Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir

by Jamie Brickhouse

  “What?” I asked.

  “What’s it called? That thing that boy was talking about on Oprah? Bare-skinning?”

  “Oh. Barebacking. Why?”

  “Never mind.” She held up her finger to silence me and leaned back into the sofa with a just-you-wait smirk on her face. Then: “Michael?”

  “Yes, Jean?”

  “Have you been barebacking lately?”

  Dead silence.

  Dad was shaking his head in resigned exasperation, his eyebrows raised.

  Mama Jean was silently tee-heeing. She cocked her perfectly coiffed head with her ear in Michahaze’s direction. “Michael? Did you hear me?”

  Michahaze appeared in the archway with his expert poker face, which made him unflappable in any situation. “I heard you, Jean. But I’m not sure that I understood you.”

  “You don’t know what barebacking is?”

  “Riding sidesaddle?”

  “Oh, come on. If you don’t know what barebacking is, I’m worried about you.”

  I broke the charade and explained that she was just showing off the new term she had learned. We laughed uneasily over Mama Jean’s little gotcha. The story became an instant classic before it was even dry, an award-winning entry in my repertoire of Mama Jean dinner-party stories—right up there with “two kinds of sex: oral and anal.” But every time I laughed at the reaction it got, I cringed inside because of the secret I had been carrying around since the fling with Father John had ended, when we were still living on West Eighty-second Street.

  Back when Father John called to tell me that he had the clap, I got checked out as I promised him I would. A few days after the exam, my doctor called me at my office at four-thirty.

  “Hi, Jamie, it’s Dr. Connolly.”

  “Oh, hey.” I held a press release in my hand that I was proofreading.

  “I have good news and bad news.”

  I laid the press release down. “Okay?” I said with a nervous rise in my voice.

  “The good news: you don’t have gonorrhea.”

  “That’s a relief.” But I wasn’t relieved.

  “The bad news: you’re HIV-positive.”

  I closed my eyes and held the phone in silence. My mouth went dry. When I opened my eyes, they were still fixed on the press release, but I couldn’t read a word. My vision was blurred.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. All the negatives of tests past had lulled me into a false sense of being one of the lucky ones. When I went in for the clap check, Dr. Connolly asked if I wanted an HIV test, since it had been over a year since my last one. “Might as well,” I said with nonchalance to hide from him—but more from myself—my fear that I had reason to worry.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. Had he been joking, it would have been a cruel joke, but a cruel joke would have been better than the truth.

  “Yes, I’m sure. But these days, it’s a manageable condition.” His voice was suddenly upbeat, as if I had just won the lottery, only it was the lottery in that famous Shirley Jackson story where the winner is stoned to death. “You may not even need to go on medication right now. Make an appointment and come into the office next week and we’ll talk about it.”

  “Okay. I’ll make an appointment.” I hung up.

  Is he supposed to tell me this on the phone? What if I opened my twenty-third-story window and jumped out? I shut my office door and sat at my desk like a zombie waiting for the workday to end. Why I didn’t leave immediately, I don’t know. At five on the dot I robotically rose from my desk and left the office as if I worked in accounting. If ever I needed a drink, it was then.

  How many years do I have left? Five? Will I have to take those pills that give you sunken-face syndrome? How long have I been positive? Was there ever a more negative term than positive? Did I get it from that guy in the bathhouse that time I did crystal meth with him? I know I didn’t get it from Michahaze because we always have safe sex. Who knows where I got it, there were so many morning afters when I suddenly remembered that a condom hadn’t been part of my night before. How stupid am I? I came of age when the AIDS epidemic was full-blown and safe sex was standard protocol. I’m not supposed to get this. Mama Jean’s warning echoed in my ear: “Remember, a moment’s pleasure isn’t worth a lifetime of regret.” I couldn’t tell her she was right and face her I-told-you-so wrath, but mostly I couldn’t tell her because it would kill her. God, I needed Michahaze. But more than anything else, I needed a drink.

