Remembrance of Things I Forgot: A Novel Page 6

  Soon Junior was on me. He aggressively kissed me, using his roaming hands to check out my arms, back, and shoulders. I kissed him back partly out of surprise and partly out of curiosity. Over the years several guys had told me I was a good kisser, and this was the first time I had a chance to prove it. When Junior stuck his tongue in my mouth and pressed his hand against my crotch, I abruptly pulled away from him.

  “Slow down.”

  “Okay.

  Junior awkwardly backed away from me. An older man wasn’t supposed to rebuff the advances of an attractive younger man; it overturned the entire natural order of gay life.

  “I just want to get to know you a little better,” I said, cringing at hearing a line I’d used before on other guys I didn’t want to sleep with— mortified that I was now using it on myself. (It also bothered me that the cliché had never made any sense, as having sex is inarguably one way of getting to know someone better.)

  Junior was quiet, and I knew exactly what he was thinking: All right. Where’s this going? He was wondering if I was one of those guys who announced after he got you hard that he didn’t want to have sex on the first date. I’d always thought, If you’re going to give me a boner then give me a fucking break too. Why wait? Seize the gay.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you since we met.”

  Junior’s face stiffened, braced to hear, “I have this bunny outfit . . .”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m you from twenty years in the future. You’re actually standing in a time machine. And I need your help with something before I return to my time.”

  Junior’s expression didn’t change, and I was mystified that he seemed to have no reaction to my announcement. He sighed heavily before he spoke. “You know I’ve had guys change their minds about having sex with me after they get me back to their apartments, but this is the most fucked up lie anyone’s ever told me. If you didn’t want to sleep with me, why not just suggest some sex act so disgusting that I’d immediately head for the door?”

  The telephone rang. Who the hell could that be? I thought. My number was not just unlisted; it had probably been nonexistent until a day ago. I picked up. I thought it might be my Taylor from the future.

  “Hello?”

  “Look, some guy just stopped by, asking me if I’d been contacted by someone who claimed to be from the future. Someone by the name of John Sherkston.”

  It was Taylor, but he wasn’t from the future. It was his younger self whom I’d spoken to earlier in the day.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I lied. There was something cyborg about him that I didn’t like. You’d better watch your ass. This guy’s a freak.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “An old bald dude with glasses.”

  I assumed they’d send Taylor to rescue me, but this guy sounded like Cheney. There was no way the vice president would be trying to rescue me. Would he? Of course, it was a government project; Taylor was too valuable to send back in time. Perhaps they sent a bald bureaucrat to fetch me.

  “He gave me the creeps. He has this glassy-eyed way of speaking that looks and sounds psychotic. If I was you, I wouldn’t let him find me.”

  His advice raised a question I had.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I have a friend who works in high-tech telecommunications. He’s developing this last-call return feature and he’s letting me try it out. I use it on all my phone sex partners. I like to stay in touch with the good ones and keep track of the bad ones.”

  It didn’t surprise me that Taylor could *69 callers long before the phone company offered the service. He was buddies with scientists and engineers from around the world, and they were always giving him sneak previews of their latest inventions. I recalled he had a camera phone years before anyone else. There was an awkward lull in our conversation as we both ignored that I had been placed among the bad phone sex partners.

  “So are you from the future?”

  “Yes.”

  “Awesome. Now do you remember any of this?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.” It took me a moment to grasp that he was asking that if our conversation had already occurred in my past, then why didn’t I remember it?

  “My guess is that your physical body and memories haven’t changed from your old past,” Taylor explained, “while your new memories— the re-altered neurons—don’t physically exist yet in your brain. It will interesting to see if your new memories will instantaneously appear when you return to . . . what year are you from?”

  “2006.”

  “And why is this dude looking for you?”

  “I have no idea. They’re probably afraid I’ll change the past and alter the future.”

  “They should look on the bright side. Maybe you’ll change history so every guy in the future will be a genetically altered über-stud.”

  I thought about how easily President Bush had authorized torturing terrorism suspects, and I considered what lethal force he would authorize in order to stop someone from possibly interfering with his future. But I wasn’t about to return to my time until I enlisted Junior into becoming our sister’s guardian.

  “This guy described you as a bodybuilder. Is that true?”

  I could see where this was leading.

  “Sort of.”

  “Well, would you like to meet for coffee?”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m in relationship.” With you, I wanted to add.

  “I thought I was your boyfriend,” he said.

  “You are,” I said, thinking having sex again with the young Taylor would be hot. “But I don’t have time. I’m sorry.”

  Taylor pressed me to meet him, but I wasn’t going to be sidetracked from saving Carol by the memory of Taylor’s then-crisp six-pack.

  “Just one more thing. Do I really invent a time machine?”

  “You do.”

  “Wow! That’s cool. I’m sorry. I’ve gotta go. I’m speaking to the Physics Club at Stuyvesant High School tomorrow and have to prepare.”

  Stuyvesant was the premier science school in the city and Taylor was a graduate. I thanked him for calling, and he said one last thing: “Be careful.”

