Be Safe

by Doug Weaver

  Rogarth has deduced that AIDS doctors are required to ask certain questions, one of which is the old standby: “Any thoughts of suicide since we talked last?” which Dawa faithfully utters.

  Dawa is poised at his computer keyboard to enter Rogarth’s response into the more than likely medical database administered from both Sacramento and Washington D.C. – or wherever the CDC’s offices are, like Georgia or Alabama – that his computer terminal is currently connected to.

  Rogarth wants to foreshorten this part of the examination, but for some reason he decides to tell the truth: “Of course I have.” He wants to add you fucking moron, but decides that that prolongation would simply serve as the catalyst for unspeakable and unknowable layers of complication that, for some weird, reason-defying subroutine that’s worthy of study in some humanities class focusing on genre, would manifest itself in the inevitable yet regrettable weaponization of etiquette where recitations of discontent become manifested as please-and-thank-you-laden observations that serve to funnel the complainant’s morsels of displeasure, like cattle herded to their deaths while dutifully tramping up and down various ramps leading to a killing room, into a no-win realm of argument and to its ultimate proclamation: there is no way I can answer that question, sir – and which will usually not only raise your blood pressure to the aneurism level, but also launch yourself right into a locked 5150 box somewhere in a downtown jail, and has the same effect as calling time out so that you can don a pair of fluffy, feather-filled fake boxing gloves before punching the beatific grin right off some idiot’s face.

  Nevertheless, Rogarth’s candidness forces Dawa to ask follow-ups, beginning with a slightly anxiety-tinged: “Please explain.”

  Rogarth wants to shake Dawa by his shoulders because he’s been saddled with the responsibility of explaining the unexplainable. He wants to display his arms scarred from shooting dope:

  How the fuck should I know, you idiot! I shoot dope into my arms. I can’t speak for everybody – because I don’t know everybody, but I’m thinking that we, meaning dope fiends, on some level, all want to die, but we’re so fucking scared of just about everything that we don’t want to make a mistake as we traverse that yawn-inducing tapestry that’s too often generously described as life, which is why overdoses are such an attractive alternative to maybe blowing your brains out with a shotgun in the mouth, like we’re all little Hitlers who try to escape the responsibility of actually committing a reprehensible act by labeling it the product of offering to ourselves and then accepting a fait accompli, whether it’s the annexation of the Sudatenland or the injection of too much dope into a vein: Oops! Too late now, I guess. Pity – I would have made a helluva forty-year-old. As if – really as if, motherfucker – one could or would have the wherewithal to assign a value to the sudden realization that an overdose was either a) happening, or b) finishing – which probably would depend on what kind of dope you’re using – heroin taking on the role of guillotine with all its sudden finality, and even if you could squeeze out an opinion while sinking into that particular blackness, one would be hard pressed to give a fuck because perceived dying just doesn’t matter that much because you’re feeling so warm and fuzzy and pretty fucking sleepy – or cocaine, which affords a pretty sharp and accurate awareness of your organs going all numb inside your body, one by one, and the surprising onset of paralysis, which doesn’t allow you to even scream for your boyfriend (lucky you!) ‘Hey…I need help here. I think I’m dying,’ or, if you think you’re keeping your drug use a secret, propriety would dictate that, dying or not, you should keep your mouth shut, a circumstance that lends a slight tinge of noble (at least temporarily) purpose to your paralytic silence. Some dope fiends would add overdoses of methamphetamine here, but I’m not convinced that bona fide overdoses can be caused by using too much of the shit, which, rather than causing death, too much meth makes your eyeballs bulge and shake like crazy. Or it just may be that suicide is the natural response to the unshakable and inescapable frustration that comes from the realization that dreams are what it’s all about. “Yes, that’s right, Rogarth! Good boy! To be or not to be, or more plainly, to dream or not to dream! Please continue.” Because if dreams are what we’re here for, then it stands to reason – please fucking stop me if you have the answer – that the more dreaming the better? Isn’t that it? And please don’t hit me with ‘it’s a matter of degree.’ Please! I couldn’t handle that bullshit one more fucking time.

