I suddenly felt the drabness of my own existence. The hour I'd spent with Amanda made me yearn for something I'd never known, or even missed, before. Not exactly beauty or money or s.e.x or power, although all of these things, I realized, might be exchangeable for this thing. I can only call it brilliance, like a surfeit of light. For a brief moment, everything in my life was more vivid. And in that moment I felt a kinship with the senator and his quest for glory. I understood how he could risk everything for a moment like the one I'd shared in the limousine. I had risked quite a bit myself. I would have liked to discuss it with him, but we were never alone together again. After that night, my career with the senator was essentially finished. He didn't fire me, but I was sent to Chicago to work with the new office there in a clearly demoted capacity.

When he threw in the towel after Illinois, I had to pay for my flight back to Washington. While away, I'd been replaced on the Hill, and when I called the chief of staff, he told me there were no openings at that time. I wasn't really surprised. I was still living in Adams Morgan with Trey, to whom I confessed most of the details of my disgrace. Though disillusioned ever since the hiring of Furst, he was back at work on the Senate staff. Sometimes at night I heard the daughters of amba.s.sadors and cabinet officers howling and moaning in his bedroom. For the first time in my life, I succeeded in picking up a girl at a bar, and later, back home, she had to plead with me to be gentle, although in all my scant amorous history, no one has ever accused me of excessive enthusiasm.

Three months later, Trey came home in a rage. After paying Furst and his people more than $200,000, the campaign committee declared bankruptcy. Like most of the staff, including Trey, I was owed four months in back wages. "Can you believe that b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" he said.

That night we went to an Ethiopian restaurant, and Trey told me the senator had flown up to New York twice in the last month to visit Amanda Greer. By this time I was working for a public relations firm. It was nothing I would've envisioned myself doing five months before, and I was hardly proud of the work. We represented, among others, a South American dictator who for years the senator had attacked for his appalling human rights record. I was, however, having more success with women. After my moment of glory with Amanda Greer, I felt slightly disdainful of mortal females, which seemed to make me more attractive. For six months I dated a legislative a.s.sistant from Texas, Deirdre Clark, who would've married me, and whom I probably would've been thrilled to marry a year before. She was coltish and sweet and smarter than I was. I cheated on her and let her find out about it, and she moved back to Houston a few months later.

Trey had increasing difficulties with Castleton and eventually went to work for Senator Moynihan. Three years after our campaign ended, Castleton officially announced he was making another run, and now he was the front-runner. According to Trey, fat-faced Carl Furst had agreed to take charge only after Castleton promised to stop f.u.c.king around. A week after he won New Hampshire, one of the supermarket tabloids published a story about his relationship with Amanda Greer. Lacking hard evidence, they published a picture of the two tete-a-tete at a fund-raiser. Unnamed sources said that the senator made frequent, unscheduled visits to New York and that his wife had given him an ultimatum. The issue of womanizing, the secret buzz of the press corps for years, was now out in the open. At a press conference in Florida, he was pelted with questions about marriage and infidelity. He indignantly denied the story, while acknowledging "an old friendship" with the actress. With Doreen standing at his side, he said, "I have always been a faithful husband and a devoted father," and refused to say more. He accused the press of conducting a witch-hunt and suggested this was the work of his rivals and the Republicans. The issue bubbled for a week, then faded with the lack of new disclosures.

A few days after the senator's Super Tuesday victories, Trey organized a reunion poker game for some of us who'd been involved in the previous campaign. We met at a saloon in Georgetown, where he'd reserved a private room in the back. He'd asked each of us to bring at least two hundred dollars. Gene Samuels, Dave Crushak, Tom Whittle, Trey and I drank beer and reminisced about the bad old days on the trail. All of us had been burned when the previous committee had declared bankruptcy, and not one of us was involved with the new one. If the American public had been listening in, they would've formed a highly unfavorable impression of Castleton's character. Old slights and grievances were revived, along with tawdry stories of broom-closet dalliances. We reviewed the specifications of "the type"-blond, big t.i.ts, no a.s.s. Finally, Dave Crushak said, "I'm feeling lucky. Who's got the cards?"

