Clean

this piece has been accepted for publication
in aids&understanding magazine, april 2016
http://www.aumag.org
http://www.aumag.org/?s=clean

“Are you clean?” my Grindr date asks me. I met him on the popular gay chat site some weeks ago, and after some pleasant back and forth, we agreed to meet up.

 He’s cute and too young for me, about 30, give or take. His name is Kenny.

“What do you mean?” I ask, as if I don’t know. I sip my Starbucks.

“You know,” he says, picking at the raisins in his half eaten scone, “are you disease free?”

“Are you asking me about my HIV status?”

“Yeah. Are you clean?”

I hate this question. I hate it because it states clearly in my profile, the one that no one bothers to read as they scroll through pictures of faces and torsos and body parts, my status is HIV positive, undetectable, on meds. These days, in the age of medications, being undetectable means that my ability to transmit HIV is drastically reduced. This, and safer sex practices that we all learned in school, helps prevent new infections. But sadly, there is still stigma in the gay community toward those of us who are HIV positive. I am healthy in every other aspect. I have a good job, in fact I am a nurse in the HIV field. I own my own place. At 50 I’m in pretty good shape, well reasonably good shape, anyway. I’m basically considered a nice guy, a real hoot at a party, a catch. Still, when this question about my status comes up, as it almost always does, in just this same way, I feel like an undesirable, untouchable.

When I tell Kenny my status, I watch his discomfort, his pretty blue eyes that look anywhere but at me, as if he’s scanning the place for an emergency exit. I know he will be gone in about two minutes.

“I should get going,” he says, right on schedule, suddenly forgetting we had plans to hang out together. It’s a bright, warm, sunny October afternoon. We had talked about walking along the Charles River, to see the beautiful autumn leaves. We were going to go to the Square, to browse the stores.

Kenny thanks me for the latte. “Nice meeting you.” He manages a tiny smile. He zips up his jacket hastily, the hem of his untucked flannel shirt gets caught. He just leaves it like that. He can’t get out of there fast enough. And then he is gone.

From the table at the window, I watch him as he crosses the street. He does not look back.

The place is busy, noisy with people.  I stay there a while longer, alone and quiet. The coffee gets cold. I take a sip, still not able to shake this feeling that’s something a little more than sadness, I sit there feeling for a moment dirty, and unclean, diseased.

I can’t be angry with Kenny. He’s too young to remember. He doesn’t know what it was like, to come of age just as AIDs was on the horizon. I understand his fear. I was scared in those days, too.  Who was not? They were truly terrifying times. I was barely 20 before the first casualties began.

Robert in July of ‘85. He went fast.

Davidwas in hospice a few weeks, so we got to say goodbye.

Everet lingered. He was a ghost by the time he passed like a shadow, after months and months of wasting away. He scared me the most, with his face, so thin, so gaunt. The feel of his bones when we hugged made me cringe.  I hated myself for how I felt.  I couldn’t wait to get away from him, away from the bottles of pills, the diapers, the smell of dying and death. I hated being there, and I was afraid of him.  And, worse, he knew it.

Everet died, then Seth.

Those early years, it was like playing musical chairs. When the music stopped, someone was out. I stumbled through, numb among the sick, skeletal, walking dead. In between, I kept dancing and drinking, I smoked and snorted and rutted to forget. I needed to feel alive, to feel a pulse, a warm body, someone to hold onto. I had boyfriends, I had tricks, lots of them, like survivors in a shipwreck, I clung on, sputtering, dazed, wounded witness to the end of the world, what could I do but keep playing the game? What I really wanted was to say:

Take care of me. Don’t let me go. Love me, a little.

By the 90’s, we had collectively moved through the stages of grief, from shock and denial, to anger. Anger was the dominant mode, and it took the form of activism.

We wore black Tshirts that said SILENCE=DEATH as we marched in pride parades along with QUEER NATION and Act UP. These groups organized protests that politicized the epidemic into a call for action. They verbalized the rage we felt, they made people uncomfortable, but they were visible, vocal, and they would not back down.

We were angry. We were scared. We didn’t know what to do, so we marched along.

