The Year of Yes (26 page)

“Men,” she said. “He can’t even get dressed by himself.”

“That’s a problem,” I agreed, pretending I’d been adjusting my shoe and not blatantly spying. I’d never had a man long enough to determine whether or not he would be unable to button his shirt if we were too long separated. All the men I’d known seemed perfectly self-sufficient, clothing-wise. If they failed to zip their pants, it was a choice.

“Come and get me!” someone yelled from inside.

“Shit. Must’ve left him tied to the bed,” she said, laughing, and then carried the kayak into the house. I stood there for a moment, amazed at the kind of personal information New Yorkers were willing to share with complete strangers. I glanced back when I hit the end of the block, and saw the naked top half of the girl lean out an upstairs window and close the blinds.

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I conducted an informal survey of the Neighborhood’s women. Next door to Dogboy’s house was a building full of punky bands. The stoop was almost always occupied by a fantastic-looking, mascara-streaked chick. Sometimes the women were
drinking from flasks as they sat. Sometimes crying and eating donuts.

They
all
knew Dogboy. Intimately.

Verdicts were mixed on whether he was good or evil, but every girl said the man was skilled. Dogboy, it seemed, was the neighborhood witch doctor. He was the cure for whatever crippling love affair you’d just crawled out of. Either that, or he was a very appetizing poison.

“Just listen, for a minute,” offered a girl named Kitty, cocking her head and blowing out a smoke ring. “What do you hear?”

“Cars. Music. Jangling metal.” Kitty had no less than twenty piercings, and that was just on the parts of her body that were visible.

“Huh-uh. Like, really listen.”

A moment, and then a female moan. Faint, but rapturous.

“That basically never stops,” said Kitty.

“It has to stop sometime,” I said.

“Nope. Twenty-four/seven, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Maybe it’s a porno on endless repeat.”

“That moan a minute ago? Was Sabrina. She plays bass. Blue hair?”

“Oh.”

“She’s my roommate. Supposedly. Her boyfriend Ryan? Is inside our apartment right now, writing angry songs and trying to paper train their Yorkie. The Yorkie is his. Ryan’s been trying to convince Sabrina that lapdogs are ironic and masculine. But there’s nothing he can do. Dogboy has a pit bull. Ryan knows better than to try and stop her. She’ll get tired eventually, and then she’ll come home. They all do. I did.”

“You went out with him, too?”

“Yeah,” said Kitty, and looked dreamily out into space. “He’s a bastard, but he’s totally worth it. His dog’s name is Felonious Monk. And she’s a girl. I mean, how could I resist that?”

Kitty blew another smoke ring. We watched it rise and then dissolve, as Sabrina’s screams echoed blissfully down India Street.

BEEP. “HEY, MARIA? This is the guy whose door you stuck a note in the other day. Presuming you didn’t stick notes in more than one guy’s door, you probably know who I am. Come out dog walking with me tomorrow night. I’ll be outside my apartment at seven.” Beep.

I skipped to my dresser and started looking for dog-walking attire. Something that I didn’t really possess. I was thinking maybe a Katharine Hepburn-esque safari suit. The dogs I’d grown up with hadn’t been walked. They’d been hitched to sleds, and then pulled us down the snow-covered highway. I therefore felt that city dogs were wusses. Either a safari suit, or a 1930s silk slip? Perfect for walking a wuss dog. I held it up.

“Ugh,” said Vic. She’d heard the message, too.

“What?” I said.

“I guess that’s the kind of guy you want. Whatever. Get your heart broken again.”

Vic and I had not really regained our solidarity. We went about our daily business, brushing past each other in the apartment and trying not to make eye contact. She’d made
a brief exception during day three of my sobbing festival, and brought me ointment to put on my chapped nose. She was definitely still pissed at me, though. I again protested that I hadn’t known she was so interested in Pierre.

“I wasn’t,” she said.

“Then why are you mad?”

“I’m not.”

“Then why are you not speaking to me?”

“I am speaking to you. See? Speaking. Let the record show that you are going out with a dog walker. Just like I said you would.”

“His dog’s name is Felonious Monk,” I said.

“That’s supposed to make me think he’s cool?”

She was right. He was a dog walker. I hadn’t thought of it that way. This dog walker, though, was the most famous man in my neighborhood. It was too bad that Vic was mad. If she’d been happy, we could have spied together on Dogboy’s house. I’d just have to wait for her to get over it. In my experience, it might take several months.

