Like a Love Story

by Abdi Nazemian

  “I think the originals should go with you,” I say. “It’s what Stephen would have wanted. He wrote them for you.”

  “Thank you,” Art says, with genuine surprise. Then he takes my hand, and says, “Thank you for sharing him with me. He was your uncle.”

  “Art, stop,” I say. “He didn’t belong to me. No one belongs to anyone.”

  I see Reza glance at Art when I say this. Maybe Reza wanted Art to belong to him, or vice versa. I know Reza considered leaving with Art. He even asked me to talk through the decision with him. We made a pros and cons list. There was only one pro to leaving: Art. There were a lot of cons. Ultimately, Reza chose college and his family.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” Art says, his face lighting up. “I think we have time.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  Art tells us. We make one more copy of the cards, and then we go around scattering them around the city like ashes. We leave #69 King, Billie Jean, in a restaurant booth. #130 Woodlawn, Holly, we place in a mailbox. We put #24 Cockettes on a car windshield, and countless cards on storefronts.

  We hand a businessman #68 Jorgensen, Christine.

  We stop two fabulous models and give them #74 Lorde, Audre.

  To our taxi driver on our way to the airport, we bequeath #95 Provincetown.

  In the airport, we leave them in the bathroom, on the magazine stands, inside suitcase carts, until they are almost gone.

  All but one. We go to an airport store selling magazines, medicine, trinkets, and souvenirs. We consider placing the final card in front of the latest issue of Vanity Fair. Anjelica Huston is on the cover, looking fierce in a red dress I kind of wish I’d designed myself. Stephen would’ve approved, but it doesn’t feel right. We browse the rest of the shop. Yankees hats, and I Heart NY T-shirts, stuffed bears with a map of the state on them, key chains. Finally, we see a display with hundreds of plastic Statue of Liberty figurines standing next to each other. That’s where we choose to place the card.

  #75 Love.

  We stare at it together, read it as if it’s Lady Liberty’s new epitaph.

  “Was it love?” Reza whispers to Art. “Or was it like love?”

  I realize I’m a third wheel here. I grab a copy of Harper’s Bazaar, and I excuse myself to the corner of the store. Madonna is on the cover, obviously, her hair more platinum than ever. In red block letters, the cover reads “SEX IS ALIVE and well.” I flip the pages and read. But it’s a small store, and I can hear them.

  “It was love,” Art says. “True blue.”

  “Then why would you leave?” Reza asks. “Who leaves their true blue love?”

  Art says nothing.

  “Am I not enough?” Reza says.

  “You’re perfect,” Art says. “I’m the one who’s fucked up. And I hate myself sometimes, Reza. For always wanting more. For never being satisfied. For hurting people.”

  “Then don’t hurt people,” Reza begs. “Stay.”

  I want to jump into the conversation and echo everything Reza is saying. Don’t hurt me, Art. Don’t go. Don’t leave me in this city without my best friend. Don’t break my heart.

  “You will always be my first,” Art says.

  Reza sobs now. It’s so loud and so horrible that I want to rush over and hold him. Everyone in the store looks over at them, concern on their faces, but like me, no one dares interrupt.

  “I have no regrets, Reza,” Art says, holding him now. “Do you?”

  “No,” Reza says. “No.”

  Art’s eyes well up. “I get how crazy and impulsive this is. But I’m impulsive, and maybe that’s one of the things you loved about me . . .”

  “Love,” Reza says. “I still love you.”

  Then Art whispers the final words of the card still resting near them. “Love is our legacy,” he says.

  “Love is our legacy,” Reza repeats.

  I feel a wave of gratitude that these two found each other. The idea that Reza and I were once a couple seems absurd. I’ll find my true first love someday. And when I find him, I’ll never let him go like Art is letting Reza go. Never.

  “I didn’t deserve you,” Art says to Reza.

  “Shut up,” Reza says. “You did, and you do. And if you change your mind . . .” Reza doesn’t finish the sentence. If Art changes his mind, Reza will be waiting. I will, too.