And then it was my turn. I sat in my doctor’s office when I got the news. I just sat in a hard plastic chair, staring at her calendar. It was December, 1999. I didn’t cry. “Do you want to see a counselor?” she said softly, nudging a box of Kleenex toward me. I shook my head. My first and only thought was escape. My thought was to get out of that office, out of that building, I needed to get out on the street and walk in the new falling snow. When I got home, I didn’t talk to anyone for weeks, I unplugged my phone, called out to work, stayed in bed.

Somehow, those days turned into weeks, months, and now almost 20 years have passed. In the end I was lucky to be diagnosed when things were changing on the cusp of a new century. And yes, it was luck, the kind that comes randomly, but also, thanks to the efforts of a generation of men who went before me, those who marched and protested, those who died, those whose efforts brought new meds and treatments in the pipeline, I would be ok. I would survive. But I would never forget.

I cannot forget that history; it’s as much a part of my blood as this virus, and just as potent.

Now here I am, dating again in my 50’s, trying to navigate in a foreign digital playing field that presents new challenges. I was not prepared for this new environment, surprised to be confronted with stigma toward HIV that still lingers, even in this new era. It may be people have forgotten. Or this next generation coming up just doesn’t know what we went through. I wonder, what happened to all that we learned? Where did all that  hard won understanding go?

When some guy shrinks from me because of my HIV status, yes I get angry, yes I am hurt.

 But it will pass.

I leave Starbucks after the last sip of coffee. I walk out into the bright autumn day, to breathe in the air, the air that feels cold and sharp,

the air that feels clean.

http://www.aumag.org/?s=clean

Felatio Alger

This story will appear in http://www.leopardskinandlimes.com

I went to meet her at the Greyhound station downtown. The New York bus is running 20 minutes late. Outside, it’s pouring rain, so I cool my heels, smoking cigarettes and slouching among the dim-eyed denizens of the old depot. I’m looking forward to seeing her again. It’s been a long time.

Two years ago, in high school, it was me and Tina. She was my drinking buddy. It was Tina who talked me into getting fake IDs, after she stole her cousin’s who had recently visited for Passover. She was now to be known as Bonnie Deware,  aged 22, from Staten Island. Now it was my turn. I remember sitting in the parking lot of the DMV as she handed me a birth certificate and paperwork she had “borrowed” from her brother, “Just act normal”, she said. Within minutes, under the big sign that threatened $10,000 fine and/or 5 years in jail for fraudulent misrepresentation, I  paid the nice lady behind the counter, smiled and posed for a picture,  and received a license attesting that I was Ethan Edenberg born May 17, 1962 Address 77 Summit Hill Ave, Cranston RI 02921.

And so Bonnie and Ethan were born.

Some nights she’d pick me up in her blue Nisson Centra. We’d cruise Providence, literally riding in circles around a little spit of a park, drinking Tango mix and gasoline vodka. Tina was crazy obsessed for Bruce Springsteen. “Born to Run” would be blasting through the open moon roof, so loud the drunks would throw their empty beer cans at us when we passed by. She’d laugh and give them the finger. We kept drinking, getting a decent buzz on before we hit the bar.

Back then Barry’s was the spot. It was a dance floor, it was a drinking hole, it was a place where people made out in the bathroom, and threw up out on the back deck. We drank sweet concoctions called Sicillian Kisses, Amaretto and Bailey’s, played Centipede and Asteroids in the video lounge, we danced whenever they played “She Blinded Me with Science”, our hands waving in the air. Out back we’d sneak joints in the warm night air, sweaty and breathless. The airport was two blocks away, whenever a plane flew low overhead taking off to some unknown somewhere, she’d blow smoke into the sky, “Lucky fuckers,” she’d say. We both knew we were destined one day to leave this pissant borough of Providence. We talked about our dreams out there among the plastic palm trees and Christmas lights. After graduation she was headed to New York, Manhattan, to go to FIT. Her idea was to be a fashion merchandiser, whatever that is, and I was thinking about maybe going to school in Boston. Psychology sounded interesting. “It’s all bullshit,” she’d say with a coughing laugh as we headed back in for last call.

