I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  “You mean the Life Saver Lofts?” the cab driver says. “In West Chelsea?”

  When the cab driver drives past the Spike, out the window of the cab, out of the old Plutonian darkness, the napalm cloud opens. From out of the bones of the building that used to be the Spike, a strange new sleek tower has risen up and out, shiny bright. Another spaceship that’s set its ass smack down on my history. Aliens from the spaceships, man. The Life Saver Lofts. Twelve million dollars for the penthouse apartment.

  You know all those crazy fuckers who used to walk down the streets talking to themselves? Now they have cell phones.

  THE CAB RIDE up to Columbia, 116th and Broadway. If I can stand in that doorway of the classroom where Jeske taught, the place where I first really looked at Hank, Saint Hank Christian, Guardian of the Portal, maybe I can finally find it, feel it.

  Hank Christian is dead.

  But the iron gates are locked. Of course they’d be locked. But still I stand at the gate, my hands around the wrought iron. Dodge Hall, the corner of it, just right there. I’m shaking the gate, cussing. I guess I’m screaming too. The cabbie thinks he’s got a real crazy and starts honking and yelling in Hindi. A lot of really strange fast words and every other word is fuck.

  DRIVING FAST IN the dark. My hand’s in the plastic handle above the window. I’m hanging on. For dear life. Bright lights flash by. The city that never sleeps. The night sky is no longer black. Light, just barely. Entre loup et chien.

  Columbus Circle. Wednesday nights, after teaching at the West Side Y, that goddamned burger joint and Silvio. Cheeseburgers and all that hope. In that booth where Hank and I dreamed our writer dreams, another strange sleek tower. A gigantic glass and steel spaceship. The ass on my history on this corner is concave. Bloomberg. Aliens, man. Billionaire aliens.

  “SAINT PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL,” I say.

  The cabbie rips a quick left around Christopher Columbus. He hardly lets up on the gas. Four in the morning, we’re the only yellow Plymouth screeching through. Destiny, fate, fucking fortune, the way the earth is spinning spins the cab. Just me and a Hindu man. I’m in the back seat, sweat soaked and smashed against the back door, hanging onto a plastic handle. On the dashboard, incense, pink and white plastic flowers, his beloved elephant god. It ain’t long and we’re driving down the most expensive street in the world. St. Patrick’s smack in the middle of it.

  Hell is your Virgin Mother got inside you. The thing you dreaded most, the fucking worst way to fuck up, you fucked up. You got fucked in the ass and you were banished from the world of men.

  The man who doesn’t know he’s a man, is hiding from men because he’s afraid of men, because men are his father who he hates, and all he knows, what’s left to do, is weep in the dark as an infant weeps.

  The weeping and the gnashing of teeth. The epidemic of fear, the purple sores, the wasting, the dementia. All of heaven pointing at you, laughing.

  God’s special little bitch.

  AIDS.

  And yet I am still alive.

  Really alive. I mean look at me. I’m sixty years old and it’s four in the morning and I’ve been HIV positive for over twenty-two years. Hope. The worst thing isn’t that you can’t find it. It’s that you’ll stop. And I’m roaring down Broadway in a cab in Manhattan, the hot wind through the open window blowing against my arm, my face, and I am not dead.

  When you get close to the vein that’s pulsing truth, when you open that vein, you can scrub your soul clean with the blood.

  Years ago, in the hospital in Portland, Mental Health, the security guard who told you to stay behind the yellow line like all the others. You were nobody special.

  No connection to a special intimacy.

  It was just me, only me, down there in the dark lobotomy basement on the Avenue of Fear.

  With everybody else.

  I never thought I’d say it.

  Thank God I got AIDS.

  Made me like everybody else.

  Human.

  THE CLOCK ON Cooper Union. 4:55. The acid clarity of the night has turned to speed and even though I’m a ghost my body’s shaking. I find my glasses. Pay the cabbie his fare. Tip him extra. Leave a dollar bill on the dashboard for Ganesha, Patron of Letters, Remover of Obstacles.

  I’m ready to call it a night. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find it, the next day. Room 19-3 and my firm four-hundred-and-thirty-dollar bed waits for me.

  But I’m hungry. At a time when I’m not supposed to be hungry. Then when was the last time in Portlandia I was up at two o’clock in the morning?

  Café Orlin on St. Mark’s Place. That’s the ticket. Tony’s huevos rancheros at Café Orlin.

  ON THE CURB in Portlandia, by the sun on the red brick wall of Stumptown Coffee, after the day Dab told me Hank was dead, all the calls I got, the condolences. Lucy, Ruth’s good friend called me, and we hadn’t really talked since Ruth left, so we were catching up. Then in a moment, Lucy, her voice suddenly soft, in almost a whisper, she said: “You know Ben, Ruth was there for Hank until the very end.”