  ###

  Knowing that this observation is probably insufficient as an explanation of a planned suicide, Rogarth instinctively tries to mentally prepare to resolve the looming chicken-or-the-egg; cause-and-effect dilemma. As if his mind were a Rolodex, Rogarth considers and reviews the multitude of “salient” memories of inciting incidents throughout his life, being careful to gloss over the Epidemic because he’s decided it’s just too fucking obvious, and for some reason his brain alights on his earliest, meaning teenaged, recognition of profound joy brought on by serendipitous events, which time has eroded into – due to shifting appetites and prejudices – just another memory that he’d prefer had never happened.

  Rogarth doesn’t really have a clue whether this is relevant to the suicide question, but for the moment he feels obliged to remember a certain afternoon when he was listening to a Bach cantata, the Easter or the Christmas – or maybe even St. Matthew’s Passion – while sitting on the edge of his single bed nestled inside his parents’ suburban ranch-style house with all that quilted, color-coded artwork, used brick, and avocado green carpet – and, through the window of his bedroom, he looked up to the sky, which was enjoying a period of breathless calm between hostile bouts of a violent springtime storm. At exactly the place in the music where an oboe solo took flight and began to glide majestically – (can something be lonely and majestic at the same time?) – over a comforting bed of appropriate harmonies that shimmered and shifted according to some terrible cosmic pattern, a swarm – it might be better to say “flock” because “swarm” drips with the foreboding portent of misfortune because locusts and boils and hail and shit, and “flock” is more like saying “bouquet” rather than “bunch” – but it was a swarm – a straight up swarm of birds – probably starlings, whose miraculous flight, seemingly afforded by the safety of surprisingly generous patches of blue sky interspersed between outcroppings of glowering gray storm clouds – in joyous concert with Bach’s intentions, exactly – exactly mirrored the shape of the music, swooning and soaring and shifting shapes that tyrannically followed the music’s strict metronomic meter, an experience that was curious, awe inspiring and intimate all at the same time and was so profound that Rogarth at once banished it to a protected place deep inside. But the memory itself was quickly overshadowed by the reality of his human condition. Even sensing the importance of this musical moment that had allowed him to fleetingly glimpse a cosmic benevolence that he was certain could resolve all manner of human-born earthly problems, he, out of abject laziness, never bothered to relocate the music so that he might reproduce this phenomenon again, something that’s always invoked a sense of shame in him.

  Short of sharing this memory with Dr. Dawa, though, this is what Rogarth said:

  “Nah, Doc – I’m just bullshitting you about the suicide. I wanna live.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “So what’s the prognosis, doc?”

  “No one really knows, but we hope – don’t we – for a full life.”

  “Where I can be healthy and get a job a buy a house and a car and all that?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “And live to be – what? Sixty?”

  “Oh, don’t stop there!”

  “Seventy? Eighty?”

  “Pretty lucky, huh…”(breathy giggling).
“You using protection during sex?”

  “Huh?”

  “Sex. I changed the subject. You practicing safe sex?”

  Rogarth imitates Dawa’s breathy giggle. Dawa cocks his head.

  “Sorry,” Rogarth says. “I’m not having sex. I’m in a treatment facility.”

  “Oh, yes,” Dawa says while scrolling down through his computer notes on Rogarth. “What’s it called again? Cry…?”

  “It’s with an ‘I’…a made-up acronym. Chrysalis something or other – Chrysalis Rendevouz Inhabitant or some bullshit.”

  Dawa giggles. “Sounds awful. So no screwing at this place?”

  “Nope.”

  “Must be hard. There’s no real evidence that you won’t be able to grow old like your parents or your grandparents, Rogarth.”

  “Sounds great.”

