Slaves of New York (8 page)

On the street I realized I felt extremely giddy. Here I was, Marley Mantello, a genius of an artist, and shortly about to have a new brother. Already I thought of the kid more as my own son. The discussions we would be able to have! All that I knew about art would be his by osmosis. It was as if I was in a cyclotron, whirling about. I could feel the various amoebas and molecules inside me hopping like Mexican jumping beans. Oh, it was amazing how lucky I was, though it was no more than I deserved.

I couldn't control myself; once inside the grocery store I

leapt up, accidentally knocking over a package of Japanese rice cookies. Oh, I was an elegant chap, and though my Italian almond-colored loafers were scuffed, what a team my son and I would make once he arrived! It would be him and me against the world.

Then I spotted an artist friend of mine, standing next to the piles of dried apricots and nutmeats. "Larry!" I said.

"Hello, Marley," he said, in the voice of a zombie. Humped over alongside the apricots that way, he gave me quite a jolt. It was screwy, the way he was standing, one shoulder lower than the other as if he had got the plague. Maybe he was trying to steal the fruit, though I could have told him that this wasn't the place to try. "How have you been, Marley?" he said.

The last time I saw Larry, he looked like a human being. Now he had slithered into some preliminary reptile. On his head were a few sprouts of hair with a lot of skull in between. Dull lizard eyes. He was dressed in some sort of shabby camouflage. A terrible odor, reminiscent of cauliflower and old cheese . . .

"I'm great!" I said. "My work is going fantastically, I'm designing a giant altarpiece, ten by twenty feet long—see, I've applied to build a chapel in Rome, right near the Vatican. And I have a feeling I'm going to get the grant. But the real reason I'm excited is that I'm going to have a kid. Would you believe it? Me. Marley Mantello—" Meanwhile my voice trailed off. The guy obviously wasn't doing too well. I felt embarrassed to run into him like this, in my black Italian sweater with neon-blue stripes like an early Frank Stella, my elegant rumpled old jacket, my gold, angelic hair. There was a pause. I thought at least the guy would congratulate me.

"Didn't you hear, Marley?" he said.

"Hear what?" I said.

"You must have heard."

"No."

"I'm not doing so well, Marley," he said. "I have cancer."

"Cancer!" The word leapt out of my mouth before I had a chance to close it up.

"Yes, Marley," he said listlessly. "Kaposi's sarcoma. You really didn't know?" I shook my head, taking a step backward toward the Campbell's soup. He took a step closer to me. His thick tongue crept out of his mouth and gave his lips a lick. "Well, Marley, I haven't been feeling well for about a year. Two months ago I went to a specialist in Boston. I had these giant purple welts all over my body. It's the first, contagious stage of AIDS, Marley." He stepped forward and clasped the edge of my coat.

"Wow!" I said. I shot backward about a foot.

"Don't worry," he said. "It takes intimate contact to spread it. But you know, Marley, at least now I know I'm not a hypochondriac. Of course, this isn't exactly helping to increase the value of my paintings. Who wants to buy something by an unknown artist who's got AIDS?"

"God, Larry, what can I say? Are they . . . doing anything for you?"

"Oh, I'm on chemotherapy. I had a course of radiation treatment. That's why I lost my hair. Does it look very bad?" I tried to shake my head. "You know what, Marley? Since I've gotten it, I can't have sex with anyone . . . and I'm horny as hell!" He leaned forward like a leering, toothless old lion in the zoo, sighting a toddler with a pop.

"Well, Larry, best of luck—" I edged away.

"Ah, don't worry, Marley. I know which side my butt is breaded on. I'm going to use this to get one hell of a lot of publicity. Don't catch anything now, you hear?" For I was backing off rapidly. Unable to find the insect repellent, I purchased my eggplant-chocolate-chip ice cream and staggered out of the store.