We’d finish the night at Bickford’s, with pancakes and coffee, which she liberally laced from a flat glass flask she kept in her purse. By this point in the night, I’d be  soaked with flop sweat in my polyester shiny shirt, my hair would be greased to my slick forehead, I’d be slurry and repeat myself. Tina was just waking up, fresh as a daisy on two long stems, poured into a red lycra mini dress, every inch alert and tingling. She’d talk a blue streak about guys: guys she’d done and guys she’d wanted to do, guys she hoped to do in the near future, guys she’d never do. It drew a bit of attention to our booth, which she didn’t mind at all. Whenever a man would look at her she would drop her eyes down to her baked apple tart, still talking about blow jobs and nipples, completely ignoring him, but her hair would maybe just so softly fall over her shoulder, and another poor shnook would be hooked.

I was amazed at her prowess, her confidence. To date, my sexual history consisted of some furtive after school fumblings in someone’s paneled basement rec room, and an unrequited love for Giacomo D’amico , the middleweight wrestler and a junior, whose beautiful broken nose gave me many a panic whenever I saw a sight of him in the hall.

But Tina always had a ton of guys in her little book. She actually had a little book. She had nicknames for them all: there was the Greasemonkey, Pee Wee, Pencil Dick, Nicky No Neck, Mr Married,  Foot Long Frank, Donnie Osmond, Jaguar, Angry Guy, Stuart Little, Guido, and the Donkey, and those just the ones I can remember from that year. There was one who slipped in for a while and jostled her composure, he had disaster written all over him, a tattoed small time pot dealer who drove an old woody station wagon and had a girlfriend in West Warwick by the mall, he had pockmarked skin but beautiful teeth, and according to the local reports he had an enormous equipage with appetites to match. Things were hot and heavy for a while, until that night at the drive in when the girlfriend showed up and there was a fight with hair pulling and kicking, and the next day in school everyone said that there was a knife but there wasn’t. Anyway we called that guy Zitface for the rest of time, and there was never another unguarded moment in her amorous pursuits.

When her bus pulls in, I crush my cigarette underfoot and get ready to meet her. She’s there, easy to spot in the crowd, big hair, blonder than ever, big tits, big smile. “Hey fucker,” she says. We hug, and I smell the whiff of pricey perfume, sexy and feminine, smoke and moonlight. “Look at you!” she says. “You look like that Flock of Seagulls guy. I love your hair!”

“How was the ride?”

She rolls her eyes. “Not one hot guy on board. I’m like a girl stranded on a fucking desert island.”

We grab her bag, a knock off Gucci she got on fifth avenue from some one legged guy, she tells me. “You sure it’s ok if I stay with you?”

“My room mate’s away. “

“Is he cute?” she nudges me. “Did you do him yet?”

“He’s straight,” I sigh. “Some of them are, you know.”

She shrugs. “Let’s get a drink somewhere, I’m getting the shakes.”

I take her to the top of the Pru, for the view, but it’s such a blank foggy day it’s like were peering into a cloud, floating over Boston. We have a few rounds. We’ve graduated to martinis, now that we are adults and don’t need our fake IDs. “Cheers to Bonnie and Ethan” she says, clinking my glass, “Those poor stupid kids.” Her cerise V neck top is cut so deep I can practically see her cervix, and her cleavage is like a lightening rod for men. She flirts with the bartender. She flirts with the head waiter. She flirts with the busboy, who winks at her. By the fourth drink, she’s in full swing. We’ve covered the topics: school is fine, folks are fine, she LOVES New York. Everything about it is fucking amazing. “So many men, so little time,” she sings a bit of that song, swaying on her bar stool, despite the looks we get from people. “New York is so BIG, you know?” she chews the pimento from the bottom of her glass. “It’s like you never know what’s gonna happen, or who you’re gonna meet. You can be anyone you want to be.” She’s smoking a Marlboro Light. She’s antsy, ready to leave, ready to move on. She’s on Manhattan time. We look out the rain streaked windows of the aerie high above my little  gray city.

