The People Who Report More Stress Read online

  When you return, your patron has taken your seat. You change course and head for the door, but he spins around on his stool with great ease. “Why the rush?”

  “I’m late to meet my husband,” you say, even though your dinner reservations aren’t for another hour, and the restaurant is only a few blocks away.

  “I guess all the gorgeous ones are taken,” he says with the grin of a man who doesn’t lose.

  Up close, he’s objectively attractive. Broad-shouldered. Late-fifties, not the vague early seventies you’d suspected at a distance. He’s more than fit; possibly, strapping. He’s Omar Sharif in hue and smolder. His large watch, a lattice of silver and gold wrapped around his wrist, is endearingly anachronistic. You wonder if sexy and avuncular are mutually exclusive. You’ve always been attracted to older men, even if you don’t have daddy issues—in fact, your dad is great and you get along quite well, and except for those complicated late-teen years, you always have. You believe older men can appreciate beauty in ways that contemporaries cannot. To be clear, you’re into men who are older than you, not necessarily old men. This man is somewhere in between.

  “What are you going to eat?”

  “Cuban,” you pull out of thin air.

  “Oh. Where?”

  “I didn’t pick the place. I’d have to look.” Another lie.

  “I ask because, at some point or another, I’ve eaten at every Cuban restaurant in the city,” he says with a subtle accent. Then he smiles, revealing neat, white teeth, like piano keys. They’re real, you assume.

  “Which is your favorite?” This—asking for authentic food recommendations—is something you do. The circumstances don’t need to change your ways.

  “Well, I haven’t been for some time, but it’s across town, on Christopher,” he says.

  You feign ignorance. A familiar prejudice creeps up, and you’re forced to remind yourself that New York Cubans aren’t Miami Cubans capable of tipping national elections unfavorably. Besides, this man might not be Cuban.

  “I don’t want to keep you,” he says and leans forward, resting his hand on his knee. It’s a virile hand, attached to a brawny forearm—this man could race up a tree faster than you. You feel simultaneously safe and inadequate. You stare for longer than you should. “I live upstairs,” he continues, like a highly specialized surgeon. “How late are you?”

  His eyes double in size, leeching the remaining light from an already drab room. He rises onto his sporty black loafers—he’s not quite an inch shorter than you. You two are slow-dancing in a tenebrous and foggy hallucination, like Maria and Tony in West Side Story. You feel pretty. You haven’t been in this situation since the second Bush’s first term, and you’re amazed at how familiar it is and at how quickly your blood is flowing. Your time-tested abilities to be evasive and witty have abandoned you. You purse your lips slightly, slide your tongue across your teeth, and squint. A faint tremble appears. You struggle to remember your husband. Beautiful man, but he’s not a character in this vignette. You make your peace with that. “I’m not late at all,” you say. You didn’t have to say that.

  “And whose acquaintance do I have the pleasure of making?” he asks.

  “Ricky,” you respond although it’s not your name.

  An extended hand materializes. “Mucho gusto, Ricky. Me llamo Guy,” he says. You don’t believe him, but you also don’t care.

  He leads the way out of the bar, up a brick stoop, then two doors, then two flights. As you climb, it crosses your mind to text your location to someone, just in case you’re never seen again, but you can’t decide to whom, and you’re not sincerely afraid.

  His apartment is long, white, and narrow for fourteen steps, then bursting bookshelves, floor to ceiling. Everywhere else: postmodern stacks—more books, some magazines—including a few skyscrapers on the glossy cherry wood floor. His living room is a fire hazard, but it’s spotless and the chaos is perfectly curated. One pile is waist high and appears to be all astronomy books. Atop another is a self-help guide, unimaginatively titled, Self-Help. You begin to judge him and wonder if this is reason enough for you to leave. You glance at your phone.

  From behind, his chin finds its way onto your shoulder. A delectable bouquet of cologne and deodorant feeds your senses in ways that a semicolon never could. His lips graze your ear with precision and heat—you wonder what he does for a living. He picks up the book you were only just eyeing. “She’s very good. Have you read her work?” Side to side, your head turns, slowly caressing the prickliness of his shadow against your cheek. “If you’re into short stories …” he says and taps the book against the air, before returning it to its rightful place. You feel stupid but grateful you erred toward silence moments earlier.

