Castle in the Clouds

The boy was wearing a black T-shirt printed with some "professional" wrestler star. I remember being a fan of the fake wrestling culture when I was his age. Even after I discovered that the "professional sport" was all fake, I still followed it for a while. The boy was a little cherubic black kid waiting, just like me, for the A train to arrive.

I didn't take notice of him until he started talking less than a minute after the train we got on started moving. He had a box of junk food held on his two arms while he tried to entice us to buy some off him. I didn't dare to look at his face. I was afraid he would see the eye contact as interest. There were only five other passengers in the car. No one was interested. I felt sorry for him. A boy selling junk food to a practically empty car on the day the subway resumed its service after an unprecedented halt of service.

For the first time in its history, the New York subway went quiet for more than 24 hours. More like 36 hours. Forty? When the blizzard hit in December many were forced to be closed, but this was the first time it was deliberately closed in anticipation of the hurricane that came and did very little damage to the city. A lot of debate would ensue on whether the city was overly prepared, if the media was galvanizing fear. But for now, I was in this nearly empty train with a boy who didn't seem too disappointed that no one was buying anything from him. I looked at him a couple of times in the face, and he didn't seem too eager to hang on to me. He was not desperate. He had a life I was too remote to understand. Our common bond rested on that T-shirt with the wrestler. Maybe it wasn't even his T-shirt; if he was anything like me when I was his age, he didn't buy any shirts but inherited all of them from some rich kid.

Watching him, and then after he had left, keeping the memory of his cherubic and innocent face, I thought about the weekend that had come to an end. It was Monday evening already. The weekend was stretched out by the storm. Though the subway was working, the commuter train to work was still suspended on this first work day since Irene swept through with less furor than the vomit from the media and the overreaction of the city government. I was in an A train coming from the northern tip of Manhattan. This place was the enchanted place for me this strange weekend.

That cherubic black boy was like a little angel in the fairytales (except usually it's a white boy). And he was there to end my little enchanted story of the weekend. I was in a castle. It had turrets, and surrounded by other castles, which even had gargoyles high up above. Not too far up the hill was even called Castle Hill. And down the Hill was the glimmering Hudson River, the daily resting place of the only sun we have.

Saturday morning before the last train ran up to the castle from the flatlands of the common people, I packed just one day's change of clothes and carried my laptop and some books (finance books) in my messenger bag and a degree of uncertainty in my head. I was taking a minor risk going up to the castle. I wasn't sure awaited me, and equally uncertain, what I expected there.

I didn't need to be evacuated. In fact, the plan for the weekend was quite the opposite. Because of the hurricane, because my parents were in the evacuation zone, I had to tell my guests to go to another friend's apartment in Midtown, which as a location was much better than mine. I was ready to have my parents come stay with me, along with their visiting relatives. At some point, the lady of the castle asked if I was being evacuated. She didn't make the invitation clear, but she was concerned enough to let me decide if I would evacuated to her protective dominion up north. I was touched. Or maybe I was reading too much into this, as I have so often done in the past. But the idea was planted in me. Still, I invited my parents and the relatives, all five of them.

But then they had other plans. The relatives didn't live there, but with my granny. And the parents wanted to evacuate to granny's so they can take care of them in case the wind and rain got too fierce even if flooding wasn't a problem. So in the end, I was alone.

The story started before my parents' evacuation. The evacuation order was given Friday evening. By then I was already spending some time with the lady of the castle. We were talking, as always, a lot, over dinner. Then the awkward moment came when I wanted again to pay. She felt bad. She said she didn't want to take advantage of anyone. A cold breeze, it seemed, blew through the northern heights of this peculiar island. She felt bad. I wasn't feeling so strange, as I have indicated in the past. She's confused. That's not a good sign. Women in the past were most hurtful when they were confused. But while my mind can learn all the lessons it wants in life, my heart wants always to remain innocent and naive. It wants to think there are signs that this was a different case. Eventually we were in the little Mini Cooper of her friend as we drove along the Hudson toward Midtown in a city where people were busy stocking up water and food (like eight gallons of milk that would certainly go bad in fridges when the electricity got cut during the apocalypse). The lady of the castle held my hand and tried to smile. I was feeling quite at ease, more so than any other similar occasions with other women. Am I learning something after all?

Before I split ways from them, she invited me to join them during the hurricane assault for some hurricane party. I didn't commit.

Until I realized my parents weren't coming. So I invited myself. I wasn't sure if her invitation still held.

