by Rick R. Reed
Ethan had Ethan to take care of right now.
He headed up the stairs to the “L” platform.
And now he sat on his love seat with all the accoutrements of comfort around him: the Oreos, The Big Sleep in the DVD player, and a stiff Grey Goose and tonic—the whole milk could go to hell. And he had touched none of them.
All he could do was stare out the window. Gradually a numbness had settled in over him, darkening to match the fading light of the day as the sun set, its fiery orb occasionally peeking out from between buildings and tree branches before finally calling it quits for the day and heading home.
The phone chirping on his desk startled him out of his reverie. The phone sounded too loud, shrill, even though Ethan could recall making no adjustments to ringtone or volume. Ethan walked over to the desk. The Caller ID display made his already jump-started heart beat a little faster.
It was Brian.
Ethan returned to the couch to slump into its cushions and wait for voicemail to pick up the call. He was glad the days of answering machines were gone. He didn’t think he could bear hearing Brian’s voice—live or Memorex—just now. He stared at the phone in the dim light and watched as the message indicator atop it began to blink.
What would I say to him?
What is there to say?
Ethan hoisted his Grey Goose in a toast to the window, where the sky darkened to dusk, purple at the top, hues of gray and lavender beneath it. “L’chaim,” he whispered.
He downed the now tepid cocktail with its vague slivers of ice in two convulsive gulps and got up to pour himself another. Returning to the couch, he started The Big Sleep over again, watched it all the way through, and followed it up with Double Indemnity. He imagined he was seeing the films for the very first time.
It was an evening perfect for oblivion. The movies helped, as did several more vodka and tonics. What didn’t help was the ringing of the telephone, which came at regular half-hour intervals and each time, except for once, displayed the same caller—Brian.
ETHAN AWAKENED in the middle of the night, heart thumping, sweating, and with a pain behind his eyes akin to a drill bit being applied tenderly to his brain. He still wore the chinos and white T-shirt he had on when he collapsed on top of his futon… and his mouth felt like all the moisture had been sucked out of it.
Like an inconsiderate one-night stand, his drunk had deserted him while he slept. Ethan squashed his hands to his eyes, hoping to push away the pain growing behind them, and groped on his nightstand for a glass of water. Usually he left one there for himself in case he awoke parched.
But tonight he had not been so thoughtful. Tonight he had collapsed into bed in a drunken stupor, with no time or consideration for such niceties as a glass of bedside water.
His thirst and his headache, Ethan was sure, were conspiring against any chance of his falling back into the blessed deliverance of sleep. So he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat, elbows resting on knees, head cradled in hand, and tried to summon up the energy to rise and get himself a glass of water and a couple of aspirin.
He slogged through the little studio, heading for the bathroom, when he came to an abrupt halt. Oblivion, like the drunk and the one-night stands Ethan could count on one hand, also deserted him. In its place rushed back the fact that the man who had most likely infected him—the man he had begun to think of as his one true love, his soul mate—had called no fewer than fifteen times that evening. It may have been even more, but finally a drunken Ethan had angrily pulled the phone cord from the wall. He’d shut off his cell after calling in sick that morning.
He stood for several moments, remembered Dr. Morris’s strained yet sympathetic face and the many, many phone calls from Brian. Even for Brian, the phone calls were a bit excessive.
Then it came to him. A little more oblivion leaked out of his brain.
Today was Brian’s birthday.
Ethan backstepped to the bed until it hit him in the crook behind his knees, then sat down hard on its surface. How ironic that on a day when he had planned to give Brian a gift, Ethan would discover his still-new lover had already sent one his way. Ethan laughed bitterly in the darkened apartment.
They had had big plans. A splurging dinner at Alinea on Halsted Street, where dinner for two could run more than five hundred dollars, a romantic harvest moonlit walk through Belmont Harbor, the exchange of gifts at Brian’s Lake Shore Drive apartment, and finally fireworks in the bedroom of same. There would be laughter, tears, orgasms, and a Movado watch.
