by Renee James
“What don’t I know?” I say it like a mom.
“You don’t know shit.” He looks up at me, his face sagging and sad like a hound dog’s face. “I’ve got AIDS. They don’t want to touch me or see me or know about me . . .”
“Lots of people are HIV positive, Joey. They treat them every day.”
“I’ve got full-blown AIDS, you fucking asshole.” More handwringing. “You’re a dick-sucking queer and you’re fine. I’ve got AIDS. What the fuck is that?”
He rambles on. I should go, but I can’t.
“What can I do?” I ask.
“Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Get out of my life. All this shit happened because of you, you fucking cocksucker.”
His vocabulary tells me his neurons are connecting again, as well as they can connect. “How did I cause this?” I ask. Stupid. This is not a conversation I want to have. I need to get out of here before I get shot or stabbed or infected with his blood.
“You fucked me up so bad! Those cops thought it was so funny, a guy getting the shit knocked out of him by a fucking queer with tits. They ragged on me every chance they got. They told the guards at County about it and they laughed it up, too. It followed me everywhere I went. Every bull queer in the joint figured I was easy pickings.”
He stops, sobbing.
“You know how many times I got fucked in the ass? How many cocks I had to suck just to stay alive?” He puts his head in hands again.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I try to think of something else to say, something I could do for him. It keeps coming back to money, and he’d just use it for drugs. I offer to get him to a clinic for his nose. He never looks up, never acknowledges me. He’s deep in his own world. It must be like one of those dark, barren planets that exist far beyond the light of any star, cratered and scored from the violence of his addictions. There’s nothing I can do for him.
I reach across the divide between us and touch his shoulder softly. “Good-bye, Joey,” I say. I walk quietly back out to the street and rejoin civilization, my stomach queasy at the realization that a life can turn so horribly bad.
17
THE RIGHTEOUS MILITANCY that propelled me here evaporates the moment I leave Joey’s home.
I’m on automatic pilot as I head east on Argyle for the El station. My head feels thick and my soul feels dead, as if Joey’s decomposing life had somehow infected mine. I drop his pistol in a trash can and follow the current of humanity into a standing-room-only car. The train jostles and lurches along ancient tracks. We passengers sway and brace to ride out the bumps. I don’t mind the crowd or the rough ride. I don’t even mind the man next to me bumping into me, or the large woman who nearly knocks me into the lap of a sitting passenger when she dashes for the door at her stop.
It’s a short ride to my stop at Belmont. I join the tide of off-loading passengers, fighting our way through a throng of anxious citizens wanting to board. I look around as I descend to the street. This is where I’ve gotten the vibe that I’m being stalked several times. It’s not intuition anymore, it’s a mixture of caution and anticipation.
As I start east on Belmont, an upscale diner on the corner beckons. I have time and I need to think, so I stop for a cup of tea. There’s a queue of customers waiting to be seated. The wait is endless. Two people didn’t show up for work today, we’re told. I smile and leave.
A nice gentleman opens the door for me as I exit. I have a clear view of the Belmont elevated station, and an equally clear view of a man standing back in the shadows cast by the platform overhead, staring at me. He sidles deeper into the shadows as I emerge from the diner, then starts trotting north. Alarm bells ring in my mind. My skin tingles. My hair feels like it’s standing on end.
For once, I’m wearing clothes that let me run easily. I dash across the street and pursue the fleeing man. He’s too fast for me to catch him, but I stay close enough to catch a glimpse of his profile when he heads west on the first side street. It’s all I need. I’d know that face and that body anywhere. They are seared in the memory of all my senses. Those lips have kissed mine, that flat, hard stomach has covered mine, those warm arms have held me for the best hours of my life. I can’t catch that man, but I know where to find him.
The first thing I’ll ask is, why is he following me? But what I really want to know, what I need to know, is why Phil doesn’t want me to know he’s following me?
“Think he wants to rape you?” Cecelia says it kind of half-joking, one regal eyebrow cocked in question, the regal lips forming a faint, smart-ass smile.
