Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World. Joseph Keckler
I was not attracted to “men” at all, really; I seemed to like boys my age, with long hair, who carried forth some inexpungible sense of juvenility and delinquency, and girls who skewed lesbian and wore tight clothing. Might I pretend Frank was one of these? I closed my eyes and tried as his beard scraped against my thigh.
Retreating into my mind, I remembered similar incidents from my past. Did I conceive of my body as a musical instrument that belonged to no one in particular—banged up and out of tune, the property of some hospital’s activity parlor, available for anyone to pick up and strum a vulgar ditty on? I once let a very unwashed urban nomad girl whose mind I admired have her way with me. I wasn’t feeling it, but it felt like a small price to pay to hear a few more pearls of her drunk wisdom. And then once in a Traverse City karaoke bar some clown named Larry busted into a bathroom stall and grabbed my urine-spurting penis. I was slow to respond, failing to say, “Hey, stop that!” because I was fascinated by his brazenness.
Frank was now pulling down his pants, still panting.
I wondered if I might lack what are popularly termed “good boundaries.” My father perceived this when I was little—he was troubled watching me at age eight out on the soccer field: I was lolling around back by the goal post, looking up at the sky (to find shapes of creatures in the clouds, of course) and never looking at the soccer ball. He called me to his “study,” a messy uninsulated room in the corner of the house, to have a talk with me about protecting my space in the world. But I showed up to our meeting wearing a green tinsel wig, leprechaun hat, and sunglasses, with a holster around my waist. I drew a microphone from the holster and held it to my father’s mouth, as though interviewing him, as he tried to make his points.
I did have boundaries, I realized. They were hard, cold, and invisible like the glass walls of this room. It may appear that I do not belong to myself. In fact, I view myself not as a person but as a place, or more precisely, as a trap. Frank walked into my story and he is my captive, haha! I thought, a new sinister air gathering around me as I lay on the bed, now receiving Frank’s attention with all the erotic gratitude of a twitching cadaver.
“This … feels a little forced,” Frank said, finally pulling back. His face, crimson from the sexual rush, changed to a rouge of embarrassment.
We put on our clothes and got back into the elevator, each carrying our own special disappointment. I bid farewell to people I had met on my way to the door. “See you next time,” I waved to the woman in the dashiki.
“You better!” she hollered, laughing.
Frank walked me out of the building. The air outside had become strangely tropical. We strolled down the street for a while, silent, in the dark. Occasional bodegas cast a sickly glow on the sidewalk.
“What did you think when we met?” I asked suddenly, surprised to hear the words come out of my mouth.
“Well, you …,” Frank responded, eventually, “told me about the audio.” Struggling to come up with something more to say, he added, “and you were very pleasant.” In my innocence, or was it staggering arrogance, I had imagined he’d been as struck by me as I was by him, and that he might report that he’d felt as though he were being offered an audio guide by some figure outside of the ordinary—a baboon, for instance, Audrey Hepburn, or a poltergeist. “Then of course there was the look.”
“The look?”
“Yes, the look that made me know we would be …,” he glanced around and lowered his voice, “compatible.”
A look. Was there such a look? I asked myself. Was I unwittingly speaking in some arcane code? Might my irises be flashing these “looks” all the time? Perhaps I was like the Marvel Comics character Cyclops, who must wear special goggles to prevent lasers from shooting out of his eyes. Perhaps my wild peepers were firing off lust beams, willy-nilly, leading to misunderstandings left and right. Maybe bedroom eyes were the only eyes I had? Maybe my way of being in the world was essentially flirtatious.
I entertained such possibilities. But in truth, Frank and I simply misread one another’s interest. I had conceived of him as a Socratic, high-culture grandfather who wouldn’t likely be cruising at the museum before noon, and he had envisaged me as a bushy-tailed audio tramp.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye,” I replied, reaching out my arms to give him a hug. He did not hug me, and seemed to feel damned by the mere invitation, looking nervously around to see who might be watching us.
The next day was slow at the Guggenheim. Nadine had called in sick, though I knew her to be a good-time gal and imagined she simply had a later and wilder night than I. Thelma and Cookie stood behind the Info desk. “How are you?” I asked them. Thelma simply nodded her head, brushing a wrinkle from her de Sadean romper.
“I’m fine!” snapped Cookie. She said this as though I kept offering her a blanket when she wasn’t cold! Thelma gestured towards me, as to perfunctorily ask and you?
“I’m fine,” I replied. “I went to my first New York party last night. At an ambassador’s house.” Cookie raised an eyebrow. Just then I heard the sounds of rustling. Suddenly, up rose Florence like a swan, between Thelma and Cookie, with a stack of Frank Lloyd Wright brochures in her hand. Miracle of miracles: she had resumed her throne behind the Info desk.
Florence set the stack on the counter and straightened them with her long nails. “An ambassador’s house?” she asked, turning to face me. “Well go on, dear. Sounds interesting.” She gestured, like a teacher, calling on me for an answer. “How did this come about?” she pressed. “We want details. Don’t we, ladies?” Thelma and Cookie didn’t respond, but continued to flank Florence, like absent-minded backup singers. I knew she wasn’t the type to humor anyone or express interest if she hadn’t any—clearly, Florence believed that I had Info.
All around us I heard a soft crackling of voices, barely audible remarks concerning art objects, emanating from the many visitors who moved in processions along the spiraling ramp above us, having no choice but to circle the museum’s empty center. Round and round they went, like senile birds of prey. Florence lowered her chin and whispered, “I want to be transported.” The word ricocheted through the rotunda as I opened my mouth to speak.
BLIND GALLERY
My friend gets a travel grant and leaves town. I take over some of her shifts, working for a blind gallerist on the Lower East Side. He’s not one of those blind people who you forget is blind. He won’t let you forget. He begins every few sentences, “Now, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m blind …” He is very erudite and with-it and his friends are always coming over to read him art reviews, The New York Review of Books, new poetry, new literature, on and on. But if you are me and you ask him, “Say, did you read the such-and-such article in The New Yorker,” he’ll reply, “See, the thing is, Joe, I’m blind.” Choking on laughter, he adds, “Can you imagine a blind motherfucker like me reading, uh, The New Yorker and some shit?”
My boss speaks through his teeth with a sense of strain and release, as though he is always simultaneously inhaling or exhaling a hit of pot. A breezy and hip walking bass drifts perpetually from the stereo behind him. He has a phone next to him and he makes calls all the time. But if the phone rings and I pick it up and it’s for him and I turn to him and say, “Hey, so-and-so is on the phone,” he replies, “I can’t talk to him. I’m blind! Tell him I can’t talk. He’ll understand—he knows I’m blind.” Sometimes my boss takes naps in the middle of the day. Sometimes, when the phone rings, he wakes up and picks it up. Yawning, he whispers, “Yeah, I’m in meeting right now. Mmmm, bye.” When I ask him how he curates shows he mutters, “I got people I trust. I rely on their opinions.”
I am quite diligent the day I start. Because my boss cannot monitor me—not visually, anyway—I don’t feel rebellious like I do at other jobs. On the contrary, I feel a sense of honor and responsibility to take care of business with efficiency and care. When my friend calls