It was supposed to have been perfect. Their first birthday spent together. Ethan had wanted to make it memorable. Well, the universe had seen to that!
In light of his diagnosis, the idea of sex with Brian, once so rapturous and wood-inducing, now made him nauseated. An act that heretofore had been one of unbridled passion, deep fulfillment, and adoring love had suddenly, with the swiftness of an uttered diagnosis, become tainted.
There were a lot of things Ethan had forgotten this day, a day that would now go down in his personal history as an anniversary. He had forgotten the important meeting he had scheduled with the publicity manager at Steppenwolf, forgotten that it was time to swap out his two-week-wear contact lenses for a fresh pair, forgotten to eat his dinner or brush his teeth.
And he had forgotten Brian’s birthday.
Funny, how being diagnosed with HIV could push everything out of one’s brain.
No wonder Brian couldn’t stop calling. Ethan was surprised he hadn’t shown up at his door.
Ethan shook his head. Yesterday his life was full of sunshine and good things. Who knew that one more revolution around the sun would throw a dark cloud over the whole enterprise?
He got up, took the aspirin, drank the water, and plopped down wearily at his desk. There were five messages from Brian, each one a little more angry and bewildered than the last. He clicked on the little Internet Explorer icon at the bottom of his computer screen and saw that his email messages eventually mirrored the pain and disappointment of Brian’s voicemails.
Ethan stared out into the dark night, lit only by a sodium vapor street lamp that gave the air a sickly yellowish hue.
He didn’t know what he should feel. Anger? Despair? Should he call Brian? Make a late-night visit, outraged and demanding an explanation?
He didn’t know if he could bear to look at Brian again. And right now he was not sorry he had stood him up on his birthday. He was not sorry if the guy was worried about him.
Brian had a lot more to worry about than why Ethan stood him up… or even if the reason for that had anything to do with something being wrong with Ethan, some cause for alarm.
There was most definitely cause for alarm. But Ethan didn’t know how he could talk to Brian about it.
Not yet.
Not ever?
Ethan simply didn’t know. He slid back into bed and pulled the covers over his head. He thought it very reasonable to suppose he might spend the rest of his life there.
RAYS OF brilliant sunlight awakened him. Ethan groaned, willing the sun and its evil minions of a million cheery rays to a place in hell. “No!” he cried out, trying to reclaim his drunken sleep, which was admittedly only mediocre at best, filled with restless waking and odd nightmares that found him in hospital settings and graveyards.
He threw the covers off with disgust and lay there, prostrate, in the cheerful, ignorant streaming sunlight that obviously had no concern for his newfound plight or his feelings.
He glanced over at the digital clock on his nightstand, and its red letters had never seemed more alarming. They taunted him with the fact that not only had he missed work yesterday, but also he was late for work today… by an hour. He would be lucky if he rolled into the office by ten.
He briefly considered calling in sick again. He did have a brutal hangover and was still trying to cope with the fact that he had now earned the dubious distinction of being not only a gay man, but also an HIV-positive one. Missing
work was entirely legitimate.
But Ethan’s mother had instilled in him a puritanical work ethic, and even Ethan knew that going in to his job as a theater publicist might at least keep the demons at bay for a few hours. Work was the same thing as getting drunk the night before, just more oblivion but without the headache and upset tummy. Besides, his boss had asked him to interview a front-runner for the new receptionist position. He needed to get in the office to meet the candidate no later than noon.
Life, Ethan thought, stops for nothing.
He forced himself out of bed, stripped, stood under a scalding shower, soaping and resoaping every crack and crevice, roughly dried his exfoliated and steam-cleaned hide, gulped down a too-hot cup of coffee, dressed, and hurried out the door.
Just like any other morning.
