Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  I think Edmund actually expected I would either have sex with him in the men’s room or, in lieu of that, give him my phone number, and he looked disappointed when I got up and put my jacket back on.

  “Ben, you just got here,” he said, his naked ass sliding toward me on his bar stool.

  “Busy Monday. Have to get back to work!” If I tried to sound cheerful, perhaps I could convince myself for a few minutes that I really hadn’t had those shots, that I really hadn’t given up my sobriety for a two-hour slum session in the Slog.

  Edmund grabbed my arm and squeezed my biceps. “Come back and see me, Ben. I’m here a lot?” It sounded like a question.

  “Like I said, my work’s close.” My face red, I pulled away from him, and without a beat he turned to the new man sitting on his right.

  I backed out through the wet leather slats onto Folsom.

  * * *

  I’d never been drunk in San Francisco, but in my slightly impaired saunter I realized this SoMa neighborhood was fueled by alcohol, drugs and partying of all kinds, which had deep historical roots. Even the side streets were named after the city fathers’ favorite prostitutes: Bessie, Minnie, Isis. I’d have to check the map for Dallas.

  I’d hide the fact that I slipped. No one would need to know, really—I’d just stop celebrating my AA anniversaries, be conveniently out of town or have something come up so as not to have to accept the traditional celebratory chip, cake, hug or handshake. I’d still go to meetings on occasion, but now that I’d tested the waters, I’d try those drugs that had become so popular during my years of sobriety: ecstasy, GHB, Special K, crystal.

  I deserved it; I deserved to get high, and after all, I’d been good and look what happened.

  Terry’d have to be duped. This might not be the easiest thing in the world, since he had a sixth sense about all matters alcoholic. However, I never gave myself enough credit for being a good actor. I’d avoid him and make up small but dramatic problems to cover the truth.

  It was quiet at Safe Harbor when I got back to my cubicle. Tony Mallard’s glass cage was dark and locked. The red light on my phone set flashed. My head was throbbing. I needed coffee immediately.

  Paul Sutcliffe had called twice. Kelly then called to tell me Paul would be calling and that she needed to “set me straight” about a few things—Vegas travel arrangements—before I talked to Paul. Dr. Kim’s office wanted me to call them back. Even Karen left a message, something about the film festival circuit.

  I’d long ago reached that point in daytime drinking where it’s obvious—for an alcoholic—that either I had to keep drinking for the rest of my conscious time in that particular twenty-four-hour period or I needed to sleep some of it off.

  Safe Harbor had remodeled a room in one corner of our floor as a nursing room, a place where mothers could pump their boobs and then breastfeed their babies in privacy. This place had subdued lighting, rocking chairs, plush toys and a sofa, which was perfect for a little nap. Luckily, the one nursing mom I knew about had been pink-slipped in a round of layoffs a couple of weeks before.

  I slept for about thirty minutes. When I came to, I had that familiar, not entirely unwelcome feeling of falling deeper into a pit with no sides, that consuming self-loathing I’d worked a lifetime to perfect and then just gave up one day.

  It was back.

  5

  Jake had an unusual reaction to my cancer news—he got very quiet. There was no earful of HIV-warrior stuff; the fact that he didn’t made me think I wasn’t fooling myself: This was indeed that special guy, and I better not fuck it up.

  We hugged for a long time, rocking back and forth in the back doorway. He smelled like his garden, like dirt, and the steady rubbing of his hand on the back of my neck was hypnotic. It had been a couple of days—long enough for the alcohol smell to dissipate from my body; whatever, Jake said nothing about it.

  My next appointment with Dr. Kim was the following week—the fact they didn’t seem to feel any urgency was startling. Even though I told myself not to, I couldn’t help but troll the Internet for more and ultimately nastier prostate cancer information.

  I dreamed I was in the movie Alien, and instead of Sigourney Weaver it was I who was the strong, take-no-shit-from-anyone heroine. The twist in my version was that the monster was inside me, not in my costar. The demon had a prostate gland for a head and would move around my guts at will, tormenting me. Its ultimate torture was that it would not come out, like in the movie, but would just grow inside, eventually eating up everything in there. Didn’t matter that I was a woman. In my dream everyone had a prostate.

