Ralph was all good cheer as he let me off at the truck stop (the rain was still coming down and I was calling it a day, even if it was still early afternoon and Jimmy’s hoop was another fifty miles north. He never said take me back at the same speed, just take me back “the way” ).
“Jesus loves you,” he shouted.
“Right on.” I jutted my thumb in the air because I did sort of like Ralph, Jesus or no.
Oh—he was hauling palm oil, for cookies, crackers, and other snack foods: hydrogenated, lethal to the heart. Poor Ralph, spreading love and death, spreading it like margarine. And how the heart aches.
America, this is the house that Ralph built. Made of fat, cocaine, and Jesus.
I waited until he was out of sight to make a beeline for the liquor store, where I procured a foul-looking packaged burrito (gotta support Ralph’s hydrogenated economy) and a forty-ouncer—just in case Jimmy manifested, thirsty and randy.
Then I mounted my steed and pedaled quickly to the nearby Red Rose Motel. Things had gone mad and roguish, and now everything was rosy in Roseburg.
In the amber light of the little office, a woman who looked like a giant bullfrog gave me a room. “With a view” I requested roguishly, but she didn’t get the joke, or care, and I felt all alone in the mad rain, my bike up on my shoulder, climbing the stairs to room 206, with the view of an empty trash-filled lot, the big double bed, and the freeway beyond. No place like home—and home was there in the bag, gone, a pile of ashes. They burned our house down.
I put my Converses on the radiator to dry and I can’t say whether it was the rain and Jimmy, or the fact that I was avoiding calling my mother, or just Ralph’s tale of woe, but I felt so sad that I climbed into bed and watched out that window as I, a bit too quickly, upended the consolation that was Crazy Horse malt liquor and ended up making love to Jimmy phantoms with my blistered, calloused hand, not wanting to admit to myself that I wished Ralph and Jesus were both there with us.
What a fourway: the hairy stocky jewboy with the big Mediterranean dick, my sweet horseboy Jimmy, and the beefy uncut cokehead who likely fucks like a jackrabbit. My first trucker fantasy.
27
Jimmy got philosophical, which made me worry about dementia. An El Greco–looking saint muttering mysticisms. He talked about Indians—Chief Joseph and Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull—while we waited in clinics with water bottles and little Playmates to keep food and medicine cool.
“Crazy Horse said two things it’s hard to forget. Hoka hey—it’s a good day to die—and when they tried to photograph him: ‘Why would I let you take from me my shadow?’”
“Do you think he said Hoka hey the day he died, Jimmy?”
He looked at me. “They shot him in the back, Shame. He used to say Hoka hey when he went into battle, but yeah, I guess he probably said it every day when he woke up. You gotta understand Zen to understand Crazy Horse, I think. Hoka hey is like a koan.”
“One cannot understand Zen,” I responded in my best Japanese Buddhist monk mimic.
He popped me lightly on the head.
He’s not demented, I thought, relieved. His wan smile.
I didn’t just lose Jimmy. He was torn from me, slowly, like how they took the land from the Indians. Sometimes I’d have much rather he’d gone off and died in Vietnam like my father. There’s a mercy in sudden death. But the slow reduction of life, like starvation—he grew too thin to even have a shadow to take.
I remember a sickman at one clinic, his lover like a Birkenau survivor, shriveled to a skeleton. “When they prove the government created this disease, we’ll have our Israel,” he’d said defiantly. He was angry, and my throat caught to hear his defiance framed in the idea of a place of respite; a sanctuary. It was the kind of anger that made me want to cry.
I didn’t dare.
Because I felt guilty. That I’d been spared. But I felt even guiltier that I found the dying beautiful. And I don’t mean in some poetic way. I thought they were hot is what I mean. I tried to shake it out of my head. These tiny, shriveled gray men, with big eyes (is it as simple as that? Hello Kitty?). They all looked like boys at the end. And all of them seemingly abandoned—if not by family, then by nation, by history, by the fact that all their friends had already died.
I don’t know, but I fell in love or lust a thousand times in those clinics. And Jimmy, I got hotter for him as he withered, and I couldn’t tell if it was love for his sweet, plump heart, or for the appearance of those ribs that surrounded it.
