Like a Love Story

by Abdi Nazemian

  I glance at Mrs. Bowman a few times during the show. She watches with fascination, but with no sense of connection. When Madonna masturbates during “Like a Virgin,” she covers her eyes with her hands and yells, “Oh, no. This is too much.”

  “It certainly is too much,” Jimmy says with glee. “And that’s why I love it.”

  But the show takes a turn when Madonna sings “Like a Prayer.” She begins the song by simply looking up at the heavens and calling out, “God?” She speaks God as a question, like she’s wondering where he has gone, how he’s letting this world burn. The show goes from something fun to something challenging. After “Like a Prayer,” she sings “Live to Tell,” and at that point, the audience is in a hush. I hear a sob, and I turn to see it’s Mrs. Bowman, tears flowing down her usually composed face.

  One by one, we all turn to Mrs. Bowman, shocked to see her crying. Judy holds out her hand, and her mother takes it. Squeezes it hard.

  Judy cries too now, and soon I do too, and Art.

  “Oh, God,” Mrs. Bowman says, still clutching Judy’s hand. She rests her head on Jimmy’s shoulder, her tears moistening the velvet of his jacket. He comforts her. It’s hard to hear her words over the music, but I think she says, “He won’t live, will he? He won’t live to tell anything.”

  “Shh, baby, it’s okay,” Jimmy says. “Cry it out.”

  And she does. I do too. Because I am so filled with emotion. So much love. For Madonna, for the dreams she allows me to dream through her magnificence. For Art, whose hand I’m clutching so tight, who I cannot get enough of. For Judy, my first friend. For Jimmy, who I once feared touching. For Mrs. Bowman, who is so kind. And yet, there is still fear. Fear that Stephen and Jimmy will be gone soon. Fear that all these beautiful dancers on-stage with Madonna will be gone soon. Fear that this celebratory holiday we are experiencing will end. Fear that just as my life is beginning, it will come to a violent stop.

  Will it grow cold, the secret that I hide?

  I feel it all in the two hours that Madonna graces us with her presence. Joy and pride and love and fear and anger and passion. And one emotion I never thought I would feel: faith. Yes, faith. Because if the world could bring together this woman with these songs and these dancers in this place with me in it, then creation must be more powerful than destruction.

  The last song she sings is her ode to family, “Keep It Together.” Before the song ends, she hugs every member of her crew, starting with the grips and electricians. Her dancers keep dancing, and that’s when it hits me that almost every one of her flamboyant, gorgeous dancers is a black man or a brown man. One of them even looks distinctly Middle Eastern. And they all seem gay.

  Madonna dances until she is the only person left on-stage, the audience’s clapping the only instrument she has left to accompany her. And to the sound of our beat, she repeats a mantra over and over, like her life depends on it. Like our lives depend on it.

  Keep it together. Keep people together. Forever and ever.

  We sing along. We cry tears, but now they are filled with joy. And we hold hands. By we, I mean Art, Judy, and me.

  We are together again, just like Stephen planned. Whatever was unresolved between us seems to have been healed by this music, by this movement of our bodies and by the union of our voices. We find each other’s gazes, and we sing along together. Singing these words is what we needed, more useful and powerful than all the apologies and accusations. We have been reminded that our unity is important.

  Art

  I knock on Judy’s hotel room door an hour before we are set to go to the NIH. Mrs. Bowman opens the door. In the background, I can see Judy painting a sign that reads DEAD FROM HOMO.

  “Good morning, Art,” Mrs. Bowman says.

  “Hey,” I say. Judy looks up at me with a sad smile and a small wave. “I was thinking maybe Judy would want to grab breakfast before we go.”

  “Can you finish the sign, Mom?” Judy asks.

  Mrs. Bowman looks over at the sign. “Of course,” she says. “Dead from Homo . . . sexuality?”

  Judy and I freeze.

  “It was a joke!” Mrs. Bowman says. “Am I not allowed to engage in some dark humor to get through all this?”

  Judy gives her mom a hug. “You’re full of surprises, Bonnie Bowman,” she says.