The first assault of the rain came two minutes before the 7 train arrived. Then it was sunny by the time I reached the castle an hour later. She was happy to see me.

And she practiced her piano. I couldn't read or write; I just sat behind her and listened as her charm worked its way into every cell of mine, the physical ones as well as the soulful ones. I never felt so touched by classical music as I did this past weekend. That was one of the magical parts of this weekend. I've always wanted to date a musician, just as I would an artist, an athlete, people with traits I identify with. I am not a professional or even really good at any of these things, but I do them to one degree or another. Here was a classical pianist, dancing once again with the piano.

When she wasn't dancing with the piano, she was talking to me. As before, we didn't really talk about "us". We were trying to get to know each other. That was her criterion for dating me, it seems. She needs to get to know me first. In Israel, she said, men didn't seem to care who you were, and she never understood that. That was her explanation on why she never dated anyone while growing up in the Jewish State. Now she wanted to get to know me. Wanted to spend a lot of time with me this weekend, not only alone, but also with her roommate, and her nearby friends. We walked in the torrential rain across the George Washington Bridge (width-wise, not to Jersey), and celebrated the less-than-exciting hurricane with her Russian friend and what I realized later the boyfriend of the friend, both were tango people and both professional musicians. It was fun. The roommates later came and so did another tango dancer. There was vodka, of course, since there were so many Russians in the house. There was wine. There was salad. There was the chocolate mousse I made especially for her Friday night hoping she would invite me to her castle for the weekend.

And after we braved through the rain on the return home, we talked more. I can't believe there is so much to talk about but in a way I had always understood that Russians and Chinese had a lot in common, both avid tea drinkers, and both lived under communism. For me, the added plus was that she's Jewish, a people I always misunderstood but wanted to understand more. I grew up with a lot of Russian Jews, then more Jews from work in general. I had many crushes on Jewish women, ever since junior high. But at the same time, my pro-Palestinian feelings made it difficult to understand the Jewish people. I never shared my views of the Palestinian question with her, but on Sunday we talked a lot about her family in Israel, her views, her ideas of Zionism, feelings being part of a legacy of extreme persecution. What she said made me feel more connected to her, not just informational.

The charm isn't just in the music. Otherwise we wouldn't have a lot to talk about. But the music was a simple and trusted blanket that brought me close to her. All I had to do was sit and listen, and watch her body melt with that wooden giant.

After the rain was over we went out to the Hudson River Park just down the hill from her castle. It was a place I had always wanted to go once I moved to New York. Now I was with someone who was becoming important to me to share this experience with. We braved the growing whipping of the rainy wind as Irene flailed her last tail as she traveled north. There were big waves on the river, and the sky's grayness only was matched by the river's. Nevertheless there were lots of people walking on the same path, as well as bicyclists. We talked more. I looked at her as she bunched her big bundle of wavy white hair to one side, and saw how Jewish she looked. I tried to explain to her what I saw, but I failed. I just felt it. Sometimes she looks at me in the eye, as if searching, and I often lose the courage to meet her gaze. I don't know why. And I don't know what she is looking for. Reason to trust me? Why I was spending time with her? What do I really want? I don't really know the answer in words, if there is an answer. Sometimes I am afraid I want a girl just so she can take the crown of My-Girlfriend. Sometimes I want this just so I can undo all the past rejections. But maybe, maybe this time it's different. Maybe this time the charm is raising in me other possibilities. Maybe I want a woman because of her and her only, not because I need something from her, but because of her.

The lady of castle was a little sad to see me go on Monday. I tried to look cool, if not impersonal. I knew that I would leave this castle and end this weekend of unexpected connections with her without a kiss. She put it very simply: you want me to kiss you when I really want to kiss you. When I want someone to kiss me to prove something to me, I guess I want something from her, not that I want her. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but not one that ruined anything. She's going to be as difficult and stubborn as any woman before her. But the difference this time is that she really likes me even if she isn't ready. The difference is that I am willing wait, for my own sake as well as for hers. I am willing to take the time to get to know her so I know for myself what I really want, to see if what I want is simply her, and not what she can offer me as healing.

She wanted to see me the night I left, at a milonga. But I declined. I needed time to process the weekend. Every moment was magical. I left the castle charmed even more, and I hope she's charmed just as much. She's a simple woman who spent most of her life making love to the piano and being hurt just enough times by men to not trust them too quickly with her heart. Her castle is made of a thick wall of rules, but inside, she can charm you with the serenity and beauty of her piano. That's the other difference from previous women: she's not complicated. She actually wants to be loved.