The Sunset

“I’ve never seen anybody go in or out of that place,” Michael says, his head is hanging out the bus window. We are both a bit overheated and drunk. He’s pointing at that dive, a short, squat, square, wooden gin mill. Over the door, on a battered sign, “Sunset Tap” is spelled out in peeling letters. A neon ad for Schiltz beer blinks sporadically. “Why don’t we go in for a drink?” he says. “It’s still early.”

“In there? That fire box? Probably a bunch of townies in there. We could get killed in a place like that.”

He waves a hand in my general direction. “Come on, we’ll be Out and Proud. In Your Face Fags. Act Up. Queer Nation. Let’s be visible, let’s be Out There . Shake up the establishment. ”

“You’re crazy! I’m not going into that shit hole looking like this!”

We’re still wearing strands of rainbow beads from the Gay Pride parade, where we drank way too much and danced at the block party in a sea of shirtless, sweaty guys. We must look pretty gross, with lipstick smeared on our mouths, eyeliner rubbed off, the two of us decked out in the height of early 90’s gay wear: combat boots, short short cutoffs, tank tops in neon, and hair spiked up for days. He is freshly platinum blond. I’m the redhead. There is glitter all over us from the drag queen who sprinkled fairy dust from the RamRod float.

The bus, still stopped at the light, is about to get going with a gasping release of its brakes. He pulls the cord to signal the driver.

“Hold up!” Michael calls. “We’re getting out here!”

 As usual, I follow. I never have the balls to stand up to him.

The boozy day, the lusty excesses of Pride, and Michael’s excitement, all conspire to make me bolder than usual, and I am almost giddy. I have no idea what to expect, but I feel like an anarchist, a Queer activist. Living with Michael is one adventure after another, usually involving alcohol. And, I have to admit, I am curious about the place. No one ever does go in or out, it seems. What goes on in there? 

Just wait ‘til they get a load of us.

Soon, we are on the blazing pavement in front of the building. It looks sad, by itself, on the bustling busy avenue crowded with apartment blocks and businesses. Across the street is the Greek Corner, and the Coin Op laundrymat. The day is bright, lovely early summer.

We stumble up the crooked concrete steps to the Sunset Tap.
“Here goes,” I say, with my hand on the door, “a small step for gay kind, everywhere.”
“You’re a regular Rosa Parks, or maybe Nellie Armstrong” he starts to laugh, but shuts up the minute we are inside.

It’s dark. It feels like the place Darkness goes to get drunk and forget. The overpainted windows don’t seem to have been opened since Prohibition. It takes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom, after the sunny outdoors.

On the paneled walls are framed photos of JFK, and Jackie, Sonny Liston, two popes, and a long dead decorated general from some war past. There’s also a stuffed marlin, a number of plaques with sweet, pithy homilies, like : “if you don’t like it here, go the fuck home,” and faded pictures of old sports teams.

“Oh my!” whispers Michael.

“This was your bright idea” I mumble back.

The staleness of the place cannot be overstated. It is rank.

A crowd of regulars, a dozen maybe, are already well launched into their day. Not one of them bats an eyelash as Michael and I sashay in, on a whiff of China Rain. They lean bleary eyed and listless, watching the little TV bolted to the wall. The Sox are playing. 

Our grand entrance is decidedly anticlimactic. "This must be how Al Gore feels when he walks into a room," i say. With a shrug we sit down on two stools, our elbows on the sticky bar.

“What’ll you have, boys?” asks the bar guy, who looks like he’s been standing there since Man crawled out of the primordial ooze, he looks like he’s seen it all, and he didn’t like any of it. 

His eyes are slits, his skin is a reptilian hue. 

“Shall we order martinis?” Michael giggles nervously, but the guy does not crack a smile, he wipes the counter with an old, dingey damp rag.  

“What have you got?” I say.

The bartender nods and grunts to the bar taps, and the row of liquor bottles, indicating the selection at the Sunset.

We order two whiskeys, neat, something to drink fast so we can get out of there.

“Rot gut,” says Michael.

“Here’s mud in your eye.”

