Sunday, August 30, 2009

 

ENTRY 250: THE LONG GOODBYE
Part Three: The Final Accident Report


It's little I care what path I take,

And where it leads it's little I care;

But out of this house, lest my heart break,

I must go, and off somewhere.


--Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Departure"




Why don't you exercise your right to shut the fuck up?

--Will Smith, Bad Boys II


This final post is dedicated to all who are patient and understanding.

###


"We still have a little time. What would you like to talk about?"


For a minute I stared into the near distance, over his shoulder, before answering.


"I feel like I'm in a holding pattern," I said, and then the words started pouring forth. "I--my identity has been so intertwined with being a writer for so long, and now I'm working full-time as a writer and getting paid decently for it, which is pretty rare, and it's good, it's an accomplishment, even though my boss makes things difficult. But then for the second year in a row I've been denied the chance to get an MFA, to grow in that sort of mutually supportive, serious creative environment in terms of my own writing, and I can't keep holding out for that. I'm almost 31 now, and you can only apply three times anyway. And then there's the other part of it, the way I feel like I can never get my personal life on the right track, that I keep butting my head against the same walls, dealing with the same problems that I can never seem to fix adequately, wondering if I should still be in New York. The other day at the laundromat, I found a shit-clod in my washer. A shit-clod, man! What the fuck? Sometimes I look at myself and say, 'I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing.'"


"Yes, I've seen some of that frustration," said my therapist.


I found myself in a moment when I felt a particularly stubborn resolve, and at the same time my mind seemed as clear and pointed as a diamond.


"Am I really making any progress?" I said. "Am I getting anywhere at all?"


"I think you're getting better at figuring out patterns," he said, "and navigating life more consciously is good. There are ways in which you keep bumping up against certain things, like issues with relationships. That could be worth exploring in more depth."


"Okay," I said. "Let's do that. But in a more general sense, I need to establish some more coherent direction. The MFA thing is gone. It's dead. I have to let go of it and move on. But I need to figure out what comes next in order to do that."


"That sounds like a good plan," he said.


"I'm serious about this," I said. "I'm going to make something happen."


###


"So have you been seeing anyone?" asked Abra as I shoved the lime slice down the neck of my Corona, shielding myself from the spray with one hand. We were sitting at the nearly deserted bar of our favorite watering hole on a drizzly weeknight, catching up. It had been a while. She'd been busy with her new job, and I'd had all I could handle with mine.


"Mmm, sort of," I said, hooking my toes on the lower rung of my bar stool. "I went out with this designer a few times, and a lawyer who works for the U.N., but it was just kind of the same old same old. Nobody's all that compelling, you know? It's the same old shit over and over--'I like to go out to eat and to the movies and to the gym.'"


"Yeah, there are a lot of boring people out there," she said. "I went through a lot of that before I met John."


"They aren't passionate about anything," I said. "And then they think I'm bizarre for having hobbies. As though I were in a cult or something because there's a subject about which I have deep knowledge, something I actually give a shit about. There's something wrong with me because I care about something." I paused to take a drink. "So you pretty much knew with John at the beginning?"


"Yeah," said Abra. "We were both into theater, and we had similar senses of humor. I mean, he was living with someone else at the time, so, you know, oops."


"But you knew," I said. "And it worked out eventually."


"Right. It was just really natural."


"I honestly don't dwell on the relationship thing that much these days," I said. "I guess I'd like to see how I would do in a reasonably functional one. I think I could do it pretty well."


"I'm sure you could," said Abra. "With the right guy."


"Maybe it's just not going to happen in New York," I said. "It might just be the nature of the city. People come here to focus on themselves and their careers, and that doesn't necessarily translate into particularly generous souls who take the time to look beneath the surface. I know I haven't always been the most enlightened person myself, but I really feel I try to see people for who they are and connect with them on that level, and to accept their little quirks. People can be so unforgiving, so all or nothing, and I do try to remember that in my own interactions. To accept the differences of others."


"The right person will appreciate that," she said.


"Blah blah blah." I waved my hand. "So how's John?"


"He's fine," said Abra. "We're going up to Massachusetts this weekend."


"Nice," I said. "You seem about due to get out of the city for a few days."


"Definitely," she said. "I don't know, I think he might propose."


"Wow," I said. "Really? What makes you suspect that?"


"Just a sense I have," she said. "He was talking about wanting to stop off and see his parents at some point. It was kind of weird the way he said it."


"Well, that's great!" I said. "As a confirmed bachelor, I totally approve."


"Thanks," said Abra. "I thought you would. So what else is going on?"


"Other than work? Still plugging away at the research for my historical article, and doing a lot of reading, and working on my last blog entry whenever I have the time, which is not too often. It keeps dragging out, and I really need to end it, not that there are any readers left to end it for."


"I'm sure there are still people reading it."


"Yeah, a few, but it isn't about that, and really, it never was. I know I talked for a brief period about trying to make some kind of book project out of it, but that ultimately seemed conceited to me. It was something I started as a kind of therapy. I've always used writing as a way to kind of process things, and I wanted to be better at writing about my own life, and it's been good for that. But life is so messy, you know, and I'm such a perfectionist in certain ways, so that doesn't make it easy to try to create an 'ending' for a story about my world." I paused. "You know what's kind of fucked-up about it? I feel like maybe I've been dragging my feet a little because I keep wanting to give people this total happy ending, you know, where I've figured everything out and I've met the right guy and I'm utterly fulfilled or whatever. But I know that's never going to happen."


"Happy endings are overrated," she said. "I always preferred honest ones."


"Yeah," I said. "Me, too." I took another swig, then a new thought made my lips twist around the neck of the bottle in a smile. "Unless, of course, I'm living it myself." I snickered, then shook my head. "No, I'm kidding. What would I do if there were nothing left to strive for? It's being uncomfortable that always prompted me to rise to the occasion. I may not be the happiest guy around, but at least I'm not complacent."


###


"So what's been going on?" asked my therapist, settling easily into his chair.


"I'm applying to grad school, and I'm looking for a new place to live," I said. "I told you last week that I was serious."


"Great," he said. "Tell me more."


"It looks like my company will pretty much cover grad school for me," I said. "So I'm applying for my master's in business communications. It's something I've been thinking about, something that I think would be an interesting challenge and that I'd be good at. And it's a versatile skill, something I could use in the nonprofit sector as easily as at a corporation. The deadline already passed, but I called the admissions office and they told me that I could still try to apply for the fall. I already have one recommendation letter, and my boss will have one for me this week. I'm writing my application essay, and I've ordered my transcripts. And I already took the GRE for my MFA applications."


"That's fantastic," he said. "And what about moving?"


"I sent out word that I'm looking for a new place," I said, "and I've gotten some leads already. As much as I don't love living with Bertha, I don't need to just rush into something, and the good thing is I have the luxury of looking at my leisure. My rent is cheap and I can leave with a month's notice, since I'm not on the lease. It won't happen immediately, but I've put it out there, and we'll see how the universe responds."


My therapist nodded, smiling.


"It's weird," I said. "I have a senior position now, and I'm putting money into my 401K every month, and I might be going to grad school in three months. It's almost like I'm growing up. I might almost miss the roaches and Bertha and Humbert's drunken fights and getting woken up by roosters. What will I write about when all of that is gone?"


"I think you'll figure something out," he said.


###


Another recent topic of discussion between my therapist and me had been my friendship with Peter, which had not been the same since my ill-fated trip to Los Angeles several years ago. Sadly enough, I had come to basically accept that Lawrence had succeeded in what I perceived to have been his aim: to drive a wedge between Peter and me.


I was vividly aware that it had been over a year since Peter and I had even had a phone conversation. Several times over the holidays I'd attempted to call him, but he never answered his cell or returned my voicemails. In a broader sense I'd long ago given up any expectation that we would be in regular communication. The barely-there silver lining of my horrific L.A. visit had been that the nasty shock of it had prepared me somewhat for the further deterioration of our friendship. And yes, that does sound even worse when I read back over it.


There had been an awkward Facebook exchange a few days before I went to Reykjavík; Peter had brought up the fact that I never really asked about Lawrence. I cannot tell you how sorely tempted I was to respond, "And just how often does Lawrence inquire about my health and well-being?" But that would have been grotesquely catty. In fact, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, the deeper issue was that Peter was basically asking me to relive a trauma.


I'd been afraid that the issue would come to a head, but it seemed to vanish.


And then, in July, Peter texted me that he really needed to talk to me.


I said that I'd be happy to, and gave him a very specific idea of my schedule, but still didn't hear from him, until finally we were able to connect. It happened to be the same day as Abra's impromptu engagement party (yes, John made good), but as soon as I felt the telltale buzzing in my hip pocket I stepped out into the sultry hallway and crouched there, sweat beading my body, listening to everything.


It had been incredibly difficult lately for Peter, who had lost his job earlier in the year. To make a long story short, Lawrence apparently had trouble dealing with the fact that Peter was having life challenges, and had ended the relationship after three and a half years.


Peter was hurt and angry, he said. He had found it hard not to wonder whether he could have done anything differently.


"That's not something you need to put yourself through," I said. "The fact that you have challenges stemming from circumstances beyond your control is totally understandable. You've been patient with him while he was going through things. You have nothing to feel guilty about. You did nothing wrong."


He expressed a certain wistfulness, wondering whether things might have worked out had Lawrence not been as young as he was, in a different stage of his life. And he talked about Lawrence's good qualities. This was hard to listen to, of course, but I wanted to respect what he was saying even if I couldn't relate to it based on my own particular experience of the situation.


"Lawrence and I weren't exactly best friends," I said, "but I'm very sorry that this happened and that you're going through this. I'm sorry it didn't work out. But--and I hope this doesn't make you feel worse--I'm still here. Always."


"I know," he said. "Thank you." And he apologized for the absence, and I did not say anything remotely resembling "I told you so," because I've never derived any enjoyment from such things. We talked for more than an hour, and as I pressed "END" and stood up, the backs of my aching knees sweaty, it felt good to be leaned on, to sense a new possibility of moving forward after all the strained and uncertain days.


###


Despite my grueling work schedule, I managed to escape to San Francisco later that month to visit Hamilton. He was still working as a hospital clerk, still plugging away at his novel in his spare time, still living with his boyfriend on a steep quiet street in Bernal Heights.


We were sitting on the couch, watching Rachel Maddow and sipping wine with some double-entendre name. Earlier in the day I'd sprawled on my stomach on the guest-room bed upstairs, watching the sun set near the Twin Peaks as it scorched away some feeble wisps of fog.


"So you're happy?" I said, thinking of his depression, of my mother's.


"I am," he said. "I'm happy that I'm writing, and my relationship is easy and comfortable, and I have Henry"--with his foot he nudged the quiet dog curled up next to the sofa--"and I feel good."


"Do you miss New York?" I said.


"A little bit," he said.


"Really? You couldn't wait to leave."


"Well, that's because it's changed so much," he replied.


"As it is wont to do," I said, drumming my fingers lightly on my glass.


"We're going to be in Connecticut next month," he said. "I'll come to the city for a few days and we can visit. You won't have started grad school yet, will you?"


"No, not until September," I said. "Hey! You should get married while you're in Connecticut."


"We were talking about it."


"Really?" I said. "Wow, everybody's getting married now."


"It would just be a little thing with a justice of the peace," he said. "If we have time."


"Am I invited?"


"Sure," he said, "if you want to come."


"Of course I do," I said. "I'll throw rice and cry because I'm still secretly in love with you."


###


It was the last day of July and I was staring uncomprehendingly at the little message attached to a new Facebook friend request.


"Frank! Been ages. Admired you from afar when we both worked at Big Publisher. Hope life is treating you well and your summer, especially, is going gangbusters."


I remembered Thomas well--surprisingly so, considering that we had rarely spoken in the tumultuous year and a half I'd worked for Hamlet. Thomas had been quite chummy with Hamlet, who had occasionally dispatched me to Thomas's office on another floor in order to pass manuscripts and books back and forth between them. While Thomas had always been friendly with me, usually chatting me up in his office when I dropped by, I'd never had a particular suspicion that he was treating me differently than anyone else, or even that he was necessarily gay. I couldn't so much as recall whether I'd made a point of telling him goodbye. When I left the company I had done so quietly, with minimal fuss.


Yet five years later here he was, somehow remembering me.


Over the next couple of weeks Thomas and I indulged in a charming epistolary conversation that proceeded in fits and starts, our missives separated sometimes by a few hours and sometimes by a few days. We discussed his dog, the fact that we had the same favorite Looney Tunes character, Hitchcock, and foot fungus. We kept each other busy inventing nicknames. I was utterly swamped at work, but I still found myself anticipating each new response, the bold "1" next to "Inbox," whenever I paused a moment to take a breather.


"When is our inevitable meeting of the minds?" I asked one day, and it turned out that it was, indeed, inevitable.


It was 12 minutes past the hour, and I was beginning to fear the possibility of a no-show, which is not an atypical anxiety for a mind like mine. I was just glancing at my phone when I saw Thomas dashing across the street and into the bar. He made a beeline for me and enveloped me in a generous hug.


"I'm so sorry," he said, and continued with something about a conference call and having to walk his dog. His smooth forehead was beaded with perspiration, which I had an intense urge to wipe off his adorable earnest face. Perhaps wisely, I suppressed the impulse.


We settled down at a small table, and he said, "So remind me, when did you leave Big Publisher?"


"In 2004," I said.


"Wow," he said. "You have been gone a while. And what have you been doing since then?"


The first thing that popped into my head was, "Well, if you can spare a few weeks, there's this blog I've been writing...." Perhaps wisely, I suppressed the impulse.


His clear dark eyes stayed with me as I began to sketch out the general trajectory of the past half-decade. Occasionally I stopped to cool my tongue with the dry white he'd ordered.


"Is this boring you?" I asked after a momentary pause.


"No, no, go on," he said, with perfect authenticity.


I already wanted to hold his hand. Perhaps wisely, I suppressed the impulse.


"So then I was promoted last year," I said, as the waiter passed by again and drained the last of the bottle into both our glasses. "That was really when I felt I'd finally come into my own career-wise. It's been good for me. My parents are visiting in September. The last time they were here, I was down to my last thousand bucks, on the verge of leaving New York, and my mom slipped me a check to buy me the time I needed. I want to take them out to dinner. I want them to know I'll be okay now."


As we started a second bottle and dusk faded into night, Thomas told me his own story, although I still was a bit fuzzy as to how he'd managed to become the head of his own publishing imprint at the age of--well, I wasn't quite sure, but it was well before he'd turned 30. In fact, after all the wine I was fuzzy in general, but I knew that he was hard-working and smart and talented and nice and fucking adorable. I wanted to lean across the table and kiss him. Perhaps unwisely, I suppressed the impulse.


"It sounds like you've done well since striking out on your own," I said.


"I've enjoyed it," said Thomas, "and it's so much better than working in that office."


"Yeah, the esprit de corps at Big Publisher was pretty much in the shitter, wasn't it?" I said, tilting my head back to drain another glass.


We both turned as, just outside the windows, the heavens opened and a deluge washed the streets clean.


"I love rainstorms," he said. "So much."


"Me, too," I said.


"So tell me the name of your first boyfriend," he said. My buzz, just a second ago so alive, prepared to flatline.


"Dale," I said.


"First and last," he said.


"Dale Anderson." I poured myself another glass.


"And what happened?" prompted Thomas after a beat.