“Where to now?” she says.

I manage a shrug.

In the bathroom mirror, under the harsh white lights, I get a look at myself, like I’m shimmering underwater, my hair plastered to my head, my forehead beaded with drunk sweat. It feels like my brain is pickled in olive brine, dirty martinis course through my synapses. “You can be anyone you want to be,” I say to my shitfaced reflection and we both laugh.

He was still laughing his head off when he walked out, leaving me with my face on the cool hard porcelain sink. That was the last time I saw Ethan Edenberg.

http://www.leopardskinandlimes.com/?s=belanger

The wilderness
a version of this story has been published in Jonathan Magazine, number 11. to read this and other stories by some great LGBT writers, go here: https://siblingrivalrypress.com
this story also appeared in Red Fez issue 91
https://www.redfez.net/nonfiction/essay-the-wilderness-732

“Why don’t you get out of the God damned house?” My mother barges into my room.  “You’ve been cooped up all day reading, on a beautiful day like this, with your nose in a book. It makes me nervous!”

She points her finger at me. She’s still wearing those pink rubber gloves from house cleaning.

 I toss the paperback on the bedspread.

“The life of Ben Franklin?” she reads from the cover “Go outside like any normal kid on school vacation,” she says, “go out and play ball or something.”

“I’m going.”

“Don’t give me that face, Mister,” she warns, “I’ve had a long day.”

“Okay.” I lace up my Keds and head past her to the stairs.

“Go out the front door, I just mopped the kitchen floor, and I don’t need you scuffing it up with those filthy sneakers.”

“I’m going to Robby’s,” I say.

“Good. I’m gonna go lie down and watch my stories for a while.”

My hand runs along the smoothly polished banister that smells like lemon polish. I sink into the plush gold wall- to -wall carpet as I pass through the living room. The pale green couch and ivory love seat flank an empty fireplace, like ghosts in the dark room. To keep the sunlight from fading everything, heavy drapes are shut tight.

Outside, the late Friday afternoon is blazing and bright. Our lawn is already tinged brown. It’s dry underfoot. The FOR SALE sign swings, it creaks on a gust of wind that feels damp and hot. I walk my bike across the street.  Mr. Mason is mowing his grass, an oblong of verdant green bordered by neat flowerbeds.  Petunias, pansies, and yellow summer roses droop in the drowsy heat. He nods as I came over, mops his brow. “Hot one today,” he says. His bare, sunburned arms are tattooed from his days with the Marines. He nods again, tucks his handkerchief in the front pocket of an old pair of Bermuda shorts.

“Is Robby home?” I ask

“He’s out back,” he says, and gets on with his work.

The yards, like the houses on Lilac Hill, are nearly identical to each other, with minor variations; flagstones, flowering dogwoods, an inground pool here and there, a useless gazebo like the one in front of the Kirby place, set the properties apart. The Mason’s patio is off a breezeway that connects the garage to the kitchen. In the shade of a striped umbrella, Mrs. Mason sits at the table doing the TV guide crossword puzzle, a ballpoint in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Next to her pack of Tareytons, a tall glass beads with sweat. “Well hello, stranger,” she says over her big sunglasses. “How’s your mom holding up?”

“Ok”

“You tell her to come over anytime, if she wants a little girl talk. I always keep a Sarah Lee in the freezer for when company comes over.”

“I will.”

“It’s too bad she didn’t get invited to the Andrews’ pool party tonight, I talked to Judy and she figured it was going to be a lot of couples, and your mom might feel a little out of place, considering.” She takes a sip of her drink. A trickle of perspiration makes its way down into the shadow of her cleavage. “We’re going, of course, Big Bob and me,” she goes on, “it’s not every year we have a big Bicentennial bash, ya know? Judy’s going all out, she’s got waiters in Revolutionary outfits, and fireworks, the whole nine yards. Everyone is going.” She drops her eyes. She crushes her smoke into the overflowing ashtray and lights another.

“Where’s Robby?”

“Up in his tree.” She points past the barbecue pit to the big leafy oak at the back of the property.

I climb up to the fort and give the knock.

