by Chris Rush
When he answered the door, he was holding a papaya. He had very short hair; looked tan and strong. “Poopinita,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
We hugged. I told him I was off drugs. I asked why he was still in Tucson—wasn’t his plan to move to San Francisco? He ignored my questions, asked if I was hungry. As we ate the papaya in his kitchen, I asked if he was feeling better.
Sean looked confused. “I wasn’t sick.”
“I know, I just…” I wasn’t sure what to say.
I said, “It’s really great to see you.”
* * *
THAT FRIDAY, we went to the Graduate, Sean’s favorite bar. I was nervous, having no idea what to expect. I had on a clown-red Guatemalan shirt, jeans, and Birkenstocks. Sean, a bellhop at a resort, was still in his work clothes and already half-drunk. An old jukebox played country swing. Sean introduced me around. Even in a fag bar, I was a weirdo. I hadn’t cut my hair in seven years. My shirt was handwoven by Mayan spinsters. When a handsome man tried to buy me a drink, I said: I’m sorry—I only drink spring water.
While Sean talked to his buddies, I leaned against a wall, astonished by everything I saw. From a tiny stage against one wall, a black drag queen appeared. “Hello, boys,” she shouted. “I’m Honey Jerky, your hostess. Tonight, the Graduate Lounge presents for your unnatural pleasure … the beautiful baby contest!”
The crowd clapped and yelled as five guys walked onto the stage. The men were naked, except for bonnets and diapers. They paraded and twirled. One snuck down his nappies to show off his hairy butt.
As I watched the grown-up babies prance around, gooing and gahing, I found myself laughing for the first time in a while. But soon I felt sad again. And though I was glad Sean had found his circus, I wasn’t yet ready to join. I still needed quiet. With what remained of my drug profits, I could hide out a little longer.
* * *
JULIE TOLD ME I needed to have some fun, to meet someone. Every few weeks, she sent me back to the clubs. Sean watched out for me, even if he sometimes wandered off with some guy—to the bathroom or the parking lot. After last call, he’d always let me stay at his apartment.
One warm night, as I lay on his couch, I was restless. All my various worries came and went. I knew that drugs were finished—and there was a kind of crazy grief in my heart, as great as any grief I’d ever known. My old life was over and I was empty, with no idea what would happen next.
At first light, Sean’s apartment materialized before my eyes, as if to suggest: What about this? Sean was living on the upper floor of the aging Hotel Geronimo, near the university. His room floated above a sea of palm trees fluttering in the morning breeze.
How does one live, I wondered. I admired Sean’s place—the new camera on his desk, the stereo stacked with albums, the poster of Tina Turner. His bathroom was particularly swank, tiled in black and white, a puzzle perfectly solved.
I washed, gave up on sleep, faced another formless day.
Sean did not stir. I watched the sun catch on empty beer bottles in his kitchen, whiskey bottles, too, all glittering like gold. For a moment, I was jealous that he could drink, but I knew I couldn’t join him on that raft.
Sean called from the bedroom, Dude, are you awake?
I saw him maybe once a month. I might have seen him more, had I known the sickness that would come and take him away.
The last time we met was thirty years ago, in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, where Sean had finally moved. He was rail-thin and looked like I had during my recovery in Tucson. Before we said goodbye, he touched my short hair, told me I was beautiful. And then he told me to be careful.
I was.
* * *
JULIE CHECKED our mailbox every day. Usually there was nothing. But two or three times I got a postcard from Donna. The notes were always too short. We put up pickles this year, you’d love them. She’d tell me her daughters were fine, that she missed the desert. As I read her cheerful handwriting, my heart would sink. Our worlds were drifting apart.
* * *
ONE NIGHT, after months in Tucson, I went out to a nightclub alone. Shy as usual, I was standing at the edge of the dance floor when I saw my twin, a boy with long blond hair and velvet bell-bottoms. He saw me staring and smiled.
I walked over, my heart pounding. “Hey, man, do you wanna dance?”
He said, “Yes.”
We both danced oddly, hips locked, arms akimbo. Like me, the boy was nervous, unable to make eye contact—and when we tried to talk after the song, his voice was so soft that I could barely hear him. He said he was from Delaware, on vacation with his mother.
He took my hand. “I’m Todd. Maybe we should get together?”
“Tomorrow?” I suggested, and he said, “Sure.”
The next day, during Julie’s work shift, he appeared at my door. In his incredibly high voice he said, “You don’t mind if my mother waits in the driveway, do you? It’s the only way she’ll let me do this.”
I peeked outside. In a large beige Pontiac sat an old woman with a copper bouffant. She appeared to be holding knitting needles. She waved at me. I waved back. “Todd, does your mom want to come in?”
“No, no, no. She prefers to wait and give me my privacy.”
“Do you do this a lot?”
He looked down, seemed to be counting with his fingers. “You’re the fourth.”
For our date, I’d put on a silk shirt with an embroidered dragon. Todd’s outfit was far wilder: yellow granny glasses and a matching, knee-length crocheted vest. Though he was tiny—much shorter than me—his hair had been teased into a huge, unearthly nimbus.
