God Says No

by James Hannaham

  I’d gotten there before eleven, so the place wasn’t crowded. I counted seven people: three older men, a tall, skinny loner scuffing his feet by the carpet at the edge of the dance floor, and a couple of Asian men disco dancing to the thump-thump-thump of the music. They held hands and spun each other around.

  Another fellow sat at the bar, facing out and swirling ice in a tumbler. He locked his eyes in my direction. I looked away, scared that he liked me. There wasn’t anything between us worth staring at, though, and I had my back against the wall. The fellow didn’t take his eyes off me even once. Nervously I shifted my weight from foot to foot. Talk to me, I thought, and I’ll… I didn’t know what I’d do. August Valentine would be charming and talk to the man. He’d win the man’s heart without trying, and break it the next morning, I bet.

  Several more men trickled in over the next half hour. The staring man had another drink. Slowly the disco ball turned, shooting out beams of light, like when God creates a new planet. I changed locations, and all of a sudden the man from the bar appeared next to me, trying to see around my book.

  “She it is, in darkness shines!” he shouted. I peeked around the book. The man had big, wet red eyes and his hair was blond on top but dark at the roots. He giggled and waited for a response. Though I didn’t move, he went on. He struck a funny pose like an actor doing a play from Old English times. “’Tis she that still herself refines! By her own light, to every eye, more seen, more known when Vice stands by.” Belching quietly, he touched his fingers to his chest when he said “Vice.” Then he waited for me to react. The disco beat shook the bar’s thin walls.

  “Are you calling me a she?” I bristled from behind the pages. Homosexual men called each other “She.” That was one of the womanly things they did that disgusted me. August Valentine wouldn’t tolerate feminine behavior in other men, even if he did things with other guys.

  The man guffawed. “Silly Billy. You’re not reading that book at all, are you?”

  I froze. I hadn’t thought much about what book it was. Casting my eyes down, I turned it quickly to re-read the cover without showing my face for too long. It surprised me to think that this Ben Jonson fellow was famous. I had never heard of him before. I flipped the book back.

  The man tapped the picture on the cover of the book, right on Ben’s nose. “I played the fourth pygmy in a staged reading of one of the masques a couple of years ago. I’m with this sort of dance company thing. Are you an actor?”

  “No.”

  “Glad to hear it.” The man’s face was red. Maybe he was blushing. A rush of sympathy came to my heart. He was a shy person, sort of. It must have been difficult for him to approach me. “So why are you reading that book? It’s sort of obscure. Are you a drama student?”

  “I build sets. I’ve built sets.” In junior high school, I meant, for one show. Seemed that every time I said something about August, I learned something new about him and myself at the same time.

  “Oh! A set designer!” He exclaimed, brightening and tucking his electric blue lycra shirt into his jeans. “Delighted to meet another man of the theater. Are you fond of Jonson? I’m a big Jonson fan. Or a fan of big johnsons, or something like that.” Cackling, he threw his head back. I had no idea what he meant by any of it, but it sounded funny. As usual, I was flattered that somebody had decided to talk to me, once the terror wore off, so I took a longer glance around the book. The man lit a cigarette and folded one arm across his chest, then crossed his legs and took a drag. The move made him lose his balance slightly.

  “That’ll teach me not to buy my shoes at Kmart!” He burst into laughter at his own joke. “I am so ridiculous!”

  He told me he was the son of a U.S. Army general from Arlington, Virginia. He had lived in many places all over the USA before settling in Hotlanta, as he called it. In order to support his career as a dance/theater artist, he worked at a gift shop called Over the Rainbow in little Five points. He had moved out of his parents’ house when he was seventeen and his father figured out about him. Sometimes he wrote or spoke to his mother, but he didn’t have a lot of contact with his family.

