CONT'D: Through the Haze | Page 1, 2

A landscape over our chairs caught my eye, and I found myself staring at it while host sat talking and I listened, sipping on a frigid gin and tonic. The fragile iron lamps hanging from the ceiling cast a half-light on the painting, which depicted a foxhunt. The hunters, standing in their saddles with excitement in the culmination of a hunt, had nudged their horses into a circle around a single tree where they had obviously cornered their prey. The flanks of the steeds stood side by side to prevent the fox's escape, their dogs stalking the perimeter of the circle. I could not pull my eyes away from that scene. Was that pride or ruthlessness in the hunters' eyes?

Perhaps realizing that my mind had wandered, or maybe to keep me entertained, my host confided to me the story of how he came to be a member there. Now, it must be understood that he is a man barely past the prime of his life, having accomplished much in the way of real estate and the sale thereof throughout the city. His position allowed him membership at any one of the many similar clubs in Manhattan's established neighborhoods. Yet he had chosen this particular gentleman's club to anchor himself socially, choosing these men and this place and its paintings and drinks as a daily celebratory ritual with which to identify himself. How had he come to be here?

In his youth, he said, he had fallen prey to alcoholism and lost everything. He was one of those lost souls who inhabit the streets of all large cities. His wanderings took him from one end of the island of Manhattan to the other. One subway station in particular he slept in and regarded as his home base. Every day he would return to this station to sleep or beg, watching natives and visitors tramp through its halls, in and out through the turnstiles at the drop of a token.

He survived though, eventually in a shelter and later, in rehabilitation programs and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. His journey here, to this club, had taken a long time. Long enough for him to take his life back. I was quiet in my deep leather chair. He kept talking. The thing is, he said, the subway station that had been his home was the one that stood not thirty feet from this particular gentleman's club. Which goes to show you that many worlds come together in the oddest places.

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Tom Maher lives and writes in Long Island, New York.