Chapter 5

When I arrived at Pilz Bar, he was standing outside, smoking, looking off down the street. The smoke drifted toward me through the night and I felt it on the back of my tongue. He looked beautiful, transforming the garbage-strewn street, shapes lurking in the streetlamped murk, into something sublime. I wanted to consume him. I wanted him to consume me.

On the long subway ride back to Brooklyn, after I’d left my parents’, one phrase had echoed through my mind: You are Freud. I pictured saying it to him, over and over: You are Freud, you are Freud, you are Freud. I saw his eyes dilate, the pupils so big they could swallow me whole. Yes, I heard him say, yes. The world rose up shimmering to meet his yes. His yes was lying on my back in the park looking up at autumn leaves, his yes was a Manhattan avenue sparkling late into the night, his yes was the crescendo of an orchestral movement, his yes was being crushed, his yes was relief, his yes was warmth, his yes was home. I imagined running my hands along his sides, up and down; looking into each other’s eyes. Just that. He had come back for me. I was not no one. I was not alone. You are Freud. Yes, I am Freud. Yes.

And here he was. His beard like brush, waiting for a fire. His arms, which had lurked in the back of my mind all night, the muscles moving beneath the skin. His sturdy frame, which could immobilize me. How many flavors of craving there are. He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out, and when he looked up, he saw me. His eyes.

“You came back,” he said.

“I came back.”

We stared at each other. He put his hands in his pockets. He was smiling, a little, and this made my heart race.

You are Freud.

Say it: You are Freud.

Instead my feet walked toward him of their own accord. I breathed him in, the pungent smell of male sweat. I raised my eyes to his and held his gaze, a look I’d given hundreds of times before, a look that meant kiss me, a look that meant I’m yours, a look that meant yes.

Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head.

Shame engulfed me; I was reeking of it, as if I’d soiled myself. I felt enormous and floating, obtrusive, unhidable.

I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear.

I wanted anyone else. I wanted Sam, I wanted Dominic, I wanted patio guy, I wanted Langham. I wanted to be flattened. I wanted to be small. I wanted my parents, I wanted to curl up in my mother’s closet alone. Only they understood me. Freud did not understand me. Only my parents understood me—where were my mother’s pants, where was her smell, where was my father’s wink, I should never have left, I needed to go home.

And why had I come, when I had seen what I had at the party? Was I really and truly out of my mind?