Speak of Me As I Am

by Sonia Belasco

  “So we don’t have to talk about it—we can talk about whatever you want.”

  I stare into my coffee. “I don’t know. It’s a hard part, I guess.”

  I can feel Tristan watching me. I know Tristan’s not buying what I’m selling, but I don’t have enough energy to make this performance convincing.

  “We can talk about me instead,” Tristan says, taking a sip of his coffee. His drink is topped with a generous helping of whipped cream and probably sweetened into oblivion. “I’m always happy to talk about me.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “So my parents found out I’m gay,” Tristan says. “And also, Bryan broke up with me.”

  My hands twitch around my cardboard cup.

  Right. Because I’m not the only person on earth with problems.

  “Damn, Tristan. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s been an awesome couple weeks,” Tristan says. “I know it has because rehearsing a tragedy that ends in a murder-suicide feels like a relief.”

  “How did they—”

  “We were sloppy,” Tristan interrupts. “And to answer your next question, Bryan is a cowardly little shit who couldn’t handle the possibility of being outed to his soccer buddies. So here we are. Well—” Tristan shrugs. “Here I am.”

  “Have you talked to Melanie about it?” I ask. “I mean—I’m guessing you have, but—”

  “Not about the breaking up with Bryan part,” Tristan says.

  His eyes are downcast. Normally Tristan seems unafraid to look the world in the eye.

  “I just—I don’t know how to talk to her about that. She already thinks I have terrible taste in guys, and I didn’t want to—”

  “Prove her right?” I say.

  “I keep hoping that—this is so stupid, but I keep hoping that maybe he’ll want me back,” Tristan rushes on. “So pathetic, but I liked him, and . . .”

  Tristan trails off, shoulder slumping, and I reach across the table and place my hand on top of Tristan’s. I leave my hand there for a moment, then lift it away.

  Secrets that hurt you, I want to tell Tristan, are never worth keeping.

  But I stay silent. Who am I to tell someone that?

  “I’m a tool,” Tristan says. “I came here to help cheer you up, and all I can do is talk about the most depressing shit in the world.”

  “Hey, it’s not a murder-suicide,” I murmur. “That’s something.”

  Tristan looks up, his eyes catching on mine. He looks tired, but there’s a victorious glint there too. “Yeah,” he says softly. “That’s something.”

  • • •

  Tristan leaves to go to dinner, but I don’t go home. Instead I walk to the Metro and get on and ride to Union Station with all the commuters in suits and shiny shoes. I get off, climb the escalator to Mass. Avenue and start walking in the direction of the Capitol.

  One sign proclaims: Columbus Circle. Is that what it’s called? I didn’t even know that. D.C. has so many circles—fitting, somehow, for a city with few straight lines and fewer straight shooters. There’s no city with more secrets than this one, and no secrets less important than mine.

  I am not stupid. I know why it’s so hard for me to do Othello’s final scenes—not because I’ve ever felt that low or wanted to die, but because the act is real to me in ways it’s abstract to others who’ve only seen it portrayed on TV or in movies or analyzed at an acceptable distance in psych textbooks.

  The night Carlos killed himself I sat in the hospital corridor and heard nothing, felt nothing, thought nothing. I clasped my hands together in my lap, absentmindedly trying to do the secret handshake me and Carlos had created one afternoon while feeling bored and aimless. I couldn’t do it, couldn’t make my hands do the motions required. I remembered the way our fingers interlocked, then the way we tapped fists, but I couldn’t remember beyond that—the six or seven other motions. To this day I can’t remember how to do it, and it remains one of the many tiny, unimportant things that died with Carlos.

  Were there signs? I imagine there were, but I wasn’t looking for them. How do you look for what you don’t know is there? Sure, Carlos was moody, angry, and unpredictable. He got me to do crazy things, things I’d never do on my own: steal, tag trains with brightly colored aerosol spray paint, hit on girls ten years older and out of my league. Carlos’s family was fucked up, no doubt: His mother was an emotional basket case and his dad was hardly ever around, and when he was he never did anything but scream and throw punches. Carlos worked all the time at his cousin’s auto repair shop, bought groceries, played the part of man of the house, took care of his baby sisters.