"I've got a card," said Trey. From his blazer he extracted a five-by-seven picture of an attractive blonde, on which was printed the name Tamara, along with a set of measurements and the name and number of a Los Angeles modeling agency. We pa.s.sed it around, making appreciative noises. We were all a little drunk by now. "Look familiar?" Trey asked. When no one could place her, he said, "The f.u.c.king archetype, boys."

It was true. She looked like a composite of all the stewardesses and receptionists and students.

Leaning forward and leering beneath the arched bat wings of his eyebrows, he explained: "The game, gentlemen, is one-card stud, no draw, two-hundred-dollar ante."

I had dim suspicions of the nature of the game, but I thought he must be kidding. We all fell silent. Trey looked smug. He had our attention.

"I met Tamara in New York, where she began her modeling career. Not only is Tamara a model; she's also-surprise, surprise-an actress. An aspiring actress. But it isn't easy to break into that business. Lots of compet.i.tion, lots of pretty faces. Ditto for modeling. Tamara has to pay her rent. And she likes a good time. So she mixes business with pleasure. What the h.e.l.l, you like a guy, you let him buy you dinner. Or a gram of c.o.ke. Why not let him pay your rent? Quid pro quo. Semipro."

"I'm a happily married man," Gene Samuels said nervously, misreading the intro.

"Ignorance is bliss, Gene. As usual, you're way behind the curve here. Now, let's say you're a young aspiring actress like Tamara. Wouldn't you kill to get invited to the house of a major studio head? Or even better, what if you had a chance to meet a handsome young senator?"

"If you're saying what I think you're saying ...," said Dave Crushak, who didn't finish his sentence.

Trey explained that Castleton would be attending a fund-raiser at a studio executive's home in L.A. the following week. A college buddy who owed him a favor had been invited. He proposed to send Tamara along as his friend's date and let nature take its course. Under skeptical questioning from the rest of us, he explained that Tamara would actively solicit and encourage the senator's attentions. Toward that end, we would pay her a thousand dollars. Another college buddy, a reporter at the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times, would be happy to watch Tamara's apartment in Santa Monica later that night, in case anything newsworthy took place. We all raised a dozen practical objections, though somehow we were unwilling to voice the moral ones. Like Castleton, Trey was a magnetic individual, whom the rest of us envied and feared. If anyone had raised his voice in indignation, the others would surely have followed, but n.o.body wanted to seem priggish. And we all felt betrayed. I think in the end I told myself the scheme was unlikely to succeed, thus absolving myself as I put my two hundred dollars on the table.

And that, basically, was how it happened. This was years ago, but I've never been able to forget it. Tamara was famous for a minute and a half, landing a role in a TV pilot that never aired. Trey married one of his debutantes, the daughter of a liberal philanthropist. Amanda Greer, whose screen career as a femme fatale had been fading for some time, did a well-publicized stint at the Betty Ford Clinic and was subsequently cast as the star of a TV series that's still running. I saw her two years ago in the Jockey Club at the Ritz-Carlton, where I was dining with a client and she was being feted by a large party. I'd read in the Post Post that she was in town to film an episode. She spotted me as she came in, and I guessed from her puzzled expression that she half-remembered me. Several times during dinner I saw her squinting over, trying to place me. When she excused herself from the table, I followed to where she was standing in front of the phone booth, waiting for me. that she was in town to film an episode. She spotted me as she came in, and I guessed from her puzzled expression that she half-remembered me. Several times during dinner I saw her squinting over, trying to place me. When she excused herself from the table, I followed to where she was standing in front of the phone booth, waiting for me.

"Do I know you?" she demanded.

"I worked for Senator Castleton," I said, looking down, unable to hold her gaze. She was still beautiful, and, if anything, looked younger.

"Ah yes," she finally said. "Benjamin Braddock."

I nodded.

"You know the crazy thing?" she said. "He hardly touched me. Mainly, he just wanted to hold and be held. That was all. He'd fall asleep with his arms around me and hang on for dear life."