Vic forgave me sooner than I’d thought she would, though, because that night we heard thwacking sounds coming from Zak’s room. Vic came out of her bedroom and stood in the living room, her ear cocked for a minute.
Thwack. Thwack.
Vic gave up her grudge and ran across the living room to my hut.

“Hear that?”

“How could I not?” I said.

“Is it what I think it is?”

“Spanking.”

“Gross. So, so, so gross,” giggled Vic, and crawled into my bed.

“It’s not gross,” I said. “It’s just kind of loud.”

Zak’s new girlfriend, Malibu Barbie, was in his room with him. Malibu Barbie was not a stupid person. In fact, Malibu Barbie was a pleasant and intelligent person. But I was jealous, humiliatingly jealous, and when I learned that her Los Angeles plastic surgeon father had given her a teenage nose job, that was the end of any good feeling I’d had about her. She had yards of blonde curls, and Zak was wrapped around her manicured finger. Princeling One had been her boyfriend at some point, and they were a perfect match, gorgeous and commercially viable. They were poster children for NYU. Zak and I were the opposite half. We were prime examples of what happened if you went to an expensive school without anywhere near enough money. You ended up living in a hovel, working too many jobs, and not focusing on school at all. We were rotgut; Malibu Barbie and Princeling One were gin and tonic. Apparently, Malibu Barbie had been a very bad girl. The floor of our apartment shook. The walls of my hut vibrated. Vic giggled. The spanking went on for a long, long time.

THE NEXT MORNING, Zak was in a stellar mood, though he had sacks beneath his eyes. Vic and I sat down at the kitchen table, and smiled at him.

“What?” he said. “Good morning!”

“Good morning,” we said.

“Right, good morning. Why are you staring at me?”

“Are we staring?” Vic asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think Zak’s paranoid.”

“You guys are acting freakish.”

“It’s a freakish house,” I said, “Don’t you think, Vic?”

“I do.”

“At least you’re smiling again,” Zak said, “but that smile is kind of scary. Wait.” He looked worriedly at the bathroom door. “Did the toilet explode again?”

“Nothing like that.”

“No, nothing, no explosions,” said Vic, and then had to leave the table because she was laughing too hard to stay in her chair.

“Is she high?” asked Zak. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her that cheerful before. Wait. Is she getting laid?”

“Is that why
you’re
in a good mood?” I asked, innocently.

“Maybe,” said Zak. Clearly, he was totally unaware he’d been overheard. Ah well. I’d leave it, for the time being. For the right time. Maybe for when he was mocking me in front of Griffin.

“Going on a date with Dogboy tonight,” I told Zak. He groaned.

“He hits on everything that breathes, and some things that don’t,” said Zak. “His ego can be seen from outer space. I’m telling you.”

“What’s your point?” I asked.

“He’s what you always like,” he said. “He’s also what you always hate.”

“He’s sexy,” I said.

“He’s a jerk,” Zak said.

“Sexy jerk,” I said, shrugging. “
Sua cuique voluptas.
”

“You’re not allowed to use my Latin against me,” Zak said. I’d been flipping through his phrasebook. “Everyone
has his own pleasures” seemed like a useful thing to know how to say. Even in a dead language.

THAT NIGHT I WENT OUTSIDE IN the black nightgown, high heels, and a parka. The wrong attire for almost any public appearance, particularly in December, but I was determined to impress Dogboy. He was walking Felonious Monk down India Street. Windows were opening, and skinny, cuckolded hipster boys were peering forlornly out. Their tattooed and pierced hipster girlfriends were emerging from doorways up and down the block, drawn like mutts to filet mignon.

“About time. Hold the dog for a sec,” Dogboy told me, handing me Felonious’s leash and disappearing into the bodega. Felonious stomped her dainty pit bull feet. Her friendly was the friendly of an ex-girlfriend who’s well aware that your man will never get over her.

Señor Chupa and a couple members of his old man posse strolled by on the other side of the street. Señor Chupa’s shirt tonight was pink and ruffled, his hat at a rakish angle. He tipped it in my direction and did a little shuffle dance. The posse imitated. I could hear their finger-snapping song carrying across traffic, and so I mimed a little applause for them. What else was there to do? They were my personal Greek chorus.

Dogboy returned with a carton of chocolate ice cream. He squinted at Señor Chupa, who was dancing into the distance.

