My son looked at me, then back at the phone.
“Okay, but why did he let them throw rocks at him? If he had a special Jesus power to open caves, why didn’t he use that when he was tied to the cross? And just fly up?”
You were quiet for a moment and then you said,
“Well, that was a good question.” Your end went silent again except for what was either the sound of you smoking or the result of you having smoked so much.
“Why did he let the bad guys hurt him?” asked my son.
“Because he wanted to live the life he set out to live. He wanted to show us about sacrifice and forgiveness, as the Son of God,” you said. My son turned to me and his mouth dropped open. He picked up the phone and spoke directly into it a bit louder.
“Wait,” he said, “God was, like, his dad?”
“Yes,” you said, “yours, too. I mean, depending on how you like to look at it. We’re all loved by God that much. No matter what our powers or who our father is.”
I hoped your voice would soak into their brain chips, my son being too young to remember this conversation and my daughter being nearly asleep. I didn’t want them to discount prayer because some people sold it as a passport to an afterlife with vine gardens and a food court. I wanted them to feel freed by the mysteries of whatever doctrines they chose. As my children slept I looked at them and wondered who had taught you how to think, or perhaps how not to think.
I called you as my father was dying and you said, “Remember this: your dad is the most honorable man I have ever known.” I held the phone to my dad’s ear. I knew your voice, but the rhythm coming through the receiver was different. You were using another language with him and your tone was more strident. I suspected that you were passing along things the rest of us are not ready for, as my dad was nearly gone from this Earth and didn’t need to wonder anymore, or wander. I looked to my brother and knew he was remembering the same thing. You there at the dinner table with us all those years ago, sipping your wine and laughing your big throaty laugh. Echoing our commitment to the unanswerable, the mysterious. Mystery is endangered but need not be extinct.
When I spoke to you recently you told me that you were getting married. Not to be inelegant, but what are you, late seventies? That gives me hope for all humanity. I haven’t met your partner, Richard, but I can say he is a lucky man. It’s because of you that I can go to any church and take whatever the service has to offer, all of it up for interpretation except kindness.
Dear Miss Girl,
(you) “Hey Miss Girl!”
(me) “Hey Miss Woman!”
Then, barely audible:
(you) “Hey Miss Thing!”
(me, even softer) “Hey Miss America!”
(you, only ants can hear) “Hey Fantasia!”
We bonded in about five minutes over lemonade and fries at the Chateau Marmont. Our shared devotion to skincare was only the cherry.
• • •
“Well, Hey, Miss P-Town!”
“Hey Miss Can’t Find Me a Place to Park in Front of the Sunset Marquis!”
Miss Woman, you always greet me with a bright face on. Even when one of us is a tad suicidal we manage to laugh about something. I thought of you when I met that priest from Opus Dei, that sect of hard-core Catholics who believe to the seams of their Filene’s Basement blazers that homosexuals will fry in a sweaty ring of Hell that has no TCM channel or Streisand. Miss Girl, I have to tell you that when this man asserted that “the only happy homosexual was a dead homosexual,” I saw us rolling on the floor laughing just from sharing pictures of our hairdos from the eighties. This man said that homos usually commit suicide, and that there has never been a truly happy homosexual. I said, I don’t know, have you ever seen Richard Simmons? He said, “Sadly Richard will be burning in Hell for all of eternity,” and I said, “At least he’ll be sweatin’ to the oldies!”
When he narrowed his eyes and retorted, “I think you know what I mean,” I was all sweetness back. “Sorry, but do you really mean burn?” I queried and he crossed his arms, said, “Yes, eternally,” and I said, “Wow, so are you going to put them in space suits or something?” “I don’t follow you,” he said, and I was like, “I’m just saying, you better get flame-retardant pods to nestle those gays in, because nothing? can burn eternally without melting? not even a flip-flop, or one of those Japanese knives they sell on QVC?” His face was vermillion as he informed me, “There is another set of rules waiting for us in the Afterlife,” and I said, “Oh goodie, can Poppycock be good for you? Can Twitter give you eczema?”
• • •
“Hey Miss Militant Gay-Lover!”
“Hey Hey Little Miss Flip-Flop!”
“Hey, Betty!”
