by Bob Smith
“Taylor might change,” suggested Junior. “He did throw up. Maybe that might be enough to stop him from becoming a Republican.”
“It’s nice to think so, but I wonder.”
“Are you giving up on Carol, too?”
“No, I’m not giving up on anyone. Even you.”
“There’s not much you can do to change things when things choose to go from bad to worse,” he said.
His comment worried me. My great fear was that everything I’d revealed to Junior about his future would make him pessimistically cynical.
“That’s not always true. Gay people live better now than they did twenty years ago, and they’ll live better twenty years from now. In twenty years same-sex marriage will be legal in Massachusetts and in all of Canada.”
Junior’s optimism was temporarily roused, but after he asked a few questions, he slouched back into his seat.
“It’s okay to be skeptical but it’s never okay to be cynical,” I said. “What’s bad in your life can sometimes turn out to be strangely great or at least interesting.”
He exhaled sharply. “Tell me one thing that’s like that.”
I couldn’t think of anything offhand and tried to recall something. Then I thought we should stop at the next gas station to call and find out how Michael, Elena, and Taylor were doing. Thinking of Michael reminded me of something, and while I wasn’t confident it proved my thesis, it was all I had.
“Milton’s party was probably the worst party you ever went to, but imagine now how disappointed you’d be if you’d missed it.”
On Christmas Day in 1985, Michael and I went to our next-door neighbor Milton’s open house, thinking it would be a sophisticated New York soiree. Instead, we found chunks of cheddar on saltines and a house full of bickering queens who served up every remark on a skewer. At one point, I tapped Michael on the shoulder. “Can you believe this?” I whispered. Michael lost it. He began to laugh, and watching him struggle to suppress his laughter made me laugh. Soon Michael was bent over in paroxysms of hysteria as people stared at us. Michael told me later that he knew what I had to be thinking since we entered the house, and my comment unleashed a gusher of merriment that had been building since we arrived.
“The party was a disaster,” I said. “But in some ways it was the most memorable party I ever went to in New York. Michael and I still laugh about our ungracious behavior on that day. It’s a shared experience that the two of us treasure. And I’ve tried to think why it resonated with us. I believe it was because we’d become such close friends that it was the first time we can both recall when we knew, without a doubt, exactly what the other one was thinking.”
“I guess if you look at life through the prism of Camp, almost anything bad can be considered good,” Junior said.
“Not really. Camp doesn’t work at some point. No one ever says, ‘My life is so bad—so unbelievably horrible—that it’s great.’”
There was a moment of silence as we drove through the long stretch of California desert between Blythe and Chuckwalla. Junior cleared his throat and said almost apologetically, “I was thinking about Carol.”
“Me too,” I admitted. It reminded me that the things I shared with Junior outweighed our differences. My thoughts had been vaguely mournful without pinning down any specific memories, almost as if sadness were a smell or taste. Sometimes my head feels like a storage unit for sad things; I forget what I have buried in there until something or someone reminds me.
“What makes her life so bad?” Junior asked. “So bad that she wants to kill herself.”
It had been five years since her death and I still had doubts about why Carol killed herself.
“I’m not sure anyone solves a suicide,” I said. “It’s like a detective trying to solve a crime where the only witness was also the murder victim. People write suicide notes, but to really explain why someone kills himself I think you’d have to write a suicide novel.”
The thought of trying to read those depressing, unreadable books made me almost grateful that most suicides remain a mystery. “For most people, wanting to kill yourself is unimaginable,” I added, “and yet the survivors try to piece together a story.”
“You must have some idea.”
“Yes,” I said. “But we’ll never know the whole story.”
“Sounds like life.”
His comment sounded cynical, but I don’t think he meant it to be. It might have been a fantasy, but I decided to think of it as a sign of wisdom.
15
WE STOPPED AT A GAS STATION near Palm Springs, and IWregretted not being able to show Junior the Big Morongo Nature Preserve, owned by the Nature Conservancy. “It’s a must-visit place,” I said. “If you go in May, you’re guaranteed to see vermilion flycatchers. They’re a small spectacular gray and . . . vermilion bird.”
“What’s with all the interest in birds? Don’t tell me I become a birdwatcher. That would be the most depressing news you’ve told me yet.”
“Well, then I have some really bad news . . .”
Junior shook his head. “That’s one aspect of your life that should stay closeted.”
“Too late,” I said. “I’m a gay birdwatcher—outdoors and proud.”
I used the pay phone to call Midland and learned that Michael had a black eye and Taylor had a bloody nose. When they gave one of the black ops a bathroom break, he’d almost overpowered them, even though his hands were tied. They’d barely managed to regain control, and Elena still sounded shaken up. She asked how much longer we had until we reached Crescent City, and I estimated another fourteen hours.
“Well, step on it,” she said. “I’m scared, and the longer we stay with them the scarier it gets.”
