Born on the Edge of an Adjective
I stood and went to him by the sink and put my arms around his waist, rested my chin on his shoulder. The heat of him, the scent of him, something a little like salt and a little like honey, the unbelievable solidity of his body was amplified by Neil’s claim of not-being.
“You’re here,” I said. “And I may be a fool, but I definitely see someone where you’re standing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t mean physically. I mean inside. Inside my head.” He tapped two fingers against his skull.
“That’s na�ve nihilism,” I answered, slowly removing my arms from his waist. I turned to leave him to the dishes, his forearms submerged in soapy water, and then he asked what I saw in him. Right then, at that moment.
“What do you see?”
What did I see? I didn’t know if I’d be able to tell him, but he was calling my bluff. Had I really been paying attention? He stood before me with a plate in one hand and a dish rag in the other, waiting for my answer, which I found was ready on the tip of my tongue. Sometimes I surprise myself.
I told him he was outlandish, a loner, a hothouse flower who would wither if removed from his greenhouse. “This city,” I said, “is your center. From here the sun can reach you. You rely on its depression, its darkness, its anonymity to the rest of the world. People don’t even know this place exists. Some of those people live here. I’ve made up a slogan for Youngstown,” I told him. “Youngstown: Why fix it if it isn’t broken?”
But it was broken, is broken. No money, no jobs. This is what you call an economic depression. An economic depression means there’s no money, and people are depressed about it. Buildings haven’t been updated since the seventies, since the steel mills closed down. Sidewalks buckle, graffiti looms, vacant lots appear daily, filled with patches of yellow-brown grass and shattered beer bottles, and still the city will not change. Here, entropy is the golden rule. For some people that’s attractive.
Neil didn’t say anything. He continued washing up, sulking silently, his back bent over the sink, his head lowered, his entire body a question mark.
How to tally, to compose, to bring together answers? And what to do with them once they’ve been found?
“Are you working?” I ask when he calls me.
“I’m doing some carpentry for the dancer,” he says.
“Is she paying you?”
“Of course she’s paying me, Marco. I’m not a fool.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You implied.”
“Forget it.”
“I will.”
“Good.”
They’ve been seeing each other for two weeks now, maybe more, Neil and the flamingo. Her name, he’s informed me, is Margaret Stanbottom. Not quite what I’d imagined for a dancer, but I can never predict who Neil will drag home. Or in this case, who he’ll follow home.
They’re living together, in her half of a Victorian house on Valencia. She’s very wealthy, according to Neil, and she keeps him in clothes and well-fed, amongst other luxuries. She bought him the cell phone, which now has a message that goes something like: “I’m not here, but nothing changes. Leave me a message. That helps a lot.”
Helps who? Helps Neil feel real, although not anyone would understand that. It’s code, like mandarin poetry, like Tori Amos lyrics. It’s Neil giving his callers an emotional update. I don’t leave messages. The cell phone will list my number as having called him. That’s enough to tell him I care.
He and Margaret are living life simply, he tells me. Their lives have become slightly hermetic. Excepting her dance recitals and his weekend pool league at the Shamrock, they spend most of their time at home. Margaret’s dancing and Neil’s pool league are the last remains of their social beings. They’ve agreed that each of them should keep hold of something outside of their relationship.
The Shamrock, house of eighties music that it is, is Neil’s choice for keeping contact with the world. The thing about the Shamrock, though, is that more than half of its patrons are from Youngstown or Cleveland.
“It’s a kind of halfway house for transplanted Northeastern Ohioans,” Neil jokes.