She looked very sad, although I'd grown old enough to wonder if it was genuine sadness or the mask of an actress.

"I felt so bad for him." She searched my face for a moment, her expression almost imploring, and I wanted to say something but suddenly didn't trust my voice. She sighed and nodded, then turned away and disappeared into the ladies' room. When she finally returned to her table, I was unable to catch her eye.

The former senator has an active consulting business, and as the scandal fades in public memory, he's called upon more often to comment on world and national events. He's writing his memoirs. Doreen stood by him, and by all accounts their marriage has actually flourished. I'm not nearly so cynical as to claim any credit for this, to suggest it was part of the plan or that it absolves me in any way. I don't know that Castleton could have won, or that having won he would've preserved any of the ideals of the man I went to work for, fresh from my American history seminars. At the age of thirty-three, I have lost or betrayed most of my own ideals. Having had so direct a hand in ruining him, I blame myself, as I'm sure he blames himself, though I'm pretty disgusted with everybody else, too.

Another election is upon us, and Trey's running for Congress from Manhattan, bankrolled by his father-in-law. They say he's settled down and is faithful to his wife. He's expected to win handily, and I'm confident that he will.

1992.

The Waiter "The problem with America," she said, "there is no context. Anyone can tell you anything."

"Exactly."

"You just don't know."

"You knew." knew."

"Well, yes, I I knew. But not until later." knew. But not until later."

I'd arrived in the middle of a story. Like my country, it seemed, I was lacking context.

"This is Seth," Cara said. The other woman was clearly foreign, possibly Italian; attractive in a windblown, careless fashion. Not as beautiful as Cara, who made me queasy with desire, but better-looking than I wished she were, since she had pretty much dismissed me at a glance. And her air of ent.i.tlement seemed to go beyond what her appearance would have merited. Though she was wearing jeans and a man's oxford shirt, her watch and jewelry probably cost more than my tuition for the next year, with plenty left over for room and board. She made me feel like a b.u.mpkin, and I was already practically paralyzed with insecurity in Cara's presence. Between them, they seemed to present such an una.s.sailable front of sophistication and beauty that I concentrated on the other girl's moles, one on her chin and another above her lip. It seemed to me, in my limited experience, that European women had more growths and marks than American girls did. I tried to hold hers against her, since she was clearly holding something against me. Cara on her own was daunting enough, with her casual aura of boarding school, country clubs and European vacations. I could hardly think of anything or anyone else that summer.

"Marella's just telling me a story."

"It is really not so interesting."

"I like a good story," I said.

"Well, of course," Marella said. "We all like a good story."

"Seth's a writer," Cara said.

Marella sucked hard on her cigarette and held the smoke in. "How wonderful," wonderful," she said, looking out toward the ocean. "What has he written?" she said, looking out toward the ocean. "What has he written?"

"I'm a student, actually," I said. "Studying to be a writer."

She was unable to suppress her contempt. "Only in America do they think that they can teach you this thing. To create literature. Do you think Proust studied-what do you call it?-'creative literature'? Or Kafka or Calvino? In Europe we don't believe a professor can teach you to have the soul of an artist. Even the English, they don't think this."

I could see and smell the ocean across the road from the cafe, and I was suddenly seized by the desire to run down across the beach and jump into the surf and swim far out into the waves. No, actually, that's poeticizing. Trying to be writerly writerly. What I was actually seized by was the desire to hold Marella's head under the water while she thrashed and struggled for air. Still, I would've put up with far worse than this to be sitting next to Cara. I'd been insinuating myself into her presence for weeks. And if there was a story, I figured, I might as well hear it.

"We met him at that new place-what's it called?-it's owned by that terrible man who owns the one I like on Madison in the city. He started talking with Julia when I went to the powder room. Well, you know Julia. She would talk to the hat stand if it said h.e.l.lo. I mean, I adore adore her, really, but you her, really, but you know know how she can be." how she can be."