We did step on it, although we still needed to stop periodically to let Ravi out. When I explained how upset Elena sounded, Junior amiably offered to drive if I was tired. I was exhausted, and for the rest of the trip we basically took three hours on and three hours off. Junior could sleep in the car, but I couldn’t any longer. I closed my eyes, but my mind wouldn’t shut down, as I worried about the three of them back in Midland. I also worried about how we would convince Carol that she might kill herself in fifteen years and also whether knowledge of that event would dissuade her from ending her life. Perhaps some new reason to kill herself would appear in place of the justification she’d relied on previously. And I was still concerned that I might be implanting the idea in her mind.
As we headed north, there were long stretches where neither of us talked. I’d traveled a lot in California and thought of the state as a condensed continent with drive-through restaurants and drive-through trees, where the never-ending Gold Rush was stuck in traffic. I’d once considered moving there. Its climate was luminous, its cities sophisticated, and its natural beauties made my eyes feel they’d struck the mother lode. Springtime has never been expressed more magically than by an entire horizon filled with neon orange California poppies. But I couldn’t imagine living in Los Angeles, put off by the thought of people with sequoia-sized egos whose major achievements in life were producing lucrative game shows. And I ruled out San Francisco at the thought of living with people who took overweening pride in the accomplishment of moving to San Francisco. I was happier living in New York, where people move with big dreams and then spend the rest of their lives proving the truism that no one’s interested in hearing about anyone’s dreams.
While driving in the dark up Highway 101, I worried about Junior. Traffic had almost disappeared entirely once we passed Santa Rosa, and the occasional headlights of oncoming cars illuminated his handsome face as he slept. His head rested against the window and his lips were slightly parted, but no sound issued from them. It gnawed at me that I’d altered his life in ways that neither of us would discover until I returned to 2006.
The sun was rising when we reached Eureka. When Junior awoke, he went from drowsy to goggle-eyed, checking out both sides of the road. He’d never seen redwoods before. I half-apologized
that most of the trees were second-growth. Shortly before the car was cast into shadow, we passed through a grove of trees thick enough to make round dining tables that could seat twelve. “Wow,” he gushed appropriately. It was thrilling to observe myself witnessing something stupendous for the first time; it was almost like reenacting a memory, even though my first encounter with redwoods had been at Muir Woods just north of San Francisco.
“Carol’s been telling me I’d like it out here,” he said, craning his neck to look up through the windshield, attempting to see the crowns of the trees. “But I’d just moved to New York and didn’t have the money to visit.”
For my first two years in New York, I thought traveling anywhere outside New York—not counting Fire Island and New Hope—was unnecessary; where was I going to go? I already lived in the city I most wanted to visit. In due time, I went to London, Paris, Florence, Venice, Santa Fe, and St. Petersburg and decided that New Yorkers didn’t have a monopoly on cool. And seeing the natural glories of Alaska, Australia, and the Galapagos forced me to concede that Central Park’s woodsy splendor is provincial by comparison.
Redwoods are skyscrapers that turn even sophisticates from Manhattan into gawking tourists. For a few years, after I became a New Yorker, Carol and I talked infrequently, catching up during our annual Christmas visits to Buffalo or our summer boat trips on the Niagara River. When I finally did visit Crescent City in August 1988, I was bowled over by the redwood forests and fantasized about buying a cabin there.
“Redwoods are on my ‘Short List of Things That Won’t Disappoint You,’” I said.
Junior smiled. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but I was pleased that he liked my idea as much as I did.
“You know,” Junior said, “Carol told me when Mom visited her out here, they were walking through the redwoods and Mom said, ‘Nature is beautiful. It’s the best thing about life. Everything else is a mess.’”
“It sounds like an entry in Thoreau’s journals,” I suggested. “If Thoreau had been a tough broad from Buffalo.”
“What else is on your list?” Junior asked.
“Um, whales.”
“I’ve never seen a whale.”
I’d see my first whales with Taylor on a whale-watching tour off Provincetown in the early ’90s. We had beginner’s luck and for hours watched humpbacks breaching right next to the boat. After that spectacular introduction to cetaceans, I encouraged friends to come whale-watching with me the following week, and all we saw were a few dorsal fins.
“After seeing a whale, I can promise that you’ll never say, ‘That stunk!’ Well, you could, but you’d have to be the most unbearable person on earth.”
Junior took a sip from his coffee. We’d stopped in the middle of nowhere at a combination convenience/general store stocked with dusty canned goods, freezer-burned ice cream, and ancient cold cuts that sent a chill up your spine at the thought of eating them.
“What else?”
“Seeing a comet in the sky with your naked eye. That’s amazing.”
“Really?” Junior made a sour face. “In April we drove out of the city with some friends to try to see Halley’s comet. We wanted to get away from the light pollution, but it was a washout. We went to the beach but couldn’t find the comet. Turned out it was low in the sky, and the mist on the ocean obscured the view.”
I’d completely forgotten about that night. A group of my pals had wanted to see Halley’s comet. We’d driven out to Long Beach on Long Island on a very cold spring night and had been unable to find the comet. Our search might have been impeded because we were a bit blurred after smoking quite a bit of pot—but I had to give us credit for at least trying to see this once-in-a-lifetime wonder.
“Well, you’re still young. There might be other comets that will come along.”
