Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? (10 page)

Michael

M
y whole life has been a baseball analogy. When life gets me down, I say it’s bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded. I still have one more at bat. Sometimes life throws you a knuckleball. Sometimes a fastball.

In my life, the Big Pitcher Upstairs usually throws me a curveball, kind of low. So it was when I met George.

I have never been monogamous. I’ve had periods of my life where I was a total whore. It was the lifestyle of the time. It was Studio 54. Even when I settled down, when AIDS came along and killed half my friends, I just never went looking for a soul mate. Maybe Lily’s right. What we have is so close to perfect, except for the sex part, that we both got kind of lazy about finding someone.

Maybe it’s that, for most gay men, the whole settle down and get married thing didn’t even start to be a blip on our radar until gay men could safely come out of the closet—the 1990s, maybe. And “safe” is relative. I live in New York. Forget some other places where I think hiding in the closet remains the only option if you value your safety. And it all depends on your family, too. Your world. You can’t play pro sports and be gay. I don’t even think you could be a sportswriter and gay. Fireman…pushing it. I mean, legally you can do some things and the courts would even back you. But at what price? My father hasn’t spoken to me since I transferred to a different college after my assault. When it rains, I get an ache in my upper left thigh—where my femur was broken—that almost makes me want to go to bed. But that ache is nothing compared to what I lost when I was in that locker room and afterward.

Still, commitment ceremonies—those are new. And marriages—in Canada and Vermont. Also new. I would read about these changes on the landscape of America. I would also read how some people worried these changes were literally causing the demise of all that was good and right about America. Undermining marriage. Well, straight people have had a fifty percent divorce rate for some time without us gays coming into the picture.

However, despite the new options, the new possibilities, I can’t say as I ever felt this longing for a soul mate—for the other “half” of me. I didn’t feel less than whole without a spouse.

For Valentine’s Day, Lily and I were dining at the latest hot spot on the Upper East Side. I made reservations a month in advance through Lily’s paper’s restaurant critic. Tara offered to babysit Noah because Justin was going to a family wedding so she was going to be alone and crabby on Valentine’s Day anyway. Lily took a lot of Compazine so she wouldn’t throw up the delicious meal for which I would be paying in the neighborhood of two hundred bucks (before tip), and donned the new red silk scarf I gave her on her now-bald head. She pinned a rhinestone butterfly to the front of her turban and looked vaguely like a gypsy fortune-teller. I admire her that she never bought a wig. It’s bald or the scarf, but she isn’t going to deal with a head of fake-looking hair, itchy no less. Actually, at the start of chemo, she did buy a wig. She opted for a white platinum punk wig that made her look like a hooker. Have to hand it to her. She says “Fuck you” to cancer just as well as she says “Fuck you” to me when she’s mad.

We were sitting at a prime table at Giorgio’s—three-and-a-half stars in the
Times
—and laughing our way through the night. Toward the end of the evening, around 11:00, the crowd was thinning a little bit—though not too much because it was Valentine’s Day, after all. And out came the chef. He stopped at table after table. Not my type, really. A little bit chubby, dark hair (I like blondes). He was very charming, though, and knew food. And call it “gaydar,” but I sensed he wasn’t straight.

“You enjoy your meal?” he asked us. He had the tiniest hint of an Italian accent, and when he smiled he had a single dimple at the top of his left cheek. His eyes were dark brown, framed with the longest lashes I had ever seen. He looked at Lily’s scarf, and he welled up. I think he thought we were lovers and here she was a tragic Valentine’s Day figure on the most romantic night of the year. He got the tragedy part right, but not the rest.

“It was magnificent,” Lily smiled. She was loopy. In addition to the Compazine she’d taken, she’d smoked some grass (courtesy of Ellie, whose new boyfriend grew it in his attic under heat lamps) and had drunk two glasses of wine.

“The sauce on my pasta was magnificent,” I said.

“Thank you.” He looked at me intently.