Well, of course I didn't know how she could be or even who she was, but that was the point. She wasn't talking to me, but to Cara, barely tolerating my presence. If I wanted to listen, then there wasn't much she could do about it, but she certainly wasn't going to go out of her way to make me feel included.

"I was just telling your friend about the meteor shower tonight," Marella said the man had said when she came back to the table. "It should be well worth staying up for."

"And you have some special place in mind where she can watch the meteors with you?" Marella said with a sneer. (Or so I choose to imagine-I'm sort of partly reporting and partly projecting, based on what she told us that day.) "Well," he said, "I haven't entirely decided where I'll be watching from."

"You are keeping your options open," she said, "waiting for the best offer?"

"I think life is best viewed," he said, "as a linked series of improvisations."

"Maurice is renting the Condens' guest house for the month," Julia told her.

"I don't think I know them," Marella said.

"Sure you do," Julia said. "You remember, we were at their Memorial Day party on the beach."

Perhaps Marella let this pa.s.s, or else she muttered something about there being far too many parties in the season to remember every single one. She must have been softening up a little, because otherwise she would've frozen out the gentleman at the next table at this point. In fact, she'd already told us she thought he was handsome, his complexion suggestive of Latin blood. "Distinguished-looking," she said, his hair flecked with gray at the temples. He had an accent, but as a foreigner herself, she couldn't quite identify it. Of course, she could have just asked, but her innate sn.o.bbishness, I suspected, prevented her from being so direct. That was the funny thing to me-a few well-chosen questions could have removed the suspense and ended the story. Americans, at least the kind I grew up with, come right out and ask where you're from and what you do for a living pretty much in that order, but I guess this was too obvious for Marella. She wouldn't want to demonstrate that much interest, or perhaps it was considered rude where she came from. Anyway, Cara seemed fascinated with the story, and anything that interested Cara was sure to interest me.

"He told us he'd just gotten back from Dubai," she said. "Which, of course, is where all the Russian gangsters go to buy Cartier watches for their mistresses and all the Saudi princes go for dirty weekends, but he wasn't Russian and he certainly wasn't Saudi. It seemed he might have been traveling for business-he told us thirty percent of the world's cranes were in Dubai. And Julia asked him if he was a bird-watcher, and I didn't understand what she was talking about; I thought it was just, you know, more Julia craziness. And the guy, he says no, not bird cranes, but cranes for construction. And she says,'Oh,' and I say,'What are you talking about?' and they explain to me that a crane also is a kind of bird. Although it turns out, believe it or not, he really is is a bird-watcher. He actually goes on holiday to look for birds. Or so he tells us." a bird-watcher. He actually goes on holiday to look for birds. Or so he tells us."

"Seth's a bird-watcher," Cara said.

Pleased as I was to hear my name on her lips, it took me a moment to recall the basis for this claim. The first and only time Cara had visited the house I was renting with my buddies, she had picked up the well-thumbed copy of Roger Tory Peterson's edition of Audubon's Birds of America Audubon's Birds of America, which belonged to the owners of the house, and asked me if I was a birdwatcher. I'd said yes, the basis for this claim being that my parents kept a bird feeder and because I had recently met a man of letters, who was a big hero of mine, at a c.o.c.ktail party and he'd told me, apropos of I don't know what, that he was "dead keen" on birds. I thought this sounded like kind of a good Waspy eccentricity to have if you were trying to impress a girl like Cara.

Marella, on the other hand, having zero interest in my hobbies, was determined to finish her story. "We were about to order a bottle of wine, and he asked us if we would mind a suggestion. He called the waiter over; he had this very casual but authoritative-what do you call it?-the way with the hand. You know how some men can't get the attention of the waiter...."

"I hate that," Cara said. "You mean wave wave."

"Yes, well this corrector, he knew how to wave wave to a waiter." to a waiter."

"What's a corrector?" I asked.

"You should know; you're the writer."

"Honestly, Seth. She means character character."

"Sorry, it took me a minute."

