Adam (20 page)

“Totally,” said Adam.

They went inside the museum, where everything was quiet and the air chilly. Gillian wrapped her arms around herself, and Adam imagined that they were his arms. Tickets were twenty dollars.

“Sorry it's so expensive,” said Gillian. “I'm paying 'cause it was my idea.”

“No,” said Adam, pulling out his wallet. “Let me get this.” He took out two twenties and shoved them under the partition before Gillian could get her money out.

“No,” said Gillian. And she shoved her twenties into the pocket of Adam's flannel.

“No,” said Adam, and he took the twenties out and put them in Gillian's shorts pocket but tried to do it so it wasn't like he was feeling her up.

“No,” said Gillian, and she put the twenties in Adam's jeans pocket, and her hand near his crotch gave him an instant hard-on and his mind wiped out for five seconds.

“No, seriously,” he said. And handed her twenties back to her, earnest.

“Fine,” Gillian said. And she smiled, rolling her eyes.

A large group of people speaking French bustled past.

“I have to go to the bathroom first,” said Gillian.

“Cool,” said Adam.

They walked over to the bathrooms, where there were two signs next to the men's and women's rooms. Gillian stopped to read the signs, so Adam did too. The sign over the women's room read:
“Women use the bathroom more frequently than men for several reasons, such as drinking more liquid and having smaller bladders.”
The sign over the men's room read:
“Throughout your life, you will eliminate more than 45,000 liters of urine. That could fill a small swimming pool.”

“Right,” said Gillian. “Of course the women's sign is all about how women are different from men, and the men's sign gets to be this interesting universal fact. So annoying.”

“Yeah,” said Adam.

“Be right back,” said Gillian.

Adam nodded and waited. He didn't have to go. He looked over at the entrance to the exhibition hall where another quote was painted in bold letters on the wall.

 

“I consist of body and soul in the words of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgeable would say, I am body through and through, nothing more, and the soul is just a word for something on the body.”—Nietzsche

 

Gillian came back and they entered the exhibit, which was filled with dozens of stripped-raw human figures. From what Adam could tell, this was going to be awesome, and he got that excited, antsy feeling like when his family would pull into the parking lot of Great America and he'd see the tops of the roller coasters. The first human they walked over to was made entirely from an intricate lace of arteries and veins. It wasn't even clear how the whole thing managed to stand up.

“Wow,” said Gillian, “it's so beautiful.”

Adam examined it closer and felt his own arteries and veins light up inside him, as if suddenly made fluorescent. His whole body felt delicate and weak. He twitched.

As they made their way through the hall, things got progressively more bizarre. At first the figures just stood there, upright and respectable.
“I am Skeleton Man.” “I
am Muscle Man.”
Like
3
D models from Adam's biology textbook. But as Adam and Gillian turned the corner, they ran into a figure lurched over, holding out a clump of entrails strung from his abdomen, a gaping-mouthed horror-movie psycho offering his guts to you.

“Jesus,” said Adam.

“I think I may have picked the most unsexy date possible,” said Gillian. She looked at Adam apologetically.

“No, it's cool!” said Adam.

“You're not totally turned off?” said Gillian.

Adam shook his head and smiled.

“Good,” said Gillian. And she took his hand. And Adam got hard. Adam could be submerged in a pool of diarrhea and if Gillian touched him, he would still get hard.

They walked into the next room where “muscle 'n' organs” figures were manipulated into positions as if they were skateboarding, running with a football, and one just sort of awkwardly “reaching for the stars.” Something about these position-molded figures made Adam feel . . . off. Like it gave them silly personalities or something. He supposed these were cooler to look at, but the break-dancing skin-stripped man made him uncomfortable. Adam wondered if Gillian felt the same way but was nervous to say anything. He didn't want them to disagree.

“Look,” said Gillian, “have you noticed how they all have blue eyes?” Little glass eyes were fixed into the figures' muscly sockets. “I heard there's, like, this controversy that all the figures were actually Asian prisoners or something from China, who may have not given consent. And then they give them blue eyes. Amazing.”

