My first roof-top party in New York City was approximately fifteen minutes long. I didn’t know anyone there, except for the friend that I came with, and spent most of those fifteen minutes on the phone anyway. It was impromptu. My friend and I were actually going to meet to discuss our one-night stand (also impromptu), but this city has an uncanny knack for spontaneity and so I found myself on the roof of a renovated complex in the East Village.
Really, I didn’t care either way. Here was a party: might as well. Unfortunately, as far as parties go, it was uncharacteristically dull and reminiscent of high school gatherings on the back porch of the rich kid’s house. When my friend suggested we leave, I didn’t mind at all. No one knows how to throw a party anymore. The art of entertainment and conversation seems to be foreign to America.
I bring up the party because Adam was there. I’d thought I’d met him before. In fact; yes. I had. Two months ago when I was drinking coffee in Java City, he walked over and dumped a bunch of condoms on the table. This night, meeting him the second time, we recalled the moment with fondness. He asked for my number and I gave it to him.
Actually, if a fellow is nice enough, I won’t withhold my number, though I may not remember him when he calls the next day.
Adam, thanks to the condom scenario, was an unforgettable fellow. When he called me on Friday night, I knew who it was immediately. I also thought it was ironic that the movie he was asking me to was “Knocked Up” since condoms seemed to be the basis of our relationship. The movie was for ten o’clock and I was moving.
Moving. As in: packing all my belongings and hauling them to another apartment. As in: Adam’s call was untimely because I was trying to move. My room was a disaster area, with bottles of nail polish and shoes waiting to be packed. I told him, “Thanks, but I’m moving tonight. Have fun at the movie.”
Five minutes later he was at my side helping me pack. I almost burst out laughing because all I could think about was my mother recalling her first date with my father. He too had called about seeing a movie but ended up at her house pasting green stamps (which, as far as I could tell, were coupons that required sorting and gluing. Their extinction is understandable.) While packing isn’t nearly as mundane as pasting green stamps, it is certainly a chore, and chores should never be a first date.
Adam was surveying my bed with me as I haphazardly threw things in a trunk sitting on my pillow.
Did I mention I was stressing out? I was stressing out. My packing was less than efficient. After watching me for a moment, Adam said, “You know, I’m an expert packer. I know how to make things fit in a small space.” With that, he began sorting my trunk with the finesse of someone who has moved too frequently. I let him reign and handed him my stuffed bear.
“Who’s this?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t name him,” I said.
“So just ‘Bear?’”
“Just ‘Bear.’”
He probably thought I was heartless and uninhibited. I mean, who leaves stuffed animals unnamed? What kind of unattached woman neglects to identify a bear as cute as mine?
“I feel like I’m invading your personal space. I mean… I’ve seen your bear.”
“You’re not invading I assured him. Because really, I am not a private person at all. I can be too honest with people I hardly know. Someone walked in on me in a unisex bathroom on 58th and 1st the other day while I was looking at my breasts in the mirror, and I hardly felt over-exposed. In fact, if he had stayed I could have turned around and asked him if thought one was bigger than the other and ended my debate. He read the situation differently and fled before his crotch could tent. Poor man; his face was very, very red. Though, back to his crotch, I imagine he was fighting an erection the rest of the evening. I do have very nice breasts.
Adam latched the truck close. He watched me while I was washing the dishes and we must have talked about something or other. When conversation dragged I began singing, because I have an instinctive impulse to start singing whenever water is running.
I didn’t have enough luggage to justify spending moving on a moving company, or even a truck, so I flagged a cab. The first cabbie was a dick and refused to carry my plethora of belongings and sped off before I could tell him exactly how big of a dick he was. Adam flagged the second cab and sweet-talked (read: bribed) him into accommodating yours truly.
While riding through Central Park, I learned two things: 1) Adam was raised in the West Village and 2) he is a freelance handyman. If he learned anything about me, it was equally unremarkable.
When the cabbie was unloading my luggage, I tried to pay him.
“It’s already been done,” he said. “I’m sorry, but he handed this to me first,” he pointed to a twenty poking from his shirt pocket. Adam was piling my things onto a luggage cart.
“You wonderful bastard,” I said.
“Do you know how you can repay me?”
“How can I repay you?”
“If you let me take you to dinner.”