"He told the waiter to bring us a particular bottle of wine, without making too much of a fuss about it. You know, a man should know about wine, but you don't want to go on and on about it. Some of these American men can be so obsessive on the subject, trying to show off how much they know. Well, our friend, all he said was that the wine was made by a friend of his in Umbria and he thought it would go well with our food-he'd heard us ordering. So then Julia says,'Oh, so you're Italian.' And he says, well, yes, on his mother's side. And so Julia asks him where in Italy, and after a long pause he names a little town not far from Lucca, which I happen to know because my friends own the place. So I said,'You must know the Tamborellis,' and he says,'Only a little,' because he moved when he was young and lived in France. So Julia asks him where in France, and it's the same thing when I ask him if he knows the d'Arbanvilles. He says he knows them, but not well, because he didn't stay there very long, either."

Over the hour they spent sitting next to him, Marella became obsessed with "placing" this guy while Julia flirted. Something about him set off an alarm for her. She must have thought he was some kind of con man, although she didn't say as much. When she said, "My suspicion was alerted," her glance at me made it clear that I hadn't quite pa.s.sed the sniff test myself.

The way she told it, she was just looking out for her friend Julia, who'd accepted an invitation to a c.o.c.ktail party the following evening before the main course arrived. By this time he'd joined their table. And it was the main course that eventually betrayed him, or so Marella believed.

"Julia had ordered the fish and it arrived at the table whole, with all the bones. And Julia is looking at this fish; she doesn't quite know where to start, and our friend says,'Here, allow me.' And he takes the plate, and it's quite amazing; one two three, he has taken out the bones and made two perfect pieces of the fish, like two pages of an open book. Bravo, very nice. Julia was charmed. I am also impressed. But that's when I knew." She paused, a nasty smile of triumph deforming her face.

"Knew what?" Cara said.

"Darling, don't you see? The manners, the wine, the fish. I mean, it's very charming, being able to undress a fish like that. But what kind of a skill is that really? It was like a lightbulb on top of my head. How do you say? An epiphany. I knew who he was."

I looked suitably baffled and Cara shrugged. "Who was he?"

"Darling, he was a waiter."

It took us a moment to register this. I mean, I understood how she had come to the conclusion that the man might have been a waiter at some point in his life, but I couldn't see how it mattered, and, in fact, I was kind of waiting for Cara to say, "So is Seth." Because that's what I was doing in this little summer paradise, waiting tables at the best restaurant in town, collecting orders and tips from people like Cara's parents. I wasn't really a waiter, having already been accepted to grad school back in the city, and I was in the process of becoming, I hoped, a writer, although my father, the foreman of a maintenance crew in a paper mill, still hoped I would come to my senses and go to law school, and that, too, was possible. At that point in my life, almost anything was possible. At any rate, I knew I wasn't going to be a waiter for the rest of my life, and it didn't really occur to me to be insulted until I saw Cara blushing. I started to become embarra.s.sed, whether for her or myself, I'm not quite sure. I mean, she could have made a joke of it. She could have said, "Well, Seth's a waiter, too," and proved her superiority to this silly woman. But the fact that she didn't made me feel that in her eyes I was was a waiter, that on some level she accepted this woman's judgment about the social order. It was ridiculous. This was America, wasn't it? We weren't Europeans. I knew I was as good as anybody, that my father was every bit as good as her father, if not better. I believed it in theory anyway. But not in my heart, I realized as I watched her blush and felt myself blushing, as well. And I realized something that I'd only intuited up to that point, that there is a cla.s.s system in America, even if some of us bottom-dwellers didn't realize it. a waiter, that on some level she accepted this woman's judgment about the social order. It was ridiculous. This was America, wasn't it? We weren't Europeans. I knew I was as good as anybody, that my father was every bit as good as her father, if not better. I believed it in theory anyway. But not in my heart, I realized as I watched her blush and felt myself blushing, as well. And I realized something that I'd only intuited up to that point, that there is a cla.s.s system in America, even if some of us bottom-dwellers didn't realize it.

