A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (51 page)

The rental is owned by an older gay couple who live in the other half of the building. It
’
s big, high-ceilinged, affordable, painted mauve and periwinkle but otherwise perfect. I fill out a form, give them all my information, lie about our income—I have learned that much—and later that night, I write a long letter to them, begging them to grant us the place, reiterating that we were first, that we are quiet and nice, tragic and desperate, chosen to live and suffer and educate. I want to and almost tell them about the dream I had the night before, a semi-conscious dream where I entered Toph
’
s bloodstream—I was some kind of microscopic particle, like in
Fantastic Voyage
maybe, and I entered his bloodstream, and saw the layers of flesh, and the reds and mauves and violets, the muds and blacks, and I was blowing around at thrilling speeds, things shooting to and fro, in the capillaries and out, but then suddenly I was going through the sky—I am not sure at this point if I was still inside Toph or not; could Toph
’
s frame also encompass a sky—and there were the usual stages of blue then atmosphere-white and then soundlessly into ebony space, seeing the world, with roundness, below. I somehow think this story, this kind of thing, will endear us to them, but then worry if it
’
ll be a case of, you know, too much information.

I drive to the twenty-four-hour Kinko
’
s to fax it so they
’
ll have it in the morning, will read it when the sun arrives and will love us and cease to entertain other offers. In the morning he calls.

“
David?
”

To gay men I am David.

“
Yes,
”
I say.

“
That was a nice note you faxed.
”

“
Thanks.
”
Relief. It
’
s done. The eagle has—

“
But we
’
re really looking for a gay couple.
”

It
’
s unbelievable. With the San Francisco rental market tightening to an all-time high—driven, in large part, by the endless flow
of Real
Wof/^/-worshiping postcollegiates—we are treated like vermin. We are below gay couples. We are below married couples, unmarried couples, female roommates, male roommates. Landlords do not answer our calls. We see one place, a light-filled two-bedroom in just the right neighborhood, which we know we are the first to see—we are always the first—and though the pudgy landlord is himself a single parent, and though we hand him all our bank documents proving our net worth and ability to pay this rent, he gives the apartment to—

“
Who?
”

“
A doctor.
”

We are appalled. We are shocked,
shocked
that in this day and age two such as we would be discriminated against, solely because one of us is twenty-five, dubiously self-employed, makes only $22,000 a year, and lives with his twelve-year-old brother, who, it says on paper, pays almost half the rent—

Oh, rental stories are not interesting.

But suffice it to say we had to debase ourselves thoroughly to get this place, in a quiet neighborhood, close to his new school, close to a movie theater, close to a grocery store from whence we can walk the whole way home, carrying our bags without car or cart. Like men. In the apartment is a huge west-facing window for Toph and a retirement-community-facing window for me, which is depressing but fitting if you really think about it, and I relish the sacrifice I have have made, giving him the bigger room, the light-filled room with the bay window. And we gorge ourselves on San Francisco. We
’
re suddenly a five-minute bike ride from the beach, Baker Beach, rolling with dunes, the Pacific on the left and the Golden Gate on the right, and we
’
re a few blocks from the Presidio, choked with pine and eucalyptus, recently decommissioned and all but abandoned. We bike through it, a
ghost town of white stucco and wood set against lawns of parrot green, everything sprawled loosely, casually, on some of the most ridiculously valuable property in the world. There is no sense to the Presidio, its areas of raw forest, unkempt baseball diamonds near million-dollar homes, but of course there is no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. It
’
s the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons. Why not pink, purple, rainbow, gold? What color for a biker bar on 16
^th
, near the highway? Plum. Plum. The light that is so strong and right that corners are clear, crisp, all glass is blinding—stilts and buttresses and turrets—the remains of various highways—rainbow windsocks— a sexual sort of lushness to the foliage. Only intermittently does it seem like an actual place of residence and commerce, with functional roads and sensible buildings. All other times it
’
s just whimsy and faith. Just driving to and from Marny
’
s, in the Castro, is epic, this hill and that hill—oh, the sorrow of flat, straight Illinois!—this vista and that, always the hills, the curves, the maybe our brakes will fail, the maybe someone else
’
s brakes will fail—it
’
s always a kind of adventure in faded Technicolor, starring a vast cast of brightly dressed losers. Always there is something San Franciscan reinforcing all everyone has come to think about the city, The City, they say—the homeless people wear bathing suits and do handstands on the sidewalk, and shamelessly defecate, unmolested, on busy street corners. Activists throw bagels at police in riot gear, bicyclists are allowed to choke Market Street traffic but are arrested for trying to ride over the Bay Bridge. The first time we visit Haight Street a man staggers past us, bleeding profusely from the head, followed ten seconds later by another man, also bleeding from the head, yelling, apparently at the first bleeding man. He is holding a tennis racket. There are the endless signs of the concerns of its residents, the different things considered objectionable, grapes and granulated
sugar among them, to cars in the city, skateboards downtown, tunnels through Marin. Street signs are amended:

