The Prettiest Star

by Carter Sickels

  After the cool down, I eject the tape, and then pick up one labeled “Pyramid” from a stack of Brian’s videos. At first there is nothing but darkness, then a few red lights reveal a crowd of people chattering and laughing. A tall black woman wearing a sparkling evening dress comes out on stage, and people cheer and clap as she begins to sing “Endless Love” by Diana Ross, as a solo instead of a duet, and for a second, I wonder if it’s actually her. The camera moves to the crowd again—mostly men wearing skimpy shirts, tight pants, holding drinks, swaying, smiling, happy.

  I hit eject and choose another tape. This one is labeled SHAWN, 1983. His friend. The one who died. His picture is up on Brian’s wall, along with all the others. Brian says they’re his family. All of them so handsome, even pretty. Like Shawn. Like my brother. They’re all dead.

  Shawn was an actor, but only in plays and a few experimental films, nothing I would have seen. Brian told me how funny and smart he was, how kind. Then he looked at me and said not to listen to the racist shit that I hear from Wayne or our father.

  “Dad’s not racist,” I said.

  “Just because Dad doesn’t use the n-word doesn’t mean he’s not racist,” Brian said. “Everyone in this town is, even Mamaw. I’m not saying they’re meaning to be, but they are.” He looked at me. “Have you ever had a black friend?”

  “There aren’t any black people in Chester.”

  “Yeah, why do you think that is?” Brian told me that he learned a lot when he moved to New York about his own racism. “It’s way under your skin. We breathe racism.” He told me, “You’ve got to be open-minded. It’s the only way. You’ve got to be willing to see it.”

  In the video, Shawn stands in front of a vanity, his back to the camera. He’s wearing little purple shorts, no shirt. “I told that queen to pull it together, and she told me to fuck off, so, like, whatever,” he says, and turns, holding up a dangling blue feather earring. “What do you think? Oh, shit, are you shooting this? You,” he says, and reaches for the camera. Brian laughs and then he comes into the picture too—they’re facing each other, close, too close. Shawn kisses Brian on the cheek, and then his mouth moves toward his—and suddenly, everything in me turns too hot and flushed, like I’ve come down with a fever, I hit eject.

  My muscles are trembling. I’m thirsty. I should leave, I should get a glass of water. But I pick up another tape. This one just lists a date. A recent date.

  He’s sitting on a bed, in front of the camera, and it takes me a few seconds before I realize he’s here, in this house, in his room. His bed, his night stand, his shelf of trophies. David Bowie on the wall behind him. Brian wears a button-down shirt, his hair combed back. He smiles, frowns, smiles. Then he clears his throat. “Hello again. So, I’m thinking about how no one really knows. Sometimes, I don’t want them to know. Other times, I want to shout it from the rooftops,” he says. “I’m sick. I have—”

  The front door, footsteps.

  “Anyone home?” my brother calls.

  Frantically, I eject the tape, turn off the TV, and hustle out the door to the garage, where it’s dark and cool, like a cave. I’m trapped. I press the button on the wall, and as the garage door rattles and lifts, I duck under. Outside, the air smells like worms and dirt, and the sky is gloomy. The downstairs light comes on.

  He said it aloud on the tape. I heard him. He said, I have AIDS.

  I start to run.

  My brother’s red cup. Mom washing his laundry and dishes separately. His thinness, his frailty. The ocean of secrecy. The huffs of my breaths make beats like music. I run harder, my side screaming. Everything hurts. I want to feel the ache in my muscles, to hear the pounding of my heart. There is still too much of me. He said aloud what I knew and what I thought I didn’t. I keep going and my muscles burn through fat, through the lies of our family.

  Brian

  June 25, 1986

  Jess doesn’t want to hang out with me anymore. She’s gone all the time—on runs, or hanging out with friends. I’ve smelled smoke on her, just like I have with my mother. I started smoking when I was Jess’s age, filching my grandmother’s menthols. I thought they were so fancy, the special green and gold package. Maybe Jess is wilder than I thought. I don’t blame her, really, not wanting to talk to me. She knows something is going on.

