STEAM HEAT

THE VINYL VINEYARD—Vintage music, vinyl and cassette tapes bought and sold! The plywood sign was six feet across and painted to look like an old LP. The storefront around it was covered with an impressive mural of pop culture imagery from—well, my own youth. The first one, I mean.

As we stepped inside, I got to watch Lita’s charm offensive go fully industrial. Her boss, Adam, turned out to be a dark-haired, goateed hipster almost as young as she was, and Lita employed the most outrageously flirtatious smiles, bashful looks, even batted her eyes—though only once and very briefly—as she introduced me to him, and explained her need to spare me the predations of people like Janus. Adam fell before her shtick like the proverbial house of cards, not only giving her the following day off, but inviting her to leave as soon as their Saturday crowd began to wane that afternoon. It wasn’t hard to guess who Adam was dreaming of at night these days.

I was invited to hang around for the remainder of Lita’s shift, and, as the hours passed, heard Adam play a lot of music that my fifty-year-old incarnation had never been aware of—some of it pretty enjoyable. I even gleaned some useful insights from Adam’s rant about how MP3s were destroying music stores, and how the DJs and pretentious hipsters (Wait a minute, Adam. Seen a mirror lately?) who bought, and so terribly mistreated, old vinyl LPs these days had no concept of their real worth. But the most striking thing that happened to me, as I hung out in corners of the store as far from paying customers with working noses as possible, was my first encounter with actual boredom since this whole odyssey had started.

Though it sure felt to me like weeks had passed since I’d left my condo and emerged from that nervous breakdown, it had really only been four days! Four days and several lifetimes, during which the only moment I’d been really free to process anything beyond a frantic stream of urgent crises or mind-bending revelations right in my face had been that moment in the Lady’s guest house bathtub; and that opportunity for reflection had been—uh—pretty narrowly focused. Now, for the first time in weeks, I was not in shock, psychotic meltdown, or immediate danger, not running for my life, absorbing impossible marvels, engaged in paradigm-shattering debates with aliens, scrambling for food and shelter, or unconscious. I was just…wandering around a vintage music store I’d seen pretty much all of now, waiting for the ‘Saturday crowd to thin out’ so I could finally go take a shower. But in this new reality of mine, not even boredom turned out to be as boring as it had been once.

The sudden stretch of decompression itself felt weirdly novel at first: almost alarming—like the dizzying drop of some missed step. And then, as I wandered up an aisle, listening to some kind of mechanized dance music Adam was playing, my body began to move almost involuntarily. The muscles in my chest and shoulders, upper arms and abdomen started to contract and shift in synch with the tune’s complicated rhythms—as if some puppeteer were pushing or pulling at them—rather deliciously! I tried to stop at first, the fifty-year-old man inside me feeling foolishly conspicuous. But though I was able to stifle most of the visible movement, the rhythmic contractions and gyrations pressing for escape within me persisted until, suddenly, I began to notice and think about my body in ways all but eclipsed for days now by the endless barrage of distracting urgencies. When had I last felt like dancing?

I let myself move—a little, and enjoyed how…light I felt. And flexible! I stretched my arms above my head, then around behind my neck, pivoting from side to side at the waist, full of what I slowly recognized as restless energy. After all I’d been through since waking in that dumpster this morning, I had…excess energy! Though I’d really enjoyed sleeping lately, I realized now that I could not remember feeling simply weary at any time since I’d left the old condo. How had I lost track of this—even in the shuffle I’d been caught in?