I felt bad for being attracted to him then.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry? It makes me happy. We’re lucky.”
Sweet Jimmy, who could no longer do a thing but lean against me as I’d spill all over him. “You’ll never not be hot to me, Jimmy. Never. You’re beautiful and the best luck ever.”
His sighing smile.
One fairer than my love?
Nah, not gonna happen. Ever.
28
In Eugene, Oregon, next stop north of Roseburg, I got a fateful, hankering hunger for one of Jimmy’s favorite foods: tempeh. And in a place like Eugene, all you have to do is look. And I saw. The characteristic plants and benches out front, the sun and cornucopia painted on its wooden sign, and the ’70s peace-and-love people-of-color mural on the old cement wall of the parking lot. Bingo, tempehland.
I marched into that market in Jimmy’s tattered army shorts and Converse hightops; Jimmy’s stinking Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt; Jimmy in my arms and Jimmy’s food on my mind. Right back through the hippie wooden décor of the place to the rattling refrigerator where I didn’t see the tempeh, and I didn’t want to have tofu in its place, and I wasn’t ready for anything but. Tempeh. And then, like rain I heard it, because it was a rush like a waterfall; like a thousand grains of wheat; like plenty it sounded.
And I turned and looked straight at Jimmy’s back, watched him fill the bulk bins: bulgur, barley, rye, and quinoa. I swallowed hard when he turned to reveal he wasn’t Jimmy. But between my staggering hunger and my cartoon-beating heart, I just froze and looked at him for too long. He smiled at me, his beautiful long face and big nose, and his scruffy unshaven chin, his unkempt blue-black hair, the lean lankiness of him—his skin as orange as a yam. But he didn’t say a thing. Just smiled and held my gaze. For too long.
Then he walked away with his hand truck.
It had to come.
One day.
I was twenty-two.
My heart said run; my dick said linger; my mind said forty-ouncer (and do they sell them in such a place?); and my spirit—it just said: “Jimmy, what’s this?” while I clutched Jimmy in the purple bag—my Linus blanket, my bunch of dried flowers.
And I thought of Jimmy’s dick then. How we used to hold each other’s, and gaze at each other. And it was like a hand, and like safety that way. As long as I had my hand around his, and he had his hand grasped around mine, we were safe. We could find our way in the dark. We slept that way all the time—me holding his; him holding mine.
I clung to him in the bag, standing there dumb as a boy on a platform, waiting for a train, a train that had left a long time ago.
And then he came back. Fully loaded. This time it was amaranth and spelt, couscous and long-grained basmati rice. And I watched him, couldn’t seem to avert my gaze. “Pull, Seamus, pull.”
A lit match.
Reminding me of how cold I’d grown—Zen monk with my lump of coal.
I salivated. He was food, calories.
Another horseboy. But a snakeboy too—the hooded cobra of his gangly slouch of a stance. And a bird, with that crow-black hair and shoulder blades like wings that protruded as he maneuvered the hand truck into place and lifted the plastic buckets of sustenance and poured them like all the endless miles I’d traveled.
Rain stick.
Whatever he was—horse, snake, bird—I wanted to fy, writhe, gallop with him.
He was the first guy I’d looked at in that w
ay since Jimmy’d gone— and he’d even been Jimmy for a few anguished moments, from behind, in a backasswards kind of way. A thought that calmed me momentarily. The reassurance of: So long as it’s backwards and includes Jimmy everything makes sense to me and will be A-OK.
Then I just blurted it out: “Do you have any tempeh?”
He looked at me for a minute, impassively, but plenty too long. A knowing smile lit up his face, and his eyes shone with a strange impersonal kindness that unnerved me, made me want to embrace him and tell him everything all at once.
Pull.
He opened a refrigerator door for me and pointed, with a nod of his head, at the tempeh. Then he turned and went back to work on the bulk bins, making a racket, while I fumbled through the tempeh and started talking to Jimmy about how I didn’t really want to ever meet another guy again. And I sought out Jimmy’s face then in all its guises: on the platform; smiling; sleeping; laughing; coughing, ruined and haggard; then full, blushing, alive with the say-nothing smile and his index finger to his lips.
