Like a Love Story

by Abdi Nazemian

  The facilitators of the meeting—Jimmy, the woman with the shaved head, two other men and one other woman—lead a discussion about the group’s next action. They will storm the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. They will demand changes to medical trials. They will shine a light on the lack of inclusion, on the inherent corruption of AIDS research. I can feel Art’s body fill with excitement as the protest is discussed. He loves this, and I love watching him love something. He’s a force.

  “Maryland isn’t New York,” Jimmy says. “There aren’t as many angry queens and fierce feminists there. We need to encourage people to get on the bus and haul their asses down there. This action is vital.”

  I close my eyes and wish for just one hour without the fear of AIDS. I think about what I would do with this one hour, how I would get enough of Art to last the rest of my life. How I would fill myself with his fearlessness and passion.

  My eyes open at a piercing, awful sound. I see whistles being distributed to everyone by the facilitators.

  “Attacks against gay men are increasing,” Jimmy says. “And we need to protect each other.”

  The whistles are meant to be worn around our necks, to be used in case of emergency. Is it not bad enough that our bodies are being attacked from the inside? Do they need to be attacked from the outside too?

  Art places a whistle around my neck and whispers in my ear. “Do you, Reza, accept this whistle?”

  “I do,” I say, giggling.

  He looks at me with expectation. I place a whistle around his neck and whisper, “Do you, Art, accept this whistle?”

  “I do,” he says. “I do and I do and I do and I do.”

  “You do?” I ask.

  He laughs. Then, his face suddenly serious, he says, “And don’t worry, if anyone tries to hurt you, I’ll kick their ass so hard, they’ll think they were hit by a tornado.”

  “Like the storm that takes Dorothy to Oz?” I ask.

  “Exactly like that,” he says.

  Art is my tornado. He came into my life like a cyclone, and ever since, I have been in my own version of Oz. My life was once sepia toned, one color, bland. Now it is a rainbow world of excitement and anticipation.

  He stares at me for a long time, and then, when it seems we can’t look at each other any longer, he leans in and licks my lips and smiles.

  When the meeting ends, people don’t leave. They cluster. They talk. They make plans. They trade numbers. They go to the fund-raising table to buy mugs and pins and T-shirts. Art wants to buy me something. He chooses a black T-shirt with a Keith Haring image on it, the words IGNORANCE = FEAR above the image and the words SILENCE = DEATH under it.

  “Try it on,” he says.

  “Here?” I ask.

  “No one cares. And I want to see you without a shirt on.”

  I take my T-shirt off and throw the Keith Haring shirt on. Art points his camera at me.

  We saw Keith Haring at a meeting in January. Art worshipped him. After the meeting, Art told Keith how much he had inspired him, and Keith smiled shyly and thanked Art. A month later, he was dead.

  Art snaps a photo of me in the Keith Haring T-shirt, and then he pays for two of them. One for himself, and one for me. “Why Keith Haring?” he asks, shaking his head. “Why isn’t this disease killing assholes instead of artists? God doesn’t deserve him.”

  He takes his T-shirt off before putting the new one on. Time stops when I see that jolt of skin. So much skin. I inhale it all, every beauty mark, every hair on his body, the contours of his torso and his shoulders and his nipples. And then time starts again when he puts the new T-shirt on and throws our old T-shirts into his book bag.

  We have the same T-shirt on now, the same whistle around our necks. We are becoming one, or perhaps I am becoming him. I long to be him, to escape myself and crawl into the safety of his skin. The clink-clink of his camera against the whistle sounds like a metronome and reminds me how different we are. He is an artist. He has a voice. I am still finding mine. The whistles also remind me of those fish pins Judy and I wore, and how much it bothered Art. Judy has not spoken to me for months. She hates me, and with reason. I miss her. She was my friend. The only one I have ever had.

  We walk with Stephen and Jimmy after the meeting. They have begun spending all their time together. They are not a couple in the romantic sense, but they have become companions to each other. They hold hands. Art tries to hold my hand, but I pull away. We could run into my mother. We could run into Darryl Lorde. We could be seen. I sometimes have moments when I look at my life from above and wonder how I arrived here. This is one of those moments. Who is this Iranian kid in a Keith Haring T-shirt holding the hand of a boy with rainbow nails and a ponytail walking next to two men on the verge of death? Is it me? When did I become this person? When did I become so . . . lucky?

