A Room with a View (of the Brooklyn Navy Yard) - 6. vi. Common Ground – “The simple secret of the plot”

.

vi.

Common Ground

– “The simple secret of the plot”

Fleet-footed time, gentle audience, has given way from the dark softness of a lonely Fire Island resort room, to the uncompromising soberness of a Tribeca afternoon. For this is where we find our forlorn heroes, meeting up again at the exact same table, in the exact same coffee shop the pair first found common ground in one another.

And uncompromising might also best describe Patrick Forsa’s attitude.

As Ted watches him, this comes through loud and clear. The author sitting across from him is entirely divested of his focus-less gazes; and long forgotten are the twenty-one-year-old’s gestures of nervous eyewear adjustment.

Now Patrick’s perched on his seat, cradling his cup of joe with both hands, leg tightly crossed high up, foot bobbing to effortlessly convey his ‘disinterested’ ire.

It strikes Ted as suddenly ironic. His bluster tutorials have created a lusus naturae, and the pair’s very contrast at this moment suggests the extent to which Ted’s turned schlump, and Patrick, hipster.

“Now I know how ole Doc Frankenstein felt . . . . ” Ted mumbles

“What’s that?” Patrick asks as if he couldn’t care less. His coffee down at the moment, a few errant fingers go up to tease his pearls.

From Ted’s perspective, the quarter carat diamond studs in Patrick’s earlobes sure didn’t hurt his appearance any. “I said, oh . . . nothing impor—”

“So how was the rest of your vacay?”

Ted nestles elbows dejectedly into the top of his thighs. The dangly cross on a loop in his right ear sways in misery as he looks up. “I missed you,” he says plainly. “We were supposed to have the week there, together.”

The truth is, after their dinner Friday, and his long night of despair, Patrick had packed and left Saturday morning. Now Thursday – and technically still their vacation time – this was the first they’d seen of one another since Ted went off with some rando.

“I was surprised,” adds Ted, “to find you . . . gone.”

“I went back to Brooklyn. I thought it best; I didn’t want to cramp your style.”

“Ouch,” Rector again mumbles.

“What’s that?”

Ted rights his posture. “I said ouch, Patrick. Ouch.”

“Hmph. I’m not sure you’re the one hurt, Ted. Not sure at all.”

Part of Ted wants to spill his ‘sorrys,’ get it over with, and get a move on to the anticipated next steps for them – but.

“I had a lot of thinking to do, Patrick. That’s why I stayed a couple of days on my own. A lot to . . . sort—”

“Didn’t stay just for the entertainment, huh.”

Ted grows pissed himself. He’s trying his best to stay quiet, to accept Patrick’s justifiable anger at him with meekness, when all he really wanted to do was tell the writer to take out his phone and check something out. He’s waiting for the right moment to do that though; waiting for a moment when Patrick relents.

Patrick sips more of his beverage. Afterwards, he tells Ted, “You had a lot of thinking to do, did you? That reminds me of something Dashiell Hammett said:

Life’s unrelenting, but

Writing can be the art of second-life.

Of getting things right

Out of things gone wrong.’”

“I’m sorry, Patrick. I acted . . . the total—”

“Fool?”

“Yes. The total fool.”

“Reminds me of something George Sand wrote:

Fools make for poor politicians,

Though expected.

And writers make for fool lovers

Through the unexpected.’”

Ted has to laugh. “That’s a good one. He has something there.”

“George Sand was a woman.”

“Look,” Ted says, circling the wagons around Patrick’s upset, “Marshall Kingston told me to break you of that habit.”

“What habit?”

“Of quoting Queer authors all the time.”

This news makes Forsa sad. “He did?”

“Yup. Said being smart in this day and age of ‘My ignorance is just as valid as your knowledge’ pisses people off. Makes them resent those who don’t act embarrassed about their brains.”

“But,” Patrick stammers, once again appearing much like his old self, “you never said a word to me. Never told me to shut up with the quotes.”

“That’s because I know Marshall Kingston is wrong. This fucking, fucked-up world needs brains more than it needs Marshall Kingston clones.”

Patrick glows a second. Admiration shines in his baby-browns onto Ted . . . . However, his reason for being mad at this exact same infuriatingly beautiful, maddeningly wonderful Ted Rector sitting in front of him returns.