“I hope so. But they don’t seem that common.”
The comet I’d been thinking about was Hale-Bopp. I told Junior how it would hang in the sky for months; thrilling me each time I saw it. When friends mentioned they hadn’t seen it yet, it was incredibly satisfying to just point a finger in the air and then listen to their exclamations. “You know it was discovered by amateur astronomers; if we discover it first, it could be the Sherkston comet.”
Junior seemed to be enjoying the game. “What else won’t be a letdown?”
“The Channel Islands, off California.” Junior raised his eyebrows as if he’d never heard of them. “They’re like visiting California two hundred years ago. And you must go to the Galapagos.”
“You’ve been?”
I nodded. “When you see a giant tortoise grazing in a field, it will amaze you. I think it’s the only place on Earth where you can snorkel with sea turtles and penguins.”
I was also thinking as we drove that the far northern coast of California was one of my favorite places. It still felt remote and unspoiled compared to the rest of the continental United States.
“You also have to see the three canyons: the Grand Canyon, Chaco Canyon, and Canyon de Chelly.”
“I’ve seen the Grand Canyon from the air,” Junior said. “I was flying out to visit Alan in LA.” Alan was one of our brothers. “It was my first trip to the West Coast and the pilot announced that passengers on the right-hand side of the plane could see the Grand Canyon. I had a window seat on the right-hand side but noticed the guy in front of me made no effort to look. He kept reading the Wall Street Journal. I never want to be that guy.”
I had no memory of that moment and wondered what else I’d forgotten about my life.
“No one does,” I said. “He probably doesn’t want to be that guy.”
“I’d put maple syrup on your list,” Junior said.
“Hmmm. You’re right about that.” I made another suggestion. “Perfectly ripe pineapple.”
“How about maple syrup on pineapple?”
“Broiled. That could be dangerous; you might not want to eat anything else.”
He grinned adorably, and I thought gay men in New York were idiots for not scooping him up.
“What about books?”
“Is there any book that won’t disappoint somebody?” I asked. “Think of any classic book and you can always find someone who can’t stand it. Mark Twain hated Jane Austen.”
“You’re probably right.” Junior’s face suddenly brightened. “What about Green Eggs and Ham?”
“Orthodox Jews and Muslims.”
Junior laughed. I was glad to see that he got my jokes, but then thought, If you can’t make yourself laugh, you should give up conversation entirely.
“The same goes for films,” Junior said. “One man’s favorite is another man’s flop.”
“What about The Wizard of Oz?” I suggested. “It’s kind of the perfect film. It’s beloved because everything’s great: the script, the songs, the performances, the sets, and the costumes.”
“I’d put that on my list; but you know there’s someone somewhere who thinks it’s overrated.”
“That person should be forced to wear a sign. So everyone can avoid him.”
“What about works of art?” Junior asked. “What do I have to see?”
“Michelangelo’s David is the obvious one. At least for Western art. I’d also include Stonehenge and the Parthenon. Oh, and the cave paintings of Lascaux and Chauvet.”
“I know about Lascaux, but I don’t know Chauvet.”
I was silent for a second. The Chauvet cave wasn’t discovered until 1994.
“It’s a cave in southern France.” I explained how Chauvet was equally as spectacular as Lascaux and its discovery would be front-page news. I briefly explained my wild fantasy of the two of us flying to France and discovering the cave ourselves. And while we were in Europe, we could stop in the Alps and dig out the prehistoric iceman, and then fly to Indonesia and, in an archaeological triple play, discover Homo floresiensis, the “hobbit” people on the island of Flores. God, it was tempting. “We could make three major scientific discoveries, and Taylor wo
uld have only one.”
“All of those are overseas. I’ve never been.” Junior sounded ashamed.
Later that year he would go with Michael to Europe for the first time, but I decided not to tell him. Planning the trip and working doubles to pay for it had been part of the fun.
“You’re hardly art deprived; you live in New York.”
Junior chuckled. “It’s never enough; New Yorkers always want more!”
Over the next ten years, I’d visit Crescent City many times and come to understand that northern California at the height of summer is like Buffalo in July: it’s a seductive whore who shows you a good time but doesn’t mention those rainy and snowy winter months that hang on like an untreated dose of the clap.
We entered Crescent City with the harbor to our left and a strip of fast food restaurants and cheap motels on our right. “A tsunami wiped out the town after the Anchorage earthquake in ’64,” I explained. “It’s all been rebuilt.”
“The town needs another tsunami,” Junior said, his head swiveling as he eyed the downtown. “It’s like every building is wearing a velour jogging outfit.”
The idiosyncrasies of architecture give a town its character, and Crescent City’s business district looked depressingly monotonous, with rows of flat-roofed clapboard-covered boxes painted varying shades of drab. Local histories record Crescent City had once been charmingly funky, a mixture of post–Gold Rush era, late Victorian, and early twentieth century bungalows, but the rebuilt city had become a village of the architecturally damned where every building shared an unsettling, uncanny resemblance.
The motels made me think of our friends in Texas. “Let’s call Midland to tell them to get out of there,” I proposed.