Shuck (21 page)

“Sorry, David,” Bonnie said, “But she started it.”

“What's Windows on the World?” I asked.

“Like you don't know,” a fat girl with smudgy clown lipstick said. She was hugging a two-ton chrome makeup kit. “It's the club, up
there
...”

She pointed to the top of the World Trade Center's North Tower.

“We're doing a photo shoot,” Bonnie said, jiggling my face with a chest heave, pretending that it was just bad driving that was giving me a face job.

“Ten minutes to midnight,” the driver said through the intercom.

When we got to the top of the tower after watching a hundred and seven elevator buttons light up, the place was in a happy, downward spiral. Peter Jennings was at the bar, sucking down tonic water straight from the bottle. A few seven-foot bouncers came out and cleared a path through the crowd so we could get to a cordoned-off
space in front of a wall-sized picture window.

There was our crazy, twinkling city.

“What's the photo shoot about?” I asked the makeup artist, but then the deejay called two minutes and the place came apart.

Suddenly, everyone was dancing like they wanted their arms and legs to break. Strangers kissed. Drinks were poured into any mouth still open and empty. People came in their undies. You could tell by the somersaults their faces were doing.

“Quick, everybody in front of the window!”

LaChurch, the architect of New York's ugly beauty, wanted to capture his family on a once-in-a-lifetime background: the lights going out, the city's ugliest, most beautiful moment.

He was aiming a Polaroid camera, taking time to frame his masterpiece. No darkroom required, even though everything would soon be black.

“Listen,” I said to David, “I want to talk more about the writing job.”

“What?”

Tears for Fears' “Mad World” spawned a mini-riot.

“I'm a writer ... we talked about this?”

“TEN, NINE—”

“Oh, that,” David said.

“SEVEN, SIX—”

He gave me a sheepish look.

“I was going to ask you to model for me. You write?”

“THREE, TWO—”

Fuck me. Derek's show was somewhere out there. But I was dreaming, right?

“ONE—”

My head is filling with impossible objects.

All this stuff I collect in my mind, the shit and ephemera and mislaid poetry, it's smashing together and tangling into new shapes that are meaningless to me.

I've built a world I can do nothing with.

Twilight. Grey migraine. So this was what morning felt like on the day the world was supposed to end.

I stumbled onto Wall Street and zigzagged through the skyscrapers, kicking through frozen-stuck piles of confetti, broken bottles, and sparkly plastic “Happy 2000” glasses, the ones where your eyes were the first two zeroes. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I was walking to the loft.

I had lost my keys, so I rang the downstairs buzzer. No answer. A delivery guy left the building and I slipped in behind him, taking the stairs two at a time. I had trouble finding the right floor because someone had ripped the number off the stairwell.

Knock-knock-knock-knock
. Still no answer.

“Derek? ... Derek, it's me.”

“I know who it is.”

I lifted the corner of the mat, scooped the extra key, and turned it in the lock.

He was just standing there motionless, poring over a book.

“Listen, I'm sorry,” I said. “I was going to be there, but David
LaChurch asked me to write for him and then we—”

“Your excuses don't work on me anymore. Let me read something to you. It's from a delusional book by a delusional boy.”

He was holding my notebook.

“I quote: ‘Love. It's a weird word. But when the person in question is the only one down in your pit, down in the muck with you shoveling out a space to breathe, it's the only word that fits.'” He looked up at me. “Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? It's the only word that fits? What love are you talking about? How I let you crash here, eat my food, and waste away? Do you think you're the first whore I've kept around like this? And if it was love, do you think I'd have registered the serial numbers of my electronics with the police?”

I refused to cry for this asshole.

“Go on, explain yourself,” he said.

“You washed my cuts ... you painted them. And my bruises, too. We understand each other on a deeper level, and that's why we've never had sex, and we don't have to talk very much. We're like the turtles—we make art, and we just
know
.”

My Fiorucci duffel bag, I could see, was packed and waiting by the door.

“And I've watched you create new colors, you fucking bastard.”

“This fairy-tale romance of yours,” Derek said, “is starting to make you look stupid.”