Somehow, we never got past that moment. Things had changed between us. She had a tennis lesson after lunch, and my shift started at four, and when I called her later, she was always busy and I knew it was no good. At least she didn't come into the restaurant again. I saw her once at the clam shack with some preppy a.s.shole who was doing his best to look proprietary, but at least she had the decency to seem uncomfortable, nodding almost imperceptibly before turning away. I smoked sullenly, tragically-a poete maudit poete maudit at the beach. at the beach.

The days grew shorter, the nights cooler as September approached. On Monday nights, when the restaurant was closed, we had a staff clambake on the beach, and the following morning I awoke with cotton mouth, my fingers smelling like clams and b.u.t.ter and cigarettes. On the last Monday in August, I finally went home with the hostess, a bouncy nursing major from Stony Brook who'd been flirting with me all summer. I woke up with a nasty hangover at dawn and slipped out while she slept, carrying my shoes across the cold, dewy lawn to my car.

Then, on Labor Day weekend, I saw Cara again at a party. In her sleeveless turquoise blouse and her clam diggers, she looked like someone from a more glamorous era. I ignored her and threw back another Southside, nodding coldly when she came over to say h.e.l.lo.

"I was afraid I wouldn't see you before you went back to school," she said.

"You know where I work." I had meant to sound bitter, but my voice cracked.

"Don't be like that," she said. "Come on."

She took my hand and led me out back to the boathouse and started to kiss me. I realized she was drunk, but I didn't care. I could smell the sweet alcohol on her breath, along with the stale sea air trapped in the muggy confines of a shack that smelled like the inside of an old sea captain's trunk. Outside, the raspy ocean incessantly pounded the beach. I shoved my tongue in her mouth as she worked her hand down the front of my shorts.

"f.u.c.k me like a waiter," she said.

And so I did.

2007.

The Queen and I As the tired light drains into the western suburbs beyond the river, the rotting pier at the end of Gansevoort Street begins to shudder and groan with life. From inside a tin-roofed warehouse, human beings stagger out into the steamy dusk like bats leaving their cave. Inside the shed, one can make out in the dimness a sprawling white mountain, the slopes of which are patched with sleeping bags, mattresses, blankets, cardboard and rafts of plywood. An implausible rumor circulates among the inhabitants of this place that the white mesa is made of salt that, back when there were still funds for munic.i.p.al services, was spread on the icy city streets in winter; at present the rusting warehouse serves as a huge dormitory and rat ranch. At dusk the inmates rise to work, crawling out into the last light to dress and put on their makeup. Down on the edge of the highway along the foot of the pier, the shiny cars of pimps and johns wait alongside the beat-up vans from the rescue missions and religious organizations, ready to compete for the bodies and souls of the pier dwellers.

I watch as three queens share a mirror and a lipstick, blinking in the slanted light. One of them steps away a few feet, creating a symbolic privacy in which to pull up his skirt demurely and take a torrential leak. A second lights up a cigarette and tugs on a pair of fishnet hose. The third is my friend Marilyn, queen of Little West Twelfth Street. It's my first night on the job.

I ran into Marilyn in the emergency room at St. Vincent's a couple days before. I went in for gingivitis, my gums bleeding and disappearing up the sides of my teeth from bad nutrition and bad drugs. It's a common street affliction, another credential in my downward slide toward authenticity. Marilyn had a broken nose, three cracked ribs and a.s.sorted bruises from a trick tormented by second thoughts.

"I thought you had a pimp, Marilyn," I said, watching a gunshot victim bleeding freely on a gurney.

"The pimp, he get killed by the Colombians," said Marilyn. "He never protect me anyways, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He punch me hisself." Marilyn laughed through his nose, then winced. When he could speak again, he said, "Last time my nose got broke, it's my papa do the breaking. He beat the s.h.i.t out me when he find me dressed in Mama's wedding gown. I'm holding the lipstick and he opens the door of my room. Smack me good, scream at me, call me a dirty little maricon maricon, say he don't want no maricon maricon for a son. The boy last night, he was like that, this big bulging muscle New Chursey boy. After I do him, he start hitting, calling me f.a.ggot. A lot them like that, they don't like what they want. Hey, man," he said, scrutinizing me with new interest. "Why don't you be my pimp? I give you five dollar every trick." for a son. The boy last night, he was like that, this big bulging muscle New Chursey boy. After I do him, he start hitting, calling me f.a.ggot. A lot them like that, they don't like what they want. Hey, man," he said, scrutinizing me with new interest. "Why don't you be my pimp? I give you five dollar every trick."