Here’s the thing, chicken wing. I know that as a homosexual born before the year 2000, at some point someone with a Bible or your lunch money said you were a sinner. Maybe they claimed to be quoting the American Psychiatric Association, which classified homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1973. If those party poopers had their way, you and I would have no drag shows to attend. Drag was looked upon like schizophrenia, which, to me? is some flimsy researching. Someone calling any of those drag queens crazy is bewildering, because when Miss Manischewitz sweeps out and takes our breath away, I can only think: How could a mental patient possibly mastermind a ball gown that also doubles as a deli case? And while we’re at it, how on earth could a bunch of raging psychopaths keep a place like Fire Island so clean and crime free? It’s really just finger pointing by a dangerous few who lack imagination and the keen ability to accessorize. We know that story, morning glory.
I grow misty when I realize you’ll never know the homo husbands I lost in the eighties. Oh Miss Woman, you would have loved Hal— He could have sat and cried with us at The Color Purple, and his passion for exfoliating was on par with yours. Back in college we’d pack our T-zones with Queen Helene Mint Julep Masque and hang off the edge of the bed while the blood circulated to our olive green faces. We’d dangle there and he’d smoke while explaining Fosse to me, or Jesus, or the combo platter of both. Once the mask became hard we’d see who could make the other laugh to crack it. He died before he was even thirty, “off to meet my maker,” as he said. I hope he got a big welcome party, with the disciples greeting him in footless tights with leg warmers and sweet tea. And Frank! You can take your Rambo’s and 007’s; if the apocalypse were approaching and Frank nearby, I’d have hid behind him. He could slay anyone with an actual fencing foil, or build a house from a hammer and some twine. He was Excalibur, Mercutio, and Robin Hood. Had he lived, he would have played every armor-wearing, sword-toting hero that enters on a horse and saves the day. I wish to God I could have seen that.
• • •
“Hey Cindy Lou Who!”
“Hey Ladybug!”
“Hey Miss I Cried at the Harvey Milk High School Awards!”
“Hey Kay Sedia!”
We’ll be together in a week. I don’t know what I will wear when we go to see our drag show. I’ll think of you when I choose my shoes. I’ll pick something in hopes that you’ll say: Look at you, Miss Girl, don’t you look pretty?
Nowadays, months can go by without any opportunity to even say hey there, but the last time we saw each other, you said I walked away and it occurred to you that I was someone always happy to see you. You knew I’d be at your side in a flash. What you’d been looking for in a boyfriend was not as important now that we were older. Sex was not hard to find, you thought, but the other stuff? Maybe it was right there, walking across the street in a Gucci trench, and you said
Why am I such a miserable cunt that I want more?
All the things I want and need are right there in her
It’s true, Scarecrow. I’ve been in your own backyard all along.
Next week we are going to par-tay, we’re going to have the kind of night where you come home still giggling when you’re brushing your teeth. Before you fall asleep you’ll check to see if the
cute boy you met has sent you a text. When you pick up your phone it will be lit up to alert that someone is thinking of you at one thirty in the morning and when you click messages, there will be one and it will say
HEY MISS WOMAN
Dear Big Feet,
I never saw your eyes since they were closed, but your feet captured my attention. They poked out from under a sheet. I’m assuming they were wider than the norm because they seemed in proportion to their length, which obscured your face and an inch or so of afro above it. I have projected a lot onto those feet, not knowing anything about you other than the fact that you were a big deal on the basketball court. You may have been dreaming of life as an NBA star the day I spied you there. Obviously I don’t know if you were a medium or big dreamer or if your mother did the dreaming for both of you. I don’t know any of that.
I understand that everything I observed about your mother over those few days was colored by the fact that she was alone in a hospital waiting area. She sat on the couch like some rare species of sparrow, fine boned and immobile. I never saw anyone with her and I don’t know how long she’d been there. My dad had just been moved to that floor of the hospital. He was recovering from brain surgery for a neurological disorder with the odd burlesque name of “tic douloureux.” My dad got through every stage of his procedure without much drama. It went as well as brain surgery can go, but we stayed close by and were in and out of his room, the waiting room, and the cafeteria numerous times a day. It was one afternoon while making my way to the waiting room that I saw your feet and that little corner of your face, with doctors around you in a tableau that did not look promising. When I got to the waiting room I saw your mother perched there with her incurable stare. She was in that place where the high probability of failure intersects with a two percent chance of success. Hope at its most corrosive.