  Naturally the story moved me. I saw the sad part of my immediate future in his lack of family contact. As he spoke, I gradually lowered the book, letting it fall to my side. Sweetness and vulnerability showed in his big red eyes—the irises might be blue, I could sort of see that in the dim light. I like him, I thought, after listening to him talk about his life for a while. What had happened to him reminded me of what had happened to Annie after she ran away from home. It struck a chord with me now that I had begun my gay year, making me think I could preserve a little bit of my old life. The man also made me laugh the same way Annie did. A warm connection between the two of them formed in my mind. Maybe gay people could be okay if they were as funny as this man. I wondered what his name was but I didn’t know how to ask. My defenses melted; I turned my whole body to face him. I considered myself right lucky to have met a potential mate on my first official night out in the world of gays. I stopped short of thanking Jesus, though.

  “My name is August,” I finally said, at a break in his talking. I grasped his hand with an extra-firm August Valentine grip. “August Valentine. You can call me Augie.” For the first time, my new identity rushed through me like real blood. A couple of days later, I would find a head shop near the Patriot where a guy made a photocopy of a birth certificate with my new name on it. “Use this bad boy to get an international student ID, and you’re good as gold,” he said. “Probably you could get a passport with the ID. Just keep building on the old ID. Good luck, stranger. Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do!”

  “August,” the gay man repeated. “That’s a nice name. And a hot month. I’m Miquel. You probably can’t tell, but it’s actually spelled with a q. My Anglo dad wanted Michael and my Mexican mom wanted Miquel, so they compromised. But it just looks to everybody like I can’t spell.”

  “You’re funny,” I told him. He couldn’t think of a clever response and turned his attention for a second. Then our eyes met.

  The glow of our sexual feelings flickered between us for a moment. Then came an uncomfortable silence. Almost like he only wanted to break the pause, Miquel blurted out that he thought I was like a teddy bear and hugged me. He couldn’t get his arms all the way around my body, but he squeezed as best he could. After a minute, he stepped back and admired me, which made me uncomfortable.

  “What are you drinking, Augie?” he asked.

  “I’m having a…” I couldn’t think of the names of drinks fast enough, so I had to confess. “I don’t drink. Much.”

  “The hell you’re doing in a bar then? Oh, I get it.” He smirked. “you’re here to pick up cheap dates like yours truly.”

  “No,” I protested, “I— I—” I almost told him that I’d come there to read my book, but he wouldn’t have believed that.

  “Join me in a tequila shot,” he begged, turning the corners of his mouth down. Struck by the deep need filling up his face, I couldn’t say no. I had never had anything like tequila before. It burned my throat and I coughed so hard that Miquel slapped me on the back and asked if I was all right. Eventually I straightened up and asked for a glass of water.

  At 11 p.m., men in tight clothing poured in and jammed the dance floor. They took their shirts off and tucked them into their belt loops. Soon the bar became so crowded that we couldn’t move around freely. As they passed, the shirtless men scratched my arms with their shaved chests. The sensation was erotic but painful, like sexy sandpaper, if that really existed. As the space filled with hunks, their beefy bodies pushed us closer together. Soon Miquel’s stomach pressed against mine. I yawned—I wasn’t used to staying up late.

  “Bored with me already, eh?” he said. “Shall we just skip to the morning-after part?”

  “What?”

  “Do you live alone?” he asked. I hesitated. He had just finished a gin and tonic. He stabbed the lime with a stirrer, drank the water, and
crunched on the ice as it melted. “Well, I do. My boyfriend moved out a month ago.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Tell me about him.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. He was a son of a bitch, and when he hit me I gave him his walking papers. With some help from law enforcement, of course.”

  A six-foot-five, muscle-bound blond man wearing a leather armband bumped into somebody behind me, who spilled his drink on my lower back and pushed me into Miquel’s arms.

  Miquel wrapped himself around me to see about cleaning up the spill. What luck—I didn’t have to take the blame for doing what I already wanted to do. Fortunately the drink had been colorless. A few pages of Plays and Masques got wet, but nothing was stained. Miquel turned me around forcefully and grabbed a handful of cocktail napkins from the dispenser on the bar. He sopped them against my back. By then the crowd had swallowed the man who spilled the drink.