I hesitated a second. "It didn't turn out very well."


"Where is he now?"


"I don't know." I tossed another sip into my mouth. "He might be dead."


Thomas laughed for a second and I didn't.


"So is this a date?" he asked.


"I don't know," I said. "Is it?" I cocked my head playfully at him for a second. "I need to use the restroom. Be right back."


I shook my head in an attempt to clear it as I stood pissing into the toilet.


"Do not fuck this up do not fuck this up do not fuck this up," I said into the mirror, washing the lather from my unsteady hands.


I strode back to the table with an outward demonstration of confidence I did not exactly feel.


"You have some walls around you, don't you?" Thomas said, without an accusatory tone, but the very words made tears collect behind my eyes, where they were not quite detectable to anyone else.


"It's nothing personal," I said. "It's just that some things aren't entirely easy for me to discuss." We looked at each other for a long moment.


"I..." There was something I started to say. Perhaps unwisely, I suppressed the impulse.


"What is it?" he asked gently.


"I..." Christ, fuck it. I was already half-drunk. "I was a little bit afraid to meet you tonight."


"Why?"


I sighed, looking sideways for a moment before meeting his steady gaze again. "I was afraid that I'd disappoint you."


"That's the first really genuine thing you've said tonight."


I snorted. "Thanks?"


"No," Thomas said. "No, it's a good thing."


He reached across the table for my hand, and I wanted to give it to him. Wisely, I did not suppress the impulse.


"By the way," I said, "yes. This is a date. Or at least I really hope so."


We'd finished the second bottle. I glanced at my watch.


"Damn!" I said. "It's almost midnight."


"What now?" he asked.


"I don't know," I said. "Did you have something in mind?"


"Will you have another drink with me?"


"Ay," I said. "I don't know if I can handle another one." I looked at him again. "Okay, but just one."


By employing a moderate level of concentration I managed to exit the bar without quite stumbling, but Thomas did not follow for a minute or two; he'd stopped to ask a question about one of the cheeses on the plate we'd ordered. The rain had stopped and the air outside was not clean, but sharp. I leaned against a lamppost, half-convinced I'd dreamed it all until he emerged from the bar and looked for me in the opposite direction. I looked at him looking for me for a few seconds, then, as I was about to say something, he turned and saw me and walked toward me. We stood inches apart.


"Hi, there," I said, jerking my head eastward to indicate where we should go. He started to cross, but then he paused because I was waiting until a bicyclist passed through the intersection.


"There's no rush," I said. "We have time." I glanced at my watch and saw it was past twelve. "Welcome to tomorrow."


As we crossed the wet street glowing green under the traffic light I put my arm around his shoulders, and he leaned into me just slightly.


###


This has been the story of the past six and a half years in my life, the story of how I have resisted growth and pursued it and found it in accidental and surprising ways. I am not the same person I was when I was 24, yet I am more myself than I’ve ever been. I created this blog, with my accompanying Frank Beekman alter ego, as a kind of self-therapy, but I don't need him anymore. And there is and will be a bittersweet comfort in the knowledge that, wherever I find myself and despite self-doubt and floundering, I have always had a vivid sense of who I am.


It’s been rocky. God, yes. I’ve raged, I’ve cried, I’ve doubted myself through and through. But then there were also the connections, the shocks of sudden joy, the serendipitous jounces, the hard-won victories.


I’ll miss my Greek chorus of commenters, who, more often than I’d ever have expected, held up a helpful kind of mirror and forced me to take an honest look, or laid a hand lightly on my shoulder in bleak moments. I’ll miss far less the sometimes exasperating judgments of total strangers, or the strange and arbitrary emotional demands of people who thought setting up a blog somehow meant I should be infallible and something to be owned and anything more--or less--than human. With all that on me, was being the Accidental New Yorker even worth it?


What the fuck kind of question is that? Of course it was.


I’ve never ceased to be astounded by the emails from numerous people who tell me of the intensity with which they relate to my experiences and worldview. It’s hard to say how many times I’ve choked up at these messages from people. But perhaps the one that resonated the most came from a straight Muslim woman in her 30s who lives in Saudi Arabia. From 6,000 miles away she wrote to tell me that she printed out my entire blog, hundreds of pages, and read it from the beginning. She was not, astonishingly, the first person to tell me that she’d done that--I had, after all, thought of the blog as an ongoing autobiographical “novel” of sorts, though I hardly expected anyone to be interested in the task of reading it in its entirety--but hers was the most poignant and surprising voice I’d heard. She wanted, she said, “to show that we are the same, and most important to show you how you helped a complete stranger to seek her life and that it’s not and will never be over.... It’s amazing how we all are looking for the same thing, ourselves, love, success, and the rest is similar sometimes and other times it’s different.” What more could I add to that?


Endings are always losses, but they are necessary ones. They are also opportunities for processing, catharsis, something new. In the past half-a-dozen years I have created hundreds of thousands of words here, rendering superfluous any pat summation I might attempt, so I won't gild the lily now. You have accompanied me on as much of my personal journey as you cared to, and for that I am honored and grateful. And you have been a part of this whole experience, along with Peter and Jane and Hamilton and everyone else who has appeared in the blog.


I don't know where I'll be when you read these words, or whether it will be minutes or years from now. But wherever and whoever you are, and wherever and whoever I am, know that, through words alone, via black abstractions transmitted in a series of zeros and ones and glowing ephemerally on a screen, we have connected as human beings. I may not ever know your face or your name, any more than you may ever know mine, but in my joyous moments and on lonely nights and when I'm idling at the kitchen table on Sunday mornings, sometimes I will think of you, and I will always wish you well. How could I not?


THE END


###


While the window into my personal life has now closed, I am glad to say that I have started a very different kind of blog. It can be found here.

7:15 PM

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Monday, August 24, 2009

 

ENTRY 250: THE LONG GOODBYE
Part Two: The Accidental Reykjavíkur


It was on the early-morning bus from Keflavik to Reykjavík that I saw my first Icelandic sunrise--the sky an almost unearthly mass of indigo cloud striated with mother-of-pearl at the horizon.


I was grateful for the weary silence of the other passengers; on the five-hour flight, a group of rowdy fratboys and two screaming babies had made sleep impossible, even with earplugs. On top of that, I'd crossed four time zones. My body might as well have been back in New York.


The main bus terminal was smaller than the average VFW hall. I crossed the frigid parking lot in the gray half-light to board a minibus. As it navigated the narrow streets of Reykjavík, a few early risers bustled through the chill, but it seemed most of the city was still huddled indoors. Looking down the street toward the North Atlantic, I saw the snowy peaks of Esja looming cold and clear across the harbor. I squinted at unintelligible words everywhere.


The driver dropped me off at the door of my hotel (blue building in photo below) on Laugavegur, the main street for shopping and nightlife in Reykjavík. Somebody was already checking in with the extremely slow front-desk clerk. I stood there, heavy-lidded, hoping against hope that they would let me check in four hours early.


"Hello," I said, handing over my reservation confirmation. "My room's probably not ready yet, but just in case...."


He typed into his computer while I glanced listlessly at brochures.


"Yes," he said. "It is ready."


The room had been so cheap--less than $300 for six nights, breakfast included--that I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I was relieved to find a decently sized single with hardwood floors; a generous kitchenette with a table, sink, stovetop, microwave, and refrigerator; and a sleekly attractive bathroom with nice tiling and a good adjustable showerhead.







































Dumping my luggage, I went straight back downstairs to get some breakfast--banana, cereal, bread with meats and cheese, and a tasty something resembling creamy yogurt. Then I returned to my room, closed my blinds to the faint Reykjavík sun, put on the sleeping mask I'd stashed away from my British Airways flight five years ago, tumbled into bed, and, at last, slept.


The alarm clock radio crackled on at 12:30, emitting faint, unintelligible Icelandic murmurs. I switched it off and padded into the bathroom, leaving a trail of clothing in my wake. As I shook my underwear off one foot and turned the shower on, I smelled rotten eggs. It was unpleasant, but, fortunately, I had done enough research to know that the hot water taps in Iceland naturally produce a sulfurous smell because it is sourced from hot geothermal springs, which satisfy the vast majority--eightysomething percent--of Iceland's energy needs. (The extensive geothermal activity stems from the fact that Iceland sits on a highly active fault line and is itself a volcanic formation.)


The sky was slate and the wind gusty when I emerged from the hotel. Laugavegur was a narrow street and, in Reykjavík terms, well trafficked. It took me 10 minutes to walk down to the harbor for a better look at Esja across the choppy waters.


Now I was hungry, so I set out in search of the most famous hot dog stand in a country known for its hot dogs, or what they call pylsur.


The stand, Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur (which translates as "the best hot dog in town"), was so unassuming and small (roughly equal in size to the Dumpster standing behind it) that I literally stumbled onto it as I rounded a sharp corner. I joined the line (apparently there's always one), folding my arms against the cold. When Bill Clinton paid a visit in 2004, he'd asked only for mustard (which is what you get, I heard, if you order a "Clinton"), but I requested "eina með öllu," or "one with everything"--everything being mustard, ketchup, rémoulade, and raw and fried onions.















I retreated behind the nearest building to escape the wind coming off the water, and to snap a photo of my pylsa without being gawked at by the locals.


Then I bit into the pylsa, and it was tasty. The rémoulade gave it some richness, cut by the mustard, and the crunch of the fried onions, combined with the firm snap of hot dog skin, created an intriguing texture.


As I stood on the street eating, a man who seemed to be a vagrant staggered up to within a few feet of me, sat down, rolled onto his back and gently flailed his legs, as though he were an upside-down turtle. He did this so exaggeratedly and for such a long time that, as I chewed, I wondered whether this might be some sort of street theater or candid-camera stunt. Eventually he regained his footing and shuffled on.


I wandered a bit longer, stopping to examine an imposing statue of Ingólfur Arnarson, the Norwegian Viking who founded Reykjavík (translation: Smoky Bay, thus named because of the steam from the hot springs) in the ninth century. Then the windchill got to me, and I decided to return to my room.


































There are three television stations in Iceland, one of which seems to be a PBS equivalent; earlier that day I'd spent a few minutes watching the live proceedings of Alþingi (þ is pronounced "th"), the national parliament. But the channel I ended up watching the most was one that played music videos, many of them American (Britney, the Killers, Beyoncé), and that showed tons of American programs subtitled in Icelandic. Even in Reykjavík, you cannot escape Rachael Ray or Martha Stewart or The Biggest Loser, a fact more chilling than the wind. In between commercials for Law & Order, Heroes, Californication, and (to my delight) Veronica Mars, I saw a spot for a local current-affairs program, and wished I knew what they were saying.


In the weeks before my trip I had struck up an online acquaintance in a gay chat room with a local guy about my age. It was time to meet Stefan in the lobby, but I was a couple of minutes late; on the way out, my attention was arrested by a local gay-themed program showing an odd segment in which a bunch of guys in leather were dancing and singing together, complete with loving closeups of a chubby fellow in a leather thong.




Stefan was waiting on one of the black leather couches in the lobby.


"Halló!" I said, and then, carefully, "Gaman aþ hitta þig."


"Gaman aþ hitta þig," he said brightly, and much more correctly.


It so happened that Boston, one of the smartest bars in Reykjavík, was a few doors down. When we walked in, several of the patrons hailed Stefan, which, in a country where everyone kind of knows everyone else (total population: 300,000), should not have surprised me.


Looking over the small but interesting dinner menu, I settled on plokkfiskur, a traditional Icelandic mashed fish stew served with black rye bread.


"My friend Daði loves the plokkfiskur here," said Stefan. "He doesn't even want to try anything else. It's what he orders every time."


This statement, coupled with my knowledge that Björk's tour cook was the chef, rendered me optimistic. When the dish came, looking like a bowl of chartreuse mashed potatoes, I lost no time taking a bite. It was hearty and tasty, not at all fishy--the kind of thing I might make at home for dinner some night. (Later, when I asked the sous-chef--who also happened to be múm's tour manager--about the recipe, he said it was made with cod, potatoes, milk, butter, and spices, all beaten with a whisk.) The bread, called rúgbrauð, merits its own mention. I hadn't been so excited about it, not being a fan of rye, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Icelandic version was sweet and almost cakelike, something like corn bread. (I later learned that rúgbrauð is sometimes baked underground using geothermal heat.) Spreading thick Icelandic butter on it, I gorged.


"How is it?" asked Stefan, who had ordered chicken tikka masala (not the sort of thing I'd order in Reykjavík, but when I tried a bite it was actually not bad.)


"Excellent," I said. "Have you had it?"


"No," he said. "I don't really eat seafood."


"Seriously?" I said. "In Iceland? Wow."


He shrugged. "I eat lamb and chicken and pork, all those other things."


"Well, I think you're missing out," I said, dipping my spoon back in the plokkfiskur.


"Probably," he said, and smiled. "Especially since my dad is a fisherman."


I laughed. "Which is why you're studying international relations."


"Exactly," he said, drawing out the word for emphasis. Stefan had a certain dramatic flair, but was extremely affable. I liked him.


"Do you have some kind of part-time job while you're in school?" I asked.


"Sure, I've had lots of jobs," he said. "I was a lifeguard during two summers. Right now I work in a porn shop."


"Oh, really?" I said. "That must be interesting."


"Yeah," he said. "I used to do these parties, like, you know, where the women get together and buy...." He was searching for the right word.


"Tupperware?" I suggested.


"Yes, that's it," he said. "I would go to people's houses and sell sex toys to people and their friends. I made a dramatic entrance. I would walk in carrying a big black dildo with a suction cup on the end, attach the dildo to the wall, and hang my coat on it."


"Very practical," I said, smiling.


"Right," he said. "It was fun."


"So they only play American music here, I've noticed," I said, as Doris Day segued into the Davy Crockett theme song.


"Oh, really?" he said. "I never noticed that."


"Are you in a band or anything?" I asked.


"No, but a lot of my friends are."


"I read that a lot of Icelanders are musically inclined."


He nodded. "That's true."


A girl came over and sat in Stefan's lap. "Hello," she said, reaching out a hand to me. I didn't understand her name, but tried to repeat it, so we did a couple of back-and-forths in that regard; this would become common in my loud-bar encounters throughout the trip.


Eventually we were joined by Daði, the aforementioned plokkfiskur fan. He had recently returned from a year in Paris with his boyfriend, he was telling me when a group of women from Copenhagen asked if they could join us at our large table. I would learn that there is a lot of travel between Iceland and Denmark, and that, apart from English, Danish is also compulsory in Icelandic schools. Two of the women were teachers and the third was a photographer. I was asking the latter one what kind of photographs she took when Stefan asked me if I wanted to join him for a smoke. Though not a smoker, I shrugged and said why not.


We trekked upstairs to an odd little balcony, and shivering, my coat still on the back of my chair downstairs, I smoked with my arms crossed.


By now I had a couple of pints of Víking, a local beer, in me, and I launched into a conversation with Stefan about the recent Icelandic economic collapse (which, incidentally, devalued the currency by nearly half, making my trip much less expensive than it would have been only a year before).


"Everybody hates that Vanity Fair article," he said. "It's a very distorted picture."


"I could see signs that the writer had some kind of ax to grind," I said, "but I still don't understand how the krona could have been so high in comparison to other currencies before the bust. I mean, until recently it was hugely expensive to visit, and I can understand that the need to import so much of what you sell makes things cost more. But did Icelanders themselves find it expensive to live in Iceland?"