“Here’s to Mr and Mrs Bush.”

“And all the little Bushes,” I laugh.

“Here’s to Iraq.”

“Here’s to Paris. We’ll always have Paris.”

 “Here’s to  AZT,” he says, and we both are quiet after that, we both have our reasons to be quiet. We clink our glasses and drink down our shots.

“You guys mind passing those nuts?” an ancient gentleman with hair the color of old snow leans over, his hot breath is enough to peel paint. There’s a bowl of dessicated pale peanuts, Michael hands them to our neighbor, who nods.

“You come here often?” Michael says, in a campy voice.

“Too often,” the guy smiles. Not one tooth is in his head. He paws at the goobers, gums a few.

“Haven’t seen you two before,” he says.

“We’re new to the neighborhood,” I say. “We go to school.” I  give Michael the raised eyebrow “Tone it Down” look.

“Lots of young people, now,” the gentleman says, “lots of students. Not so many of us old fucks left.”

“The place sure has changed,” says our bartender, “the neighborhood’s gotten fancy.”

Michael chuckles, “I guess so.”

“No offense.”

“Oh none taken, dear man. We are indeed fancy.”

“No shit there,” he says. The bar guy doesn’t smile, but the slits of his eyes squeeze a little.

“We came in to shake up the establishment,” Michael says, “we thought we’d rile you up with our amazing Queerness.”

The bartender shrugs.

Another anticlimax.

“Stanny,” says our new pal, “get these two fellas a round, on me.”

We have drinks in front of us.

Michael gives me the wide eye as if to say, “See?”

After a few rounds, we are buddies with Dave, Stanny, Andy, John, and Paulie. The patrons of the Sunset tap are really just a bunch of regular boozehounds, and we certainly find common ground there. I seem to remember at one point singing “It’s Raining Men,” but that may be a bit of history re-writing.

things take a more sombre turn when Paulie and Andy recount a few dicey moments in Viet Nam:

“After that Hell, nothing surprises me anymore,” Paulie says. “I could literally give a fuck about anything. Who cares?”

“Every day, I thought was my last," says Andy.  "Scared to death the whole time, just a kid. No one should die like that, that young and scared, out there in some godless mud pile, all alone.”

Paulie says, almost in a whisper: “Some days I wished for a sniper come and get me, woulda been better than waiting, waiting.”

Michael is quiet, listening. He stares into the last slug of golden booze left in his glass. I know what he’s thinking, though he tries to laugh it off.

We’re both scared to death. His new medication doesn’t seem to be working. We don’t talk about it, ever, but I know. We share an apartment, we share clothes, cash, drugs and men, but we don’t talk about this. We never will.

Instead, we drink and laugh and tell jokes, we are sarcastic and loud. We play at being jaded, so we won’t be disappointed, we laugh when we are scared.

“Let’s have one more for a nightcap,” he says.

When I remember Michael, I remember that afternoon, how young we were, how silly. I remember the two of us leaving the bar, shitfaced, hanging on to each other, waving Bye Bye to our new friends.

“See you next week!” Michael says.

Of course, we didn’t ever go back. Still, there’s the image I’ll always have, of the two of us walking, hand in hand, out of the Sunset, into the blue evening together, both of us laughing our heads off.

 

the virgin mary

published in pot muck magazine, october 2015

“I’m not taking those fucking pills!” she screams.

“Mary, please.”

“Let me go!” she yells. Two security guards hold her arms. Another waits, just behind her.

“Mary, take the medication,” I say. I hold out the plastic cup.

“It’s poison! It’s going to kill me. That’s what they want!”

“Mary, I’m not here to hurt you. I’m a nurse. I want to help you.”

“You are a liar,” she says, “leave me alone! What kind of a nurse bothers a poor old lady?”

*****

Mary has been court ordered to be hospitalized for up to ten days, she is to be “compliant with treatment”. Her behaviors have been deemed harmful to herself. According to her chart, she stopped eating two weeks ago, fearful she was being poisoned. She lived on sips of water and packaged saltine crackers, never leaving her one room in the boarding house where she lived, not opening her door, not even when the police came to check on her during a four day long heat wave. They found her, disheveled, dehydrated, delusional, afraid, in a dirty robe, in a stifling room, windows locked shut, flies everywhere, food left in the sink, the place had the stink of garbage and unwashed flesh and rotting meat and urine and feces and something animal.