  I look at the time and approach them. “You’re going to miss your flight,” I say.

  We leave the store and walk toward the security line. Art has his camera around his neck, and he points it at me and Reza. He snaps a photo.

  “Really?” I ask, shaking my head lovingly.

  “I want to remember this moment,” he says, smiling.

  “You better come visit,” I say sadly.

  “I’ll be here for my MoMA show next year,” he says jokingly.

  I smile. Art dreams big, and he’s always let me dream big. “And I’ll be in San Francisco next year. They’re closing down the Golden Gate Bridge and turning it into a catwalk for my debut show.”

  We both turn to Reza, wanting him to play the game, to make some grand proclamation of where he’ll be next year. “Stop looking at me,” he says. “I don’t even know what I want to do yet.”

  “Just tell us what you dream about,” Art says. “In your wildest dreams, what would you be?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Happy?”

  “Everyone wants that!” Art says. “It’s a cop-out of an answer. Say you want to be an astronaut, or you want to cure AIDS, or you want to be a movie star, or Madonna’s manager.”

  “I think,” Reza says longingly, “I’d like to be a father someday. To have my own family. Does that count?”

  Art looks genuinely surprised, like it’s the last answer he was expecting. “Yeah,” he says finally. “It counts.”

  We stare at each other for a few moments, and then I say, “You really are gonna miss your flight, Art.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Well, I guess this is adieu then.”

  I smile. One of Stephen’s favorite songs is “Comment Te Dire Adieu,” and it’s like he’s here with us when Art uses that word.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Good luck,” Reza says, and he gives Art a hug.

  They clutch each other, their hands on each other’s necks, like they’re bottling this moment so they can drink it in when they’re apart.

  When they let go, Art pulls me into a hug. I feel like I could stay here forever, in his arms, like we’re one being, sharing a heartbeat, finishing each other’s sentences. Who else knows who I had a crush on when I was ten, and how terribly my first attempt at shaving my legs went? Who else will understand when I want to quote old movies?

  “Hey, don’t let anyone else call you Frances,” he says with deadpan seriousness. “You’ll always be my Frances.”

  I don’t know what to say to him, so I say nothing. I just pull away from him and look deep into his eyes. They’re moist. Mine are too. I nod. I’ll always be his Frances. And he’ll always be my best friend.

  He walks away from us backward, waving his hand, until he bumps into a lady, who doesn’t seem amused. Then he turns around, facing away from us, and disappears into the crowds going through the security lines, headed to different cities, other countries, fresh starts.

  Reza and I stand there for a moment, frozen. Above us is the list of all the destinations planes are headed to. Some flights are boarding, some delayed. The departure times changing on the screen mesmerize us, and Reza says, “If you could pick one city from that list and go right now, which would it be?”

  “Do I get to take anyone I want?” I say. “Because it’s not really the city that matters; it’s the people I’m with.”

  He nods. I don’t answer the question, and neither does he.

  “It’s Sunday,” I say.

  “Movie night?” Reza asks, as if he can read my thoughts.

  “Movie night,” I repeat. “Annabel might come over, but she loves old mov
ies. Is that cool?”

  “Of course,” he says. “She seems nice. And three is a nice number, as it turns out.”

  We head out of the airport, toward the chaos of the taxi line. The air outside is thick with cigarette smoke and the scent of perfume. We get in the back of the taxi line, behind a woman traveling alone with three children. She holds a baby, and her two toddlers pull at her. She speaks a language I don’t know, making everything she says to her children sound musical. The taxi line inches forward, and we all inch with it. One of the woman’s children stares at me, and I stare back, playing peekaboo with her. I wonder who all these new arrivals to the city are. Where did they come from, and where are they going?

  The woman turns around, and that’s when I notice her baby is holding a piece of paper, chewing on its edges. No, it’s a notecard. Stephen’s notecard. Love.