"No," said Stefan, "because everybody was paid well."


"Yes," I said, "but where did the money for the high salaries come from?"


"I don't really know how to answer that," he said.


"You had the fishing industries and all the geothermal energy," I said, "but really, how does that generate vast amounts of wealth?"


Probably fortunately, we were interrupted by Daði, who said it was time to move on to the opening night of a bar called Karamba, just a few doors down from my hotel in the opposite direction.


A "nightlife guide" for tourists that I'd idly examined in the hotel lobby had said, in a section titled DO'S, DONT'S [sic] AND DID YOU KNOW, "We Icelanders push and shove. Don't be offended but the places are usually so crowded that to get where we want to go we have to use initiative." This factoid was borne out within 30 seconds of my entering Karamba. A short, forceful young woman used my lower leg as a kind of makeshift stile as I stood, pinioned.


The bar was loud and raucous, with most of the attention focused on a stage in one corner where perhaps half a dozen people were singing and executing some endearingly junior-high-musical choreography.


"Who is this?" I bellowed in Stefan's ear. He finally managed to convey that it was an up-and-coming local band called FM Belfast. I had no idea what lyrics they might be singing, but I thought the music wasn't bad.


Eventually we made our way upstairs to a much more sedate setting, a gay bar called Barbara (after the romance novelist Barbara Cartland, Stefan explained). By this time a couple of females had joined Stefan, Daði, and me. Sitting in a chair that had blonde hair and wore a dress, I pretended to understand the conversation, and half-listened to a mix of cheesy American and British pop sprinkled with a few old Icelandic standards.


Perhaps sensing my uncertainty, Stefan beckoned at me to follow him to the bar and asked me what I wanted.


"I guess I might as well try some Brennivín," I said, referring to the "national liquor," an Icelandic schnapps flavored with caraway. Brennivín has traditionally borne a black label, allegedly meant to warn off unsuspecting drinkers. It's probably the equivalent of some vile substance such as Jägermeister.


"Will I need a chaser?" I asked, as the bartender poured two sloshing shots.


"You might," he said. I ordered a Gull (another major local beer; Iceland didn't legalize beer until 1989, and Beer Day is still celebrated every March 1), and placed it neatly next to my shot glass.


Clink drink burn chase.


I cleared my throat roughly. "Well, that's over with."


Since I was spending the whole next day on a tour that began at 9 AM, I decided I should duck out after finishing my beer. But then a tall, striking blond guy with sharp blue eyes, a friend of one of the girls with an unintelligible name that I'd repeated twice but still hadn't understood, sat down across from me.


I struck up a conversation with him. He was a musician, he said (his sound was a mixture of techno and folk), but worked as a seafood chef. Just as we were starting to delve into the subject of early techno ("I refuse to call it electronica," I said), the group stood up and began to move toward the door. Drat. But at least the Seafood Singer was accompanying us.


We ended up at Q-Bar, which seemed to be the primary gay bar in Reykjavík (as far as I could tell, there were no more than two or three at any given time--bars apparently come and go in the city on a fairly regular basis). As we were trudging down Laugavegur in the cold, Stefan slipped his hand into mine, and I, fuzzy-headed and jet-lagged, found myself in an uncomfortable situation. I couldn't tell if the Seafood Singer had noticed the hand-holding, and I also didn't want to be rude to Stefan, who had, after all, welcomed me into his circle of friends in a city where I knew no one.


Also, he was clearly wasted, as was the case with pretty much everyone else. I had never seen people drink so much, and it was amusing to watch people slipping on the ice, falling down on their asses, nonchalantly if unwieldily scrambling up, and promptly falling down again.


Q-Bar was very crowded, though less so than Karamba, and I quickly extracted my hand from Stefan's as I excused myself to the bathroom.


When I returned, the group had splintered into I didn't know how many pieces. Stefan and one of the girls were sitting in a corner, and I joined them. He tried to take my hand again and I allowed it, though my hand was clenched into an unresponsive fist.


"Let's dance," he said, and though it was rather dreary house music, which I've never liked, I joined them. An attractive guy was suddenly in my face, seemingly inviting me to dance with him, but after quite literally 10 seconds he seemed to reassess something about me and moved on to other quarry. I laughed for a second, then scanned the crowd for the Seafood Singer, but he had disappeared.


After suffering through a song or two, I excused myself and walked down Laugavegur toward bed, turning up the collar of my new peacoat against the cold. It was past 3:00, but the rúntur (pub crawl) was still very much in full swing. Looking down a side street, I saw a tall, skinny girl sliding resignedly downhill like an ungainly gazelle.


###


The next morning I overslept, Lord knows why, and rushed into the downstairs lobby just as the minibus arrived to pick up hotel guests for the Golden Circle tour.


Less than an hour later, I was on a large tour bus speeding out of Reykjavík. We would be visiting the triangle of locales known as the Golden Circle: Gullfoss, possibly the most famous of the country's numerous waterfalls; Þingvellir, a national park and the site of the country's first parliamentary gathering--in 870--as well as a rift valley; and Geysir (take a guess).


Before hitting the waterfall, however, we would be visiting Hellisheidi, a geothermal power plant not far from the city. As we approached the plant, the bus was filled with the smell of rotten eggs, and I started to turn around to look at the German tourists sitting behind me before realizing that the plant was the source of the odor.


The building was not very large, and after one of the plant personnel gave a short talk and video presentation to a roomful of very bored-looking Europeans, I wandered around, peering through a large window at a mass of turbines and such, before it was time to go. As the ebullient tour guide droned on and on into the microphone about something-or-other, I gazed out the window at the landscape skimming by. Iceland's black lava-rock terrain had made a deep impression on me.















Our first real stop was Gullfoss. Reaching it was a not entirely safe ordeal that involved slipping and sliding down a crude, narrow, ice-covered path with an inadequate cable fence on the dangerous side of the cliff. The tourists coming uphill were trying to cling to the cable even more desperately than those heading down to the falls, which necessitated awkward maneuvering whenever I had to pass someone. But I was compelled onward by the sight of Gullfoss, rushing and roaring.





























At last I reached the falls, managing one spectacular fall onto my behind as I clambered up the rocks to gain a good vantage point. I could tell that I'd picked the right time of year to see Gullfoss; the contrast of deep blue and icy white was beautiful, and I couldn't stop taking photos even as the wind whipped all around me. A long-haired L.A. native and I took photos of each other in front of the falls; looking at it now, it's still hard to believe I was there.





On the way back I took one last spectacular tumble, this time nearly slipping neatly under the cable fence in front of two aghast Scandinavians. Hugging the cable, I regained my footing and trudged grimly upward.


It was a short drive from there to Geysir, which was fairly anticlimactic, given that it is basically dormant these days. Nearby, however, is a smaller geyser, Strokkur (do grow up), which erupts so regularly that I found I could use my watch to predict its activity with a fairly high degree of accuracy. Still, I had the distinct impression that Geysir's eruptions had been more spectacular than its neighbor's.





It had been a long day already, but there was still Þingvellir to visit. I wasn't exactly salivating with anticipation, although I did have some interest in seeing the rift valley, in which is manifested the slow continental drift between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. Like much of the countryside I'd seen that day, Þingvellir's terrain had a stark beauty. But it was cold and rainy, and I was not the only one ready to go back to Reykjavík.



###


I had a reservation that evening at Sjávarkjallarinn (Seafood Cellar), which was supposed to be one of the trendiest places in town. And definitely not cheap. But since the accommodations and airfare had been so inexpensive, I'd decided to splurge a bit on dining out.


I'd expected a bustling crowd at seven o'clock on a Saturday night, despite the cold and steady rain, but instead there were only a couple of other occupied tables in the entire place. I found the decor a bit chilly--and not very impressive, either--and that, coupled with the fact that almost nothing makes me feel more uncomfortable than dining out alone, dampened my spirits some. But this whole trip was about striking out on my own and trying things, so I sucked it up and followed the less-than-enthusiastic hostess to my table.


I ordered what was apparently their most well-known appetizer, the lobster pick-me-up. Before long the waiter delivered a jar with a lid held in place by a sturdy metal clasp. I undid the clasp and opened the jar to find it full of a rich broth in which had been layered truffles, foie gras, cauliflower, and tender chunks of lobster. Despite the cumbersomely silly nature of its presentation, the dish itself was delicious, with the cauliflower adding the right contrast of texture to the mix, and I used bread to make sure I got all of the broth.


Interested in sampling as widely as possible, I ordered an entrée of four different kinds of fish: salmon, salted cod (my favorite, bar none--a superb Icelandic specialty), blue ling, and flounder. The presentation was beautiful, much more pleasing than the lobster pick-me-up's had been, and each piece of fish was expertly prepared. Really outstanding, some of the best seafood I'd ever eaten.


After I'd eaten every morsel I sat there for some minutes until, finally, an uninterested fellow collected my plate. There were now perhaps four parties other than myself in the restaurant. I shifted uneasily. It was all very European, the service, and I'd never particularly liked that style. Finally, the server showed up and asked if I wanted some coffee or dessert. I requested the bill, which finally came and was large, but I gladly paid it, both because the food had been that good and because the ambience was that bad. As soon as I had my credit card back, I made a beeline for my coat.


After a damp walk back to the hotel I tried to phone Stefan, but there was no answer. I left a voicemail and turned on some bad American television. The hour stretched toward midnight, and I dozed off.


The braying of the bedside phone jolted me awake.


"Halló!" said Stefan. "How was Sjávarkjallarinn?"


"Delicious," I said, "but I can't say I liked the place."


"Yes," he said, "it is rather ugly in there."


"A little. So what are you doing?"


"I'm at Daði and his boyfriend's house," he replied. "Do you want to come over to have some drinks?"


This was what I'd been wanting: to see an actual Icelandic home. "Sure," I said, scrambling across the bed to grab a city map. "Where am I going?"


He gave me directions. It was a bit of a walk, perhaps 20 minutes or so, but it wasn't so terribly cold out, and the rain had stopped. I threw on a sweater over my shirt, put on my peacoat, and headed out.


The night air cleared the grogginess from my head. As I stepped purposefully along Laugavegur, I passed by a door with a striking diamond-patterned window of yellow and pink and green. While the overall palette of Reykjavík, a winterswept town huddled low to the ground, was pronouncedly drab, the cityscape had quirky patches of color that already appealed to me. My favorite examples of this were the fluttering sequin artworks I'd seen displayed on the sides of several buildings. But more about those later.


There was hardly anyone out at this hour in the residential neighborhood I'd entered. It was hard to shake the New York mentality--the innate sense of danger one experienced whenever a street grew hushed and still; the expectation of other people in close proximity, whether they were visible or not. But I let myself exhale most of that as uneventful minutes passed.


When I reached the sprawling house in which Daði and his boyfriend occupied an entire floor, Stefan met me at the door and kissed me halló.


"You can hang up your coat here," he said, opening the hall closet.


"What, no dildo?" I asked. He laughed.


I turned from the closet and confronted a huge stuffed raven, sitting on a table in the hallway along with a cell phone and an iPod.


"Is that a real raven?" I asked, having noticed similar ones in several of the bars I'd visited.


"Of course," he said. "Why wouldn't it be?"


We entered the living room, where Daði was just placing a new record (ABBA) on a turntable. He turned his head for a second to greet me.


"This is Bjarni," said Stefan, introducing Daði's boyfriend, who greeted me cordially. I took in the room. It was simply but nicely appointed, the most noticeable features being the large picture windows overlooking a museum across the street, and the cowhide rug covering a generous portion of the floor.


Bjarni was a teacher, and we soon became engrossed in a conversation about the differences between American and Icelandic schooling; as in many European countries (Iceland is arguably European), people are in school longer than they are in the U.S., and are not expected to foot the bill for higher education.


"I've been wanting to ask an Icelander," I said, "whether you notice the sulfur smell from the hot-water tap or are basically inured to it."


"We don't really notice it," he said, "except maybe if we're out of the country for months and just coming back. And we don't use hot water when we're boiling something; we start with cold water."


He showed me around the kitchen, which was fascinating to me because it had been built in the 1950s and had not been remodeled since. There was even a vintage Frigidaire.


I poured myself a stiff drink comprised of grapefruit juice and gin, rotating my wrist with the glass in my hand to stir it. Multiple sources had told me that the cost of liquor was so high that Icelanders tended to get drunk at home before going out. It was past 1:00 in the morning, but the night was just getting started.


Eventually we piled into a cab (the only time I rode in one during the entire trip) and set off toward downtown. Clambering out of the cramped car onto Laugavegur again, I saw the Saturday night rúntur in full swing.


Stefan was in a huddle with Daði, who seemed quite tipsy, as Bjarni and I stood quietly exchanging remarks.


"Let's go to Jacobson," said Stefan at last, and I followed Bjarni's lead down the street just as painfully pelting snow flurries descended on us in a swirl of bitter wind. Bjarni made a disgruntled-sounding remark in Icelandic.


The other two were lagging behind, so Bjarni and I burst into Jacobson a few minutes before they did. We were each sipping a Víking by the time Stefan and Daði appeared.


Inevitably, a stream of people came up to Stefan, waving and hugging. Soon we were seated in a corner with two girls, one of whom wore a sailor outfit.


There was some chatter, but after the previous night's drinking and the exertions of my daylong tour, I was half-asleep. After some dancing we were off to the next bar, Kaffibarinn, which I understood to be the most popular bar in town.


When we arrived, there was a crowd on the street waiting to get in but barred by a stolid doorman. Stefan went up to greet him, and they had a friendly conversation while I cinched my scarf more tightly around my neck.


In a few minutes the doorman beckoned, and as the door swung open I found myself wondering how we would possibly squeeze inside. Then I remembered that brochure.


Being a Manhattanite of seven years' standing, I've seen crowded bars, but this one beat them all. After somehow stumbling into a small pocket of oxygen next to the coat rack right by the entrance, we designated Daði as the drink-orderer, and he proceeded to painstakingly rearrange matter in the process of reaching the bar. Already feeling my liquor most vividly, I had declined to order anything. Sandwiched between Bjarni and a dancing moron whose continual treading on my toes was annoying me to no end, I found myself jostled quite literally every 10 seconds by anyone attempting to move toward the bar or retrieve their coat.


Suddenly there was a loud commotion behind me--and for me to have heard distinct noise above the general roar meant that whatever was transpiring was dramatic. I turned my head to see a spectacularly drunk young lady scrabbling on all fours on the floor between people's legs, like Gregor Samsa in an overcoat. The doorman picked her up bodily around the waist, carried her through the door, and flung her onto the icy street. He returned to his post. A mere 15 seconds later, the door flew open and she careened forcefully into the crowd again, resembling one of the battering rams of her ancestors. This was repeated three times before the bouncer prevailed.


"Just another quiet night in Reykjavík," I said to Bjarni.


"I'm sorry, what did you say?" he asked loudly.


"Never mind," I replied. Glancing again at the door, I watched for the next Viking raid.


###


Waking came slowly on Sunday, and it was unequivocally lunchtime by the time I ventured out. My destination was Kolaportið, the local flea market, which was open only on weekends. Since Bæjarins was right across the street, I stopped by for a couple of pylsur to help myself refuel after the night before.















Kolaportið was charming, its decor decidedly 1960s. As with most flea markets, a significant portion of the merchandise was disappointingly banal--band T-shirts, humdrum used clothing, large plastic bags of socks. But I stopped at one booth to flip through boxes and boxes of old LPs, some of which had delightfully cheesy covers. Combing through a stall of books, I found an Icelandic translation of a Hardy Boys novel.


