ered getting dressed and going home, they began to talk again.
“A shrink?” said Daniel. “A shrink who’s not a Jew?” He’d been in ther-
apy for most of high school, and there was a kinky thrill in being naked with
a psychiatrist, even one from Virginia. “So you’re a bagel queen. You love psy-
chiatry, New York, and Jewish boys.”
“Nooo,” said Zack. “I just like smart guys. They don’t have to be Jewish.”
He ran his fingers through Daniel’s hair—Daniel still had a full head of soft
brown hair; Zack was still clean shaven. When Zack thought back years later
to this time, he could not help picturing their faces as they were now, only
smoother, vaguer, not yet in focus. “So you’re an artist,” he said. “All I know
are nerd doctors.”
“We’re pretty wild, you know. Flaky and unpredictable.”
“I’m a grind,” said Zack. “I work all the time. I’m not much fun.”
Each tried to tell the other that they were a bad match and shouldn’t see
each other again. Nevertheless, Daniel spent the night.
They went out for breakfast the next day, the civilized way of saying good-
bye to the total stranger who had gotten his pubic hair in your mouth the
night before. In diners all over town, one-night stands were saying farewell
over bacon and eggs. But when Zack and Daniel got up to go back to their
real lives, they went for a walk instead.
2 6
C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m
They spent the whole afternoon walking, ambling around the West Vil-
lage, strolling up into the overcast sky by the Hudson River piers—the aban-
doned elevated highway still stood on stilts over West Street—telling stories
about work and family and school. The tops of the skyscrapers downtown dis-
solved in the low ceiling of gauzy gray clouds. They wasted the entire day to-
gether and decided they might as well have dinner. Afterward they went back
to Zack’s place and ended up in bed again. They lay there after sex, sharing
Zack’s cigarettes and opening up the rest of their lives, telling about the first
men they loved, the first men they slept with, the first time they told friends.
Neither man had told his parents yet.
They met on a Friday night and did not say goodbye until Sunday after-
noon, when Zack had to report back at the hospital. He was on twenty-four-
hour duty until Wednesday. Then he spent Wednesday night with Daniel, and
Thursday night, and Friday night.
It was so easy, so painless. It felt too good to be true. Zack was twenty-
seven but had never experienced requited love before. Daniel was twenty-six
and had been through several messy, manic affairs with hot men who loved
sex but hated love. Zack seemed so sane and sweet by comparison.
They did most of their talking in bed during their first month.
“Sex is such a nice way of getting to know somebody,” Zack purred into
Daniel’s ear.
“And after you know them?”
“Oh, you can never know anyone completely, ” he claimed.
More important for Zack than the pillow talk was the first time Daniel
took him to his studio. Daniel taught part-time at Parsons, but he rented
space in an old building on lower Broadway. His fiberboard cubicle was full
of paintings in a variety of styles, but all very precise, measured, and beautiful.
Zack knew nothing about art, but he could tell when someone cared about his
work. He did not want to fall in love with a man who was faking it. Daniel
clearly loved his vocation as much as Zack loved his.
Daniel didn’t need a turning point. Somehow he knew after their first day-
long walk together that they were right for each other. He should have wor-
ried about binding himself to a therapist, a highly trained conscience, like
Jiminy Cricket with a medical degree. Yet that never bothered Daniel. He
E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a
2 7
liked the idea of sharing his life with someone who was smarter than he was
about certain things, not everything but some things, like psychiatric theories
and mental illness, which were only a small part of existence anyway. He joked
to his pals that his new boyfriend had access to great drugs. It was months be-
fore he could share the joke with Zack, who found it very funny, since it
wasn’t true.
They moved in together, into Zack’s apartment, which was bigger, with a
real lease. They both had siblings and knew how to live with other people.
They understood difference; they did not expect oneness. Zack loved classical
music and social history, both of which left Daniel cold. Daniel enjoyed ballet
and cooking and bad pop songs—the trashier the better—all foreign to Zack.
But they both liked women and they both hated Reagan, and they both