  I asked a question, and Stephen answered. We all come from love. And that’s where we’re going too. Where we are now, that’s the complicated part.

  June 2016

  “It’s always wrong to hate, but it’s never wrong to love.”

  —Lady Gaga

  Art

  Some traditions must end, but sometimes, in their place, a new tradition is born. Sunday movie nights couldn’t last forever. Not without Stephen, not after I left Reza, Judy, and New York for San Francisco. But we started something new after I left. Every June, on the anniversary of Stephen’s death, me, Judy, and Reza meet in New York City. Sometimes Jimmy joins us too, having survived just long enough for protease inhibitors to extend his life, though not without severe side effects. I was luckier, the drugs more sophisticated by the time I tested positive. But Jimmy fights on, lives on, and writes on—five novels and counting—in Paris, where he has chosen to live among the spirits of James Baldwin and Josephine Baker, two of his favorite ghosts. He told me once that if someone had predicted back then that he’d live longer than Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, he’d have told them they were crazier than the whole Psychic Friends Network put together. And yet there he was, in June of 2016, on the twenty-sixth anniversary of Stephen’s death, dancing the night away with us at, where else, an eighties night in the East Village. “Into the Groove” was playing and the sound of Madonna’s beckoning call made us feel young again. Judy’s children were sleeping soundly, her husband watching them for the night. Reza’s kids were with his husband in Connecticut, where Reza teaches classes about the sociology of pop culture. We were all dressed in outrageous and glamorous clothes designed by Judy, she being the preferred designer of rock stars, drag queens, and plus-size girls. It was Jimmy who got an alert on his phone first. A gunman had opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a place named to remember the owner’s brother who died of AIDS, in honor of his pulse to keep living, keep fighting. By morning, we would know more details. Forty-nine killed. Fifty-three wounded. We were all supposed to go home, but we couldn’t. We needed to be held by people who understood that every queer life taken is tragedy on top of tragedy, a loss of family, and so much trauma relived. We needed to be with people who knew our history. Stephen’s notecards will belong to my child one day, and now I’m adding some more. So much has happened since Stephen left us. Prop 8 and RuPaul and DOMA and Ellen and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and Tori Amos and Chechnya and Laverne Cox and Will & Grace and PrEP and Gaga and Queen Bey and Pulse.

  Here’s what I learned from Stephen: You are not alone and never will be, because you have a beautiful, constantly evolving history full of ghosts who are watching over you, who are proud of you. If you ever feel lonely, just look up at the sky. José and Walt and Judy Garland and Marsha P. Johnson are always with you, and so many more. Just ask them to listen, and they will. Tell your story until it becomes woven into the fabric of our story. Write about the joys and the pain and every event and every artist who inspires you to dream. Tell your story, because if you don’t, it could be wiped out. No one tells our stories for us. And one more thing. If you see an elderly person walking down the street, or across from you at a coffee shop, don’t look away from them, don’t dismiss them, and don’t just ask them how they’re doing. Ask them where they have been instead. And then listen. Because there’s no future without a past.

  Author’s Note

  I realized I was gay before I had a word for it, before I knew there were thriving gay communities. Like Reza, I was born in Iran, and I moved to New York from Canada when I was young. But unlike Reza, I wasn’t exposed to its gay community. All I knew of the feeling inside me was fear and shame. All I saw of gay life was death. I thought I had a choice between being myself and staying alive, which isn’t a choice at all. Either way, I wouldn’t truly be living. The generation I come from wasn’t old enough to be on the front lines at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, nor were we young enough to come of age when treatment was available. We were coming into our sexuality with fear drilled into us, and it worked. That fear protected me from making risky decisions, but it also made it difficult to accept myself, since for most of my youth I viewed my sexuality as a death sentence. Writing this book was a way for me to reconnect with the scared teenager who still lives somewhere inside me, and to thank the friends, family, artists, and activists who helped me on my journey from shame to acceptance.