  “You haven’t seen the half of it,” Mrs. Bowman says. “Wait until you leave the house and I have a midlife crisis. I plan on wearing cone bras to work and—”

  “Bye, Mom,” Judy says with a kiss on Mrs. Bowman’s cheek.

  “See you in the lobby.” Mrs. Bowman sits down and gets to work completing the sign.

  Judy and I head out toward the elevator. We enter the lobby in silence. “Wanna grab a croissant and walk for a bit?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Speaking of croissants, I can’t believe you went to Paris and I wasn’t there.”

  “I know,” she says.

  “And I don’t even know where you went, what you ate, what you wore . . .” I look over at Judy, and she’s smiling.

  “I went everywhere. I ate everything. I wore nothing but Givenchy, darling.” She laughs. “Seriously, Art, it was magical. It was more than a trip—it was like, I don’t know . . .” She searches for the words. “It was like knowing that everything would be okay. That there are other cities, other communities, that there’s just so much beauty in the world. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah,” I say, sighing. “It makes total sense.”

  “We went to the Moulin Rouge,” she says. “And we saw this crazy, bawdy show, and it made me think of you.”

  “Of course it did,” he says. “I love me a courtesan.”

  “Their costumes were beyond. As was the top of the Eiffel Tower. And I love eating snails now. And I might like macarons even more than ice cream.”

  “Maybe you’ll live there someday.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know.” She pauses, thinking. “Oh my God, wait, I have to tell you. There’s ACT UP Paris. It’s amazing. We went to a meeting.”

  “Wow,” I say. “That’s incredible.”

  “It’s so cool,” she says. “It’s just like the meetings here, but in French. They asked Uncle Stephen to speak, and they treated him like the star that we know he is. I made a photo album of everything. I’ll show it to you when we’re back home if you promise not to mock my photography skills.”

  “Moi? Mock toi? Never!”

  She laughs, and that sound heals something in me.

  We get almond croissants at the hotel coffee shop, and then we head outside. Maryland isn’t Manhattan. No crowds fight for space here; there’s no crush of people, no skyscrapers hide the clouds above. It feels open, and foreign. Judy chooses a direction and starts to walk. “How are you and Reza doing?” she asks.

  I don’t answer immediately. I’m playing different answers in my head, wondering how they might be received, afraid of upsetting her.

  “You can be honest,” she says. “I’m a big girl.”

  “We love each other,” I say finally.

  “That’s great, Art.” Judy puts an arm around me, maybe to let me know she really means it. “I know this is awkward and I definitely wish I didn’t date him before you, but you deserve to be loved.”

  “Thanks, Frances,” I say, feeling unworthy of her. I know how major this is for her. I love her so much I want to hug and squeeze her, so I do.

  She pushes me away with a laugh and says, “Okay, let’s not be sticky about it.”

  I laugh, because she’s quoting a line from Mildred Pierce, and no other teenager but us would probably get the reference. “You deserve to be loved, too,” I say. “And unless you already fell in love with a Frenchman who you’re hiding from us, I know you will.”

  “No Frenchman for me,” she says. “The trip wasn’t really about that. It was more about experiencing the city with Stephen, and weirdly enough, bonding with my parents. I don’t know why I didn’t realize this sooner, but I
have really rad parents.”

  “Yes, you do,” I say, trying hard to hide any trace of envy in my voice. “You’re lucky.”

  “I know that now,” she says. “I think, I don’t know, that it’s easy to take things for granted when you’re young.”

  “Wait, are we old now?” I ask, and she laughs again.

  “You know what I mean,” she says, swatting my shoulder. “Anyway, we’re older.” She’s right, we are definitely older. “So . . . ,” she says, her voice dropping an octave. “Have you lost your virginity? Whatever that means to you. I know gay virginity is different.”

  I stop for a moment, not sure I’m ready to discuss all this with her. I don’t want to alienate her. I don’t want to betray Reza. But then I remember she’s my best friend. She’s the person I’m supposed to talk through this stuff with. “He’s still afraid,” I say sadly. “So we mostly kiss. He won’t even let me take his pants off.”