But unlike any other morning, when he got to his front door, he was confronted with something that made him stop dead in his tracks. Through the glass he saw the usual: people rushing by, on their way to work, school, sexual conquests, whatever. That was no different. What was different was the man who stood just outside his door, facing the river of traffic flowing by on Halsted Street. His back was broad, encased in a faded blue denim jacket. His ass and thighs were taut and manly. His head was topped with fine dark blond hair, thinning in an adorable little circle at the top.
Brian was just outside.
Ethan knew the only reason Brian would be out there was to confront him. As if to confirm this, Ethan watched as Brian’s head dipped and he raised his left arm, checking the time. Before Ethan could retreat into the safety of the elevator, Brian dropped his wrist to his side and, with one fluid motion, turned to peer into the lobby. The lobby where Ethan stood frozen, clutching his canvas messenger bag as if it were life support, as if it had the power to keep him standing.
Their eyes met. Ethan knew he was displaying a sickly sheepish grin, teeth clenched together in what probably looked more like a death rictus than a smile.
And Brian turned fully and was coming toward the door.
This was all happening too fast. I’m not ready! I need time to prepare! Ethan had thought about writing Brian an email from work, an email in which he could eloquently voice his despair, his trauma, and his pain. An email that would be a righteous delivery from betrayal. An email that would demand why. Theirs was a relationship that began with electronic messages. Perhaps it was fitting that it should end the same way.
It was so unfair life was denying him a break now, when he could use a little slack. He felt like an understudy being thrust into the footlights, an understudy who hadn’t bothered to learn his lines.
Frozen, grinning stupidly, Ethan stared out at Brian, who was now waiting by the door. His brown eyes bored into him. And in spite of the riot of confused feelings welling up within him, a warmth radiated through him at the sight of Brian’s face.
But then other thoughts intruded, thoughts about honesty and fidelity for which Ethan had no easy answers, and he didn’t know if he was ready to hear Brian try to explain things. He didn’t want to be lied to.
Yes, he did.
Oh, he didn’t know what he wanted.
He wanted to forget. He wanted oblivion back. Ignorance is bliss, right? Gimme an order of bliss, and make it fast!
He swallowed hard and forced his feet to do that complicated dance maneuver, one foot in front of the other, until he reached the door. Continuing the theater metaphor, he would have to do what an understudy who didn’t know his lines would do, once in front of an audience: improvise.
He opened the door and stepped back to let Brian in, wordlessly. Brian’s presence seemed somehow larger, more solid than ever. It was almost as though he had run into someone famous, say Brad Pitt, right here in the lobby of his building. Brian’s face was a mask of bewilderment and hurt, and almost automatically, Ethan started to let his worries about HIV and dishonesty take a back seat to his need to comfort. He actually fretted over upsetting Brian for standing him up on his birthday.
Brian’s lip trembled just a bit. Then he sucked it in, refusing to let Ethan look away with the intensity of his gaze.
“Babe, what happened last night? Where were you? Why didn’t you take my calls?” He shook his head and asked the most pitiable question of all: “Are you okay?”
“No.” Ethan bit his lip and took careful notice of the black-and-white pattern on the tiled floor beneath him. “Not okay.”
“What’s the matter?”
Ethan debated briefly over whether he should make him wait. He told himself he had important things to do at work today, people he would be letting down.
But he would be letting himself down more if he didn’t deal with this now. “We need to talk. Let’s go upstairs.” Ethan didn’t wait for an answer but simply headed for the elevator, trying mightily to keep his knees from knocking.
He could feel Brian behind him as he entered the elevator and pressed the button for his floor.
“I don’t get it,” Brian started in.
And Ethan held up a finger, indicating that he should wait.
Once inside the apartment, Ethan went directly toward the window and stared down at the traffic flowing by. He gnawed at a hangnail. How to broach this? How to stay in charge of a conversation he could see wildly spinning out of control as soon as he uttered the first few words? And worst of all, what if having this conversation meant the end of his relationship with Brian? No more candlelit dinners, no more snuggling in bed until noon on weekend mornings, no more recipes to try out on a new and willing diner, and no more love…. Ethan shook his head, briefly surveying his life pre-Brian, the emptiness of it, the loneliness, the thwarted assumption that a cat might help assuage the nights in front of the TV with two handsome guys called Ben and Jerry.