In the emergency room, she was combative.  She spit on the EMT. She was restrained to a gurney, and given 5 milligrams of Haldol, 2 milligrams of Ativan, and a ½ cc of Cogentin by injection. She has hydrated with IV fluids.  Once she was calm, and medically cleared, her vital signs normalized, she was wheeled, still restrained, to be observed in the psychiatric emergency department. They checked her respirations and pulse, they offered food which she refused. She did not speak. She would not answer their questions.

She arrived on our unit some 15 hours later.

In the Day Room, her first morning, she did not eat breakfast. during the Community Meeting, when the smiling Occupational Therapist asked her how she was doing, She would not respond, a fact that was documented in her daily progress note.

She did tell the psychiatry resident to “Fuck the fuck off, Fucking Fucker!” this was quoted and discussed at change of shift, among the nurses and mental health workers.

She submitted to being bathed the next day, but only because the counselor promised to use a special shampoo. She let her long white hair be combed. She ate lime jello, and drank half a pint of skim milk. She wore a clean Johnny that hung slack off her bony shoulder blades. She wore the green Styrofoam slippers that did not fit her feet. She wore the bracelet that had her name and unit number on it. She let the staff check her blood pressure. In some ways, she became a patient, but not in all ways. She did not go to any of the groups; therapeutic communication, morning stretch, occupational crafts, cookie time, art, afternoon check-in, current events.  She made no phone calls, had no visitors, spoke to none of the other patients, or to any of the staff.

On the third day, she did not get out of bed. She refused to meet with the hospital attorney, who would be presenting her case before the judge later in the day. She turned to face the wall when the director and the nurse manager came to explain to her that she was about to be committed for an extended hospitalization, and forced to accept treatment. Her breakfast tray when untouched. Her lunch was taken away, uneaten, as well.

By evening, her case was heard, and her commitment paper was signed.

From now on, she did not have the right to refuse meals, she would have to accept medications, she would be mandated to attend groups.

“Fuck you,” she says when I tell her this.

I hold out the medications the doctor ordered.

“NO,” she says. Her eyes are sharp and blue, unflinching. “I was named for the Virgin Mary,” she says. “You can not touch me.”

Someone calls Security. Uniformed guys escort her to the Quiet Room where she will be restrained to a bed frame and injected again with a cocktail of antipsychotic meds if she continues to refuse or threaten, the men hold her though she does not resist. She walks without struggle, the green slippers slap behind her along the shiny linoleum floor. Other patients watch as we pass the Day Room. The TV is blaring People’s Court. One guy winks at her. She gives him the finger. He goes back to eating his dinner.

“I’m not taking those God Damned pills!”

“Mary, take the medicine.”

“Fuck off.”

“It’s my job.”

“Get another job!” she screams.

“Take the medications for the nurse,” says one of the guards.

“Screw you, too, Barney Fife!” She spits.

“The court ordered you to take the medicine,” I hold out the cup.

“I was named for the Blessed Virgin!”

She struggles. The guards have her down in seconds. She is small, but they hold her. She screams while leather straps are wrapped around her wrists and ankles. Another nurse rushes in with the staff psychiatrist. “She’s refusing treatment,” the doctor says. He orders medications to be administered by chemical restraint.

Her Johnny is pulled up, her buttocks exposed. My hands do not shake as I swab her pale skin and feel for the gluteus muscle, she is thin, and I feel her papery softness through my latex glove. I have done this hundreds of times. It’s my job. She writhes and screams. She is held more forcibly, to keep her still. I inject her with two needles.

It’s over in a moment.

“You rapist!” she screams. I back out of the Quiet Room. “How could you do this to the Virgin Mary?” She cries.

When I pull off my gloves, my hands still tingle from the touch of her skin,

and the warmth of her fear.

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