He bent over, laid my notebook in the bag, and zipped it shut.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Jaeven, you don't even know what you're apologizing for.”

“For everything. I'm sorry I missed your show.”

“Please leave.”

Broadway and Houston. Feet dragging me to a building that wouldn't open up. Where was Phil when I needed him to need a massage from me?

I called him from a payphone.

“You have a collect call from ... state you name ...”

“Jaeven.”

“Will you accept the charges?”

“Uh ... yeah. Hey ... what's up?”

Little pleasure groans punctuated his words.

“Happy New Year,” I said, sniffling. “I thought you might like a massage.”

“Well, I'm kind of getting one right now.”

I heard shuffling, then someone else took the phone.

“Listen, asshole, he's through with you. You never knew how to get in under his muscles. He told me so.”

I'd recognize Trey's snooty voice anywhere.

“And Phil and I agree that you're
so
last year. I'm the new Boy New York now.”

Click.

I collapsed in a corner, where the sidewalk met a building, and propped my bag between my head and the concrete.

Stupid, but I wanted to write.

For as long as I could remember, writing was the only thing that could make the shit of life bearable. I didn't need anything else. The words would come and strangle the feelings, or rearrange them into something peaceful.

But Derek hadn't packed a pen for me. I had to go all the way to Fiorucci to get a new one.

But Derek hadn't packed a pen for me. I had to go all the way to Fiorucci to get a new one.

I found myself today, torn out of a magazine.

I should submit it as a joke to
Encyclopedia Britannica
as the picture entry for “Physical Perfection,” or maybe for “Temptation,” or who knows what else the guys who clipped this photo thought it meant. Maybe “Doom.” At the time it was taken, I'm not sure if the fourinch glossy spelled more doom for me, or for the guys who spent their days hunting the dork with the erection, running red lights, crashing into signposts, jerking off onto dashboards.

The photo. I'm not sure where I was and I forget who took it. I'm naked and spacing off, not really there. Maybe I should enter it under “Evaporation.” Not in the bad way, the way where you disappear completely, but rather like floating, floating in the space past the magazine page.

Well, here, actually.

Tilting my Walkman at just the right angle, I can still get “Ordinary World” to play, though it's much fainter than before. There are whispers where there should be yells, missing words and washedout choruses, and no matter how high I crank the volume, the wind smothers what's left of the song.

I used to think that no matter what happened, the music would always save me. I used to think a lot of things.

I got new batteries from Fiorucci and put them in my pager today. It beeped for the first time in a week. I recognized Richard's number right away. I called him back, and he told me to meet him at the Tony Schafrazi Gallery, though he wouldn't say what it was for. Like I've done with him so many times before, I took a leap of faith.

The art world glitterati were being their usual selves—sharks swarming the chocolate fondue, all silver cufflinks and wine-stained teeth.

It was ridiculous to see Richard in public, in a suit jacket fiddling with the elbow patches, mingling with people who kept getting his name wrong. He looked relieved to see me.

“My God, hello. It's the year 2000.”

He gave me a hug.

“Come on, put your bag down and stay awhile. I'll show you the pictures.”

I don't think I could've prepared myself for what was hanging on the wall—I wouldn't have dressed any differently, I couldn't have avoided the feeling of being a stranger in my own skin, and I would've been equally shocked.

Richard positioned me under a giant photo of myself. I was sprawled naked on his hardwood floor, peeping at the lens through a telescope I'd made by rolling up my notebook.

“Look at your face. You're saying, this is me, this is who I am. So deal with it.”

“That's me.”

“Well, right,” he laughed, “who else is it going to be? Come on.”

In each of the photos on the wall, I was writing personal shit I'd never meant for anyone to read. Now here was a gallery full of people with their heads tilted, eyes squinting.

I walked around from photo to photo, rubbing the scruff on my face, sinking deeper and deeper into this museum of myself.

Sepia-toned shot of me propped up on an elbow, winking at the camera through the reflection in my herbal tea. I was expecting to read a gummy love letter about Derek, with paragraphs retraced over and over to make them real. Instead, I found a page about how photography had made me a real boy, and had given me so much more than it had taken away.