My mother and I started to fear for your mom, trying to ascertain what your status was based on how much she’d moved that day. I came in once and her gaze had lowered a bit so I went and sat beside her and asked
How is your boy
She didn’t move or look at me, but there was graciousness in her tone when she said
He’s just not so good
I didn’t know how to respond but I was fairly sure that it would do her no favors if I were to burst into tears, so I said I was so sorry and went and found my mother. We stood there helplessly shaking our heads until my mom, ever full of grace, went and said to her, Won’t you please let me get you a cup of coffee? She gave the barest acknowledgment that she would accept that and then she went back to being marble.
When I returned the next day I peeked in to see my dad and then I darted over to look for those feet of yours. When I didn’t see them I stopped a nurse and said, the boy, the tall one, where is he? It was a nurse I didn’t recognize and she clearly didn’t know that you were supposed to be a big basketball star and live to be eighty, she clearly knew none of that because she did not look up and said flatly that they had taken your body away.
That day was over twenty years ago. I’ve been witness to great tragedy since but I’ve never forgotten you. I created different details to your narrative to go along with what I knew and it never seems like what I assume is inaccurate. I feel like by having some understanding of your latitude I can deduce your center, like quantum gravity, which I can comprehend about as much as I can a mother burying her son, but if certain scientists are correct and it becomes possible to bend time, then I’ll be able to ask you if any of my assumptions were correct. I don’t need answers until then, unless the idea of God becomes willing to explain itself, in which case I am up for that Q&A. Where your story intersects mine is at my refusal to accept things too sad for me to process; my reimagining endings that haunt me. It’s hard to reconcile that God is either entirely too secretive or has a totally deficient ability to prioritize. I hear people say, “It happened for a reason,” or “It’s part of God’s plan,” and I wish that made sense to me but it doesn’t. I carry you around still and who knows why.
Perhaps there are no answers for us poor humans, but we know a handful of things. We know there exists a planet with four thousand versions of songbirds. Because that is possible and because on that same planet can exist sentient beings made up almost entirely of stardust, and because bonafide poetry erupts mightily from some of those beings, and there is music, sex, and babies that laugh in their sleep; because we are roaming a universe that may be a hologram, with another dimension consecutively projecting itself outside this construct of relativity and gravity; because of all that, there is no reason why my prayers shouldn’t be able to reach your mother whose name I didn’t even know. There is no reason why not, when nothing is completely harmonious with its description, not really, and there is a flaw in every theory of time and space.
From time to time I picture it. I see her watching while you go flying down that court. I see her shoulders moving almost imperceptibly to mimic your bobs and weaves around the other players. She is going where you go without thinking about it, tied to you, following and winning when you win, until you turn to wave and that puts her on her feet and beaming. I do know that if your mother is alive today she is thinking of you right this minute. I wonder what she prays for, and if you hear her.
Dear Former Boyfriend,
In July, we kissed until our lips were swollen, but by April I was giving dumb answers to your questions and we were fighting until we forgot our points. I don’t remember having a single reasonable point, and you did, you had sound ones. I didn’t know how to have an adult discussion, which I know was frustrating. I was frustrating, no denying it, but what was your point that weekend we argued all day and forgot to eat? We kept at it until we grew weak and unfocused, when finally you said, this is insanity, you’re killing me, I want Mexican, let’s go. I said yes, down with insanity, I just need shoes, and you said okay, but hear me when I say there is now a hole inside me that only salsa can fill. We made it outside into daylight, which was an adjustment, got onto your Harley and you yelled, Let’s go to that place in Malibu, and I shouted back sounds great, but I think I just burned my leg on your exhaust pipe? You said oh, I’m sure they’ll have Neosporin at the bar. We drove up the coast and pulled in, jumping off your bike and heading for the entrance, but the door was locked and the place was closed. You walked back to the bike and put your head in your hands, taking a deep breath and trying to fathom the unfairness of life, kind of how I imagine Moses looked when Pharaoh’s magicians kept coldly one-upping him every time he thought he’d nailed it by, like, turning an umbrella into a boa constrictor, or how disappointed Mel Gibson looked on that poster for Braveheart. I put my hand on your back and said sorry, babe, I know you’re starving. You