“I’m fine.”
He didn’t look fine. He smiled and his eyes were
bright, but he was bundled up, his green plaid scarf high to his
chin. I could hear his teeth chatter and his bones rattle.
“You could sit in the truck,” I said. “I mean,
there’s no need to overdo it.”
“I’m fine, Pumpkin. Let’s just pick out a . . .”
He stood still, his eyes opening wider. He
pointed.
“That one?” I asked.
“Perfect.”
It was perfect. Pyramidical. Full needled and ample.
It wasn’t gargantuan either, which was a good thing. I inspected
it.
“That one’s taken,” said a man who stood nearby. He
was dressed in a flimsy jacket, had a red plaid hunter’s cap with
the flaps askew. He needed a shave. “I spotted that one and have
decided upon it.”
I frowned, and then looked for a tag, which would
indicate a reservation or a SOLD. There wasn’t one.
“Well,” I said, “There’s no ticket on it.”
“Don’t need one, feller,” he said. “I’m here. I’m
taking it. Don’t need to tag it.”
I perused him. He was a mean looking character, the
kind that ate bullets for breakfast. Matt turned away.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’ll wait in the truck.”
Nice
. It was like another session over the
toilet bowel. Suddenly, my hand inexplicably latched onto the
tree.
“Didn’t you hear me?” the man barked.
“I heard you fine,” I said, my Mary voice quite the
airy-fairy. It was an out of body experience. My body said,
run
away. Hide behind the big blue conifer
, but my soul said
fuck you, bully. I‘ve been pushed around by a retrovirus. So
you’re not so muckin’ fuch.
“The fact is, my lover wants this
tree and this tree he shall have.”
I pulled the tree toward me, and then waved to the
nurseryman, who was prompt.
“How much?”
“Twenty-eight,” he said.
Highway robbery
, I thought.
“I’ll take it. Bale it up, and could someone help me
get it to my truck?”
The tree disappeared into the building. The bully
snorted, but didn’t contest it. If I didn’t know better I would say
that he was put off by the
twenty-eight.
If the nurseryman
had said
fifteen
, I would have been pounded to a pulp. I
marched to the truck, where Matt rolled down the window. His face
was bluish.
“Roll the window up. I’ll put on the heat.”
“Did you get it?”
I smiled.
“Nobody fucks with this girl once I get my dander
up.”
Matt laughed, coughed and rolled the window up.
It began to snow as we drove to Long Branch. Matt
dozed and didn’t notice. The flakes were big and fat. They were
sticking before we reached the apartment and an inch was on the
ground before I parked the truck.
“Wake up, sleepy head. It’s snowing.”
“What?”
“Merry Christmas. It’s my gift to you.”
“How?”
He was out of the truck, slipping on the slick
slickment.
“Because I asked God,” I said, not lying.
“Thank you, Pumpkin.”
Hank was at the gate. He must have been waiting for
an hour, but he had a key so he wasn’t freezing. I wanted Matt
inside, but that wasn’t easy. I also needed to get the tree into
the apartment.
I was tired. This was an ordeal and the thought of
decorating a whole tree tonight did not inspire me. In fact, I was
thinking of asking Hank to string the lights and we’d do the rest
in the morning. Maybe Viv and Frank could pitch some tinsel.
“You should go inside,” Hank said to Matt.
“Help me with the tree,” I asked. “It’s heavy. I can
barely slide it out of the truck.”
“It’s a firm one.”
“It’s beautiful, Hank,” Matt said as he swiped some
snow from the ground. “It’s a perfect shape and my Pumpkin fought
some goon for it.”
“Fought some goon?”
“Well, there was a contest,” I said. “Shit, this is
heavy.”
“Here. I got it. What kind of contest? Did you need
to guess the number of stripes on a candle cane?”
“No. I stood up to another customer who had staked a
claim.”
“On a Christmas tree?”
“Stranger things have happened,” I said.
A snowball whizzed passed me. Matt was on fire. Snow
did that to him. He was singing
Dixie
. Snow somehow inspired
him to sing
Dixie.
Maybe it was the thought of cotton.
“Inside,” Hank barked.
“I’ll go.”
Together, Hank and I dragged the tree through the
courtyard and over the wreck of patio furniture that I had allowed
to fester in my absence. We managed to get it over the threshold
and into the living room. The mix of pine tree aroma and Lysol was
overpowering. Tuckered, I dropped the tree and headed for the
couch. Hank was with me.