I didn’t want him to leave our table. I fumbled for something to say. “I’m sure you hear all the time how people are amateur chefs, but I love food and love to cook and I can’t tell you how impressed I was with the presentation, and with our waiter. Terrific service.”

“You cook?” He turned to me.

I nodded. “I’m Italian, too. I make a mean spaghetti sauce.” I know I wanted him to stay at our table, but I couldn’t believe how banal and pathetic I sounded.
I’m Italian, too?
What was this? A Knights of Columbus meeting? “I can do French foods pretty well—”

“Very well.” Lily slurred a little. She patted my arm. “My best friend here can outcook anyone. Even you, I bet.” She pointed a finger at George and winked. In the candlelight, she looked ethereal. Fragile, yet glowing.

Suddenly George, the name stitched onto his chef coat, cocked an eyebrow. “I would have guessed you two were married.”

“My mother wishes,” I said, “but I’m afraid we’re both waiting for a knight in shining armor.”

As soon as I said it, I wondered again what the fuck was wrong with me. I never out myself. Not that I’m ashamed of my sexuality, but I just don’t make a habit of announcing it. And George wasn’t my type at all. He was sweaty from being in the kitchen. And did I mention chubby? I’ve always been one of those gay men who demands bodily perfection from a lover—after all, I’m “perfect” myself. But something drew me to him.

He smiled. “Me, too.”

At that, a sous chef motioned for him, poking her head out the kitchen door. He smiled at us, and did he hold my gaze a few seconds, or was I imagining things? I’d taken a hit or two of Lily’s joint. Maybe it was all in my mind. Then again, doesn’t everyone hit on me? “A crisis calls.” George motioned toward the kitchen and shrugged. “Please, don’t leave yet. Dessert is on me. And a brandy.”

When he went back into the kitchen, Lily grabbed my hand, “You were flirting!”

“I was not.”

“What’s with the knight in shining armor shit? You never do that. Never. You
like
him.”

“Don’t.”

“He is totally not your type.”

“Exactly.”

“Which is why he’s perfect for you.”

“What?” I pulled my hand away. “You better stop drinking.”

“Don’t you get it? You always pick the wrong guy for you. Here’s a guy who cooks, who’s into food. Listen to the music he has picked for his restaurant. You love Boccelli. He owns the place, so he’s not a loser who’s going to hit you up for money like Craig—ugh, he was a loser. No, this guy’s the one.”

“Lily, I’m really not in the market for a new boyfriend right now.”

“Since when have you ever had a boyfriend? You have
boy-toys.
It’s time to grow up. And he’s perfect. We’re staying. We’re closing this place up. You are giving him your number. And if you don’t do it, you know I will.”

“Please. I know. You’re such a yenta. But I don’t have time for a relationship.” I heard myself saying these things, and I also heard, as I know Lily did, that for the first time I didn’t mean them.

We closed the place. We called Tara and told her not to wait up. We drank brandy. Lily got drunk. I got drunker.

Near the end of the night, George joined our table. He talked about how he studied in Italy and France. He talked about his food influences. He spoke about opera and art and growing up Italian. He was short; he was chubby. I was smitten.

At one point, Lily excused herself to the ladies’room.

“Your friend? She is very sick?”

I nodded. “She has cancer.”

He shook his head. “She’s very beautiful. Such a shame. Such a shame. And she has children. I hope she gets better.”

“I think she might die.” I stared down at my brandy, and a choked-off guttural sound escaped from me. Sort of a stifled sob. “What the fuck?” I said aloud. “I’m sorry. She just looks beautiful tonight, and we’ve had a great time. It’s hard.”

“She is lucky to have you.”

“Thanks. I’ve known her twenty years almost.”

“Listen…I—I hope you come here again.”

“Look, if I don’t give you my number, Lily will, so you might as well call me. She’ll be impossible if we don’t at least meet somewhere for a drink.” I wrote my home number on my business card.

