Life Goes to the Movies by Peter Selgin Page A

off to sleep, Dwaine, naked and smelling of metabolized sweet alcohol, climbed under my sheets. At first I
thought he was pulling some sort of prank. “What gives?” I said, laughing. “What the hell are you doing?”
    But Dwaine wasn’t laughing. He sat there, smiling in the dark, his features lit fitfully by the red neon sign winking across the street. I heard
what at first sounded to me like plumbing noises, rumbles and gurgles, until I realized they were coming from Dwaine’s stomach, like he was about
to get sick. “Are you okay?” I said.
    “I’m fine,” said Dwaine, his voice hard to hear. “Fine.”
    I reached up then and switched on my lamp. A mistake. He screamed. “Turn it off! Turn the goddamn fucking light off!”
    I did, but not before seeing the erection that Dwaine hadn’t had time to cover up, its tip as red and glossy as a fireman’s helmet.
Grabbing my bed sheet and wrapping it around himself he rushed out of my room. By the time I said, Wait! he was already gone. For a long time I stood
there, feeling the bones of my face, all sound (including that of the subway train which chose that dramatic moment to roar by) edited out of the scene
as in a violent sequence where everything turns to silence and slow motion before going black.
    There are times in our lives that change us forever, or could have. Had I not been a square insecure small-town kid from Connecticut this might have
been one of them. Instead I had to switch on that light. Why? I should have let Dwaine get into bed with me; I should have let him do whatever it is
that he wanted to do. Again why? Because it would have done no harm. Because we were both lonely animals burrowing in the dark, seeking warmth,
comfort. Because life is short and that night especially was going to be long, very long. And because, when you get down to it, aside from changing my
life completely, it would have made no difference.
    I stopped feeling the bones in my face and called tentatively into the darkness: “Dwaine?”
    Stepping into his room I felt the breeze from his open window against my bare ankles. I climbed the fire escape to the roof where I found him wrapped
in the bed sheet, huddled close to the edge, the remains of a dead pigeon like a sacrificial offering at his feet. He looked up.
    “I’m not a homo,” he said.
    “Neither am I.”
    “But I am fucked-up.”
    “No, you’re not.”
    “Yes I am, babe. You bet your ass I am. I’m fucked up and so are you. Only I’m too fucked up and you’re not fucked-up
enough.”
    A subway passed, its roar and lights splashing. Over our heads a police helicopter flut-flutted, the whole scene lit intermittently by flashes of red
neon. Dwaine gave a weird laugh then and slid himself closer to the brink. I dove and grabbed him, pulling him into the stairwell shed where I held him
close and he burst out crying.
    “You’re my only friend,” he said through a stream of tears. “My only friend in the whole goddamn world. It’s funny,
isn’t it? Don’t you think it’s funny, babe? I think it’s hysterical!”
    I held him, feeling the clammy patch of skin between Lucky Lumps. If he’d been a woman I would have kissed him then, oh yes, I would have.
Instead I silently, secretly prayed to the eagle electric manufacturing company sign across the way, wishing it would swoop down and protect us, shield
us with its tin wings.

IV
    The Two
Greatest Artists
in New York
(a Farce)
     
    “You get me to Florida.”
—Dustin Hoffman, Midnight Cowboy
The Pertinent Movie Quote Wall
     
    P icture this: The Two Greatest Artists in New York sprawled on the sands of Miami Beach. It’s five in the morning, something like that, and
I’m awake, perusing the seascape, trying to decipher those mysterious blue shapes floating way out there.
    Mountains? Waves? Whales?
    We’re wearing tuxedoes, Bull Duncan’s tuxedos, a pair of return airline tickets to New York tucked safely in Dwaine’s breast pocket,
boarding passes to