Faking It (13 page)

We got two matinee tickets to see
The Bourne Supremacy
, and were two of five people in the theatre on a Thursday afternoon in early August. Despite my objections, Devin insisted on paying for the tickets. "To thank you for driving," he said. We sat in two aisle seats towards the back. A middle-aged man sat alone about five rows up from us, in the middle of the row, and a woman and man in business attire sat together in the last row, under the projector.

"Do you think they're playing hooky from work and are here to fuck each other?" Devin whispered to me while a computer animated hot dog on screen asked the audience to please turn off their cellphones.

"Do you think they're actually married to other people?" I whispered back.

"Do you think they're wondering the same thing about us?"

"Not based on where we're sitting, no."

He smiled. Geez, even in the darkness of the theatre, his eyes sparkled.

Devin is a talker during movies, I found out. And not just about what's happening on the screen, but about normal life, too. For example, when Matt Damon crept down the corridor of a building, Devin leaned over and proceeded to tell me that it looked like a building in the city that one of his clients owned and made him play hide and seek with her in it one night. Under other circumstances, I'd tell him to shut up, or shove Twizzlers into his mouth; if it was a first date, I'd have vowed not to have a second. But while he rambled on, I just sat there and listened, thinking to myself,
Please put your hand on my knee, please put your hand on my knee, please put your hand on my knee...

I shivered and crossed my arms tightly; the theatre air conditioner must have been set to "tundra".

"Are you cold?" he asked. He wasn't even whispering anymore.

"I can't feel my toes."

He maneuvered himself in his seat to face me and awkwardly leaned over, put his arms around me--for a split second I thought we were going to make out--and moved his hands up and down rapidly on my own arms in an attempt to warm me. Not only was he blocking my view of the screen, but my body temperature shot from minus two to three hundred and sixty degrees in a matter of seconds as a result of his mere hands on my flesh.

I squirmed. "Dev, I can't see."

He stopped and leaned back in his own seat. "Sorry," he said. From the corner of my eye, I watched him stare blankly at the screen; it seemed as if he was having his own mental conversations of self berating not unlike my own.

"I mean, thanks," I said. He nodded quietly. Was he actually embarrassed?

When the movie ended and the lights came on, I stood up and stretched, looking around. The couple in the back was gone, and I wondered when they'd left. The man in front stood up and walked out. Devin stayed in his seat.

"You like to stay for the credits too?" I asked.

"These people worked hard to get their names on the screen. We owe them that."

"My brother Joey's song got in a movie once."

Devin's eyes widened. "Really? What movie?"

"It was an indie film. Kind of a
Sopranos
meets
When Harry Met Sally
. This man and woman from warring families become friends, yada yada yada. Joey's song was used while the mob father beat the shit out of the guy friend. Ironically, the song is called 'Peace in the Valley.' It's a jazz instrumental."

"That's really cool."

After the credits finished rolling, we came out of the theatre and adjusted our eyes to the sunlight while I let the heat warm me up again. I put my sunglasses on and looked around.

"God, I haven't been here in ages," I said of the entire downtown. "Well over ten years. Fifteen, at least."

"Me too," he said. He wore two hundred dollar Ray Bans. "Wanna walk around a little bit? See what's changed."

We walked all over the village, pointing to the bars and dance clubs we had used fake IDs to get into, the boarded up dives where my brothers used to play, and the location that once housed the shoe store my mother used to take us to buy nerdy Buster Browns. As we strolled up a side-street to the public parking lot, neither of us having spoken in a few minutes, Devin broke the silence.

"This is nice."

What the hell did that mean? Did he mean,
This is nice spending time with you, because it's you and I really like you as more than a friend
; or did he mean,
This is nice because it's a beautiful day and I'm a fucking escort who makes his own hours and lots of money
; or did he mean,
This is nice because you're my friend and friends do things like this together on a summer day
?

This time I decided to ask him. "Nice in what way?"

He seemed thrown by the question. "Just...nice. You're fun to hang out with."

My heart sank. I think I would've preferred the fucking escort answer.

"Thanks." I said.

"Wanna get an early dinner?" he asked.