  Junior had overheard my conversation with Taylor and appeared to be understandably more confused.

  “Look, I can prove that I’m you, but we have to go.”

  “Go? I just got here.”

  I found two duffel bags in the closet and opened one of the dresser drawers. Junior’s eyes popped at the sight of all the cash.

  “Someone’s looking for us.”

  “Us? Who?”

  “Someone from the future.”

  “Well, if he’s from tomorrow, can’t he wait till then?”

  I glanced at him and smiled to acknowledge he’d made a joke, then began to fill the bags with stacks of bills and rolls of double eagles.

  “How much money do you have in there?” Junior asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  Junior shook his head and his expression became grim.

  “Why does every guy I meet have to turn into a freak? Just ’cause we bear a resemblance to each other, suddenly you’re me from the future? Fuck.”

  “I’m not a freak,” I said. “I just seem weird because I’m you in twenty years.”

  Junior’s smile returned.

  “Right. Because that’s the most normal sentence anyone’s ever said to me.”

  Since we didn’t have time, I didn’t try to explain what I’d meant. “You know what I mean,” I said.

  “Not really. But I guess I should know because you’re me.”

  I gave the sarcastic prick the finger and opened the bottom drawer. When I removed the guns, Junior looked aghast.

  “What are those for?”

  “We might need them.”

  “To have sex?”

  Junior stood up and moved quickly toward the door, but he held back from opening it. He
seemed to be scared of me and also intrigued, which is sometimes how I felt about myself.

  “This was a bad idea,” he said.

  I was listening to him, but I was also trying to think of a way to signal to Taylor where I’d be going without tipping off whoever was searching for me. I needed to think of something that only Taylor would understand. Nothing came to mind.

  Junior and I both abruptly stopped moving when there was a knock on the door. There was no peephole, so we couldn’t see who it was. A raspy voice shouted, “Police, open up.” I signaled for Junior to be quiet and then motioned for him to move toward the window. I opened the window and picked up the two bags.

  “You’re taking the fire escape?” Junior whispered. “It’s the police. We have to answer the door.”

  His naïve law-abiding Boy Scout persona was cute, but I found him aggravating at that moment.

  “It’s not the police,” I said quietly. “I told you, someone’s looking for me. Now follow me.”

  “No! You don’t try to escape when the police knock on your door.” We were on the fifth floor, and I had to admit the fire escape looked rickety. Then suddenly several bullets ripped through the door, and the fire escape appeared to be much sturdier.

  “Do the police shoot through doors?”

  Junior shuddered and followed me as I quickly climbed out the window.

  5

  AS SOON AS WE REACHED the street, I grabbed a cab. After I signaled Ato the driver to pop the trunk to stow my bags, Junior’s lips opened as if he was going to say something, then he made a motion to leave, but I grabbed his arm.

  “Let me go!”

  “You have to come with me. I’m sorry but you’re involved now, and there’s a chance they might come after you next.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “You don’t know exactly? What? Do you have so many killers targeting you that you can’t keep track of them?”

  My answer was to open the door to the cab and push him into the backseat. I sat down beside him and said to the driver, “We’re going to the South Bronx, 283 Alexander Avenue.” Junior’s eyes bugged out. “I’ll give you ten dollars extra if you hurry.”

  “How do you know my address?”

  “Because I’m you and I lived in that shitty neighborhood.”

  Junior stared ahead as if he was considering whether I might be telling the truth. I kept watch out the rear window of the cab, waiting for someone to come out of the front of the building. The door opened and a portly man walked out. The figure was too dark to identify until he stepped under a streetlight. He turned toward us. He was balding and wore silver wire-rimmed eyeglasses. His crooked smile turned his head into a jack-o’-lantern that was still sitting on the porch a week after Halloween. He reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol that had a long silencer attached to the end of the barrel. “Let’s go!” I shouted as Junior began to turn around to look. “Get down!” I yelled, pushing him down in the seat as the cabbie stepped on the gas. Our pursuer fired off two shots, and the few people on the street scrambled when one bullet hit a parked car and another dinged a garbage can. No one else on earth had his ghoulish grin; it looked as if he whitened his teeth with the blood of newborn infants. He’d also missed two clear shots. The lousy marksmanship alone was enough to convince me that we were being hunted by Dick Cheney.

  “Drop me off at the corner of Houston,” Junior said tremblingly, after we turned down Greene.

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Yes, you will! I don’t know what shit you’re into but my first dates usually don’t end with gunfire.”

  The cab stopped at a red light on Houston. I gave the cab driver circuitous directions to the South Bronx in an attempt to lose Cheney, then told Junior who I thought our pursuer might be.

  “I think the future vice president of the United States is trying to assassinate me.”

  “Tell the driver to drop you off at Bellevue.”

  “I know. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one. But I’m telling you the truth.”

  “I’m not stupid. I’ve seen Terminator. Just because you’re built like Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t mean you’re from the future.”

  Junior was more belligerent than I recalled. I’d never thought of my younger self as argumentative, but apparently I’d become a sharp-tongued New Yorker earlier than I thought. He peered out all the windows, trying to decide what to do.