He had cancer, and the first stages of AIDS! All I could think was that this probably meant I would get it next: he had said it was contagious. Thank God soon my son would be born. Someone to visit me in the hospital. Poor Achilles, he would be fatherless, as I had been. Tears came into my eyes, thinking about the kind of life he was going to have ahead of him. Before

I knew it I was walking alongside the Hudson, preoccupied with my thoughts.

An offering to the gods! I threw my ice cream into the water. The river was gray and choppy. I buried my hands in my pockets and wrapped my scarf around my nose, looking out. I could see all kinds of gooey things swimming around in the water, all sorts of primordial, primeval sludge. It was the land of the dinosaurs, out there in the water, with giant amoebas and lobster tails sashaying back and forth. Everything was alive, even though the water was so cold there were chunks of ice in it.

There were globules eating oil—these were the hungry enzymes from millennia ago that had survived through this day —and invisible lizards slithering through the waves. And volatile guy that I was, a great feeling of joy and happiness swept over me. I was not some primitive sponge or barnacle or anchorite. I was not Larry, walking around with a condition similar to leprosy. I was not my mother, in a dream world without clouds. But I was myself, Marley Mantello.

Oh, Marley, I thought, my boy, there is nothing you can't do. It was unfair, I was so much more alive and talented than any human being had a right to be; and if I had the financing I could have shown this to my son and to the world, by writing books, making movies, forming a rock-and-roll band and various other plans I had in mind for myself once I got rich enough to hire slaves.

I felt quite weighted down with the voluptuousness of my thoughts. Then it occurred to me that quite possibly I was weighted physically as well: an overabundance of hair. I always cut my hair myself. I was so good at it I didn't even need to look in the mirror.

So I sat down on the bank of the Hudson and got my scissors out of my key chain. It was true, it had been a long time since I had last cut my hair, which always grew quickly. No wonder my thoughts were crazed and tangled, with so much hair like violent worms feeding on the juice within my brain. My

strength was slowly being sapped. I crossed myself: though I wasn't Catholic, it couldn't hurt.

Besides, this was penance of a sort. Like the monks of yore, I would remove my worldly vanity, my golden curls. Or at least give myself a trim, in the name of poor Larry who had AIDS. It wasn't fair to give him this illness on top of the fact that he wasn't a very good painter, while I was in the prime of life and a genius to boot. And now to be graced with this offspring, little Achilles. The gods no doubt needed placating, a sacrifice to keep them on my good side.

It was only with difficulty, sitting there on the bank, that I was able to trim off the bottom hair and then lie back in the cold dirt, tired out. The hell with the top: though I had not a mirror to hand, I had probably done a good job and would be pleased with my appearance. I certainly felt dizzy. Well, what had I eaten today? Practically nothing.

It would have been nice to go now to the bistro on the corner and sit quietly at a table, eating a lovely, juicy hamburger with a mound of French fries alongside. And how very quietly I would sit, eating my hamburger and asking for an extra plate of raw onions and consuming an entire bottle of ketchup.

But my pocket, as always, was empty. Meanwhile, thinking these thoughts, I rose, leaving my piles of curling blond hair to blow along the shore. Whosoever discovered these hairs would no doubt have good fortune shine upon his life; such was the nature of all that had been touched by me, Marley Mantello. And before the last hair had blown away, I snatched it up and stuffed it into my back pocket—this I would present to my son, whether I was alive or dead, so that he could turn out like me.

case history #4: fred

Fred had a problem: he liked to approach strange girls on the street and offer to take them shopping at Tiffany's. As he was an out-of-work musician who lived in a cold-water walk-up near the Williamsburg Bridge, this often got him into trouble.

The first time it happened he was leaving a midtown record company (he had gone there to drop off yet another of his tapes) and across the block he saw a tall girl with short cropped hair and a certain elegant hard way of walking. He crossed the street against the light and came up alongside the girl. To his surprise, he found himself saying, "Listen, I like your linear definition. I was wondering—just for the hell of it—would you let me take you shopping at Tiffany's? It would give me a great deal of pleasure, and naturally I wouldn't expect payment of any kind."

The girl looked at him and said, "Buzz off."

