give me a second face
He gets home. ‘Home’. The hostel. His room. Four metres square with a single bed and a rusty sink. His first room of his own. Most gays his ages would piss themselves to look at the peeling wallpaper and damp ceiling, but Whizzer loves the independence. He shins up three flights of stairs, sprints down the corridor, murmurs a hello to the queers smoking weed in the doorways, turns a sharp corner and opens the door marked ‘3BQ: BROWN, W’ in wide blue letters.
He sits down on his bed (it creaks massively), pulls his long-sleeved sweater off and starts massaging coconut oil into his forearms. He has three circular cigarette burn scars on the left side and scratches on the other side. He runs his fingers lightly across each arm. He does it every evening. He supposes it's a ritual. A reminder. Not that he needs any more reminders about Brooklyn now that Cordelia’s back. Delia. Seeing her in the park was like coming home to a home he’s never really had. Talking to her was like putting on a comfy old sweater for the first time in years. He feels warm inside for the first time in years. He sticks the post-it she gave him above his tiny mirror and smiles. Finally, he pulls a thrift store khaki shirt, jeans and his glasses on and starts arranging his portfolio.
At six thirty a bell rings and Whizzer joins the descending rabble for dinner. There are four long tables and the around three hundred nineteen to twenty five year old queer kids sit bolting down matzo ball soup. Whizzer drinks the broth and leaves the balls, because no one ever makes them as good as his bubbe did. And because he’s watching his weight. Because there’s no money in being a fat gay. He chats with Maddy, a guy a little older than him with blonde hair and an empty smile. Maddy’s from Tennessee and he fucked his way over to new york. Whizzer’s impressed until he realises Maddy’s checking him out. He excuses himself. There will be no fucking of boys from the hostel, because he’d had to see them every day for as long as he stays there. The hostel isn’t great, it’s cold and crusty and packed to the rims, but the rent is fifty-five a month and easy to make. He has to count his blessings.
He washes up in the communal shower and wakes till dark to walk down to Holland tunnel, hanky in his back pocket. It’s a cruel necessity, he thinks. A cruel necessity.