The Ride

Why would I leave? At three I’m sunk in the couch with Sci-Fi, an hour later I’m with Kate at the stables, the wind fierce off the ocean. I close the gate behind us and we wade through the muck, scouting the brown boys for the Junkie. Pairs of heads raise from the troughs and tails twich, deep soft eyes consider us for a moment. I watch them, aware of their sudden strength. But I watch them like I watch dogs; expecting a wagging tail or some other welcome.

Kate hands me a set of brushes and I sweep No-Name Girl’s soft hair clean of hay and salt. She tolerates my hesitation. I want her to like me. I run my hand over her flanks, down her long nose, searching for the spots she’ll lean into. Not the side of her face, but underneath her chin, a hollow where I scratch and her eyes close briefly.

I try swinging into the saddle quickly as Kate holds the reins, wanting to look self-assured. No-Name Girl steps off towards the pen, yearning for lunch, but I’m able to coax her into following Kate and the Junkie as they set off for the beach. The crest of the hill beckons, the wind nearly blasts me off the saddle, and I grip the reins tightly as she steps, then trots down the steep hill. I’m glad I’m behind Kate so she can’t see my white knuckles. No-Name Girl follows the Junkie closely as we descend, picking over the sandy trail through the trees and the brush. Rubbery plants brush the soles of my boots.

Kate and the Junkie rock slowly ahead; beyond them the sun-warmed cliffs, the sea mist hanging in the air. The beach stretches out, empty, and we kick up sand as we trot, No-Name Girl following the Junkie’s lead. A fine layer of sand skims quickly in the wind across the beach, and I’ve never gone this fast on a living creature; her rhythym sets and I’m at her mercy as we fly. Kate can’t see me clutching the reins; wildness and terror flashing through me.

Is this who I’m going to be now? Everything’s opening up, taking me in strange directions. After a Sunday morning downpour I’m on a horse on the beach. She startles at the bits of seafoam blown free and shooting across the sand. She tries to scale a cliff and I’m going to fall. But I ask her to turn and follow Kate and she does, enduring my weight and fear.

Being Normal

My doctor calls last night, having read in my records that my mother died. I assume my psychaitrist recorded that in my notes. I have a crack team of specialists handling my physical and mental care, but I’m pleasantly surprised at his empathy. He’s a good man. He also tells me that my latest lab results are in and my T-cells are now up to 1100. That’s an amazing number. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.” I continue to feel like an HIV imposter.

Ex

There’s no ignoring it anymore; he makes me feel like shit. Or, if you prefer, I let him make me feel like shit. Whatever. It’s been a year. Every time he tells me he loves me, every time he gives me the look. Every time we fight, he picks up the past and swings like Babe Ruth. I said I’m sorry, I’ve said it a hundred times. Do I get more sorry with the one hundred and first?

What did she sing? I’m not like I was before. It’s been a good year; crazy-making, devastating, amazing year. I don’t do those things anymore. It’s not a pretty view, but we go back and look, again and again. I loved him for five and a half years. But if I get different and he doesn’t, isn’t there a point of expiration? When can I stop holding out? What an ugly outfit; it doesn’t even fit. I’m no Farrah Fawcett. I had my Burning Bed, trapped on my back on the floor of the closet, those fists sprouting blooms on my face. I don’t need to be acted upon anymore. Louie, dear boy, your daddy doesn’t hate your other daddy, sometimes people just…get different. So go and have fun, let him walk you and feed you and stroke your ears with warm hands. Come back to me happy, and if you’re sad let me ease it from you however way I can. You’re a lucky boy; two daddies who love you so much.

Unforgiven

He calls late, his voice a ghost of itself. He’s found another thing, some evidence in some desk drawer, and he wants to know if he was good to me. Who took the photo he wants to know, it’s stamped with a date and a cold stone drops in me; I fucked it up again. I’m marked, there’s always a sniper up above. I’m still in love with you he says though we both know it’s broke. Seconds tick I love you too but he can can hear the difference. The best we both had couldn’t hold and what, you think I can go back? You can’t. Swallow the pit, face front. You can’t ignore the proof; it’ll unearth the crap, the slut I used to be. Do me a favor and throw that shit away I say and there’s an empty laugh …way ahead of you he says, Yeah, I’m way ahead of you.

The Cost

The Tattooed Monk’s ex -boyfriend used to make him mixed tapes out of his apartment in NYC. He’d design the sleeves on his computer and title each one. Somehow I ended up with one, which is odd since I no longer have anything that plays tapes. It’s titled “Bear Heart” and features a photograph of some guys in leather hanging out on the street in front of a bar. Their heads are turned away, looking up the street to whatever is coming their way. I guess I’ve kept it because the inside cover of the sleeve has a photo of the boy himself, shirtless, with the fly of his pants undone and the thick root of his cock exposed. He’s cute, and I admired his bold self-promotion.

