Boy Talk

I barely recognized Jonathan when he came out in his cream colored crisp linen suit. He had developed a little bit of a gut, his hairline was slightly higher than I remember last seeing it. He was nonetheless, a very attractive man. And all these marks of time passing were the natural aging process. I wondered if I had similarly aged in the last year and a half. My hair hadn’t turned gray, or began to fall out, save for that first winter, in which I remember hair falling down into the book I was reading and I panicked a bit. But that was for just a few days and then I completely forgot about it. I exercised to stay slim. I moisturized. I wore sunblock even in the winter. Finding each other we opened up our arms and embraced. Jonathan ran a prurient hand over my chest and stomach, which I tightened to show off the abdominals that I woke up early every morning to exercise until they were flat and hard.

“You look exactly the same,” he said and stood back eyeing me as though for defects. “I don’t know why, but I honestly thought that living out there would take a toll on you. And here you are.” Jonathan knew exactly what to say to me, appealing to my vain side. We walked over to a deli and ordered sandwiches. I still had no appetite; the availability of foods and tastes that I’d now practically forgotten did not whet it. I was not tempted by the chicken breast in aioli pesto, or the turkey with avocado and jalapeno peppers, all of which I knew would be delicious and which sounded so lovely to say aloud, but which I only thought of at this time as fuel to give me energy to make it through the day. We too our food over to a park bench and I asked him to tell me about his life. Not much had changed since I left. Same job, same boyfriend, same sense of restlessness and dissatisfaction that is so much a part of the New York landscape. Same circle of friends, the city was small in that way “I saw your ex the other day at a party.”

“Which ex?” I asked. New York was full of my exes and I wasn’t sure how I felt about seeing some of them, though it was inevitable running into them or of them finding out about my return to New York, the city was small in that way and the circles we run in were small.

“Adrian,” he said. Adrian was a few relationships back, before I left the United States. We were still on speaking terms, even on friendly terms before I left. Every time I saw him it seemed that he continued to try and work through why things never worked out between us – and when I left he had concluded that it was because I needed to travel and see more of the world and that prevented me from settling down with a nice guy like him. Perhaps that was a part of it, I hated to say it, but I was just bored with him and secretly had fallen in love with someone else. And for this, I always felt uneasy and guilty around him. I decided that I did have to call him while I was back. “How is he doing?” I asked.

“He was seeing someone. In fact, his boyfriend reminded me very much of you, just a much quieter version. Very cute. But I think they’ve split up, already.” There was some consolation< I suppose in the fact that though life went on without me, and that things changed, that I got this sense that my whole world that I left behind in New York had gone through a complete revolution, at at this time was back at the very start where I had left it. “Are you seeing anyone?” Jonathan asked.

I thought for a moment whether to answer, how to answer. In so many ways, my life had really changed. I wondered how to explain all the changes and thought that it would require trying somehow to find the language to explain this place where I was living and my state of mind there and the series of events that brought me to the situation I was in today. There would be so much catching up that would be necessary and the situation was complicated enough as it is, I didn’t even feel myself that I understood it all. And then I wondered how people would respond. Would they understand? Would they be shocked? confused? appalled? I felt speechless.

“Is this a difficult question?” Jonathan asked.

I started, “you know it’s really challenging being gay out there. There are class issues, cultural issues, and the law. They have an old soviet law banning homosexuality. So, it’s pretty underground there.”

“Are the guys hot?” Jonathan had taken me off the logical course that I was building up to, which was about how difficult it was being gay and how it sort of spurred me on a different course. But instead we turned to talk about boys, which I felt so much more comfortable and relaxed doing.

“You know, at the start, I didn’t think so, but I opened my eyes a bit. They’re exotic, a mixture of Asian, European, Persian, but they’re all different. They’re usually dark, but sometimes they have blue eyes. Sometimes they have light hair. Some of them look Latin to me. It’s gotten to the point where I walk around there and I just find the faces so fascinating. And in New York, I’m just looking around at all these white people and even think that people here all kind of look alike. All pale. It’s strange how that can happen.”

“I remember when you first got there, you wrote me how you thought that everyone kind of looked alike.”

“That was so long ago, it seems.”

“Where do you find guys?”

I tried to answer. Well, since it’s so underground, you just sort of find people. In the park, in bathhouses, I even heard that people find each other on the bus or on the subway. Most of the ways I’ve gotten entrée into the underground was through random people I talked to in the park.”

“So, who is your Uzbek boyfriend?” Jonathan asked, and I realized that he is most likely the most tolerant person I knew and I decided I would tell him, after making him promise that he would not repeat it. I really wanted to keep mum about my life in Tashkent -- keep it separate, and not make it into gossip that will spread like wildfire among my friends. This was probably one of the most radical things I could have done with myself -- more radical that dropping out of my New York life for Uzbekistan. This is probably the kind of thing, I thought, the stuff that would make for an urban legend -- the gay guy who leaves New York to a distant country and becomes straight.

Jonathan swore secrecy and before I could have a second thought as to what an honest oath was worth these days -- as we didn't swear on bibles to faiths we had little faith in, on mothers' graves for mothers still very much alive, on our long-lost honour, I blurted it out. “Well, actually, she’s not an Uzbek, she’s a Russian. Her name is Yulia.”  ¶ 1:18 AM 0 Comments

  I peeled of clothing that now stuck to me and showered, feeling as though I had washed off the sweat, dirt, and stench of years of wandering in the desert. I put on clean clothes – a T-shirt and shorts, clothes I couldn’t really walk out of the house in in Tashkent, which seemed so far away, like something that I’d dreamed of and woken up from, as though I’d never really been there at all. I thought about Dorothy returning from Oz, waking up from her dream with the realization that the characters in Oz were like the people she knew in Kansas and that they all had taught her something.

