So then I thought maybe I would keep going with the break from drugs and even alcohol, though it was quite an endurance test eating dinner with Nate without cocktails, and Avery was starting to annoy me again. We even ended up arguing about the word snatch—she said she was reclaiming it, which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard and then I went from that argument to dinner with Nate, who kept saying Tyler, you don’t seem like yourself. So I figured it was time for a cocktail—I took one sip of that first drink and thought oh, this is it, my life, hello. After the third cocktail I went upstairs and did a bump and when I came back downstairs Nate said you’re in a good mood.
That’s when he asked me if I wanted to read another book together and I was feeling pretty daring so I said Close to the Knives, I’m always ready for Close to the Knives. So, here we go, “Self-Portrait in Twenty-Three Rounds,” and there’s that feeling in the back of my head, how do I describe that feeling? Listen: “So my heritage is a calculated fuck on some faraway sun-filled bed while the curtains are being sucked in and out of an open window by a passing breeze.”
I finish the first chapter way before Nate so I sit there and wait, sipping my cocktail and looking at his face until he looks at me and says: It’s a little much, Tyler—it’s a lot to look at. And I think about how reading Close to the Knives was the first time I ever felt my own rage in print, and whether Nate thinks that’s what’s too much.
Chapter 2, and I realize that when it’s this quiet I can hear the sound of the refrigerator in the other room. I look up at the chandelier, and the way the light goes in all directions. I think about my breathing—is it shallow or deep? And then Nate clears his throat, and when I look at him he says: I think I’d like to start with the other one.
He means Memories That Smell Like Gasoline. He saw it in my room. I actually have two copies because I used to give them out to people in San Francisco, new friends, anyone I wanted to get to know. Okay, I say to Nate, though I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into. Back downstairs Nate opens the book to the table of contents and says would it be okay if we read one chapter at a time?
And that’s a little weird because this book is so short, but also it’s kind of fun now that I’m studying the cover—the blurred headlights of a truck on the highway in a soft teal blue and then the title in yellow, David’s name in black, black-and-white stripes on the side that lead to the spine and onto the back cover, which otherwise is orange. I never thought of this before, but maybe the stripes are supposed to represent a prison jumpsuit? A piano. A hospital.
And then you open the book and on the inside cover there’s David’s handwriting, just a few enlarged words and phrases—“8th Avenue and hands and,” and then a word I can’t figure out, plus some partial words and then “wouldn’t sucking him he come in the curtains.”
On to the first page, which means the first image, I would call it a watercolor, but on the back of the book it says these are ink paintings. What’s spooky about this picture is the look on the face of the one guy you can see—it’s like he’s grinding his teeth and furrowing his brow, looking down or deep inside and not at either of the cocks in front of him. The only desire is the way his left arm wraps around one guy’s calf, hand disappearing into the floor. I mean there’s no hand, just an arm that goes away. You can see the way darkness frames light in the brushstrokes that almost look like fingerprints, gray and black and then white—the white is what makes it look like the flash of a camera has just gone off.
And then, just when I feel like I’m reading too much into the expression in that one guy’s face, there’s the first line of text: “Sometimes it gets dark in here behind these eyes I feel like the physical equivalent of a scream.”
The way driving becomes sex becomes imagination becomes intimacy becomes loneliness, you turn the page past the rest stop and the silhouette of a man, to an image of a guy jerking off in the top left corner of the page, but it’s the next page where I see myself in this guy who leans forward to suck someone off. Someone’s resting his hand on my head as he leans back in something so close to pain while the background looks like smoke billowing up—the theater the truck stop the bathroom the park, wherever it makes sense and doesn’t make sense this hope for connection. That’s what David first gave me, a language for talking about my own desires that before I still thought I needed to overcome. Because when I went to those bathrooms as a teenager I was trying not to feel, over and over again these old guys, guys like Nate with pasty skin and pink sweaty bodies, over and over again these guys sucking the drive I hated but couldn’t stop. And then afterward, once I remembered about my father, I thought oh, I wanted to beat him, to win, to win over these desires that meant I was evil, deserved to die, I would never be anything else.
And when I first read David’s words, is it okay that I call him David, David because he feels so close even though I discovered his words through his death. And I thought oh, this is what sex could mean, should mean—a flash, an explosion, a connection so rare, so possible, so hopeful, so empty.
And here David talks about looking at the light fixture on the ceiling through a puddle in between bathroom stalls, and I’m thinking about how I used to stare at the tiles on the floor of the bathroom at Mazza Gallerie after school, looking for the movement of shadow that meant jerking off, that meant maybe someone would hand me a note on toilet paper wrapped around a pen, and we would head off to the back stairwell and down into the mall parking lot.
I was on the way to my father’s office, and doesn’t that make so much sense now. Because first I was trying not to feel anything in these interactions that I craved in spite of all my shame, and then I was aware of something else, I didn’t know what exactly, but there was a way that this secret world felt like a trap but also a place I could escape to.