Experimentally, I reached all the way down to scratch the middle of my back with one hand—and nothing protested! Not a ghost of strain or pain anywhere. I lunged down to shove my hands, palm-flat, against the tops of my feet—bending nothing but my waist—and all the flex points in my body just felt…relaxed! For only the second time since I’d dodged through all that traffic outside the hospital to run through that parking garage, I gave my full attention to this new body—and everything it could do. All the great things it could feel again—all the unpleasant things that it would never feel again—for many years, at least—assuming this magic new physique was still going to age—as I hoped it would for all sorts of reasons. I stood up again, overtaken by a sudden wave of elation. I was younger than Adam was! Younger than Lita! In the desperate rush to keep up with everything I’d had to parse lately, that fifty-year-old man inside me had somehow forgotten this! Now, I wanted to leap, and run, turn somersaults—dance in the Vinyl Vineyard’s aisles just like the kid in…what was that movie I’d seen so many years ago…about a Midwestern town where no one was allowed to dance until this young gymnast moved in and forced the issue? Ridiculous premise, of course, but I could be a gymnast now! If I wanted to! This body could do…anything! “Hey, Lita,” I called. “Is it okay if I go out for a walk?”

“Sorry,” she said, sorting records at the counter as Adam rang up a sale at the register. “This must be so boring, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be out of here soon now.” She glanced at Adam, who shrugged as if to say, Who knows? Not my problem.

“I’ll come right back,” I promised. “Just once around the block. I need some exercise.”

“You’re not my prisoner,” she said. “Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? If you see Janus and his crew, head the other way and come straight back here.”

“Thanks!” I said, already racing for the door before I really did start dancing in the aisles.

Outside, walking became running in less than twelve feet. I dodged and weaved through the shuffling pedestrian herd with rocket ship dexterity. And my sense of energy only increased until I felt as if I could spread my arms and leave the ground. Being in this skin was bliss—now that I had a few minutes of unstressed time to think about it again!

I was breathing harder but not tired at all by the time I got back to the store, noticeably sweatier than when I’d left. If I’d stunk before, I knew I must reek now, and didn’t even bother going back inside yet. I just slumped down to sit on the sidewalk against the storefront and cool off. No one passing paid me any notice at all. It felt so great not to be surrounded by alien royalty gravely debating political crises caused by me.

When I’d finally cooled off and dried out as much as I seemed likely to, I sprang up on limber, energized legs, and went inside to see what our estimated time of departure was looking like. But Adam and Lita were engaged in such an animated conversation about Janus that they didn’t even notice my return at first. By the time they did, and clammed up, I’d realized that Lita’s history with Janus might be more substantial and more recent than I’d assumed.

“Hi, Matt,” Lita said, suddenly all smiles again. “How was your walk?”

“Nice. …How’s it going here?”

“Great. Looks like I’m finished for today.” She wriggled her fingers at Adam, and walked out from behind the counter to come join me. “Let’s go get you settled in, okay?”

I nodded, and waved at Adam as we headed for the door. “Thanks for letting me hang out. I like your taste in music!” I didn’t see how it could hurt to ingratiate Lita’s boss. Adam gave me an uncertain smile and tentatively returned my parting wave as Lita and I left.

“So, what’s up with you and Janus?” I asked her as we started down the avenue.

She gave me a sharp look. “Nothing. Why?”

“Janus didn’t seem to think so this morning. And Adam doesn’t seem to either.”

Her look went from sharp to probing. Then she shrugged and looked away. “Janus is much more amusing when you refuse him than when you don’t.” Her expression became flinty. “We’re all young and stupid before we’re old and wise, Matt; but I learn faster than most.”

She lapsed into a stony silence.

“So,” I backpedaled with exaggerated cheer, “now what shall we talk about?”

She offered me a grim smile, but we said nothing more at all until we arrived at Lita’s building, just several blocks away and one street up from the Avenue itself. It was an old, once elegant apartment building with tiny decorative balconies under every window, covered in gap-toothed, art deco plaster reliefs—some of which had fallen away across the years.

Lita’s place was a single room two floors up, off a clean if run-down hallway. It was furnished in mismatched thrift store chic, and plastered with posters and magazine clippings for emo bands and Tim Burton movies. A crucifix hung above a Kali statue, a bronze Buddha, and some incense burners piled with bead or rhinestone necklaces and candle stubs atop a small bookshelf full of poetry and new age, self-help paperbacks. A floor-length, dime store mirror was nailed to the inside of her door, and draped with long silk scarves in shades of plum and amber. Faceted crystal balls hung in all the windows. Her double bed was made up in black satin sheets and pillowcases under red and black crushed faux-velvet comforters. A huge old radiator hugged the wall at the bed’s foot. Its valve was heavily painted over and looked immobile, making me doubt that it still functioned. Did anyone still use steam heat these days?

