The Beautiful Man Who Lived in the Dry House

I was watching Lady Chatterley’s Lover the day the dry house burned down. Fire engines with blaring sirens screeched to a stop on my block, but I didn’t care to look at the commotion outside my window.

I was absorbed in director Pascale Ferran's French countryside. His Lady Chatterley was so nuanced any distraction detracted from its erotic cinematography: Wild flowers, blooming trees, sun-showers, chicken coops, and wood floors felt as intimate as the lovers’ affair. I was already a fan of T.H. Lawrence’s novel, copying large tracts of my favorite passages in my journal, and the movie version interpreted its narrative in sublime cinematography.  

While still watching the film, the electricity on my block was shut off, so I went downstairs and begrudgingly joined my neighbors who were standing on the sidewalk staring in the direction of the burnt house, which was on the same side of the street and could not be seen clearly from where we stood. The fire had been contained and exhausted firemen gathered the yellow hoses from the wet road.  

“It was the dry house that caught fire,” one neighborhood said to me.

“It was a four-alarm fire. Didn’t you hear the fire horn?” another neighbored asked.

I nodded. “But I was watching Lady’ Chatterley’s Lover,” I said to raised eyebrows.

“Everyone got out okay,” another neighbor continued.

“Do you know when the electricity is coming back?” I asked after a brief pause, still thinking about the movie I had not finished watching. They all shrugged.

“I already put up my pictures on Facebook,” another neighbor continued.

“I’ll guess I’ll go and get an ice cream sandwich,” I said, figuring the electricity would be out for a while.  I walked away from the mesmerized crowd who didn’t notice I was leaving. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the fire, but I wasn’t in the mood to be part of the gawking and gossiping, and even though I was relieved to know that all had survived, and I was curious about how the fire had started, I figured others would fill me in the days and weeks to come.

In my neighborhood there was a dry house for young men recovering from addictions; a Hope House for immigrants recently arrived from Africa and the Middle East who were trying to get foothold in America; a bed and breakfast with good reviews posted online by Europeans who stayed when visiting the state; and a commune with the names of its tenants listed by floors on a sheet of paper posted to the respective mailboxes for the mailman’s convenience.

Like most other neighborhoods in Portland, Maine, the houses on my street were big, rambling, and beautiful (some with wrap-around porches and unique glass windows), and like beach cottages, they all deserved their own oceanfront. Most of the turn of the 19th century homes in Portland were multi-level affairs and some even had plaques of notables who once lived or worked there. Even more charming were the houses’ worn-by-time-and-season look for which only maintenance of the shingles, change of paint, or garden, which popped up as if by surprise in the spring and summer, confirmed they were lived-in, usually by several different tenants. And even though my neighborhood fit the bill of shabby chic homes in Portland, the streets nestled between Cumberland and High Streets had a bad reputation for drug dealing and the occasional crime of passion. 

I figured my neighborhood’s ill repute was mostly due to the different people who lived there: Africans, Middle Easterners, drunks, hippies, gays, and Hispanics rented rooms or apartments in the multi-level homes (most of Maine was predominantly white and as much as Mainers acknowledged the rights and equality of others they were slow to embrace those who were different).

Because I had lived in cities (Washington D.C., New York City, Miami) most of my life, I loved living in Cumberland County’s four most exciting blocks, resembling the big, colorful American dream in all its languages, aromas, stories, and paradoxes-all striking, synthesized, and constantly in my face.

On my block, I loved the smell of pot, incense, freshly baked cakes, and the cilantro and garlic aromas of African dishes cooked in home kitchens. I admired the beautiful head scarves of Muslim women, and I blushed when young Hispanic men called me a cougar and tried to pick me up. I waved to my gay neighbor’s different young lovers who sat smoking on his porch steps in a state of afterglow.  I especially loved walking the dented, uneven, red brick sidewalks with maples that turned most of the colors of the rainbow in the fall.

My favorite pastime, though, was walking by the dry house and the beautiful man who lived there and stood on its porch in the afternoons, interrupting his daydreaming only at the sight of a pretty girl or beautiful woman.  

He quickly became the crush I had not had in years; it felt like Joey Nagy, the man I adored from afar during my senior year in high school. As a matter of fact, he had Joey Nagy’s Mediterranean coloring-dark eyes and short black hair. At the gym, where we both worked-out, he weightlifted, noting down in a pad the set of exercises he completed. Sometimes, I caught him looking my way, but we were both too shy to say “hi.” Anyway, he was too young for me, but that wasn’t the point.

I liked daydreaming about him, imaging his life in the dry house filled with rowdy white American boys with blond hair and blue eyes who hung out on the porch smoking cigarettes or talking to girlfriends who stopped by to visit. What did they have in common?   What was his story?

Portland was small but its streets were tough. When you were from the wrong side of the tracks, you had to know how to drink, brawl, be in and out of jail, move around easily, and survive at any cost. He didn’t seem to be part of that crowd.  He was too serious, intense, quiet, and smart, all of which I gathered from his punctual daily routine at the gym: he never missed a day and managed to shape every muscle in his body into a standing, upright, and obedient servant. But I didn’t like him because he was beautiful.

My one and only affair with a beautiful man had been a disaster. He visited me on Sundays when the children were with their father who I had long ago divorced. On those days, I put wildflowers on my nightstand, played Ben Webster on my CD player, and danced and stripped to my underwear-and still the sex was a disaster. When I got into his head, I didn’t care for what he had to say about his Mustang GT and all the beauty contestants he had ever dated. Without a doubt, he was beautiful-tall, lean, perfectly sculpted and Brazilian-and still I wanted him out of my bed right after we finished the act.

I don’t fall in love that often; I don’t even fall in attraction. The mysterious has to pull me into wondering and curiosity-and that too does not happen often. Loves start in my brain and sex has to have the slightest danger of falling in love with the man in my bed.  I’ve had three crushes, one great love, one almost great love, a marriage and divorce, two disastrous one night stands, and a beautiful lover. Mostly, I have loved the rebellious, brilliant bad boy who was one step ahead of the crowd he had to live with. I guess I always saw in my crushes and potential lovers the rebellious in me like I saw in my Portland crush.

He moved away from the dry house long before it burned down. I wanted to imagine he moved back to California because that’s what it said on the Muscle Beach t-shirts he wore to the gym, but I saw him the day of the fire as I was walking back from buying my ice cream sandwich. He was one of the spectators standing around the closed off street.

He was smaller, his muscles were not as built, and he was with a crowd of giggling young women and other bad boys like him. He looked away and didn’t want me to acknowledge him, so I didn’t. He had a new life, new friends, and it was miles away from the dry house where he once lived. Still, that night I remembered my crush and how once I imagined him in my bed and in T.H. Lawrence’s words, “He took me in his arms and [I] became infinitely desirable to him, all his blood vessels seemed to scald with tender desire…