I will never be on the way to my father’s office again, but maybe I’m still looking for the place I can escape to. It’s the end of the chapter, as this guy is grabbing or maybe holding, I think he’s holding David’s head and saying go ahead, enjoy it, and then: “His fingers and face scattered into shards of light.” That line in red, the way it goes into my eyes suddenly light too, and I’m wondering if David was able to plan out the layout of this text, the layout of the text and images before he died.
And when I look up at Nate he’s smiling, and so I smile too, and there’s something like desire between us. Or maybe not desire exactly, what is it?
And Nate says: I want to give you a hug. Is that okay?
And I say yeah, that would be sweet, and I’m wondering if it really could be sweet, maybe in this moment—it feels kind of nice to rest my head on his shoulder and drift away except then I’m thinking oh no, now he’s going to say let’s go in the bedroom, I don’t want to go in the bedroom now.
I don’t get to Paradise until one a.m., but then right away I’m dancing with some muscly blond guy with swept-back hair who’s kind of tacky but he really knows how to work the moves, I mean really. His name’s Calvin. He says don’t you remember me, you know I used to be friends with Brian, I was in the coast guard, I stayed at your house, we did coke together, you were making a spinach salad. He’s wired. Those glassy blue eyes. And I’m just laughing my ass off because I guess now he’s a fag.
After a while he’s got me in his arms—I don’t know how it happens exactly because first we’re practically flying into one another but stopping in the way you do on the dance floor, but then somehow it moves into something else and he says do you want to go home with me? So then we’re outside, getting into that same red sports car, and I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever gone home with anyone from Paradise.
We do coke in the car and then when we get to Calvin’s place he offers me K and I get kind of excited since I haven’t done K in a while, somehow I forgot all about it. But then I do too much and suddenly I can feel my heart beating in my skin is that really my heart I mean how do I know this is really the same Calvin I mean how does he r
emember so much, and I’m staring at the door behind his face like someone else is there and I can feel the ground beneath the ground but also it’s like I’m on a roller coaster. So we just sit there for a while and then eventually I go home.
I forgot that chapter 2 of Memories That Smell Like Gasoline was about rape, rape and the way you remember, the way it stays in your body and keeps you so scared and helpless. I didn’t remember until now, now when I’m sitting here at the dinner table with Nate and he looks so concerned, which makes me cry more, and then he says did something like that happen to you?
But does he mean a trick gone wrong, turned into rape in a truck on the side of a road you don’t know, like in the book, or does he mean a trick gone wrong, turned into a rape that you see again, when you see him or when you don’t, or does he just mean a trick gone wrong? Or does he mean rape in general, and is rape ever general, or just rape, does he mean have you ever been raped, and who hasn’t been raped?
I haven’t told Nate about my father, I mean I told him I hate my father, that when I was thirteen I decided I had no respect for my parents at all but still I was trapped and now I don’t want to talk to them ever again. But I haven’t told him why. I don’t know if I want to.
But now Nate’s saying has that ever happened to you, and I just nod my head and continue sobbing. He comes over and rubs my back. I’m sorry, he says, I’m sorry that happened to you—I don’t want it to happen to you again. And I can’t believe I’m crying this much, when was the last time I cried this much, I mean I can’t believe I’m crying again with Nate, who hands me another cocktail, and do I want this cocktail, yes.
Later I’m with Avery—he was so present for me when I was sick, but now he’s all over the place. Avery, I say, I need you to listen to me. But he’s still not listening.
I want to tell him about crying with Nate, and what does it mean? I want to tell him about David Wojnarowicz, about rage, about powerlessness, about childhood, about all this emotion I’m starting to feel, even with the coke, I want to tell Avery that she’s part of this emotion, this feeling, this opening up. But I can’t get her to pay attention so I just tell her about Calvin, and she looks really scared.
You went home with someone? She says it twice. Almost three times—two and a half—because the third time she just says you went home.
Yeah, with some guy who used to be straight, I mean he was in the coast guard and he passed out in my room but now he’s a fag and we went back to his place and did K but then I felt weird and walked home.
You went home with someone?
Avery, why are you freaking out?
Back at the dinner table with Nate, we’ve reached the place in the book where the drawings become less ink and more line. These are the ones that made me anxious the first time, made me feel gross. Right before I remembered I was sexually abused.
I think it was this first drawing in particular: black lines on a white page with a hard dick in the center. Face cut off. The chest is just a box, arms without hands, and it’s a drawing of a Polaroid a guy took when David was nine or ten. It freaks me out to look at it now too. Nine or ten, when I was nine or ten.
Then there’s something so disgusting about looking at the line drawing of this old guy with a receding hairline staring into those white briefs to look for signs of an STD. In the narrative underneath, David writes that the guy is with his son, they picked David up together, and somehow this guy reminds me of my father, even though my father’s hair isn’t receding. I remember when I was nine or ten, and I would take my father’s underwear out of his dresser and smell it while I was jerking off. There’s a chill going through my body until I finish my cocktail, and then Nate stands right up to get me another.
