In Fire Island, where I went for seven summers in the 1990s, one of my housemates planted flowers in wooden barrels on the deck of our place on Sky Boulevard every season. I watched him smoothing the dirt with his fingers, wishing I knew how to make things grow like my grandmother, who until almost her dying day squinted at plants as if they were children in need of care.
In the early mornings, home after a night of drugs and dancing at the Pavilion, I stretched out exhausted on the deck in a recliner and those blossoms would glower at me, blaring colors and chastening. They made me feel lost. This morning, the survival of our roses in the midst of the heat makes me feel better, like maybe I am doing okay here.
. . .
The lonely dog is being released today and, except for errands, I will have little reason to get out of the house so often. I am already picturing his empty pen. As I try to get Betty’s bed changed, she watches closely. The old spread and her thin yellow sheets have been washed too many times. “They’ll last me out,” she says when I suggest replacements. My back is giving me trouble and, in the mornings, wake with hands gone numb. Lately I have been obsessed over getting old, though there are gay nursing homes now. I see myself amid a group of old, tattooed codgers comparing waist sizes at Villa Fabulosa while I—wild-eyed in the Liza Minnelli Wing—grouse over the late delivery of my laxatives.
My barber on West Twenty-third Street in Manhattan and I have been together for fifteen years. Sometimes I think he is my most significant relationship. He is Russian, a remarkable fashion presence. During my last visit to the city, I stopped in for a haircut and found him in a bright red shirt with button cuffs. The buttons were covered with matching material. The yoke of his shirt had little cutouts that revealed swirls of coal-black hair. He looked like the best man at the wedding of Satan.
After all these years, our relationship has evolved into a very similar routine. He always greets me in the same way: “How you feel?”
Whatever I reply, he always says the same thing: “No way to be!”
Then he takes me through the changing group of photos of movie stars and rock stars taped to his mirror. Their coifs represent his current range of hairstyle options. Over the years, I have been through a range of celebrities, culminating in George Clooney. On the day of my last visit, he was offering Anderson Cooper, Justin Timberlake, and Adam Levine. Taking in this gallery, I felt that I had perhaps aged beyond his area of specialty. I wanted to say, “Adam. Please, I wanted to be Adam.” But I dared not. I am middle aged, not a tattoo to my name. Suddenly I was sad. What to do?
I tried to level with him about a recent problem that has really been bothering me and that I hoped he could help camouflage. When speaking to him I tend to fall into that blend of broken English and demanding assertion that characterize his speech.
“I have fat face. How to hide?”
“What you mean?”
“Fat face. Head huge. Elton John. Help!”
He scanned the photos on the wall, finally fixing on one that seemed to have been there for decades. It has been adhered to the wall and is in tatters. I glanced. I was afraid, but there was nothing really scary. It was a picture of a clean-cut middle-aged man, a stockbroker type. It appeared to have been plucked from a Sears catalog. I had not even noticed it.
“I do this for you,” he said.
I felt ancient, but just nodded. Whatever. I just wanted a clean neck and nothing puffy.
He inspected my head. “You don’t come anymore. Who do this to hair? Bum.”
“My mother is sick. I have been away.”
“Turrible.”
In a few minutes, he was finished. “You want product?” he asked, hand sliding toward an endless row of hair fixitives, including some lugubrious-seeming gels. He is a man who loves mousse.
“No product,” I said. “You know I hate stuff in my hair.”
“You need.”
“Stop.”
He looked at me “Why you frown. No way to be!”
“I want to be rock star.”
. . .
“The governor’s father, you know, my friend, the old Jay, has written a book,” Betty begins. This comes out of nowhere and at first I am only half listening.
“Jay says,” she tells me, “right in the book, that I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. When I was young. He says that, right in the book. That I was beautiful. When he knew me.” She isn’t bragging. She is surprised and a bit reluctant to mention it.
“What kind of book?” She replies: “I don’t know. Bob Thompson read it. He got it in the mail. He called yesterday when you were with that darn dog.”
“The father’s name was Jay, right, like the governor’s?”