MILE 20
“I
think that's the last of the boxes. Marvin, could you stack those in the corner by themselves? I don't want my Wonder Woman collectibles to get ruined. They're about all that's left now.”
Marvin dutifully followed the order. Everyone had been tiptoeing around Gary all morning. His world had capsized and the least his friends could do was pamper him for a while. With all of his belongingsâa whole lifeâcrowded into one room, Gary looked small and shattered. Liam had only known Gary to be a leader and a rock and hadn't a clue what to do with this withered version of the man. He found himself clumsily lining up boxes along the edge of wall to avoid falling into awkward conversation.
“I'm going to head out to buy some pizza and beer.” Ben rose from his seat on the dusty floor and wiped the film of sweat from his brow as he spoke. “I think we can all use a break and a stiff drink.”
The services at 1040 Fifth had been sublime. With porters chipping in and one of the service elevators devoted solely to Gary's move, all the boxes were out and neatly stacked in the U-Haul within an hour. Gary's new building offered no such amenities, and though the help of eight Fast Trackers made the work go faster, the long flight of steps leading from the street and the series of narrow door frames caused the move-in project to take about three times as long as the move-out. Everyone's shirts dripped with sweat by the time it was all over.
“Thanks, Ben. Let me give you some money.” Gary searched for his wallet among the papers and keys and general clutter on the kitchen counter.
“It's on me, babe. You sit tight and make this place feel like home.”
Liam wished he could join Ben, but the situation between them was still strained. But for Liam the prospect of getting loose from the claustrophobia of this twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot box, of escaping the woe that had beset Gary, was appealing. Marvin and Zane and Liam exchanged sympathetic glances. Matthew helped Riser count the number of veins protruding along the pale surface of his wiry arms. Ferdinand busily typed on his BlackBerry, absorbed in the drama of his twenty-two-year-old fuck buddy
du jour
. Cord Vespers had just graduated from Syracuse University where he had a stellar lacrosse career coupled with the sad, angry social life of a repressed closet case. Ferdinand joked that he had taught Cord the proper way to release energy. The secret was apparently found in a fistful of poppers and a tube of lubricant. Despite the distractions of his daily life and wanton habits, Ferdinand had worked tirelessly for Gary since Malcolm's death. Within days, he had pulled strings with a former trick in real estate for one of the city's top rental agencies to secure Gary a studio in Chelsea for the unheard of price of $900 a month. Until something more permanent came along, Gary would be temping at an event planning outfit that Ferdinand held a minority position in. Hourly pay and bare bones health insurance, but it would pay the bills.
“I guess I should get used to people taking pity on me now,” Gary said. “It's funny how you do the right thingâor what you think is the right thingâfor your entire life, and one day you're back at square one. Not even square one ... completely off the board, totally out of the game.”
Gary paced in circles around the high columns of boxes that formed an obstacle course in the tiny studio apartment. It felt as though he was performing a monologue, playing the patient on the proverbial couch in therapy and not really expecting a response to his diatribe.
“You guys should stake your claim to your own lives now. You're young and beautiful and talented. Don't sacrifice and give up your potential for anybody, for any reasonâleast of all in the name of love.”
Gary stopped and looked thoughtfully from box to box, as if weighing the pieces of the past to see if the measure was something he could bear. After inspecting the magic-marker description of the contents of one cardboard box, Gary opened it and removed a handful of old Polaroids. His shoulders began to shake, and he cupped his head in his hands as he sobbed long and deep. Zane came up and wrapped his arms around Gary. Liam could think only of the suffocating heat and wondered when Ben would be back with the provisions.
“I turned down the role of Ralph in
Fame
when it was on Broadway.” Gary looked at Zane as he spoke. “I know I could have done something on the stage. Everyone said I had a quiet power, a radiance.”
And from out of nowhere, Gary stepped away from Zane and began to sing. At first, he sang low, almost inaudibly, but by the end of the first verse, Gary was belting out the lyric.
“I sing the body electric
I glory in the glow of rebirth
Creating my own tomorrow
When I shall embody the earth.
And I'll serenade Venus
I'll serenade Mars
And I'll burn with the fire of ten million stars
And in time
And in time
We will all be stars.”
Tears speckled Gary's face as he performed the number, not to the Fast Tracker friends assembled in the room but to something far beyond the confines of this studio apartment, something deep into the past or far into the future. Zane joined Gary first and then Marvin and then Liam joined in a final verse of “I Sing the Body Electric.”
“I sing the body electric
I celebrate the me yet to come
I toast to my own reunion
When I become one with the sun.”
Gary glowed by the end of the performance and stood before the guys in the room like a pastor before a congregation, a father approaching his long-lost sons. He told them that he had to share what had happened to him, not to lay his burden down on others but so that they might learn from his own bad judgment.
Liam had tried not to absorb the fleet of rumors traveling around about Gary. The old men of the judging circle took perverse pleasure in the fact that the “high living G-Lo” got knocked into the gutter where he belonged. Some of Gary's closest friends made opaque references to his “situation” in tones that conjured, equally, images of mercenary gold digging and of ceaseless self-sacrifice. Being president of the club, Gary had always emanated an imperviousness to the slings and arrows of Fast Tracker folly. Since his partner's death, Gary kept a decidedly lower profile, but still the cracks in his armor showed.
