Unraveling

by Rick R. Reed

  “Listen. I’m sorry, okay? You’re right. I could have handled things better. I should have called you. We should have talked. That’s on me. I was a coward. I’ve been mad myself at guys who suddenly up and stop calling, avoiding me. It pisses me off, and I think it shows a lack of character. And then I go and do the same damn thing. Shame on me, seriously. But, Dean, listen, I don’t have an excuse. And I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I do want you to know I apologize. I regret not being more open. Hurting your feelings. You deserve better.”

  There’s quiet for a while. Then the other guy, Dean I guess, speaks in a kind of soft, wheedling tone. I can barely make out what he’s saying, but I hear enough to know that he’s pathetically asking if maybe they could have just one more chance.

  Oh man, have some dignity.

  The quiet stretches out, almost like a fog floating forward from the back of the parking lot.

  Then the first guy, the one being screamed at, says, “Dean. You’re a nice guy and we had fun, but there was just nothing there.”

  “Nothing? Nothing? Nothing was good enough to screw me on your bed and in the hallway up to your apartment? Nothing was enough to let me blow you multiple times in public! Nothing is the promises you made about spending the summer together.” Martha is back, full force.

  I know I shouldn’t be hearing this. But like someone passing a car accident on the side of the road, I simply can’t look away. Or turn my ears away. Whatever.

  I think our more reasonable member of this pair has given up. And I can’t blame him. Dean has proven himself to be the kind of “victim” for whom no amount of arguing or apologizing will suffice.

  All of a sudden, he’s walking toward me, his heels clicking on the pavement. I lean in, hoping to vanish into the plate glass window of the storefront behind me. But the guy sees me, and when he does, he stops and regards me.

  “I know you,” he says. A faltering smile whispers across his features.

  And he does look familiar, but at the moment, I’m too keyed up to recall where I might have seen him before.

  “I don’t think so,” I mumble and begin to hurry away.

  We most likely are confused, both of us. Chicago’s a city of millions—how many lookalikes are out there? Plus, I hardly know anyone down in these parts, so the odds of recognizing him are slim.

  “Yeah!”

  I start to move away.

  Dean catches up and shoves the familiar-looking guy out of the way as he heads for the street. He catches sight of me and narrows his eyes. “Get an earful?” He heads away from us. “Keep away from this jerk. He’s a user.”

  I don’t say anything. Dean walks off into the night, the flaps of his open flannel shirt trailing behind him. Was he wearing a harness?

  “We met before,” the other guy says when Dean’s out of earshot. “I remember.”

  I look at him. He’s cute. Sexy in a tough, yet cuddly way, like the bear I suppose he is. Black, curly hair. Impish grin. His ears stick out a little too far, yet somehow manage to be alluring rather than comical.

  He’s eyeing me, waiting, presumably, for me to speak up, to say where we’ve run into each other.

  But I draw a blank.

  And the spat I witnessed has put me off. I want to scurry back to the safety of my warren in Rogers Park. “I don’t know about that. I need to get on my way, though. Have a good night.”

  I don’t look back at him as I hurry south. But I can feel his gaze on me, watching, watching…

  Chapter Nine

  JOHN

  What was his name? I couldn’t forget that face—ever. But his name? It’s just there, right out of reach.

  He heads south on Halsted. As I watch him, I get distracted by the fact that he looks just as good walking away as he does from the front. Is he an old trick? Someone I brought home from Little Jim’s one lonely night? Did we meet on that cursed phone sex line and I went over to his place? Did he once date my best friend, Vince? That’s a possibility. Vince has had a go-round with about every gay and questioning male this side of fifty in the Chicagoland area. Choosy, he’s not.

  But none of these scenarios match. There’s a kind of mental alarm that goes off when you get something just right.

  I know him. I want to know him. I knew him. The memory just will not surface. Here I am, still young, and already losing it.

  I don’t move until he’s out of sight. A gaggle of early twentysomethings, laughing and hitting one another playfully, block his passage from my view. And when they clear, he’s no more.

