We used to have gay restaurants in the ’90s. They’re mostly gone now, though. There was one in Chelsea called Food Bar. Everyone went there. The food was terrible but it was a gay restaurant, you didn’t go for the food, you went for the gay. (There were no foodies in the ’90s. We didn’t even know it was supposed to taste good.) Going with friends to Food Bar was as close as you could get to going to Mykonos without leaving the country. It was all gay, all the time. I don’t think I ever saw a woman there except maybe through the window as she went by in a taxi. The owner was an older, attractive man who I knew a bit from the gym. On the occasions he would stop by my table to say “hi” it was as if I was in Elaine’s and Elaine herself had joined me. (Elaine’s was a restaurant on the Upper East Side famous for its famous patrons such as Woody Allen. Today, both Elaine and Woody Allen’s career are long dead.)
A few doors down on the corner, was Eighteenth & Eighth, another gay restaurant. I would come here with my book and sit alone at the counter for lunch. Picking at a burger and fries while I read Middlemarch or Anna Karenina or something else suitably pretentious. Reading in public was my favorite pastime. Doing it at home didn’t have the same thrill. Nobody could see me reading a book in my apartment so what was the point. I preferred a crowd. You wouldn’t sing an aria to the couch, would you? I felt similarly about reading. Why waste it on no one? I was more caught up with how I looked reading the book than I was with the actual book. Always aware as I turned each page to put on a good show. Laugh just enough to indicate that I’m trying not to laugh in public. Look intently at each page, maybe adorably bite my lip in concentration at certain passages. Let a lock of hair occasionally fall into my eyes that I have to distractedly brush away. And make all of it seem completely natural. As if I’m so immersed in my book that I’m not at all aware of my surroundings. Even though I’ve clocked each person in the restaurant. Every gesture, every look, every tilt of the head is carefully considered for utmost effect. Meryl Streep put less thought into her performance as Karen Silkwood than I did as “person at counter with book.”
When the waiter would ask if everything was okay, I would respond startled, as if I had been abruptly woken from a dream, “Where am I?” my eyes said. Then, after I collect myself, “Oh, hi, I’m okay thanks.” Sometimes I’d get from the waiter “pretty good book, huh?” but usually nothing. I don’t know who I thought I was impressing but I took my act with me throughout the city. On the subway, waiting in line, sitting on a bench, lying out in Sheep Meadow in Central Park (the gay beach for those too poor to afford Fire Island). This is a touring production that shows no sign of closing. Alone at home I’d just as soon turn on the TV than pick up a book. But plunk me anywhere with an audience of at least one and I was the most ravenous reader who ever existed. Unable to stand waiting even ten seconds for a deli coffee without at least skimming a paragraph. (There was no Starbucks then. We didn’t have a lot of places to sit free like you do now. The entire city was a constant game of musical chairs. Ten seats for seven million people.)
But there was nowhere I enjoyed reading more than the counter of Eighteenth & Eighth. There was a waiter who worked there who was also a fireman. Italian and beautiful he also modeled part-time and lived in the Bronx I heard him tell someone once. It turns out a gym-built fireman/waiter-model is my ideal type. Hopefully, his ideal type is the kind of lunatic who sits at the counter in an NYU tank top reading Proust as if he were in a university library instead of the gay nexus of the world. The vibe I’m going for apparently both slut and scholar. I’m a good time, but not too much of a good time. The kind of girl you can take home to Mom. (If Mom is, you know, cool with everything.)
But my fireman-waiter is as friendly to me as he is to all the other customers. My minimal charms do not seduce him. Or anyone there. They are all there for fun—to drink, shriek, be silly, kiss their boyfriends. All the things you can do in a gay restaurant and not anywhere else. I’m a buzzkill with my book the size of a microwave. I don’t realize this at the time. Too busy being hopeful that someone will turn to me and say “How’s the book?” or “Oh, I loved that! Would you want to go out sometime?” And that this someone will be a soap star or an Olympian or a fireman-waiter.
Positioning myself around the city with a book becomes an exhausting side job. Playing out in my head interactions that never occur. Endless compliments tossed my way like coins in a fountain. How is one supposed to concentrate on what they’re reading when they also have to imagine a parallel life playing out simultaneously? One where they are approached by a well-read handsome stranger with a house in the Hamptons. Or just someone cute and nice who likes me.
I go to the movies with a book, the theater with a book, even The Roxy with a book. (The Roxy is a club that all gays go to every Saturday night in the ’90s. It is our Studio 54. I somehow manage to get on a list that entitles me to a card to get in on Saturdays without having to wait in line. Each week stepping in front of the hundreds that swarm the street with a delicate “excuse me,” my arm extended holding out a golden ticket, the velvet rope automatically opening for me like supermarket doors. Getting this card is the singular most exciting thing that happens to me in my twenties. Maybe ever. I still have it. I’ll show it to you if we ever meet, it’s in my wallet.)
I carefully position myself with my book wherever I go. Get into my pose. Cross my legs, sip my coffee, look down at the page. Down. Down. Always looking down.
The thing that I thought would help me meet people was, of course, accomplishing the exact opposite. Why I could not see this at the time remains unclear. Too desperate to create a fantasy that no one cared about. Not even me.
I would like to go back to the gay restaurant again. I would like to be twenty-five again. I would sit at the counter with no book. Clear-eyed. Friendly. Unafraid. I would look up. And I would ask the fireman-waiter his name.