Holland Tunnel (part 03)

part 03: blonde hairs

Shane’s behavior was beyond problematic. 

But he then apologized for being weird. Which meant there was some self-awareness, some empathy in there. That let my fight-or-flight response soften when otherwise I should have run for the hills.

And I was happy to soften, because the thought of apartment-hunting all over again so soon made me want to lay down and die. There was no doubt about the change in the apartment’s vibe though. The stink of shame hung like a cloud in our common kitchen area. Whenever we exchanged pleasantries, Shane’s eyes revealed a bad-puppy regret that felt legitimately painful to him.

I was no stranger to shame. I’d been treating friends, lovers, family like extras in my life for a long time, and I’d been called out for doing it too. Shane and I were both hiding in this pocket dimension, holding on to a sense of self and trying not to slide off the edge of Manhattan into the freezing Hudson River.

The shame – his and mine – was weighing on me since the precum dot.

 Somebody had to extend the olive branch sooner or later.

++++

It wasn’t me.

About three weeks had passed. Three weeks of intentionally being ships in the night. Navigating around each other’s schedules. Even our cats were marking territory with hiss and piss, guarding us from each other.

++++

One Saturday evening as the sun began to set over the Hudson, I was posted up at my fireplace desk, drawing some portraits for a client. I heard the tell-tale scrape of sneaker sole against linoleum, just outside my door before—

A soft knock, hesitant. My stomach somersaulted as I swiveled in my chair, not knowing what I’d find, but I grabbed for the loose doorknob anyways.

Shane stood there, glazed eyes squinting nearly shut, his toothless smile harmless and sweet. He was fully dressed (from the cold) and holding a large pizza from Famous Ben’s a few blocks up:

SHANE: Hey, brother. Would you like some pizza? I got a large since we’re both home for once.

ME: That’s… very nice of you.

SHANE: Care to take a break, smoke a bowl? I’ve got about [counts fingers] 2,400 vintage VHS tapes in my room… have you ever seen “The Wizard of Gore”?

I had. A fantastic underground splatter fest. He was speaking my language.

ME: The original? Herschell Gordon Lewis actually shot his films not far from where I grew up in North Miami. Before I was born, of course.

The ice between us slowly started to melt.

SHANE: Might you be into… Supermarionation? [he squealed] The whole world’s seen Thunderbirds and Fireball XL5, but my favorite’s always been—

I chimed in:

US [together]: Stingray! 

ME: I loved the underwater setting! 

SHANE: So cute and cool, am I right?

A bridge had appeared between us, invisible good vibes rooted in greasy pizza and 1960s British kids’ shows.

I stared back at the drawing I really didn’t need to finish right this second:

ME [decided]: You know what? I’m gonna take that break now.

++++

I’d peeked into Shane’s room before, but I’d never ventured inside. I knew he was into model-building and B-movies, but when he swung his bedroom door open, that mystery only deepened. Inside was dark, cave-like, ripples of green light pouring out from within.

Crossing the threshold felt like entering a sacred space: there was a central platform he’d built out of plywood where a large aquarium shone like a beacon, algae-choked and bubbling. His windows were covered with taped-down blackout curtains, turning everyday objects into mysterious shadows.

Homemade shelves fanned outwards from this central platform, surrounding the windows like scaffolding and crawling across all four walls.

His shelves were absolutely choked, stacks of CDs crammed between piles of books, cassettes and postcards. An entire wall of shelves was just unopened boxes of vintage Japanese plasmo (plastic model) kits. His 2,400-title-strong collection of VHS tapes and DVDs ringed both windows from floor to ceiling.

I looked around in awe, not just of the obscure things he’d collected, but of this space he’d built with his hands to contain his treasures, this Museum of Shane he’d crammed into a 200-square-foot bedroom.

SHANE: Square footage, brother. It’s a constant fucking battle.

He sat down on his futon bed, laid the pizza box next to him. It rested on a secondary wood platform against the far wall, with storage underneath stuffed full of action figures in Ziploc bags, old sneakers, balled-up laundry.