If anything, Fred was energized by the experience. A few weeks later, while shopping for artichoke-chocolate-chip ice cream at Di Roma's in SoHo, he saw another girl with skinny elbows and a wry, pixieish face. He looked over her shoulder; she was purchasing a can of cream-of-asparagus soup. "Good choice," he said. "Listen, I know this might offend you, but I'm a millionaire and I get a kick out of taking young women shopping at Tiffany's. Would you like to go? You can pick out something nice—a bracelet, whatever."

"Okay," the girl said.

They got in a taxi. On the way uptown the girl explained that she was from Ohio and was visiting her sister. Fred said that he didn't do this sort of thing all that often, just when the mood struck. "It must be nice to have all that money," the girl said.

"Oh, it's not bad," Fred said.

In Tiffany's the girl grew very excited. "I can't believe this," she said. "Wait till my sister hears about this. She'll just die. This is like something out of the movies."

For almost an hour Fred and the girl perused the trays of emerald rings, chunky lapis bracelets, silver and pearl necklaces. Watching the girl, with her gingery freckles, her muttered cooing, and her skinny, twitching elbows, Fred was nearly overcome with love. At last the girl selected a $3,000 belt of alligator and silver. "Very tasteful," Fred said. "A good choice. But don't you think you'd rather have a pin?"

The girl looked worried. "Well it's up to you," she said. "You're paying. I mean, you can decide."

Fred knew the girl really wanted the belt, but he selected a tiny choker of pink coral and small diamonds.

Just as the salesperson was about to write up the purchase, Fred searched his pockets and his wallet. "Damn," he said. "I've forgotten my credit card. How stupid!"

The girl looked wistful but said she understood absolutely.

That night Fred replayed the event over in his head. He felt he had never been more aroused, more attuned to life, than he had been in that hour and a half spent in Tiffany's. Yet obviously this was not normal. He remembered reading about how when Nietzsche, the famous German philosopher, was fifteen years old and in boarding school, a sadomasochistic nymphomaniac countess snuck into his dorm room late one night dressed as a man and beat him until she was sexually aroused enough to make love.

Though Fred didn't quite remember all the details of this incident, he did know that in future years, when Nietzsche was grown up, he developed his superman philosophy, in which the virile, powerful individual would dominate in life and society.

In Nietzsche's case it was obvious how the primary, or key event—that of his rape by the blond nymphomaniac countess —led to the creation of a new philosophy.

But Fred could not understand why he himself had this penchant, this need, this lust to approach strange women on the street and offer to take them shopping at Tiffany's. He'd never had a key event. Maybe he'd never had any events.

For a few more times he was able to get away with his harmless ruse; but eventually the salespeople began to recognize him, and at last one of them, upon seeing him enter Tiffany's with yet another woman, called the police. He was detained and questioned for several hours; the woman also. She wept bitterly as she explained she had never seen Fred before. Tiffany's decided not to press charges provided Fred never entered the store again.

He thought about asking women to shop with him at Harry Winston's, but his original enthusiasm had worn thin, his pleasure in women had dimmed, even his new musical compositions seemed to lack the old zip and snap.

You never wanted to take a vacation. Just to stay home requires all of your energy, and when you go away you not only have to do all the normal, exhausting things, you also have to run around getting tickets, contact-lens solution, do the laundry, et cetera. You'd much rather just lie in bed and think about how much fun everyone else is having. But your boyfriend has a show of his paintings and decides you should both get away for a few days.

It takes days of preparation to get ready for your Haitian vacation. You take the big plunge and have your legs waxed. This is one of the most horrifying episodes you will ever undertake. By the time your appointment actually comes, you are prepared for an operation more painful than an abortion. You wonder who thought up leg waxing. It involves a tiny woman screaming at you in Spanish while she pours boiling hot wax over your legs and rips out the hairs.

You wish women's styles would change and that hairy legs on women would become a new trend. Somebody made a big mistake when they assigned you to a female sex role; you'll never get over feeling like a female impersonator.