Lita went straight to the room’s only other door and opened it, revealing a small, very full closet. Having assumed the door would lead to another room, I wondered where she expected me to sleep. She pulled a pair of black jeans and a plain white T-shirt from a narrow chest of drawers inside the closet, and, as if divining my concern, said, “I hope you don’t mind sleeping in a blanket on the floor.”

“Beats doorways or dumpsters,” I said.

“That where you got the stink?” she asked casually. “Sleeping in dumpsters? ’Cause that would be a real newbie move. There are much better options—not that it matters now.”

“I… sort of,” I said, flustered.

“Well, just in case there’s ever a next time, find one that’s full of cardboard, not spoodge and puke. Makes better bedding. And look around for needles before you get inside, in case some junkie’s been there before you.”

“Thanks,” I said palely. “Is there a shower here somewhere, I hope?”

“Each floor shares a bathroom at the end of the hall—and you’re expected to keep it clean,” she told me sternly. “I’ve got soap and a towel you can use, but it won’t do much good if you get back in those clothes.” She handed me what she’d pulled from her closet. “Use these for now. I’ll go to the kitchen and get a garbage bag for what you’ve got on. We can wash them tomorrow and go to a thrift store to get you something with more fashion sense. The cargo pants and plaid shoes have gotta go—especially with that sweater.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“It’ll cost all of five dollars. And I’m a working girl now,” she added proudly.

“That’s very generous.” I glanced around the room again. “Is there a place to eat here?”

“That’d be the kitchen I just mentioned. It’s downstairs, and everybody in the building shares it too, so you’re expected to keep it clean. And that’s no joke if you don’t wanna have to use those dumpster tips I was just giving you. Got that?”

I nodded emphatically.

“Good. All the other kitchen rules are posted on the wall by the sink, but it’s mostly common courtesy. I’ll show you which shelf my food’s on down there, and the other most important rule is, don’t ever touch anybody’s food but mine, okay? Not for any reason. You want something I don’t have, I’ll get it for you—if it isn’t crap or caviar. But you cause me any trouble with the others here, and you’re out on your ass without time to say sorry.” She gave me a warning look. “I’m helping you solve your own problem, whatever that is, not solving it for you, remember?”

“Sure. I wouldn’t touch anybody else’s stuff anyway.”

“I bet you wouldn’t.” She eyed me speculatively. “Someone raised you well.” She got a red plush towel and a bar of pink soap from the closet, and handed those to me too. “Why don’t you go get human now. I don’t want this room smelling like you smell—which means you’re taking a shower and changing your clothes every damn day while you’re here, got that?”

“No argument here,” I said, bundling everything into the towel.

“I’ll be changing out of my work clothes while you’re in the shower.” She gave me a slight smile. “So, if you’re easily embarrassed, knock before you come back in.”

 “Okay,” I said uncomfortably, turning to the door as she sat on the bed, already unlacing her black boots. “I’m sure I won’t be back that quick,” I added, wincing as my voice broke. I stepped quickly out into the hallway, hearing her chuckle quietly as I pulled the door shut behind me. Great, I thought. My voice is picking this moment to change again?

This was clearly going to be a much more awkward arrangement than I had imagined—though still vastly better than the alternatives, I hastened to acknowledge mentally, just in case Lita’s ‘universe’ was listening. I was definitely not complaining.

The bathroom was coated in thick green enamel, peeling in spots to reveal layers of several other colors beneath. There was a small, old-fashioned toilet, a dingy white porcelain sink with tarnished silver fixtures beneath a wood-framed mirror screwed to the wall. Happily, the shower was nowhere near as filthy as I was.

After laying my fresh clothes and towel across the sink, I stripped, and plunged into its spray, scrubbing myself vigorously with Lita’s soap until no hint of the reek I’d worn all day remained. Then I simply stood beneath the strong, hot stream of water, soaking up the soothing pressure of it on my neck and back. It seemed forever since I’d even seen a shower. I was in no hurry to leave it now.