  Miquel, still mopping vigorously with the napkins, untucked my shirt and pushed the wad down into my pants. Nobody could see what he was doing around my waistline. They probably didn’t care. Miquel’s other hand plunged in and he massaged me. I pulled away and turned around.

  “Hey!” I complained, grabbing his wrists.

  “I’m just being friendly.”

  “That’s real friendly!” I thought of leaving him there and going home, but August wouldn’t have done that.

  “Don’t try to tell me that big behind is untouched, Polly prude. Look me in the eye, say it with a straight face,” he mocked. “Okay, a gay face will do.”

  I dropped his hands and edged toward the door. “I should go,” I said. I guess I liked him, and I didn’t want what happened between us to be like my bathroom guys.

  Miquel made a face like he’d lost the lottery. “Augie! You’re kidding! Don’t leave. I know I was out of line. I’m just a little tipsy. And I like you. There, I said it. How could I not like you? You laugh at all my jokes.” The redness around his eyes had become inflamed. In fact, his whole face had grown bright red with embarrassment and panic. It seemed like he was about to burst into tears. His arm twisted itself around mine and he pulled himself close. “When can I see you again?”

  “Sometime,” I told him. “I’m pooped, so I’m going to go anyhow. But not because of you.”

  “Oh, Augie, don’t go! We were having such a good time! I’m sorry. Sometimes my hands just… Well, I used to play the piano, so sometimes they just get carried away. Roman hands, Russian fingers…” His fingers tripped up an imaginary keyboard. “What’s better than roses on a piano?”

  “I don’t know, what?”

  “Tulips on an organ!” Miquel threw his head back and hooted at the joke. I didn’t get it at first. When I did, I laughed, but not enough, and when he saw that, he shifted gears. His wide forehead wrinkled and his posture collapsed like one of those plastic dolls that topple when you press a button on the bottom of their little pedestals. The music got quieter, bubbling electronically for a while, like it was listening to us. I said goodbye and started to push my way toward the door.

  “If you’re so hell-bent on going, can I walk you out?”

  “I guess so.”

  We pushed our way through the flesh. Walking around for the first time in a while made me aware that I was drunk as a monkey.

  Outside the club, a long line of white men had gathered, corralled by a velvet rope, their hair slick with gel. Only a few of them looked at each other or spoke. A bulky man with tattoos kept everybody from going in. Miquel and I stood for a moment at the exit, where four taxis idled. When I smelled myself, I realized how much I stank like smoke. The drivers stuck their heads out of the cabs, hoping we would be their next fare.

  “So are you going to give me your number?” Miquel asked.

  “I’d love to,” I said. “But I don’t really have one.”

  Miquel arched his back and sneered. “Oh, I get it. Tamiqua is waiting at home with the rolling pin, and baby Jamal is crying his head off ’cause he wants his daddy? Or maybe it’s mom—you live at home, in the closet. “Never done this kind of thing before,’ huh? no, wait—I know. You’ve got two lovers named Miquel with a q already, and they’re both waiting for you in the Posturepedic waterbed. Nothing you say will surprise me, honey. Go ahead, try.” He stood with his hands on his hips, like somebody waiting for a slap across the face. I made a move toward the first cab in line. “Okay,” He barked. “Have a nice life, Jumbo!” His jaw quivered.

  I halted. The alcohol had blurred my sight. “Why don’t you give me your number?”

  “Oh Christ. You mean why don’t I throw it into the Chattahoochee River.”

  “You know, you shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain.” I tried to smile. “Just give me your number. I promise I’ll call.”

  Miquel laughed bitterly and rolled his eyes. “That’s right up there with “We can just sleep together, we don’t have to do anything.’ seriously, caballero, do you think I just fell out of the incubator—on my head?”

  I searched myself. “Do you have a pen?” I asked him.

  “No,” he replied, without checking his pockets.

  “Hey, I got a pen,” the closest of the cab drivers yelled. I turned to realize that all of the cabbies had been listening in. Blood rushed to my face. I searched their eyes, but they didn’t look shocked by our conversation. None of them even seemed amused. The nearest driver leaned out of the window and held his pen toward us. I took it and handed it to Miquel, who picked up one of the nightclub flyers scattered all over the sidewalk. Using his thigh as a surface, he scratched out a phone number. He paused to shake ink to the tip of the pen. When he finished writing, he flicked the card at my nose.