“Know him?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Louie.”

“He stole my girlfriend’s underwear from a dryer once. He hangs out at that Laundromat, stealing G-strings. Disgusting.”

“Always been nice to me,” I said. I preferred to keep the mystery of my association with Señor Chupa to myself. Dogboy was clearly intrigued.

We walked to the end of the India Street pier and looked out toward Manhattan. Even though the water was polluted beyond repair, it was still a fantastic view. And though I’d expected Dogboy to be dumb, a Neanderthal with preternatural bedroom talents, he turned out to be both intelligent and funny. We walked back to his apartment, and he used an enormous ring of keys to let us in. At last! I rejoiced. And shivered. Nightgowns in snowy weather were a bad idea.

The building was cavernous, and seemed to have no interior walls. There was a large metal staircase flanking one side. It was a testament to Dogboy’s personal charisma that he’d ever managed to get a woman into this, the ultimate bachelor lair. Not a pillow to be seen. All iron filings and half-full soda bottles. And then there was the thing I could see at the top of the staircase. A freestanding toilet.

“What exactly do you do?” I asked.

“Sculptor.” Relief! Clearly, the toilet was an art piece. Some sort of Duchampian tribute. Still, a toilet at the top of the stairs.
Gaaaaah.

“Wanna see my coal bin?”

Somehow, I didn’t think it was weird to climb down a ladder into a coal bin, forty-five minutes into a first date. I liked him, I guess. I knew that Vic would have been
screaming at me for my stupidity. Pretty much every horror movie we’d ever seen began this way. Brainless Girl says, “Sure, Mr. Creepy, I would
love
to see your coal bin.” Aforementioned Mr. Creepy proceeds to whack her on the head with a shovel, and bury her in coal. Dogboy, however, was just proud of his coal. Real coal. Real bin. Real welded-iron tulip, seven or eight feet tall, balancing against the wall. He told me he was planning to install it secretly at the edge of the East River, so that it was sometimes visible, sometimes not. Obviously, I was into this. A
subversive
sculptor. I ascended the ladder, and the stairs, ignored the toilet and bathtub next to it, and sat down on a couch that was also in the middle of the room. Next to the bed.

“Not even gonna ask about the toilet, huh?” Dogboy gave me his best grin.

“I assume you put it there on purpose.
Fountain Number Two,
right? Ironic commentary on the nature of modern art?”

I was showing off. I happened to be midway through a colossal survey of modern art, taught by a professor improbably named Pepe Carmel. The good thing about the class was that Pepe Carmel loved female nudes, and would happily have devoted the entirety of the semester to various representations of them. The bad thing was that the class was on modern art and, therefore, the female nudes we were looking at, with the exception of Gustave Courbet’s
L’Origine du Monde,
a pre-porno close-up of an amply fleeced female crotch, were abstract. I’d discovered sometime in week two of the class that I found most of modern art to be a pretentious load of bullshit. Signed urinals. In five hundred
years we’d gone from Sistine Chapel to pissoir. If this was cultural evolution, it was depressing.

“It’s a test. I happen to like women with brass balls. Want to play Scrabble?”

I assumed he meant the board game, and not some sort of wall-climbing erotic escapade. I didn’t see a climbing wall. That didn’t mean there wasn’t one. The place was huge, and not exactly well-decorated. He rattled a box. Scrabble. This was just weird. However, it was a better weird than some things. I sat down at the coffee table.

“Bring it on,” I said, falsely confident. I was awful at Scrabble. The moment the little tiles appeared in front of me, I lost language completely. Dogboy was a Scrabble fiend. He had the
Scrabble Dictionary,
and used it. He kept score on little tablets. This was not what I’d expected. At all. After an hour, Dogboy gave up on me. I’d forfeited many turns, and his score was in the stratosphere. I’d also marched to his freestanding toilet and peed, largely a distraction tactic.

“I’m impressed,” he said. “You passed the test.”

“Why?”

“No one ever does that on the first date. They all make me close my eyes.”

“I thought it was part of the deal of dating you?”

“Nah. Girls are all modest.”

“Not when their bladders might explode.” Let it never be said that I was unable to learn from my mistakes. Half of my accidental love for the Actor had probably been caused by the fact that he’d shown me where his bathroom was. I wasn’t going to let a full bladder make me get my heart broken again. Irrational? Maybe. So what?