  “I need to run into the drugstore,” Jimmy says.

  “Our second home,” Stephen jokes.

  We follow Jimmy into Duane Reade, and he heads toward the pharmacy counter to pick up a prescription.

  We linger in one of the aisles with Stephen. Condoms line the shelves. Regular and jumbo. Ribbed. Yellow boxes. Black boxes. Latex and nonlatex. Flavors. Flavors?

  “I think I’ll wait outside,” I say. “I hate air-conditioning.”

  “Reza,” Stephen says, “if there’s something you want to ask me about, you know, sex . . .”

  “I am okay,” I say.

  “No, you’re not,” Art says. “You’re scared and you won’t let me . . .”

  “Art,” I look at him meaningfully. “Please.”

  I try to leave, but Art pulls me back in and hooks his arms around me, locking his hands at my rumbling belly. I squirm, but he doesn’t let me go. “I tell Stephen everything, so he already knows what we’ve done, but more importantly what we haven’t done. Let him give you the birds and the bees talk, Reza. He’s good at it.”

  “Why is it called birds and bees?” I ask, hoping we can discuss language instead of intercourse.

  “Because parents were too afraid to speak to their kids about human sex,” Stephen explains. “So they relied on metaphors about bird and bee reproduction.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I’m so fascinated by idioms. There are so many interesting Persian ones that make no sense in English. Like we don’t say ‘I miss you.’ We say ‘My heart has become tight for you.’ And when we truly love someone, we say, ‘I will eat your liver.’”

  “Reza,” Art says, exasperated, “you’re working overtime to change the subject.”

  “I’m gonna give you the good news about sex first,” Stephen says.

  “This is how he started with me too,” Art says.

  “The good news is that when you’re gay, you can’t get pregnant. No babies. No unwanted pregnancies. No trips to the abortion clinic.”

  Am I supposed to be happy about this? I want children someday. I want to hold a baby in my arms, and feel needed, and know that whatever began with me doesn’t end with me. I want to prove that I can be a better father than my father.

  “And the bad news is that when you’re gay, you can die from sex,” I say, a hint of anger in my voice.

  “Sex has always been dangerous,” Stephen says. “Look up how many women die in childbirth every year. But yes, let’s be real here. The bad news is there’s a virus out there infecting gay men disproportionately. You want more good news though?”

  I say nothing. The last time he gave me good news, it was that I would never become a father.

  “Condoms!” he says with a lilt, waving his hand across the aisle like he’s Vanna White. An old lady with white hair and a basket full of hair dyes gives us a glare. I am mortified, but Stephen shrugs her off. “Condoms work,” he says. “They do their job well. All you need to do is use them right. If you want a tutorial, we can go home and practice with bananas.”

  “Or Persian cucumbers!” Art says. I blush and try to push away from him, but his arms are still locked around me.r />
  “Condom advice,” Stephen says. “Always check the expiration date. They do expire.”

  “Unlike Persian cucumbers,” Art says. “Those get better with age, like a fine wine.”

  “And never keep them anywhere hot. If you put one in your pocket for the night, use it that night or dump it. You don’t want the condom to break.”

  This is something I will no doubt have nightmares about. Condoms breaking. Like a faulty dam.

  “Make sure your lube is condom-compatible. Not all lube is.”

  “Lube is lubricant,” Art explains. “Men need it, because we don’t naturally get wet down there.”

  I feel my face burning from embarrassment.

  “The jury is out on whether oral sex is safe or not,” Stephen says. “But my advice is to use a condom for that too. Experiment with flavors if you want, though I think the flavored ones are gross. I don’t want sex to taste like pineapple.”

  Does sex have a taste? Does it taste the same with different people? Am I supposed to be asking these questions out loud?