  “Happy trails, amigo.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “And I heard that Christ guy is coming back from the dead, too.”

  A surge of pity for Miquel crested in me, one that made me know I would have to see him again. I had to prove to him that love existed— especially Christ’s love.

  My balance was unsteady. I folded the flyer into quarters and stuck it into my front pocket. “I’m going to call you, Miquel,” I said in my most serious tone.

  “Y’know, it’s like, the more you say it, the less I believe it. Isn’t that cuuurious?”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye already.” Miquel chucked the pen at my feet, turned on his heel, and stepped over to the doorman. I picked up the pen, which had rolled into the gutter between the first taxi and the sidewalk, and got into the backseat of the cab. “Thank you for the pen,” I told the driver.

  “No prob. Where you headed, son?” With some difficulty, he pulled the gearshift into drive and slowly started pulling away from the curb. I gave him the Patriot’s address. “Tough luck tonight, eh? The homos can be worse bitches than the women sometimes, huh?” he snorted. Only half-listening, I grunted in agreement. I had turned to watch Miquel, hoping that he would see me. I wanted him to acknowledge that something real and tender had happened between us earlier in the night.

  I heard the doorman bellowing, “All exits are final! Don’t make me say it again!”

  “But I left something in there, Mr. Doorman, sir.”

  “What did you leave in there?”

  “My fucking dignity, that’s what!”

  Craning my head out of the back window of the cab, I couldn’t catch Miquel’s eye as he stumbled off down the sidewalk.

  NINE

  That weekend I shuffled through the streets of Atlanta with no destination, searching thrift shops for dirt-cheap clothes that August Valentine would like-subdued colors, ethnic patterns-and beating myself up the whole darn time over what I’d done. Sunday morning I promised myself I’d end it with a phone call to Annie. But in my travels, I made the mistake of picking up the Journal-Constitution and reading an article about the derailment. I was scared to read about it, but it would’ve made me angry if they’d ignored it. The paper had put the article in a small box on page 12, probably
because the only death was a man named Gary Gray, whose body they said had burned up in the fire. I hadn’t expected to read that they’d notified the next of kin. My heart kicked my rib cage like a billy goat. A steel door might as well have slammed shut between me and the past. I found the nearest place to sit down, a brown brick wall under a tree in a plaza full of homeless folks and people cutting through, and my body shook. I sat there for a good while, worrying that I’d done something monstrous and deceitful. Then I got to thinking that a deceitful monster ought to stay away anyhow.

  Watching folks pass, I asked myself questions I never had before. Who were these people? What had their lives been like? How much time did they have left? How many of these men and women were like me-people who weren’t who they said they were?

  On TV I had seen many stories about people who moved to new places and changed their identities. Most of them had done it to avoid criminal charges. I had the advantage of not being a criminal, at least. Annie and Cheryl and Mama and Daddy would understand that my death was part of the Lord’s plan.

  At the fried-chicken restuarant across the plaza, I bought a two-piece, extra crispy. August would have gone to a cafe, but Gary had to watch his spending. When I finished eating, I wiped my greasy fingers with a napkin. I wadded the garbage up in the box, set it aside, and found a pay phone at the other side of the brown plaza.

  I reached into my back pocket and found the dance club flyer with Miquel’s phone number on it. I took myself a long look at that number. By the second or third time, I had it memorized. It was an easy number, with a pattern of sixes and fours. I admired the rounded, readable handwriting. A fat loop sat behind the q, a circle flew above the i.

  By this time it was about three in the afternoon. I thought that would have given Miquel enough time to get a good night’s sleep and a late breakfast. By now he would be reading the paper, watching television, or perhaps even waiting for my call.

  Four times, I dialed every digit except the last. A thin woman in a blue hat came over and stood in line to use the phone. Finally, mustering all of August Valentine’s courage, I dialed the last digit.