But how could he not give up everything that Brian meant to him? Their union was a house of cards built upon a sand castle anyway. No real relationship ever laid a foundation of dishonesty, did it? Not one that expected to last, anyway. Sadly, Ethan thought that by losing Brian, maybe he really wasn’t losing the man at all, not the real man, but only the idea of him. Still, Ethan wished in the pit of his churning stomach he could just jump in a time capsule and go back to the day before yesterday, or even further, wishing he had not made the appointment for that checkup. Who knew? Maybe he would have been one of those people he read about who had the virus in their systems for years with no complications.
He just wanted to not know.
Knowledge is power? Who said that? Right now, to Ethan, it felt like knowledge was nothing more than his own little personal slice of hell.
In his heart of hearts, he realized he needed to know the truth. Besides, there was no way to continue now without facing things. Ethan sucked in some breath, trying to slow his rapidly beating heart, and turned to Brian, who stood fidgeting near his breakfast bar, looking just as confused and bewildered as he had outside.
A few words, bald and to the point, could start things. Ethan propelled himself forward in both senses. He walked so he was standing closer to Brian and willed himself to say the words gathered on the tip of his tongue.
“I forgot your birthday yesterday because I had bad news.”
Brian’s brow furrowed in concern, and he reached out for Ethan. “What? What was it?” He was about to wrap his arms around Ethan, but Ethan stepped back just out of his grasp.
Ethan almost relented, seriously considering the prospect of procrastinating, just putting the whole mess off for another day, when he saw the hurt expression darkening Brian’s features as he stepped away from him, obviously not wanting to be touched. It was a first for them as a couple.
But Ethan knew what he must say next and, almost without thinking, let the words trip off his tongue. “I went to the doctor yesterday.”
Brian’s face, if possible, became even more touched by pity and concern. It was breaking Ethan’s heart. “Are you okay?”
Ethan looked over Brian’s shoulder toward the kitchen, steel
ing himself for the words that would come next. “It was a follow-up to my last checkup and—” Ethan bit his lower lip. Say it. Just say it. He let out a rush of air, on the tail end of which was the sentence “And I found out, much to my surprise, I am HIV positive.” He returned his gaze to Brian, who stood stunned, mouth open and staring at him. Now that the words were out, it was a little easier, and he continued. “My T cells are at 380, and my viral load is around 12,000, whatever the hell those numbers mean. I just know they’re not good.”
Brian shook his head. “Babe, I’m so sorry.” Again, they did the dance—Brian reaching out and Ethan stepping away, more forcefully this time, glaring at him as though to say “How dare you try to comfort me? Especially when you’re the cause of my pain!”
Ethan’s anger and hurt settled in with the force of a fire bursting into a conflagration. He had never experienced going from confusion and despair to rage so quickly. It was all he could do not to strike Brian, to punch the silly expression of concern stamping his features right off his face. How could you? How could you?
“Yeah,” Ethan said, a smile born of ire pulling up the corners of his mouth. “Yeah. You should be sorry. Did you just not tell me for a reason? Did you think maybe those few times we dispensed with a condom, we’d just be lucky? Did you just get infected too? Maybe while you were with me?” Ethan spat the last words out, glaring at Brian, his breath quickened.
Brian shook his head. “Ethan, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, please. Don’t.”
“Can we just sit down and discuss this? Sweetheart, I’m so sorry you’ve had this news, but it’ll be okay. There are treatments—”
“Oh, don’t patronize me. Don’t try to placate me. And no, I don’t want to sit down. I don’t want to discuss this.” As rapidly as the rage had come, so did the tears. Ethan angrily batted them away, not wanting Brian to see. “I was hoping you’d at least be enough of a human being to tell me the truth. I was hoping you’d at least be a man and own up to the truth.”