Page 2 of View From the Bottom
His expression, just like his body language, read confident and easy as he trekked toward me. The contour of his frame was traced with indentations and delineations that danced wildly with the sun and the shadows as he walked. Two small, round nipples, the darkness of which pierced through the bright white of his tank, sat brazenly in the center of his pecs, the outlines of which shifted gently with each step he took. The hair on his head was jet black and high-faded into a tight crew cut that he probably got trimmed up weekly. His skin was naturally tanned and exuded a Hispanic essence: Puerto Rican or Dominican, I assumed.
My eyes were fixated on him as he approached. Had we been characters in a Saturday morning cartoon, they might have popped out of my head while my tongue dangled from the side of my mouth. I tried my best not to appear obvious, though. He didn’t look at me until the last minute, when his eyes covertly shifted in my direction, then quickly averted back to his course. Maybe he’d felt my gaze lingering on him and thought it best to assess the situation for signs of danger. But as I turned for a look-back after he passed, I ascertained that that wasn’t the case at all. He met my look-back with one of his own, and a slight, sexy smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, letting me know he’d been caught.
The most intriguing scent jumped from his flesh to my core when he passed, curling into me in the aftermath of our inconsequential encounter; a potent combination of citrusy body wash, musky cologne, and… maleness—carnal and raw. Almost like a quivering sweat had been beading on his chest and dripping down the crevices of his frame as he traversed the city; a shimmering sheen slicking his flesh as he worked on cars at a garage or hung from the back of a garbage truck or pulled pizzapies from an oven with a giant peel to sell to hungry passersby by the slice.
That intoxicating pheromonal pull stirred up a bubbling cauldron of erotically charged anxiety inside me, and I suddenly wanted to pounce on him like a cheetah attacks a gazelle in the African wild, but neither of us stopped. We simply turned and continued on our paths. A look was all that was needed for that titillating connection with a perfect stranger.
I’d hoped the excitement of witnessing his enticing body in motion might cool me down, might drench me in a dream, forcing me to focus on anything but my body temperature. But instead, it only turned up the heat, making me anxious with nervous energy. A disarming sense of promise as my heart beat heavy in my chest.
I really could’ve used a fan.
—
The streets of Chelsea were no less busy than the streets in my neighborhood. The lack of airflow indoors had coaxed residents and tourists alike into the streets to find some sense of relief. There were, however, a few bars that remained open to serve the population drinks at prices residents of other American cities would never consider paying in their hometowns. But in New York, that was part of the deal to be so close to the center of the universe, so they said.
The bars that were open on Ninth Avenue seemed to spill over with tourists and drunk straights, and I wasn’t sure I could be bothered with the hassle, so I contemplated a walk over to Eighth or pushing on down to the Village. My T-shirt wasalready damp with sweat. What would another ten or fifteen blocks in hundred-degree temperatures matter?
I finished my water and pushed onward, tossing the empty bottle into the grated garbage can on the corner. A few minutes later, I stepped into a bar on the corner of Grove and was met with the sweetest greeting I could imagine: a blast of cool air on my sweat-slicked skin. Never again would I underestimate the importance of a generator.
The bar was literally packed with people who stood shoulder-to-shoulder and wore tired, worn-out expressions from incessant exposure to the heat. Many of them held empty glasses in their hands, not necessarily keen on getting another but not quite ready to be forced back out into the fire. They lingered and loitered, weary but attentive, one eye on the door, scanning for new blood.
Pushing past the crowds that gathered more densely under air ducts, I found an opening at the bar and ordered a beer from the mildly irritated bartender. I then wandered through the maze of patrons until I found a lone high-top table by the window. It was in the process of being abandoned by a group of preppy-looking guys whose product had long ago sweated out, wayward strands of hair plastered against their foreheads. As they vacated, I populated, capturing one of two barstools that lingered on either side of the table before some other fatigued patron could swoop in to rest their weary bones.
The table was a mess with empty glasses and water spots and crumpled-up napkins that had probably been used to dab at beads of sweat resting mercilessly on foreheads and necks. I did my best to stack them and push them to the edge of the table, out of my way. I didn’t figure anyone would be by to bus the table anytime soon, but then, I didn’t require much space. It was surprisingly fortuitous that I’d been able to find a seat at all.