I took a seat on the floor. That same greasy gray linoleum carpet as my room, but even dirtier. Like you’d find in the “office” of an auto body shop. He probably ganked it from a film job. Shane lay down on his side, barefoot, one hip in the air. He smiled at me. The vibe felt weird again. Uncomfortable.

We both felt it. Shane lifted the lid on the pizza and gestured for me to take a slice, before realizing:

SHANE: Oh, oopsie… [cartoon-butler voice] Might the young master desire a plate upon which to sup?

I nodded. With yogic skill, he twisted his torso backward behind him, his hands fishing between the bed and the wall before coming up with a roll of paper towels in one hand and a three-foot glass bong in the other. He tore off a single square of towel for me before digging into his own slice of pizza, moaning as hot cheese and grease coated his gums:

SHANE: Oooo, nummy nummy! [watching me eat, carefully] How’s yours, Daniel?

I’d just bitten down, orange pepperoni grease only beginning to sear open the skin of the roof of my mouth. It hurt but was also salty, fatty, delicious. 

ME: Mmmph... Famous Ben’s is consistently great.

We gobbled up three slices apiece like vultures until Shane burped into his fist, leaped to his feet, and held the box with the last two slices above his head, declaring in a Highlander voice:

SHANE: I decree: ye shall be Tomorrow’s Breakfast!

With a slam, he chucked the pizza box into the fridge and returned to his room at a full sprint, sliding into a seated position right next to me on the floor. He reached out for the bong — stained, rancid, like it had survived a war — packing it with a fat tangle of red-haired flower, before he handed it to me:

SHANE [giggles]: Ladies first…

As I lit the bowl, as I took a dozen half-sips of air to coax smoke from the burning nugs into the chamber, as I pulled the slide and inhaled twin lungfuls of high-grade “Al-Qaeda Kush,” Shane sat on the floor the whole time, watching me. His cheeks flushed red, his blue eyes burned, a splash of orange pizza grease slowly changing shape in the corners of the left side of his mouth.

Holding the smoke until it burned, I emptied my lungs with a champion exhale that went on forever until it tripped up over its ambition and crashed out in burning coughing jags. And with that I knew: I was now absurdly high. Shane watched me in the green glow of his aquarium. Grinning, delighted.

ME [laughing as I realized]: You— you were fuckin’ high already!

SHANE: You bet your boots, roomie; it’s my default setting! Why’d you think I went out for pizza?

But his stare: it wasn’t just mutual stoner camaraderie. I willed my eyes to flick away from his, ultimately wrenching them free. They landed on the fish tank. Lit from above, half the aquarium was occupied by a thick green clot of plant mass, dense and fluffy like thermal insulation. Tiny silver guppies swam in and out of it, circling the tank to encounter each other anew again, again, again.

SHANE: This tank reminds me of like, life. This is all we experience, you know? Swimming ‘round, trying to find each other, forgetting we had, then remembering. 

He sighed deeply, wearily.

SHANE: This weed is pretty exceptional shit, right?

Then he cackled at how exceptional the weed was. I felt his breath and microdroplets of his spittle against my flushed cheeks. I felt the green light passing through my eyelids, entering my skull, greening my brain. What the fuck does “greening” even mean? My eyes shut, I was just another tiny guppy. I didn’t want to be a fish. I wanted to be a whole person again. I desperately wanted not to drag the anvil of my heart behind me everywhere I tried to go, plowing impossible grooves of longing and regret in the cracked sidewalks. I wanted to rewind and return to the child I once was and start over from there, avoiding now-obvious wastes of time and the advice of idiots who cared about me. I wanted to seek out better mentors, grow faster with clearer intention. That’s what I wanted, right now. Was I having some kind of breakthrough?

My eyelids slowly fluttered open. Shane still faced me, leaning on one elbow. His lips pursed, wet with saliva. His gaze heavy, sleazy: 

SHANE: You really are quite… striking, Daniel.