  Maybe he was never there. Or maybe he moves in and out of reality, the gay male version of Brigadoon.

  Maybe he’s the elusive one I’ve searched for all my adult life, rare and fantastic as a unicorn.

  I breathe in the night air, inhaling deeply and letting it out slowly, as I turn and head up the street toward North End.

  My nerves are still jangling from my encounter with Dean. I’m not used to conflict, to being put on the spot, to being challenged. He reminds me of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. He’s got that same kind of delusional, clinging mindset. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Whoever coined that little chestnut never met a jilted gay man. I should laugh, but it’s not funny.

  Dean didn’t stop calling, not back when he tore up my number live on my answering machine and then mercifully said I’d never hear from him again. But now, the coward doesn’t have the nerve to say anything when he dials me. He blocks his own number and calls and hangs up, over and over, at all hours. I can’t think how many dreams he’s interrupted.

  I found the air let out of one of my tires one morning. Maybe him? Who knows? I don’t want to be paranoid, but I also don’t want to be cavalier about this guy, who’s obviously nuts.

  Like tonight, I suspect he was lying in wait for me in the bowling alley parking lot where I often chance parking, even though I’d pay out the ass if I was ever caught and towed by the Lincoln Park Pirates. I have no idea how he’d know where I’d be, other than my telling him at one point about my little parking secret, but I’m getting more and more the feeling he’s following me—I catch little glimmers of someone out of the corner of my eye when I’m out and about, and I think it’s him.

  Maybe I’m the one who’s nuts.

  Or maybe I’m the one who’ll end up stabbed in a back alley off of Halsted.

  Yikes, John! Get your mind off the melodrama! Your life isn’t a horror movie. Get busy and have some fun.

  I’m at the entrance to North End. I lean against the wall, my shoulders resting against the cold brick. Do I really want to go in? Earlier, alone in my apartment, it had seemed like such a good idea. I had played The Go-Go’s, an old fave, at top volume, as I danced around my apartment, getting dressed. I’d asked Vince to join me, but he’s been seeing this dentist guy named Arvin up in Edgewater, and, wonder of wonders, the two of them have hit it off. He’s staying in with Arvin tonight so they can try out Arvin’s new laser disc player and watch old Russ Meyer movies.

  Fun.

  But the encounter with Dean has left me shaken. Shaky. I know alcohol might mute the jangle of my nerves, but I also think alcohol might dim and blur my memory.

  And I want to remember where I saw that cute guy before.

  I turn and open the door, peer inside for a minute. The bouncer has his hand out for my ID and eyes me questioningly.

  After a moment, he asks, “You comin’ in or not?”

  I listen to my heart and say, “Not.” I step aside to let a couple of guys, who smell of bourbon and cigarettes, slide in past me.

  The street is once again quiet. It’s not all that late, but I guess everyone’s in their favorite watering hole by now, doing the mating dance of glances, awkward smiles, and more obvious signals like the cupping of a crotch. Lord help me.

  I recall the crowd inside North End. They looked lively, happy. The music was loud, the chatter louder. Smoky air. Techno music. The crack of an eight ball hitting its
target.

  Normally, I’d want to dive right in that fine water of available men. Browse for a while and then pick one out that I could take home for the night—or he me. Maybe I would have ended up with the guy I met a few weeks ago, or someone like him, who lived in Lake Point Tower in one of the penthouses. More of a thrill than the tepid blow job he gave me was the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows—the black ink stain of Lake Michigan, the rising, gilded towers of the Chicago skyline, the long concrete peninsula of Navy Pier.

  It was all magical until I woke to a gray dawn and tiptoed around, gathering up my clothes so I could sneak out. The man on the bed was snoring, a line of drool dribbling from the side of his mouth. In the wan light, he appeared decades older than he did to me the night before when soft lights, denial, and hard alcohol had imbued him with a kind of youthful exuberance. Now, he’s just a scruffy older man, maybe even old enough to be my dad, with a pot belly and pitted scars on his face from teenage acne.