In the last aisle, I encountered a booth teeming with vintage postcards and coins and stamps. I immediately began to look through the postcards, pulling out three choice specimens to take home with me.


I'd also contemplated seeking out hákarl, which was an Icelandic specialty of fermented shark meat that I'd heard was sold in cubes at Kolaportið. But since I'd heard it characterized as everything from "vile" to "not as terrible as you might expect," and since I knew one had to chase hákarl with Brennivín, the stuff I'd already had to chase with beer, it struck me as too unwieldy an undertaking, with no real enjoyment to be derived other than some sort of macho pride from having survived the experience. Besides, I had much more pleasurable-sounding Icelandic culinary experiences to anticipate later in the week.


Outside again, I decided to stop by the biggest souvenir shop in the city to pick up some tchotchkes for the folks back home. Most of it, unsurprisingly, was tacky and expensive, but I did find a really adorable puffin sippy-cup for the Niece, and a terribly ugly troll wearing a horned helmet and an Icelandic flag on his chest. Some cute puffin magnets for my parents, and I was all set. On the way to the cashier, however, I found my attention arrested by the most peculiar figurine, which I present here without further comment.


That night I made a trek down to the harbor in search of what some sources have billed as the best humarsupa (lobster soup) in Reykjavík, served at a humble shack of a place called Sægreifinn (Sea Baron), right on the water. It was a still, cold evening, and the area was almost entirely deserted. I had been feeling twinges of what I sometimes experience on solitary Sunday nights--the faint depressive ache of something like my own mortality--especially after the friendly drunken company I'd enjoyed the last two evenings.


Safely inside the warmth of the small restaurant, I ordered the humarsupa as well as a pre-prepared haddock entrée that I took from a refrigerated case and handed to the woman at the cash register, who sent the fish to the back to be heated in their oven.


I waited patiently at a long wooden table next to a handful of my fellow diners. As I sat there, I noticed a picture of the Sea Baron himself, the restaurant's owner, on the wall. The photo was taken in the restaurant and, apparently, used in a VISA ad.


In a little while an elderly woman appeared with a basket of bread and my soup, which was served unceremoniously with a plastic spoon.


A bit skeptical, I stirred the golden concoction and poked around in it, finding generous chunks of lobster in a rich broth. I took a taste, and my misgivings vanished. It. Was. Amazing. I used the bread to make sure I got every last drop. As far as I was concerned, the humarsupa had won the best lobster soup title hands-down.


The haddock I was less excited about, but the portion was exceedingly generous, and it turned out to have a strong spicy/salty flavor--an acquired taste, but I acquired it. All in all, an excellent, if humbly executed, seafood dinner for the equivalent of about $16.00. The fish at Sjávarkjallarinn, it must be said, was both cooked and presented in an exemplary manner (and had cost five times as much), but in terms of heartiness and ambience, my simple dinner at Sægreifinn was far more satisfying.


My stomach warm and full, I did not mind the solitary walk back to the hotel. I stopped to admire a curious revolving door full of portholes, one of the whimsical touches that, along with the aforementioned dashes of color, I appreciated about the city.


This would be an apt time, perhaps, to take a break from my travelogue to show a few other bits of local color that I noted. I think on some level it's what makes Iceland special--a certain creative spark just beneath the drab physical exterior.
















Perhaps because Iceland is, by nature of its very geography, an isolated society, there seems to be a disproportionate number of musicians and artists. A number of people I met played music or did music promotion or something of the sort. Icelanders also have a reputation for being particularly artisanal.

By far my favorite example of local cleverness was a series of artworks that I stumbled across quite by accident while exploring the area around my hotel on the first day that I arrived in Reykjavík. They were so simple in concept yet clever in execution that I asked Stefan if he knew anything about them. He told me that he was acquainted with the artist, whose name is Theresa Himmer, but he was surprised when I showed him the video footage of the art that I had shot, because one of the pieces was actually unfamiliar to him.

Still photographs do not do these pieces justice, because their impact stems from the way in which they are manipulated by the wind from the sea. I found them absolutely enchanting, the glacier most of all.














These things just made me happy.


The artworks are made out of sequins, and you can read more about Himmer's process here.


###


It is probably an actual law that every tourist who visits Iceland must go to the Blue Lagoon, an outdoor geothermal spa between the airport and Reykjavík. The spa is fed by the runoff from an adjacent geothermal power plant that taps into the underground heat generated by lava. The result: a small outdoor "lagoon" with water averaging 104°F in the midst of a stark field of black lava rock.


The bus from the city deposited me and my (mostly European) fellow tourists in the parking lot a little before noon on Monday. The spa building was spare and modern. A clerk inside the entrance handed me a plastic bracelet that I could press against a scanning mechanism on any unoccupied locker in the locker room in order to key it to my bracelet. No need to worry about carrying around a key all day. Nice.


More than one guidebook had taken pains to advise that nothing makes Icelanders angrier than foreigners who do not bathe properly before entering a public pool--apparently they use sanitizing chemicals sparingly, if at all. Shower naked, I'd been told by numerous texts. But I found I was one of the few doing so--people are so modest these days, although, looking around, I didn't necessarily mind--and there seemed to be no placards telling people to follow my example, so I was inclined to think that to some extent it was the Icelanders' own damn fault for having to swim with dirty tourists.


It was cold and brisk outside, mostly overcast, and I began to shiver as soon as I stepped through the glass doors. But all was well as soon as I stepped into the heat-milky waters and had, for the first time in my life, the surreal experience of swimming through hot liquid.


The bottom of the pool was covered with silica mud, which I felt when I reached a shallower portion of the lagoon. Scooping some up with my toes, I transferred the substance to my hand and found it resembled thick, white...conditioner, to be euphemistic. Apparently it has exfoliating properties or some such, and there were stations throughout the pool with buckets of the stuff that people were putting on their faces until it dried into a white, chalky crust, but...no. I did put some on my hand, holding it above the water until it felt tight and covered with cracks. When I rinsed off the dried silica my hand did feel a bit smoother than it had.


As I swam toward the other end of the pool, where I saw two sauna rooms built into the black rock, I passed an almost scaldingly hot part of the pool and realized that I'd found one of the water intake vents. People passing by screeched at the heat, but I absolutely loved it, lingering there for some time before finally settling onto an underwater bench near the lagoon's edge. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes and let myself physically relax for the first time in ages. As I sat there in the steaming water, tiny snowflakes settled on my upturned face.


Eventually I left the water and hastened to the door of one of the saunas. As I entered, I had to pause so my eyes could adjust to the darkness and the clouds of steam. In a minute I could see a vacant spot on the bench that circled the interior.


As soon as I sat down fresh pillars of steam flew into the air, and I inhaled deeply, my sinuses swelling invigoratingly open. My body was damp with sweat, my cells pulsatingly alive. The sauna cleared out before long, but I remained, relishing the dark heat, until the door opened again and my reverie ended.


###


I spent most of the remainder of my time in Iceland exploring Reykjavík further. On Tuesday morning I made the very manageable crosstown trek on foot to visit Perlan, an odd complex perched on an unpronounceable hill and constructed from hot water storage tanks with a hemisphere on top.


The top floor contains a revolving restaurant, which I did not avail myself of. I did step onto the observation platform for a good view of the city, which, while low and drab, still looked charming from a height.


From there I walked to Kjarvalsstaðir, a museum dedicated to the work of Iceland's most famous painter, Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval. Kjarval had an impressive stylistic range in a career that spanned decades, and the museum also had some interesting contemporary art, including an exhibit devoted entirely to variations on chess sets.


For the most commanding view in town, I ascended to the top of Hallgrímskirkja, a strikingly odd Lutheran church near my hotel. In one direction I could see Tjörnin, the small lake in the middle of the city, and in the other the waters of the harbor, a ship inching across the base of Esja.















In the vicinity of Tjörnin I dropped in at the National Gallery, very modern and very small ("Yes, this is our only building," said the woman at the front desk when I asked); Ráðhús (City Hall), with its strange mossy portholed facade; and a session of Alþingi, the national parliament, where I was allowed to walk right in and sit in the upstairs gallery overlooking the entire hearing chamber, which was painted a cheerful robin's-egg blue and was also not terribly bigger than my hotel room. I also visited the National Museum, where I learned a great deal about the history of Iceland and happened upon a most peculiar image: "Print of a weeping boy: a picture which hung in many Icelandic homes in the 1970s." It made me wonder about the nature of the national psyche.















I'd been anticipating Tuesday night's dinner quite keenly, because I had a reservation at a local restaurant Stefan had recommended to me that had some distinctive Icelandic dishes on the menu. It was in the middle of a nondescript residential neighborhood within walking distance of my hotel, and when I arrived they seated me at an almost comically small table in one corner. There was already a full house, and people kept arriving, which I took as a good sign.


I ordered two appetizers; the first was smoked puffin breast with mustard sauce. When I asked the server, she checked and told me it was smoked with birch. I liked the artful presentation, but when I took a bite I liked the taste even more. Yes, I know puffins are cute, but they are also delicious. The best way to describe the taste is a combination of smoked salmon and beef carpaccio. Truly unique. The other appetizer was reindeer pâté with Cumberland sauce. Also nicely presented and not at all heavy or overly gamey, even though the puffin was still far and away my favorite of the two.















My entrée was something I'd actually checked up on beforehand, because its consumption in Iceland has caused some controversy and I wanted to make sure I wasn't eating an endangered species (I wasn't): whale pepper steak in a pepper sauce.


The steak's preparation and the pepper sauce were both superb, but I was most curious about the taste of the meat itself. It's a little difficult to describe, but basically the meat was very tender, and at first tasted like regular beef. With a bit of chewing it took on a slight liver aspect, and then toward the end it was reminiscent of a meaty and non-fishy fish such as a monkfish. It was cooked medium-rare but looked beet-red on the inside, which is its natural appearance. (When I spoke with the owner's daughter, she told me that they use only the tail meat, which has virtually no fat on it.)
















For dessert I had a very nice skyr brûlée. Skyr is an exclusively Icelandic food product similar to Greek yogurt--equally thick and sour--and virtually fat-free, since it's made from skim milk; the average Icelander consumes something like 10 liters a year, and it is a popular ingredient in things like smoothies. (At the local supermarket, Bónus, I bought several flavors of skyr that I hadn't been able to find at Whole Foods in Manhattan, including banana split, which I found myself wishing I'd bought more of.)


This was definitely the best meal I'd had in Iceland, and among the best I'd had, period. Not a false note in any dish, and I couldn't have asked for nicer service.


I did decide, however, not to tell the Niece that I'd eaten puffin.


###


My last evening in Reykjavík, I had a not entirely satisfactory lamb dinner, then decided to drop in at Q-Bar one last time for a couple of drinks. It was sparsely populated, but just as I was finishing my beer a tall thirtysomething guy wandered in a bit unsteadily, walked up to me, and nodded in slow motion. Unattracted but polite, I nodded back, looked away again, and sipped faster.


"Halló," he said, quickly launching into Icelandic until I shook my head.


"Fyrirgefðu," I said. "I don't speak Icelandic."


"Oh, sorry, sorry," he said, leaning unnervingly close. "Where are you from?"


"New York," I said, tilting my head back rather subtly.


"Cool, cool," he replied. "I'm Guðbrandur. What is your name?"


"I'm Frank," I said, reaching out to shake his hand as I shrugged internally. It was someone to talk to, after all.


"Hi, Frank," said Guðbrandur. "I'm very drunk."


"Are you really?" I said.


"I just broke up with my girlfriend on Monday," he continued. "We have two kids together."


"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "I mean about the breakup, not the kids."


"Yeah," he said. "So I decided to come out here and have good time."


"I see," I said. "So are you bisexual or what?"


"Kind of," he said. "More straight, but a little bisexual."


"Okay," I said, not really interested in pursuing the matter. I asked him what he did, and he told me that he installed software for businesses and made a pretty good living. He also told me, more pointedly than I would have liked, that he had an apartment nearby. I took the opportunity to ask about local rents.


This went on for a little while, with my asking him practical questions about Icelandic life, things I'd been curious about, and his pretty clearly trying to get in my pants. At one point there was a pause while I drained my pint and contemplated ordering another.


"I like you," said Guðbrandur.


"Thank you," I said.


"I like you," he resumed, lurching into the bar, "but you act like a homo."


"What's that supposed to mean?" I said, leveling a stony expression at him.


He made some kind of waving gesture in my general direction. "That jacket and everything."


I looked down, mystified. I was wearing my father's old wool blazer and an ordinary button-up gray shirt.


"I don't really know what you're talking about," I said.


"You're kind of a homo," he said, "but I do like you."


Barely concealing my rage, I said, "Gee, that's big of you. What can I say? I was born a big old faggot."


Infuriatingly enough, my tone went utterly over his stupid fucking drunk homophobic head. "It's okay," he said. "We're having good time."


"I'm not so sure about that," I said, looking at my watch without noting the hour. "It's getting late. I should probably go."


"Did I fuck up?" asked the Snail of the Uptake.


My blinding anger gathered in my tongue. The accumulation of bigotry and abuse that had been inflicted on me over the years was poised to strike this offensive lumbering drunk jackass who thought he had ever had a fucking prayer of taking me back to his place because I had decided to be polite and talk to him in a bar.


"No wonder your girlfriend left you, you fucking piece of shit."


At least, that's what the voice in my head said. But I had matured just enough, after all that I'd experienced in my life, that I chose the humane path. The big homo decided to be the bigger man.


"I'm sorry about your girlfriend, Guðbrandur," I said, rising to my feet and turning toward the door. "Get home safely." And inwardly, I offered the same words to myself. I'd come to Reykjavík to see new things and figure out if I had the courage to travel to a strange new country alone, not knowing anyone. And I'd done all that, and it felt like something that had expanded me. I'd conquered that fear.


But now it was time to get back to New York. There were loose ends I had to tie up, and decisions I needed to make.


###


I had previously planned to wrap up Entry 250 in two parts, but the second part ended up being so long that the inclusion of a third part seems to make the most sense. The process of writing this final entry has dragged out much longer than I'd ever anticipated--or wanted--due to a number of circumstances beyond my control. Life has not been uneventful. But I will post the third, and absolutely final, portion of the entry before August ends. Even with everything that has preceded it, the third part's scope might surprise you.

7:10 PM

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Monday, June 01, 2009

 

BRIEFLY


There have been some unexpected developments here that are ongoing and need to be incorporated into the last entry. I anticipate posting it by mid-June.

12:07 AM

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Sunday, May 03, 2009

 

DELETED SCENES from ENTRY 250, Part One

It was a soft October night, but I was not asleep. I felt like having a drink, actually, and Phil had buried himself too deeply in his work (as usual), so, only slightly against my better judgment, I called Jack.


I stepped into the same Hell's Kitchen bar where, a couple of months earlier, he'd pronounced me the hottest guy in the place and attempted to poach me from my date. Now he seemed distracted, which didn't surprise me in the least. I didn't have a sexual or romantic agenda; I just thought he was dysfunctionally interesting.


"Hey," I said, slinging my jacket over the back of the chair across from him.


He paused midtext and said, "Do you want to go to Brooklyn?"


"Brooklyn? What's in Brooklyn?"


"Union Pool," he said.


"That's a bar, isn't it?" said I, never having been much of a trendster.