STOP

DRIVING

STOP

MUMIA
’
S EXECUTION

The buses are attached to strings or wires or something, and driving behind them requires often waiting, having reading material on hand, for these buses do not for long stay attached to the strings or wires—suddenly there will be a spark, and the bus will stop and the driver will get out, walk to the back of the bus, and yank on the string or wire, smiling cheerfully, oh ha ha, because here there really isn
’
t all that much of a hurry, for anyone, anywhere, least of all for those who take buses. There are eighty-year-old twins who haunt Union Square, and the alleys breathe urine, and teenagers slum in the Mission, the Haight—
“
Brotherman! How
‘
bout a slice of that pizza?
”
—and the wind tunnels off the Pacific, speeding down Geary, through the Richmond, attacking Toph
’
s west-facing bedroom window.

And at the new apartment, the sliding is good. The layout is long and narrow, and there is a hallway connecting all the rooms, and because the hallway is wood-floored, and about thirty-five feet long, we can, with the door to the building
’
s stairway open, pick up three or four feet in momentum, so, with those three feet and another sixteen or seventeen needed to build sufficient speed, it still allows for a good twenty feet or so of superior sliding, even more if Toph
’
s door is kept open and the chair at his desk moved.

But Toph is the only one in his new school who lives in an apartment. Many classmates live nearby, but all own their homes, huge perfect houses in Presidio Heights, with maid
’
s quarters,
driveways, garages. When I see the school roster, and see that
“
#4
”
after our address, I hate it. I want to call the school and have them remove it. He
’
s started seventh grade and, outside of the one teacher, a kind man who feels it necessary to ask him once a day how he feels, all is well and normal and he has immediately become unbearably popular. Within a month there were three bar and bat mitzvahs, two birthday parties, various other social events, and I am relieved, enormously relieved despite the endless driving involved, for this activity, the popularity, buffering the shock of the move.

I drive him to a get-together at the house of a girl in his class. When, three hours later, I pick him up from the party, he is shaken, bewildered.

There has been Spin the Bottle.

“
Really?
”
I say.
“
Spin the Bottle? I had no idea that still existed. I mean, I don
’
t think / even played that, ever.

He had been surrounded. It had been only him, one other boy, and six girls. He had been trapped, set up. He was the new boy and they were fighting for dibs.

“
So did you kiss anyone?
”

“
No.
”

“
No? Why not?
”

“
Because I hardly knew them.
”

“
Well, sure, but...
”

“
I didn
’
t feel like it.
”

I don
’
t know what to say. Most of me, the vast majority of my being, wants to spend the next few weeks talking only about this, not only siphoning every possible detail out of him, drunk as I am with vicarious curiosity, but also overwhelmed with the need to rattle him for being such a
pussy.
I weigh my options carefully and, because I am a master of strategy, decide that the only way to get any information at all is to add as little as possible in the way of,
say, ridicule to the conversation. I am careful also not to project my own regrets on him, the opportunities missed, the girls never kissed, the junior high dances I missed—the fact that I do not want him to have these regrets, any regrets. We discuss the subtleties of the evening all the way home, and at home on the couch, long past his bedtime, while watching
Saturday Night Live,
and after that.

“
Were they cute?
”

“
I guess. A few. I don
’
t know. A couple weren
’
t from my school.
”

I am enthralled, hoping not to jinx it, his openness with regard to the girls, because it
’
s one of the first times he
’
s talked to me about it, given that I usually giggle and snicker, and so, accordingly, he usually chooses to share these matters with Beth.

But Beth, as a first-year associate, has lately been too busy. We are seeing her less and less, which is a problem, but not as much of a problem as it would have been even a year ago. Toph is at the age where I feel like I can leave him for a few hours, and because we are only twelve blocks from his new school, he can walk. I do drive him the first few times, and when he
’
s too late to
get
there himself, but otherwise, because I have been up until three at the computer, changing the very face of the world, I sleep through his morning. He wakes up and makes his lunch, his breakfast, ingests it with the cartoons and then, when he
’
s leaving, I often, easily once a week, raise my head from the pillow long enough for:

“
Hey.
”

“
Hey.
”

“
How
’
s it going?
”

“
Good.
”

“
You better get going, you
’
re almost late.
”

“
I know.
”

“
What
’
d you eat?
”

“
Waffles.
”

“
You eat any fruit?
”

“
An apple.
”

“
You did?
”

“
Yeah.
”

“
How you getting there?
”

“
Bike.
”

“
Your chain still broken?
”

“
Yeah.
”