  Dawa considers offering Rogarth a morsel of counseling, but his time is valuable. He’s abruptly all business, telling Rogarth he’s going to issue instructions for the nursing staff to give him vaccinations against pneumonia, meningitis and also a flu shot before Rogarth must head back to Cri-Life, and offers a frilly wave of his hand before ducking out of the examination room.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jimmy S. emerges from the restroom at the Arco station up on Sunset Boulevard, the one right next to that failed strip mall at La Brea. He’s washed his face and actually run his thick red hair under the faucet in the bathroom’s sink – it’s obvious that he’s been trying to refresh himself and appear less like a walking corpse than he appeared a few minutes previous. He still looks like shit, but at least he feels a little better – and god knows he’s had enough sleep to sustain him for a while. He feels a certain regret at having refused Korn’s invitation to get some burritos at Antonio’s because he knows he should eat something. But he’s on his way to see The Geisha over on Martel, and he’s hopeful that she’ll be awake, that she’ll remember to buzz him up – and most of all that he’ll be able to squeeze a shot of speed out of her – one last time – at least that’s been his strategy for the last half dozen or so times he’s been to see the little queen. Jimmy’s forgotten The Geisha’s real name – it wasn’t anything Asian – something like Brian or Brendon or something like that, but because he spends almost all his time dressed in kimonos and other slinky Oriental-looking robes, Jimmy and a bunch of other guys have just learned to refer to him as The Geisha.

  Jimmy tries to fortify himself as he approaches Sunset Boulevard. In order to reach the other side of this major thoroughfare he’s going to have to cross it, a task whose unpleasantness quotient, especially the older he gets, has grown to fearful dimensions simply because Jimmy fancies himself a mind reader, especially when it comes to the drivers and passengers of cars stopped not only at that particular red light, but all the red lights of the city. He just absolutely knows he’s going to be judged (it really doesn’t matter if he’s being judged fairly or unfairly in this case – he just wishes they’d stop looking at him.) Jimmy reluctantly presses the button on the light standard and hopes he’ll be joined by others before the crossing begins so that the attention searing into him will hopefully be dispersed between him and any other human beings on this asphalt journey between lines of the crosswalk. But he’s alone. His only other option is to appear as generic as possible, a strategy he’s practiced hundreds of times over the years, and is one that all other non-human creatures on earth have perfected because it allows them to wake up to yet another glorious breakfast of worms or plankton or krill or – actually anything but Twinkies, apparently because the “lower” animals instinctively sense that what won’t nourish them will probably harm them – or worse, bore them to inattentiveness. But whether it’s a matter of burned out memory neurons or a Darwinian survival mechanism, Jimmy doesn’t remember that this “disappearing” technique he’s gearing up for at the moment usually has exactly the opposite effect than what he’d planned: Halfway across such a huge intersection Jimmy tries to will everything about himself to flatten into plainness: his facial features, the length and depth of his gait, the height and weight of his steps, the fit of his pants and shirt, the way the folds of his clothes behave, the object of his gaze, his gel-infused well-wrought hairstyle, his intentions – gravity itself – everything that he can think of, the sum of which is Jimmy S. – all of it devolves into the exact inversion of his hugely successful performance of imitation that results in him becoming aware that the only judgment that can possibly be made by others looking at him is: Oh, look at that guy! He’s pretending to be human!, a realization that, once it’s acknowledged, compounds exponentially, and has in the past resulted in Jimmy, with bulging eyes and the fierce albeit short-lived resentment often embodied by the underdogs of society – at least the ones who at one time had a choice in the matter, directing his gaze back at all the haters in their cars: You satisfied now, motherfucker!? Either that or its inverse where, like a forlorn puppy who’s close to tears, he beseeches that girl in the Chevy Malibu or that businessman in the VW, or that bus full of students – all those drivers – to please – please stop it; that he only wants to cross the street. In such instances, though, he knows better than to ask the looming question: Why? Why are you looking at me? because he’s conflicted. He is at the same time both really quite afraid and also quite thoroughly hopeful of being shown mercy by some vehicle-bound good Samaritan who might want to hear about his problems, because he doesn’t think he could resist the temptation of making an act of confession to a perfect stranger – right there in the middle of Sunset Boulevard:

  ###