Paul didn’t stop. He was fucking as hard as he could and Daniel watched as Juanito squeezed his eyes shut and sobbed. Daniel got out of the chair and knelt on the ground next to the bed. He reached for Juanito’s hand, and held onto it for as long as it took for the session to finally come to an end.
* * *
When they had first stepped foot in their apartment in Williamsburg, it felt like they were gonna take Brooklyn by storm with their love. They had nothing in their hands except the bags they could carry and whatever hope was shining in their eyes. He let Juanito run up those stairs first. Juanito was so happy, he practically took those steps two at a time. Daniel was doing his best to keep up with him, following the jingle-jangle sounds of the keys up the stairs and to the door. Then they stood together like wow. Not believing their luck.
Of course the whole place was empty, but that made it feel even more magical. It was afternoon some time, and the light had lit the whole place. All the walls and the wooden floors.
“Ay, mira,” Juanito said. “We got our very own nevera.” He was swinging open the fridge door like he was Amish and ain’t seen one before. Daniel thought it was the cutest motion. “I’m gonna buy all the yogurt thingies,” Juanito said, “and keep them fresh in here for the both of us.”
Daniel dropped his bags and walked from the sala to the bedroom with his arms wide open like that chica from The Sound of Music when she’s on the mountain singing out to the world. La-la-la. They spun together in circles until they fell down on the floor into puddles of their own laughing selves.
And they held each other.
“Ay, mira over there,” Juanito said to him, holding his hand all tight. “We got a window.”
Daniel wanted to say, Of course we got a window. This ain’t a jail cell. Even jail cells got little windows. But he was talking bigger. That window was bigger. He watched as Juanito looked up and out of it, at the blue up there with the clouds.
“Damn, what a view,” Juanito said. “Hot damn.” It felt like they had stumbled on the one place on Earth that was all theirs. “We got the sky view,” Juanito continued. “I mean, damn, don’t it feel like we got the whole sky just to ourselves?”
“Yeah,” Daniel said. “It does.”
And it did. It really, really did.
CODA
GOING
(1993)
In the dream Randy’s leaping into
the future, and still here; Michael’s holding him
and releasing at once. Just as Steve’s
holding Jerry, though he’s already gone,
Marie holding John, gone, Maggie holding
her John, gone, Carlos and Darren
holding another Michael, gone,
and I’m holding Wally, who’s going.
Where isn’t the question,
though we think it is;
we don’t even know where the living are
—Mark Doty, Atlantis
ANGEL
Every Wednesday she took the subway. She woke in the morning, stood in front of the mirror, and put on the Chanel suit slowly. She needed to luxuriate in the process of putting it on, one arm at a time, like she was soaking in a bubble bath made of herringbone fabric.
Ever since she bought the suit, she loved to watch it drape on the hanger. She could do it for hours, just sit there and watch it. Dios mío, she thought every time she saw it, this belongs to me. And claro que sí, baby, delicate fabrics call for delicate hands and delicate grips. If only the whole world could’ve seen her then—walking to the subway like she was going to the biggest ball in all of New York.
This Wednesday was no different. She got tea from the bodega so that, just in case it spilled, it wouldn’t stain. She took a deep inhale, double-checked to make sure it was buttoned proper. She had on a smooth wig (no curls, just waves), those beautiful patent leather cockroach-killer pumps that had been calling her name ever since she saw them on the rack, a cute little teardrop pillbox hat that cost four bucks at a cute thrifty dig in SoHo, and a cane to keep her upright. To top it all off, she wore a black knitted veil to cover up the purple spots. She wanted to channel Jackie O at John’s funeral. For that matter, she wanted to take the funeral look to the subway underground. She looked at herself in the mirror now, took it all in, and adjusted her lapels with a quick pinch of the fingers.