I wondered if there was anyone in New York in my life that was like any of the people I knew in Tashkent. I wondered what the people of Tashkent had taught me on this journey. I couldn’t think of any similarities. I couldn’t think of anything that I had learned, which was to be expected; the part of Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy starts to wax on about what she earned, even the other characters in the film start to look at her as if she’s a bit loopy. Tashkent was so alien, so different. I couldn’t even find the words to describe where I had been, if friends were to ask me, I wouldn’t know what to say. It felt like nothing like here. There was no point of reference. People acted differently, they acted the way they did because there was a different set of rules. I knew that there were these rules, but I couldn’t articulate them, or list them all, or list the few that I could accurately. The only people I felt who could understand it were my friends there, who had seen it, had lived there for a bit. I decided that it would simply be impossible to do the place justice in words, and that I would not even try to describe it. I would stay silent about it in front of friends rather than have my friends and family look at me the way they looked at Dorothy.

The streets here felt different. The heat was different from Tashkent’s dry heat; it was heavy and humid and inescapable. In my shorts, I walked around without fear of untoward behavior. People here didn’t look at me and if they did, our glances would meet in a smile. I was not anything exotic or arousing suspicion or curiosity, just another person sharing the sidewalk with the other pedestrians. I waited in front of Jonathan’s building; I was not alone there -- there were people standing there, waiting, and smoking. You didn’t loiter in Tashkent, the streets were too deserted for that and it might be an invitation for a document check by the police, and passers by would constantly ask you for the time of day, most likely to figure out if you were a foreigner (by your accent) and also to see what kind of watch you wore. I unfortunately, never wore a watch.  ¶ 12:24 AM 0 Comments

  Good Morning America!

I was still in my clothes when I woke up in the middle of the night, a blanket wrapped around me, a pillow under my head. Out the large window above me, I saw the pale, starless New York sky and realized how in my parents’ divorce settlement, my father kept the telescope I remember he had ordered from a mail-order catalogue when I was just a child. And I wondered, what could you really see from it in the New York sky?

I fell back asleep and woke up again to find the room bathed in light, the sound of a chopper outside and in full view from the window, the sound of Bob Marley played loudly in my father’s bedroom. From the 42nd floor, the city below looked like an architectural model of a city, the buildings clean with straight edges, with uniformly shaped windows, almost impersonal, without the very shabby and individual windows and buildings like those from the view of my Tashkent kitchen window. Below, the streets weren’t cracked and crooked with haphazardly planted trees, with the bases painted white, for a reason I could never find out. In New York, they looked new and clean.

My father emerged into the living room, freshly showered and tying his tie onto his crisp, starched white shirt. I walked to his refrigerator and only saw a few beers, some cranberry juice, some condiments. A typical bachelor’s refrigerator. I thought to ask him about coffee, but knew that there was no way he would keep any in his house. Just as there wouldn’t be cigarettes. I wasn’t sure if my father knew or suspected that I smoked. I was sure that he would hate it if he did know, or if he ever caught me doing it. But I’d been forewarned upon my return to New York that cigarettes had become extremely expensive because of a new tax on them. And that it was illegal to smoke practically anywhere in the city – in bars, restaurants, clubs, parks, hotel lobbies. If you wanted to smoke, there was nearly nowhere to go. So, you just didn’t smoke. I wondered if that would be a problem for me.

My father asked me if I slept well. I told him that I did. I felt rested now. “So what are you going to do while you are here, do you have any plans?” he asked. “Do you want to stay here the whole time?”

“No plans…Just see people.” I said. “I’ll probably stay here another night, then probably stay with friends.”

He gave me a copy of the key. “Let me know if you want to come back.” He adjusted his tie in front of the mirror, opened his briefcase, methodically flipped through some papers, closed the briefcase and left.

When he left, I sat down on the sofa and opened up my address book and flipped through the pages. I couldn’t decide whom to call first. Not that it mattered much. Everyone would be at work at this time. I’d probably have the day to just wander the streets. It was a lovely day outside, blue skies, bright sunshine. Funny how in this huge city, the place which I was supposed to consider home, I anticipated feeling as alienated and alone as I did in Tashkent, looking down in the tiny orderly city so far below. I know I had just arrived, but I suddenly imagined a whole life of looking out at windows and feeling very alone.

The first entry in the address book was Jonathan’s; and coincidentally, he worked right down the street from my father’s building. Would he be able to have lunch with me? Would he care to hear from me, or had I strayed so far from his orbit, or from the orbit of all the people I knew at home that I had become something alien or at the very least, something forgotten. It was early still and I dialed his number expecting to leave a message on his office voicemail, but he picked up. “Jonathan, it’s me,” I called into the phone and his warm voice boomed through the receiver in his typically genial and excited manner.

“Get out! You sound so close. Where are you calling me from, Uzekistan?” he said, as he and others always would mistake the pronunciation of the name of the country where I lived. It came out as East Pakistan, Ubekistan, Ureckistan, Ulekistan, even Azerbaijan…

I told him that I was down the street and asked if he could see me for lunch. “Of course,” he said, and immediately, I felt cheerful, that New York wouldn’t be so bad, that coming back to the US wouldn’t be such a culture shock. To call someone in the morning and see if they would have lunch for you – that was really something that I could only do in Uzbekistan, that spontaneity that one had, especially given the feeling that you always had so much time on your hands, that so much time was spent in a somewhat benign boredom. Here in New York, I remember that everyone was always so busy, that plans had to be scheduled far in advance, that many of my friendships over time as people settled into careers and domestic situations, mutated into phone relationships. And here, someone was going to have lunch with me in just a few hours!  ¶ 5:12 AM 0 Comments