"Yeah," he said. "I'm meeting some friends there." I paused, and he added, "I'll pay for the cab."


I shrugged. "All right."


"But have a drink here," he said. "It's on me. What do you want?"


I had just started to drink my pint of Stella when he admitted, "It's actually somebody I'm meeting on a blind date."


"I see," I said, not at all surprised. "Are you sure you want me along?"


"Sure," he said. "He's going to have his friends with him. And he might not be that cute."


"True," I said, my face telling nothing.


"Do I look all right?" he said, his eyes fixed on his reflection in a nearby mirror as he fussed with his hair.


"You look just fine," I said.


"I know it doesn't look like it now, but I used to model," he said. "I did some catalogues."


"You're an attractive guy," I replied, my involuntary sigh creating a stray bubble as I sipped my beer.


"I had my first plastic surgery when I was 14," he said. "I had my ears put back because they were kind of big, and I had my eyes done. I had the fat sucked out of my chest and my stomach, and I got a nose job, because, you know, I'm Jewish. And I started taking Propecia when I was 20. I go to the gym for three hours every day."


"Wow," I said. "That's a lot of effort."


"Yeah," he said. "But I look pretty good now, even though I'm 33." He ran his hands over his face, which, when I looked at it, seemed strangely glistening. "I've had a lot of chemical peels."


"Hmm," I said. "Interesting."


Jack looked at his watch. "You ready to go?"


"Sure," I said, taking a final gulp. I was about to reach for my jacket, but paused as I watched him work on his hair for a good 30 seconds.


"Do I look okay?" he said.


"You look great," I said, standing. "Shall we?"


I gazed out the window at the constellation of Manhattan as the cab glided smoothly over the Queensboro Bridge, vaguely remembering how, the last time I'd been in a taxi on this route, I'd had the head of an adorable half-drunken boy in my lap as we headed to his place for a hot fuck. It had been nice, having his head in my lap, stroking his hair.


We arrived at Union Pool a few minutes late; as it turned out, his date was even tardier. The crowd reminded me why I didn't spend much time in the affected parts of Brooklyn, but I shrugged it off and we tried to push our way through to the bar.


It took a long time for the bartender to get to us, and Jack quickly became vexed; I had the impression that he wasn't used to waiting for things.


"Do you ever wait this long for a drink?" he said with a frown.


"Have you ever been to a bar in New York?" I asked.


Finally, beers in hand, we made our way onto the back patio.


"They have a taco truck?" I said, pointing the neck of my bottle at a concession vehicle at the other end of the patio.


"Looks like it," said Jack, who was just receiving another text. "He and his friends just got here."


"Why don't I snag that picnic table?" I said.


Jack nodded. "We'll meet you there in a minute." He headed indoors.


I felt calmly matronly, but not at all put out by it. Sitting at the table, I propped my face on one hand and picked at my beer label with the other.


After a minute or two Jack emerged from the bar with three guys and two girls, all of them seemingly in their early 20s. When they reached the table I stood and shook hands with the blind date, who looked rather studiedly artsy and, while attractive, was a bit too pretty for my taste.


I found myself seated next to the male half of a heterosexual couple, and we launched into a conversation that, to my relief, flowed easily. He was a film editor from Wisconsin, and we talked about the process and how I'd done a tiny bit of that in my current job, and about the art we'd seen recently in the city, and I felt the wave of relief I always experienced whenever I stepped outside my comfort zone and it didn't go horribly fucking awry. He asked me how I knew Jack, and I responded as succinctly as humanly possible.


It was about that time, perhaps 20 or 30 minutes into the encounter, that Jack stood up and announced that we were leaving. I nodded internally but made no outward motion other than rising from my seat. Everyone else stood as well, and I bade the group goodbye.


"We're just going to talk for a minute," Jack said, taking his date a few yards away. The rest of the group headed inside for refills. I repaired to the edge of the stone pond across the patio, purposely turning my back to whatever was going on, though I heard the occasional faint strain of Jack's heightened voice.


I was eyeing a fauxhawk with distaste when Jack stepped up behind me and said, "I'm going to the bathroom. Meet you out front."


"That well, huh?" I said, but he didn't reply.


A few minutes later he emerged from the entrance. "Any cabs?" he asked.


"I saw a couple," I said. "Not at the moment."


"Great," he said.


"That might be one," I said, pointing across the street, and he sprinted that way. The taxi braked to a stop, and I jayran over as Jack opened the door.


"Midtown Manhattan, please," he said. "Immediately."


"So what happened?" I asked, running a hand through my wind-mussed hair.


"He was a dick," said Jack, trying in vain to catch his own reflection in the window. "Do I look all right?"


"I feel like I might have already answered that," I said. "You're a handsome guy. You look fine."


"He told me that I was cute, but he just didn't think we clicked," Jack said acidly.


"Well, there you go."


"Oh, come on," he said. "Why would anybody say that if they really thought you were attractive?"


"Uh, maybe because it's true?" I said.


"It doesn't make any sense," he replied, and I realized I had been interrupting his monologue. "I told him he was a prick for making me come all the way out there and then rejecting me."


"You don't think he has a right to--" I paused, then threw the towel so far in that it would take a spelunker to find it again. "What did he say?"


"He apologized," said Jack.


"Wow," I said. "Well, I guess you have to give him credit for that."


"He's a prick," he said, and then, "Do you think I'm crazy?"


I sighed. "Why do you care what I think?" I looked across the water at the brilliant white syringe atop the Empire State Building.


"Because you're a cool guy," he said. "And you're smart."


I waited a moment before turning from the window. "You're no crazier than most people," I said gently. But as I said it, I suddenly felt incredibly sane and grounded. Despite all the uncertainty and solitude I'd felt for the last seven years, I had an unwavering sense of who I was. I'd sometimes sold myself short, but I'd never lost my grasp on the essential truth of my own identity.


The cab dropped us off at the exact same Hell's Kitchen bar where we'd begun the evening. I let Jack buy me another beer, and watched as he cruised the room for his next prospect. He settled on a rather plain-looking, questionably postpubescent guy.


"Hey there," he said, nudging the fellow. "Come talk to us."


The quarry approached gamely, and I felt, absurdly, as though I were a necessarily link in the flavors-of-the-month chain. I shook hands with the new guy, passing the baton, tossing the potato. Someone else could now deal with Jack's anarchic emotional questing. For a few minutes I watched Jack shower the new boy with compliments and questions, like so many ephemeral snowflakes.


"It's getting late," I said, setting down my half-drunk pint. "I think I'll leave you guys to it." Jack bade me goodbye, hardly taking his eyes from his objective.


I slipped through the crowd to the exit. To my relief, I saw no heads turn as I vanished out the door.


###


The entire clan was gathered in the living room the night after Christmas, and Marc was making an announcement.


"Since this year we had three important birthdays--my grandmother's 80th, my dad's 60th, and Frank's 30th--I put together a DVD of photos and music," he said. Never terribly fond of looking at photos of myself (blurry or otherwise), I shifted awkwardly on the couch as Marc pressed Play.


To the strains of "You've Got a Friend" by James Taylor, my grandmother's baby photo materialized on the TV screen. Then there were wedding and young couplehood photos, my mother and aunt as toddlers, my grandparents growing older. I glanced across the room and saw my grandmother wiping her eyes.


Next came my dad in diapers, and grinning between his two brothers, and wearing his Navy uniform, and walking down the aisle with my mother, and carrying Marc piggyback. There he was holding me on his 30th birthday, the day I was born, and then mowing the lawn, and sitting at Marc's bedside in the cancer ward, and performing best-man duties at Marc's wedding.


And now appeared my infant self, and my toddler incarnation exploring my grandparents' house with my cousin Burt, and my awkward big-ugly-plastic-glasses phase, and my awkward brooding-with-dyed-black-hair phase, and the scarred relief of my high school graduation day, and my visits home from college.


Shortly thereafter my segment ended, giving way to a mix of family photos, and I recognized my glaring absence since the day I left Texas for New York, all the things they had been doing and the places they'd gone without me. A twinge of wistfulness arose within me. Yet I also understood that there had been absences even when I was there, absences apparent in the expressions on a face attached to a brain suffering from a chemical imbalance. I'd had to find my own way to heal, and it had required leaving home, where the roots of that pain were. But at a certain point my mind turned away from these thoughts, and I looked not just at photos where I was absent even when I was present, but also images where I was there even when I couldn't be seen. Roots hold you down. Roots nourish you.


###


"Hi, Dad," I said.


"Hey, Frank," he said, and I thought I sensed a guardedness in his tone. It was the first time we'd really spoken since my disastrous attempt to talk to him about the homophobic email. "What's up?"


"Well," I said, "I need your help with something. I want to do my best to replace your old peacoat, and I need to ask you some questions to figure out exactly what to look for." I explained that I'd done considerable research on the varying materials used during different periods to make Navy peacoats.


Dad told me when he'd enlisted and received the coat, where he'd gone to boot camp, how he'd altered the coat from its original state. I took careful notes.


"I'm sorry that your coat isn't in our family anymore," I said, "but I'm going to do everything I can to replace it with a reasonable facsimile."


"Well, that's nice of you, Frank," he said.


Then we talked some more, about work and about my nieces and my parents' new house, and almost an hour passed before the conversation came to a close.


"It was good talking to you, son," he said. "I love you."


"I love you, too, Dad," I said, and after hanging up I sat there silently for a while, pondering. Perhaps none of our underlying problems had been solved, and no doubt there would be more pain, but I felt a renewed potential in groping blindly forward, trusting in what could not be foretold.


###


Look for the conclusion of Entry 250 this month.

10:14 PM

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Thursday, April 02, 2009

 

ENTRY 250: THE LONG GOODBYE
Part One: To Be Imperfectly Frank...

Our story thus far....

Are you fucking kidding me?


###


Reader, I married him.

"And oh, Aunt Em! I'm so glad to be at home again!"

"On a field, sable, the letter A, gules."

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

The eyes and the faces all turned themselves toward me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room.

He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

And it was still hot.


But after six years, I know it is finally time to write my own ending for Frank Beekman.


###


Phil impulsively threw his arms around me, and I stumbled back a quarter-step as my arms went around him and I blinked in surprise over his broad shoulder. My gaze sidled downward in a mixture of emotion and thought.


We'd been waiting in a crowded Hell's Kitchen bar for the bartender to sling our drinks, and Phil had asked, "Are you done with your fuckin' blog yet?"


"Almost," I said. "The penultimate entry just went up a couple weeks ago. You're in it a lot."


"I am?" he said.


"Yeah." I shrugged. "There aren't too many other people I'm hanging out with lately, after all. And the pot-smoking incident seemed like it would be pretty amusing to write about."


"I'll have to check it out," he said.


"Well, I should warn you it's a little bit of a downer," I said. "I went through and counted, and there are no fewer than four sobbing jags in that entry."


And Phil turned then to pull me into his aforementioned embrace.


"It's fine," I said, after a moment. "Thank you, but it's fine. There's just been a lot to deal with the past few months. With my job and my mother and not getting into grad school...."


"I look forward to reading it," he said, "sobbing and all."


"It's okay if you don't," I said. "I mean, you bought my book five years ago and never got around to reading that." I smirked good-naturedly at him.


Phil looked momentarily sheepish. "But I've read a lot of your blog," he said.


I paused mid-swig. "You have?"


"Yes," he said. "And it's really good."


"Thank you," I said, clinking my glass against his. "And here's to your good taste."


A minute or so passed as we surveyed the mob scene. I turned back to him.


"I wanted to say I'm sorry," I said.


He made a face. "For what?"


"For having been slightly catty about you and the Harvard novelist," I said.


"Were you?" he asked vacantly.


"Yeah," I said. "I kind of was. But I want you to understand that it was a little difficult for me."


"That's certainly understandable," he replied.


"It triggered multiple things for me," I said. "It was difficult even three years ago when I went out with him, because, you know, he was younger than I was and a Harvard graduate and publishing a novel with a big publishing house, and had just managed to buy his own apartment and quit his job to write full-time. And it's hard for me, being where I was, where I am, not to...have feelings about that."


"Of course," said Phil.


"And then there's the weirdness of you being the one who hits it off with him," I continued. "And it just sort of conjured up my many, many dating failures over the past six years."


"Yeah," said Phil. "While I've been so successful in contrast."


"You know what I mean," I said. "But anyway, I want you to know that I'm sorry for the way I behaved before. It was immature of me. I'm glad you like each other and I want you to enjoy it, and I hope it works out. I want that for you."


"Thank you," he said. "We'll see. He's going to be in Europe all summer, so there'll be a good long break. And he's kind of like us, an island."


"Is that what you and I are?" I asked. "Islands?" Then, after a pause: "Maybe so."


For a moment I felt an urge to press my forehead against his shoulder, but, deciding that might seem forced, I took another sip of alcohol instead.


###


Betraying not a flicker of trepidation on my face, I sat across the table from my boss and placidly sipped soda out of a bottle. She'd suggested we go to lunch to discuss "the future of our department," and I knew this was it. For a month and a half I'd been waiting to learn whether I'd get the promotion or else be forced to look for a new job elsewhere, to cast a net that might, ultimately, pull me out of New York altogether.


I'd been busting my ass for a long time, above and beyond my job description and pay grade, and had come to find it slightly embarrassing to be where I was, with all my capabilities, on the verge of 30. Since the previous head writer had resigned, I'd been picking up the slack not just for him, but also for my other boss, who was on a four-month maternity leave.


I was tired of being stuck in limbo. But I sat there and sipped and waited.


"How's your sandwich?" she asked brightly.


"It's good, thanks," I said. "And yours?"


"Very nice," she said.


"And how are Ben and Jenny doing at summer camp?" I asked, masochistically drawing things out.


She gave a couple of anecdotes about her kids' camp activities, then put down her sandwich and said, "Why don't we talk about what's going on in the department?"


"Sure," I said, my face a pleasant marble mask.


There was introductory material about the complications of the decision process, why things had taken so long. I did not want to make a prediction one way or the other, though I was not a stranger to unfairness. My attention skimmed over the prefatory remarks, waiting for the essential information.


"So," she said, "I'd like to offer you the head writer position."


"And I accept," I said. "Gladly."


On the subway home, I pondered the new development. There were problems with the department, Lord knows, but I had finally been promoted at a company, at last had a job title with "writer" and without "assistant," would trade my cubicle for an office. The MFA rejections had been a bitter blow, but, if I'd been looking for some kind of sign as my 20s ended, I'd found one. There were, perhaps, measures of justice.


###


"And happy birthday to you," I said, teetering on the arches of my feet on the edge of the curb.


"Thank you," said Dad. "How does it feel to be 30?"


"Maybe roughly the same as being 60," I replied. "Want to tell me about that?"


His laugh sounded slightly staccato; I looked at my cell phone for a second to see how many bars I had.


"So you're at work on your birthday?" I said. "How festive."


"Yep," he said. "Yep. What are you up to?"


"I've just been to the optometrist," I replied, "and I'm about to go to the dentist."


"Whooooa," said Dad. "That's a fun day, Frank."


I shrugged, pointlessly. "I figure that most people do abuse to their own bodies on their birthdays, so why not do something different and make it more of a wellness day? After all, I am 30 now. What do you think of that? Your youngest becoming old?"


"Hard to believe, hard to believe," he said with the faintest sigh.


"So aren't you about due to retire?" I said.