It’s strange how when I thought about this book before it was all about AIDS, but now we’re two-thirds of the way through and David hasn’t even mentioned AIDS. Except then there’s page 39: “The beautiful view and my overwhelming urge to puke.” The view from a friend’s hospital room, right across from the guy looking into ten-year-old David’s underwear. And then after the image of the hospital and the smell of human shit, and some guy telling David-as-a-kid not to worry, he won’t come in his mouth, while the wind in the picture blows everything in the room to the left, I turn the page and it’s a guy covered in lesions. And I don’t know if I’m ready, I mean I don’t know if I’m ready to read this with Nate. So I close the book, and I say what do you think of the drawings? And Nate closes his book too and says: I think they’re pornography, child pornography.
There’s something about having sex with someone who knows you, who knows you so well, who knows you so well in this particular way. Avery and I are on Joey’s bed, Avery’s fucking me from behind and I don’t have to ask him to put his hands underneath my thighs, to rub softly, really softly. When I move his hand away from my dick he doesn’t move it back, I don’t have to keep pushing him away. When I pull his arms around me he keeps them there, holding me with his dick still in my ass, until I relax and then he moves his hands all over my head and face and down to my neck like he’s going to choke me and I feel so safe.
And he pushes me onto the bed, face down, I know this is a game we’re both playing until ouch, I pull away, and he pulls out, turns me over, grabs my head again and we’re making out in that way that makes me forget there’s anything else except this tongue and those eyes so close to my eyes I can feel his eyelashes, my hands all over his back, squeezing his armpits, there’s his dick at my asshole again, inside as he puts all his weight right on my chest, yes, spits in my face the way he was afraid to before and I’m laughing because there’s a lot of spit, I’m laughing with all this spit and Avery on top of me, now he’s biting my neck and pumping, grabbing me all around, I can tell he’s going to come so I grab his head and feel the pressure of his belly against my dick, and after he comes and pulls out and throws the condom to the side he lies down beside me and I get on top of him, move one of his hands under my balls and then I squeeze him tight, that stickiness between us and now Avery’s laughing and saying how did you come so much?
So when Nate says child pornography I feel defensive, like he’s criticizing my life. How we were so close yesterday or the day before, and what does it mean to feel that close, when you’re not really close? Maybe I need another cocktail.
And then Avery pulls the sheets off the bed, opens the linen closet and there are all different colors—paisley, plaid, bright yellow—at first I wonder what happened to Joey’s sheets, but there they are on the bottom shelf. Avery pulls out the paisley sheets and drapes one over me, it’s soft but stiff in that new-sheet kind of way. They’re for you, he says, us, and when I go to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror, wrapping the sheet around my head, I see there are new towels too, paisley towels that almost match the paisley sheets, such beautiful colors and I feel like a little kid twirling around in one of my mother’s dresses, I mean I was never allowed to do that but now.
In Memories That Smell Like Gasoline, the Gulf War is playing on hundreds of TV screens at St. Vincent’s Hospital—I’m thinking about senior year of high school when I was studying for finals at the American University cafeteria and I looked up at the TV screens and there it was, the bombs were dropping: I couldn’t study anymore.
Then on the next page there’s that drawing of the guy with lesions all over his body, everywhere, there’s nowhere without lesions and his eyes are closed like maybe he can imagine this away. Something so simple can feel so scary. And I’m thinking about how I hardly ever see anyone with lesions anymore, and where have they all gone?
And then I hear Nate gasp, and when I look up I see his hand over his mouth. He doesn’t look at me. We both go back to reading. There’s a drawing of a guy with blood all over his clothes from cruising the waterfront for hustlers: “Maybe I did something wrong,” he says, on one side, and then on the other we learn for the first time about the virus inside David’s body.
BOYS IN THE SAND
> So now here I am, wired to all hell, at the party picnic table in the Fens. I’m not even horny, or I don’t think I’m horny, but Avery and I were arguing again about Calvin, who asked me out on a date, and I said why is this date such a big deal, I mean I don’t even have any friends. And Avery said why do you need friends?
So now I’m in the Fens, smoking pot to try to calm down—Avery doesn’t care about the Fens, since I’m never going to meet any friends here. Some guy wearing a big floppy hat comes up and sits down across from me, I figure he just wants pot so I hand it to him and he says oh, oh, manners, remember manners, don’t we? Don’t we? I hold out my lighter and then he takes a big hit.
Ooh, ooh, that’s right, he says, and smiles at me. What’s your name, he says, and holds out his hand.
Ooh, that’s a good one—what’s your real name, the one your mother gave you? Ooh, ooh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. That’s the last thing I wanted to do. You know you’re an awfully attractive boy. Boy-girl. Girl-boy. I like a girl boy boy-girl girl-boy girly girly cutie hot-tot hottie tottie hottie, yeah! Yeah! Do you like to party?
So then I’m on my way to his house, wondering if this counts as a date. He lives in one of those big old buildings right on the Fens that I’ve always thought were kind of glamorous, but we don’t go inside, we go around back behind the gas station next to the Ramrod, and his apartment has its own entrance on the ground level. He makes a big show of saying welcome, welcome to Pee-wee’s playhouse, but when he opens the door it’s pitch dark and he says don’t worry, don’t worry ’bout a thing.
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