  But that’s not the whole story, and I know it. Carlos loved his family. If he’d seen any other way, he never would have left them behind.

  Not unless he thought there was some reason they wouldn’t want him around.

  Why couldn’t you just tell me?

  But I know why he couldn’t tell me. Because he was afraid of what I would think. Of what it would mean for us, for our friendship. Because all this time that I thought Carlos was telling me everything, he was keeping the one thing from me that mattered most.

  I scuff my shoe against the frosted ground. My head aches.

  Afterward everyone reassured me, over and over again, that it wasn’t my fault. I just bit my lip and nodded, but I wanted to tell them: It is my fault. It is my fault. It is my fault.

  The shrink I went to only once asked me: Where do you feel it? Where do you feel your grief? I said: Everywhere. Everywhere. I meant in my body—my chest, my head, my stomach, the tips of my fingers and the ends of my toes—but also everywhere outside of me, on every corner, in every store, under the covers, on that boat we used for crew, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Everywhere I point the camera, in every image I capture, in everything I see and don’t see because Carlos isn’t there to fill the space.

  Damon, my father said to me with heavy-lidded eyes the morning after, it’s okay if you want to talk—

  No, I said, and shut myself up in my room for the rest of the day. I spent those lonely hours learning the ways of Carlos’s camera, reading the manual I found online, taking photos of my shoes, my unmade bed, the view out my window, making sure each one was perfectly in focus, had even contrast and color saturation and tone.

  This was one thing I could do, I thought. I could make people see this world the way it is: how beautiful, how amazing and how fucked up.

  Sometimes I tug out the box of photos from under my bed and flip through them just so I can see Carlos—see his face and remember. I’m so sorry, I want to say. I’m so sorry I didn’t see you, that I didn’t get it, that I didn’t know until it was too late. I’m so sorry I was too late. People keep saying they’re sorry, but fuck that, fuck them—I’m sorry, I’m the one who’s sorry, I wish I could tell you that, I wish there was some way you could know how sorry I am.

  For in my sense ’tis happiness to die. Every time I come to that line I trip over it, a pebble in my path. How could Carlos have thought that? How could he have thought it would be better or easier? How could he have thought these things when I was here and his friend?

  Even if the world had nothing else to offer Carlos, it still had me.

  I am still here.

  But I couldn’t be what Carlos wanted, not really. Carlos knew that. Carlos knew it even if I didn’t.

  Othello continues:

  When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

  Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,

  Nor set down aught in malice.

  Speak of me as I am. I don’t know how to do that for Carlos, not yet, but I want to be able to do it. I don’t only want to have Carlos’s camera, I want to be that camera. I want to frame Carlos’s world, to freeze it in time. I want people to know who Carlos was, to see what he saw, to feel what he felt, to know. I want
people to know.

  I sit down on the steps of the Library of Congress, wrapping my hands around my knees and rocking back and forth. It’s cold now; night has fallen and my cheeks are wet. I’ll pretend it’s because of the cold. There are few people around—the young, underpaid staffers are shut up in their offices, tourists have gone out to dinner or back to their hotels, and it feels like a ghost town.

  I pull out the camera and snap a tilted picture of the Capitol, lit from below the dome, glowing like a beacon. The Capitol was supposed to be the highest point in D.C., built on a hill so everyone could see it. Not many people know that. If this city were a tree, the Capitol would be the seed from which it sprouted and spread.

  I get back on the Metro and ride to Woodley Park, then get off at the zoo and walk, just follow my feet where they want to go. I find the spot in the park more easily this time. Every time it gets a little easier. Like rubbing a bruise: hurts more as it fades away.

  In my mind, I see Carlos waiting beneath the tree when I get there, propped up against it. He could be lounging. I remember thinking: He could be resting, he could just be resting.