In my room, sitting at the edge of my bed, he told me about himself. He said he was a pinball champion, and that he’d been touring the country with his mother since he was twelve. “I’ve won a lot of prizes. The trophies are in Mom’s trunk. I can show you later.”
He stopped talking and kissed me.
I kissed him back, trembling. It took me a long time to come that afternoon, but Todd didn’t seem to mind. When it finally happened, my whole body shook from head to toe. I hadn’t come in months. As I lay there, something like a sob came out of me, which I tried to turn into a cough. Todd held me and closed his eyes.
I studied his face, young and smooth, but sad—too tired for a boy of nineteen. I saw the mascara on his eyelashes. His skin was nearly transparent, exposing tiny trails of blue blood. I told him I wanted to see him again.
“Definitely,” he said. “But I should go now.” His mother had been in the driveway for over two hours.
For the next week, we met every afternoon in my bedroom, while his mom knitted in her car. We kissed, slumbered, and fumbled behind the curtains, trying to save ourselves.
It was the first time I understood that one’s sadness could be touched—another person could actually touch it. Todd never seemed troubled when I cried after coming. He said sometimes it happened to him, too.
* * *
AT TWENTY, in my little art studio in Tucson, I forced myself to draw again. Sitting in the sunny room, five blocks from an air force base stacked with nuclear bombs, I sat before each blank piece of paper, as if before God. On pot and acid, I had always drawn fantasies, strange creatures in strange trees. But now I wanted to draw what was in front of me. First I sketched my left hand with my right—and then my right with my left.
I still have hands, I thought.
Next I drew a rock from the yard, then a hiking boot, then an empty cardboard box. I took up again with the real.
* * *
ONE MORNING, I wandered the aisles of Safeway, trying to feel hungry. In the produce department, I confronted a pyramid of red apples. Apples meant health and happiness. I decided to bake a pie. I’d never baked a proper one before, but on a bag of flour I found a recipe. Making a pie from scratch took all afternoon. From a disaster of flour, butter, and cored apples, I constructed an accidental masterpiece. The house was filled with the smell of home. Coming out of the oven
, the pie was golden, a miracle.
Julie and I ate it for dinner, ate almost the whole thing, sitting on the kitchen floor. It was absurdly delicious and that night I slept like a baby.
After that, I made a pie from scratch every few days. The effort of preparing the fruit, rolling the crust, shaping the pie—it kept me busy. Apple to blueberry to peach, as the seasons turned. I started to feel human again.
I baked about a hundred pies. I suppose it wasb on one of these days, eating pie with Julie, that I decided I wanted to live.
* * *
AFTER NINE MONTHS in Tucson, my body began to feel better. I’d stayed clean since leaving New Jersey. My body’s memory of swallowing that pearl of cocaine—the pain, the sickness, the fear—had banished all craving. I never used again.
I don’t know why I was saved and others were lost. My father would never stop drinking. Flow Bear would OD in jail. Maybe it was Tucson that saved me. I found tremendous solace in the desert, in its generous warmth and light. Had I stayed in New Jersey at that time of my life, I don’t think I would have survived.
* * *
AS MY STRENGTH returned, I spent more and more time in the mountains, visiting the places I’d camped when I was living rough. One breezy spring day, I borrowed a car and drove to some hot springs east of Tucson. From the highway, I had to hike a ways to get there. The springs were in the wilderness, pools I’d once visited with Owen and his family. The canyon smelled of sulfur and flowers.
Sitting alone in the steaming water, I watched the clouds, hoping a cute guy might show up. Instead, an old man appeared, out of breath. He leaned on a wooden staff, a leather patch hanging over his left eye. “Is it warm?” he asked.
“Perfection,” I said.
“Then I must get raw.”
I’d never seen a geezer naked. Though decorated with marvelous beads and amulets, his fat body was a wreck. Lowering his hairy flesh into the pool, he sighed orgasmically. Ah! Ah! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
“My friend,” he said, “we are in hot water.”
I laughed.
The pool seemed too small, our bodies too close. I looked down, certain I was blushing. “Where are you from?” I asked.
“Here and there. Spain and Spokane. And you, my child?”
“New Jersey and maybe here. Arizona.”
“And are you in mad love?”
“What? I don’t know. Sort of.”
“Hmm—sort of? Don’t be shy.”
“Honestly, I really don’t know.” I was ready to get out of the pool.
“I do know,” the old man said. “I can see it. Love is your true flag.”
He was calm as a king, talking to me as if he knew me better than anyone on Earth. I was transfixed. He said his name was Pluto.
He asked for my name—and then he told me a story.
“There was a boy like you who had a dog, a dog named Girl. He loved Girl but as he grew strong, Girl grew old. One morning, the two of them walked to the mailbox and Girl saw a squirrel dart across the road. She went to investigate and didn’t see the truck. The driver was carrying a load of canaries.” He paused. “What does a canary weigh in flight? Do you know?”
I shook my head.