  My grandmother, on the other hand, is always hovering, asking if I’m okay. She worries about my headaches, how tired I get, how thin I am. I’ve lost five more pounds.

  Today, I asked my mom what she thought about telling Jess and Mamaw the truth. It gets exhausting, pretending you’re someone you’re not.

  Her shoulder blades tensed. She was at the stove, pushing around pink clumps of beef with a spatula, furiously working her arm.

  They’re going to find out, Mom, and then what?

  She clicked off the burner and turned around, her face rigid. I’ll talk to your father, she said. But I don’t think he’s going to change his mind. He’s trying to do what’s right.

  Right for who?

  There were tears in her eyes. Maybe there were tears in mine too. I went outside with Sadie. We sat for a long time, the sun on our faces. My dad doesn’t want anyone to know I have AIDS because he doesn’t want anyone to know I’m gay.

  June 27, 1986

  Today, I was watching TV with my grandmother, and Tammy Faye Bakker was on, singing about Jesus, and Mamaw looked at me.

  Honey, even if you don’t go to church, God will listen to your prayers, she says.

  Good Lord. Was she telling me to get right with God? Does she worry I’m heading to hell? Tammy Faye doesn’t seem to believe in a punishing kind of God, and I don’t think my grandmother does either. As Tammy Faye blinked her mascara-thick lashes, I was reminded of drag queens I knew in New York.

  I wouldn’t mind going to church with Tammy Faye, I said. Especially if she’d let me do her makeup.

  Mamaw giggled. Big alligator tears started to run down Tammy Faye’s glittery pink cheeks. Oh, there she goes! Anything can set her off, Mamaw said.

  When I was little, on “Avon nights,” we’d sit at the table, and Mamaw would make lists of what she sold and what she needed to reorder. I’d help organize everything, lining up mascara wands, tubes of lipstick, flat pressed squares of eye shadow. Moisturizer that smelled like flowers. Eye cream. I loved the dark green bottles of perfume, the elegant gold cases of rouge. My grandmother didn’t care if my hands fluttered. She asked my opinions, she trusted my taste. I think Mamaw would love to see a drag queen.

  Sometimes, I’d help friends with their makeup, but I only did drag a couple of times myself. I never performed or went out in public, didn’t have the nerve or the courage. But, still, when I sat in front of a mirror and brushed on blush and eye shadow, glued on eyelashes, I felt a wild shock of delight.

  Boys came to me because I had the right touch. A few of them are dead, others sick, others infected. They were thrilled to be wearing makeup and sparkling gowns and wigs, and to be free from their fathers’ disappointment and shame.

  They were so beautiful.

  I want to tell you about my life in the Before. Before the ghosts. And how all that changed.

  When I first got to New York, it took me a month or so to work up the courage to go to a gay bar. I was terrified, walking into that room of men. It didn’t take long for one to come over—mustached, older, wearing a muscle shirt. He took me home. I had never even kissed a guy before. He treated me to breakfast the next day and said he’d call. He never did. It didn’t matter.

  New York was all dancing with shirts off, bare chests bumping. With music inside our hearts, we moved in ways that we had never been allowed to before. I had sex, I fell in love—with the city, with men. I met men who looked at me like nobody ever had before. Everything I used to dream about, but better.

  Before we started dying, we were part of an electric dream. Alive and young, I danced and fucked and loved. Stayed out all night, snorting just one more line, ordering just
one more round. Now, it’s all vitamins and juices, pills and pretend treatments.

  My first couple of years in the city, I heard rumors of something called GRID—gay cancer. But, even in New York, it seemed far away. Who got it? Older, rich gays who worked on Wall Street and spent their summers on Fire Island—worlds away from the poor artists and faggots of the East Village.

  Then, a few weeks after I met Shawn, a friend of his died. Shawn told me things were going to get bad. I didn’t understand, I don’t think most of us did.

  He was right, of course. More guys started getting sick. You’d see a guy at a party with horrific, purple, cancerous marks of KS all over his face, trying to make small talk and act normal. Emaciated guys limping along on walkers. I was scared, we all were. Afraid of someone sweating on you, touching you. That was before we know what we know now. Before AIDS was on the news, in magazines like Time and Newsweek, on TV shows. Before it had become a regular part of our lives.

