IN THE OUTER SUBURBS
I’d spent Christmas Eve with friends. They’d uncorked some champagne in the afternoon, and I’d gone home early because I was drunk and I had a headache. I was living in a small studio apartment in West Queens. In the morning I was awakened by the phone. It was my parents calling from Switzerland, to wish me a merry Christmas. It wasn’t a long conversation, we didn’t know what else to say to each other. It was raining outside. I made myself some coffee, and read.
In the afternoon I went for a walk. For the first time since I’d been there, I headed out of town, toward the outer suburbs. I hit Queens Boulevard, and followed it east. It was a wide straight road, cutting through precincts that didn’t change much or at all. Sometimes it was shops, and I had a sense of being in some sort of conurbation, and then I found myself in residential districts of tenements or small, squalid row houses. I crossed a bridge over an old, overgrown set of rails. Then there was an enclosed patch of waste ground, full of trash and rubble, and an enormous crossroads with no lights and no traffic. After that I came to another bunch of shops and a cross-street that had a subway stop on top of it, like a roof. The Christmas decorations in the storefronts and the tinsel hanging over the streets, disarrayed by rain and wind, looked like ancient remnants.
The rain had let up, and I stopped on the corner to light a cigarette. I wasn’t sure whether to go on or not. Then a young woman came up to me, and asked for a light. She said it was her birthday. If I had twenty dollars on me, we could buy a few things and have ourselves a little party.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I haven’t got it on me.”
She said that didn’t matter, I was to wait here for her anyway. She was going shopping, and would be back.
“Funny, it being your birthday on Christmas Day.”
“Yes,” she said, as though it had never occurred to her, “I suppose you’re right.”
She went off down the street, and I knew she wouldn’t be back. I knew it wasn’t her birthday either, but I would still have gone with her if I’d had the money. I finished my cigarette, and lit another. Then I started back. There was a bar across the street. I went in and asked for a beer.
“Are you French?” asked the man next to me. “I’m Dylan.” As in the great poet Dylan Thomas, he said, light breaks where no sun shines …
“Did you ever, ” Dylan asked me, “read a love poem from a woman to a man?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t read poetry.”
“I tell you, you’re making a mistake there. You’ll find everything in poetry. Everything.”
He got up and went down a short flight of stairs to the restroom. When he came back, he stood next to me, put his arm around me, and said: “There aren’t any! Women don’t love men, believe me.”
The barman gave me a signal I didn’t understand. Dylan pulled a tattered volume from his pocket and held it over our heads.
“Immortal Poems of the English Language,” he said. “It’s my bible.”
There were dirty little scraps of paper stuck in between many of the pages. Dylan opened the book at a certain place.
“Now, listen to the way women love men, ” he said, and he read out: “Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways … Not one word about him. All Mrs. Browning does is say how much she loves him, how magnificent her feelings for him are. Here’s another one …”
An old man next to me whispered: “He’s always doing that.” And he made the same signal as the barman before him. I started to get it, but I was already feeling a bit drunk, and I didn’t want to go just yet. I just smiled, and turned to face Dylan who had turned to another poem.
“Miss Brontë,” he said, “same story! Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee! Far, far removed … That’s how it starts, and then it’s all about her pain. Nothing about the guy. Or this … Mrs. Rossetti: My heart is like a singing bird … My heart is like an apple tree … And so on, till the last line, which goes: Because my love is come to me. Do you call that love? Is that the way a person in love would write? Only someone in love with herself.”
He put the book away, and put his short arm around me again.
“You know, my friend, there’s no such thing as a woman’s love. They love us like children, or the way the creator might love the thing he’s created. But as little as we find peace with God do we find peace with women.”
“Does that make God a woman?” I asked.
“Of course,” said Dylan, “and Jesus is Her daughter.”
“And you’re his sister,” said the barman.
“I don’t like women with beards,” said the old fellow on the other side of me.
We fell silent.
“Homosexuals will all go to Hell,” said the old man.
“I’m not going to get involved on that level,” said Dylan angrily, and moved closer to me, as if seeking protection. “The two of us were talking about poetry. This young man here doesn’t have the prejudices of you two clowns.”
“The next round’s on the house,” said the barman, and he put a cassette of Christmas tunes on the stereo behind him.
“God rest ye, merry gentlemen,” sang Harry Belafonte.
“Yo,” went a young man at one of the tables, “he misadeh misadeeho …”
The barman set our beers down on the bar in front of us. I was pretty drunk by now. I raised my glass, and said: “To poetry!”
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” said the old man.
“Now read the poems that men have written for women,” said Dylan, and he recited from memory: “She is as in a field a silken tent, at midday when a sunny summer breeze has dried the dew …”
Overcome, he stopped, looked down at the dirty floor, and sadly shook his head.
“Women call themselves romantics, as if they would call themselves American, ” he said. “They love it when you say you’re beautiful, your eyes shine like the sun, your lips are red as coral, your breasts are white as snow. They think they’re romantic because they like to be adored by men.”
I wanted to contradict, but he said: “I just want to open your eyes. Don’t let women make a fool of you. They’ll tempt you with their spare flesh. And once you’ve bitten, they’ll break your head open and eat you up.”
I laughed.
“You remind me of someone,” said Dylan.
“Some friend of yours?” I asked.
“A very good friend. He’s dead now.”
I went to the restroom.
“I’ve got no money left for the bus now,” I said.
“I’ll take you home,” said Dylan.
I thought it must be dark by now, but as we stepped out of the bar, it was a fine afternoon. The rain had stopped.
There were still clouds in the sky. But the low sun shone through underneath them. The houses and trees and cars glistened and projected long shadows. Dylan had his car parked on Queens Boulevard. He turned into a side street.
“That’s not my way home,” I said. “You’re going the wrong way.”
Dylan laughed. “Are you scared of me?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m just turning the car around,” he said. “Are you that scared of women too?”
“I don’t know … I guess not.”
We drove back toward Manhattan in silence. I hadn’t walked nearly as far as I thought.
“Here,” I said, “I’d like to walk the last bit.”
I got out, and walked around the car. Dylan had wound down the window and held out his hand.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said, “and thanks for the beer.”
Dylan wouldn’t let go my hand till I looked into his eyes. Then he said: “Thanks for a pleasant afternoon.”
As I crossed the street, he called after me: “And Merry Christmas.”
1999