  I sat on the crowded subway white-knuckling the ride until I could gulp a martini. Someone seemed to be staring at me. I looked up, and floating in the sea of strangers was the pale, wan face of a man who was a dead ringer for the actor who played the sad, middle-aged uncle with AIDS on the gay soap opera Queer as Folk. Maybe he actually was that actor. Once when I was watching the show while visiting Mama Jean and Dad in Beaumont, Mama Jean walked into the room. “What’s on TV?”

  “Queer as Folk. Ever seen it?”

  “Uh, yes!” she said in disgust. “If your life’s that sordid, I feel sorry for you.” My life is that sordid and I love it, I wanted to say as she walked out of the room.

  The hangdog, pallid face of the man stared at me. Is he cruising me? I moved to the end of the car to get away from his gaze. I couldn’t. No matter where I went, his eyes followed me, like the Uncle Sam I WANT YOU poster, only it was Uncle AIDS who wanted me. As if I were the only one in the subway car who could see Uncle AIDS, I was convinced he was an apparition.

  When I got out of the subway, I headed straight for the Works, aka the Last Chance Saloon, glancing behind me to make sure my fate wasn’t following me. I parked myself on a stool and ordered my drink, Beefeater martini, dry, up, with a twist, and drained it. “Another, please.” It was barely five-thirty, so only a handful of people were in the bar. I felt a man standing behind me, watching. I turned around and was relieved not to see Uncle AIDS, but instead a new stranger with a concerned face. He asked me what was wrong. The dam broke and in a flood of tears I told this nameless stranger that I was positive. That my life was over. That no one would want to have sex with me again. He said that it wasn’t true. To prove it, he took me to Les Hommes and had sex with me. Only then did I truly understand what Blanche DuBois meant about always depending upon the kindness of strangers.

  By six-thirty I was home drinking a fresh gin and tonic and robotically blowing cigarette smoke into the air when Michahaze came home. He kissed me as he always kissed me when he came home from work. He looked at my red, puffy face. “Is something wrong?” He sat on the sofa across from me with his unflappable poker face.

  I put out the cigarette and I nodded my head yes. My lips curled inside my mouth as the tears started to break again.

  “What is it?”

  “I had an HIV test. I’m positive.” The tears broke.

  “Oh, no.” His face cracked—a hairline fracture—but it cracked.

  I abandoned my chair and crawled onto the sofa and lay my head in his lap and guttural cried as he held me and caressed my head.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Gown Days

  “Stop making me laugh,” Liz’s reflection in the nightclub mirror said to mine as I sipped my usual martini. “It hurts when I laugh.” She turned away from my reflection in the mirror to my actual face. She was dolled up for the company Christmas party in black velvet pants and a winter-white angora cardigan with rhinestone buttons. Trash disco played to an empty dance floor while the rest of our colleagues ate and drank on the sidelines.

  I was imitating the Brits, which always made her laugh, and telling her one of my blue tales from the time I lived in London my junior year of college. “Well, you lived over there,” I said to her. “You know how disgusting and wrong the food is in England. So I was having a very playful time with a new boyfriend. ‘I have an idear,’” I said, mimicking his Cockney accent. “So he ran naked to the kitchen and returned with some creamy, white stuff spread on his dick. When I swooped down to inhale every
sweet drop of what I assumed was whipped cream, I gagged. It wasn’t sweet at all. It tasted like paste. ‘Puh! Puh!’ I said, and spit it out. ‘What is that?’ He looked at me, hurt. ‘Plain yogurt.’”

  At “plain yogurt” she spit out the cabernet she had just started to swallow. Laughing with closed eyes, she waved her left hand at me to halt while holding her abdomen with her right. “I told you. Stop making me laugh. It hurts too much.”

  “What’s so funny, dearies?” Jo Ann asked as she joined us. Jo Ann was the editorial director and Liz’s second-in-command. A veteran editor who specialized in psychology books, Jo Ann was one of those native New Yorkers of a certain age who mixed a dry wit with maternal concern. Anne Bancroft would have played her in the movie.

  “Him,” Liz said, holding her abdomen with both hands. “A blue tale involving yogurt.”

  “Plain yogurt,” I said.

  Jo Ann cut both of us a look over her glasses. Then, in a falsetto singsong: “I can only imagine.” She pointed to Liz’s abdomen. “So, do we know more about what’s going on there?”