After decades of unexamined autonomy, it was very strange to be so utterly directed by others—not just Lita, but Catcher, Stacy, everyone I met. Between my new age—whatever it really was—and my apparently glaring lack of expertise here, I was so obviously the lowest creature on anyone’s totem pole. As my mind wandered, I recalled following Lita out of Stacy’s shop as if being steered around were second nature to me. ‘Is it okay if I go out for a walk?’ I winced at the memory. I wasn’t even trying to run my own life anymore. How had that happened—at all, much less so quickly? Was there something so intrinsically dependent about being a child that not even fifty years of life experience prevented such swift surrender to everyone taller or older than I was? Or was I, specifically,  just a wimp—at any age?

These thoughts exhumed my most recent embarrassment: fleeing Lita’s room as if the mere thought of a woman in her underwear were too frightening to face… As if I really were a clueless boy. With dull amazement, I realized that I couldn’t actually recall the last time I had thought about a woman undressed. Not since college anyway. It couldn’t possibly have been that long, but I could not recall any more recent instance. I did think of Jessie then, the young woman who’d sent me spinning off kilter the night my old life had ended. But even she had inspired no very lascivious thoughts that I could remember now; just a world of remorse about how empty of them my life had been, and how hopelessly expired my chances had seemed.  

I’d been more than able to support a wife and children by the time I was thirty, had I ever thought of trying to. So…why hadn’t I—in all those years…?

There had been a few fumbling attempts at sex back in college—all aborted in one painfully awkward way or another, and a lot of jacking off to fantasies of even prettier and more willing women than the few real ones I’d ever dared ask out. And then…what? I’d ‘grown up and gotten serious?’ About…business? …Condo upkeep?

I hung my head, and stepped farther back into the stream of water, as if it might wash away the truth I had always been so eager to dodge.

I’d just been too…unable to imagine any woman…wanting me that way. Too insecure and ashamed ever to risk coming face to face with the expressions of discomfort and embarrassment on some woman’s face as she was cornered into telling me that I was not…qualified. To be that kind of man. With her…or anyone. In fact, I’d imagined that dreadful scene at least as often and as vividly as any sexual fantasy I’d ever had back in my youth. Where all that fear and shame had come from…I still didn’t really know. It had always just been there like a chin-high wall between myself and…all of that. I’d told myself, again and again, that someday later, sometime soon, I’d sort things out, find my missing confidence…meet the right woman… But as I’d grown older, watching my body go flaccid, losing energy, hair, eventually even libido, gaining all the wrong kinds of weight, and wrinkles, and chins, ‘someday’ had faded away almost unnoticed. Like the proverbial slowly boiling frog; I’d given up increment by tiny increment.

The pitiful truth was…the man I’d been had died a virgin.

I looked down at my impossibly restored body in the streaming water—looking just as it must have back when my sense of self had first started taking all those wrong turns. I had never felt attractive as a child; quite the opposite. Nothing about me had ever seemed equal to or even competitive with the randy looks and stylish hair and angular builds of…well, virtually every other boy around me. Not even in college had I felt anything but plain. And dull. But now… Now, I’d been fifty years old. I’d spent years seeing that body—that face—that hairline in the mirror, and in contrast with those memories, what I saw now looked…very young, admittedly, but otherwise, pretty damn good. In fact, I believe that moment was the first time I’d noticed that I had toenails again! Pale pink and shiny where there had been ragged, chalky white talons for years, thanks to some fungus! Wherever all that sense of shame and inferiority had come from before, I looked just fine to me now. And at ‘this age,’ I had ample time and energy to get it looking and feeling even better. This time, I meant to love my heart out, and have all kinds of sex, and every other sort of adventure I could lay my hands on. This time, I knew what it would cost me if I didn’t.