  “Have you seen Venus?” he whispers directly into your ear, making every hair on your body stand. “She reappeared last week. If it were night, I would show you.”

  It takes a moment for you to realize that this isn’t a figurative conversation. “Even with all of the city’s lights?” you respond.

  “That,” he says, and points to an enormous black telescope by the farthest window, “is very powerful. You should come by one evening.”

  His lips devour your neck, and his hands travel assuredly across the rest. You bite down on your tongue to quell an unspecified chattering: Is this regret or possibility? Are you afraid or excited? When he pulls away and disappears, you look back briefly at the long hallway that led you here.

  * * *

  You’re on an imperfectly painted bench in Tompkins Square Park, combing your hair with your tears and your fingers. You need to pull yourself together. A disconsolate brown man in an unabashedly gentrified neighborhood is the beginning of a below-the-fold news item. You take a deep breath, look out at the orange sky, and scan the park. It’s busy, harmlessly peculiar, and casually segregated: New York City. You’re staring at a postcard. You’re always staring at a postcard, it seems.

  What have you done? How could you have ruined something so beautiful? How will you ever look at your husband’s face again? At your own? What would your mother say? This was what she’d feared all along. She’d seen your lifestyle as a condition, a relic of biblical times, an eccentricity that proved the downfall of grand civilizations—the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the 1980s. It took years for her to seem truly comfortable with your relationship, and now, here you are callously queering it up. Your ability to find a middle ground between your desires and your husband’s apathy suddenly feels like a wasted compromise. You have typecast yourself.

  A long, slanted shadow appears at your feet. At first, you don’t look up because you assume it’s a request for money or a request for directions that’s ultimately a prelude to a request for money. The shadow remains.

  His T-shirt is cut off at the shoulders; his shorts are frayed just above the knees. He’s an urban castaway. His skin is of a hue similar to yours, but tauter and with more sheen. Youth, you realize, is relative. You’re dripping snot, but embarrassment doesn’t occur to you. He hands you a napkin from inside the paper bag where he’s stored the falafel sandwich that he interrupted to come see about you. There’s a small smear of tzatziki on his otherwise bare chin.

  “Thank you,” you say after blowing your nose.

  “Why is such a cute guy crying on such a beautiful day?” he asks.

  “I’m married,” you respond with unwarranted force and hold up the hand with the finger that has the matted silver band you bought at an antique shop that had a glass cocktail shaker in its window.

  “So what?” he says playfully before scanning you as conspicuously as anyone ever has.

  Well if this isn’t the kicker. If all you had to do was put away your phone, you might have done so weeks ago. You’re still upset, but now irony or coincidence or both are hoisting you onto their shoulders. The world is much clearer up here, even if the line between cause and cure is muddled.

  “An odd day, that’s all,” you tell your scene-stealing
Puck as you rise to your feet—he’s not quite an inch taller than you.

  Your thigh vibrates. It’s your husband. This is either his second call or his third text. You’re fifteen minutes late. The restaurant is less than a block away. “Thanks for your concern, but I’m okay,” you say, spreading the remaining tears with the back of one hand while the other surreptitiously silences the kind, loyal, uncomplicated interruption in your pocket.

  “You sure?” The Nuyorican texture in this stranger’s voice reminds you of what the neighborhood used to be like. His deep brown eyes are … truly something. Wow. Is this the meaning of puppy-dog eyes? You’re not a pet person, so you honestly don’t know.

  “Yes, yes. Thank you,” you say while forcing a smile.

  “Can I have something before you go?” he asks. You’re so entranced by his eyes you never see his lips move. “Your phone number,” he continues, as he digs into his pockets. Triceps, marvelous. Everyone, it seems, has been at the gym for the last decade.