said, voice cracking from the memory, that you’d only had half a Pop Tart and an Amstel Light twenty-three hours ago and now you felt like an outlaw. I said wow. I said don’t cry. You said I’m not crying, goddammit. You gunned out of the parking lot grunting something that sounded like “strip mall.” We rode another twenty minutes before pulling up to another restaurant as it was closing and when you realized the gruesome reality that they wouldn’t stay open, you threw your helmet into the gravel and raised a fist to the gods. I’m starving, you bellowed, I could eat my bike! I need chips like I need oxygen! My kingdom for a chimichanga! I started to space out to avoid agitating you further and we got back on your bike and you roared, On to that dive downtown! I raced to put my helmet back on, but in my rush it ended up backward on my face like Ichabod Crane, and I was suddenly blind and could not breathe except for one eyehole that had landed near an open nasal passage. I didn’t realign it for fear of being thrown from your Harley and I tried squeezing you and yelling over the wail of your bike that I needed air, but you thought I was being comforting and called out not to worry, the next place would have your combo plate or you would decapitate someone. As you slowed, pulling into the parking lot, I reached up to shift the helmet so I would not lose consciousness and gave a t
humbs-up in victory when you cried out that God was on your side, they were open! I let out a muffled “hurlgraah!” from inside the helmet as you lurched forward into a parking spot, jerking me so violently that I stabbed myself in the shoulder with my thumb, but I was so happy to take off my helmet and see dimension in front of me, and shapes, that I did a kind of crippled sideways skip toward the restaurant. As we entered, the host looked at me with concern and said buenas noches, is señorita in fine shape tonight? He was staring at my hair, which had gone stiff from the wind and nearly horizontal from my body. I said sí, as you pulled me toward a table, and the waiter appeared and we ordered. I began to wonder what was sticking to my calf so I held a candle from the table to my leg and saw that my leg was stuck to my leg, the exhaust burn had grown to the size of a Kinder Egg. I said one sec babe and dragged my leg behind me to the bar, but couldn’t remember the word for blister in Spanish. I managed to hit on something like Mister, this old leg is hot and inside is the queso from that bike of my lover, help me hold the burn, thank you, mister, which confused him, but then I put my leg on a stool and pointed, and the sight registered to the bartender, who was sympathetic. Minutes later I limped back with a tube of Neosporin in one hand while holding an ice pack to my leg with the other. You were now lucid, and I realized I was hungry too, but you’d eaten all the chips in the basket. I was getting light-headed from my flesh wound and from breaking the sound barrier on Ventura Highway when our food arrived. You looked at my plate and said Beauty, you ordered so well. You didn’t glimpse at your own dinner as you dipped into my guacamole. I eyed your plate. You had in front of you a similar combo, including guacamole. I stopped moving entirely and watched you dip a chip in my guacamole and say “What is that but just altogether fucking yum.” You weren’t looking at me as you continued to eat my food and I couldn’t move from rage. There was such a fog around me that I felt like I had entered a Whitesnake video. I had a rush of leaving the physical plane and I watched from the ceiling as I took my fork and stabbed you in the hand that was reaching, again, toward the last of my guacamole. The fork made contact and stayed lodged in the fleshy part at the top of your hand, the part they tell you to squeeze if you have a migraine, and then I removed it and reentered my body. I didn’t feel recognizable human emotions, but knew my name and could maybe quote some of the liner notes from Bat Out of Hell. No one moved. You stared at your hand and said softly, whoa, you drew blood. You leaned back and smiled. Babe, you said, what did you do with that Neosporin? I said I must have lost it. Go get more at the bar and could you order me some guacamole while you are at it. You put your hand down the back of my shirt as you got up and said my legs belonged in a museum. I smiled but didn’t look up yet because I knew that when I did I would see someone who was a former and not a current, so I focused on beer as I wiped the last little smidge of your blood off of my fork and onto my napkin. I helped myself to your Negra Modelo and thought about the lovely sound of the word cerveza, and how much better things sound in a romance language, even when it’s only food. I looked down at my leg, realizing the scar would be the second of two that I’d gotten that year. They would both be there in twenty years, like the faintest freckled mouse ears that really, you would need a map to find. It would take me almost until now to suspect that you were a good guy and I didn’t even know you that well, or for that matter, a good many of the people attached to my scars, visible or not.
Dear Mr. You Page 6
