and meet them. Talking
wordless animal body talk. "Hello hello hello. We're glad to be here
with you. Yes yes yes." As we slide to sitting on the walkway, oblivious
now to everything around us. Recognized by them. Seduced by them. Merging.
Click click click click. We turn. A busload of Japanese tourists has
come up the ramp. They cluster around us. They see four domed heads
pressed together on either side of a thick glass divide. Embarrassed,
amused, we smile at them, then turn back, to that divide that is dividing
nothing. The tourists press around us, loom above us, crane their heads
to capture us from different angles. Clicking. Clicking. Around the
tank other visitors knock on the glass. Parents with children. Straight
couples, holding hands. They too want the attention, not of the tourists
but of the belugas. But the whales have eyes for only us. Will not leave
us. Have become a part of us, and we of them.
How long we are there, I cannot tell. Time stopped. City of dirt and
noise and crowds, vanished. And then something made time start again.
We pushed ourselves up. Grabbed our packs. They rose up. Pushed back.
Came right up to the glass again. We pressed our hands to their faces.
Our faces to the glass. Stepped away. Bowed to them. Returned to the
subway. The rattle. The graffiti. Long ride underground, back to Manhattan.
Both of us reading, not talking. He, Genet. Me, Colette. Then the long
walk up at our stop, steps littered with wrappers of fast food burgers
and empty cups, smelling of beer and urine. Walked down his crooked
block. Pigeons scattering. Climbed dim lit stairs to his black-walled
apartment. Sad, later, in bed, that we hadn't given our addresses to
the tourists. That the only record we have of the day is the story we
don't need to tell yet, pressing our faces together and becoming wet.