  We all have a right to love and the real prayer is that each of us will find it. Hank found it. I hope Ruth did too. And on his deathbed, beloved Hank was in the best of hands. Ruth’s hands.

  WALKING OUT OF Café Orlin, three steps up to the sidewalk of St. Mark’s Place. The huevos rancheros were, as Tony promised, delicious.

  The sun is rising. Through the smog, a bizarre peach and violet sky. Light that doesn’t shine, it glows. The buildings to the south in shadows that are navy blue. The air, almost cool on my skin.

  My belly is full and I’m no longer a ghost. My body is right here and my awareness is here and so is my spirit. It’s been a long time since the three of them have been altogether at the same time. My thumb is in the no-fear place.

  I’m walking.

  And my body knows exactly where to go.

  #77 ST. MARK’S Place. When I get to that piece of sidewalk, I’m just about to look up, when it hits me. How very perfect that poem is. True the way truth can make you wince, make you cry, bring you to your knees. I’m on my knee, a genuflection, then both knees, then my elbows too. My upper body rolling out repeated bows. Wystan Hugh Auden. His slum apartment was so cold that the toilet no longer functioned and he had to use the toilet in the liquor store on the corner.

  The first time.

  #77 St. Mark’s Place. Night Birds. Hank’s and my first date. We’d walked all over the Lower East Side. It was early morning like it is now, only twenty-four years ago. I read Hank out loud the line of poetry on the plaque under the second-story window. Hank and I stood there for a long time. Closer than most men would stand, but not touching. I was trying not to cry. But Hank was crying too.

  A big old smooch right on the lips, Hank Christian’s sweet lips on mine. He walked away and waved without turning around, the same way we’d walked away from the skinhead dude. Just move your legs and walk. Into a brand-new world. It was that easy.

  The second time.

  A year and a half later. A Sunday morning early, after our night at the Spike, at #77 St. Mark’s Place, a proud gay man at the Gates of Homosexual Heaven, I was standing half-dead from exposure to ice and cold before the poem that breaks my heart. Breaks it open. My friend, My “April in Paris” Friend, what have you done to my heart Hank, was standing next to me. He’d just asked the second question after the first question, homosexual? that follows sooner or later: do you take it up the ass? And do you like it? This was right after maybe only an hour before he’d said: Assholes are feminine. That’s why guys say I got your back.

  Most of me wanted to run. But mostly always I ran, then fell, stumbled, tripped, cracked, broke, then tried to get up again, tried to put it back together. That morning, though, that plaque, the line of poetry, I was staring at my homosexual history and all the brave men and women who have gone before.

  The third time.

  Really, it was third time.

  Because it was the last time and
because it was after the sweat lodge and after Alturas Bar, the rock rolling down and down over the century and a half, the tiny splash into the deep dark blue-green pool, the sun on the water in the porcelain pans, bye bye Mr. Chocolate Chip Cookies, Hank’s Hercules, my Fair Adonis, the wedding ring bed.

  Atlanta, Idaho. Where Hank and I were most alive.

  May 5, 1989. #77 St. Mark’s Place. It was the first time Hank and I had been together since Atlanta. It was my last day in Manhattan and Hank was in town from Florida to get his shit out of storage. We were staring up at the line of poetry Wystan Hugh Auden wrote on the plaque under the second-story window. We’d been standing there for I don’t know how long. It was just past noon on a day that was sunny but still cold. Hank was in his gray hooded sweatshirt and Levi’s. Still wearing the straw cowboy hat Gary’d given him. His new white tennis shoes. His hair was cut short and his beard shows gray. The Eighties were about over and my head’s a buzzcut. Still with a mustache. I was wearing the green coat Gary gave me with Idaho Dairy Association on it. Levi’s, my Red Wing boots. Sal’s red baseball cap. In fact, I know everything about what we’re wearing, everything about how we look, how blue the sky is, the gusts of chilly wind down the street. Because this was the last day ever that Hank will be this Hank and I will be this Ben and we will be together.

  It will take us twelve years to see each other again. A Christmas Eve night in Portlandia.

  Auden’s poem. How very perfect that poem is. True the way truth can make you wince, make you cry, make you proud.

  I’d brought an old bike along somebody’d left in one of my basements. Hank said he could use it in Florida. It was one of those stripped-down bikes with ten gears and knobby tires that’s good for dodging through traffic. Hank was standing on one side of the bike, me on the other. I gave Hank a quick rundown on the gears and the clutch. How you have to watch the rear brake because it sticks. I let the bike go and it stood alone for a moment, then fell into Hank.