It was a measure of my prospects that I thought this was a pretty good offer. In fact, I'd been unemployed by another Colombian murder and was sleeping in Abingdon Square Park. I was dealing halves and quarters of c.o.ke out of a bar on Thirteenth when my man got whacked and I was left without a connection. Before that I'd been in a band, but the drummer OD'd and the ba.s.sist moved to L.A.

When I first met Marilyn, I was living in a cellar in the Meatpacking District. Marilyn worked all night, and I was up jonesing on c.o.ke or crack and trying to write. I'm a songwriter, you see, a poet. There is beautiful, ugly music inside me, which plays in the performance s.p.a.ce deep in my mind. Walking the streets, doing the bars, I hear s.n.a.t.c.hes of it in the distance, above the subliminal ba.s.s line of the urban heartbeat. I am most attuned to it in moments of transport, when I'm loaded on cheap wine or crack. Sometimes I'm dead certain that with one more drink, one more hit, I'll grasp its essence and carry it back with me to the other side. An aesthetician of ugliness, I am living here in the gutter like Prince Hal, biding my time, waiting to burst forth like a G.o.dd.a.m.n sun.

A refugee from the western suburbs, I used to skip school and take the bus into the city. I hung out on St. Mark's Place and the Bowery, copping the look and the att.i.tude of punk, discovering Bukowski and the Beats in the bookshops. Returning to the subdivisions of Jersey was an embarra.s.sment. The soil was too thin for art. No poetry could ever grow in the grapefruit rinds of the compost heap. Ashamed of my origins, neither high nor low, I dreamed of smoky bars and cafes, steaming slums. I believed that the down and dirty would lead me to the height of consciousness, that to conceive beauty it was necessary to sleep with ugliness. I've been in that bed for several years now. So far, n.o.body's knocked up.

Like Dylan says, "Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent, / When I paint my masterpiece." I'll be rich and famous, photographed with models who will suddenly find me incredibly attractive-my goodness, where have I been all their short, naughty, long-legged lives?-and I will do a lot of expensive designer drugs and behave very badly and ruin my promising career and end up right back here in the gutter. And I'll write a song cycle about it. It'll be excellently poignant, even tragic.

Marilyn grew up in Spanish Harlem, where he was christened Jesus, a delicate boy with a sweet face who is a plausible piece of a.s.s as a girl. He wants to get married and live the kind of life I grew up in. Except he wants to do it as a woman. At night he looks longingly out over the Hudson at the dim glow of suburban Jersey the way I used to look over from the other side at the lights of Manhattan. He wants a three-bedroom house he can clean and polish while awaiting a husband who works in the city. There's a huge Maxwell House sign across the river from the Gansevoort pier, and he told me once that when he wakes up at the end of the average American workday, he remembers the tuneful Maxwell House commercials he saw as a kid, dreaming about percolating a pot of coffee for a sleepy hubby.

The doctor who gives Marilyn his hormone shots says that more than half the-what shall we call them?-the people who get the operation get married, and that more than half of those don't tell their husbands about their former lives as men. I personally find this just a teensy bit hard to believe. But Marilyn doesn't, and he's saving up for the operation.

Poor Marilyn with his broken snout. In this business he needs to be able to breathe through his nose. I decide to give it a shot. Could be a song in it. Plus, I'm stone-broke.

So as the sun goes down beyond the river into the middle of America, where the cows are heading back to their barns and guys with lunch boxes and briefcases are dragging a.s.s home to their wives, I'm trudging toward the Meatpacking District with Marilyn, who is wearing fishnet hose under a green vinyl miniskirt, and a loose black top. The Queen and I.