"That was the plan," he replied, "but with all the money we lost in stocks recently and how over budget building the new house turned out to be, I don't know when I'll be able to retire now." He paused. "Your mother's very worried about our finances. It's really getting to her."


"I know," I said.


"We've been trying to figure out how to make ends meet," said Dad. "I might have to get a second job. Working at Wal-Mart on the weekends, maybe."


I stood there, glancing at my watch to gauge how much time I had until my dental appointment, but mostly trying to absorb this.


"So it's really that bad?" I said.


"Kind of," he said. "I keep trying to tell your mom that we'll figure it out somehow."


"How is she, really?" I said. "How bad?"


"Frank," said Dad, and for a minute I thought he might not get any further than my name. "She's lost 30 pounds, doesn't have any interest in things anymore. She's wasting away, she's gotten so frail. All I can do is try to hug her."


My eyes burned and I shook my head to halt that. "Is she still seeing the therapist?"


"The doctor gave her some prescriptions," he said vaguely.


"Right, I remember," I said. "But what about therapy? Pills aren't enough, there should be a talking cure."


"That's once a month," he answered.


"Which isn't nearly enough," I said. "But it's what your insurance covered me for when I was seeing my shrink in high school. So I guess it's pretty much the same."


"Yeah," he said. "She's just so isolated. She doesn't like being back in Corpus Christi, and she doesn't have any friends here. No one to talk to. There's me, but she needs someone other than me."


I was just faintly surprised that he could acknowledge that.


"So she just keeps getting worse?" I said.


"Yeah," he said. "I don't really know what to do."


I bit my lip. In front of all of us well-intentioned, impotent witnesses, my mother was slipping away.


###


My thirtieth birthday celebration was a pretty modest affair, which is exactly what I'd intended. As the date approached I'd felt somewhat trepidatious about it, given the depressing disaster of the year before. I decided it wouldn't make sense to ignore the milestone, but I would do something low-key and have minimal expectations rather than attempt anything grand.


It was a mix of coworkers and people from other facets of my life, and we met after work on a Friday at a little bar downtown that's an old standby of mine. By the time people began to arrive en masse, I was midway through a pool game with two of my favorite coworkers.


There were text messages from well-wishers who couldn't make it, and protestations whenever I reached for my wallet, and my reluctant imbibing of one--and only one--shot. My coworker Jan, the person I'd worked most closely with before my promotion, appropriated my digital Canon and wandered through the crowd, taking photos with numerous random bar patrons (sometimes she yanked me into the frame) before returning the camera to me at the end of the evening. Abra came later with her boyfriend, and Phil showed up just as I was about to leave.


We huddled together on a couch as the crowds teemed around us.


"How does it feel to be 30?" asked Abra, just like everyone else had.


"It feels better than 29," I said. "It feels okay, actually." And it did.


###


"How does it feel to be 30?" asked my therapist.


You had to give him points for originality.


"It's all right," I said. "It's all right. The past year was really difficult, and I'm not sorry it's over. It's just...I know it's cliché, but can't help thinking about what I'd hoped to accomplish by the time I turned 30. And there's so much I'd wanted to do by now but haven't."


"Like what?" he said.


"Like finishing my next book. And being further along in my career. I mean, up until a week or two ago I had the same job title I did when I was 24. It was depressing. That whole year when I was unemployed just fucked everything up and set me so far back. I feel like I've spent the past several years simply regaining lost ground, when I knew I was capable of so much more. And on top of that, to be rejected by every MFA program I applied to last year when I wanted so badly to pursue my writing at a higher level."


"That must have been very frustrating," he said gently.


"Yeah," I said. "But it was the reality of the situation, and I dealt with it. I saw myself approaching 30, though, and being where I was was scary. So the promotion was pretty well-timed."


He nodded. "Maybe it would be useful to talk about the things you have accomplished."


"Okay," I said, and paused for a moment; I was not used to patting myself on the back without the involvement of a knife. "I've published a novel--from a very small publisher, and a number of years ago, but still, a novel. I'm working full-time as a writer and getting paid decently for it, which is pretty rare. And I moved to New York without a job and basically knowing no one, and it's often been a struggle, but I've stuck it out when a lot of people would have given up. So I'm either pretty strong or pretty stupid--or both."


My therapist smiled faintly.


"And I've written that blog for five years now," I continued, "and been able, I think, to become better at autobiographical writing, and at telling the hard truths about myself."


"Those are all real and important accomplishments," he said.


I smiled crookedly. "Well, I guess I haven't yet accomplished all the amazing things I'd wanted to, but I could have done worse."


"Yes," he said. "And there's still plenty of time."


I fiddled with the armrest cover on the couch. "I imagine so."


###


My second date with Gary began with a Sunday brunch in Hell's Kitchen. Remembering how the first date had ended, I ordered a small orange juice; Gary, unsurprisingly, opted for the all-you-can-drink special.


I ate my steak and eggs as I watched mimosa after mimosa disappear across the table. He talked about going out the night before, and I took the opportunity to inquire about a certain kind of psychiatric drug that figured in my long-languishing next novel.


It seemed to me that we probably didn't have enough in common for anything significant to develop between us, but I remained mindful of what Gary had said about waiting until the third date to make a final judgment.


There was a line of people waiting to be seated, so we paid the check and moved to the bar, where Gary knew the bartender. He appeared to know a lot of bartenders.


"Bloody Mary?" he said, after ordering one for himself.


"I'm good, thanks," I said.


The conversation shifted into a discussion of the vagaries of dating. I found myself beginning to feel peevish, not because I disagreed with anything Gary was saying but rather because I agreed with basically everything: he was spouting truisms.


I was bored, and trying to think of the most gracious way possible to make my exit, when a series of stuttering beeps issued from his pocket. He read the incoming text.


"My friend from L.A. wants to meet for drinks," said Gary. "He's cool, I bet you'd like him."


"Okay," I said, taking the chance that his conjecture might be true.


"He wants to go to Beer Blast at the Eagle," said Gary, as we set off on foot in the late-August sunshine.


"Yikes," I said.


"What?" asked Gary.


"Oh, it's just that the last time I was at the Eagle, some guy was staring at my junk while I was trying to pee."


"Didn't you like that?"


"Oh, yeah," I said, smiling tightly.


When we arrived at the Eagle, an employee informed us that it wasn't open for another hour and a half. We had just exited again when a cab pulled up at the door, and out stepped a tall, beefy guy wearing expensive sunglasses.


"They're closed until five," said Gary to the newcomer.


"Oh, really?" he said. "That sucks."


"Frank, this is Randy," said Gary.


"Hi," I said, shaking Randy's hand. We exchanged a brief glance, seemingly not knowing quite what to make of each other.


Trekking back to 8th Avenue, we hailed a cab to the Hotel Gansevoort, where Randy was staying on business. Within 10 minutes we were sipping drinks at the rooftop poolside bar, with the Hudson burning white in the near distance below us.


Randy was a corporate type for a big, famous company. "What do you do?" he asked. I told him.


"A writer? That's pretty cool," he said.


I laughed into my gin and tonic. "I'm glad somebody thinks so."


"So how do you two know each other?" asked Randy.


I looked at Gary. "Should we tell him?"


"From Match.com," said Gary.


Randy raised an eyebrow. "What? You two are on a date?"


"You could say that," I replied, drawing lines with my index finger through the condensation on my glass.


"So this asshole dragged you along to meet me while the two of you were on a date?" said Randy. I was beginning to like this guy.


Gary started to make faint protestations, but I merely shrugged.


"It's okay," I said. "We're just out for the afternoon."


Randy shook his head.


"I could throw my drink in his face if it would make you feel better," I added.


We all laughed, not too uneasily.


By the time we started on our second drinks, it was painfully obvious that Randy and I had a rapport that did not exist between Gary and me. I did my best not to exclude Gary entirely, but once Randy found out that I watched Gossip Girl, we launched comfortably into giddy chatter that Gary could comprehend only faintly.


"I used to have a crush on Dan," I said, "but I'm so fucking over him now. Sanctimonious little bitch."


"What about Blair?" said Randy. "She's so awesome."


"She has her moments," I replied, "but enough with the mommy issues already. Boooring!"


"You have to love Dorota," he said.


"Well, yeah," I said.


I'd had two drinks and was enjoying myself by the time we piled into another cab to return to the Eagle. It was a perfectly temperate late afternoon as we stood drinking beers in the rooftop bar. I had made sure to go to the bathroom before leaving the Gansevoort.


There remained the problem of my disproportionate rapport with Randy as opposed to Gary, so I was relieved when some older guy that Gary knew came up to him and started a long conversation. He offered to buy the next round, and asked what we were drinking. Randy and I displayed our near-empty Coronas.


"Your friends have expensive taste," the older guy said to Gary.


"That's kind of obnoxious," I muttered to Randy.


"Very," he said.


We had been talking for a long while about living in L.A. and what he missed about New York. "Do you ever get out there?" he asked.


"I visited my friend there a couple of years ago," I said. "I can't say it turned out all that well."


"What happened?" he asked.


"It's a long story," I said evasively. "But we should definitely hang out next time I'm there."


"Absolutely," he said. "You're really fun."


With the drinks and the beers the early evening had turned a bit hazy, and before I quite knew what was happening Randy was stepping into a cab back to the hotel to meet a friend for dinner. The obnoxious older guy and Gary pushed me into another taxi and we ended up at Marie's Crisis. I wasn't exactly itching to visit a piano bar full of singing patrons too tone-deaf to realize that they were, but I was too fuzzy-headed by now to be terribly assertive.


The older guy bought me another drink ("Well liquor is fine," I nearly added), but half an hour was about all I could take.


"I should get home," I said to Gary over the sounds of Sondheim sacrilege. "I haven't eaten dinner yet, and I have to work tomorrow."


I picked up some takeout on the way home, and managed to eat it before passing out face-first on the bed. There seemed to be a pattern here.


###


The summer had not been a relaxing one. Besides the fact that summer was our busiest season at work, coupled with the fact that we were still severely understaffed and would be until after Labor Day, I was taking two continuing-education courses in the evenings on my company's dime.


I'd enrolled in a general marketing course to brush up on the fundamentals, as well as a marketing writing course. The latter was, naturally, my favorite of the two by a significant margin; years ago, Neil had even helped me put together a copywriting portfolio when I attempted to start a career in advertising. But that had come to naught. I was not gunning to be at an ad agency anymore, but it seemed to me that the next logical step in my career would involve a transition into a writing position that was more blatantly marketing-oriented. It was important to me that I do well in the marketing writing course, and it seemed, over the course of two months, that I had.


I lingered afterward on the last night of class, and after the professor had spoken with the last couple of stragglers, I stepped up to thank him for helping me improve my promotional writing.


He was quite gracious, and said he'd enjoyed having me as a student. "I probably shouldn't be telling you this," he said, "but I always saved your assignments to read last, because they were so well done. You had a consistent message throughout your marketing campaign, and you found ways to make it interesting and clever."


"That's really nice to hear," I said. "Thank you."


We talked about ways in which I might secure the kind of job transition I sought. In my mind I sensed boundaries crumbling, past misfortunes receding.


I was actually doing things.


###


I agreed to meet Gary for dinner, but only because I planned to tell him that I didn't think we were a match. The server brought our sushi so fast, however, that I hadn't been able to work up to that conversation by the time we were finished eating.


"How about a drink?" he said as we walked up 9th Avenue.


"Okay," I said, figuring I might as well tell him when he was loaded. Never again, I resolved, would I so gamely subscribe to someone's random three-dates-even-if-they're-not-so-good theory.


We repaired to a nearby gay bar, and were not yet through our first round when an attractive guy appeared in front of us.


"Hi," he said. "I'm Jack. Who are you?"


"I'm Frank," I said, offering my hand, and then Gary introduced himself.


Jack was a glibly smooth conversationalist, flitting from question to question. It became apparent that pursuing me was his sole object, but I tried to feign ignorance, and hoped that Gary would not pick up on it.


It was a futile effort, I realized, when Jack leaned forward and told me, "I was staring at you for half an hour before I came up to you. You're the hottest guy in here."


My face blazed, and though what he'd said was, on what level, exactly what I wanted to hear, all I could allow myself was a noncommittal "Thanks."


"So how do you two know each other?" asked Jack, finally managing to look at Gary as well as me.


"From Match.com," I offered pointedly.


"Oh, so you two are on a date?" said Jack, looking straight at me.


"Yes," said Gary.


"A first date?"


"Third," I said.


"Really?" said Jack. "And how is it going?"


My face burned again.


"I'm sorry, am I getting too personal?" said Jack.


"A little," I replied.


"Sorry about that," he said. "Let me buy the next round."


"Okay," said Gary, before I could speak.


Jack at least made a show of being interested in talking to Gary, but kept brushing up against me suggestively when he didn't think Gary was looking. I pretended not to notice.


"So what have you been up to tonight?" asked Jack.


"We had sushi down the block," said Gary, "and then came here."


"Cool," said Jack. "I was actually on a date here, but the guy looked a lot better in his pictures, so I set him loose."


We were spared having to reply to the comment, because at that moment someone else appeared: a slightly supercilious blond whose face I recognized instantly but couldn't place.


"This is my friend Grant," said Jack, and introductions were made all around.


"I think we've met," said Grant when we shook hands.


"I think you're right," I said, "but I can't remember quite when."


"Me, either," he said. "But I think it was years ago."


"That's probably right," I said.


Gary and Grant struck up a conversation. Jack sidled closer to me.


"So how do you know Grant?" he asked.


"I think we chatted online or something," I said. "I honestly can't remember when or where we met. I'm sure it could have been only once."


"I have a confession to make," said Jack, and I sighed internally. "When the date with the other guy didn't work out, I set up something with Grant. But you're way cuter."


"I see," I said.


"Come with me to the bathroom," he murmured in my ear. I shook my head subtly.


"Come on," he repeated, but I gave no indication of hearing him. Whether I found Jack physically attractive or not, and as sure as I was that it wouldn't work out with Gary, I would not hurt Gary's feelings by flirting with a third party while on a date.


There was a belatedly dawning comprehension in Jack's appraising eyes.


"Is my flirting bothering you?" he said.


I glanced at Gary, who wasn't looking in our direction, and then shrugged while leaving my mouth slightly open, as if I were at a loss for words. I was trying to telegraph my honorable intentions while still on the date with Gary, coupled with the fact that I was nevertheless turned on by the attention from Jack even though I couldn't do anything about it at the moment.


These subtleties were lost on Jack, who quickly stepped back a pace. "I'm sorry, man," he said. "I wasn't trying to piss you off."


"Don't worry about it," I said. "It's fine." I tried to make my tone vague enough so that Gary might interpret it as slightly chilly, while Jack would simply find it reassuring.


"I think I'm going," said Grant.


"Oh, okay, buddy," said Jack.


I had a strange inclination to apologize to Grant--for what, I wasn't exactly sure. But of course I did not.


"Another round?" said Jack.


Gary and I exchanged glances. He was waiting for me to speak.


"We should probably get going," I said. "But it was good meeting you. Thanks for the drinks."


"No problem," said Jack. Then Gary turned around to put his empty glass on the bar, and I quickly slipped my card with my number into Jack's hip pocket.


"Well, that was interesting, wasn't it?" I said to Gary when we were out on the sidewalk.


"He was certainly going after you, wasn't he?" he said too cavalierly.


"Seemed like it, yeah."


"I can see how that could be attractive if you're into really aggressive guys," he said. "But to me it's kind of too much."


