But soon a man in a costume with wings on his back that mirror light bumps into me. “Excuse me,” he says, and from his voice I decipher he is a homosexual.
“It is not a problem,” I say.
“Let me make it up to you,” he says. “What are you drinking?” I tell him Coke and vodka, and he says, “My kind of guy.”
I hope Rebecca returns before he does, but he’s back quickly. “One vodka and Coke for Mr.?” he asks.
“Karim Issar,” I say, and I shake his hand with great force.
“Easy, tiger,” he says. “I need that. Jamie Spalding.”
He asks where I’m from and what I do and how long I’ve been in New York, and I answer each question in a calm and quiet voice, which is simple because my normal voice is not very stimulated and is a facet I’m working on, as business people respond to enthusiasm and energy.
When I tell him that I don’t mind working long hours, and in fact I prefer them because sometimes I’m uncertain what to do with myself when I don’t have a project, he laughs very hard, even though nothing in my statement is humorous. Then he touches my chest and says, “Do you consider dancing a project?”
I must remind myself that I am a guest at this party and in this country. “No, I do not,” I say. “But I have to rejoin my friends now.” Before I depart I shake his hand even though I don’t truly want to.
At the pool table, Jefferson introduces me to the cat (Melissa) and the English Middle Ages waitress (Bonnie). He says, “Karim works with us at Schrub. The boss fucking loves him — he took him to the World Series the other night.” I don’t know how he knows this, and I wish he didn’t know it. Then he whispers in my ear, “Bonnie’s been asking about you. Talk to her.”
I don’t believe him, and I also think he wants me to talk to her so that he and Dan can possess Melissa exclusively for themselves, and it frustrates me that Jefferson always secures the optimal female, but Rebecca is still waiting for the restroom and I do not want to be alone or have Jamie converse with me again, so I engage Bonnie. She is studying for a master’s degree in sociology at a university in New York, and although she is friendly and intelligent and I do not think females who are slightly overweight are unattractive, as Jefferson and Dan do, I keep looking over at Melissa and partially listening to her, even though what she is saying is vapid (she is discussing where she bought her costume and how the idea launched from a television show), but Jefferson and Dan pretend to be very stimulated.
Dan continues refilling my drink and I become dizzier but I don’t want to appear like a boring socializer so I continue drinking, and then Dan and Jefferson pour us all small amounts of tequila and we consume them as a group project. The liquid produces flames in my throat and my eyes hydrate and when I open them everyone has a compressed face. At one point Dan says quietly to me “Karim,” and because he uses only one syllable I can tell he is also drunk. “I know I can be a dick. I can’t help it. It’s not personal. I’m just that way sometimes.” When I say it is okay, he squeezes my shoulder and says, “No, really. I’m a bastard. I can’t stand myself most of the time.” I tell him he is a better person than he credits himself, and I think I see a tear in one of his eyes before he deletes it with his fingers but it may be a result of the alcohol, and he hugs me with force and makes me drink another small glass of tequila with him.
The remainder I don’t remember with clarity. I know that soon Melissa began talking to me, possibly because I was pretending not to pay attention to her, and people act according to a supply-and-demand equilibrium like prices do, and then she was touching my arm frequently and laughing at my jokes that I knew weren’t very humorous and licking her lips just below a small birthmark that looked like a decimal point, and she asked to hold my wrench and then pocketed it in my pants, and we all drank more tequila, and soon we were all dancing in the middle of the room and Melissa was dancing with her back to me but adjacent to my waist and her neck had the most delicious smell of vanilla and felt like silk sheets against my cheek, and when I turned around at one point I saw Rebecca standing in our former spot, and we looked at each other briefly although she was blurry but I could see she was smoking a cigarette again.
Melissa went to get another drink, and Rebecca came up to me and said, “Sorry to interrupt. Maybe I’ll see you on Monday, if you make it in,” and left. Sometimes I wish my voice recorder didn’t record everything.
Then Melissa returned and kissed me and tasted simultaneously like a soft dessert and alcohol.
Dan and Jefferson were both dancing with Bonnie dividing them, and she was alternating in kissing both of them, and then I saw Dan bend down with his President Clinton mask off and kiss Jefferson with his tongue and Jefferson permitted it for many seconds before he pushed Dan away and called him a fucking fag.
Melissa licked the inside of my ear and whispered, “Do you want to get out of here?” and I said yes and licked her ear but instead contacted her hair with my tongue.
In the elevator we kissed more as we descended, and she also put her hand inside my pocket and said she was looking for my wrench and laughed, because it was the pocket without the wrench. When we exited the building it was much colder than before and my body was vibrating from the temperature and the alcohol. She said we could go to her apartment in the East Village. We waited for several minutes but couldn’t receive a taxi because they were in such high demand. Then a white man driving a bicycle with an attached carriage came down the street. Melissa stood in the street and waved her hand, and when he stopped she entered the carriage.
I couldn’t believe the man was going to transport us with his legs all the way across Manhattan. But Melissa said, “What are you waiting for?” and I got in.
The man pedaled to her address. He looked like he was my age and wore a wool hat for the cold, but soon he perspired from the work. Melissa continued kissing and touching me. I looked at the driver’s legs periodically and tried not to pay attention to people on the street observing us.
When we arrived at Melissa’s apartment, I gave her my wallet because I couldn’t focus on the numbers on the bills. She paid and returned it to me and exited the carriage, and I gave him another bill whose denomination I couldn’t read.
Her apartment was on the fourth floor, and I was breathless at the top because I have had little challenging exercise in New York. Her bedroom and kitchen were in the same room. “I guess it’s not quite what you’re used to?” she said.
In fact, it was similar to what I was used to in Doha. “It is sufficient accommodations,” I said, although I did not pronounce the words clearly.
She took my hand and led me to the bed, and soon we discarded all our clothing. She said she liked my body and that my skin had “such beautiful coloring.” I said I liked how smooth hers was (although one small section of her left leg was not because of a shaving error) and how soft her hair was, and we spent a long time touching each other’s skin and faces and hair and I forgot all about Kapitoil and work and being a foreigner and everything else, and all I thought about was how luxurious my body felt next to Melissa’s and that I had won the cream of the cream female at the party.
Finally she opened a drawer next to her bed and removed a condom. I had a moment of clear thought in which I truly understood what I was about to do and what it would mean and how I might feel after it, and my initial reaction was to tell her that I needed to go home, but then she exhaled warm air on my neck and my body defeated my brain and the thought deleted and I asked her to place it on me.