“I wouldn’t talk of clones, if I were you. Never talk ill of your hook-ups, Ted.”

Ted snaps back, “They all think I’m you, Patrick. They all want to be with you, not me. And . . . fuck. I don’t blame ‘em.”

Stunned, still digesting the import of Ted’s emotional outburst and his revelation, an odd thing occurs, drawing the men’s attention.

Some unidentified young woman, carrying double-fisted doses of Uma-Ma Yo-Mama Java-Lava to a table of friends, passes by the boys.

She then inexplicably halts her steps, and slowly retraces them backwards.

Arrived, the girl turns her whole body to face Ted, swallowing audibly, and lets out loose with a blood-curdling scream!

Scuttling her splashy beverages down on their table, she does a little jig of excitement, screeching at full volume, “It’s him! It’s – OMG – Patrick! Forsa!”

The boys slowly get to their feet, eyes never leaving the wound-up, unpredictable fan accosting them.

The young woman stops her gyrations. Her tone drops too – although not her volume. “I’m literally about to die, dead, right here on the spot, cuz . . . cuz! I love you so muuuuchhhh—”

The boys exchange brief, scared eye-contact.

“I’ve just got to—” Showing the whites of her eyes, the girl lunges for Ted. The boys make a run for it. Run as if their very lives are at stake!

Out on Vesey Street, the boys turn west and towards the water. But a stream of newly agitated Not Enough Beans patrons follow them, led by the over-caffeinated Java-Lava imbiber: she’s now determined to fangirl all over Patrick, or Ted, whom she thinks is the writer.

A trickle soon puddles into a pool as others pour out of storefronts to see what the commotion is about. Perhaps Kai Cenat is in town!

Along with them emerges something like a continual roar; the one thing discernible through the human din is “Partrick! Forsa!”

But what of our hapless heroes, noble listeners? Well, put on your personal favorite chase scene soundtrack, for no one will be sleeping like a log for quite a while.

Ted and the novelist turn right at the corner at full gallop, thinking they can somehow make it to the Chambers Street subway station. But instead they are cut off by a wily split of the original horde coming the opposite direction.

They dash into the open space of the Tribeca dog run, dodging stockbroker Dobermans and rottweilers, who naturally want to run with the guys, but the people – the paid dog babysitters – they get a whiff of the excitement trailing after Ted and Patrick, and soon leash up their canine charges to join the chase.

Now on Warren Street, they breathlessly weave through traffic to get on the other side.

Bad choice, for like skillet-splatter to charcoal, they’re soon running past Harms & Ignoble bookshop.

Here, Ted’s sex-savvy face is plastered in each of the book pusher’s seller’s windows. A staggering ten-foot tall, a copy of the horn-toad green Rascals rests in his glossy photographed hand, while piles of the flesh and blood, or shall we say, paper and ink specimens are mounded on tables below, ready for guilty swipes and private pleasures.

Ah, it will be hot under the Christmas tree this year!

Naturally, more folks stream out of the store, excited as anyone to peruse the creative duo. They raise their bags and extract pens, prematurely begging for autographs . . . .

But, past the pot dispensary, Ted and Patrick try to lose them by swinging a hard right, into the manufactured plaza before the newish Hole in the Neighborhood Foods.

Three stories tall, our heroes wisely duck behind the ground level display of ripe green tomatoes while the crowd splinters higgledy-piggledy, with most charging up the escalators, and a few deciding to wait for the elevator.

Dashing back out the doors again, and back on the street, they think they’ve dodged the worst of the stampede, but like a bad cold sore, the vanguard of the crowd spots them, and sends up a cry of: “Oh, Patrick – convert me!”

From there they take increasingly confused tours through the Partial’s discount department store, the Fruit Bite glass-box electronics emporium, the campus of the New Yonkers extension college, and finally, Punchy’s Place, a skeevy pugilistic sweat farm for Wall Street day traitors traders to work off their frustrations by punching one another silly. Well, sillier at least.

Ah, the sweet smell of desperation!

From there, wall-to-wall people – whom the boys had managed to increase from each place they traversed – surge up the gloriously wide and tree-shaded North End Avenue, for Ted has an idea. From its far northern end, the boys enter Teardrop Park and hide.