Pop music drummed from the speakers surrounding the main level of the bar at what I would describe as a reasonable volume—a much more reasonable volume than it would have been played on a Friday night, anyway. The grand piano that the more theatrical queens normally flocked to during typical happy hours sat desolate in the corner, no Broadway throwaways or optimistic drama majors to tickle its keys. The black iron railing around Christopher Park, visible from where I sat, fenced in groves of shade trees and benches packed with people, begging for relief.
I took occasional sips from my beer and lost myself in thought as I peered through the window. Seventh Avenue looked almost lonely. People seemed to move more slowly than usual, without any sense of purpose or inflated ego. Funny how one can become accustomed to the self-importance that wafts through the streets and wades down the avenues of New York City. The immodesty sometimes spills from the windows of taxicabs and bleeds from the cracks in the sidewalk. Overbooked calendars and vibrating phones and back-to-back calls and the incessant pinging of social media feed notifications fill the air around us with a thick pompousness that can only be cut with overpriced juices and the newest Asian food trend.
But when the city has no choice but to stop and bask in itself, to look at its haggard face in the mirror, to focus on nothing but the beauty around it, its citizens become human again. They become real people that ache and sweat just like the rest of the world. Their feet swell and their heads hurt and they realize just how much they need a break.
I relented into my love-hate relationship with the city I called home as I gazed out that window. I lost myself in the cool air and the quench of my thirst.
I grabbed my beer and brought it to my lips, and as I swallowed hard, there he was: the guy I’d passed on Forty-Fifth Street. The guy in the jeans and the white tank and the Timberlands. The guy with honeyed flesh and rugged definition and perfectly high-faded, jet-black hair. The eyes that met mine and the lip that curled when he realized he’d been caught. He strolled right by the window at which I was perched without looking in, without noticing me.
Had it been a coincidence that I’d seen him again? A twist of fate? Or simply the fact that a sizable portion of the city’s residents were in search of a light at the end of a deeply suffocating tunnel?
I smiled to myself and went back to my drink, back to idling and daydreaming. The air vent positioned in the ceiling not far from where I sat streamed cool relief into the bar and onto my skin, drying the sweat on my brow. I used the back of my arm to finish the job. An uncomfortable clamminess clung to my skin. I was oddly excited about taking a shower even though I’d had one that morning, simply to rinse the heat of the day off my frame.
“You mind?” The voice, even and deep, shook me from my thoughts. My attention was torn from the world outside and attempted to focus itself on the man standing next to my table. It was him, casually gripping the slender neck of a beer bottle in one fist while the fingers of the other rested easily on the tabletop.
It was him. The man I’d shared a look-back with on Forty-Fifth Street.
He stood there in all his ’round-the-way glory, the slightest smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. His eyes stared through me, almost squinting as though the sun outside was still blinding him in this new, noticeably darker environment. Short, silken strands of black hair softly coated his forearms, tapering off as they reached his biceps. Had he been wearing a Yankees cap while sitting on the stoop of a brownstone and rolling a joint, I’d have written him off as a curious piece of rough trade, a guyon the down-low in a neighborhood his boys wouldn’t have been caught dead in. Someone I had no interest in fucking with, even as a one-night stand.
It’s funny the way I sometimes judge people. I mean, I grew up just off the M-line in Ridgewood. The son of a second-generation Italian-American plumber. My ma worked at a hardware store. Queens was in my blood. Stoop-sitting and handball and public school had all defined my childhood just as much as they’d probably defined this guy’s.
But he wasn’t hiding behind a baseball cap. His features were sharp but soft, and he wasn’t looking over his shoulder. His eyes were steady as he addressed me. They weren’t shifty. And he didn’t seem the least bit nervous about being caught in a gay bar.
“Nah. Seat’s open.”
He effortlessly perched himself on the barstool across from me and examined the tower of glasses and bottles at the edge of the table, smiling. “Been goin’ hard?”
I laughed. “They were here when I sat down. But you knew that already.”
“How’s that?”
“Because you saw me on Forty-Fifth. I haven’t been here long enough to finish a beer.”