Ghost Writer - Part IV
I had just moved back to New York City and was staying with my parents temporarily while waiting for my own apartment to be ready. I was also desperately looking for a job. Eventually I had the luck of meeting a very unusual woman who was looking for a ghostwriter.
THIS IS PART 4 of a SEVEN-PART STORY
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Image: Pexels - Cottonbro
I was in my parents’ guest bedroom, where Jofka and I were staying until our own apartment was ready, when Harry Rosen arrived to take me out to dinner one Friday night. She, my little six-year-old, got the first glimpse of him, and came running to the back yelling, “Mom, he’s really ugly!”
He wasn’t ugly, just short, balding, baggy-faced, old. He was in a business suit. When he arrived, my father asked him what he’d like to drink, and he said, “Anything that isn’t nailed down,” a phrase that became famous in our family. I gave him a quick look and thought, “We’ll go to the nearest restaurant and get this over with fast.” The man was definitely not my type.
But in the restaurant, something happened. We both ordered stiff drinks (scotch on the rocks). I planned to drink mine slowly to make it last, but before I’d even finished, Harry ordered another round. This was a man after my own heart!
He kept the drinks coming, and I began to grow warm and comfortable, especially once I realized he had no romantic interest in me. Quite the opposite: he told me he sensed I had a crush on someone (I did, a very fleeting one, a brief encounter that went nowhere) and I should feel free to discuss all angles and developments with him. By the time we left the restaurant, I was really drunk and not too sure what was happening. Everything was blurry. We were in a cab, but I had no idea where we were headed. Eventually we stopped in front of what I later learned was a club. Harry led me inside and deposited me at the bar while he went around saying hello to people he knew. The place was vast and cavernous, and I felt lost and a little helpless until I started talking to the woman seated next to me. She was very pretty with smooth skin, a gorgeous, meticulously made-up face, a beautiful decollete. “Where did you get your sweater?” I asked, admiring the soft, pink cashmere.
“Bloomingdales,” she said in a deep, male voice.
Unable to stop myself, I gasped and said, “Oh my god, you’re a man!”
“You didn’t know?” she said, gratified that I’d fallen for her female identity.
“No idea,” I said. I looked around nervously and spotted Harry in the arms of an extremely tall, robust woman. My new friend’s eyes followed mine. “Is that a man, too?” I asked.
My new friend, whom I later learned was a well-known drag queen named Chrysis, studied my face carefully. “Let me put it to you this way,” she said. “You are probably the only true female in here.” And she suggested I accompany her to the ladies’ room in order for her to prove her point.
Cover Image: Tim Mossholder