"Sure. We'll go to Francesco's on Route 110 for some pizza. I haven't been there in ages, either."

I drove us there, where we shared half of a pepperoni pie and an order of garlic knots as well as more stories about growing up during the eighties and where we used to hang out (the Walt Whitman Mall for me; the Sunken Meadow boardwalk for him; that, or any one of the diners in or around Massapequa). Then Devin started asking me all kinds of questions about Massachusetts--comparisons, mostly. What's the seafood like? How do the beaches compare? Which city did I like better, Boston or Manhattan? Do they really say
paaahhk the caaaahh?
And so on. And as we talked, I steadily grew homesick for the flavorless bagels, the abominable pizza, and the comforting warmth of clam chowder. I found myself longing to hang out with my friends to watch baseball games or play tennis, and aching to feel and smell the sea breeze waft through my open windows as the sun went down. I missed things moving slower, even if only slightly.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, my voice sounding wistful.

"You're a million miles away."

I shook my head slowly. "Just over the BragaBridge."

We checked the LIRR schedule and I drove him to the Huntington train station rather than all the way back to Hicksville. Facing the onslaught of evening rush hour commuters was not unlike attempting to drive down a one-way street as a herd of bulls came charging towards us. Rather than park and walk with him to the platform, I pulled over near the cabs and kept the car running.

"Well thanks, Andi."

"Yeah, it was nice," I said, kicking myself for using the "nice" word.

"I had a great time, really."

"Me too."

We both sat there for a minute, like a first date, neither of us knowing what to do and both of us refusing to make the next move. The air conditioner whirred ostentatiously.

Just like the previous morning, he leaned in and pecked me on the cheek before I even had a chance to move or respond or kiss back.

"See ya next week," he said, and got out of the car, dodging and weaving through the crowd of oncoming commuters.

I drove back to East Meadow in silence, even oblivious to the air conditioner. Devin was probably zooming towards Penn Station, asleep, while I inched along Jericho Turnpike, alert and preoccupied. It really was a nice day.

Chapter Thirteen

August

Week Six of the Arrangement

B
Y THE SIXTH WEEK, OUR TUTORIALS AND HOMEWORK assignments had become more risque, more challenging, and more rhetorical. While Devin had me sucking on phallic-shaped ice pops, I had him reading and writing commentaries about a recent prostitution bust in which the arresting officer allegedly raped the prostitute after she allegedly refused to give him a "freebie" in exchange for being let go with no charges. While he learned logical fallacies, I learned stretching exercises to improve my body's flexibility during various sexual positions. While I assigned him to read Aristotle's
Rhetoric,
he assigned me to watch "The Couple's Guide to Better Sex," an instructional video that could have been more aptly titled "Jerking Off with the Joneses."

Devin asked me to explain the modes of discourse to him, and I gave him a breakdown of the rhetorical strategies housed under the categories of exposition, narration, description, and argument. Moreover, I described and showed him how to access them as methods of organizing and arranging language to further rhetorical purpose.

"Why do you hate them so much?"

"I don't hate what they
are
; I hate the way they're
taught
." I then went into a diatribe about the teaching of the modes as separate, disconnected, linear formulas of writing that push students to usurp authentic purpose and instead focus on a finished, precise product that conforms to the modal criteria, yet ultimately is stripped of original thought.

"In other words, they're taught not as the means
to
an end, but as the means
and
the end," said Devin.

"You got it, baby," I said, my adrenaline rising, "Current traditionalism in its most puritanical form." I then summarized Robert Connors' article "The Rise and Fall of the Modes of Discourse" and gave him a crash course in the history of composition studies in the American university. He listened to my lecture with a sort of twisted delight and admiration.

"You're an academic snob--you know that, don't you? How do you know you're not a fundamentalist in your own way?"

"A good writing instructor incorporates all theory and blends a number of practices. I teach the modes--my whole course doesn't revolve around them, but I maintain their necessity as well as the classical canons devised by Aristotle. I teach writing according to their specific social contexts and the genres that fall into the scope of those contexts based on rhetorical purpose and audience. My students engage in meta-cognition by reflecting on their own writing processes. But ultimately, I believe in expressivism and process method: using language to make meaning and understand the self in relation to others. And it's not a neat package. It doesn't all work well all the time. But it works for me."