A bit of a green warren, tucked between tall buildings on all sides, Ted and Patrick easily find a spot behind some trees where they can remain unseen.

The ploy works; the mob runs past them at full throttle, encouraged by the lead pursuers up front shouting: “They went to Rockefeller Park! After them!”

The boys watch in non-moving strain as the long train of running people stomp, and scream, and gaggle, and act out of control, moving in front of their hidden, sun-dappled position. Eventually this stampede includes all of the slower moving elements as well, until, at last, an old man with an arthritic sheepdog saunters past, followed by a pair of grannies on scooters.

Cautious still, our boys wait it out. At last they’re assured the hot-blooded host of book-club fans had descended, locust-like, down to the riverfront. The thrill of realizing this, raises a ripple of laughter from Ted and Patrick.

Through his hard breathing, Patrick says, “Now I know what Herman Melville meant when he said:

A great book is

Like a waterfall –

Best enjoyed from

The whirlpool below!’”

Silently, with the type of deadly earnestness only arising from the deepest of internal emotion, Ted moves from the author’s side to stand in front of him. Rector’s hand raises, as if with a mind of its own, and goes to the side of Patrick’s head. Then he uses this contact point as an anchor to draw himself in for a kiss.

No halfhearted effort either, this is a mad, wildly passionate kiss, undulating from tender to penetrating in sensual waves, while Patrick, no shrinking violet, meets Ted’s thrusts with accepting parries, but happily takes the lead when his sexy tutor slows.

After holding him on the side of his fever-pitched neck, feeling the man’s cross earring caress the back of his hand, Patrick moves his grasp lower, taking Ted by the waist and pulling him in close against him. As he does, and feels their excited members meeting through fabric in mutual insistence, it dawns on Ted that this, this is exactly what he’d fantasized about doing since that first day meeting him in Marshall Kingston’s office.

Eventually, the pair break apart through necessity; they’ve driven one another nearly breathless.

Ted utters, “I’m so sorry, Patrick. So sorry for how I acted on Fire Island.”

“Aw, Ted—”

“Before you say any more, can I ask you to do me one thing?” He steps back.

Patrick nods.

“Look at your Earn Er profile.”

While Patrick pulls out his phone, Ted explains, “I’ve been trying to get you to do it since the coffee shop, but there was never a good time.”

App open, the first thing Patrick notices is an “Arrow” from someone – it’s the Earnest Eros equivalent to a Blindr “Smash.” The Arrow’s from Ted. He follows the link and reads an update to Rector’s “Looking For” details. All the long-winded theories – the sentiments and abstractions – are gone. In fact, now the only thing it says is:

My ideal mate is a boy who likes plain, 2% milk, and riding in the backseats of cars with his eyes trained on the cosmos.

Patrick’s sight fast fills with tears. “You mean it?”

Ted retakes him in his arms. “Yup.”

Once Patrick’s able to hold his gaze, Ted continues, “I love you, Puma. I love you and I’ve been a fucking fool to try and keep it from the both of us.”

“Don’t mess with me, Rector, because not only do I love you, I like super, really, all-time love you.”

“Good.”

Patrick chuckles, using the back of his hand on his wet cheeks. “Good – is that all you can say?”

“It’s not all I can say, but it’s enough – I love you; you love me. It’s the third, most important, common ground we both share. Let the rest of the world fuck off.”

“Oh, Ted—” Patrick would have told him more besides, gentles all, except, as the old song goes, Ted’s lips got in the way.

Content, after the seal-the-deal bussing ends, Patrick slyly glances down the length of Teardrop Park.

“What are you doing?” asks Ted. “You think the rabble is back-tracking?”

“Could be. I suppose we better hide from them for the rest of the day. Maybe, the rest of the weekend – just to be sure.”

Patrick’s knowing grin leads Ted to inquire, “Have any particular place to in mind to wait it out?”

The author’s arm goes up, pointing to a specific low rise at the south end of the park.

“The Vanderbilt Hotel,” he says.

After a follow-up smooch, Ted takes his boyfriend’s hand, and does not let it go again until they’re checked in their suite on the 12th floor – and the Do Not Disturb sign is swinging in the breeze of the closing door.

_