As always, the 6 was empty when she got on at Castle Hill. It wasn’t until Seventy-Seventh and Lex when things started to fill up. Rush hour—it was the only time of day to do it. She made sure to stand up in the middle of the car as the bodies filled in until everything was so tight. She loved the calentito energy that people gave off when they were standing right up against her—all warmth, especially in the summer. It was like the best example of what made a New Yorker a New Yorker: the ability to put up with anything—rats the size of cats, fucked-up subway cars that were less glamorous than a room at Rikers, the always-present humo of piss on the hottest days—and they all did it because that was Nueva fuckin’ Yol, the city that felt alive and buzzing with energy. Whenever Angel saw the skyline at night, just after a fresh sunset, she’d think, I might be dying, but thank god I still got my eyes because is that not a sight to behold or what?
Suits surrounded her on all sides. She held in her breath. She closed her eyes and pretended, for a little hot second, that she was a real businesswoman who was en route to a real office, and there it was, because who could tell everyone around her that it wasn’t the case? She was wearing Chanel, for fuck’s sake! For all they knew, she was one of them.
There was the truth of it: she rode that train every Wednesday because she had the virus and she knew that nobody wanted to touch her. Once a week, she could put on her Chanel, get on that subway, and when the train cars were packed with people, she could feel human bodies all against her and feel their warmth.
DANIEL
He probably should have left the neighborhood and gone somewhere else. He had dreams of picking up and going somewhere he could take evening walks, somewhere he could slice watermelons and eat them straight to the rind, somewhere he could raise kids, and if not kids, a dog or maybe two. But they were just fantasies and nothing more. The thought of moving gave him churra pains. Everything it entailed sounded like a pain in the ass: packing shit up only to unpack it later, carrying boxes into a truck, labeling the things that needed to be carried.
He was horny all the time, but he didn’t dare cruise around Williamsburg or Bushwick. He tried the parks in the West Village, but it only took a couple of blow jobs for him to get tired of getting sucked on a bench, in the dark, out in the semi-open. He tried the piers, but just being there brought back too many memories that he didn’t want to think about. He walked into a porn shop in Times Square and, as soon as he stepped foot inside, he walked right back out.
Then he found the phone hotlines. All it took was a quick ring of the nine-hundred number and he could record his own message about what he was like and what he wanted to do. He could also listen to the recordings that other guys left. It took him a couple days of listening to figure out the gist of things about what kind of info he was supposed to leave: age, race, height, hung or not hung (exact inches optional, but preferred), HIV-status was a must, and then other details like kinks. Some of the messages were so fancy, but all he wanted to do was fuck. He didn’t want to bottom. “Total top only,” he said in his recording, “condom is a must, nonnegotiable.”
It only took a week for him to learn that, somewhere in the five boroughs, at any given time, there was a thirsty bottom looking for a big-dicked top. The calls came back immediately. He had a string of guys who were down, but the only thing he had was their word. Who knew how cute they’d be? What if they lied about their age or height or whatever else?
The thing was: most guys didn’t lie. There was Jason, Justin, Joshua. Ricardo, Preston, Frankie. Arthur, Kyle One, Kyle Two, Kyle Three. The more guys he fucked, the more he wanted to. He was gobbling them up like Pac-Man on a ful
l board.
One night, after he fucked Preston, he lay in bed watching him get dressed to leave. He scratched his armpit hair with one hand and relaxed his head further in the pillow. Preston lingered by the door. “What’s wrong?” Daniel asked.
“We’ve been doing this for a couple times now,” Preston said, “and I was wondering—”
“I already told you,” Daniel said. “I’m neg and not looking for anything serious.”
“I’m not asking about that,” Preston said. Daniel should’ve known. Preston was the worrier. “You say that you don’t have a boyfriend, but whose stuff is all this? Like these pants folded over here?” He picked up Juanito’s pants from the corner of the bedroom. “Whose are these?” he asked. “They look too small for you.”
Daniel faked a laugh to make Preston realize he was being ridiculous. “Why’re you being paranoid?” Daniel said.