Suddenly, Matt was on the threshold, a veritable
snowman wrapped in jacket and scarf, his cowboy hat iced over. In
each hand, he held a snowball.
“These have your names on it,” he said.
“No, you don’t,” I said. “I spent hours cleaning
this place. You’re not going to mess it up now.”
He gazed about.
“It’s already full of mud from the tree.”
Hank laughed.
“He’s right.”
“Throw them out,” I said.
“Shame to waste them. I think I’ll pop ‘em in the
freezer. Keep ‘em ‘til morning.”
He headed for the kitchen.
“He’s a pistol,” Hank said.
“You know, I don’t know what we’d do without
you.”
“I kinda like you guys too,” he said. “I will say,
you picked a hell of a time to decorate a Christmas tree.”
“Shall we wait ‘til the Fourth of July?”
“That’s not so strange,” he said. He stretched out
on the couch. “I know this Lesbian couple who have a tree for all
seasons. It’s a tall skinny artificial tree and they have ornaments
for every holiday, even the Fourth of July. It’s always up and
decorated.”
“Well, I’ll be.”
I tied to picture a thin evergreen popsicle covered
with jack o’lanterns and witches. I laughed. Suddenly, there was a
crash . . . in the kitchen. Hank was up first. I darted behind
him.
“Matt.”
Matt was sprawled on the kitchen floor, a snowball
in each hand. It turned out to be one of the bad days.
I looked like a freaking astronaut in my antiseptic
smock, cap, mask and rubber gloves. I was emerging from Matt’s
hospital room, walking down the breezeway corridor when I saw
Leslie and Ginger.
“Snooks,” Leslie called. “Is that you behind that
gear?”
“Yep,” I said, pulling the mask down. “You’ll need
to dress up too. Only you need to wait.”
I pulled Leslie to the waiting bench, while Ginger
squinted down the breezeway.
“So this is the place,” she said.
“This is the place,” I said. “Come sit. His Mom, Dad
and sister are there now and technically only two people can be in
the room at a time.”
We had rushed Matt to Robert Wood Johnson Medical
Center at Hank’s insistence. They had established a new AIDS ward.
It wasn’t called that, but all the patients were kept in private
and in isolation rooms. Visitors went antiseptic to prevent
bringing unwanted germs into the ward. It was plastic, but
necessary.
“They’re strict here,” I said.
“How’s he doing?” Leslie asked.
“If you ask him, he’ll tell you he’s ready to go
home. But one look and you might think he’ll be here
permanently.”
I slipped the gloves off, and then heaved a
sigh.
“We’re so sorry.”
“There shouldn’t be places like this,” Ginger said.
“It fries my ass. If the government would throw some money against
it, they might get a vaccine or something. But the president won’t
even admit there’s an epidemic. He won’t even say the word
AIDS.”
“What do you expect?” I asked. “He doesn’t even
recognize that there are such things as gay folk.”
“Damn it. He was the vice president to an ex-actor.
You can’t tell me that he didn’t shed a tear for Rock Hudson.”
“Ginger,” Leslie chided. “I know you’re angry. So am
I. But we’re here to see Matt and comfort Martin.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “There’s little comfort you
can bring unless you have a Volkswagen full of cash in the parking
lot.”
“Expensive, I bet.”
“Insurance?”
“No coverage for people with AIDS,” I said.
“Shit.”
“This little house stay has put a second mortgage on
the Kieler homestead.”
“That’s terrible,” Leslie said. “Is there any way we
can help? I mean we have the B&B and not much else, but if you
need a loan.”
Ginger crossed her eyes. I caught it and knew they
didn’t have anything to spare. Leslie was goodhearted, but Ginger’s
eyes spoke the realities.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m muddling through it. And
I’m doing it without steady employment now.”
They both fell silent.
Matt’s collapse on Christmas Eve, the so-called
second episode, combined a return of PCP with the advent of
Kaposi’s sarcoma. The first lesions had appeared on his upper
thigh. He found them, but managed to hide them from me for two
weeks, so I discovered. I was so tired — bleary eyed, in the dark,
I didn’t suspect a thing.
“Did you check yourself?” I would ask.