“What?” said Adam. “That's fucked up . . .” He was distracted by the sudden sensation that he could smell the muscles through the glass.

They wandered through the rest of the rooms, examining blackened, cancerous intestines, sea anemone–like glands, and trails of spinal nerves spreading out from brains. Adam noticed a group of teenagers being led around by a teacher. Summer school? The teens were loud and messy, saying things like, “Oooh, that's nasty,” or “I'm hungry.” Adam felt cool and above them. He was on a date. He was twenty years old and on a date.

“Hey, see those kids,” whispered Gillian. “
Three
of them are wearing Jack Skellington
Nightmare Before Christmas
T-shirts. It's like they planned it.”

“For who?” said Adam. “The dead bodies? ‘Oh, cool, you're one of us.'”

Gillian laughed.

One of the girls made eye contact with Adam, blushed, and looked away. Adam blushed too.

“That teenage girl totally just checked you out,” said Gillian.

“What? No, she didn't,” said Adam.

“She's cute,” said Gillian. “God, I'm such a pervert.”

The next gallery was divided into two halves. Painted on one side of the wall was a woman symbol and on the other, a male symbol. A muscle 'n' bones man and a muscle 'n' bones woman stood watch, representing for each side. Adam noticed that the muscle 'n' bones woman had large eyelashes affixed to her glass eyes. Beneath the figures were display cases with disembodied genitals.

“How come everyone's crammed around the female display, but no one's looking at the male?” Gillian asked.

It was true. Adam didn't want them to go over and look at the male display, either. He felt embarrassed.

“It's crowded in here,” he said.

Gillian's expression shifted.

“Yeah, let's get out of here,” she said, smiling. And she took his hand and led him out.

The exhibit was over. Adam and Gillian stood in front of a round table scattered with pencils and little booklets titled
Impressions.

“Let's see what people wrote!” said Gillian. She seemed more excited by this than she had by anything in the exhibit.

They hunkered down at the table and opened one of the booklets. They were sitting so close, the hairs on their arms touched.

“
‘Needs places to sit,'”
said Gillian, reading an entry out loud.
“
‘My legs hurt.'
This is amazing.”

Adam read the next one.
“‘Human beings are all the same. Everything we fight over—countries, religion, beliefs, ideas, money—is not real. What a sadness that we kill one another and hate one another.'”

“Mm-hmm,” said Gillian, with a conciliatory smile. She read the next one:
“‘The maker of these awesome bodies is Jehovah. Psalms 83:18. The person responsible for disease, sickness, and death is Adam. Genesis 2:17, 3:6.'”
Gillian pinched Adam. “Ooooh, Adam! Is it true?”

Adam laughed.

Then there was an awkward pause.

Why?

“Oh,” said Gillian. “Are you or is your family . . . ?” She had an anxious smile.

“Oh, no,” said Adam. “We're, like, Jewish, but not really. I'm nothing.”

“Cool,” said Gillian, relaxed. “I'm nothing too.”

They went back to scanning the entries.

“You know what I've always actually thought . . .” Gillian said.

“Yeah?” said Adam.

“That we're part alien. Humans are. I mean, I believe in evolution and everything, but there's just something inexplicably
weird
about us. You know?”

Adam nodded. He did.

***

Adam and Gillian walked out of the calm, air-conditioned museum into the blazing chaos of South Street Seaport. They weren't holding hands, but they were walking close together.
Now what?

“So . . . you wanna get something to eat?” said Gillian.

“Yeah!” said Adam, grateful.

They headed in a random direction. Adam was nervous. Inside the museum there was always some display or something to talk about. And at the party they had been drunk, and when you're drunk there's always something to talk about. But now, strolling along sober, his mind grasped for something to say. They had been silent for about eight seconds, otherwise known as fifty years. The awkwardness was shredding up his insides. He saw a movie poster on a building wall that read:
Lady in the Water—a film by M. Night Shyamalan.