“He couldn’t rape me.” I smile back, full smile. “Before he even formed the thought, I’d be stark naked and singing Come to Momma.”
“I can’t fault you for that,” says Cecelia. We’ve always agreed that Phil was a hot guy. When my affair with him started, she used to ask me what it was like with him. She didn’t mean, what was it like going for walks or having dinner together. She meant having sex with him. It was a game we played. I demurred with as much dignity as I could, and she shared her vision of what it would be like with him. She got very graphic, until I learned not to blush and get flustered. She was remarkably accurate, so much so, I wondered if there was a hidden camera in my bedroom. After a while, though, I learned that hers was the voice of experience, and my experiences are the treasures of a woman’s life. I stopped blushing and started joining in on the ribald conversation—not about Phil, but about the best and worst parts of sex with men.
I know this is not a repartee that genetic women have. It’s even less common among my transgender sisters, many of whom are very straitlaced about sex. It’s just something that bonded Cecelia and me, being frank, even crude, about our urges and fantasies.
We’re having a light dinner in a Wicker Park café, not far from Phil’s place. I asked her to meet me after the twin shocks of Joey’s story and discovering Phil spying on me.
“Maybe he’s trying to keep track of how many lovers you’re taking,” Cecelia says. Again, the sly smile. “That would get him into higher math.”
“Very funny,” I mutter. “I may never have sex with a man again, not after seeing Joey.” I look Cecelia in the eye. “That’s no way to die. Not even for a cretin like him.”
“Bobbi!” Cecelia says it softly, but with the urgency of surprise. “He got to you, didn’t he?”
“He got me good,” I admit. “I feel like I’m haunted by him and it won’t ever go away.”
Cecelia shakes her head and frowns, like she doesn’t understand. “That bad?”
“It’s like, he got AIDS because of something I did. I didn’t do anything wrong, but because of me, he’s dying a slow, horrible death.”
“You think you should have let him brain you and drag that girl out of the salon?” Cecelia isn’t really asking a question.
“No,” I say. “It’s harder than that. It’s like, you do everything right, but someone who doesn’t deserve to die for their sins dies badly.”
“Joey doesn’t deserve your sympathy,” Cecelia says.
I’ve had that thought, too, but now I realize why it didn’t lessen my guilt. “It’s not about him,” I say. “It’s about how my life affects other people’s lives in ways I don’t even think about sometimes.”
“Stop it, Bobbi. You’re overthinking this. You’re good to your family, you’re good to your friends. You’re a good boss and you care about your employees. You do good things in the community. I’m not going to go on and on because you’ll just get a big ego and there won’t be enough room for both of us in here. But you get my point. Joey’s dying because Joey is a moron and a junkie and he chose to be a goon.”
Everything she says is true, but that doesn’t lighten my load. The specter of Joey is going to haunt me for a long time.
Officer Phil lives in a nice apartment building in a nice section of town. Wicker Park is cool in a laid-back kind of way, not flashy rich like Lincoln Park, or swinging hip like one of the night club districts. His girlfrie
nd’s place is in a modern building near my salon, in the River North area—a tonier, higher-rent district worthy of a beautiful young woman who makes truckloads of money and is every bit as smart as she is sexy. That’s probably where he is, getting laid or going through the rituals that will get him laid. But I’m not brave enough to face that reality, and besides, my business is with him, not Barrister Barbie.
I ring his bell, hoping maybe his lady is off arguing a case before the Supreme Court or fixing parking tickets, hoping I’ll catch him alone for ten minutes so we can sort this thing out.
“Yes?” His voice is thin and mechanical in the intercom system, but I can hear the doubt. He’s not expecting anyone, not even Barrister Barbie.
“We need to talk,” I answer.
The silence that follows seems to last an eternity. Phil would like me to go away and not come back. I will, but I want some answers first.