  She looks over at me with real empathy. “I hate AIDS,” she says.

  “I hate it too,” I say.

  We look at each other in silence for a long beat, saying nothing, letting all our hatred and fear bring us closer to each other.

  “It’ll be over someday,” Judy says. “I know it will.” I can tell what she’s thinking. That it may not be over in time to save Stephen. But she doesn’t linger in sadness. She shifts her tone and jokes, “And then you’ll take his pants off.”

  I laugh and add, “Oh, I won’t take his pants off. I’ll tear them off. With my teeth. Like a tiger that’s just been unleashed from zoo captivity.”

  She laughs again. God, I love her laugh. I love the way she makes me feel, like I matter. She has always made me feel that way. “And imagine all those years of anticipation built up inside him,” she says. “It’ll be the most insane sex of all time.”

  “Hopefully it won’t be years,” I say. “Maybe it’ll just be a few more months.”

  “You think?” she asks. “You think the CDC or the NIH has the cure and is just sitting on it?”

  “I have to believe that,” I say. “I just have to.”

  “I know you do,” she says. “I do, too. I just . . .” She looks deep inside me, like she can see my soul. “Sometimes I lose hope, Art.”

  Stephen is in the air now. His presence and his absence. We both know Stephen must be in really bad shape if he didn’t come to Maryland. He orchestrated our reunion perfectly. I just hope it’s not one of his final acts of goodness. I need him to keep fighting, keep adding more goodness to the world.

  “I know,” I say. I hold her hand, squeeze it tight, trying hard to transmit hope to her.

  “Change the subject,” she says, her voice quivering. “Please.”

  “What about you?” I ask quickly. “No new men at all now that you’re a popular girl?”

  “Oh, come on, I am not a popular girl,” she says, a little embarrassed by the description. “And I don’t want to be. I’ll always be a proud freak.” After a pause, her face reddens and she adds, “But, um, I might have hooked up with Reza’s stepbrother.”

  “What?” I squeal, clapping my hands together. “No seriously, WHAT?!”

  “And he may have called me since because he wants to do it again,” she says.

  “I’m sorry, but I need ALL the details. How did this even happen?”

  “Well, I was a little drunk, so . . .” She’s blushing even harder now.

  “You gorgeous hussy,” I say, and she laughs. “Do you like him?”

  “No!” she says quickly. “But it was fun. That’s okay, right?”

  “Fun is definitely okay,” I say. “You deserve fun.”

  “And he’s one hundred percent straight,” she says. “Which was a refreshing change for me.”

  “You deserve straight, too.” I look at her with new eyes. She’s still Judy, but she does seem different. More confident. More grown-up.

  We both finish our croissants. “You’re the first person I told that Saadi story to.”

  “What about your new best friend Annabel?” I ask, instantly regretting the snide tone.

  “She’s cooler than you think,” she says, defensive. “Still, I haven’t known her as long as you. It’s not the same, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say.

  “Anyway, please tell no one. Especially not Reza. I don’t want it to be awkward for him.”

  “Okay,” I say, nodding.

  “I think I’ve earned the right to have a few secrets of my own,” she says, pointedly.

  I put up my hands. “You have absolutely earned that right.”

  I realize this is it. We’re friends again. We tell each other secrets once more. We trust each other. It’ll never be me and her against the world the way it used to be. Too much has happened. I have a boyfriend now. And she has her girlfriends. But me and her, we’re good again. We’re us again.

  “It’s not always gonna be easy, is it?” she asks.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Us,” she says. “Friendship.”

  “It’s like what Stephen said about Joan Crawford in his notecard,” I say. “That she was like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up a hill, except what she was pushing was the idea of ‘Joan Crawford.’”

  “I’m not sure I follow,” she says.

  “She survived—that’s the whole point of her. Nothing came easy to her. You could always see her working for everything she had. And every time they tried to kill her, she came back. I guess what I’m saying is that . . . easy is overrated. We’ll put the work in, and we’ll survive.”