  The fury hits me like a thunderbolt, sudden and irrational and unexpected. I can see Carlos there, and he’s so smug, and he’s so confusing, and God. God.

  I hate you, I think. I hate you, Carlos.

  You don’t mean that.

  I mean it, I think, and viciously kick over a pile of leaves. I think you’re a selfish bastard.

  I see you’ve entered the next stage of grief, Carlos says. Anger.

  “Oh, fuck you, man,” I say, and start at the sound of my own voice, so loud in the quiet.

  I didn’t do it, I think. I didn’t kill you, I didn’t—

  Yeah, but you let me die.

  I curl my hands into fists. The anger is so potent now, swirling dark inside of me, whispering fierce.

  Fuck you, man, I think. You put all of this on me. You decided, you made that decision, and you lied—you lied to me. You told me you were okay. We made plans that night to hang out, a couple DVDs and some KFC, but you made plans too and you didn’t tell me about them. You never did that before, man, you never—you never lied. I thought you never—but that wasn’t true either, was it? You lied every time you told me you were okay, every time you acted like—

  You’re the actor, D. You telling me you couldn’t read the signs? The letters on the wall?

  Men should be what they seem, I think, Iago’s words echoing in my ears. I’m the actor, but you’re the photographer. The camera never lies. Right?

  The camera lies all the time, hombre. I don’t mean airbrushing and all that shit—I mean when you hold that thing in your hand and focus, you’re showing people what you see, right? But you’re also deciding what you don’t want them to see. Whatever’s outside the frame. People always talk about what the camera exposes. They never talk about what it hides.

  I exhale, a deep, full breath. The wind ruffles the leaves in the trees and it’s like they’re exhaling with me, one big release. But I’m no more relaxed, and Carlos is gone.

  He’s gone.

  • • •

  The next day at school, I round a corner and nearly run face-first into Prague. He grabs my arm.

  Yesterday when I talked to Prague, I walked out on him. Now he’s looking kind of sheepish—not an expression I’m used to seeing on his smug-ass face.

  “Can we talk?” Prague asks.

  “Depends on what you want to talk about,” I say.

  I don’t mean to be unkind, but I’m tired of the lectures and condescension—don’t do the play, it’s too gay; don’t date the white girl, you’ll piss people off. I’m tired of coloring within the lines. I played it so safe with Carlos, never pushed him to talk, never asked the questions that nudged at the back of my mind: How bad is it? How scared are you? Do you know you’re not alone?

  “I wanted to talk about Melanie,” Prague says.

  “I don’t know if I want to talk to you about her,” I say.

  “That’s fair,” Prague says. “But I’m sorry, man.”

  It’s a genuine apology, sudden and unqualified. I don’t know what to say.

  “You trying to say it’s suddenly okay for me to date a white girl?” I ask.

  Prague sighs. “I’m saying you should date who you want. And I—”

  He stops for a second, scratching behind his ear.

  “My boy Trey said Melanie’s mom was his little sister’s art teacher. He said she died this last summer, cancer or some shit. Nobody even knew she was sick. And I thought—”

  That I might understand what that’s like, I finish for him.

  I draw in a breath.

  “I’m not trying to mess shit up for you, D,” Prague says. “Maybe you think that, but . . . I just want you to be okay.”

  I look at him, and our eyes meet.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Well.”

  “You do what you need to do, is what I’m saying,” Prague says. “Whatever gets you through the day.”

  I don’t even know what to say to that. Who is this Prague and what’s he done with my dumbass cousin?

  “And plus, she looks like she could kick your ass,” Prague says, quickly. “So maybe that’s what you need.”

  I stare at Prague for a long moment, long enough for Prague to start to look queasy.

  Then I begin to laugh, and soon Prague is laughing too.

  • • •

  On Friday I show up promptly at seven at Melanie’s house for our date, dressed in a pair of gray slacks and a long-sleeve button-down shirt with a leather jacket over it. Melanie’s wearing a long black skirt and a gauzy black top, silver eyeliner making her eyes sparkle.