The security door buzzes. I open it and go to Phil’s door. It’s ajar. He’s not waiting to give me a hug or even a handshake. I walk in. I find Phil in the kitchen, seated at a dinette, eating a frozen dinner. He nods as I enter the room, but says nothing. Without invitation, I sit across from him.
“What?” he says. He’s trying to be curt and businesslike, as though nothing unusual happened today.
“You tell me,” I answer. I sound pretty businesslike myself.
“Why are you here?” He’s playing dumb, trying to make me feel stupid.
“Because I was trying to find out who’s stalking me today, and when I looked up, there was the love of my life staring at me from the shadows. And when I tried to talk to him, he ran away like a thief in the night. I want to know what’s going on.” I don’t whine and I don’t plead. I say it like a tough, no-nonsense bitch who’s had it up to here with this stalking nonsense.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sullen, but not convincing.
“That was a pathetic attempt at a lie,” I respond. “You were never good at it, which was one of the many things I loved about you.” I say “loved” in the past tense, but the truth is, I love him still and that’s one of the reasons.
“I know you weren’t there to rob or rape me, so just tell me and I’ll go away and I won’t bother you again.” I say the words without tears, but I’m on the brink. When I look at his face, even now, him trying to be distant, eating some kind of melted crap, I see the goodness in him, and my body feels his warmth and tenderness with a reality that’s shocking.
He stares at me for a couple of long beats. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“You were watching over me?” I had come in here thinking that was one possibility, but I didn’t believe it. Now that I hear his lips say the words, my heart does flip-flops.
“Something like that.”
“If it wasn’t that, what was it?” Jesus, this is like getting a teenager to admit he put a dent in the car.
“I was making sure you didn’t get hurt.” He looks at his frozen dinner as he says it.
“At the Belmont station? You worried about me getting hurt at an El station during rush hour?”
He finally looks at me. “I followed you to Uptown. I knew you were going to confront Swidell. He’s as dangerous as a fucking rattlesnake.”
I blanch a little when he swears. Phil’s use of the English language is sanitary enough for the priesthood. Something’s under his skin.
“That was stupid, Bobbi. Going to see him.” He says it bitterly. “That was just as stupid as going after Strand.” His eyebrows rise when he says this, making an exclamation point. We have a shared history with the murderer John Strand, the violent sexual predator John Strand, the rich, powerful, untouchable John Strand. We survived the experience, but we both have scars that will never heal. Neither of us wants to have that experience again.
“I have to get to the bottom of this, Phil.” My voice is quiet, but firm.
“Just let us do our job,” he says.
“If you catch him, I’ll stop.” He grimaces when I say that. He thinks I’m trying to be a smart-ass. “What I mean is, you have to have evidence to do anything. I can act on a hunch.”
“If you commit an act of violence, even if your hunch is right, you could do jail time,” he says.
“So, you saw the little moment I had with Joey?” In the back of my mind I’ve been marveling that Phil, who always describes himself as a desk jockey in the department, could follow me all that time, and I didn’t see him or feel him until I came out of the diner prematurely. Maybe he was a sniper in a previous life.
“I just saw the last few minutes,” he answers.
I cock my head in question.
“I had to find a way to get in back without being seen,” he explains.
“How did you do that?” I ask.
“Professional secret,” he says.
“What if Joey had pulled a weapon on me? What would you have done?”
Phil sighs. “I would have interceded.”
“How would you explain that to the department?” The questions occur to me spontaneously, but they are building to a realization.
“I would have lost my job.” He sits back and shakes his head, like he was marveling at something.
“You would have risked your career for me?” The words pour out of my mouth before I can stop them.
“For a smart woman, you ask some stupid questions, Bobbi.” He is very uncomfortable talking about this. It’s a lot like after we started having a physical relationship. He never wanted to talk about sex when we weren’t actually doing it because he had these terrible misgivings about being hot for a transsexual and how maybe that meant he was some kind of deviant.
“I don’t get it. We broke up months ago. You’ve got the perfect woman. Smart, beautiful, perfect ass, natural vagina—”
“Stop it, Bobbi.” He says it sharply. I stop. I wait. We’re silent for a moment.