“God, that looks horrible,” he said.

“M. Night Shyamalan,” said Gillian. “I'm kind of obsessed with M. Night Shyamalan.”

“Because his name is M. Night Shyamalan?”

“Yes!” said Gillian, turning to Adam with a grin.

“His ads always say ‘a film by M. Night Shyamalan,' like, bigger than anyone else's ever do,” said Adam.

“I know! Oh my god, did you see
The Village
?”

“Wait, which one was that—?”

“OK, imagine a bunch of silly people who don't like the color red and take turns putting on a bird costume and going out of bounds for medicines—cut to: ‘End. A film by M. Night Shyamalan.'”

“‘Coming soon,'” said Adam, “‘
M. Night Shyamalan
—a film by M. Night Shyamalan.'”

Gillian laughed.

And then, maybe because he had seen those
Nightmare Before Christmas
T-shirts, Adam started singing the words “M. Night Shyamalan,” to the tune of “This Is Halloween.”

“M. Night Shyam-a-lan, M. Night Shyam-a-lan.”

Gillian joined in.
“M. Night Shyam-a-lan, M. Night Shyam-a-lan.”
Then they just started laughing again. Gillian gave Adam that same amused look she had when they'd first met at the party.

“I'm, like, delighted by you,” she said.

Adam blushed.

“You're really quiet and don't talk much, but then you'll just come out with this totally weird thing. I mean, in a really good way.”

People often told Adam he was quiet. Which was strange to him. His thoughts were so loud, it felt as if he were talking all the time.

“I like you,” said Gillian.

“Me too,” said Adam. “I mean, I like
you.
Not myself.”

Gillian laughed again.

“Should we get some pizza?” said Adam. They were in front of a Famous Original Ray's.

“Yeah, in a second,” said Gillian. She grabbed Adam by the sides of his flannel and pulled him over into the alley behind the pizza place. Gillian leaned herself up against the brick wall and pulled Adam against her. They opened their mouths, and their tongues jammed into each other. Gillian's hands went under the back of Adam's shirt. His dick was fully hard, and he thought he might lose it. Why did this feel so unbelievably good? Gillian tugged him closer. He needed to hide his erection. He did
not
want her to think he was “packing.”
God.
He adjusted his hips away from her.

Gillian moved her hands up onto Adam's neck and in his hair. He let his fingers hover near the low neckline of her striped tank top. His fingertips grazed the seam and soft, smooth skin underneath.

“That's OK,” she said, smiling, and brought his hands up over her breasts. He could feel her nipples, hard and poking out under the fabric. If he came in his pants, he would never forgive himself.

A man shuffled down the alley in front of them, glancing over. Gillian and Adam giggled and dropped their hands to their sides.

“Should we go get pizza?” said Gillian.

“Yeah,” said Adam. He adjusted his pants, willing his hard-on to go down.

They walked into the pizza place, holding hands.

“It's weird being publicly affectionate with a guy,” said Gillian. “It's like no one really cares.”

“Yeah?” said Adam. He needed to start saying more than “yeah.”

You're really quiet
, she had said.

“I mean, you know how it is with two girls,” continued Gillian. “Guys always leer at you like you're putting on a show for them, or people act like you're making some big political statement and give you ‘the smile' to let you know they're cool and they approve. So annoying.”

“Yeah, my sister talks about that,” said Adam. She did. One of Casey's favorite rants was about people who thought they were extra special because they were nice and friendly to gay people. “You don't get
bonus
points for not treating gay people like shit.”

“That's so cool your sister's queer too,” said Gillian.

“Uh, yeah,” said Adam. He was starting to feel hot again.
Tell her/Don't tell her
reared up in his mind, but he shoved it away. He noticed a
Street Fighter II
game in the corner. “Hey, wanna play?”

“Yeah! I love
Street Fighter.
”

Adam dug out some quarters and hit
TWO PLAYER
. He picked Vega, and Gillian picked Fei Long.