Quiet Midtown

It was quiet at MOMA the other night, after we got in. We said hello to the woman behind the desk and strolled past the security guards. We'd just turned the corner when, suddenly, cacophonous noise. There was a jazz quartet, dancing babies, and hundreds of people. Four open bars and food stations. I knew this had to be the place.

I sent my short, fat, gay, Indian companion to get us some white wine and cheese. When he came back I introduced him to the tall man I'd been talking with. "But he's not Indian like that. He smoke-um peace pipe." "Yeah," my companion said, "me trade-um wampum, round-eye." "Round-eye?" the man said. Then we all laughed. There's no shaking art-types. We were here to see the new etchings exhibit by Lucian Freud.

At the stairway beneath a helicopter a volunteer told us there was no drinking upstairs. My companion and I left the tall man and went back to one of the bars. We never saw him later, upstairs, when we pressed into the crowd at the start of the exhibition rooms. Freud doesn't really do sketches or studies. He prefers etchings, and can think in reverse, in mirror-terms. There was a series he'd done of his daughter with a Pluto t-shirt on. He wasn't happy with her face and had the printer buff out the brass plate where her face had been, but kept the background and body the same. He'd had it buffed out twice. The third time he was finally happy and printed copies. All three were shown here. "Look at the second one," my companion said. "That totally sucks."

We went next door and had a drink at The Modern.

We had a drink at P.J. Clarke's.

We had a drink at Old Town.

We had a drink at Fanelli's.

We had a drink at The Corner Bistro.

It was oddly quiet at Employees Only when we arrived. A slow night. We sat at the end of the bar next to the entrance and my companion visited the bathroom. The mustachioed bartender asked if I'd like some real Absinthe. "Yes." My companion came back from the bathroom. He declined, but ordered some Rittenhouse rye whiskey. The bartender performed the ritual. With the sugar cube, the fire, and the slotted spoon. He advised me to take it slowly. It was a little more than a shot's worth. It took me about three swallows. A little later, as the walls began to move oddly, my companion announced he was going to try out the secret bathrooms downstairs. I told him I didn't think he would make it out alive. People's faces were at once blurred and sharply in focus. Eyes straying to the middle of foreheads.

I thought about my companion. His husband is in New Mexico. He's a lawyer, or something. My woman is in Indonesia and I hear from her less and less. We're friends on Facebook, but her status hasn't even changed in two months. As far as I know she's still about to board the puddle-jumper to Jakarta. "He's not Indian like that, you sonsabitches!" The mustache-bartender was too polite to hear me. Maybe I hadn't said anything. Maybe it was in my brain. I tried it again. Same non-response. Right now we have each other, my companion and I. He likes Paul Simon and Luna Bars, but I like him anyway. Lucian Freud has sometimes been criticized for portraying people with hyper-realism. Almost in caricature. So what? Let people have moles and lazy eyes. What I've been resisting in online communities is a streamlined version of the self. Second Life is for masturbating. Also, I feel oddly displaced on Facebook. I'm connected constantly with everyone I know, or can be, but am alone in my apartment.

Fourteen hours later my companion came back upstairs from the bathroom. He told me a story about his adventures down there and I listened silently. He sat down next to me when he was finished and he was silent, too.