Alden, Seven Hills' resident artist, was sitting on the front stoop, recovering from a typical Saturday night of debauchery, vaguely sordid but happily as vaguely recalled next day, when a beautiful young Indian woman strolled by with a dowdy male companion walking a little dog.

Now, Alden and I share some common assumptions that allow us to relate, even across the great chasm of sexuality (Alden says he's straight —and I believe him, as aside from his lovably bad taste he actually smells straight — that peculiar mix of Old Spice and B.O. that even the most closeted or hetero-ironic gays can't fake).  We both belong to the ancient Ababawdiap school of sexual attraction — Anything But Anglo-American But Anglo-American Will Do In A Pinch. 

Adherents to this ideology esteem exotic looks, a foreign accent, strange ways, and a soul, over the slick, overpolished plastic Barbie and Ken thing most Anglo-Americans seem to go in for.  I spent so many years abroad among the uncircumcised that to come back and hear the vicious, finicky WASPs hereabouts characterize uncut meat as "gamy" strikes me as parochial, if not outright racist, and makes me wonder if they've ever had anything but Barbie doll sex themselves. 

I realize I'm being a little racist and making all sorts of irresponsible generalizations myself here.  I apologize.  And of course my prejudice may deprive me of unknown pleasures, but I doubt it.  I have had plenty of Anglo-American lovers over the years, and they were all nice enough, in a nasally blah sort of way.  Anatomically perfectly correct, they still somehow managed, to a one, to turn sex into something quite ordinary, to the point where it was almost respectable. Of course, I can't say what it all felt like from their end (so to speak).  Mild is wild to some, and vice-versa to others. 

But you do run into a certain frigid WASPy type a lot in these parts.  There's one who goes to my gym who's the perfect example.  Strikingly conventionally handsome to the point of being hard on the eyes.  But there is something  fussy and mean about the way the features are arranged just so, like a room that's too tidy.  You search in vain for something out of place on his face, but there's nothing.  Remember what Tolstoy said about families — how happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The same could be said of these conventionally handsome faces.  They are, by very definition, all alike.

But these types have been wantonly flattered all their lives.  Superficially superior, mixing superficially with the masses has given them a false sense of their overall superiority, instead of, for some unknown reason, a sense of their overall superficiality.

Now, I've met blindingly beautiful people who were also cursed with superior intellect, and I am convinced they are usually from either outer space or the future, neither of which I'm dying to visit.  But most very good-looking people are of average intelligence, and because they are they don't realize that they are, and that people aren't worshiping them for who they are inside.  No one, in fact, is interested in hearing them expound on the nature of the universe.  That's what we have the Socrateses and Steven Hawkings of the world for: no one hears anything gorgeous people say, because they're too busy looking to listen.

Anyway, this character at my gym once told me he preferred, in his words, "intellectual over smart."  It was such a strange and stupid thing to say I knew he couldn't explain, so I never bothered to ask.  My point being: I am the exact opposite. Give me a man with innate, animal intelligence — the kind that knows when to pounce — with that keen, hungry look of something wild in his eyes, and a build a bit brutal, and I'll give you a man who knows his way from one end of the bed to the other. 

Alden understands all of this from the other side.  I mean, the straight side.  Whatever it is that has gotten in and infected Anglo-Americans and their allies— the pox of unearned prosperity no amount of professed guilt can ever rationalize; the amateurism of  fragile jerry-rigged identities, pockmarked with doubt; the husk of selves constructed around the imagined consequences of insignificant lives — it's squeezed all the juice right out of them, dried them up.

There are degrees, of course.  Which is why we're both Ababawdiapians and not Abasians.  It's like vegetarians who eat fish (and chicken sometimes) versus vegans.

So, back on the front stoop.  Cute Indian girl walks by, flashes old Alden the eye.  He's like, WTF?  Because, like I said, people around here will do anything to avoid eye-contact with anyone they don't know, and even sometimes with folks they do.  There's a guy in the neighborhood I dated a few times.  Saw him on the street a couple months ago.  I was alone.  He was walking towards me with a friend.  Sidewalk's otherwise deserted.  I saw him from a ways away, and kept my eye on him as he approached, thinking he would look over at some point, make eye-contact, and we'd say "hi." We hadn't met in a while, and it's not like we left off on bad terms. 

Well, you know what happened.  He brushed past, not two feet away, rigorously avoiding eye-contact.  I could feel him stiffen up as he passed.  But without an opening, I wasn't about to leap into his path.  He had seen me, of that I was sure.  But he was with someone.  The next time I ran into him, a couple weeks later, he was alone, and — no lie — he greeted me without hesitation. 

I've thought a good deal about it over my years here, and have come to the conclusion that this avoidance of eye contact is not out of politeness, or indifference, it's out of fear.  And a very full-bodied fear it is.  Lots of levels.  My neighborhood is a noxious mix of old school white trash and new school mods, many of whom like to parody white trash in the way they dress.  So there's a cultural and a class divide — which you find in different shades everywhere in Boston. 