The boy died today of stomach cancer, at the age of 32, at his parent’s house outside NYC. The Tattooed Monk is in a bit of shock, struggling to ascertain the meaning of his death, as if it held such a thing. He’s questioning the value of life, the cost of loving others, wondering if he should continue to bother caring about anyone else. Anyone beyond his small circle of friends.

“I’ll just wait it out until I no longer have any friends, then I’ll be done with it,” he says.
“Well, I’m going to be stubborn and stick around a very long time,” I reply.

I’m lucky. Lucky to be a member of that small circle. Lucky to walk beside him on a cold night in the City. We wander slowly, thinking the proper meaning will emerge as long as we keep moving.

25 Minutes

-I’m wondering where you are fitting the HIV into your life, what does it mean to you?
-(long pause)…It don’t dwell on it much.
-(silence)
-It’s funny you should ask that, I was just thinking about it. The other day I was talking to a friend of mine who was positive, who got it when his boyfriend fucked around and brought it home…he’s angry about it, betrayed. Me, I’m not angry, I just know I got it from my own actions.
-(silence)
-Honestly, I worry more about the dental work I’m getting done than I do about the HIV.
-(silence)
-I guess…I guess I don’t want it to be a part of my identity…you know, how some people make it a big part of their lives, they construct their identity around being positive. I don’t want to do that.
-(silence)
-It seems like a waste of time, or energy, to think about it. I mean, I have it, that’s all behind me, you can’t go back.
-(pause) I’m wondering about the difference you made between you and your friend, you spoke of it as though you deserve it more than he does.
-(silence)
-Yeah, I know. I don’t know.
-(silence)
-(long pause, then a smile)
-What’s the smile for?
-I feel like you’re not saying anything because you think that I’m in some sort of denial, and you’re waiting for me to acknowledge it.
-(shakes head) No, I’m just listening.
-I mean, my numbers are really good, I guess if they weren’t, I’d think about it. And I’m not really having a lot of sex, so it doesn’t come up. (Maybe I’m not having sex because of all this crap)
-(silence)
-(sighs) I can’t seem to keep my mind on one thing.
-Yes, I’ve been trying to follow your train of thought and it seems uncertain.
-I have a headache.
-Did you have it when you came in, or did you just get it now?
-I had it when I came in, but it suddenly got a lot worse just now.
-(silence) If you could do anything with this session that you wanted, what would it be?
-Honestly, I’d just go home.
-(long pause) Well, I’m okay with ending early if you want.
-Yeah, I can’t think. I just need a good night’s sleep I think.
-Okay.
-(long pause) Okay then. (gets up) Thanks, I’ll see you next week.

Unadorned

I’m not well. My subconscious is either unstable or very, very angry, because it’s killing off the rest of my family. I’ve been dreaming that I’m the last remaining member of the clan, and calling it a sob fest wouldn’t do it justice. Last night I could hold the body of my 26 year-old little brother in the palm of one hand.

I don’t know how to make this pretty for you today.

Did you know that it’s physically impossible to keep your eyes open when you sneeze? Try it.

On a chalkboard at the Noah’s Bagels near my work, they’ve scrawled “Don’t be a schmuck. Try an egg mit.” Everyone behind the counter is Latino. Well…I guess the manager is Hawaiian.

No, I didn’t watch. And you already said it better than I could.

It’s time for performance reviews at work; precisely the moment when I couldn’t care less. I won’t try to cash in pity points, but honestly, since I got back from the memorial service, I just don’t care. How do you articulate that without appearing to emotionally blackmail your employer?

I’m sorry I ever posted someone’s search results used to access my page. I did it to be funny, and it’s coming back to haunt me. Every single fucking day of my life. Look, “lesbian” is spelled with an “e”, not an “i”. Got it? An “e”. No, I don’t have any p-i-c-s of them, and it’s an “e”. You’ll find a whole hell of a lot more by using an “e”.

Stage Presence

I nearly had a day without you coming for a visit, but then they elected me facilitator of the Saturday morning 12-step meeting, and I knew it had something to do with you. Or the absence of you. They wanted to give me something now that you’ve left. Something to return to, each week; some kind of home. A church basement. Wonderful.

I really don’t know what to do with you. You should be more than a framed photo on my desk, a ghost who smiles at the moment I look up from a book. Shouldn’t you be more than that? You’re sitting on my heart and it hurts.