“From tippy toe to toppy head,” he’d say.
However, he never told me the results, inferring
that he had found nothing. The second lesion was at the base of his
neck. So he started wearing his collar high and wrapped himself in
a scarf when outside. I didn’t suspect a thing. I yelled at him
when he recovered a bit. He duped me, but he didn’t want me to
worry. I was his caregiver, yet he didn’t want me to worry. I would
have had his ass to the doctor’s at the first purple splotch. So by
Christmas Eve, when the PCP returned, exacerbated by our little
tree outing, Matt’s chemistry was dancing a wild cha-cha to the
beat of all those meds. He had become a walking toxic cocktail.
The AIDS unit occupied an entire floor at the
hospital. Unlike the other facility, they were aware of gay folk
and partners and such. There was no judgment passed. However, they
treated the patients as if they were lepers. The staff was sterile,
both technically and in bedside manners. Matt was very sick. I
prayed and paced. I wept into Hank’s shoulder, Louise’s breast, and
Viv’s fringe work. I will say I was a mess for the first week. He
looked so helpless lying there and I kept vigil until the nurses
threw me out.
“Mr. Powers,” said a bruiser name-tagged Nurse
Rachel. “You are not doing yourself or your partner any good by
sitting at the end of his bed. I suggest you go home, get some rest
and perhaps go to work. We’ll call if there’s a change.”
I didn’t want to leave. If there were changes for
the worse and I wasn’t there . . . If I abandoned him in his hour
of need, I would never forgive myself. Louise and Sammy were
constantly there, but it was Mary who finally urged me to leave —
to check in at work.
I had called my boss, who wasn’t pleased and, in
fact, doubted that my mother was in the hospital. I had used the
excuse so often, it was suspected. Still, I received a cool
okay
and an
I hope everything works out.
I now know
that the last phrase was my pink slip. The blue-pencil was
surprised to see me show up. I had missed, after all, a critical
selling week, and then some, and now I showed up ready to fold and
to patrol and to sell. My spot behind the counter was already
manned, and why shouldn’t it be? I was politely told to clear out
my locker and that whatever pay owed to me would be mailed.
By this time, I didn’t regret the loss of a job in
retail, my chosen career. However, I needed this job for more than
the incidentals of living. I returned to Long Branch knowing that I
no longer could afford my rent. Still, I stayed there, sitting in
the lightless living room watching the shadows form. My cowboy was
hanging in the balance, the finances were sunk like a battleship
and everything I had worked for was quickly sliding into the
Atlantic.
Now suicide is not an unlikely thing to discuss
under such circumstances. Every gay man has such thoughts,
especially after the first beating in the schoolyard or the first
rejection by the world at large. However, I am comfortable with who
I am and have never entertained ending my existence. I’m too much
the sissy for that. I mean, I quivered on the brink in the Rockies.
Jumping off an overpass on the Garden State Parkway was too much
height for me to consider, although it would be a windshield that
would break my fall. However, as I sat there in the dark, I
considered beating my cowboy to the grave. It was a stoic, sober
consideration. The kitchen was just a few steps away, with a drawer
filled with sharp knives —
take your pick, Martin
. I could
do it the Roman way, in the tub. I hadn’t taken a deep relaxing
bath in a while. The thought of all those red bubbles was
disenfranchising. I pictured the blue-pencil stunned.
If we
didn’t fire him, he’d be alive.
I saw the memorial service by
the Jersey Gay Sparrows backed up by the Errata Erastes. Jasper
would sing his soaring solo. Brian, the Librarian would deliver the
eulogy and Todd and Padgett would turn to each other and swap
wonderful remembrances of my solid friendship. Hank would be
distracted. Viv would lecture me in the coffin, while Frank, the
Insurance Man, held her steady. Then I saw Louise, Sammy and Mary,
clutching each other in the first pew. I began to weep.
“Matt,” I said. “Why did I ever meet you? What did I
do to deserve you?”
I was too sober for suicide, so I grabbed my coat
and headed for
The Cavern.
The Cavern
wasn’t crowded on a weekday night.
Still the regulars were sitting at the bar — Sam, Kurt and Mother.
I waved as I slipped under the stalactite ceiling, just as the
Zippilin
let loose across the empty dance floor. I noticed
Bruce Q. was futzing with the contraption.