That Night I Snuck Into the Central Park Zoo

While the mammals of the concrete jungle snoozed ever so peacefully, I jumped the fence to touch a polar bear's paws.

Illustration by Sophie Goldstein

Teague’s parents were divorced, too. His father had remarried and moved into an apartment in a building called Orwell House on the corner of Eighty-sixth Street and Central Park West. We were seventeen or eighteen at the time, and when his father went away on weekends, Teague would sometimes invite me down to the city.

One night we were sitting around drinking Ringnes beer. We played chess using a board Teague had drawn on a piece of white-painted wood and these little lead soldiers he collected. Later we watched Monty Python on the TV in his father’s den, Teague miming all the bits he now knew by heart. When it ended we were bored and decided to go out for a walk in Central Park.

Teague pulled out a pouch of Drum tobacco to roll a few. I grabbed some beers, the squat bottles fitting nicely into the pockets of our army surplus canvas coats. We took the elevator down to the lobby where Teague tipped an imaginary hat to the doorman, saying “Cheerio!” as we …