  My first exposure to a celebratory depiction of gay life came through, who else? Madonna. I fell in love with Madonna when her very first video was released. I made my parents take me to the Virgin Tour when I was way too young for it. I created a Madonna Room in our home as a place of worship, a place where I could be with the person who let me dream big and seemed to understand and accept me before even I did. Yes, a Madonna Room, and it would be over a decade before I would come out to my parents! She was so much a part of my life that she practically became a member of our family. So when she started to explicitly and courageously include queer life in her work, there was no way to shield me from it. She was also a portal into other queer art. Thanks to Madonna, I discovered filmmakers like Pedro Almodóvar and artists like Keith Haring, and I learned about the underground ball scene. Thanks to Madonna, I saw queerness not as a death sentence, but as a community and an identity to be celebrated. My gratitude to her is boundless.

  In high school and college, I was exposed to more queer culture. One high school teacher introduced me to gay films like Paris Is Burning, The Times of Harvey Milk, and Maurice. I started to read queer authors. The impact of these works, and of the mentors who shared them with me, cannot be understated. This book could never exist without the spiritual mentorship of all the storytellers who gave voice to queer life and to the AIDS era. Those men and women helped shape who I am long before the idea for this novel came to me, and they guided me as I researched this novel. I hope anyone who reads and likes this book uses it as a portal into further exploration, and is inspired to read the words of James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Armistead Maupin, Randy Shilts, Paul Monette, Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Sean Strub, Tony Kushner, Amy Hoffman, Tim Murphy, Patricia Powell, and Cleve Jones, to name a few, and then watches films like How to Survive a Plague, Longtime Companion, Parting Glances, Tongues Untied, BPM, Angels in America, and Torch Song Trilogy, to name a few.

  This book is an ode to the heroes and heroines of the AIDS movement, activists who saved lives, without whom I and many others would likely have met different fates. While the protests depicted here are all real, I chose to fictionalize the activists themselves. I didn’t want to put words into the mouths of people I admire as much as Larry Kramer, Marsha P. Johnson, Sarah Schulman, Keith Haring, Peter Staley, and others. To them, and to anyone else who was a member of ACT UP or other activist groups, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I recognize that my health and my freedom would not exist without your heroism. ACT UP was a diverse coalition of men and women of all races. Its leaderless structure, its affinity groups, and its joint actions with feminist groups spoke to an inclusive, diverse, and democratic movement that has served as a model to other activist group
s. I am not a historian, and this isn’t a work of nonfiction. Though the important facts here are well researched, I did make some small changes for storytelling purposes (for example, I may have shifted Madonna’s Maryland Blond Ambition tour date up by two weeks). If you would like to learn more about the true history as it happened, I hope you’ll research these heroes and their work. It is thanks to them that so many of us have the abundant lives we have.

  There is another person who was integral to my coming out and self-acceptance: my first boyfriend, Damon. He forced me to come out to my parents, threatening to break up with me if I didn’t. He pushed me past many of my fears and boundaries. He had in him the flamboyant spirit of an activist. He also had a tremendous amount of darkness, which he shielded me from during our relationship. Years after we broke up, he died of an overdose. He isn’t the only one. I know too many members of our queer community who have taken their own lives or overdosed. There is still shame to work through, still residual fear.

  In college, a friend conducted a survey for a class, asking his classmates where they saw each other with each passing decade. None of the gay men he spoke to, myself included, saw a life for themselves past forty. I am past forty now, with the family I always wanted but never imagined for myself. A loving partner who accepts me as I am, and who knows as many Mommie Dearest quotes as I do. Two incredible kids who light up my life, and have a lot of favorite Madonna songs. I am blessed to live in a time that allows me to live and love freely, but there is still work to be done. When people say that history repeats itself, they tend to mean it in a negative way. But there is so much that can be good about history repeating itself. Activist movements can learn from past activism. Storytellers can be inspired by artists who speak to them. Families and communities can honor their ancestors. We owe so much to those who came before us, and perhaps by honoring the best of the past, we can repeat the best of history instead of the worst of it.