I later learned that he didn’t have enough money to take a cab back home, so he hitched through Central Park at midnight and met a lot of interesting people.
Wednesday. 7:00. Dinner with my new friend Adam.
I wrote a play. Really. It’s called “Listen to the Band” and took me two years to write. Someone pointed out to me several months after completion that “Listen to the Band” is actually a song by The Monkees. I couldn’t change the title because it was just too perfect, but I did buy The Monkees greatest hits and converted “Listen to the Band” to my ringtone.
More than anything I wanted to meet someone who could produce my play. I arrived at college expectant and hopeful that my masterpiece would find its way to the hands of a knowledgeable and well-connected professor, a student director and an actor going places.
I met the actor where I frequently meet soul mates: while I was buying coffee. He was promoting his theatre group. The group was concentrated on African American theatre, and as my play depends on jazz, I latched on his company like a sprig of Ivy on Yale.
Vlad is four years my senior and a Haitian actor with more dedication to his calling than Jesus. I made my mark as a dramaturge, than as a playwright among his contemporaries as well as a wonderful dancer and lover of Mojitos. I wondered frequently why he picked me out. Understand that I am as white as they come. To give you an idea of my whiteness, CoverGirl doesn’t make a foundation light enough. (True! Being pale can be expensive. The same amount some spend on tanning passes I spend on customized make-up and sunscreen.)
And while we’re describing my physic, I may as well admit that I know perfectly well why Vlad noticed me. My ass is rather round for someone so petite everywhere else. I can not articulate how much I despise my J.Lo butt. But if New York City has taught me anything, black men really love a girl with a round ass. Lord knows I’ve tried everything short of anorexia to decrease its shape, but all I’ve done is make the rest of me smaller. I dare say my butt to waist ratio is still exactly the same.
So Vlad noticed me. Attacked me rather, while I was adding Splenda to my poison.
“Do you want to write for the theatre?” He said.
Do I! So the black community welcomed me with open arms, and thanks to my ass, felt I was their equal on the dance floors for the most part. These hips do not lie.
So now you have met two actors, both of which I’ll admit to sleeping with, but I haven’t fallen in love. It’s difficult for me to fall in love with an actor. I’m wary that their affections might be an… act. Actually, I haven’t fallen in love with anyone in New York City. I didn’t come for love after all. Nor has anyone else I gather. I’ve dated a fair few, but I gently break things off before anything emotional starts to grow so that we can remain good friends at least. To conclude Adam’s part of things, we spent a pleasant evening with Italian wine and his sheets and he taught me billiards the week after. Halting the romance was as simple as a phone call. He was on rebound anyway.
This morning I received a phone call from dear Brandin, the best friend of my former love back in my desert home. He’s close to being my best friend when you come to it, us both being in the city and loving the same man. Platonically. I was considering wasting my morning sleeping. I was doing such when my cell phone began singing.
“Guess where I am?” Brandin said.
“Where?”
“Your room.”
I was in my room. I was pretty sure he wasn’t.
“What? No you’re not.” Than I remembered. My old room. My desert home room. The room that is the size of the average studio apartment in the East Village. With my old bears and pictures. I tried to remember what I’d left. I had a sneaking suspicion that my room wasn’t representing me very well. He was in hometown teaching a dance workshop that I desperately wanted to be a part of.
“I like your bed,” he said. “I think you have better dreams when the bed is diagonal.”
“Have you seen Anthony?”
“I’m going to have breakfast with him and Bob in just a moment. But I wanted to call and see how you were.”
“I’ve been meaning to call Anthony. To see if he’s called Kelly. He’s in love with her you know.”
“I don’t know Janet,” he said.
“I don’t know either. That’s just what he said,” (meaning Anthony.) “But he also said that he couldn’t picture himself growing old with a guy. I don’t know. I mean, that’s his own quagmire…”
I said “quagmire.”
“Really, I think that sexual preference is so terribly socially constructed. I think everyone is born bi and than gets confused.”
We talked sociology for awhile. We talked about dancing and writing and New York in the summer.
He wished I was there.
I wished I was there.
Than he wished he was here.
The city, I said, is lonely enough without best friends. He knows I’m right. He also knows, I suppose, that I’ve yet to love anyone besides Anthony.
“Next year,” he said.
“Yes.” I said. “Next year.”
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