I remember mom telling me that the first time she ever met
anyone who was HIV-positive was when she was attending one of her Christian
Conferences down at the Civic center and the person ahead of her in line asked
for a pen. Some how they got on the subject of HIV and AIDS and somehow it
leaked out that the gentlemen standing in line ahead of my mother just so
happened to be HIV positive himself, and that his lover, whose impediment had
developed into AIDS had given him the virus, so gay men (human beings) became
dominoes, fumbling from a chain reaction, bending over, unable to get up. Mom said that this was the first and only
time she had ever met or touched anyone who was HIV positive.
She
didn’t ask for the pen back.
***
Matt Brown ruffles my head every
morning. “Your head looks like a seat cushion for a big, gaudy fag to squat
on.” He says smiling. My eyes droop shut, my body is enervated from pumping
copious amounts of alcohol through my veins the night before. The brass hue and
cactus texture of my hair grants me the appearance of a lopsided philharmonic
trombonist crashing through his windshield with his instrument perched at his
lips. Matt peels back the crusty strands
of hair and kisses my forehead, informing me that he loves me. Telling
me that he loves me, before he goes to work, helping patients who are HIV +.
***
“I love you Damian.” I tell him.
His pants drip down the side of his legs, and we are walking down back to Larry
and Carries, my eyes, as are often the case, because of both my contacts and my
allergies, are bubbled red in the iris.
“What was
up with you and that girl back there,” He says.
“I liked
her name. I think she was afraid of me though.”
“You were
acting all over her like that because of her name,” Demian looks back at me. It
is three am, cars continue to whiz past, occasionally swerving.
“Yeah,” I
say, commenting perfectly with the heavy ruffle in my corduroy jeans. “I was
into her because of her name.”
Damian
pauses. His eyes appear to be a canopy drooped over a sunset somewhere else.
“But, Dave.
You’re just like you were last year. Just like you were last year when you were
with Misty.”
“I pause,
and reply by saying, ‘meaning’ with my voice perched an octave to form a
question.
“Meaning
what was going on last summer with you and Misty. That’s how I wanted to spend
last summer, you know I had plans.” A cool drip has mopped over the surface. We
pass a high school, we pass Roosevelt
Avenue
***
“I’m disappointed in you, Dave.” Mother is saying again,
sitting on the edge of her mattress, as if stranded with her feet dangling over
the edge of a peer cutting into a nuclear Lake .
“I’m disappointed in you she says again. I’m disappointed in you. On my way to
work I slam the door shut and get into my car. My spine, sprouting up like a
beanstalk out of my shoulder, curving into a question mark shape as it wraps around
my brain. Wondering why, just why, things have to be so fucking difficult at
times. If they would have wanted me to live a more Christian Life, then they had the option to send me to a more Christian school during the formative years of my life when I felt absolutely no love at all and my parents were very interested in sending me to shrinks and putting me on medication but not very interested in helping my overall, academic future by sending me to a school that would be considered overall quote ‘conducive’ to academia. This, then, perhaps, depriving me of, from a formative years, me as a person, truncating my ambition from seeing what I am ever quote, ‘capable’ of achieving as both a person and a functioning human being in this lifetime. Everything mom and dad would have ever wanted for me to have accomplish immediately gets hauled around on my shoulders because I harbor sincere thoughts of killing myself every time I see a telephone pole picturing a noose tied around it like a clown’s tie and my neck fumbling back and forth, a fish pulled out of water that is now used for bait to catch other hapless inhabitants.
It
was the moment that her face let go over every single muscle it was holding
onto, unbuckled and smiled. That moment when Vanessa was walking down the
staircase, each row our bodies clopping hard down, around, the staircase
descending turning the corner. It was after the class period where I told her
that her prose was so beautiful and so gorgeous that it gave my heart an erection.
“I’m glad
that was the only thing it made erect!!!” Thomas Palakeel laughing outloud,
slapping his hand into the side of his knee. The class breaking out in
laughter, tilting their heads back, cackling out golf ball sized hackles.
***
“I will sleep with whoever I want!”
She says, stammering. Tears, residual salt icicles still leak from the side of
my eyes, leftover form the funeral. I tell her that she is free to do that. I
inform her that our rapport, as lovely as it is, is based solely on trust, and
that, even though our bodies sexually configure into one physiological heart,
our bodies are still functioning separate entities. She continues to scold.
Dave has
been in his bedroom all day watching Queer as Folk DVD. He is laconic and sips
his pipe. Outfits are adjusted and we enter his 2001 Santa Fe SUV Jace got him
such a good deal on. Inside the car he taps the radio nubs and twists back onto
High Street. It is damp outside, the color of a tea bag thoroughly doused. He
rounds the corner, turning from High onto Sheridan. The break light on his SUV
nearly winks at the Stop octagon as he pushed the gas forward a block and a
half, turns on Windham. Headed
He says. towards Campus town. A heavy reticence fills the
car and breath begins to leak out of Dave’s throat. It is on the corner of
Windham and Orange that the break like on the SUV pause for a minute and he
puts the car on P. He is on my lap and tears are draining from his head.
“I could
be, I may be HIV positive.” He says, his face a flush of tears.
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