  You started hearing things—who’d gone back to their families, who was in the hospital, who was dead. I had a friend, Troy Benton, who lost his mind—a twenty-seven-year-old turned into an old senile man. All these young men in the prime of their lives. You’d see a guy who looked fine, and run into him a few months later and he’d be puttering around on a cane. Or, someone would just drop out—you wouldn’t see him anymore at the bars or the bath houses, or at art shows or dinners—and you knew he was sick or dead. It wasn’t like someone would say, I have AIDS, or I have HIV. They’d just disappear.

  When I finally went in for the test, I wasn’t surprised. Still, you don’t want to believe. Even after your brilliant beautiful boyfriend dies in a shitty hospital room, even after you’ve seen friends and lovers wasting away, you want to believe you’re different.

  It’s impossible to understand or explain what it feels like when you’re told you’re going to die. Back in New York, some days I wanted to breathe in every single second. I’d notice little things—like a scrawny tree pushing up through the cement—and feel grateful I was a part of the city I loved. Other days I was a sobbing mess. Still, other times I burned up with anger toward everyone who was not me—because they were alive, living their goddamn lives, and, I was sick. And people knew it, especially other gays. I had that look—I know because I’d seen it in others: a haunted, hunted look. My body once turned men on, but now they turned away.

  Now here I am. Alive, in Ohio, where we do not speak of the dead. Let us pretend. Where are all my beautiful men?

  June 28, 1986

  I haven’t asked my father to sit down in front of the camera, but I’ve shot footage of his things. His work boots, his baseball cap that says P.T. GAS & ELECTRIC. In the garage, silver tools hang from pegs on a pegboard above his workbench. Screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers. Everything so neat and orderly. Hefty tool case with little compartments filled with screws and nails. I touch everything. The smell of motor oil makes me weak in the knees, that male smell, that father smell. The sunlight falling through the dirty windows turns the garage into a faded Polaroid from my childhood, yellow and summery—from a time when he still liked me.

  I wonder what goes through his mind when he thinks of me, his only son. His queer son. If he has imagined what I do. On my knees, a cock in my mouth. If he thinks of me at all.

  This afternoon I was in the kitchen, and he walked in smelling like outside. He’d been mowing the grass, and there were green flecks on his neck, on his pants legs and in his hair. Silver mustache, stubble on his chin. His rolled-up sleeves showed off his muscles. Sometimes I hear him lifting weights in the garage—his grunts as he presses the barbell up off his chest, a weight none of us can touch, and then the thud and clatter when he drops it.

  It’s going to rain, he says.

  I could hear thunder rumbling in the distance. On hot summer afternoons, when I was a kid, we used to sit on the porch watching the storms roll in.

  He made himself a baloney sandwich. Then he looked up and asked if I wanted one.

  The simple question cut me open. Yes, yes, I want my father to make me a sandwich. I want him to feed it to me with his fingers, bite by bite. Yes, please.

  I told him no thanks, I wasn’t hungry.

  He says, The Reds are playing.

  An invitation? I followed him into the front room. Maybe noticing my shivering, he turned off the A/C and cracked a window. Then the gray sky opened up and the rain started coming down. I breathed in the metallic smell of it hitting the mesh screen and the prickly scent of ozone. The room went dark, and my father turned on the lamp—the spotlight shining on him.

  The announcers talked in low, intense voices. The sky on TV was blue and clear. When the Reds scored, my father looked over, forgetting for a moment his son’s a faggot, and gave me a thumbs up. When I was little, prancing around to Dolly Parton, my grandmother egging me on as I flipped my pretend long, beautiful hair, I caught my father’s embarrassment, how could I not? For him, I learned to speak the language of baseball.

  The rain was starting to come in, gathering in small pools on the sill, but I didn’t close the window. I liked the fresh air on my face. A sudden clap of thunder shook the house. I felt so alive, and safe.