"You're right," I said. "It kind of is."


"Do you want to have a drink at my place?" said Gary.


"That sounds cool," I said, "but I think I've had enough for one night. I'm a little tired."


My phone buzzed minutes later, and within half an hour Jack and I were making out in the middle of another bar. Yes, I was going to hell.


###


What with work and my classes and my many, many trips to the library in the course of my endless research project on the life and work of an illustrator, I hadn't been getting out as much as I should have; my mind, I felt, was becoming less outward-looking than it ought to be. So one Sunday in late August I stepped off a crosstown bus in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Pigeons scattered around my feet as I began my typically purposeful stride up the endless steps.


I found myself in pleasant reveries as I made my way through a lovely exhibit covering photography's first century, peering dimly backward through time at gorgeous strange manipulations of light and dark. Eventually I meandered through the complexly frivolous superheroes costume exhibit. My eyes passed casually over a couple holding hands, and for a fleeting instant I wondered what that was like, to walk through a museum with someone holding hands.


I'd never done that. There were so many utterly ordinary things I'd never done. I'd written novels and confronted violent bigotry and, six and a half years before, left my former life behind by walking onto a plane with little more than a one-way ticket and a stubborn belief in myself, but I'd never seen a changing of the seasons with someone, never had anyone point out the one white hair in the middle of my right sideburn, never brought home the wrong kind of toilet paper, never ruined the dinner I was making for two. Yet what I felt was not really despondency; rather, it was a curiosity about what I had not experienced. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing that I hadn't been in a string of relationships-for-relationship's-sake, despite my occasional yearnings for connection.


My thoughts returned to my immediate surroundings. I stared into the blank eyes of a Batman mask, and glimpsed for an instant in my mind's eye the blurred visage of my alter ego Frank Beekman.


Leaving the exhibit, I started across the European Sculpture Court, smiling faintly as I tilted my face slightly back to catch the gentle sunlight through the glass roof. I would walk toward the back wall of windows to look out over Central Park. I turned my gaze forward again and Roger was approaching in the opposite direction from the far end of the hall, talking to a man and woman pushing a stroller.


My head swiveled right just as I sensed that he might be turning his head to catch a glimpse of me. I didn't look again to determine whether he'd seen me, I didn't want to make eye contact with Roger for the rest of my life after what had happened, I spun instinctively toward the nearest exit, I almost rammed into the linked hands of another happy couple, red rover red rover send Beekman right over, I was through the high archway and my torso lurched expertly to one side to avoid a toddler in stumbling sneakers, I was in the hall of medieval art with my hand trembling against a glass case, I pulled my hand back so as not to smudge the case and dug my fingers into my side to steady them.


This was part of what I had always meant about New York's being accidental. It didn't seem quite right, it never had, it was so easy to get lost in this city, to lose someone, but one could never quite be certain because everyone and everything was so tightly compressed, two elements could be forced back into contact again at any moment, it almost seemed as though that should foster some kind of intimacy but it was merely corpses unintentionally dumped into the same grave, I didn't want Roger's cold dead hand on mine, I didn't want it to bother me enough to have made an Olympic-worthy sprint through watching crowds.


I composed myself, walked resolutely past the suits of armor. On Madison Avenue I would catch the bus back home, where I'd make myself an early dinner and eat it with a feeling of relief that there was no answering clink of silverware across the table, no one I'd have to talk to about my quiet afternoon at the Met.


###


Lighting a fourth or fifth match, I crouched down again and brought the tiny flame near my other hand, which was groping for a telltale notch.


"I think that's it," I said to myself, and sighed. The tire had blown out in the middle of New Jersey. About 60 miles outside Manhattan I'd felt the dreaded shimmying begin, and had taken the next highway exit. Pulling into a remote hotel parking lot, I'd parked under a streetlamp and closely examined each tire as I prodded it with my toe. All had looked fine. But as I'd returned to the access road and come within sight of the entrance ramp, the rental car had shuddered violently and a vivid flapping noise struck my eardrums. The right rear tire was shredded.


I might have expected it; the car had clearly not been checked properly before being handed over to me two days before. There was trash inside from the previous driver, and the trunk, I'd discovered halfway to my upstate conference, already contained a busted tire.


So here I was in the middle of nowhere by the side of a dark highway, with half a book of matches and no flashlight, attempting to find the jack notch on a strange vehicle. It wasn't as though I hadn't changed any number of tires in my time, but never in such adverse circumstances.


At last I was relatively certain I'd aligned the jack properly, and began tediously twirling the handle to inch the car upward. The tire was nearly off the ground when a car pulled up behind me and started its hazard lights flashing. A silhouette approached.


"Is everything okay?" asked a tall guy in jeans and a T-shirt and a light jacket.


"Yeah," I said, scarcely looking up from working the jack. Once stubbornly independent, always stubbornly independent. Then I remembered what Phil had said about being an island, and my inside softened slightly, and I said, "It's just a pain in the ass doing this in the dark."


"Here, get the spare," he said, commandeering the jack and lifting the car the last few inches while I retrieved the spare tire from where I'd angrily flung it, along with the previous driver's flat tire, about 20 minutes before.


It turned out he was a state trooper just getting off work, and while technically I'd been doing okay without his help, it was kind of nice to know that somebody actually gave a fuck.


"I'm John," he said, reaching out his grimy hand to shake my grimy hand.


"Frank," I said.


"Where are you headed?" he asked.


"New York," I said, shrugging as if to say, Accidents.


###


My insurance pays for 30 psychotherapy sessions in a calendar year, and I used the last of them the day before the presidential election.


"I guess we only have about 45 minutes to solve all my problems," I said, settling on the couch. My therapist smiled gently.


"I can't believe it's the end of the year," I said.


"How do you feel about it?" he asked.


I stared into the near distance, allowing my eyes to lose focus. "I don't know," I said. "Okay, I think. I think so, yeah. I mean, not everything went according to plan, exactly, but that's not a surprise by now."


"Are you thinking of anything in particular?"


I smiled lopsidedly. "Well, I had kind of believed on some level that I would be in the MFA program by now. And that, I don't know, somehow by the time I turned 30 I would have figured out how to date someone in a non-fucked-up way. Or hell, even in a fucked-up way. My last serious date was with the town drunk, and I picked up another guy the same evening."


"It can be rough here," he said.


"Oh, come on, don't let me off the hook that easily," I said.


"Someone has to."


I smiled despite myself. "Really, though. I know I'm not Mr. Warm-and-Fuzzy. I know I don't make it easy to get close to me. But... I feel like every time I reach out to someone, it blows up in my face. And what's worse, I feel like I'm so much worse at it than I used to be. Like I'm getting more inept all the time."


"Do you really think so?"


"I don't know," I said. "I just--there are so few people I can honestly trust now. I miss Peter. Things haven't been right with him since what happened two years ago in L.A., and I miss having a best friend."


Saying those words triggered another thought that stopped me cold for a second. "I guess I just realized that I also lost my other best friend," I said. "I know it will sound cheesy, but it was my mom. She was always there to listen to everything--she wanted to hear it, God help her. But when she got depressed I couldn't talk to her anymore. There've been so many times--the MFA rejections, the problems with my insane boss at work, turning 30--when I've needed her, but she was gone for weeks at a time, and when she did resurface it was only for a few minutes, I could tell she could scarcely bear to talk on the phone. And I couldn't help her, and she couldn't help me." My eyes swam and stung. "It's been kind of a hard year."


"Yes, it sounds like it," he said quietly.


I sat there for a second, mourning both of them, before I spoke again. "It's okay. At least I trust myself enough most of the time to have a grasp on who I am. In the end that's all you can really know. That's something, isn't it?"


He nodded. "And what about the good things that happened this year?"


"Work certainly isn't perfect," I said, "but the promotion, definitely. Which I worked very hard for. And people take me more seriously now as a result. But--I mean, I don't have to tell you this again, but my boss makes things incredibly difficult for me. So much inconsistency, and I don't really have any confidence in her abilities. But I think it has taught me how to act more unilaterally and to trust my own instincts even when they clash with authority." I smiled. "Not that I didn't know before how to disagree with someone in authority. Damn, I need a break. I only took three or four vacation days this year."


"Have you decided whether you're going on that trip you talked about?"


I sighed. "I'm seriously thinking about booking it. It feels a little crazy--the people I've mentioned it to think I'm nuts for wanting to go there--but I think it would be a really fascinating country to visit. And I do need to get away pretty badly. I just--my life has become so routine. I need something to look forward to."


"It sounds like it could be a good change of pace for you."


"Yeah," I said. "And you know, I'm thinking about embodying the definition of insanity." He looked blank, and I continued, "You know, doing the same thing again expecting a different result. I realized that my recommendation letters and GRE score and all that remain on file for a year, so I think I'm going to reapply for an MFA. God help me."


He nodded. "That sounds like a good thing to do."


"I mean, it's just another pipe dream," I said. "My chances are better of being struck by lightning. But why change now?"


###


A casual friend of mine, the one who'd been kind to me when I had my Victorian-wife haircut, had his birthday party at a bar in Hell's Kitchen the weekend before Christmas, and though it was in the 20s and snowing heavily, well, he had been sweet to me at a low point in my life, so I bundled up in my dad's old peacoat and ventured out.


The birthday boy had rented out a private room upstairs, and there was quite a crowd by the time I arrived. He saw me as I approached across the room, and greeted me with a kiss and a slightly unsteady embrace.


"You look great," I said.


"Thanks," he replied. "So do you."


"Thank you," I said. "Is there somewhere I can put my coat?"


"On the couches there," he said, indicating an area separate from the rest of the upstairs room. I put my coat on a chair and went to the bar for a drink.


"So are you going back to Texas for Christmas?" he asked, putting an arm around me.


"Yeah," I said, "I'm flying out a couple of days before. My parents finally finished building their retirement home way out in the boonies, and we're spending the holidays out there."


"What part of the boonies, exactly?" asked Birthday Boy, tilting back his head to drain his martini.


"Well," I said, using my straw to knock the lime slice into my gin and tonic and giving it a few stirs before tossing the straw onto the bar, as I always did, "it's about an hour and a half out of San Antonio. Outside of San Antonio is Kerrville, and outside of that is...."


"The boonies," he said.


"Well, that's skipping a couple of steps, but pretty much."


My leg prickled; it was my vibrating phone. Phil had texted: did I want to go out in Hell's Kitchen?


Already there, I texted back, telling him where to meet me.


By the time Phil arrived I was dancing with a cute fellow I'd met months before at Birthday Boy's Cinco de Mayo party.


"Hey!" I said to Phil, whose arms flew wide to hug me. "Just when I thought it couldn't get any better."


"Hail yeah," he said. "Where do I put my jacket?"


"Put it with mine," I said, taking his coat and dumping it on the same chair where mine was. "Why don't we go get a drink and you can tell me what's been going on?"


His mind was filled with the frustrations of his job.


"That's what the holidays are for," I said.


"What about you?" he said.


I shrugged. "Did I tell you I applied to the MFA program again?"


"No shit," he said.


"I decided I wasn't happy with any of the stories I had," I said, "so I decided a few weeks before the deadline to write a new one. I found myself struggling with it, and I was up until 2 AM the night before it was due working on it. Falling asleep at the keyboard, quite literally. Then at the last minute I decided it wasn't quite right, so I used an older piece of writing. I mean, it's something I've gone back to over the years and polished up, so that's probably a good thing, even if I did write it a long time ago. It was due by 5 PM, and I filed the electronic application at 4:03."


"Here's to MFAs," he said, toasting me with his glass.


"So was that the birthday boy you were with?" asked Phil as we returned to the couch area where people were dancing.


"No," I said, "that's him," and I pointed to where he was dancing. Birthday Boy saw me, pulled me over to him, and proceeded to grind against me. Shrugging slightly, I responded in kind until he started stumbling a little.


"I'm going to finish my drink," I said, patting him gently on the arm. As I appropriated my glass from Phil, I glanced over at the chair where I'd laid our coats. I saw Phil's coat, but not mine. My heart lurched, I tasted metal.


"Oh, no," I said. "My coat is gone."


I made a complete circuit of the room, going through all the coats on all the couches and chairs. I looked behind and under every piece of furniture. Nothing.


"It's really gone?" said Phil.


"Yes," I said. "I'm sure of it. Fuck. It was my dad's officer peacoat from when he was in the Navy. My winter coat for the past 10 years. Fuck."


"What's wrong?" asked Birthday Boy, who had wandered past on his way to the bar. I filled him in.


"Oh, no," he said. "Did you ask at the coat check?"


"What coat check?" I said.


He pointed down a hall I hadn't noticed before. "Over there. We haven't really been using it, but there is one."


I strode down the hall, looking left and right to see if anyone was holding my coat. The coat check attendant shook his head when I asked whether anyone had turned in a peacoat with gold buttons.


"A lot of coats get stolen around here," he said. "You should have checked it."


"If I'd known you were here, I might have," I said with a frown. "Do you have a card or something in case I want to check back later about my coat?"


He handed me a business card, which I pocketed without looking at it.


Birthday Boy and the cute guy I'd been dancing with had been canvassing the party to ask about my coat, but everyone had said they didn't know anything about it.


"Sorry, dude," said Phil, looking grim. "Maybe it'll turn up."


I shook my head. "My scarf was right on top of the coat. I really don't think anyone would have mistaken it for theirs. Some fucker stole my dad's coat. It's gone, Phil. I'm not going to get it back." And, although I did check back with the bar several times over the next month and post an ad in the Missed Connections section of Craigslist, my unfortunate prediction was borne out.


Birthday Boy was profusely apologetic, and insisted that I wear his jacket home. It was much lighter than the peacoat, and my teeth chattered as Phil and I ducked into a pizza place to get a slice. He bought me one, and I chewed it forlornly.


"What's your dad going to say?" asked Phil, as I dabbed at my lips with a napkin.


"He's not going to disown me or anything," I said, "but he'll find this upsetting. I mean, I'm certainly upset. What son of a bitch would stoop so low as to steal someone's coat when it's freezing cold and snowing? And when it's the weekend before Christmas? I mean, fuck."


"It's shitty, all right," he said.


"I'm not looking forward to this conversation," I said. "I already have to talk to him about that awful email he sent me. And now I have to tell him about this."


"Can't you just not tell him?" Phil asked, reasonably enough.


"No," I said. "He entrusted me with that peacoat 10 years ago. At the very least I owe him the truth."


Outside the snow fell and fell.


###


When I finally reached the front of the checkout line, the cashier scanned the bar code on the antiperspirant I was buying. Then she paused, peering at the label over the top of her horn-rimmed glasses. Unscrewing the cap, she took a big whiff and said, "You're going to smell good!"


I was back in Texas, all right.


My mother and grandmother were waiting in the car when I emerged from one of the few grocery stores in the little town closest to my parents' house. On the drive from San Antonio we'd stopped at a Dairy Queen so I could satisfy my lust for a basketful of chicken fried steak fingers with cream gravy, French fries, and Texas toast. As I'd eaten, the heads of a buffalo and a longhorn had stared impassively at me from their places on the opposite wall.


"How do you eat all that and stay so skinny?" Mom asked, sipping a Coke.


"Laxatives," I mumbled through a half-masticated mouthful.


###


Squinting through the sight, I steadied my aim and pulled the trigger.


About 50 yards away a tuna can leaped with a clang from its perch on a rock, its label shorn off.


"Nice shot, Frank!" said Dad.