  “And here’s something important,” Stephen says. “The straight world has defined losing your virginity as intercourse. That’s their thing. But we get to define it for ourselves. And you never, ever have to do anything you don’t want to do. As far as I’m concerned, sex is just intimacy between two people. You can define what that looks like for you, and what losing your virginity looks like for you. We’re queer. We make our own rules.”

  “Oh, and don’t feel like you have to buy into that tops and bottoms bullshit,” Jimmy adds. He’s just joined us, a prescription in his hand. “If you’re a top, fine. If you’re a bottom, fine. But you can be both, or you can be a top on Monday and a bottom on Tuesday.”

  “Who has sex on Monday and Tuesday?” Art asks.

  Jimmy laughs. “Honey, before this disease, some of us had sex seven days a week.”

  That’s what I want. To have sex seven days a week. With Art. Only with Art. Seven days of Art.

  “I know there’s a lot to be afraid of,” Stephen says. “But I want . . . I just want to communicate to you that . . . that . . .” Stephen’s voice shakes a little. Cracks.

  “That sex is beautiful,” Jimmy says. “That intimacy is beautiful. That feeling like one with another human being is why we were put on this planet. It connects us to everything good that exists inside us and outside us. And you can’t be robbed of that. Stay safe, but don’t lock yourself in a prison. Live.”

  Stephen nods and repeats the last word, “Live.”

  Live. A marching order given to me by two men with little life left in them, their future a ticking clock with the alarm set to go off at any moment. Live.

  Stephen grabs two packs of condoms and goes to the counter to pay for them. He hands one to me and one to Art. “You don’t need to tell me anything,” he says. “Promise you’ll keep these just in case.” After a pause, he says, “But don’t keep them in your pockets! Store them somewhere cool.”

  Art walks me home, but he doesn’t come up. I don’t let him. “Art,” I whisper, taking the condoms out. “Please take this with you. I don’t think my mother could handle finding it.”

  He laughs. “You think your mother snoops through your stuff?”

  “I think all mothers probably snoop through their children’s stuff,” I say. I don’t know if I mean it. But I know that I took the first chance I had to look into Art’s backpack. I know that I invade Abbas’s pockets. I have to assume others are as duplicitous as I am.

  He takes a condom from me and puts it playfully in his mouth, biting the edge of the wrapper. “I’ll keep it somewhere safe,” he says.

  I shake my head, smiling. I’m not used to smiling this much. But I stop smiling when I go upstairs. My mom, Abbas, and Saadi are finishing dinner and ask me to join them. My mom asks me how my study group was. They think that’s where I was. I don’t have the energy to tell them the truth. My mom hasn’t mentioned my coming out since it happened. She hasn’t used the word gay or asked about Art. She just pretends it never happened, and the rest of the family seems to back up this fiction.

  She’s equally in denial about Tara, who moved out in early January, after finally telling her that she’s now a bartender in love with a DJ. They argued for hours and my mom cried. But now it’s like nothing happened. Tara and I have a new saying. Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, it runs through the whole Middle East.

  At home, Saadi has become an expert at taking the cues and saying nothing about me. But at school, he and his friends are constantly taunting me. I’ve heard every possible word a homosexual could be called in the last few months, all spewed out of the hateful mouths of Darryl, Saadi, and their cronies. Faggot. Pansy. Mary. Butt pirate. Fruit. Turd burglar. Flamer. Nancy. Queen. Lately, they taunt us with lyrics from Madonna’s new song, which they know we love, and which celebrates the underground ball scene.

  This morning, as I walk into school, I hear them cracking each other up as they call, “Reza, are you ready to strike a pose?” I ignore them. Then, when Art approaches me, Darryl says to us, “Hey, ladies with an attitude, don’t just stand there, let’s get to it!”

  Art looks up at them, with a defiance I wish I had in me. “Yeah, you fellas in the mood?” he asks lasciviously. “Because I’ve got some whips and chains in my backpack I’d love to try on you.”

  “I bet you’d like that,” Darryl says in disgust.

  Art approaches them slowly, methodically. “Don’t motherfuckin’ test me,” he says. “And leave Reza alone, you hear me? Save the abuse for me. He’s off-limits.”

  “He’s got it easy here,” Saadi says, smiling. “If he went back to Iran, they’d kill him.”