He smiled and mopped at his brow with a cloth napkin. He tucked the napkin into his apron when he was through.

“I’d like that. I work crazy hours, you know. The restaurant.”

“I’m not looking to get married. Maybe I’m just looking for a friend.”

Lily was practically squealing in the cab on the way to the train station.

“I want to know every detail. I am so jealous.”

“Yeah, well…we haven’t even done anything yet.”

A week later, we had. We went to a movie—he liked foreign films with subtitles and old movies. Just like me. And he held my hand in the dark. I found my palms sweating like some high school kid on the night of his prom. We went back to his place, a beautiful apartment facing the East River. He had black-and-white photographs hanging on the walls, matted and framed. Venice and Florence. The Italian countryside. He must have spent a fortune to redo his kitchen, which was enormous by Manhattan standards. We made cream sauce for fresh raspberries and ate them at his dining room table.

“You might as well know,” he said, “I’m intimidated as hell about being with you. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a more beautiful man.”

“They all say that,” I joked.

“And I might as well tell you it’s been a while for me. I’m a workaholic.”

“Well, I’m a slut. And you know, I can’t explain why I feel so comfortable with you.”

We made love. And like that, we were a couple. Albeit a couple with conflicting schedules and conflicting lives. I felt guilty, too, for finding love when Lily needed me most, but George never pushed. He was a workaholic, and maybe it never would have worked if I hadn’t been so busy with Lily. Maybe what I thought was a curveball was actually straight across the middle of home plate.

“Hey George,” I said one night, across a tray of lasagna I’d cooked for him. I’d gained six pounds since we started dating. He’d gained three.

“Yeah?”

“I forgot the most important question of all.”

“Yes, Michael?”

“Yankees or Mets?”

“How can you even ask? Could I hold my head up on the streets of New York if I was anything but a Yankees fan?”

It was love. A home run.

Unholy House
by Lily Waters

I lived in a godless house.

On Sunday, while my playmates leaned scraped knees on church kneelers, wriggling and sliding on shiny wooden pews under the annoyed gazes of their mothers, I learned how to pull a dollar bill from under a shot glass without spilling a drop. The next day, I brought a shot glass and a dollar in for Show and Tell, much to the chagrin of my second-grade teacher. I learned from her shocked gaze and the awed stares of my classmates that visiting bars in the less fashionable neighborhoods of New York City on Sundays was considered unholy.

When I hear my girlfriends recount their childhoods, they complain about distant fathers and overbearing mothers. Lisa tells me about the year she nearly made the Olympic swim team—only to have her accomplishments overshadowed by her brother’s Hail Mary pass in the final game of the season, which lifted his team to the state championships—and exalted him to a football scholarship. Her father went to every football game. He never made it to a swim meet. Others tell of adolescent screaming matches and sneaking out past curfew. Alcoholism, sexual abuse, a sister confined to a psychiatric hospital. I listen to my friends’ stories, and when it comes time to hear about my Sundays and my house, they regard
me
with pity. As if somehow a dimly lit bar and a pack of tough guys slamming their money down is no place for a little girl. But I learned more from Big Jimmy and John the bartender and the colorful crew with their nicknames out of a Scorcese film—Trigger, Snake Eyes, Larry the Lip—than I would have learned in any catechism class.

Certainly, I learned persistence. The sole purpose of the Shot Glass Shuffle, after all, was to free my dad to have a few beers while I struggled to learn my trick. I sat for hours patiently learning under the tutelage of the Barroom King.

But bar tricks aside, I learned all the Judeo-Christian values preached about on Sabbaths everywhere. I watched my dad’s rough crowd take care of skid row bums who came in from the cold to get warm and beg for a beer. My father and Uncle Jim talked to these trembling, toothless men as equals, making sure they got a sandwich and didn’t go hungry that night. Theirs was a no-holier-than-thou approach. They didn’t belittle the life these men led as wrong or sinful. Those ragged and filthy Bowery bums were hard-luck cases. One wrong turn, one jail stint turned ugly, and it could have been any one of them sitting on the stool, trying to escape the cold.