  As I leave, he stirs a bit and mumbles, “Call me.”

  I thought, “I sure will.” Not.

  I’m thinking I’m already here, in Boystown, so why not see what the night, and the bars, have on offer? If I don’t want to go to North End, there are other choices: dance clubs, leather bars, low-key hardcore drinking establishments, backroom bars with hardcore porn on the screens, even the bathhouse farther south.

  That last place has come in handy when in need of a quick man fix. Yet, when I’ve walked its dim hallways and “play” rooms, I’ve always had this feeling of aloneness—there’s a smell of desperation in the air, along with the bleach. All of this underscored by the techno beat of nameless, tuneless, house music. I’ve always looked around guiltily as I left, praying no one who knows me will be walking or driving by to see me emerge.

  I could go to Roscoe’s, maybe even see if I could engage my happy hips again. I’ve never been shy about dancing and have no fear of getting on the dance floor by myself if I have to. There’s a certain appeal to just disappearing into some good, endless thumping music, closing my eyes, letting my body take over.

  But not tonight. Tonight, I simply feel my movements would be awkward, stiff.

  I could go to Sidetrack.

  And when I think of Sidetrack, I remember. That’s where I saw the cute guy with the mustache. It was last winter. I tried to buy him a beer, but he was so scared you’d think I was Michael Myers brandishing a knife instead of a Budweiser.

  I wonder if that’s where he was going tonight. Maybe I could try again.

  Really, John? I don’t know if he’d be happy to see you. Delight wasn’t written across his face when you passed him. He denied remembering you, and even if that was true, he probably didn’t get a very good impression of you or the company you keep after witnessing your altercation with Dean.

  I shrug. I don’t know if it was running into Dean or what, but the enthusiasm I had earlier for going out has vanished.

  I get moving, heading east. I’ll walk down by the lakefront, stare out at the water.

  Maybe on the way, I’ll see him.

  OF COURSE, I don’t see him. That kind of meetup only works in romantic comedies, when the two star-crossed lovers run into each other as part of some mix-up: say one of their dogs, slick with suds and bathwater, has escaped and is dashing headlong down a dark street, and the other scoops it up and hands it back to him.

  I finally come to where the city ends. I’ve traveled a little south and ended up at the notorious Belmont Rocks, what passes for a gay beach in Chicago. In summer, the large graffiti-tagged boulders are home to legions of sunbathers, some wearing Speedos, others cutoff denim shorts, and still others, nothing at all. The “Rocks” is a party spot, a meeting destination, and a state of mind, especially in the late part of summer, when Lake Michigan gets warm enough to dip into without risking a coronary, and the summer sun heats libidos up enough to send them out in search of sustenance.

  Tonight, the Rocks are empty. As if to underscore the loneliness of the scene, here in the midst of this crowded metropolis, a moaning wind, cold, moves across the lake to lift my hair and to cause my eyes to water.

  I stroll through the darkness, feeling a kind of peace in this solitude.

  And then I hear it, from somewhere below, near the crash and spray of the water as it slams into the boulders.

  Someone weeping.

  My first impulse makes me feel guilty. It’s to quietly turn tail and head back west on Belmont toward the traffic and the bright lights. I rationalize this selfish notion by telling myself that whoever’s down there on slippery rocks, crying, wants to be alone. He’s gone to great pains to find a spot away from the rush, the hustle and bustle of the Lakeview neighborhood.

  But I know that’s not true. I just don’t know if I’m up to comforting someone else when suddenly I feel so in need of it myself.

  I make a soft tsk to myself, shaking my head. One thing I’ve learned is that we can heal ourselves not by reaching in but by reaching out. The fact that there’s a fellow human being in pain near me should be cause to investigate, to see how I might help.

  It’s what I’d want someone to do for me.

  I sit on the rocks and shimmy downward toward the cold and crashing waves.

  I recognize him as soon as I get close. Recognition makes me wish I’d listened to my baser instincts.

  He looks over at me, sniffs, and says, “You.” It’s not a statement of recognition but one of accusation.

