And right now, frankly, I’ll take the pee toilet.
The place Diego brings us is a sixth-floor walk-up off St. Marks. By the time we make it to the actual apartment I’m already sweaty and out of breath; no place in New York has air-conditioning, not even in the pit of summer, which is a unique brand of awful. Clearly I’ve been cradled in the slothful embrace of LA traffic too long if an East Village walk-up can defeat me.
Even without the heat, I wouldn’t recommend taking the subway from Astoria to St. Marks. The train doesn’t get off at a super-convenient station, it’s a lot of walking, and the commute takes an hour of your life each way. Drunk tourist city isn’t worth it.
Ophelia looks infuriatingly perfect still, not even winded, her violet eyeliner just as crisp as it was when we left Astoria. “I go to a lot of spin classes,” she says when I ask.
“Addicted,” mouths Diego over Ophelia’s shoulder.
Diego doesn’t bother knocking. Not that I think anyone would have heard him over the bass of the music or the crescendo of voices talking and laughing beyond the door. Inside, the party is about how I expected, only there’s more than just weed smoke overhead—someone is burning sandalwood incense in a little golden bowl on the kitchen counter.
“Want a beer?” Diego offers, heading for one of the coolers sitting at the base of the island.
“Sure,” Ophelia says, right as I respond with “I’m good.”
Diego digs around in the ice and surfaces with two IPAs. “You sure, Ely? They’ve got cider too, if you have a gluten thing.”
Like I haven’t eaten five hundred bagels in front of him this past week. “No, really. I’ll get something in a bit.” Lukewarm tap water probably, but it’s not like I’m expecting craft mocktails. Ask a sober person what they have to drink, and they’ll show you a whole fridge full of twenty different seltzer flavors. Last time I asked a drinker for seltzer, they handed me a White Claw.
Diego shrugs as if to say,Your funeral,and passes Opheliaboth the beers. “I can’t open these with my nails,” he says, flicking his fingers toward us to show off his rhinestoned talons. “Do you mind…?”
Ophelia rolls her eyes with plenty of gusto, but she does it. “I’m starting to think you just get those things so you don’t have to open your own cans. Or wash your own dishes…or scrub out the oven…”
“Hey,” Diego says. “We have a system. You do all that; I clean the bathroom and cook all the food and— Jesus, I’m not gonna list out the whole chore chart. We’re at a party. Comeon.”
We delve deeper into the crowd, and Diego finds the host somewhere and introduces us, which turns into offers to roll a few blunts—and I take that as my cue. I slip off and make my way back to the refreshments table, where I pour myself a red Solo Cup of tap water and take a bite of one of the little cheese cubes on display.
I used to be a riot at parties. Chaya and I would pause in the building foyer to roll off our stockings and unbutton the high collars of our shirts enough to show a daring slice of collarbone. We’d fold the waists of our skirts to hitch them up above the knees. And then we’d descend like birds of prey—at college frat parties, boho soirées hosted by someone’s online friend’s brother, bars that wouldn’t look too hard at our IDs.
Going out like that was such a thrill. Because for those few hours, we weren’t us. We weren’t the weird, frumpy Chassidic girls that goyish people stared at on the subway. We weren’t the troublemakers threatening to tarnish our families’ good names. And if we drank enough vodka sodas, swallowed enough pills, we kind of forgot we were any of those things ourselves.
Here, at this party, I catch myself staring at the mess of liquor bottles on the kitchen table. I yank my gaze away, but it’s too late. I’m already thinking about tequila, nectar sweet on my tongue. About the way getting drunk feels like slipping underwater.
And thinking about being drunk makes me think about being in other, more fractured mental states.
Okay, now I’m just getting melancholic. Time to do something with myself.
I’ve brought my camera, actually. I feel a little weird having it out, which is different for me—I used to bring my camera everywhere back in LA. It was as much a part of me as a necklace I’d never take off. People in my social circle knew to expect it. Ely Cohen, always there to snap candids, always watching everything and everyone through the lens of a Nikon.
I came to Parker to take pictures, and yet I’ve hardly done any of that so far. I’ve been so busy with classes and obsessing over this thing with Wyatt and trying to make friends that I haven’t done the one thing that never fails to help me put down roots: taking photos of people in the community I’m trying to be a part of.
I’d tried so hard when I was younger. I took hundreds of pictures a day: the young mothers in their brand-new wigs pushing strollers, old bubbes shuffling down the street to the corner store, the anxious bochur scurrying—late, books clutched to chest—to class. I would develop them in the darkroom at Yeshiva University, where one of the studio-arts professors knew my English teacher and was willing to let me take advantage of the college’s resources.
My parents looked at my photography habit the same way they looked at my sister Dvora’s ability to speak French: a fun fact to put on your résumé when it was time to find a marriage match but otherwise frivolous. They still hung up my photos around the house, still farmed out my services for all the cousins’ b’nei mitzvot, but they never really saw it as a valid career choice.
I lift the camera and focus on a girl who’s sitting on the sofa, curled up with her drink perched on one knee, watching the party swirl around her. She seems as if she’s a part of this world but not at the same time. As if she knows these people and likes them but is maybe a little tired, already thinking of going home.
I’ve only been here for five minutes, but I know how she feels.
I check the lighting, the white balance. Looks good, at least for my first time out after a week away from Albert.
That’s my camera. I named my camera Albert.
When I lift Albert again, I zero in on two people in conversation, a man and a woman. She has her head tilted slightly to one side, a lock of black hair twisting around her finger. He’s saying something with a small smile curving his lips. Flirting, or perhaps manipulating. I snap the photo.
I shift my lens to the left, and it finds a man with curly hair tipping forward to snort a line of cocaine off the coffee table.
My finger stutters against the shutter button, and I accidentally take the damn photo. I close my eyes before I turn away, but it’s too late. That image has already painted itself across the backs of my eyelids. And now it’s immortalized on film.