  In the information gleaned from various cancer Web sites, both those that smacked of legitimacy (affiliated with university hospitals) and those less credible (personal horror blogs), three things stood out: (1) death (2) impotence and (3) incontinence. Other things, like treatment modalities, however ghastly sounding, or survival rates—generally pretty good if the cancer was caught early enough—seemed of only passing importance.

  I would either die of this cancer or survive it but likely be impotent and perhaps incontinent as well. Lovely. That was death. What sort of life would I have as a fortysomething gay man in the cruising capital of the universe, wearing Defendors to catch the flow from a now-useless appendage?

  * * *

  I hadn’t had anything more to drink since that day at the Slog and so far wasn’t craving any. Out of habit, I’d gone to an AA meeting in the interim and avoided my sober buddies there. On my walk over, the programming kicked in, and honestly I’d made my mind up to share that I’d had a drink—or two or three—and start the process of coming in out of the cold.

  The thing was, if I did that I couldn’t have more, and I wanted more. At least, I wanted the option of more. David A. and David T., who always sat together and usually saved a spot for me, didn’t get the chance to quiz me since I sat in the back and left the meeting early.

  Karen’s phone message from the day I drank was actually exciting in scope if mundane in process. We had a locked edit, finally, from Glenda on Hell for the Holidays, and she wanted to talk about the longer list of film festivals to target. Finally, I called her back.

  “We can’t go wrong with the gay fests. I guarantee you there’s no other story starring two mostly boring, middle-aged queers,” I said.

  “Maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced. “I’d like to try all the big places, in addition to Sundance—I bet there’s a great response to this, and I’m jazzed.”

  Maybe she was right. Perhaps Hell for the Holidays really was a good little movie, despite the fake-looking fuselage scene and Ron Frankhauser’s college-boy smirkiness. I wanted to trust Karen. In the back of my mind, adding in the new cancer equation, I knew it would be pragmatic to do so.

  She didn’t know about the cancer, and I wasn’t ready to tell her.

  “OK,” I said.

  “You sure? I mean—good. Good! We’ll do it. I’ll get the dubs made tomorrow, and Thursday night we’ll start shipping them out. We’ll have a party; Dennis promised he’d help. You’ll come. Bring Jake if you want. Glenda might even show up.”

  “I think Jake works that night, but I’ll ask him.”

  She went silent for a moment. “You guys all right?”

  “Yeah, just fine. He’s around here somewhere—maybe out in the garden; you know him and those plants.”

  He’d just transplanted the exotic datura, which had yellow, trumpetshaped, upside-down, unimaginably fragrant flowers. They now drooped lazily over some rotting wooden fencing Bunny’s father had installed during WWII—when she was just a girl, she’d always remind me—for passersby on Douglass Street to enjoy.

  “You sound funny to me, Ben.”

  I didn’t want to continue this conversation. Karen was one of those people I didn’t want to lie to; she had this way about her that would make me, without planning it, inexplicably open up to her and tell her my secrets.

  “I’m hungry. I’ve got to do
something about lunch.”

  Suddenly, a close-up of my fuck buddy Eric’s face clicked into my slide viewer. As was usual when erect, he was smiling, a little bit shy, and looking off to one side. My cock responded immediately, pushing up against my shorts, then against the buttons on my jeans till there was that uncomfortable tightness and I had to open my legs to give it some breathing room.

  I knew what I wanted for lunch.

  “I think I’ll head down the hill to that Italian grocery that makes those nice ciabatta sandwiches for five dollars,” I told Karen. “I’m jonesing for some roast beef and cheese.”

  “I hate you.” She laughed so loud I had to take the phone away from my ear. “I put on five pounds just inhaling the air in that place. See you Thursday.”