And then that mantra in my mind—I don’t know how to love you, I don’t know how to love you, I don’t know how to love you—as I hunted carrots and celery, vegan cakes and cookies, wasabi chips, amazaki, and all things holy and nutritious for the repose of the soul of James Damon Keane. A seder for Jimmy. Jimmy, who had drawn all those red hoops on his map, and yet the angel of death had not passed over after all.
The angel of lust apparently wasn’t going to pass over either.
I’m the angel of sex and death and I don’t know how to love you.
And I remembered a threesome we’d had once on account of some guy who’d gotten hung up on me and kept coming around. Jimmy finally said: “Well, Shame, you guys seem to like each other, and I think you oughta get together, find out what it is.”
“I know what it is, Jimmy, and so do you! Let’s just forget it. He’s another horny faggot. Like I need another one of those.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Why you getting mad at me for not wanting to sleep around, Jimmy? That’s backasswards.”
He nodded and chuckled. “I don’t know. Don’t you think attraction is a message?” Jimmy challenged me.
“Yeah, and the message is: ‘I want you.’ Uncle Sam, the faggot.” (Sounded like a good idea for my next painting: Let Them Point and Demand Sex from Each Other.)
He rolled his eyes.
But I wouldn’t budge from my position, my rife aimed and fixed on Jimmy’s sweet horsey behind. “Why don’t you do him, then, Mr. Jimmy? You can report back to me on what the message was.”
He suggested a threesome, and so the three of us ended up swinging our little swords around for a few hours, spilling our half-baked chromosomes all over each other and recognizing whatever it is you recognize in sex—like old friends: nice to see yas.
“It’s more than that, Shame. With gay guys, there’s always a spirit baby that’s born.”
My face a question. “What the hell is a spirit baby—really? Where you’d find the money? Who and what are you, James Damon Keane?”
“Some things you gotta figure out for yourself, Shame.” His smile.
And out went the light.
But what do I do now, Jimmy, several hundred miles and thirty-eight days into your death? Should I bring the purple bag with me whenever I trick? Threesomes with the dead? Naked boys wrestling on a bed scattered with marigolds?
I grabbed my tempeh and turned and almost ran into the boy as he steered his hand truck past me, lifting his chin, with just the slightest coy smile, as if to say “see ya later.”
A girl in produce, with multicolored hairweaves and a plethora of piercings, was looking at me by then, since I was standing there frozen watching the bulk boy recede into the far reaches of the market. And she came right up to me, holding big red apples clenched in each upturned palm, and said: “He’s mute, so if you want to talk to him you can—he’s not deaf—but he doesn’t say much, if you know what I mean,” (she winked) “being mute and all. Just thought I’d let ya know.”
I was a little taken aback, but she seemed friendly, and so I asked nervously, “Um, is he a friend of yours?”
She turned to place the apples in their rough wooden trough as she answered me: “Sure—I work with him. He’s only been here a few months, and he really doesn’t say much, believe me,” she smiled, crouching down to grab some more apples from a box. Then she craned her neck to look up at me, “But sure, I like him alright.” And she looked concerned suddenly, seeing something I was unaware of.
“Why are you crying?”
I didn’t know I was crying, but I wiped my face to find I was. Just slightly. “Uh, allergies,” I blurted.
She gave me the kind of sweet smile that said, You’re lying, but I understand, and it’s okay. “Do you need a hug?” So Eugene.
I did, but I didn’t dare. I’d fall apart in the name of Jimmy.
I had to pull just then. “Uh, thanks, but not right now. Um, so … what’s his name?”
She smiled knowingly, holding a large apple in her fist, moving her fingers over it like a baseball pitcher. “They just call him Eugene, ’cause he’s here. But he has some Indian name he doesn’t use. He’ll answer to Eugene. You want me to go get him?”
“No! No, no, I gotta go. Thanks!” And I hurried to the register to wait in line. That’s when I saw him coming toward me. He marched right up and put a little scrap of paper into my hand, smiling as he closed my fingers around it. Then he turned and walked away.