“Come on in,” he says.

Robby and his dad built the tree house a few summers ago, out of spare lumber from Mr. Mason’s workshop. They’re both pretty handy. The two of them worked on it together for weeks. It’s pretty snug. Robby calls it his laboratory, where he does top secret experiments. He’s at the workbench playing with his chemistry set. “Check this out,” he says without looking up. He’s running a lighter flame up and down a test tube. A plume of purplish smoke curls around the low raftered room. “Don’t breathe it too much, it’s wicked poisonous,” he cautions.

“Cool”

“What’s up?” he says.

“My mom’s on the rag” I say.

“That blows”.

“Wanna do something?” I ask.

“Sure, let’s grab a Del’s,” he says, “it’s hot as the devil’s butt hole in here”

“Ok”

A few minutes later, we retrieve his bike from the shed.

“Have you heard from your dad?”

“Nope.”

“Nothing?”

 “I’m not supposed to talk about it”

“Ok, sure,” he shrugs.

When we pass my yard, he glances at the sign on the lawn. “It’s gonna be kinda weird when you move, not having you across the street anymore.”

“Yeah”

“My dad says you guys’ll probably get 60, maybe 70 thousand bucks for the house”

“Really?”

“Yea you’ll be rich.”  He laughs.

We hop our bikes and ride down the street. He’s got the new one, it’s shiny with slick treaded tires. Mine’s kind of rusty, the chain kept falling off, but he fixed it for me last week, so now it’s going pretty good. He’s talking about one of the nuns at Sacred Heart, where he went to elementary school, there’s this Sister Anthony that razzed him all last year. “I’ll be glad to be getting out of that hell hole,” he says, “and away from Monkey Tits.” In September, he starts at Bishop Allen, the private junior high. He’s stoked to go to the new place. “You’ll understand when you get to middle school,” he says, “you’ll see.”

On the corner of Hollyhock Lane is Rocky Cole’s house. He’s out on his front lawn hanging with Vinnie Macarone and Joe Ritoli.  “Hey FAGGOTTS!” Rocky yells out as we go by. They’re a few years older then us, in high school. Ordinarily, they’d chase us, but it’s too hot, and they’re too high from sniffing glue.

Robby flips them the bird.

“Look at the homos!” Vinnie says.

“You’re mom’s a fucking drunk, Mason!” says Joe.

“That’s a lie!” I say to them.

“What do you know, baby?” says Rocky, “your dad left  ‘cuz you’re such a cocksucker!”

“I heard he’s got a skank he’s living with in Scituate,” Joe says.

“Who can blame him?” says Rocky, “the old lady’s a lard ass!”

Vinnie chucks a lit M-80 toward us. It goes off and leaves my head ringing, but we are booking ass.

“Fuck off Cocky Roll!” Robby laughs over his shoulder.

We pedal up to the window at Del’s where we pool our pocket change for two large lemonades at 35 cents apiece, and a small pack of raspberry Twizzlers for another 15. Expertly, we chew off the ends of the licorice to use as straws.

“Brain freeze,” I say.

“You always drink it too fast,” he laughs.

“It’s good.”

“You wanna sneak into the Drive- In tonight?”  He runs a hand through his longish sandy blond hair, like he does whenever he’s planning something.

“Again?” I say. “We’ve seen The Omen three times already. It creeps me out”
“Chicken shit,” he says.

We kill some time there in the parking lot, talking about nothing, shooting the shit. The heat of the day steams off the hot black top. Soon, we are riding again, up Laurel Hill, pumping hard up the steep incline, fueled on sugar syrup, our T- shirts plastered to our backs with drenching sweat. At the crest we stop for a bit, panting. He pulls a smoke from the leather pouch hanging from his high rise handle bars “Wanna split it? I only got the one”

“Sure.”

He inhales deeply and hands it to me.  I put my lips to it where his just were, his spit still slick on the filter tip, it tastes like raspberry licorice, there’s the rush of nicotine, and it feels good.