“When I met Malcolm, there wasn't this mountain of cash,” Gary began. “I guess there never is in these stories. Anyway, I went with a guy in one of my theater classes for drinks some random night in the early eighties. We went to The Townhouse. Don't roll your eyes at me, Riser; Townhouse was the sun in the gay universe back then. Anyone who was anyone met up there. It was instant with Malcolm ... aided, of course, by a sprinkling of martinis. This was back in the days before Cosmos, when real menâeven gay onesâsipped gin martinis at night. Ah, that night. The first week, the first year, it was all paradise. I rehearsed and washed dishes in a little German restaurant on the Upper East Side, and Malcolm trained as an analyst at Goldman Sachs. We spoke different languages, but what does that matter when you are twenty-three and having the best sex of your life? And the gravy was that Malcolm engineered many of the market changes in the mideighties, complex financing schemes that involved leveraging companies with all different grades of debt. He was hedging back when that still meant bush trimming. The paychecks grew exponentially with time; his bonuses went up tenfold each year. By the early nineties, we were in our little perch on Fifth Avenueâabout as high as you can go in this town and probably the first openly gay couple to get there. Now, isn't that a nice little success story? Then the blight came down. For some reason, Malcolm got it and not me. God only knows why. I cried so much, you'd think I was the one infected. He sweated and tormented next to me, the sheets constantly damp and soiled. Malcolm Dodd, who had never missed a day of work, had to craft elaborate excuses with his office, and he dragged himself in looking half dead on many a morning. He eventually resigned to protect his name and his legacy, and I tried to keep up appearances and manage the finances but was in way over my head. Still, I wanted him to keep all that he had struggled to attain for as long as possible. The bills began to swallow me by the end, but I kept all the dreary details from Malcolm.”
Zane had already begun to weep when Ben walked in with a big shopping bag and two pizza pies. All eyes turned to the apartment door and then just as quickly back to Gary, begging for more of the thread.
“It's just my life story, Ben. It'll be over in about three more minutes. Put the pizzas down and have a listen.”
Ben followed the instructions and sat on a cardboard box.
“Taking care of someone, giving your life over to them, is a funny thing. At first, you get a high and are utterly grateful. It's like they've given you this supreme gift of purposefulness, and you have no idea what your life even meant before. Then I went through a questioning phase. I would stare at Malcolm while he was sleeping, his mouth a hoary mess, and I would wonder why the earth needed
me
and not him. And I would clean his sheets as a way of cleaning my soul, rubbing my hands raw to open the skin up, telling myself I'd let the disease come in and enter me. Each time I chickened out, wanting to live more than I wanted to understand what my lover was going through ... But the days pile into years and your thick waves of black hair recede and gray, and you look at the sack of nothing in the bed all day, and one day you stop sobbing and you pray for it to end. You pray to God for your lover to die. I resented him and then I resented myself for being nasty and brittle with him. That's when the sickness had us both in its throes. You guys already know what happens next.”
Marvin raised his eyebrows at Ben, who looked at Mitch, who turned to Zane, who chastised Matthew and Riser, both still angling in front of the only mirror in the apartment, with a look of disapproval.
“You silly guys,” Gary went on. “This whole battle made me join Fast Trackers. This club saved my life. Or rather it helped me save myself. Running brought me face-to-face with each and every demon that haunted me, every insecurity and doubt and lie I harbored inside. The first time I tackled Central Park, it was middle March and a damp, brutal wind pummeled along the West Side Drive. The park was desolate and the naked trees swayed ominously, and I told Horaceâyes, crazy, eccentric Horace, all dressed in purple, though he hadn't started running with those ridiculous little weights yetâthat I needed to stop and exit the park. And he didn't throw any grand philosophical gesture at me about perseverance and success. He just reminded me that everyone was going to Mallory'sâa tragic piano bar in the west Seventies but a destination nonethelessâafter the run and that I only had twenty more blocks to get there and that the beer never tasted so good as when you had really worked for it. I panted and cursed on those hills along the reservoir, but I got stronger and changed my body image, and I cured myself of this disease. And now Malcolm is cured too. He deserves the peace more than anyone I've ever known. I don't mind that paying down all his medical debts and those Fifth Avenue expenses means that I have to more or less start from scratch. God help me, I am strong and I know I can. Ferdinand found this fabulous gem of a studio for me. And I get to live in a far hipper quadrant of town than the corner of
Uptight
and
WASP
. The $20,000 in personal savings I had squirreled away in case things really went south mean that I won't starve to death. Hey, young dreamers come into this city in their twenties with far less and live with endless possibility and unequaled joy. Maybe I'll end up having to work until I'm eighty-sevenâbut we can just keep our fingers crossed that I don't make it that long.”
The room had fallen so quiet that the sudden sound of a cat shrieking for attention in the flower bed outside Gary's window caused everyone to pop out of their seats. Ben passed around the two pizza pies and opened several beers for the tired crew collected on this hot August night. Liam asked everyone to wait before guzzling down the ice cold lagers.
“Everyone here owes something to Gary,” Liam began, raising his glass to alert everyone in the room that the gravity of a toast would ensue. “To some of us, he has been like a father figure, to others he has been a leader and a guide, and to some he has just been a really fun guy to hang out with. For me, he has been all three.”
Ben rolled his eyes, blushing slightly when caught by Liam's glowering glance.
“Today, I want to wish Gary all the best in what is not the ending of a chapter but the beginning of a whole new book. A new residence, new happinessâa new life!”
“Here, here,” shouted Zane and the room all clinked glasses and drank furiously in the heat of the crowded apartment. Though cramped with boxes and overrun with people, this studio felt so much cozier and more hopeful to Liam than the austere grandeur of the Fifth Avenue manse.