  “You look amazing,” I say, and lean forward and press a kiss to her cheek. I rest my hand on her arm, and she leans in.

  I wonder when she started doing that—when she started leaning in.

  “Thanks,” she says. “You look pretty good yourself.”

  “I know I do,” I say. “I worked hard on the hair today. Used a comb and everything. You ready for a ride in my sexy car?”

  “You mean your Volvo?”

  “It’s my parents’ Volvo, okay, and that Volvo is hot,” I say. “There is no Volvo hotter than that Volvo.”

  “I think your Volvo might be the anti-sexy,” she says.

  “That’s kind of mean, Ellis. I’m offended, and more importantly, my Volvo’s offended. As my mother would say, it’s a sensible vehicle. Not much good being sexy if you’re dead.”

  Melanie cocks her head to one side. “That’s a good point.”

  “So get in my anti-sexy Volvo,” I say, opening the door for her, “and let’s blow this joint.”

  When we’re both situated I flick on the ignition and the car rumbles to life, the stereo filling the car with the dry, sardonic drawl of Etta James.

  “I think we can agree,” I say, “that having me in this Volvo makes it sexier.”

  Melanie turns to me and grins.

  “Well, of course, sugar.”

  “Now I’m gonna take you somewhere,” I say.

  “Surprise me, Casanova,” she says, and smiles.

  “Somewhere” is Five Guys for burgers, and then a building near Fannie Mae in Tenleytown. The building is a standard office building, but when we go around the side I go straight for the door I know will be unlocked and push it open. Thanks to Carlos, I know at least a half dozen office buildings that don’t lock their doors and don’t have working alarms. I lead Melanie into the darkened hallway and jam my finger into the button to call the elevator. When it arrives, we climb inside. The elevator has dirty lime green carpet and faux wood walls.

  “This is officially the strangest place I have ever been at nine o’clock on a Friday night,” Melanie tells me. “I really hope you’re no
t a serial killer.”

  “Whatever, I got you burgers,” I say with a wave of my hand. “What are you complaining about? This is totally romantic.”

  Truthfully, I would have been happy to buy Melanie pricier food, but I’d been excited to bring her here. I think she’ll like what she sees.

  “How do you know about this place?” Melanie asks.

  “A friend told me about it. It’s quiet. And private.”

  “Unless we get caught.”

  I shrug. I’m not worried. You get caught, you tell ’em you’re part of the cleaning crew, Carlos said once. Nobody ever suspects a black or Latino kid with a mop.

  The elevator door dings and opens on a long, narrow corridor. I lead her up a staircase, then shove open an ugly green door. A cool fall breeze greets us, ruffling Melanie’s hair. She’s warm beside me and she smells delicious, like french fry salt and spice.

  We step out on the rooftop and walk to the edge. The building’s not tall—no buildings in D.C. are higher than fifteen stories, as mandated by law, nothing higher than the Capitol—but it has a nice view of downtown in one direction and the low rooftops of town houses in the other. The sky rolls out in front of us, empty and huge and lovely. Being up here makes the air look solid, like we could step out onto that darkness and feel it beneath our feet, firm as asphalt.

  “Wow,” Melanie whispers.

  “Yeah.”

  I look at her, scarlet-tinted hair bright under the security lights, dark eyes glittering, lips bitten to the red of her hair.

  I lean in.

  I kiss her, and oh, I’ve kissed her before, but this feels different. My tongue flicks at her bottom lip, asking for permission like I’m knocking on her front door. She opens her mouth against mine and suddenly it’s another level of kissing, slippery and deep and dirty and wow.

  I pull the clip out of her hair, run my hand through the strands and tip her head back so I can kiss her some more. I feel the warmth collecting in my stomach, fuzzy and hot. She tastes vaguely like a burger and ketchup, and she makes this sweet little strangled sound when I press my hand to her cheek.