Sunset Park

Bing even suggested such a possibility, even whispered a single word about what is on his mind, he would lose Miles’s friendship forever, which is something he devoutly does not wish to do.
    Miles is off-limits, on permanent loan to the world of women. But the tormenting power of that erect phallus has driven Bing to consider other options, to think about looking elsewhere to satisfy his curiosity, for in spite of the fact that Miles is the only man he craves, he wonders if the time hasn’t come to experiment with another man, which is the only way he will ever find out who and what he is—a man made for men, a man made for women, a man madefor both men and women, or a man made for no one but himself. The problem is where to look. All the members of his band are married or living with their girlfriends, he has no gay friends he can think of, and the idea of cruising for some pickup in a gay bar leaves him cold. He has thought about Jake Baum a few times, plotting various strategies about how and when he could approach him without tipping his hand and humiliating himself in the event of a rebuff, but he suspects there is something ambiguous about Alice’s boyfriend, and even if he is with a woman now, it is possible that he has been with men in the past and is not immune to the charms of phallic love. Bing regrets that he is not more attracted to Jake, but in the interests of scientific self-discovery he would be willing to bed down with him to see if he himself has any taste for phallic love. He has yet to do anything about it, however, for just when he was gearing up to cajole Baum into having sex with him by promising to arrange the interview with Renzo Michaelson (not the strongest idea, perhaps, but ideas have been hard to come by), Ellen asked him to pose for her, and his quest for knowledge was temporarily derailed.
    He has no idea what they are up to. Something perverse, he feels, but at the same time altogether innocent and without danger. A silent pact of some sort, a mutual understanding that allows them to share their loneliness and frustrations, but even as they draw closer to each other in that silence, he is still lonely and frustrated, and he sensesthat Ellen is no better off than he is. She draws and he drums. Drumming has always been a way for him to scream, and Ellen’s new drawings have turned into screams as well. He takes off his clothes for her and does everything she asks him to do. He doesn’t know why he feels so comfortable with her, so unthreatened by her eyes, but donating his body to the cause of her art is a small thing, finally, and he intends to go on doing it until she asks him to stop.
    On Sunday, January fourth, he spends eight hours with Miles at the Hospital for Broken Things, giving him his first lessons in the delicate, exacting work of picture framing, introducing him to the sturdy mechanisms of manual typewriters, familiarizing him with the tools and materials in the back room of the tiny shop. The next morning, Monday, January fifth, they go back for more of the same, but this time Miles seems worried, and when Bing asks him what is wrong, Miles explains that he has just called his father’s office and was told his father returned to England yesterday on urgent business, and he is concerned that it might have something to do with his stepmother. Bing, too, is both worried and perplexed by this news, but he cannot reveal the full scope of his anxiety to Morris Heller’s son, nor can he tell him that he spoke to Morris Heller just forty-eight hours ago and that nothing seemed amiss at the time. They work steadily until five-thirty, at which point Miles informs Bing that he wants to take another stab at calling his mother, and Bing deferentially withdraws to abar down the street, understanding that such a call demands total privacy. Fifteen minutes later, Miles walks into the bar and tells Bing that he and his mother have arranged to meet for dinner tomorrow night. There are a hundred questions Bing would like to ask, but he confines himself to just one: How did she sound? Very well, Miles says. She called him a no-good shithead, an imbecile, and a rotten coward, but then she cried, then they both cried, and afterward her voice became warm and affectionate, she talked to him with far more kindness than he deserved, and hearing her again after all these years was almost too much for him. He regrets everything, he says. He thinks he is the stupidest person who ever lived.