  * * *

  I wanted to say something to Eric about the unfairness of giving him my phone number with no reciprocation on his part. It was all about control, and I hated not having it. The only way I could get in touch with him was through the Internet—though I suppose I could just show up at his door.

  He was always on IM, and for that I was grateful. But the one-sidedness ate away at me a little bit more each time—just the knowledge that my desire for him was greater than any lust he might have for me drove me crazy.

  Truth was, I hated facing the fact that I was rapidly becoming invisible in that urban homo world—I was almost forty-five and still coming to grips with the sad reality that the culture gay men had invented to support ourselves simply had no place for anyone over forty, and even that was pushing it.

  The American gay ghettoes—at least the ones I had either lived in or had a strong familiarity with—the Castro, West Hollywood, Chelsea—had largely turned to cold, indifferent, market-driven neighborhoods, where I now felt more in common with the immigrant Russian ladies evaluating fresh produce or the bridge-and-tunnel crowd looking for fashion bargains than I did with the young gay men whose world stretched out endlessly in front of them and who looked right through me.

  Now, even if I was old and had cancer, too, I’d snagged at least one of these hotties as my sex buddy, and I was not going to fuck this one up.

  I IM’d Eric. There wasn’t a response immediately, and Jake lurked. I was about to sign off his computer and go downstairs to my own apartment and my own machine when Eric shot a message back.

  Eric: Sorry, I was in the bathroom.

  Me: What, no wireless in there? U got to upgrade, sexy.

  There was a pause as he tried to figure out whether I was serious or not about the computer in his john.

  Eric: Want me to come over?

  Me: I have to meet you somewhere else, BF is around.

  Eric: U bad!

  He was right. I was bad, and I didn’t know why I had to do this. My boyfriend was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen; he loved me and was almost always interested in having sex when I wanted it. Apparently I was a pig and needed more than that. Besides, Eric didn’t know about the cancer and wasn’t going to feel sorry for me.

  Me: Can I come over there?

  Eric: There’s someone here.

  Me: Who?

  Jake started humming some tune only he knew, then closed the bathroom door. The shower sprayed against the plastic curtain and the hot water surged, knocking the ancient pipes along the outside of the house from the heater at ground level, down in the kingdom of the rat children.

  Eric had a trick over, I was sure.

  Eric: Cleaning lady.

  Odd for a Sunday, I thought.

  Me: Ideas?

  Eric: Buena Vista Park?

  Eric—the slut—wanted to have sex with me in the bushes in a place that had been a notorious outdoor cruising ground but which now almost nobody cute went to anymore.

  The day was decent, if not exactly warm, and it would not be unpleasant to be naked at least from the waist to the knees for however long it took with him. I took a pocket packet of lube I’d stashed in my mother-of-pearl treasures box, my one memento still on public view from the life of my only long-term lover—Wayne—who’d died ten years earlier.

  I decided to walk over for a couple of reasons—the hills were too steep for me to either navigate with my bike or park the Mercedes on with any degree of assurance it wouldn’t slide back down. Also, if I did this slight amount of exercise, I’d appear thinner to Eric, thereby increasing the lust he felt for me.

  Buena Vista Park had a clearing up top where on good days the view was spectacular and might be comfortable if the wind off the Pacific wasn’t too strong. There were picnic benches under trees just off a clearing to the west.

  Eric sat on one of them in his official San Francisco uniform of black leather jacket and blue jeans. That he was the oddity of his generation in being so unbelievably punctual for our trysts never stopped surprising me.

  Other than him, I saw only an oblivious Asian trio, an older woman with a younger one—her daughter perhaps—striding along together in matching gray sweat suits; the stooped man I assumed to be her husband lagged behind.

  Eric was on top of the table with his legs apart, his hands balled up in the pockets of the jacket. I went directly to him and stood inside the warmth of his thighs, my arms feeling the soft, cool leather that covered him. He moved his head slightly to the side as I kissed him, my lips hitting scratchy beard stubble instead of his mouth.