  June 30, 1986

  Today Mamaw picked me up in her Crown Vic, tequila-gold shining in the sun, washed and waxed, and said we were going shopping. She loves to drive, always has. She used to drive all over the hills of Ohio, hawking her wares. It wasn’t easy to sell beauty products in Appalachia, but my grandmother was a hell of a saleswoman. Usually, the lady of the house would invite us in, offer us a glass of Coke. If Mamaw ran into any trouble making a sell, then she’d get me to sing a Dolly Parton number. My cuteness usually nailed it.

  You have a special way of seeing the world, she used to say. Like her brother, the one who was killed in the war. A young man who never had a girlfriend. Whenever she talks about him, she gets tears in her eyes. He was a good man, she says.

  When I left Ohio, my grandmother understood. She told me to live my life, but I also saw the hurt in her eyes. I’m scared for you, she said. I told her I’d be back soon.

  Now I want her to take care of me, but how can she if she doesn’t know? When I was growing up, she laughed at jokes about homosexuals, we all did. Since I’ve been here, she hasn’t said a word about gays or AIDS.

  We went to the mall in Madison. She wanted to go in every store, stopping to look at all the window displays. Oh, look how cute, she’d say, pointing out ceramic puppies, a mug with a bunny on it, a pair of tiny red Dorothy slippers. She touched things. She picked up a container of potpourri, and gushed, Oh, don’t this smell good.

  After an hour or so, we took a break. Not for her. For me. She pretended she needed a rest too, but she wasn’t winded at all. I hardly remember how things felt during the Before: when I never had to think about breathing or walking or running any more than I did about eating or sleeping. Those were just things the body did—without pain, without effort. Now the shortness of breath comes and goes. My body—I want the old one back.

  We sat on a cement bench next to the center fountain, the bottom lined with pennies and nickels. I dipped my hand in. The water was cold and clear, smelled like metal.

  When my grandmother saw a couple of ladies she knew, she waved big.

  This is my grandson, Brian, she tells them. He’s back from New York City.

  New York! They shook their heads with wonder, eyes locked onto my earring. Both were squat, boxy, with short, styleless hair. Dykes, I thought, but of course, they had husbands at home, kids and grandkids. One wore a loose T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on the front, so long it fell almost to her knees, and the other had on a plain blue oxford worn out at the elbows. They’ve probably never been out of Ohio. They have everything they need here, why go anywhere else?

  After they left us, Mamaw opened her change purse, the same one she’s had for years, with the little copper clasp that fastens together. She handed me a penny and took one for herse
lf.

  Make you a wish, she said.

  I flipped the penny in, and when I opened my eyes, it had already sunk and joined the hundreds of others, all those drowned wishes. I’m scared, Mamaw, I wanted to say. Make me better.

  We went to Sears and walked through the ladies’ section where a few women browsed the sale racks. Watching them, hearing the click of the plastic hangers, I felt nostalgic. When I was little, I used to crawl under the racks of clothes, slipping between dresses and slacks, as Mamaw read price tags aloud and touched the material to see if it was well-made or not.

  We rode the escalator up to the men’s department, even though I told her I didn’t need anything.

  It’s my money, she says. Look here. They’re having a sale on tops.

  She sent me over to a table of shirts and told me to hold out my arms, and a salesman with puffy blond hair came over and asked if we needed any help. He was probably in his mid-thirties. Tiny lines around his eyes. He wore silver rings on his fingers and spoke with a predictable lisp. I gave him a smile of recognition. You can spot your own. This one, what a nelly.

  I told him we were just looking.

  If you need anything, just holler, he says, voice all bright and gay. He said his name was Andrew.

  My grandmother, chatty, told him all about me—her grandson, home from New York City.

  Andrew gave me the same knowing look I’d given him. As he hovered, jabbering about upcoming sales, I started to feel like I couldn’t breathe. The factory smell of new clothes and cheap carpet, the swirl of cologne—I was suffocating. I needed to get the hell out of there.

  That’s a good color on you, he says, as my grandmother held up a blue shirt to me. She goes, Matches his eyes, doesn’t it?