Greg Baxter - A Preparation for Death

Maxine was staring at me. She had very clear blue eyes. Even when Barbara was speaking to her, she stared at me. I went to the bathroom to check that there was nothing wrong with my face. The urinal at Motto is a wall-high mirror so that men can see each other’s dicks. An old man stood beside me and stared. It’s very large, he said. Thank you, I said.

It’s also circumcised, and very pretty.

I suppose, I said, shaking it for him.

Would you like me to suck it?

No thanks, I said.

I returned to Maxine. I lied about how big my going-away party would be the next weekend. In truth I imagined that only Walter, Lucy and one or two others would come if I asked. Barbara left for a moment, and it was just me and Maxine, and she turned to me and crossed her legs. I asked her to stay for a few more drinks, but she was tired and had rehearsals in the morning. She gave me her number. She would gladly make the Abschiedsparty . Let’s do it in Motto, she said. That’s the smartest, I said — now I was speaking in German again.

Over the hour or two since we’d arrived, I’d had about five shots of vodka — most of them placed in front of my face by Lucy, who seemed to have one every five minutes. She also drank gin, soda and cucumber. She liked the suitability of gin and cucumber, she said, though cucumber would probably be just as suitable with vodka. Then she clapped her hands — but clapped is not the word, more like slowly glued them together — and smiled: Apropos vodka! And another shot was put in front of me. She played a folksy Austrian tune that everyone knew the words to, and everyone stopped trying to look sophisticated for a moment and sang along.

When Maxine stood to leave, and I kissed her, she had two inches on me — without heels. She stooped a little, and I stood a bit on my tiptoes, and we kissed each other’s cheeks. Then Walter left. He said he wasn’t having any fun, because he felt so awkward, and he could not drink because of his medication. Carolin followed half an hour later. And I was on my own, at least until Lucy played her last number — which would be two a.m. I moved a seat closer to two blonde girls — not natural blondes, and clearly sisters — and eavesdropped. I could not make out a single word, nothing I could use to drop myself into the conversation, until I realized they were speaking English; once I adjusted my ears to English I heard everything. They were Irish. I introduced myself: You’re Irish, I said.

The older sister said, That’s right.

I live in Dublin, I said.

The older sister was Alex, the younger was Astrid. Alex lived in Vienna, Astrid lived in Australia, but they were from Galway. And — who knows how these things happen — two hours later I was standing close to Astrid in a gay nightclub called Mango. Astrid was sitting beside Lucy, who was pickled — her word — half sleeping, sometimes managing the energy to flirt with random men, or sign an autograph, and every now and again to quote some famous line from some famous female singer or movie star from the fifties, or from Dean Martin. Astrid told me she was married, and a few minutes later she admitted she was eight weeks pregnant. We drank beer and shots until six in the morning. Alex was trying to kiss a 23-year-old bartender from Motto. There was an asshole there with a black leather jacket who grabbed Astrid’s tits in the ladies’ toilet, and an hour later grabbed Alex’s tits at the bar, right in front of me, and suddenly I felt like a fight. I wanted to beat his brains in. I grabbed him by the collar and tossed him outside. I threw him on the pavement. Astrid and a few others grabbed me and pulled me back. The asshole tried to get back inside. I met him at the door and threw him back out on the street. The bartender — a tiny little gay boy who looked like he might break if you squeezed him — asked me to go back to the bar. No problem, I said. Then he told the asshole that he was banned, forever. I’ll be waiting here for you, the asshole shouted at me. Give me half an hour, I shouted back. Astrid and I drank some more shots and Lucy said, My hero . And when I looked around again everyone seemed to be kissing, men and women, men and men, men and boys, boys and boys. Except for Lucy. Lucy does not kiss. She gets up to the filthiest things imaginable, but she does not kiss.

When we left the bar at six, the Irish girls had no money, and no bank cards. They needed twenty euro for a taxi. I suggested we all get a taxi home together and have a threesome. Then suddenly they were arguing about whose fault it was that they had stayed out so late. Astrid was leaving for Sydney the next day, and Alex had to work at nine. I couldn’t tell if the argument was serious or a joke, but I wanted no part of it. I kissed them goodbye, gave them some money, and caught the U4 at Pilgramgasse. I got on the rearmost carriage, and because it was a new train, with an open gangway from back to front, I made my way stumbling and swaying and rebalancing and excusing myself to the front. I believe I prepared myself something to eat when I got home, but this may not have happened. Walter got out of bed to go to the bathroom. Hallihallo , he said, sleepily, in his little white underwear. I put my headphones on and played Mompou’s Variations on a Theme by Chopin .

I picked John up at Landstrasse, where you catch the express train to the airport. It was about eight p.m. He had packed light for the weekend: a phone and two shirts, a change of underwear, and some socks. He asked about our plans for the evening, and I said it was dinner and drinks with Walter, but that things were not going well with Walter, and he might not come out at all. When John and I arrived, Walter was drunk, so he was doing a little better. He had turned all the lights off and lit all the candles in the apartment, and was listening to a collection of famous arias.

After a brief dinner in Naschmarkt, Walter led us around the southern edge of the First District, by Karlskirche, then Schwarzenbergplatz, because he wanted to take us to Peter’s Operncafé, the place where he had spent his twenties. It was a wet and cold night. The Ring was busy with taxis, but once we crossed into the First District there was just a strange cool emptiness. Madama Butterfly was playing — someone other than Callas. I realized at once that this was the place Christian, the boss at Santo Spirito, meant when he told me, one evening a few weeks back, to go down the road if I wanted to listen to Puccini. Walter explained that the two bars have something of a hatred for each other — but a respectful hatred. Peter’s Operncafé was where all the important players in operas went for drinks after opening nights. Peter himself, an older gay man who wore, that night, a sleeveless muscle shirt and moved around the café as though he were on ice skates, has such high standards when it comes to opera and considers himself such a pivotal figure in the opera scene — the singers ask him for his autograph, for instance — that he is obligated to hate everything. I asked him what he thought of Netrebko, and he nearly fainted with dismay. He put the back of his hand to his forehead and wobbled. Walter used to go there by himself in the afternoons and sit at the bar and listen to music, and ask Peter who was who and what was what. The walls are covered in portraits of opera greats. Peter has told Walter the story behind every picture. Half the stories are true, says Walter.

John said: Fuck me, horse, this is a cool place.

I wished I had known about it sooner. To think that I had let so many afternoons and evenings go by in search of a place exactly like this — and I had only a week left.

John and I had three beers each, and Walter had two. Peter hadn’t seen Walter in years, so he played a few arias especially for us — ‘Nessun dorma’ (Walter wanted us to enjoy it like he enjoyed it: it was a pity that John recognized it as the theme music from Italia ’90), ‘La vita è inferno’, ‘Vissi d’arte’ (I had said I’d seen Tosca , and he said he’d introduce me to a version worth listening to), and some others Walter wasn’t quite sure about. From time to time, the conversation would stop. Walter would close his eyes and lean his head back, or conduct with one finger, and I would look up at the ceiling.