  “Jesus, Ben. Anybody can see us up here, those Chinese people…”

  “If they live here, they’ve got to be used to guys hugging in public,” I said, squeezing him tighter, leaning my crotch into his, feeling that lump against my own hardening shaft.

  This was just an excuse. Eric didn’t want to kiss me, and this really hurt today, more than usual.

  “I’m cold,” I said, wincing at having to provide this extra justification for wanting to be close.

  It was starkly clear to me then what I usually tried to deny: that I was far out of his league, that he knew it, too, and this was unspoken between us but as unavoidably real as the come-to-Mass ring of St. Ignatius’s twin tower bells—which had just joined this awkward scene. The wind stopped rustling the eucalyptus branches above.

  Eric patted my back lightly, indicating the embrace was finished. “The thicker brush is down this path over here,” he said.

  I wasn’t surprised he knew this, and I’d always been sufficiently slutty myself, so this was certainly not the time to judge, especially if I wanted some of Eric’s cock.

  I could navigate these paths in the dark without a flashlight.

  He took off downhill without any response from me. There was that split second of doubt in my head: Make him ask you. He was a few steps ahead of me and kept disappearing along the path, obscured now and then by bushes and tree branches, a few of which were still wet from the rain and hit me in the face. I slid and fell on my ass.

  “Wait!”

  It came out as a loud, chaotic whisper. This was ridiculous, and whatever horniness I’d had earlier was gone. My socks slid around in shoes filled with mud.

  “I’m right here,” he said. Eric had stopped in a small, hollowed-out part of the woods just off a path, which was really the secret insides of a large shrub whose leafy green skin obscured all of what went on inside.

  Plenty had—there were a few soda and beer cans, bento box containers, ripped condom packets and even one used red rubber hanging from a twig at eye level.

  “Gross,” I said. Though my experience in reading Eric’s moods was limited, he didn’t look happy, and he didn’t look sexually motivated in any recognizable way.

  This was easily both the most human and the most uncomfortable interaction we’d had. The energy passing between us seemed to indicate that our relationship would end right then and there in the bushes above Haight Street.

  “I’m going home, Eric.”

  “What?” He looked annoyed, maybe angry—that Latin fire rising.

  “Come on, I’m too old for this, it’s…disgusting.” I nodded at the st
illdripping condom.

  “We come all the way the fuck up here, and now this?” He pulled a small black knit cap out of his jacket pocket. “Thank you for wasting my Sunday afternoon.”

  There was a slight break in his voice, as if he might cry. This was at odds with that supremely masculine image he conveyed, made even stronger as he pulled the cap over his head stubble so that it accentuated his eyes, cheekbones and the dark shadow where he’d grow a beard.

  He hurried past, pushing me back into the wet leaves.

  “Eric—wait, goddammit!” He was gone. No sound but the wind coming up the hill, the canopy above responding, and a foghorn out near Alcatraz.

  All for the better. I fished out the remainder of my squashed ciabatta sandwich and took a bite while hiking back up into the clearing. Off in the distance, on a picnic table on the south side of the rise with the view to Bernal Heights, was a small animal; it became alarmed by my sudden appearance, turned and stared right at me, then bolted off into the brush.

  A chill flew up my spine and electrified my scalp. It was the same thing I’d seen at the Slog—but, now, that was impossible, wasn’t it? That thing, that…dog—that looked so much like Connie.

  I ran over. The bushes were quiet and empty. A crushed orange Mania can was under the table. I picked it up and jerked around fast for one more look.

  No one was there; no one was spying on me. It was merely a half-decent Sunday afternoon in the middle of an otherwise crowded city.

  * * *

  Without a doubt, I was the youngest person waiting in the Presidio Heights Urology Department. I noted several walkers, an oxygen tank or two, some guy asleep in a wheelchair and, curiously, several women, perhaps the wives of men waiting or of men who’d been taken away for treatment already.

  There were two employees who checked in the lines of sad-sack men. One was a fat, unfriendly black woman who wore harlequin-type eyeglasses, and the other was an intimidating bottle-blond queen who wasn’t taking shit from anyone.