  “No!” Liz said, annoyed. She’d been having abdominal pain for several weeks. “And it’s starting to interfere with my sex life. That’s not good. Because I like sex a lot.” She looked at me with a twinkle in her eye, a mischievous smile as if it were meant only for me, and kiss-ready lips—the Look of Liz, I called it—and said, “Oh, I long for the day when we don’t work together and we can really get to know each other. I have so much more to tell you.”

  “Me too, but come on. Let’s at least dance tonight!” I dragged her to the dance floor.

  “Wait for me, dearies!” Jo Ann was as in love with Liz as I.

  The three of us punished the parquet, twirling and laughing to my favorite disco hits: “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” “I Will Survive,” “Love Hang Over.” Our joy was contagious. Soon our colleagues danced around us. My martini buzz was perfect, so I was feeling no pain. I pushed aside the anxiety over the recent Caine Mutiny of my staff, which had been causing me enormous worry and pain. If Liz was worried about the mysterious pain in her abdomen, she ignored it for that brief, euphoric moment.

  * * *

  Early in the 2006 New Year, a few weeks after the disco music had faded from the office Christmas party, Liz took me out to a come-to-Jesus lunch to discuss the near collapse of my small department. A series of petty rivalries had broken out among my staff over my favoritism of Jason, the comely, gay one. He was like a young me (only much more handsome), and I was replaying the dynamic between Jack and me, with me starring in the Jack role. The resentments exploded when I promoted Jason, eventually causing two staff members to resign. My management answer throughout all of this was to throw alcohol on the rising fire and treat everyone to drinks at Mesa de España after work. But I’m a fun boss. Why don’t they like me? Not thinking to ask, Why don’t they respect me? Eventually, they all stopped accepting my Mesa de España invitations. Have I become Michael Scott, the boss from The Office?

  The New Year lunch with Liz didn’t come after the shit hit the fan, but after it hit the corner office. Before Lea, one of the resigning staff members, left, she had an exit interview with the CEO of the company. Lea sold me down the river. What Lea told the CEO I don’t know, but everything was probably prefaced with the adverb too: too much attention to Jason, too many drinks at lunch, too many drinks after work, too many sick days. The CEO shared with Liz the conversation he’d had with Lea, which is why Liz took me to lunch. Liz didn’t tell me what Lea unloaded in the corner office, other than to say, “She was one angry bitch.”

  When the waiter took our drink order, I made a big show of ordering Perrier, and Liz winked at me. Then she got serious. She was wearing the same Christmas-party sweater of winter-white angora with the rhinestone buttons that sparkled like the bubbles in the Perrier I was drinking.

  “My heart is so heavy over all these problems with your staff.” Her heart either sang or it was heavy. She acknowledged that I had had a bad mix of people working for me that had caused the stars to align against me. She gave me a pep talk about needing to hire good people—and fast—to get the department back on solid ground.

  With her elbows resting on the table and her hands pointing at me in a prayer gesture, she said, “I know you’ve battled your demons with alcohol, so if you need help, honey, find it.” I shook my head yes. “But trust me, you don’t want the CEO to get involved.” She didn’t mention my disastrous spin on the dais at that sales conference nearly three years ago. She didn’t mention the time I showed up late to an author meeting, my body a Niagara Falls of sweaty booze. What a mistake to have ever told her I was getting sober during that “dial on/dial off” time of not drinking. How long ago was that trip to Rio?

  * * *

  Later that January, not long after five P.M. one day, everyone but me heard Jo Ann let loose a shriek straight out of a Hitchcock movie. Karen, Liz’s partner, had phoned to say that Liz had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Stage four. I didn’t hear the scream because I had already left the office for Mesa de España to have my usual martinis before my commute home. My commute was a mere ten-minute walk, but come quitting time I needed that drink and couldn’t wait until I got home.

  I sat alone on the red vinyl seat of the barstool along with the other solo regulars, bitterly drinking over work, drinking over my department, who’d done me wrong, and drinking over yesterday’s drinking. So what if I drink a lot after work. So what if I have a few at lunch. I still come back to work and do my job. So what if I have a few sick days. So what?!