  This encounter is intriguing but also unsettling. It shouldn’t be this easy, you think. He’s too forward. What if he’s a cop? Or high? You fear he’ll mount a campaign that won’t allow you to leave the park quietly or, worse, will follow you all the way to your husband if you resist—there’s endless gumption in those twenty-something cheekbones.

  “Fine,” you say, and pull out your phone. In your hands, it rings again. “Sorry, I really have to run. Another time.”

  You scan the faded bench for your belongings, but there’s nothing there. Your eyes dart anxiously around the perimeter for a bag or jacket. This was all a ruse, you realize. He distracted you while his accomplices stole your things: New York 101. And you failed. You feel like a fool and also afraid. The odd sensation of being trapped in a wide-open space takes hold, until you remember that you left home with nothing. You also remember why you were here in the first place. You walk away.

  At the precipice of Avenue A, he calls out to you, “L’Agrado!”

  His high-top canvas shoes are wedged into the park’s waist-high perimeter; the vertical bars frame his brawny, contoured legs—soccer or genetics. He’s a foot off the ground, one hand gripping the wrought-iron railing. Now, he’s Mercutio and Romeo, and the park’s magic has trapped him. He’s not going to follow. You were wrong about him. “It’s my handle,” he calls out. “Look for me. Anywhere!”

  You nod and cross the street. You know Agrado. You know her well. She’s the sex worker-turned-personal assistant in Almodovar’s Todo Sobre Mi Madre, possibly your favorite of his films. Certainly, one of his greatest protagonists. This guy has just endeared himself to you in ways he couldn’t possibly imagine. You’re walking quickly, but that doesn’t prevent you from perusing one of the three dating apps on your phone. There he is: “L’Agrado, 27 y/o. Bottom, powerful. Queer. Anarcho-syndicalist. Poet. Latinx. ¡Independencia pa’ Puerto Rico o muerte! I am a shame-free zone. No bullshit hang-ups, please. #fuckwhitesupremacy.”

  You reach the restaurant and catch your reflection in its windows. You’ve looked better. The indisputable man of your life is in there somewhere, sipping slowly at his gin and tonic—his summer theme. An exhilarating fear flits through you. What if this is the onset of the undoing? Or, worse, the midpoint? Again, you remind yourself: it’s just sex.

  Before you open the door, you pivot eastward: a corridor of multicolored awnings, a laconic stream of glistening humans, an interstitial field of fleeting yellow cabs. In the distance, amongst the park’s green giants, is the man. Just another. One of many. He is perched on the gate, looking at his phone. Waiting.

  SHE AND HER KID AND ME AND MINE

  “ARE YOU SURE?” SHE ASKS as we trot down the tree-lined street, barely able to keep up with our kids.

  “No problem at all. I prefer him to be entertained with someone his age than drive me crazy,” I respond before committing to a tight-lipped smile. “Besides, I don’t have to pick up my youngest from daycare until later.”

  “Oh, perfect.”

  We approach my apartment building—a prewar, five-story brownstone tucked seamlessly between other prewar, five-story brownstones. The block is a set of antique encyclopedias, and she lives only a few shelves away. I hoped she was walking us to my place to acquaint herself with where I live, and from where she’d have to pick up her son later. But she makes no mention of leaving and, instead, is now waiting for me to dig keys out of my pocket.

  I’m to blame. We were fine outside, in the public playground, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, on rubber turf. But then I went and got cold and peckish, so I gave my Julio an it’s-almost-time nod, which led him, an intrepid four-year-old, to ask his pre-K buddy, another intrepid four-year-old, over to our place. All of which was still fine because it was a semiprivate interaction that I was tracking from across the jungle gym, but the conversation soon spilled over, engulfing more participants: “Daddy, I never have a play date! Please, a play date!” The emphasis on “never” was exaggerated and infuriating.

  It’s not that this other parent is a particularly unpleasant person, but if I can avoid an hour of awkward interaction and, in the process, secure some time for myself, I will.

  “How long have you lived here,” she asks, as we follow our children up the stairs.

  “Approaching twenty years,” I say, suddenly very aware of the strident creaking of each step. Embarrassed, in a way.

