It took him over a year to make a friend, then another year before she became his best friend. Séverine—a painter whom he met on New Year’s Eve in the West Village. They were crammed next to each other at Stonewall, which he now visited regularly, no longer afraid to declare himself. What the other swanning, laughing gays there didn’t know—regardless of his handsomeness, regardless of his gazes, regardless of the confidence he exuded when ordering drinks and carrying them like a glass bouquet back to his and Séverine’s table—was that he was still a virgin. He had only kissed men, but he still found himself hesitant to go home with them, because of that failed night with Ken several months ago and because he had begun to hear more and more about the disease striking young men down across the city.
It was so easy to take refuge in Séverine. She had emigrated to the States from France right out of “art school,” though Teddy could never quite get out of her which school that had been. She shared his height and thin frame, her shoulders and elbows pointy, her knees like fists through cloth, but she had the undeniable fashion sense of a Frenchwoman, a penchant for dark clothing, black hair dye, and abundant eyeliner that was in stark contrast to her paintings (which even she admitted were ersatz Chagalls). Her eyes were black, too, their irises and pupils indistinguishable from each other, giving her the look of someone perpetually enthralled even when she was three sheets to the wind.
Speaking of three sheets to the wind, they both were, often. They spent that first New Year’s Day sprawled on the Oriental rug in her loft apartment, a harem’s quarters of palm fronds, patterned silk, half-empty perfume bottles in varying shades of amber, and discarded underthings. Her easels formed a painted hall of mirrors, their truncated animals and disembodied eyes reflecting each other across the gigantic space.
“?a va?” she asked Teddy.
“What?” he replied, kneading his forehead, which had lain flat against the carpet all night.
“That is the reason why you do not feel like a New Yorker yet,” she said, crawling over to a little bookshelf, from which she produced a packet of cigarettes and a rusty lighter. “Everyone in New York should be able to speak French.”
“People barely know anything about French where I grew up,” he said. “Except if it’s dressing.”
“Pardon?” she said, and at first, he thought that she was trying to pronounce the English word, hindered by her accent.
“French dressing. Have you never had French dressing?”
She had never heard of it. Then Teddy realized that he had absolutely no idea what was in it, either. It became their catchphrase. From then on, when they didn’t understand something—when they couldn’t hear a subway announcement clearly, when a person at a bar gave them a lame line, when they couldn’t agree on a time over the phone when they should meet at Caffè Reggio—they’d just mutter “French dressing” but with an exaggerated accent—“Frawnsh dressink.”
By the time that they became good friends—drinking bottles of port by the Hudson; getting mugged in Herald Square and, by divine fortune, finding Teddy’s wallet ten minutes later in a nearby trash can; spending another New Year’s Eve at the Stonewall while a couple not-so-discreetly exchanged handjobs at a nearby booth—Teddy had more or less given up his auditions and his sandwich-making. Instead he took a job at a small but popular department store in Chelsea.
The job had come through one of Séverine’s expat friends who worked “in fashion”—all of Séverine’s expat friends worked “in fashion” or “in art.” He had mentioned it to Teddy and written down the owner’s number on the back of a matchbook. Teddy had called, spoken to a Piaf-voiced Frenchwoman named Michelle, and forty-eight hours later, he had quit the sandwich business and found himself behind a glass counter.
It was at the store that he tended his budding sense of fashion. The seed had been planted by Séverine, who gave him scarves and sweaters as if he were a sibling who needed hand-me-downs. Michelle—in her fifties, wide-hipped, emphysemic from smoking—had a habit of taking his hips from behind and burying her tiny head in his back whenever business was slow, and she gave him perk after perk, from free winter coats to theater tickets that she “couldn’t use.”
It was also at the store that he began to piece together French. He had gleaned words and phrases from spending so much time with Séverine, but they took on new meaning under Michelle’s tart tongue. She had the thickest French accent that Teddy had heard—it truly seemed that New York was teeming with more French people than Paris—and soon it was easier for Teddy to interpret her French, punctuated purposefully by her lively hand gestures, than it was for him to understand her English. He didn’t overlook the real reason why he had dived so intently into his new job and this lingua franca. He had still not dated anyone seriously, and he took solace in Séverine because she represented so much of what he wanted to be: stylish, cool, and beautiful. But also earnest, romantic, and easily romanced by life itself. She encouraged him to seek someone out, even volunteered to set him up with one of her few gay friends—most of them French. There was one, in particular, Edouard, whom she introduced to Teddy with an eyebrow arched and lips pursed meaningfully, but Teddy found him somewhat boring, his Frenchness concealing the fact that he didn’t have all that much to contribute to the conversation. Teddy’s dismissal of him finally led to a revelatory conversation with Séverine.
“You confound me,” Séverine said, sitting on the couch and cutting hungrily into a leftover piece of chicken that she had slid onto a plate with some cold salad and canned chickpeas. “You don’t have to be looking for love. Have sex. That’s what this city is for. That’s what any city is for.”
“I don’t want to just have sex, especially with people getting sick,” Teddy said, lying flat on the rug and lifting his legs languidly in the air in a mock-effort of exercising. “I’m looking for something bouleversant.”
“My friend, if everyone in this city waited for something like that, no one would ever get laid. And then everyone would be as miserable as you.”
“I’m not miserable,” Teddy said. He wasn’t, not truly. He was just lonely. (Although perhaps loneliness was inherently miserable.) It wasn’t just something extraordinary that he wanted. He knew, in fact, what that specific thing was, but never having verbalized it, he kept catching himself. In this moment, with Séverine looking somewhat drab for a change with her meager dinner, Teddy felt compelled to share it with her. “I’m not miserable. I just have a specific fantasy.”
She threw her plate across the couch and crawled onto the floor next to him. “A fantasy? Oh, do tell.” She propped herself up on an elbow, and he mirrored the pose. He then proceeded to tell her about that first train ride, the heft and beauty of the man, and when he finished, he let himself fall back flat onto the floor, melodramatically emphasizing his sense of relief.
“Oh, Teddy,” Séverine said, disappointed. She returned to the couch and picked up her plate, resuming her dinner as if he hadn’t told her anything.
“What?” he said, taken aback by her indifference. “I’m not joking.”
“I know you’re not joking. That’s the worst part.”
An uneasy feeling crept over Teddy, like a lemon squeezed into milky tea until curd formed. “What’s the matter?”
“You’re not really going to take a black lover,” Séverine said, not a question but a dismissive observation.