I’m back again in New York, and I have an urge to go to the zoo. I miss my dog, my cats and the Three Rivers wildlife-- bear, deer, and feral turkeys. I don’t know of any wildlife in NYC, aside from the NYC rats, which I shudder to think about. But I want to see what else is out there, and the zoo is right across the street, so I think why not?
I get lost along the way, so I ask a city groundskeeper, a middle-aged Black man for help. “Sure, I’ll show you,” he says.
We walk around, trying to find the entrance when we spot a group of schoolchildren being led by two orthodox Hasidic women, dressed in long sleeves, their hair wrapped in turbans.
“You going to the zoo?” the man asks. “Can she come with you?”
The women ignore him, like he’s not there. When I ask, they point to the entry way.
“You see?” says the man, “That’s what it’s like to be a Black man in America.”’
“Yeah, that’s bullshit,” I say.
“Like I want to steal their kids. What am I going to do with a bunch of kids?”
I laugh. “Yeah, I don’t want those kids, either!”
Inside the zoo, I buy a pack of potato chips and sit at picnic table under an umbrella. A young orthodox Jewish woman with her head wrapped in a teal blue turban and a baby in a carriage asks if she can join me. “Sure,” I say. A peacock, approaches us, its face looking like a prehistoric dinosaur, its beak coming dangerously close to us, demanding potato chips. We laugh and give him a few crumbs.
The woman tells me her 42-year-old husband just suffered a heart attack. She says she thinks his ex-mother-in-law put a curse on him, or perhaps it was something bad he did in a past life—“if you believe in that sort of thing,” she says.
I laugh. “I’m from California We all believe in that sort of thing.”
We discuss the best way to deflect the mother-in-law’s curse. When she gets up to go, she says, “I’m going to give you a blessing. For safety. And clarity. Especially for clarity.”
Clarity? What is it about me she knows that I don’t?
It’s a small zoo and not much to see, but the baboon exhibit fascinates me. I watch a mother baboon nurse her baby and yank him back by its tail when he tries to run off. A junior male walks up to the alpha male, shows him his red-cheeked butt, and the alpha male gives him a back massage and picks bugs out of his fur. Apparently, that’s what baboons do when they greet each other—they show each other their butts as a way of saying, “here’s everything you need to know about me—nothing to be scared of.”
Tonight, I’m meeting James in East Village in Manhattan for drinks and karaoke. We had a great time on our karaoke date last year, so I’m excited to see him again. My train is late, so I text my sister—a realtor—who can do criminal background checks and ask her to run his phone number. I didn’t ask her last year because he seemed so nice. I’m shocked with what she sends back: A sexual felony assault for sex with an 18-year-old girl when she was a student, and he was an educator back in the early ‘90s. They were close in age, so there’s a good chance it was consensual sex. Plus, the case was dropped. Then there’s the heroin/cocaine charge which he plead guilty to.
I don’t know what to make of this. All this happened 30 years ago. My friend, Rosemary, later, will argue that people change. But I don’t know. I’ve seen people change for the worse, but rarely for the better. I’m on the train now, 15 minutes away from him. Do I cancel, do I show up and whip out his arrest record, and demand answers?
I decide to play it by ear. I meet him at a bar called One and One. It’s a beautiful Manhattan evening, the skyscrapers casting a mountain-like alpine glow as the sun sets. He sips his beer. I order a wine. I don’t know how to bring up the disturbing text, so I don’t. He marvels at my adventuresome spirit to leave my small town. We talk about our brilliant fathers—my world-famous chemical engineer father, and his dad, a brilliant physicist.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “This is the same conversation we had last year."
He pauses. “Yeah, you might be right. But I don’t remember it,” he says.
So, we continue our conversation—the same one from last year-- like we’re riding a train at Disneyland, stuck on a preset, track going round and round on a track that keeps leading us back to the same place--nowhere.
At the karaoke bar, I chat with a young Black guy in a red dinner jacket, sitting next to me. He leans into me and says, “I’m so excited I’m dating a normal/healthy guy. It’s the first nontoxic relationship I’ve had.”
“Good for you!” I say. I want to hug him.
He points to James, “Is that your boyfriend?”
I grimace at him conspiratorially and give my head a slight shake “no”.
James notices I’m quiet. “Is everything ok?” he asks.
“Yes, I’m just a little tired,” I say.
I’m trying to have fun, but I feel deflated after my sister’s text. Are there no good guys out there? My ex-husband who seemed like a dream come true turned out to be a white- collar predator.
James asks me again on our way back to the subway what happened with my husband. I tell him he was arrested for allegedly bilking innocent people out of millions of dollars. “He was completely different than who I thought. Has that ever happened to you where someone was completely different than who you thought?” I ask pointedly.
“No,” he says.
It’s the perfect time to ask about his past, but it seems weird bringing it up now. He’ll wonder why I didn’t ask him earlier or why I went out with him at all. I’ll have to admit I snooped into his past --that I know things about him he doesn’t know I know. It’s almost like sneaking a peek at someone naked without them knowing. It feels wrong somehow. How would I feel if someone confronted me about the worst thing I’ve ever done on our first or second date?
Even if I asked, he’d just lie. No one tells the whole truth about themselves. Ever. It’s not like we’re two baboons showing each other our red-bottomed asses, saying, "here’s my deepest, darkest secret. Tell me yours and we can give each other back massages and pick gnats out of each other’s fur.”
When we reach my stop, I give him a quick hug good-bye, and walk past the zoo. I think of the baboons snuggled in for the night and make my way home alone.