Grief is not a jug of water with a slow leak, your burden lightening as the days pass. Or if it is, there are cloudburts and showers, filling the jug and, as Rula Planet would sing, spilling over.

The girls are a constellation; the sky sings and they fly and fall in the night. A string of lights hangs above the stage; the soundman falters and the song, wrong, spins then stops. You keep a straight face. You work us in the dark, stepping between folding chairs and perching on our laps tell me all your dirty little secrets, feathers rustling and shaking like an animal. Where do you look when you look like that? It’s a spot out there, above our heads; it holds your gaze and you hold ours. When your hips knock from side to side we’ll give it up, slipping bills in your fingers. This song reminds us of something;everything is going to be all right and our hearts ache as you make us believe that it’s true. Please us and tease us, play us and leave us, you know we’ll be wanting more.

A body in motion

You’re so afraid. You’ll sit on that chair in that room and tell us forever what scares you today. You’re afraid of men, you’re afraid of your job, you’re afraid of success, you’re afraid to lose your hair. You’re afraid to change, you’re afraid of the night, the weekend, the winter, whatever. You’ve never lost a thing in your life. You need to sit there and tell us how it’s scary to have it all; the house and the man and the dog and the job and the money. I’m afraid of being alone you’ll say (again) I’m afraid of being in love. And they’ll throw their arms around you and say yeah I’m so afraid too and somehow we’re just going to have to get through it and you’re afraid of guns and planes and arabs and women. You’re afraid of your dad and you’re afraid you’re getting old. You’re afraid of intimacy and we all need to hear it, night after night, week after week, you’ve got it all and you don’t even know it.

I don’t have time. I’m now, I’m gorgeous, I’m shooting through. I’m a bullet, I’m a tank, I’m a skyscraper jumper, plummeting to earth. I’m moving in slow motion, I’m exploding the car. I’m a city on fire. I’m a man, I’m fucking the earth. I’m due, I’m on, I’m pouring salt in the wounds. The lights can’t catch me, I’m sliding through the night. I’ve lost her, I’ve lost you, I have it all. I ain’t afraid of shit.

Snapshot

The five-block span between my home and work isn’t exactly known for its quaint neighborhood “feel”. The view from my window looks across a noisy street to a tire shop that’s hung virtually every type of hubcap known to man on its building and the surrounding 20-foot tall chain link fence. It’s also an area infamous for its prostitution, the heterosexual kind. On the weekends young tight-skirted girls totter in heels around the block in the cold winds. But during the week it’s the cracked-out ruins on the corners turning and staring at the drivers of repair trucks and SUV’s. These women’s faces are portraits in hard living; deeply lined, smiles of broken teeth, scabbed lips and twitching eyelids. Some of them like Louie; they catch sight of him and their demeanor shifts, they bend and reach a hand out, their voices pitch an octave higher, and he gladly greets them with his wet nose and his stunted, wagging tail. They’re there at 6 a.m. and they’re there when I walk home.

One particular woman intrigued me when I first caught sight of her after work one day. She was different; she looked like someone’s mother; young and shy. As if to subvert her presence on the corner, she’d wear glasses and an overcoat and when she’d see me she’d look away. I wouldn’t see her often. I wondered about her, wanted to follow her home, if she had one, and watch her when she wasn’t here. I reasoned, of course, that it was drugs, some addiction that pushed her out there when the money was gone. I wanted to save her in some nebulous, romantic fashion, but knew I neither would nor could.

This morning I caught sight of a neon yellow flyer tacked to a telephone pole along my morning route; “Please Help Us Find our Sister Vanessa (a.k.a. Holly)”. Underneath was a photo of the woman. It had been awhile seen I’d seen her.

I used to buy speed in little bags the size of my thumbnail; the size of my life. I was a frightened, rageful presence behind the dark pit of a bar where I worked several shifts a week. I drank to cut the speed jitters, to give myself the courage it took to be behind the bar. I drank for the courage to remove my shirt on “Pec Night”. My weight fell as I erased myself. I’d stay in my apartment as long as possible each day; my forays into the world set my heart pounding. I bought the small bags because I was always about to quit, like a chain smoker who never buys cartons. But I couldn’t resist for long. Without speed I couldn’t breathe. Soon I’d be back at the dealer’s, twenties and tens gripped in my fingers, enduring his psychotic ranting; buying back my life.

It’s a good snapshot, though the copier darkens the shadows, presenting her face in high contrast. She’s taken off her glasses. Eyeliner sharpens her gaze, a coat of lipstick darkens her lips. Her halter top is barely visible under the folds of her overcoat. The photographer was taller; Vanessa looks up from where she’s leaning against a wall. Something I hadn’t seen plays on her lips. She smiles, shyly, at her friend.