I thought again of Lita’s knowing chuckle as I’d fled her room—laughing at me, clearly; at my terror—still—of the very idea. At ‘this age,’ that terror was cute, I supposed. I was way too young for her now, of course—and surely much too tame. And, as attractive as she was, hers wasn’t the kind of attractiveness I preferred anyway, though I could not have put my finger on exactly which kind was. But there had to be lots of Jessies out there, somewhere, for someone with as much time and potential as I had now. Finding a girlfriend needed to be priority one—or as close to that as circumstances allowed. This time, I was determined to be someone Jessie could have wanted. And to find a Jessie who wanted me.

Unsurprisingly, this whole line of thought had awakened little lights and buzzers all over my adolescent body and, for a moment, I considered doing myself another of those delightful favors I was so well equipped to do now. Where better than in a shower? But…there was a fifty-year-old man inside this teenage boy, with a shrewder, more disciplined sense of strategy.  ‘Don’t,’ he said to me. ‘Let that urge store up and drive you where you really want to go. Where did this business in the shower get you the last time around? You want to be a Romeo? Then be one! Don’t just keep pacifying yourself here—boy,’ he sneered.

Yup. Even as I swore to build self-confidence this time, I was still shaming myself.

I suspect such advice would have done nothing to deter a real teenage boy from what his body wanted. But with fifty years inside me, I was never going to be a normal boy—whatever I’d imagined on the night I’d set all this in motion. That much was already clear. And maybe that was for the best. The Lady had told me I’d just make all the same mistakes for the same reasons. I was determined to prove her wrong—about that, at least. I shoved all the lovely invitations twining up my skin back where they’d come from—as only a fifty-year-old teenage boy was likely able to—and turned off the shower, wondering if I’d already broken some house rule about wasting water.

When I was dried and dressed again in blessedly clean clothes, I went back and knocked at Lita’s door. Receiving her all-clear, I went in to find her in black and silver party clothes that did little to decrease the restless urges my shower meditations had aroused. If she was serious about rebuffing Janus’s interest, such attire seemed pretty poor strategy—though I was no longer equipped to attempt fatherly remonstrance with anyone, much less my streetwise hostess.

We went downstairs to the kitchen and gorged ourselves on macaroni and cheese made from a box on Lita’s food shelf, and ingredients from her six square inches of refrigerator space. When I’d cleaned up our pot and dishes—to spare danger to her party dress—she invited me to make myself at home with anything in her room, then said she’d see me in the morning, wished me a good night’s sleep, and left me to my own devices.

Confinement to her room grew challenging as the evening crept by. I found a portable CD player under her bed on which to play the small stack of CDs on her bottom bookshelf. Much of her music, however, proved too jarring or melodramatic for my taste. I spent an hour perusing her small collection of self-help books, most of which seemed laughable, except for one. It was an intriguing exposition on how people tend to live their whole lives projected into past or future, even though the only time any of us ever actually exists, much less does anything, is ‘now.’ It was a compelling idea that seemed very relevant to my current situation. And the author made his point extremely well in just the first two chapters. Unfortunately, he’d written another dozen after that, looping the same initially compelling ‘now’ over, and over, and over until I closed the book unfinished. After that I gazed out of her window for a while, watching life go by on the street below. When that became monotonous, I examined her trinkets more closely. She was clearly a very spiritual person. Eventually, I even opened the closet and explored her wardrobe—though I did not stoop to going through her drawers.

Finally, I took the blanket she had left me, folded it over several times for extra softness on the uncarpeted wooden floor, and lay down at the foot of her bed to compile a mental list of adventures I might want to try out there in the world, now that such ambitions were plausible. The mind-warping kind that I’d been having lately were not at all what I was aiming for. I wanted the kind of adventures that you could make a life out of. The kind that made you more human, not less; that connected you to other people, not left you hiding from them, as I was forced to do now. Whatever ‘teaching me to hide’ entailed, I hoped it wouldn’t take too long. I was pretty eager to get on with doing my life over—as life should be done, this time.

I fell asleep still working on that list, atop my bedding, warm and dry and safe in Lita’s room, well fed, and dressed in clothes that smelled of nothing worse than fabric softener.