"Still, you're a snob."

"And my Rhetorical Theory professor loves me for it."

***

Devin also finished his memoir:

Found and Lost

When I was eleven years old, my fifth grade class took a field trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to see a Picasso exhibit. I would've preferred a trip to Shea Stadium during batting practice or JonesBeach for surfing lessons; looking at paintings, however, was not my idea of a good time. Prior to the day of the visit, we'd spent a week in class learning about Picasso, but all I remember getting out of it was that he was some weird Spanish guy who was supposed to be a genius.

Being a kid from the south shore of Long Island, Manhattan didn't impress me the way it might someone from somewhere else in the country, somewhere more idyllic and less crowded. It was always there, after all. In fact, on a very clear day, one could faintly see the very tops of the twin towers from a certain point on the

Northern State Parkway

. (Of course, you had to be looking for them.)

Although this was my first time going to the MOMA, I had no expectations of being impressed, but rather bored. Almost immediately, those expectations diffused when I entered. The place was a castle of marble--gigantic wall after gigantic wall of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and tapestries awaited my inspection, and I could not possibly take it all in. My preoccupation with the shiny floors (perfect for sliding on with socks, and I must say I was tempted) was replaced by the docent (a term I would soon learn on my own; but to my eleven-year-old incarnation, it stood for boring old guide) who announced that our tour of the exhibit was about to begin. He was a skinny man with white hair, and he explained each painting to us as if we were art scholars here by choice and not kids bummed because Shea Stadium had been ruled out. Many of my classmates, however, were either restless or bored and showed their appreciation by making fun of both the paintings and him, mimicking his mannerisms and voice.

By the time we reached the second room of the exhibit, my classmates had stopped listening to the docent altogether. Along the way, we passed another room that caught and held my attention. I crept away from Steven Marino, my dreaded 'buddy' (in title only, assigned to us for the purpose of not getting lost on field trips) and when everyone was distracted by one of Picasso's cubist renditions, I escaped.

Time stood still in this new room. The first painting I saw spanned almost the entire wall. It seemed familiar, like a finger painting from my childhood. But when I moved closer, I could see just about every imaginable color in darting, tiny brushstrokes. It was as if my eyes had become blurry and I could neither make out shape nor image; but I could clearly see the movement of the artist, as if I knew exactly what he was thinking when he painted it. When I stepped back, the colors and brushstrokes dissolved together into the form of water lilies. I circled the room, again and again, leaning in as close as I dared to each painting. I practically walked on tiptoes, afraid I'd disturb them--they looked too alive and I was spying.

I must have been a curious sight: an eleven-year-old boy dressed in Levi's jeans, a Rolling Stones glitter t-shirt, and Addidas sneakers, so fascinated with these pictures on the wall. I didn't care. I was lost in the flurry of brushstrokes, thousands of them, all in one room. Furious and gentle, red and green, all tumbling over each other. All in one room.

The painting of a ballerina, seemingly tucked away in a corner, was the most breathtaking of all. She looked as if she would leap right out of the frame and dance just for me. She was fleeting, delicate, and sensual.

So, this was art. Picasso wasn't just a weird Spanish guy anymore, and these weren't just paintings--they were shapes, forms, and colors. Like the twin towers, you just had to know where to look. They took me to a place way beyond my childhood experience of paper mache and poster paints, to a world as much removed from time as I was from my classmates, until a mother chaperoning our trip found me (Steven must have squealed). She dragged me back to the bunch of school kids still staring at frame after frame of Picasso. I don't know if my teacher was angry at me for breaking away from the group or because I was unremorseful for my escape. I didn't even hear her scolding; instead, I saw her lips move in tiny, darting brushstrokes of red hues. Meanwhile, the docent droned at the children, the children dully eyed the Picassos, the chaperones watched me, and I saw nothing and everything: nothing that looked real, and everything in a world of brushstrokes. I wanted to make these kinds of paintings.