“We broke up,” he says, finally. “Alice and me. It wasn’t working.” Sadness punctuates every syllable.
“I’m sorry, Phil,” I say. I reach out and touch his hand. “She’s crazy if she can’t see what a great guy you are.”
“It was me,” he says. “I broke it off.”
“You?” My voice is filled with wonder. All the things about her that add up to the perfect woman whiz through my mind. “Why would you do that?”
He doesn’t want to have this conversation, but he’s too much of a gentleman to show me the door.
“I was cheating her,” he says.
“You? Cheating on her?” This is unimaginable. Phil is scout-like in his honesty and faithfulness.
“No. Cheating her.” He pauses and shakes his head again. “I didn’t love her. She was beautiful but she didn’t really . . . turn me on. She was smart, but we didn’t talk about things that touched me.” He struggles for each word.
“My goodness, Phil. I’m sorry.” I touch his hand again.
He puts his other hand on mine. It’s warm and firm, and I get goose bumps from the intimacy of it. “I can’t get over you, Bobbi,” he says.
I exhale. I didn’t see that coming. Now I wonder what comes next. A long, slow seduction would be nice, but I’d be fine with something sudden and hot that leaves us writhing on the kitchen floor.
Phil strokes my hand. It’s almost absentminded the way he does it. It’s tender and affectionate, but there’s none of the intensity that signals passionate lovemaking. I glance at his face. Sadness surrounds him like a dark cloud. He’s mute and motionless. I wait, but he doesn’t move.
“It’s not like I’m rejecting you, Phil.” It’s the understatement of the year, but he’s not in a place where humor can penetrate.
He finally looks at me, all sad eyes and a little facial grimace I can’t read. I raise my eyebrows in question.
“When we made love, Alice and me, I thought of you. Whenever I think of sex, I think of you.”
My soul tingles. My libido starts purring. “You’re mak
ing my day, Phil,” I say, “except you seem so sad about it.”
“It’s not—” He stops, groping for words. “It’s not love. It’s not . . . good.” He goes silent again.
“Okay,” I say, drawing out the word, coaxing him to explain.
“It’s because you’re trans, Bobbi.” The dam of political correctness crumbles, the truth gushes forth in a torrent of words. “It’s kinky for me. Sex with you. It’s like, you aren’t a woman, you aren’t a man. You’re a little of both. It overwhelms me.”
We’ve been through this before, except for the part about being a little bit male. “I still don’t see the problem,” I say. “Do you feel revulsion afterwards?”
“It’s me. I’m repulsed by who I am. I’m perverted. When we have sex, I don’t think of you as a woman or a friend or someone special to me. I think of you as a man who looks like a woman, and I’m fucking you, and it makes me crazy.” He stops there.
“But in a good way,” I say. “It makes you crazy in a good way. At least, from my perspective.” I always thought the passion of his lovemaking was the frosting on the Officer Phil cake. In the terrible hours of loneliness when I have mourned losing Phil, that was one of the things I remembered about him. I had to block him from my mind when I had sex with someone else because the experience could only be disappointing by comparison.
“Not in a good way,” he says. “I’m using you. I’m not relating to you as a person.”
I make him look me in the eye. “You’re overdoing the morality by several magnitudes. You treat me like a princess. You’re the most exciting lover I can imagine. You’re fun. You’re interesting. I don’t care what it is about me that turns you on, I just care that something does.”
He drops his gaze to consider this.
“Really, Phil. Some men are attracted to big tits, some to redheads or blonds. The fact that one very handsome, sexy man in this world thinks making love with me is erotic seems more like proof there’s a benevolent God than evidence you’re perverted.”
He forces a smile. He’s always enjoyed my weird sense of humor. If he had laughed out loud, I might have thought we had reached some kind of higher understanding, but we didn’t get that far. In his mind, a man who prefers a transsexual is like a man who prefers pubescent girls, and nothing I can say will change that.