  That sends a jolt down my spine, because it’s true. I escape the situation, searching for an empty classroom. As I do, I walk straight past Judy, who looks away from me as I cross her. She’s standing with Annabel de la Roche and a group of popular girls I’ve never spoken to. They’re laughing, pretending I don’t exist.

  I can’t find an empty classroom, but I see the auditorium is open, so I rush in and take refuge in the costume room of the theater. No one will come in here this early in the morning. I can hear Art call my name. “Reza, stop!” he says as he catches up with me. He puts his arms around me. “They’re dicks,” he says. “You want me to beat them up for you?”

  “No,” I say quietly. “You tried that once, and it was horrible.”

  “But it felt so fucking good,” he says gleefully, like he’s already forgotten the pain of the blood and bruises on his face. “And it would feel even better doing it for you.”

  “I don’t want hitting,” I say, looking into his glimmering eyes. “I want . . . kissing.”

  “Well then, don’t just stand there,” he says, moving his lips closer. “Let’s get to it.” I shake my head, and smile, and kiss him. We’ve danced to “Vogue” so many times, always at Tara and Massimo’s place. That’s the only home we can be ourselves in. Massimo has all the remixes, and we all dance like lunatics. I’m a terrible dancer, but Art can move. He strikes poses like Linda Evangelista, his hand framing his head, his legs assuming frozen poses that look glamorous and athletic. We laugh. We sing along. We pretend we are Madonna, or her dancers, or Greta Garbo. I know everyone Madonna is singing about now. I know who Rita Hayworth is. I know how to give good face.

  Art takes my hand. He holds it and kisses the tip of each finger. Then he takes my other hand, kisses each of its fingers. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” he says.

  “I don’t know,” I say nervously. “We should go to class. We’ll be late.”

  “I don’t think I do,” he says, ignoring me. “But I like the idea of it. Like what if we knew each other in a past life? What if we were Bonnie and Clyde? Or Cleopatra and Mark Antony? What if this isn’t the beginning of us, but just a continuation of something that started a long time ago?”

  “You’re funny,” I say. “What if we weren’t extraord
inarily famous people? What if we were just . . . normal?”

  “Reza,” he says. He says my name with awe, like I truly am extraordinary. “If past lives exist, then we were epic people.”

  “Okay, then I want to be Cleopatra,” I say, excited. He’s succeeded in getting me out of my head, into a fantasy.

  He kisses the palm of my hand now. “And what would you wanna be in our next life?”

  I don’t know what I would want to be, so I say the first thing that comes into my mind. “A fish maybe. It seems peaceful underwater.”

  “As long as you’re somewhere far from sharks and oil spills,” he says. “But I like that idea. I’ll be a fish with you.” He sucks his cheeks in to make a fish face, and I follow suit. We mash our lips into each other, laughing. I briefly think of Judy, of those fish pins we wore.

  “You want to practice putting condoms on each other tonight?” he asks with a mischievous smile.

  “Where?” I whisper, as if there is anyone in here who can hear us.

  “We could ask Stephen to use his place,” he says, like he’s trying to convince himself that’s a rational idea. “Or your sister.”

  “I am not asking my sister if she’ll let me have sex in her apartment!” I say, way too loud. “And let’s backtrack. I’m not ready to have sex at all.”

  He makes a fish face again. “There’s no AIDS underwater, you know,” he says. “And even if there were, fish are immune.”

  My heart beats fast. Everything seemed so right just a moment ago.

  “I have a crazy idea,” Art says. “Let’s go get tested. Me and you, together.”

  I look at him, confused. “Tested? For what?”

  “What do you mean, for what? For HIV.” He says it so matter-of-factly, like he wants to sign us up for piano lessons.

  “Why would we need to be tested?” I ask, incredulous. “We’ve never done anything! Have you ever done anything? I have never done anything!”

  “No, I already told you,” Art says. “I’ve never had oral or anal . . .”

  “And me neither,” I say. I hate those words. Oral. Anal. I hate how graphic they are, how hostile they feel. I sometimes wish sex could be like it is in old movies, a passionate black-and-white kiss and separate beds.