“Of course you don’t. No one knows. The driver was looking back at the canaries when poor Girl went under the wheel. And at the moment Girl died, her spirit merged with the boy.”
The old man lifted the leather eye patch, revealing a hole in his face. I was afraid, imagining his brain working back there in the dark cavity. The other eye glowed like a faraway planet.
“You can love anyone, Christopher, even the dead. Will you be here tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure.”
“None of us are.”
He told me to take care. He shook my hand like a man.
Epilogue
The Portrait
A LIFE SHAPES A FACE, makes it what it is. In the old, you can see the roads and reckonings. The shocks of childhood rise to the surface. What was hidden becomes visible.
It was so with my father.
He disappeared for a few years, not long after I left for Tucson. When he showed up again, my mother was still waiting for him. I think it stunned him that he had not lost everything. Shaky, mistress and money gone, he was defeated. But my mother took his arm and led him back to life.
I made my way to New York, became an artist. Julie tagged along for a while, encouraged me, then met a man and drifted away.
I saw Donna now and again. By then she’d married a rich Republican, played a lot of tennis. Of course, she’d always remind me, “I’m still that girl tripping in the park. That’s the real me.” But now she got stoned in a big Mercedes.
My life changed, as well—my face, too. A short-haired man in a sharkskin suit.
For a long time I avoided my parents—but I missed them too much, even my father.
In my forties, I decided to paint Dad’s portrait. At first I attempted to paint him from memory, but memory is a tricky thing. Then I thought to use a photograph—which, as I looked at a few, did not seem right, did not seem to capture the man I knew.
In the photos, he’s often with my mother. Mom, in pearls and a dark silk dress, a tangerine jacket with big black buttons. Dad wears a silver trench coat, very slim and sexy. As I look at these photos, many snapped right before they’re about to leave on a trip, I see that these people are not my parents; they are lovers, going someplace I’ll never completely understand. It’s between them. It’s their story.
This is not the father I want to paint. I want to paint the man I know.
And so I don’t use photos. I ask my father to sit for me.
At this point, he’s old, can barely speak—the ravages of cancer.
And at this point, I know about his past. I know about the awful tragedy of his brothers.
In my studio, my father is already beginning to shrink, to become the figurine I’d find in his coffin just a few months later.
I paint him quickly, a face daubed with ash and violet. I keep saying, “Great, Dad, really great!”
He grimaces, using all his strength to produce a smile. And somehow, he manages.
“Is he smiling?” my mother asks when she looks at the portrait. She can’t see it. She says the face frightens her.
It doesn’t frighten me at all. I recognize him. He is my father.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank:
Victor Lodato, for his love, support, and guidance. His editorial insights were a marvel—he sent me to the heart of my own book.
Daniel Mahar, who first heard these stories on a train ride across India. He encouraged me to write—and then read each and every draft. He never didn’t get it, not for a second.
My agent, Bill Clegg, for his wild enthusiasm and total faith.
My editor, Colin Dickerman, for his cool brilliance and style.
Everyone at FSG, including Alex Merto, Abby Kagan, Jeff Seroy, Daniel del Valle, and Dominique Lear.
My mother, for answering a thousand questions, and for wisely saving all my letters, drawings, and photos. Her memory is uncanny, her mind extraordinary.
My six siblings, for suffering years of interrogations about that crazy time—a time that we all agree was like no other. Donna, for her courage and kindness. My cousin Caroline, for the long interview she gave me after not seeing me for thirty-five years.
My early readers, who were all too kind: Larry Kallenberg, Liza Porter, Mary Reynolds, Peter Groff, Shawn Garrett, Wynn and Sally Chamberlain, Bob Deluca.
My later readers, who I leaned on heavily: Jeff Westerman, Adam Geary, Ken Van Houten, Mayo Roe, and Michele Conway.
My cheerful comrades: Richard Davis, John Wells, and Steve Johnstone.
My soul support: Norah Pierson, Austin Brayfield, and Karson Leigh.
For divine accommodations: Pietro Torrigiani-Malaspina and Maddalena Fossombroni at Castello in Movimento, Italy; the Chamberlain family, for spring at Sierra Giri; and Henning Ba
rtsch, for Heaven 11 in Akumal.
Lastly and perhaps most of all, I want to thank the friends who lived through this story with me—who were everything I needed.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Rush is an award-winning artist and designer whose work is held in numerous museum collections. The Light Years is his first book. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I: My Education
1. Flower Boy
2. Eviction
3. Johnnies
4. Napalm
5. Virgin in Ruins
6. The Help
7. Star Farms
Part II: Give me a Home
8. Peter Pan
9. You Don’t Belong Here
10. Blackout
11. Marjorie
12. Sixteen Kilos
13. The Bermuda Triangle
14. Five Gunshots, Maybe Six
15. For Your Own Protection
16. Sick
17. Proof
Part III: The Fool
18. Marin
19. The Barbizon School of Drug Running
20. Miracle of the Dust
21. The Spoons
22. I Just Like Vegetables, Sir
Part IV: Spaceships
23. Mom in Mud
24. Julie