  The warring voices in my head shut up long enough for me to focus on one of the regulars. He always sat in the middle of the long end of the bar drinking a martini and reading the newspaper, occasionally staring at his reflection, which floated above the bottles in the mirror behind the bar. He looked kind of like me, but ten years older. We never spoke or even acknowledged each other as I sat at the short end of the bar, drinking my martini and reading the paper. Watching him was like staring into a looking glass:

  The martini is placed before the man. He looks down at it, almost salivating. He reaches out his right hand to pick it up, but sees that the hand shakes like a palsy victim’s. Then he reaches out the left hand to help the right hand pick up the filled-to-the-brim glass that he knows from experience will spill with the least tremor. The left hand is equally shaky. So he waits until no one is looking, and like a trained seal playing a horn, he dives into the drink to suck up two robust sips. The hit of booze is the medicine he needs, and it calms his shaking hands enough to allow him to pick up the glass with both hands like a toddler holding a sippy cup.

  When I heard the news about Liz the next day, my first thought was Jesus Christ. This is curtains for Liz. My second thought: This is curtains for me.

  This job was no longer any fun and I didn’t want to be there without Liz, but I was going to hold it together while she was out sick. “Titties up, girl! Titties up,” I said to myself. I was going to whip my department into shape. I was going to make bestsellers out of all of our books. I wasn’t going to be out “sick” anymore. I was going to be early to work. I was going to cut back on the drinking and not drink at lunch. I was going to do it for Liz.

  Liz had not returned to the office after the diagnosis. Sometime in early February, after we had received intermittent reports of her progress funneled through Jo Ann, Liz surprised me with a call on my cell phone as I was returning to the office from lunch. I read the caller ID, “Liz Cell,” and couldn’t flip open my tiny phone fast enough.

  “Hello, Liz?”

  She answered a staccato “Hi,” her voice almost ethereal.

  “Oh, Liz! Hello. Hello.” She was probably having nothing but “gown days”—Mama Jean’s name for days when she didn’t get out of her nightgown or put on her face. However, I didn’t imagine Liz in a nightgown when I spoke to her. I saw her in that winter-white angora sweater with rhinestone buttons. She asked how I was,
then asked if I would attend a dinner for a Catholic conservative author of hers in her place. “Tell him that I can’t attend”—she said her next lines in mock horror—“because I have ovarian cancer! That’s a good excuse, right?” We both laughed. “I may be sick, but I’m still funny.” It made me think of Peggy Lee: Can’t even get out of bed. But I’ve still got the voice. When the call ended, I stood on the corner holding the phone as if it were Liz herself.

  After that her prognosis grew more dismal every day. Jo Ann classified the reports she received from Karen as “not good.” I tried to cobble together my department. I tried to be on top of my game. I tried to do it for Liz, but my titties began to sag. If the road to hell was paved with good intentions, the road to the bar was paved with broken promises.

  In mid-February I lost it on Mr. Parker’s bed in the middle of his studio apartment, which was packed ass cheek to jowl with party guests. I was in hot-pink corduroy pants and a faux-mink jacket (a sad substitute for the Persian lamb), so I wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Here’s what I remember:

  Arriving with Michahaze at four in the afternoon in good spirits.

  Three hours later crying hysterically in a puddle on Mr. Parker’s bed about the dying Liz.

  Sliding repeatedly into the snow like a Pink Panther rag doll while Michahaze tried frantically to hail a cab.

  What I don’t remember: biting Jason on the neck on my way out of the party.

  Then black.

  The hangover the next day was award winning, even though I slept until two in the afternoon. I thought I was going to die. No, really. I thought I was going to die. Michahaze and I were shopping at Home Depot. My head was the weight of a bowling ball, my legs were wobbly, and the right side of my abdomen throbbed. I didn’t tell Michahaze how sick I felt. I pressed on the spot on my abdomen where it hurt. Isn’t that where the liver is? Oh, God. My liver is going to explode just like Jack Kerouac’s. Right here in the Home Depot in front of the $19.99 orchids.