Christopher: A Tale of Seduction

Greeting

My story, which is not mine alone, but also that of a far finer spirit, takes place in 1984. As those of you alive at the time will surely remember, this was the most important year in the realm of the literary imagination since the death of God. The reason was, of course, Mr. George Orwell's notoriously unreadable 1984, which warned of society's descent into an authoritarian hell, reeking of cabbage and old rag mats.

For decades, critics had bestowed upon Mr. Orwell's arbitrarily chosen title a profound significance, and so when the actual year finally arrived it was greeted with a collective exhalation of very bad breath. Sleeves were rolled up and typewriters shaken free of tobacco ash. In every periodical and newspaper, the novel was discussed, dissected, and reassessed. On television, pundits scoured the cultural landscape for any sign of Big Brother--a bootprint, a mustache hair, even a stray lump of scat. By spring, sales of 1984 had reached fifty thousand copies a day.

Of course, none of this meant anything. (So little truly signifies in the realm of the literary imagination.) For most people, 1984 was just another year: a ribbon of time marked by a seam or two--a birth, a divorce, a slow, stinky death--and as soon as it had passed it was all but entirely forgotten.

But I confess I am not most people.

For better or worse, 1984 changed me into something that quite closely resembles a human being.
--B. K. Troop

January

On Sunday, January 1, 1984, Manhattan awoke to find itself buried under a cliche--a blanket of white. For the next few hours, before a million tires got hold of it, the streets of the City would look, dare I say it, almost pretty. I had a mad whim to fling myself facedown in Times Square and execute a flabby snow angel, but I resisted the temptation and set myself to the matter at hand--boxing up my life. The moving van was set to arrive at noon.

Packing was no small task. I had lived in that basement apartment for the past twenty-three years and had picked up, in that time, a vast embarrassment of rare and beautiful objects. If the choice had been mine, I would certainly have avoided this day forever, but, just a week before, my beloved friend and landlady, Sasha Buchwitz, had nudged me awake with the imaginary handle of an imaginary hatchet, explaining that Satan was standing naked on her fire escape, demanding that she cut off my head. (Hers had been a spirited twenty-year battle with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression; she was losing.) I scampered out the very next morning and, greasing a few palms, secured for myself a one-bedroom apartment in a tenement just a few blocks away.

The doorbell rang as I taped shut the final box. I stood by with pride and watched as my life was whisked away on the shoulders of giants. The transition went off without a hitch--save for the queasy glare I was thrown by one of the removalists (a strapping, high-buttocked Dominican named Santos) in reply to my suggestion that he help christen my new digs by spending the night. His colleagues dragged him away by the elbows, and I set to work.

Sixteen hours later, just after cock's crow, I slid the last of my vast antiquarian library into its alphabetized place. What had once been an empty apartment was now a home. As I had yet to sleep a wink and am highly allergic to dust mites, I descended to the street, lost in a bleary, malevolent haze. My goal, a Denver omelet and Bloody Mary at my beloved Parnassus Diner, followed by a twelve-hour snooze.

I little suspected what the Fates held in store.

We nearly collided as he ran up the marble steps three at a time. He was of medium height with longish black hair and equally dark eyes. His head was large, well shaped. Our conversation was limited. "Oh, excuse me," we both said as we passed. It was only I, however, who glanced around for a peek--he was slender and strong all over. The fact that he did nothing to confirm that I was flagrantly neither all over, I took to be an ill omen, but one which I had come to expect whenever my fancy was stoked.

Our more substantial introduction came the next afternoon when I cunningly emerged from my lair at the precise moment that he entered his.

"Hello!" I said, stopping him in his tracks.

"Oh. Hi. I guess we're neighbors." He flashed the shy smile of an intelligent person who has just stated the obvious. And it was obvious--our doors were just three feet apart.

"I suppose so," I replied cleverly. "My name is B. K. Troop. What's yours?"

"Chris Ireland," he said, extending a smallish hand. Even in the dim light of the hallway I could see that he was a nail-biter; thankfully, the kind in whom vanity trumps self-loathing, which is to say that his nails were short enough to lift my eyebrows, but not turn my stomach. We shook. His hand was cold. No surprise, Manhattan was in the grips of an Arctic freeze.