  I sidle across the surface of the boulder he’s on so I can sit beside him. We eye each other. He sniffs again and wipes his nose on the sleeve of his flannel shirt. Sighing, he picks a pebble up and flings it into the water.

  “Dean, I’m sorry…again. That things didn’t work out between us.” Why am I doing this? We barely spent any time together. He’s overreacting. We all get dumped. “I should have been more honest with you, but I can’t go back and undo it now.”

  I feel the burn of his stare through the darkness. At last, he says, “You don’t even know.”

  “Know what?” I’m already thinking about my bed at home, and not in a sexual way, but sinking into the comfort of Mom’s homemade quilt, flannel sheets, and my mound of feather pillows.

  Dean’s voice is soft, barely audible above the wind and the crash of the surf. “You think it’s all about you. About us. When there was never really an us to begin with.”

  Who is this person, I wonder? I want to look again to check to make sure it is indeed Dean next to me.

  “What? I’m sorry, dude, but you’ve been stalking me since we broke up. And I don’t even know if broke up is right because we only went on a couple dates.”

  Dean sighs. He takes my hand in his, and my first impulse is to snatch it away, but I resist. I look over at him and my eyes have adjusted more fully to the dark. I hone in on something in his eyes I can’t quite put my finger on. Is it caring? Resignation? Despair?

  “I wasn’t crying about you. I’ve shed all my tears over you.” He lets loose a little laugh. “I realized after I came at you earlier tonight that, one, I was losing my dignity and not liking myself much; and two, what I thought I was in love with wasn’t you at all, but an ideal, an image of you I made up from some truth and a lot of hope. Yeah, you’re a cool, manly guy, very butch. Hot. Some might say a catch. But I wanted someone who was as into me as I was into him. And that wasn’t you. That’s not your fault. Hell, it isn’t even personal.”

  “Okay,” I say, unsure where this is headed.

  “I got some news today.”

  The sentence hangs in the chill and damp of the night air. Like “We need to talk,” the phrase he just uttered is seldom followed by anything good.

  The nurturing side of me kicks in, even if it is Dean. “Everything okay?”

  “No, John. Everything is not okay.”

  I turn a little more toward him. “What is it?”

  I’m gay. I work as a paramedic, so I’m in the healthcare industry.
I help people. I save people. I’m attuned to the news, both in papers and on TV, as well as the news that flows on the streets, especially in a gay ghetto like Boystown. I brace myself for what I suspect’s coming.

  No surprise here. No shocking twist.

  “I went to my doc’s today.” He stops and I can hear him trying to tame his breathing. I don’t say anything. I listen.

  “It was, uh, just the usual checkup I have once a year, like getting my teeth cleaned.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And, uh, he said one of my tests came back with an abnormal result. Can you believe that? Abnormal? Please.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I guess. For now. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  I nod even though I hope, in an absurd way, that he’s got lung cancer from all the smoking he does. Lung cancer, at least, is somewhat treatable. “I think I do, but why don’t you tell me anyway?”

  “I’m HIV positive.”

  Even though I suspected this was the crux, I’m taken aback. I suck in a breath.

  Not many get out alive once they go inside the HIV funhouse.

  “I’m sorry,” I say and I mean it. I’m also rapidly and selfishly recounting my sex with him and wondering if I was ever a little less than careful.

  I think I’m okay. Maybe.

  But right now I have in front of me a person who is not okay and who’s in need of comfort.

  “They’re coming up with new treatments all the time.” I feel like I’m lying as I say this. The gay newspapers’ obituary sections are full, every week, of pictures of young, smiling men who should be looking forward to decades more.

  “Yeah, that’s what they told me.”

  We’re silent for a long time. Words and phrases rise to my consciousness, and they all seem banal, meaningless, superficial in light of life and death. So I simply repeat, “I’m sorry.”

  “I am too. For the longest time, I wondered if I was immune because I haven’t exactly been Mary Poppins.” He nudged me. “You know that.”