Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [99]
I pass by a mirror and catch a glimpse of my arms. I think, I really need to work on my shoulders more at the gym. I should have a separate shoulder day as opposed to lumping shoulders together with arms. If I really work on my shoulders, the deltoid will cut into the part of my arm that separates my triceps from my biceps. And I need this. And this strikes me immediately as the difference between a gay man and everybody else. A straight man or woman might think, I can relax a little once my 401(k) reaches a certain level. A gay man thinks, I’ll be happy once I’ve added another two inches to my chest.
Near the stacking plastic trash cans, a pack of children is standing in a confused mass, adult-less. They are looking in different directions, little heads turning, arms down at their sides, fingers gripping and releasing air. I can see spittle in the corners of their pink mouths. A pedophile could walk into the group and take over. He could clap his hands and say, “Time to get some lunch,” and I bet at least two of them would follow. It’d be easy. People don’t get how easy.
I walk past the pyramid display of plastic Martha Stewart soap dishes and head into the housewares section in search of my iron.
My pulse is thrumming at my wrists, and I can feel that my face has flushed. It’s the same feeling I had the first time I went to Las Vegas and put a silver dollar in one of the slot machines. And won five hundred dollars. I am deeply excited by this environment and thrilled to consider what might happen.
Every day, millions of people come to stores like this, and they buy small appliances without so much as a second thought. Perhaps for most, it’s even a chore. But I have waited my entire life to buy an iron. In a sense, I might as well be walking up the steps to accept my Grammy.
The iron is not for me. It’s for Dennis. I haven’t ironed anything since I stuck crayons between two sheets of wax paper in third grade. But Dennis irons frequently and well.
At first, without ever actually watching him iron, I suggested he just “give it to the Dragon Lady.” By which I meant he could simply bring it downstairs to the coy Chinese lady who runs the dry-cleaner place. Dennis smiled, as if with secret knowledge. He said, “I like to iron.”
But this didn’t make any sense to me. Ironing was just something you gave up when you lived in Manhattan. You either dropped your clothes off at the cleaners or, like me, let gravity take care of the wrinkles.
Dennis sauntered over to the closet and pulled his ironing board off its hook on the wall. He carried it back under his arm and then made a display of opening it. He winked at me, flirting. Then he walked into the kitchen and pulled his old iron out from one of the kitchen cabinets that I never open.
And he went at it.
When Dennis irons, it is a slow, soothing, and careful thing. Creases are blended away, smoothed into soft flat plains. Wrinkles melt. He works very gently, with the tip. He edges around buttons as if he is driving an exquisite car, handmade in Italy. Gliding along the stitching on the cuff, then the cuff itself.
I watched him iron and experienced what my friend Christopher, a science-fiction reader, describes as a “time slip.” This is when you become so absorbed in something that either one minute or one hour can pass, and you honestly couldn’t say which it was. And when you snap out of it, things have shifted, sometimes in alarmingly perceptible ways.
Was it twenty minutes later? I was wearing the shirt, and it felt warm and smooth and loved. How had this happened?
So now I am