  Hank’s body, my body came together, front to front. It was a quick embrace with a bicycle between and I wondered why the bicycle was between and we slapped each other on the back. Five seconds tops we touched. And then we parted. A couple of guys, so cavalier. We had no idea the darkness that lay ahead. Hank was moving to Florida. I was leaving for Portland. Like all youth, we couldn’t know yet just how far away a person can go. Auden is smiling. Auden is weeping. All of Homosexual Heaven turns away. How everything turns away from the disaster.

  I went to say it, but Hank said it first:

  “Got to go, pal,” Hank said.

  The way Hank Christian can laugh. He rolled his right pant up to just below the knee. So white and fragile, glass-looking, his calf muscle flexed, pushing down on the bike pedal. Hank crunched the straw cowboy hat down onto his ears, and then he was off on the bike, clowning around like he was going to crash. Halfway down the block he waved without turning around. I waved back. Wasn’t long and Hank was just a little dot, a straw cowboy hat, the sun on the brim of it, a gust of wind and he was gone.

  Up the stoop, below the second-story window, the plaque and the line of Auden’s poem.

  If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.

  In front of #77 St. Mark’s Place, alone at the gates of Homosexual Heaven that day, May 5, 1985, I cried the way women in the Mediterranean all in black cry. Cried so hard I had to sit down right there on the sidewalk. It took me forever, but when I got myself together, I snuffed up and looked and on the asphalt right in front of me there were Hank’s new white tennis shoes.

  And there he was again, Hank Christian, straddling the bike, holding his body the way he does. Red potatoes in a shovelful of earth. His deep set eyes – eyes with his complexion you’d think would be blue, but aren’t, are black. Under the efficient line of Roman nose, above the square jaw a bit of cleft, Hank’s sweet smiling lips.

  Never ceased to startle me, the way Hank and I could look at each other.

  Hank made a point of looking his eyes full on into mine. Too long he looked. Somebody who does that. Reveals you to yourself. I didn’t look away. The look was long because he was trying to express something inside him that’s big. That half-smile of his, part bewildered, part amused, wasn’t a smile at all, was Hank just trying to make his mouth work right.

  Took him a while but he did it. So perfect, so true to who he is. Right out loud he said it:

  “I loved you more.”

  Acknowledgements

  A BIG SHOUT OUT OF THANKS TO RHONDA HUGHES AND Hawthorne Books for loving my novel. Also at Hawthorne Books, thank you to Liz Crain, Adam O’Connor Rodriguez, and Adam McIsaac.

  Always my thanks to Neil Olson of Donadio and Olson Literary Representatives, NYC. And to you, too, Carrie Howland. And in LA, thanks to Judi Farkas Management LLC.

  Thank you, Grey Wolfe. Muchas gracias, Johnny Dynell. Also: How old Mendy Graves. Thank you, my dearest Clyde Hall. Cole Coshow, and Frankie, you’ve always been there for me.

  Many thanks to Hunter Morrison, Sam McConnell, Julie Christeas, Schuyler Weiss, Greg Sirota, Justin Vivian Bond, John Cameron Mitchell, Paul and PJ, Susan Anderson, Evelyn Newham and Mick Newham, Morgan Persons, Queen Mae Butters, Jicama, Chaser Rue, Judi Reeves, Frank di Palermo, Scott Ehrlich, Elle Covan, Steve Dearden, Sheena Dearden, and Ella Mae Dearden, Danny Broderick, David Peterson, Alexandra Cadell, Thomasina and Isolde, Martin Mueller, Janice Halteman, Bill Crane, David Young, David Zakon, Woody at Crush, Walker Kozik, Travis Coloma, Paul Ann Peterson, Monica Drake, Kassten Alonso, Chuck Palahniuk, Suzi Vitello, Aaron Scott, Thomas Lauderdale and Philip Iosca, David Weissman, Stevee Postman and Padme, The Esalen Institute, Grandma Ruby, Robert Vasquez, Joe Wheat, Kerry Moosman, Andy Mingo and Miles Mingo.

  Thank you to my nurse practitioner, Maria Kozmetatos, Sheila Walty, LCSW, and Tim Irwin of Studio X. The Naraya dancers at Wolf Creek.

  Big love to all the Dangerous Writers, especially Colin Farstad and Kevin Meyer. Thanks to Domi for the Burnt Tongue Readings. Thanks also to Judith Waring.

  And in loving memory:

  Howard Wasco

  Bob Waring

  Kay Oswald

  Tom Trusky

  Bjorn Millom

  James Lord.

  And to you, my beloved Michael Sage Ricci. None of this would be possible without you. The very thought of you, my beautiful friend, and I forget to do. Lots and lots and forever and forever.