I also learned what true brotherhood meant. My dad always told me if anything happened to him, my uncle Jim, no blood relative but a blood brother of the streets, would take care of me. I never pinned my hopes on ethereal guardian angels, but instead on iron workers and construction foremen, on the occasional ex-con and on bartenders. These men would shelter me from harm. They would kill for me. My father traveled the city streets with a switchblade in his pocket and a crowbar under the seat of his car. He told me I had to be willing to kill for my family because that is the way things are in Yorkville and on mean streets. I learned Darwin’s survival of the fittest from a master.

No preacher or priest would stand in the pulpit and praise the blade and the bar. That type of justice was not preached at the Sermon on the Mount. But the bond, unable to be broken, remains. My father “made it.” He pulled himself up from the streets to marry a nice girl and raise a daughter in the suburbs. He got a college degree at night and took a union job. He paid his dues. He followed the rules. But even as he “got respectable,” he never forgot where he came from.

I never much thought about why we never went to church, except when my mother’s parents came to visit. Polish-Catholics, boisterous and loving, her family revered the Pope and made certain we knew The Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. But once Grandma and Pop returned home after a visit, the prayers stopped. We never even went to church once a year on Easter. Never attended a Midnight Mass. My father taught me that hypocrisy is the lowliest form of cowardice. I learned that if I claimed to believe in something, I had to be able to defend it. I could not throw my name behind a concept or word like “Christian” or “feminist” as a matter of convenience. I cannot hide behind the shield of a word or phrase, I must
be
the embodiment of what I believe.

When I turned fifteen, I finally found out my father didn’t believe in God at all. He was not a fence-sitter playing both sides “just in case.” Not an agnostic, he was an atheist. If there is a God, he used to say, why are children abused? Why is there war? At fifteen, I didn’t have a good answer for him. But Dad taught me to think for myself. He brought up the big questions of the ages. He challenged me to find the answers.

I became a woman unafraid to ask for what she wants, gutsy when she needs to be. There is something to be said for standing your ground, even if it means a fight. I don’t want people in my life who can’t say what they think. I cringe when I see people talk down to children. Eye to eye, face-to-face, let them know truth.

After years of Sundays in bars where cigar smoke clung to the paneling and swirled around slow-turning ceiling fans, I discovered the life lessons my friends from religious households did. I learned about loving your brother. About tolerance and respect. About honoring family. And I still acquired something akin to faith.

The concept of our aloneness in the universe terrifies us. The passage to an unknown at the moment of death is rarely even spoken about. Our fragility as humans is denied. We bury our corpses with waxenlike makeup in an effort to preserve a sense of life about them even in death. But God’s house is not a church. It can be a bar. It can be a soup kitchen. Perhaps she is everywhere. Perhaps he is a Barroom King. If a messiah can be born in a manger, God can live in smoky bar.

I only see now what a unique universe I grew up in. Then, as I clutched my shot glass and brought it to class, I thought mine was a childhood like all others. I thought my classmates learned about five-card stud and pitching pennies against a dirty curb. But it was my world. And it made me what I am today. A woman striving to avoid hypocrisy. Atheists are unique in this world of stargazers and prayer-sayers. My childhood world was one of foamy beers in highball glasses sitting on a barstool, high above the floor, unable to get down. Watching the weary travel in and out the doors. Learning the Shot Glass Shuffle.

Then, at the end of the day spent with Dad, I’d come home to the embrace of my mother, who believed the world could be viewed through, not just rose-colored glasses, but fuchsia ones. I had a dichotomy there. Now, both my parents are gone, so is the old bar, the friends of my father’s who dwelt there. I can’t hear them, but sometimes, sometimes I can smell them, in a bar, the scent of yeast. And I suppose, for me, it’s as close to heaven as I may get.