"Thanks," I said, tempted to upend the air rifle and blow on the end of the barrel but deciding it would be too showy. I pumped the pellet gun 10 times before handing it back to him and reaching for my Shiner Bock.


I wasn't a Second Amendment groupie or anything, but after two days in my parents' not-huge house with roughly 15 people, I didn't need much of an excuse to step outside, even if it was something that entailed bullets and belching.


My options were limited. The house was so isolated that, to get cell phone reception, I had to drive 10 miles into town for even a weak signal; my parents didn't yet have a landline or Internet service. A guy can play only so much Guitar Hero before the very words "Steely Dan" prompt a seizure.


The most unfortunate part was that, despite the isolation, the experience hadn't been particularly relaxing. My parents had put me in a strange sleeping area at the top of an extremely narrow winding staircase, up which I'd had to lug my suitcase. At the top of the staircase you walked straight into a tiny "room," no bigger and perhaps even smaller than my bedroom in Manhattan, with no door. There was just space enough for a small desk and an air mattress on the floor. I opened what I thought was the closet door, only to encounter the dark attic beyond.


"Isn't it neat?" asked Mom.


"Well, sure," I said.


I didn't need that much space, really, but it seemed odd to be all the way out in the middle of nowhere and still feel about as cramped as I did in New York. The real issue, however, was the lack of a door and the fact that the room was just off the kitchen and the living area, meaning that I heard clearly every single thing going on downstairs. The Niece and Niece II, sorry to say, were early and loud risers. This was, I recognized, fairly normal kid behavior, but I had already been operating on a significant sleep deficit when I left New York and was vexed not to be able to make up for that now.


The Niece was in a willful phase, resulting in a lot of stern warnings from Cleo, while the Niece II was at a stage when Cleo literally could not take three steps across the room for a moment without Niece II beginning to scream, "Mommy Mommy Mommy!" I have been extremely candid in the past about not exactly being a born uncle, and, although I spent some time playing with the Nieces, I found myself retreating often to the garage to look through old boxes of my stuff that I hadn't seen in years. There were books, and old achievement certificates, and letters from old flames and high-school friends. The latter things were what I lingered over longest. Letters, I marveled to myself. Nobody sends letters anymore.


I was skimming over a note, mailed from Mexico the summer before my senior year by the only girl I'd ever propositioned, when Dad entered the garage.


"There's a lot of stuff here," he said. "Want to take any of it home?"


"Hmm, I don't have much room in my bag, but we'll see."


He shook his head. "I can't believe how much stuff you guys have."


"Not as much as you have," I said with a shrug, folding the letter and slipping it back in its discolored envelope.


"That's true, that's true," he said, rubbing his chin absently.


I exhaled through my nose. "Dad, do you want the good news first, or the bad?"


After a one-beat pause, his eyes turned to me and said, as I'd known he would, "The bad."


"Someone stole your old Navy peacoat from me."


"Oh, really?" he said. "Who?"


"I don't know," I said. "I went to my friend's birthday party at a bar in Hell's Kitchen, and I put the coat in a very particular place, and it disappeared, even though I wasn't far away. I looked everywhere, and I asked the coat check guy, and there were a couple of people asking everybody there if they'd seen it. I've called the manager of the bar every day since to see if anyone turned it in, and I even put an ad online, but it's gone. And my scarf was right on top of it, so I doubt somebody just mistook it for theirs. I don't have much hope of getting it back. I'm so sorry, Dad. You earned that coat, and you entrusted me with it, and it was a great coat. It kept me really warm through all those winters. It was something of yours. You know, if there'd been a fire in my apartment, that's the one thing I would have rescued."


"I appreciate that," said my father, visibly affected. "I guess what I always say is that it's all just things, and in the grand scheme things aren't what matter."


"I know," I said. "And I figured you'd say that. But I'm going to keep trying to find it."


"It's nice to hear it means that much to you," he said.


"Of course it does."


"Are you ready to go back in the house?" he asked.


"Yeah," I said, putting the binder of letters back in the box.


"So what's the good news?" Dad asked as we walked down the breezeway between the garage and the house.


"Oh," I said, and I told him I'd booked my overseas flight and which country I'd be visiting.


"Really?" he said. "Why there?"


"Because it sounded interesting," I replied. "And it's not somewhere that everybody goes. I have all this vacation time I'm not using, and I wanted to do something different."


"That's different, all right," he said. Then he told me that his brother--my uncle with the eyepatch and the 250-pound dogs, the guy I'd met only once in my entire life--had been stationed there in his military days and had fucked a local girl in a guard tower.


"Lovely," I said as my father opened the refrigerator door and handed me a beer.


"What are you talking about?" asked Mom, entering the kitchen.


"Did Frank tell you where he's going?"


"No," she said, trying to sound casual, but the anxiety with which she always reacted at the prospect of new and unexpected information was apparent in her eyes.


"Why there?" she said, after I'd spilled the beans, and I patiently explained it all again, slightly vexed that they didn't really seem to share my enthusiasm.


Fuck it. I was going to get on a plane by myself and set off on an adventure. It would be good for me.


I padded into the living room and sat down next to Marc on the couch, sipping my beer. Mom followed behind me and said, "I know you guys are really smart and creative"--I rolled my eyes before turning toward her--"so I need you to help me with a fun game that my friend Irene had us play at her holiday party. She had little slips of paper with clues for Christmas carols on them. Like 'The dozen 24-hour periods of Yuletide.' Do you know what that means?"


"No," I said, taking a giant chug and stifling a belch. "That's way too difficult for me to figure out."


"Oh, shut up," she said, slapping my arm. She handed me a clump of small green slips of paper, half of which I dumped in Marc's lap.


"This is lame," I said to him when she was out of earshot. He shrugged.


"All right," I continued. "If she wants cute little clues, she'll get cute little clues."


###


We had our big Christmas Day dinner on the afternoon of the 25th. I was sitting next to my cousin Eleanor's new husband, whom I'd never met. He seemed nice and was actually kind of cute, but I didn't have too much in common with a small-town physical therapist. We seemed to be doing fine, however, with pleasantries.


"Time for our game," said Mom, circling the table and holding a Santa hat out of which each person drew a green slip.


Marc, unlike me, had kept all of his clues clean. I waited patiently for one of the good ones.


"'Alcoholic German animal'?" said my mystified grandmother.


There was a bit of discussion around the table, but no one could figure it out.


I finally put them out of their misery. "'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.'"


"Rudolph wasn't a drunk!" Mom replied.


"Says you," I shrugged.


My aunt had a confused look on her face, and I knew she had probably drawn my pièce de résistance.


"What do you think it means?" she murmured to my uncle, showing him the paper. He snorted and shook his head.


"Read it out loud," said my grandmother.


My aunt looked around at the dozen or so of us to make sure that the Nieces had left the table. She glanced at the paper again and read, "'Orgasm upon the transparent twelve.'"


The faces around the table were uniformly blank.


"Okay," I finally said. "'It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.'"


My aunt, who has always had a ribald sense of humor, burst into laughter, and a few of the others snickered. Mom just shook her head.


"You know," I said, "that was a fun game."


###


On Saturday the rest of the relatives went back to San Antonio, so it was just Mom and me in the car on the drive to church the next morning.


"So how are you doing now?" I asked.


"I'm much better," she said. "Frank, it was so strange. I couldn't do anything. I didn't want to eat, or go anywhere, or talk much to anyone. Your dad and I would drive for two and a half hours between Corpus Christi and San Antonio without me saying anything. I didn't want to get out of bed, there was nothing for me to really look forward to. Is that what it was like for you when you were depressed?"


Having always tried to spare her from the unpleasant details of my mental illness, I paused as I considered how to answer. "Sometimes, " I said. "Self-motivation could be difficult. But you're definitely not depressed anymore?"


"No," she said, "I'm basically back to normal. But the stress of the depression did make my hair fall out, and it's pretty thin in places. My doctor said it just has to grow back, and it could take about a year." I stole a glance at her scalp for a second. "I just kept thinking about how it must have been for you that year you were unemployed, when you were up in New York by yourself and dealing with all those rejections."


"It wasn't easy," I said, deliberating how honest to be. "I don't know. There were days when I could barely get out of bed, let alone leave the apartment. But I would force myself. Sometimes I would have to talk to myself. I'd say, 'Okay, Frank, you're going to pick up your left shoe and then put your foot in it, and now you're going to tie your shoelace. Now you're going to take your right shoe and put your foot in it, and tie your right shoelace. Then you stand up, and pick up your keys and wallet and put them in your pocket, and now you walk to the front door and open it and go through it.' I don't really know what else to say about it."


"But it's not that way anymore?" she said, studiedly casual.


"I'm fine, Mom," I said. "I'm okay."


"If that ever happens again, you call me, all right?" she said. "Or anything else. If you go into the hospital like when you had strep, let me know and I'll fly up there to take care of you. You didn't even tell me you'd been in the hospital until a week later."


"Okay."


"Promise?" she asked.


"Yes," I said, trying to lie convincingly. It was far too late to be a child again.


###


After church we had lunch at a big Mexican restaurant with its own Starbucks, a video game arcade, and an animatronic Davy Crockett who sang something unintelligible from the top of an Alamo facade every half hour. On the way home my mother rode with Marc and Cleo and the Nieces, and Dad and I took the other car.


"Do you want to drive?" he asked.


I shrugged. "Sure, why not?" Taking the keys, I settled in the driver's seat and adjusted the rearview mirror before starting the engine.


"So what are you going to do out here once you retire?" I asked, pulling out of the parking lot.


"There's still a lot of work to do on the house," he said. "Boxes to unpack. And some more trees to clear out on the property, down toward the river."


"Will you be making a lot of things in your workshop?" I asked, steering carefully around a sharp bend in the narrow two-lane road.


"Probably so," he said. "Do you like to build things?"


"I don't think anyone would really want anything I could make," I replied. "I'm not very good at that sort of thing."


"I was always interested in figuring out how things are put together and trying to reproduce that," he said. "I didn't know if that was how your mind worked."


"Not really," I said. "I'm more verbal than--I guess spatial is what you'd call it. But that's great that you can do that."


I made a turn onto the road leading to the house. We had several miles to go.


"I know this isn't your favorite subject any more than it is mine," I began, "but I think it might be useful for us to talk about what happened in that email exchange a couple of months ago."


"What email?" Dad said.


"The one about Obama and homosexuality that you forwarded to me," I said.


"Well, I wasn't trying to offend you," he said. "I didn't really think it had anything to do with gay people. I honestly forgot about the homosexuality part."


"I know you weren't trying to offend me," I said. "But the fact that you could forget about that part of the email, when it really did say some pretty awful things, is a deep concern for me. I mean, you witnessed everything I had to go through when I came out, and you've known about it for almost 15 years. The guy who wrote that email was being homophobic, and if you're not really seeing that, or why I found it upsetting, then I'm worried that you could be influenced by that kind of ideology on some level."


"I was just trying to have a dialogue with you," he said. "But you cut that off and said we couldn't talk about politics or religion."


"Right," I said. "Because we both seem to get upset about that kind of thing when it comes up. So we talk about other things, then. Or we have a dialogue based on what we say to each other, not just forwarding on the words of someone else."


Then came the worst of it.


"The reason I don't call or email you much is because you're offended by so many things," he said.


I shook my head. "I don't think that's true." But given his tone, the belief he seemed to hold in this grossly unfair generalization, there seemed no point in arguing my case. Whether he consciously saw it or not, he was dumping the blame for our dysfunctional relationship on me, a fact that would make me furious in hindsight. It wasn't okay for me to express any feelings that he was remotely uncomfortable with; I was hysterical, the madwoman in the attic, a voice to be dismissed when it could not be wholly avoided. In the moment, however, all I felt was profoundly sad.


I had known the truth, in a way, years ago, but I hadn't analyzed it fully. My mother had basically told me that my father didn't read much because he felt if you weren't doing something with your hands, it was a waste of time. "Ah," I'd said to myself, "so my life, which is basically devoted to books...does it seem like a waste of time to him?" But this wasn't the most crucial lesson to be taken from what she'd said. What I'd finally realized was that, essentially, my father mistrusted words, the very things that I consider the sole vehicle to truth.


Dad and I would never speak the same language. All these years I had held out hope that someday I could bridge the gap between us. I had done what I could. But it was time for me to stop looking over my shoulder and go on alone, and perhaps to find a way of mourning something that had never really existed outside my own overly optimistic imagination.


###


One of the bright spots of 2008 was that, after falling out of touch for a while, I'd grown closer to Brian as well as his best friend, Justine. They'd kind of taken me under their wing as I started to reemerge yet again from my habitual shell. In the summer we'd gone to movies and made excursions to the beach and gone drinking for free at the special events Brian organized for work. When Justine found out that I was planning to stay home on New Year's Eve and make a pot of chili, she inisisted that I go out dancing with them instead. "You can be my date," she'd said. The crotchety voice in my head said that I was getting too old for this sort of thing, but I ignored it.


By midnight Brian and his boyfriend and Justine and I were on the dance floor, having already worked up a sweat, poised to ring in the new year with plastic flutes of cheap champagne.


"Goodbye, fuckin' 2008!" said Justine, as Brian looked at his watch and nodded. We bumped glasses all around and swigged it down. Brian and his boyfriend kissed, and I leaned in to smack lips with Justine.


Within half an hour Brian and his boyfriend were sullenly refusing to speak to each other, but eventually the alcohol wore off and all was resolved and we scurried through the cabless cold toward the L, which was not a short walk.


"Why is it so damn cold?" said Brian's boyfriend, shivering as we walked side by side about a half-block ahead of Brian and Justine, who were still back at the last corner scanning for a taxi.


"Let's huddle for warmth," I said, and we put our arms around each other's shoulders. I rubbed his arm briskly with my fist.


"We'd better not let Brian see us," he said.


"Don't tell me you seriously mean that," I said.


"I don't know," he said.


"Oh, fine then, freeze to death," I said lightly, disengaging from him.


We parted ways at the L as they headed deeper into Brooklyn and I turned toward Manhattan again. It was as anticlimactic as any other December 31 I'd ever experienced, and it was terribly cold out, but it was also the first New Year's Eve in at least two or three years that I hadn't spent alone. And while I hadn't been concerned about ringing in 2009 at home by myself, spending the evening in the company of friends had been an unexpected gift.


Much like the barf that trickled around my feet when someone vomited spectacularly in my subway car.


###


The first couple of months of 2009 were a blur, with my continuing to pick up the slack at work while we remained understaffed, and also trying to move toward a conclusion of my outside research project. In my few spare moments, I worked on Entry 250 and read up on my vacation destination. With increasing friction between my boss and me, the prospect of having a week off assumed even more importance. I needed to clear my head, to be free of grousing.


Before I quite knew it, the day of my departure, which had seemed so distant, arrived. I reached JFK about three hours before my flight, and, as I'd anticipated, had a good two and a half hours to kill after passing through security. I ambled through the duty-free shop, looked out the window at planes being loaded and unloaded, sat reading until the odor of an unhygienic European couple drove me away. Airports were merely a means to an end, but what a dreary means.


At last my flight began to board. When my turn came I handed my passport and boarding pass to the employee at the gate. She scanned the ticket, and handed back the stub and the passport.


"Takk fyrir," I said carefully. Our eyes met for a second, and then, nodding politely, I grasped the handle of my suitcase and walked through the gate.

[To be continued in Part Two.]

2:15 AM

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