It was a stupid question to ask. He knew why Preston was asking. It’s not that Preston was looking for a boyfriend. Daniel knew that already. But Preston was more scared than the others of catching the virus. Daniel sighed. “I already told you, dude,” Daniel said. “I don’t have a boyfriend and I don’t have the virus.”
“Are you sure?” Preston said.
“Yes,” he said.
It was a long story to explain and he never felt like telling any of them. How could he say to a stranger—because that was what these guys were, strangers—that the love of his life had killed himself? Two months earlier, he walked into the apartment and Juanito was in bed with a plastic bag duct-taped around his head. The suicide note was short: he had tested positive, he felt guilty, he couldn’t handle this, he asked Daniel to forgive him, he didn’t want to die a slow or painful death, that was it, signed, goodbye with love.
And now Preston was going to stand there and think that he knew what was going on? It was laughable, Daniel thought, because there was no way he could explain to any of these easy fucks what his life felt like now that everyone around him was gone. How he had to get tested every couple of months because he was scared that the negative results were hiding something. How there were no antibodies in his body that could be detected, but how could the tests really be sure? How could that even be the case if Juanito had seroconverted? It was easier to just shut down when guys like Preston pressed him. He felt so much rage.
“Get out,” Daniel said. It wasn’t like he was lying to Preston anyway. All the tests pointed toward negative. He used condoms.
“What?” Preston said.
“You need to leave,” Daniel said. There it was: his heart had shrunk to three-sizes-too-small. He could hear the meanness in his voice.
“Why’re you being so rude?” Preston said.
“Why’re you still standing there?”
“You know,” Preston said. “You seemed like a nice guy at first.”
“Well,” Daniel said. “I guess you were wrong about that.”
* * *
But he knew that Preston wasn’t wrong about that. That night, Daniel lay naked in bed, crying himself to sleep over the type of person he’d become. He hated sleeping alone, in the dark. He took one of the pillows and propped it between his knees so he could cuddle against something.
There was his apartment, full of shadows. He’d saved all of Juanito’s things as if their home was some kind of museum or monument to their life together. It was useless and fucked-up.
The next afternoon, he stuffed Juanito’s jeans into a black garbage bag and tied the string into a double-knot. He carried it over his shoulder to the edge of the street where the garbage would be collected later that night. When he walked down the street, he looked back at the bag, thinking maybe he would take it back. He could haul it upstairs, cut open the knot, put the jeans back into the drawer where they were supposed to go. Pero from down the block, all the black bags looked the same. All lumpy and ready to be taken away.
He opened all the drawers and created a pile of all of Juanito’s things. Ties, shoes, tank tops, loose spools of fabric, the sewing box with a hundred needles stuck into pillows like they were voodoo dolls, button-downs, his comb, aerosol, the nameplate necklace that he had bought as a gag, books of matches from this place and that. He no longer remembered when they had gone to Boy Bar, but there was the matchbook as proof, ready to burn when struck.
The sewing machine was in the corner where Juanito had last used it to make an ascot from fabric he bought on markdown in the Garment District. No, he refused to throw away the thing. He didn’t know how to sew anything together, but he would keep it.
When the apartment was emptied of all reminders, he lay in bed waiting for the sound of the garbage truck. Pero when he woke the next morning, he had no memory of hearing the sanitation crew come by. He peeked out the window and it was all gone. He went to brush his teeth, and he stared at the toothbrush all alone in the cup. Later, he told himself, he’d go to the pharmacy to get another toothbrush to balance things out. A cup should always have two, so the weight of one wouldn’t knock the thing over.
He couldn’t keep going like this. He knew he would have to bite the bullet. She was the one person who could help him through this loss, if she was willing to take him back.
* * *
“What the fuck does that mean?” he said on the phone. He was glad Dorian picked up. He didn’t know what other options he had. His back was up against the counter, near the sink that held a week’s worth of dishes. He didn’t have any more clean spoons left.