   

                                                         

The neighborhood is easing into a golden summer evening. There is the whiff of smoke from backyard cookouts. People are sitting out on lounge chairs, chattering and laughing from patios. An endless whirr of sprinklers whisks across green lawns. Occasionally, firecrackers go off. American flags are fluttering from just about every house, little plastic ones are taped to mailboxes, and some are stapled to telephone poles.

We weave our way through a bunch of kids from school playing touch football at the end of Dahlia Drive. They have to stop when old Mrs. Murphy goes by in her big emerald two tone Buick with the tail fins, its polished chromework glares in the late sun. “That heap must be twenty years old, at least,” Robby mutters. Robby likes cars. He already has his eye on the Trans Am he wants his dad to buy him, when he gets his license in a couple years. “It’s gonna be fucking awesome,” he assures me. That’s what some dads do, they buy their kids cars, they build tree houses, they mow the lawn.

We glide under the trees, toward the woods, an acerage of undeveloped land that for us holds all the allure of a kind of wilderness. This is the place where just a few years ago we played games like Capture the Flag and Hide and Seek, games kids play.

The entrance to the woods is just ahead. Even in the daytime, it’s a little dark and a little scary. The place is haunted these days, since that evening the night after Christmas when they found Johnny Johnson hanging dead from the old Indian tree.

“He was strung out on LSD,” Robby says knowingly.

“What’s that?”

“Bad News” he says.

There is also an old junked car, buried in the underbrush, an ancient rusted Dodge. “That’s where Donna Johnson lost her cherry a bunch of times.” Robby says.

Donna is Johnny’s sister. “I heard from David Chapnick that for a quarter she’ll show you her panties, and for a dollar the sky’s the limit.”

I laugh although I have no idea what he’s talking about. I have never heard of cherries being lost, I have no idea what he means about the sky, but I laugh anyway.

We walk our bikes down the path, under the scrubby, stubby evergreens. The place is quiet and shaded. Fireflies are already winking in the green ferns. We pass the old Indian tree, and the relic car. We walk up to the rocks along the rise of a hill.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” he says.

“Does it bother you? The stuff they say about your mom?”

He’s looking down at the dirt. “Nah.” He kicks a rock into the brush.

“What about you?” he says, after a while. “What’s the story with your dad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’d he go, anyway? Don’t you wonder?”

“Sure. No one’ll say. They just fight whenever he’s around, and then he’s gone. Just gone.”

“Sucks,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“You think it’s true? He’s got a girlfriend?”

“Mmmm.”

I don’t want to talk about it any more. I’m glad when we’re just walking under the leaves, when all I can hear is the birds, and the insects droning in tall overgrown grass.

“You wanna horse around a little?” he says.

“OK”

For some time now we’ve been playing a new game. The first time was on a rainy random day, on the floor of the knotty pine paneled rec room in his basement. After helping ourselves to Mr. Mason’s liquor cabinet, we kicked aside the Monopoly board, and rolled around a while, touching each other. Since then, we don’t play Monopoly so much any more.

Without talking, we make our way to the spot we discovered, deep in the deep woods, high up Little Bear hill. There are construction trucks parked along the edge of the field, they’re planning to put up more houses and a mini mall soon. I follow him into the dense green place that is still our secret.

Afterwards, when it is over, when we are both quiet, someone down in May Field sets off rockets, and Roman candles. Everything has gotten dark blue, just past dusk. We watch the fireworks light up and fizzle out.  

“You think you’ll miss the old neighborhood?” he asks. For a second his face is illuminated, and I can see the spray of freckles on his nose. His eyes, brown with flecks of gold, are looking at me.

“I guess so,” I say.

“You probably won’t even remember any of this,” he says.

I shrug.

And then he kisses me. Just once. We stay there a while, not saying a word, not moving, barely breathing, his face still close to mine.

Nothing has changed in the shadowy woods, though something suddenly seems different, like when the barometer drops before a big storm. When we lie down together against the mossy rock, to look up at the new stars, the rain clouds block our view, darkening heaven. I think that this is what they must mean, when they talk about the limits of the sky.

Still, we stay a while longer, listening to the sounds of the wilderness, until it’s time for us both to go home.

https://siblingrivalrypress.com