Free The Cosmopolitans by Sarah Schulman

worlds.
    â€œI’m going to a party. Want to join me?”
    â€œSure,” Earl said. Why did he say that?
    On the subway he was still asking himself that question. Lynette talked and talked, which gave him some time to think. She was newly divorced. She talked primarily about her ex-husband and the key facts of the situation, the ones that bothered her the most. She was annoyed now about how great he had looked in his army uniform when they’d first met. But then, after the war, back from Berlin, he hung with his old friends from the neighborhood and never took his responsibilities seriously. It all got very old. She was tired of being his mama, always asking him to keep his promises. She was clear about what she wanted. Lynette Carter was looking for someone more mature, more adult. Like her father. She wanted a man who understood the importance of stability. She was finishing her master’s in social work at Adelphi and doing her fieldwork at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. It was a long commute from her parents’ place in Harlem, and sheknew it was only a matter of time before she got her own apartment again. She had dated a Jewish psychiatrist she’d met at Kings County, but he still lived with his parents in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and was a big baby. She’d already had a black adult baby, why get a white one too? No, Lynette Champagne Carter wanted a grown-up black man to live with in Brooklyn or a Puerto Rican neighborhood like Chelsea, someplace friendly. A lot of her friends from City College became artists, intellectuals, teachers. They were a happening crowd. Earl would understand them, being an actor like her father. He would really like their scene.
    Earl came to the answer to his own question. He’d said yes because he had nothing else to do. Even if he’d pretended that his man was waiting for him at home. It wouldn’t be very long before he got there and was alone. That’s why he’d said, “Sure.” So now he had to do it. Go to this goddamn party.
    At the Union Square exit of the RR train, Earl stepped into the quiet of a phone booth to call his service. He closed the door and sat on the wooden seat, trying to recover while dropping nickels into the slot. It was an unusual choice, since he knew that no calls had come in. No auditions, no spear-carriers, no understudies, no one-liners sweeping up in janitorial uniforms. But he had to try. It was one last chance for the universe to rescue him from leading this woman on any further. He’d made a deal with fate. If only one good thing happened, he would free her and go home. But there was nothing. He was torn because he only lived four blocks away. He’d be home in five minutes, and miserable, escaping from the night into his apartment.But then where would he go to escape from himself?
    â€œOkay,” he smiled. “Let’s go.”
    When they got to the party on West Eleventh Street, it was packed. Folks lining the walls and crowding the stairs. It wasn’t a home, really, more like a rehearsal room, but someone who didn’t know much about carpentry had thrown up a couple of sheets of drywall and created cubicles where a few people seemed to be living. Each section represented a room with a bed and belongings, but there were no windows, and in some cases the drywall did not reach the ceiling. Doors were openings with curtains, hiding piles of books, clothes, fashionable Mexican blankets, drawings tacked on the walls, typewriters, notebooks, Chianti bottles covered in melted wax. Each one had been set up for the party with drinks, beers, remnants of food long gone. Guests had to poke around the tenants’ belongings to find an opener for the beer. A number of the girls had unopened beer bottles that the men were cracking on the backs of chairs, showing off their manhood. Some good-looking guys, white girls with their hair piled high on their heads. Black girls outshining them at