“Encephalitis,” Dorian said again, slower and louder, like he was talking to the deaf.
“I heard you the first time,” he said. Bless her. “I still don’t know what the fuck it means?”
“Darling, you disappear and reappear and you call to ask me this nonsense? You hear the word encephalitis and you ask me what that means? Are you sure you’re a gay in this year of the Lord?” Dorian said.
“Damn, Dorian. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was a gay thing.”
“It’s not a gay thing, darling. It’s an AIDS thing,” Dorian said. “It’s like dementia. You’ll be lucky if she still remembers you.”
* * *
He had to sit on the stoop of her new building for two hours until he saw her walking down the street. “It’s me,” he told her when she walked toward the steps. She had one hand in her purse, fishing for keys. When she looked back up at him, her stare was dead-neutral. “Do you remember me?” he asked softly.
Angel pulled out her keys and reached for the lock. “Of course I remember,” she said. “Where’s Juanito?”
He didn’t feel like talking about that yet so he shifted the conversation. “Are you wearing Chanel?”
“Why yes,” she said, extending her arms out for a moment of dazzle. “Don’t you love it?”
“Where were you going dressed so fancy?” he said, fearing that she might’ve been coming back from another funeral.
“Nowhere special. It’s Wednesday,” she said, as if that answered it. “Where’s Juanito?” She had to push the door in order to unjam it.
He was quiet, thinking about where to start. He had never actually had to explain it aloud to anyone before. Words—he thought—words could be so damn impossible sometimes.
She held the door open for him, waiting for him to come up the steps and back into the house. “Oooh,” she said. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t think I’m ready to hear this.”
* * *
He had been so happy to see her, and so relieved that she remembered him, that he didn’t even notice how fucked-up she looked. He noticed later that evening, when he heated up some leftover arroz con pollo that she had in a Tupperware. When she took off the Chanel and changed into gray pajamas, Daniel could see how flaca she was. He saw the purple sarcoma spots—one on her forehead, another on her left triceps. He didn’t know where else they were and he didn’t want to ask.
He was so hungry that he inhaled his food in a couple of minutes. Angel had only taken a couple bites. He w
atched as she moved the fork slowly down, missing the plate once, twice, again. She stabbed at the rim of the paper plate. It took her an entire minute—he knew because he counted the seconds in his head—for her to successfully take a spoonful of rice from the plate to her mouth.
“You okay, mama?” he asked. “You want me to help you?”
She chewed and shook her head.
“You sure?” he said.
“I said I got it fine,” she said.
* * *
They lived like this for another few days: Angel moving at a glacial pace and Daniel wondering if she did, as she claimed, have everything under control. One afternoon, he walked out of the bathroom to find her on the floor, trying to shove a videotape into a cassette player.
“What is happening here?” he asked her.
“All I wanna do,” she said, “is watch Pretty Woman.”
* * *
Angel complained about a sore in her mouth and shooting pains that felt like needle pricks. He went with her to the hospital to have a CAT scan done so a doctor could tell them where the pain was shooting from. They gave her a shot of ethanol because the doc said it’d permanently kill the offending nerve.
“What’s for dinner tonight?” Angel asked on the subway ride home. She rested her head on his shoulder.
“I think I’ll make lasagna,” he said.
“Oh yummy,” she said. She yawned and he could feel her jawbone against his body. “What a treat.”
An hour later, he was prepping the sauce and she asked, again, what he was making for dinner.
“Lasagna,” he said, peeking his head out of the cocina to look at her collapsed on the couch. “We talked about this on the subway, remember?”
“Right, right,” she said, scratching her arm.
A half hour later, she came into the cocina while he was stirring the sauce pot. He had the oven fan on to blow away any steam. She opened the cabinet where she kept her pills and took out the Vicodin. She popped one into her mouth and turned on the sink to gather water into her hand. She gulped the pill down. It was probably her fourth Vicodin that afternoon, if he was counting correctly.
The House of Impossible Beauties Page 40