I did my best to ignore the toes — and untrimmed yellow toenails — of his left foot as they spidered across the carpet to rest their skin against my own. There was an electric shock that passed between us that felt instantly wrong and very bad. I flinched, retracting my foot, and scooched backward on my ass until two more feet separated us. Because I did not want to fuck Shane, nor did I want Shane to fuck me.

ME: I don’t want to fuck, Shane.

The light beaming from his smile broke, an audible crack, like a glass fuse burning out.

SHANE: Then, why…?

ME: I was hoping this was just… nice roommate pizza time. Things have been weird around here and I just appreciated this… gesture.

SHANE: Ah. And I’ve just misread you… yet again.

My head bobbed up and down, a nod so hard it bordered on rude. I got to my feet, thanked him for the pizza, and went back to my room.

After I closed and locked my bedroom door behind me, after my heart stopped racing and I could breathe again, I lit an incense in the dark and lay on my futon with my cat purring on my chest.

Through the door, on the other side of the apartment, I heard Shane mumbling to himself for a few minutes, then making tiny whimpering noises that sounded like he was crying.

++++

Our boundaries newly hardened as being “just roommates,” Shane and I became very much just roommates. My rejection made him colder toward me; any inching into friendship – or friendliness – had scuttled into our very separate corners of the apartment. It didn’t feel like a big loss; it’s not like we were ever truly friends at any point… but now any sugar-coating was removed and our interactions had become 100% transactional.

Honestly, I didn’t even care all that much. I had an address in lower Manhattan, I had my own tiny pocket universe within our shared pocket universe and that was just fine with me. Also, I had a little cash and a place of my own to start dating again. After 18 months in sex jail, I could let my dog off its leash.

++++

Because that dog was thirsty and New York City was dripping wet. Once I’d broken the celibacy seal, I started waking up in strange places, bringing strangers home; the frozen sidewalks piled with filth-black snow mounds hid strangers with tiny cozy apartments, bedroom candles, shared comforters. Single-serving adventures, single-serving humiliations, I was out here in the streets again, reaching to satisfy a thing I could not name.

++++

Winter nights were dark and long but definitely not lonely. On one such night of many, an apple-cheeked stranger shuddered and came loudly beneath me, collapsing into a puddle. They mumbled for me not to fall asleep in their apartment, to walk my ass to my own home. Sunrise was still two hours away, but you can’t overstay a welcome never granted.

I trudged west in the dark and wind, all the way down Canal Street, until I re-entered the pocket universe. Upstairs, I peeled off my clothes, my body a map of bite marks that smelled like someone else’s sweat. After a hot shower in our again-horrid bathroom, I crawled back under my own comforter, face-down on my pillow, waiting for sleep to swallow me.

My eyes closed, my pillow felt moist on my cheek and smelled… off. Did Captain Galaxy sneak in and piss on my bed? It wasn’t an ammonia smell, it was more… sour. My heart began to race but my brain had already begun to dim the lights, turn down the volume.

I woke up a few hours after sunrise, coughing. Something was stuck in my throat. Finding the end of it with my tongue, I pulled and pulled and pulled until a long, thin blond hair unspooled from my mouth like a party clown’s rope of handkerchiefs. 

Every inch of my skin began crawling with ants. I leaped out of bed only to find several more blond strands: in my bed, in my armpit, between my butt cheeks. For the first time in my life, I very seriously wondered if I’d been roofied — or worse — in my sleep. 

I stripped down in front of the mirror and inspected my body. I didn’t feel any pain or discomfort. My neck and torso were covered in bite marks, but I’d brought those home with me. Besides, Shane didn’t have that many teeth.

But what he did have now was a fucking problem.

++++

I waited for him to get home. I waited literally all day, until he dawdled in around three in the afternoon, roasted to the tits. He was not expecting to see me.

SHANE: Oh! Fancy seeing you home at this hour, Daniel.

I stared daggers at him. He felt them, and sweated.

SHANE: Usually you’re outside, lollygagging on your way to work—

ME: What the fuck were you doing in my bed?

He let his army-navy backpack drop to the floor with a thunk. His eyes met mine, naked, wounded. He chose his words before he opened his mouth:

SHANE: Now, hang on a minute—

ME: Shane, my pillow was wet with what smelled like YOUR SWEAT when I got home last night and I woke up covered in YOUR HAIR. You owe me a fucking explanation!