  “Oh, wow. I’m sure the neighborhood has improved a fair bit. I can’t imagine …” Her singsong voice trails off, but her eyebrows lift the whole of her long face.

  If she were one of my students, I would ask her to define improved. I would ask her who benefited from the improvements, and who didn’t. I would ask if there is a human cost to gentrification. I would ask her where the displacement and suffering end up. I’d ask her about all the isms. But she’s not one of my students, and I speak public health all week long, and sometimes I just want to speak plain English. “Yeah, it’s a very different neighborhood,” I say, “some good things, some not-so-good things.”

  Before unlocking the deadbolt, I apologize for whatever mess may be inside. “We have a friend staying with us for a few days. He’s not the neatest guy in the world,” I say. Our friend left a few days ago.

  She nods her empathy, all the while helping her son out of his coat and shoes. She tucks them into the mess of layers already in the hallway outside of the apartment. She pulls a phone from her bag. “Bobby, we have one hour before we have to go home,” she says. “I’m going to set a timer.”

  Bobby doesn’t betray whatever he might feel about his mother’s declaration. Instead, he shows himself inside and begins to peruse our bookshelves, running his small hand along the spines. His fingers pause briefly on Anal Pleasure & Health: A Guide for Men and Women, which sits next to Larry Kramer’s Faggots. My chest seizes, but before I can even consider what his mother might be thinking, Bobby moves on to the shelf of knickknacks.

  I don’t mind Bobby. He’s high energy, like my son. Together, they’re two fugitive electrons escaped from a Ken Kesey novel. They talk over each other, run into each other at full speed, cry and scream within an inch of each others’ faces, never balking, only escalating, the threat of disaster ever upon us. I also like Bobby because his name does nothing to my limbic system. With all the Thors, Lakes, and Birches toddling around town, I am grateful for a solid, working-class Irish name. In my Catholic youth, he would have been Bobby for short. But this Bobby’s mom and this Bobby’s dad certainly didn’t name their kid Robert. Not a chance. They’re part of this new wave of parents who think nicknames are proper names. Bobby was Bobby in the placenta and on his birth certificate.

  “Did you hear that, Julio?” I shout toward my son as he and his friend take off down the hallway. “One hour. I don’t want to hear any crying or screaming. I’m setting a timer too.”

  Timers. Christ.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for any tools or techniques that facilitate the trauma
-free domestication of our small, wild humans, but the gulf between my childhood and my children’s is vast and vertigo inducing. My parents used to set timers with the backs of their hands. Sometimes, the timers were made of leather. But those were different times, I’ve heard people say. I assume they meant different income brackets.

  “Julio. Where is that from?” she asks as she makes her way to the couch.

  Are you serious? I wonder. It’s in a Simon & Garfunkel song that she’s undoubtedly heard a thousand times.

  “I ask because I have a coworker named Julio; he’s from Puerto Rico.”

  “It’s my grandfather’s name on my mother’s side, Salvadorian, as well as my father’s side, Colombian—Would you like something to drink?” I don’t feel like having the Spanish colonialism conversation. I lock the front door and walk toward the kitchen. “I have water, milk, beer, or whisky.”

  Alice’s or Betsy’s or Carolyn’s eyebrows perk up a bit, and she grins. I never forget a face, but I have no idea what her name is, and by this point, we’ve known each other for too long—months—for me to ask. She’ll be Alice. And I can tell Alice is a whisky drinker. Something about the preserved streak of gray in her reddish, Bonnie Raitt hair tells me she enjoys sitting at a bar by herself from time to time.

  I stand in the archway between the living room and kitchen, a half-empty bottle of spirits in my hand. At least this, I think to myself. No ulterior motives. No suspicion. I could offer her absinthe and a speedball, and she wouldn’t wonder if I was trying to seduce her. This is, as far as I can tell, the only magic in the much-ballyhooed relationship between gay men and straight women. “I shouldn’t,” she replies. “I have to make dinner and get some work done tonight. Just water, please.”