  Judy laughs. She can’t stop.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  “It’s just . . .” But she still can’t stop the laughter. Finally, she catches her breath. “You’ve literally turned into Stephen,” she says. “You used Joan Crawford’s career as a metaphor for the survival of our friendship.”

  “If the shoe fits,” I say. “We had our flapper phase and our MGM glory years. We just survived our box office poison days, and we’re about to get signed to Warner Brothers. Watch out, ’cause there’s an Oscar and a troglodyte in our future.”

  “I’m ready for it all,” she says. “Bring on the trogs.”

  Now I laugh too. We laugh together. We laugh for the rest of the hour, and when our time together is up, we meet the others in the lobby as planned. Jimmy has been working with an affinity group that’s planning on setting off multicolored military smoke grenades outside the NIH. As we all walk together, Jimmy explains this element of the action to us. “The whole idea is to get on the cover of the newspapers. See, a lot of papers are printing their front pages in color now. The rest is still black and white, but the front pages, those are bright and colorful. This affinity group had an ingenious idea. Basically, give the papers a color image that they cannot say no to. Rainbow smoke bombs outside the NIH.”

  “But is it safe?” Mrs. Bowman asks. “Because this movement is about saving lives, not hurting people, right?”

  “No one will get hurt,” Jimmy says. “It’s totally safe. It’ll just be beautiful and cinematic.”

  “Leave it to fags to turn protest into installation art,” I say. Mrs. Bowman shoots me a look of death, and I correct myself. “Sorry. Leave it to homosexuals to turn protest into installation art.”

  “Where does one buy multicolored grenades?” Judy asks.

  “Soldier of Fortune magazine,” Jimmy says. “You can find anything in the back of a magazine these days.”

  “Wow,” Reza says. “I guess you really can buy everything in America.”

  “Except life-saving medication,” Jimmy says. “That’s either too expensive or not approved yet.”

  No one says much after that. A somber silence hovers around us, like Stephen is walking by our side. I can almost feel him, smell him, hear him. And then I imagine José walking next to him, and Walt walking next to Jimmy. And James Baldwin leading us, and Michelangelo, and Oscar Wilde, and Judy Garland. They’re all walking
with us. When we arrive at the protest, one of Jimmy’s friends tells us that over one thousand people showed up. “It’s incredible,” the activist says. “This turnout will show them how much we care.” I want to tell him that even more people are here than he thinks, because there are spirits protesting alongside us.

  Jimmy and the members of the affinity group run toward the entrance of the NIH, holding long poles, and then they ignite the grenades. I’m so mesmerized for a moment that I forget to raise my camera up and take pictures. That’s how beautiful it is, how powerful. We have taken grenades, symbols of destruction, and turned them into symbols of love, of color, of hope.

  And then, CHAOS.

  People are chanting, demanding changes to the underrepresentation of women and people of color in clinical trials, demanding more and better treatment for all the opportunistic infections that come with AIDS.

  The police are standing on guard, ready to make arrests, ready to pin people to the ground, handcuff them, silence them.

  Activists lie down on the lawn, another die-in, their limp bodies a stark contrast to the lush green grass, glimmering in the springtime sun.

  Other activists choose a more physical approach, using each other’s hands to springboard onto the concrete of the building, literally becoming one with the structure as they chant.

  Health Care Is a Right.

  We’re Fired Up.

  Act Up, Fight AIDS.

  NIH workers exit the building. They attempt to engage with protesters. Words are exchanged, loudly, passionately. Activists plead with them. So many people are screaming that I can only hear pieces of what each is saying.

  “. . . killing us. It’s toxic . . .”

  “. . . BETTER DRUGS NOW . . .”

  “. . . opportunistic infections . . .”

  “. . . BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS . . .”

  Jimmy gets in the face of an NIH suit. “And people of color? We’re getting infected and dying at disproportionate rates, but where are we in your trials? Do our bodies not matter to you? DOES MY LIFE NOT MATTER TO YOU?”

  A group of activists blows horns in unison. They blow a horn every twelve minutes, because that’s how often someone dies of AIDS in this country.