SHANE [raising his voice to match mine]: And I’ll fucking give you one if you’ll stop being PARANOID!

I folded my arms, all ears.

SHANE: I didn’t realize it was a crime to climb over your bed so I could sit on the fire escape and take pictures of the sunset. I’ve been doing that with multiple roommates for the seven years I’ve lived here. Did I enter your room without permission? Yes. You weren’t home and I… I didn’t think you’d flip out over it…

ME: What about the hairs? I found nine hairs in my bed, on my moist pillow—

SHANE [defensive]: Man, don’t be cruel! I’m 56 years old, brother! They’re all falling out! I’m not sure what you need to hear to believe me—

He was dancing, wriggling right out of my hands.

ME [not giving up]: Why was my pillow wet? And… smelly?

SHANE [tearing up]: Oh. Oh, that’s just… You’re a mean fucking asshole, you are.

He threw up his hands and pointed at Wedge, who was peering out from my bedroom doorway to observe us. 

SHANE: Probably your own little devil took a cheeky tinkle on it! Captain Galaxy has never, would never do something like that!

Shane’s eyes swallowed up the tears. I felt awful; I was the monster in this situation, shaming and belittling this innocent goober… until I noticed his hands fidgeting in front of his crotch. His fingers were knitted together, the dry skin of his palms rubbing against each other noisily as he tried to cover a clearly blossoming erection beneath his ski pants. Was manipulation his kink? 

Right then, I knew: I couldn’t trust a word Shane would ever say to me, and whatever was going on between us was slowly approaching critical mass. This moment hung in the air like a temple gong, filling the room and slowly fading away. When it had gone, Shane licked his lips and took a breath before asking:

SHANE: Are you… satisfied? [I stayed silent]. Are we… cool? I don’t think I want you to continue staying here if we can’t be cool.

He’d flipped it around on me again. I bit the inside of my lip, too hard, tasting my own blood.

++++

I began making notes of his comings and going in my sketchbook until I started to find the shape of his weekly schedule. I annotated the secret codes of his meal times, weekend plans, who he claimed to hang out with. I’d heard him mention a few friends, but I’d never met a single one. 

Something else wasn’t adding up: did Shane even work? I hadn’t seen him go on a single “film industry” job since I’d moved in. He’d asked me to write my rent checks out to him, not to the landlord, and motherfucker had definitely been cashing them. My room was nice but not any kind of cheap. Was my vampire temp work bankrolling both of our lives in the pocket universe?

Now that I’d built out his schedule, I was able to shift my own at home so we stopped intersecting almost entirely, with any occasional hiccup being a nod, a pair of “long time no sees.” Polite, transactional.

But my door stayed closed. Locked.

+++++

And then, weeks into our psychic cold war, on a frosty Sunday in early March, Shane knocked on it. I’d been awake for a while, looking at untranslated manga and slurping instant lemongrass noodle soup for breakfast.

SHANE: Hey, Daniel. Are you decent?

Swiveling in my desk chair, I opened the door, praying to Jesus this time he’d be fully clothed. 

He stood there in his winter jacket and chunky snow boots.

SHANE: Listen, brother, I know this is sudden, but I’ve got to leave town in a few days. I’ll likely be away for… well I’m not sure yet how long, but I’ll be taking Gally-boy with me.

ME: Oh. I hope it’s not a family emergency or…?

He’d never mentioned his family, or where he grew up, or any single detail of a life before he’d moved into the pocket universe.

SHANE: No, no emergency. Just life complications. I know we’ve been… spiky with each other, but I hoped you’d be a pal and feed my fishies while I’m away? I’ve left enough fish food for months if need be.

ME: Months? Wow, okay. Of course…

Months living here, without Shane? My first thought was how totally naked I was going to be all the time up in here, alone and with sleepover guests. But my second thought was: 

The aquarium was in his bedroom. Maybe, finally, I might find out what the actual fuck is what.