I stood dumbfounded, and then I opened my fist and the note and read what it said:
Want to hang out after work?
I get off at 7:00.
You can meet me here if you want.
29
I was the nurse and the janitor and the candy striper, bouncing around the room in just a jockstrap, hoping to cheer up poor Jimmy.
“I’m pullin’, Jimmy, I’m pullin’!”
“You’re a motherfucker.”
The words of love.
But Jimmy had the libido then of a Zoloft droid, so I had to come up with something other than a sexy outfit.
I read him Rumi poems and put on Tammy Faye makeup.
You know my coins are counterfeit,
But you accept them anyway
But Jimmy lost the very things that gave him the strength to stick by me and stick around in general. Jimmy lost his humor and Jimmy lost his patience.
No good attitude for Jimmy. Shitting his pants and sweating all night was not for Jimmy. Jimmy was only patient while he was moving and independent. And he was pastready to go. Jimmy wanted morphine, and lots of it. And he wanted me to go get it for him.
“I can’t do that, Jimmy.”
“You have to,” he said fatly.
I don’t know how to love you ...
I was close to blubbering tears. Killing him would be killing me.
“Otherwise you’ll have to smother me with a pillow, Shame.”
I just looked at him.
“Go find someone who will help me, Shame.”
We both knew there were people at ACT UP who would help him.
“I’ll help you, Jimmy.”
But I didn’t mean it how he meant it. I was his protector, his friend, and I was also selfish, scared, hung over with Catholicism. I needed Jimmy and I couldn’t open the door for him, couldn’t say goodnight.
“How about a massage?”
“I need Dr. Jack.”
“I’m no Dr. Jack, Jimmy.”
He looked at me, frustrated.
Then Jimmy got mad. And good. Jimmy was weak and unable, but he got himself up anyway, glaring at me sitting at the table. He put on his slippers—those sad little kung fu shoes—and his green army overcoat over his long underwear, his hair pitch-black now. Jimmy’s roots had come in like death, they had. Black as a priest’s cassock, black as carbon.
No pity. I can’t pity him, but I doubted he’d be able to manage the stairs and
thought to stop him.
He looked over his shoulder as he opened the door. “You fucked up.” And he left the house.
I was nail-biting crazy. Annoying inane. I’m the caretaker; I’m in charge of Jimmy. I’m a heartless coward and a dumb, confused boy in way over my head. I can’t kill Jimmy. I heard him slowly shuffing down those stairs. I knew I shouldn’t have let him leave the house. Paralyzed until I wasn’t.
I got up and ran after Jimmy, who’d made it all the way to the sidewalk. “Don’t you touch me!” he snapped. I embraced him then, squeezed him. And he shivered as he fell into me. And his legs went out from under him, and he slid down me, pulling me. But I got him back up, noting the twins watching from the window, and then slowly I guided him back upstairs. Reassuring Jimmy all the while: “I’ll go, I’ll go.” And once back upstairs, I helped him off with his coat and those sad slippers, both of which seemed to have grown huge around his withering body, and I settled him back into bed.
And all the way down to Sycamore Alley near the BART Station, where we first came up from underneath, to find Tony, who’d bring the morphine. But I hesitated with my thumb hovering over the buzzer. And I walked away. Jimmy will fall asleep, I told myself; he won’t get up again. But I walked in circles all the same, orbiting Guerrero Street and lurking under the big acacia tree near the corner liquor store, just to be sure, watching to make sure Jimmy didn’t come out. I thought of going to find Tanya. She’d get all the arrangements in order. But, unlike Jimmy, she wouldn’t hear me out and she wouldn’t collapse in my arms. Tanya was a warrior and would do the deed. So I didn’t expand my orbit to Shotwell Street; I didn’t want to get it started. I wanted to keep Jimmy right there for as long as I could. I wanted him to forget about death.
Selfish. Scared. Catholic. I was no Dr. Jack. No sir.
Jimmy was right. It was gonna take everything I had, and Jimmy was everything I had.
A Horse Named Sorrow Page 11