  “Let’s just go to your place,” I suggested. “Then in the morning, if you want me to go, I’ll leave.”

  “Why would the vice president want to kill you?”

  I glanced at the cabbie. He remained focused on his driving and appeared not to be following our conversation. I assumed either he didn’t understand English well or it was commonplace for taxi passengers in New York to discuss why our nation’s leaders wanted to murder them.

  “He might be trying to stop me from changing history.”

  We took Greenwich Avenue down to Eighth Avenue and passed Uncle Charlie’s, a video bar. During my first year in the city, when I didn’t have many friends yet, I used to go there almost every Saturday night. The ’80s was the decade when gay men decided that watching television in a bar was a novel way to meet men. Predictably, it merely replicated an evening watching television with our families: no one talked, and by the end of the night everyone seethed with resentment. I ended up hating that bar, since I always left alone.

  “Why did you come back here?” Junior asked.

  “I was talking to the vice president . . .”

  “. . . the one chasing us?”

  “Yes. We’d been talking about how you could make money with a time machine, and he sent me back here.”

  “Why?”

  “I have no idea. At first I thought it was to help me make money. I don’t know what to think now.”

  “What did you need the money for?”

  I decided to tell him the truth. I’d have to reveal something about his future in order to convince him of my story.

  “I wanted to break up with my boyfriend. I wanted the money so I could move out and not have to move to Astoria.”

  “I really pray that you’re not me because you sound like a total loser.”

  “I’m sorry to break the bad news.”

  “Please stop with the bullshit. You’re not me! There’s a resemblance but you’re bald and wear glasses and you have a bump on your chin that I don’t have.” He pointed to a spot on his chin to indicate the bump he

  was talking about.

  “That grew in after I turned thirty.”

  “Well, if you really were me, you would’ve had that removed long ago.”

  “My dermatologist said it couldn’t be removed without leaving a scar.”

  “Then what the hell’s this?”

  Junior pointed to a long purplish scar on my right wrist.

  “That happened two years ago. A friend had an ice-skating party for her birthday at Rockefeller Center. It was stupid. All her friends are middle aged; we don’t need to fucking ice skate. Within the first five minutes, I fell and broke my wrist. I had to have surgery.”

  Junior’s face called me a liar.

  “I grew up in Buffalo and know how to ice skate. It looks like a suicide attempt. And who’s the friend?”

  It was Donna Carlino, and our friendship had cooled after my accident. I’d met her at a comic book convention.

  “You don’t know her yet. You’ll meet her in fourteen years.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  This wasn’t going well. I sounded like a delusional liar. It never would have occurred to me that it would be difficult to prove my identity to myself. I directed our cabbie to head up Eighth Avenue and then turn right on Forty-Second Street. We stopped moving at Fortieth Street when we became stuck in traffic. I kept looking out the rear window to see if we were being pursued and saw a dozen other yellow cabs creeping up Eighth. I woul
dn’t be able to tell which one was Cheney’s until the first bullet hit us.

  “Are we being followed?” Junior asked.

  “I have no idea. He has to be stuck in traffic too.”

  “For someone who almost got assassinated by the vice president, you don’t seem very worried.”

  “I don’t know what else we can do.”

  “We could try to lose him by getting out and taking the subway.”

  “Good idea.” I paid the driver. We got out and began to walk up Eighth Avenue to Fifty-First, then cut over and down Broadway. In Times Square in 1986, half the people walking around looked like they wanted to kill you and the other half looked like they had something to hide. Every old man, every balding man, every pudgy man, and every man wearing eyeglasses made me do a double take to make sure it wasn’t Cheney. I picked up the pace to get us out of there.

  It was thrilling to see Times Square restored to its proper sleaziness. I felt a sense of pride that I’d lived in the Big Apple when it was still a symbol of sin and temptation rather than rebranded for tourist families as a wholesome once-a-day fruit. It made me nostalgic to see our nation’s insatiable appetite for pornography still publicly proclaimed on “Adult” theater marquees instead of furtively stashed away on our computers. The Heinylick Maneuver was playing at the Eros, and Sperms of Endearment was at the Adonis.

  When the Adonis Theater was being demolished, I was riding in a taxi on Eighth Avenue and saw the word “Adonis” dangling perilously from the marquee above a pile of rubble. I longed for a camera, as the image seemed to be the perfect metaphor for being middle aged.

  At Forty-Fourth, we cut over to head to Grand Central. “This will all change,” I said, with a wave of my hand. “All the porn theaters will be closed or torn down and this will become Times Squaresville.” I tried to not to react like some grumpy curmudgeon mooning over the good bad old days, but seeing all the changes in the city made me painfully aware that the passage of time is the demolition of each day.

  Junior smiled. “Will there be protests to save the porn theaters by thespian do-gooders like Colleen Dewhurst and Tony Randall?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They’ll give earnest television interviews where they can get all actor-y and lament, ‘If they tear down all the adult-movie theaters and strip clubs in New York then where will the porn stars of tomorrow learn their craft?’”