Along with the town vs. gown mentality, age is a factor.  There are so many students around how could it not be? In Boston, the subtleties of their network of affiliations are baffling to outsiders who might not be aware of each school's history, rivalries and rank.  An errant glance is not only likely a waste of time hereabouts, it could be socially perilous.

So, back on the stoop.  This attractive young woman flashes Alden a look.  And the first thing he thinks is: "did she just flash me a look?"  And by the time he's asked himself that she flashes him another look.  Which is unheard of.  So he's like: "Oh my gawd, she did just flash me a look, and then another look!  But she's with that guy?  Who's that guy she's with?"  And while he's processing that riddle, she gives him ANOTHER LOOK.  It was not the storied Triple-Backward-Glance, which is good for a hundred and fifty points, but it was a triple, which ain't nothing.

His poor brain's on overload, though.  Even a Forward Triple Glance is so rare, there's a whole procedure you'd have to consult the MANual for.  And who has time when you actually encounter it to find it in the glossary?  All he could think to do is smile and give a little wave back, as she walked on.

I'm like: "you waved?"

He's like: "Well, what was I supposed to do?"

"Say something, anything.  'Nice weather,' 'nice dog,' 'that can't be your boyfriend, right?' Anything!"

He threw his head in his hands. "Now I'll never see her again."

I'm telling you, I could feel his pain.  I'm so rusty, I went to a nude beach in Vermont with my buddy Stevie last weekend, and even there, with everything hanging out and everybody giving it away, I was having trouble reading the signs.  And with no place on my person to keep my MANual, I was out of luck.  I came back with nothing but bug bites on my butt to show for it. 

So, after the fact we both got our MANuals out.  It's a guy thing — we come with them, ladies, FYI.  Mine looks like this:


I flipped to "Forward Triple Glance," cross-referenced with "With Another Guy" and "Walking A Dog".  And it was as I expected: someone was supposed to ask someone else for a light.  See that's the problem with having a MANual from 1969.  Even his, from 1976, was woefully out of date.

As noxious as smoking was, people forget why they started: because when everyone was doing it, it was the perfect opening line.  "Got a light?" was the all-purpose come-on.  Everything about cigarettes was perfect for bridging that now unbridgeable gap between strangers — even the fact that they were addictive.  It gave both parties an out.  If she rebuffed you, usually with a "no, sorry, this is my last one," you still had your pride.  You could be all like: yeah,well, I'm only asking because I'm about to have a nick fit, not because I want to get in your pants, sugartits.

If she — or he — said yes, there was always time as she fished in her pocketbook, or he unrolled the sleeve of his tee, looking all rebelly without a cause, to show off your charm.  The cigarette was an in, an opening.  And despite the fact that it would eventually  kill you, it was also supremely civilizing.  Nothing has taken its place.  Gum-chewing lacks sophistication, asking the time doesn't invite intimacy, and you can't just go up to someone you don't know and start talking about the weather, even in New England, where it is a rich, voluble topic.

I used to think of cell phones as the new smoking, but only because they, too, pollute the environment.  But cell phones are actually worse.  They've allowed the virtual, in the guise of the private, to colonize and completely overrun the already decimated public sphere, the shared space of strangers that once held the promise of a strange intimacy, without which our common life withers.  Smoking, as damaging as it was to health, at least had a social function among strangers to partly make up for it. 

I mean, try asking someone if you can use their cell phone.  Not the same as bumming a fag, is it?  I was on the street the other day and a suspicious-looking character who was apparently locked outside an apartment building and needed to call up called out to me and asked if he could use mine.  No way.  Unless you're bleeding out of a major artery and need to call 9-1-1, and then I'll make the call for you. 

I mean, first of all, what's this jerk doing locked outside?  He obviously doesn't belong inside, or that's where he'd be.  Second, what kind of a loser doesn't have a cell phone?  Even if no one ever calls you. And he looked like the type who would not only have a cell, but have one of those dumbass bluetooth things plugged in his ear.  And then I'm supposed to stand there with my thumb up my ass while he makes God knows how many calls trying to get into a building he's obviously not supposed to be in to conduct some nefarious business of God only knows what nature.  And now I'm an accessory.  I'm gonna have to testify.  Turn state witness.  Plea bargain my way out of a life sentence. 

Didn't even break my stride.

No.  Is it a coincidence that smoking and solidarity amongst strangers disappeared at about the same time?  But the answer is not to take up smoking again.  If it were only that easy, but that era is over.  The answer is obviously to get hold of a newer edition of the MANual.  There must be some newfangled way to intercept a Forward Triple Glance — an iPhone app or something.  Note to self:  Google it.