The Last Lovers on Earth: Stories from Dark Times

by Charles Ortleb

  The next morning, Eddie couldn’t breathe. Eddie called some of the ailing people he had been helping, but all of them were too busy or too ill to come and assist him. Some of them made him promise that he would go over to their places to cook for them when he recovered his ability to breathe. Eddie finally found enough energy to dress and drag himself down to the street where he could barely lift his arm to hail a cab. He asked the driver to take him to the nearest emergency room. When he arrived at the hospital he collapsed at the front door and when he woke up he was in a bed and on a respirator.

  Eddie couldn’t believe how many doctors and nurses were standing around his bed. He had never seen so many human beings this interested in him in his entire life.

  One of the first people to speak to Eddie was a social worker. After gathering some personal information from Eddie, she told him that she would inform his employer at the bowling alley about his illness. She also said that she had been assigned to Eddie for the purpose of giving him AIDS counseling. When Eddie told her that he didn’t need an AIDS counselor because he knew enough people with AIDS, a doctor standing next to the bed gently took Eddie’s hand and told him that he had AIDS. When Eddie told the doctor that it was impossible that he had AIDS because he had never slept with anyone, everyone in the room began to laugh. They sounded like the studio audience watching a sitcom. Eddie began to realize that there were dozens of people jammed into the room. There were virologists, cardiologists, radiologists, epidemiologists, psychologists, urologists, immunologists, and just about every kind of nurse and orderly. It was a very strange sight. Eddie had never seen so many professional people this concerned about him, ever. In a strange way it made him very happy, even though he felt ill in just about every part of his body. Luckily, he was out of earshot when an insensitive orderly in the back of the room said, "That’s about the ugliest piece of gay ass I’ve ever seen in my entire life."

  When Eddie insisted again to the social worker that he couldn’t have AIDS because he had never slept with anyone, the social worker gently told him that was something everyone said at first, but that they would work on his acceptance issues together, that there were all kinds of new therapies for gay men in denial.

  "But you don’t understand, I’ve wanted to sleep with somebody, with everybody, ever since I came to New York, but nobody would sleep with me! I can’t have AIDS. I wouldn’t even care if I had gotten it, but nobody would sleep with me. Nobody would love me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it!"

  "But darling, you do have AIDS. You have no immune system and you’re gay," said a sweet and comforting voice at the foot of his bed. For a minute he thought it was his grandmother, but it was a doctor.

  Eddie kept insisting that nobody would sleep with him. He tried to shout out the utter truth of his loneliness so everyone in the room would hear him, but it was to no avail.

  "Darling, we don’t care how you got it. We’re going to take good care of you. We’re going to give you the newest experimental treatments."

  "But I don’t have AIDS!"

  The laughter in the room was making him confused and lightheaded. He started crying.

  "Now, there, there. We’re gonna work on this together," said the social worker. I’m gonna help you understand what’s going on. Doctor, don’t we have something that can help make Eddie sleep?"

  One of the nurses plunged a needle in his arm, and as Eddie began to fade into unconsciousness, he could hear that the people in the room were still laughing.

  When Eddie awoke the doctor was the only one in the room. she had the kindest smile he had ever seen. He really wished that she was his mother or his grandmother. The doctor told Eddie not to worry, that they were giving him the latest drugs for AIDS, some that had bypassed animal testing and come directly from the laboratory. Best of all, He wouldn’t have to pay for them because the federal government was paying for everything that needed to be done for AIDS patients.

  "But I don’t have AIDS."

  "Eddie, where did you go to medical school?" the doctor responded, somewhat snippily. Then she tried to lighten things up. "I bet you have a big fancy medical degree and you’re hiding it right there under that pillow, aren’t you?"

  "How can you have AIDS without sex or a lover?" asked Eddie.

  The doctor smiled like a bemused parent and said, "Eddie, you have sex-negative, lover-negative AIDS!"

  "Did you give me a test for the virus?"

  "We didn’t need to. We could tell from your immune system and your symptoms that you have AIDS. We don’t want to waste our health insurance premiums on unnecessary tests, now, do we, darling?"

  "But I never had sex. I never had love," Eddie moaned.

  "The social worker is coming in a little while. She’ll help you through this. Remember Eddie, we love you. You’re very important to us. You’re a very special patient."

  Eddie couldn’t believe it. For the first time in his life he was being told by important people that he mattered.

  When the social worker appeared, she brought a large thick pencil with a pad of paper and asked Eddie to draw a picture of two men in bed. Eddie was extremely weak and had trouble lifting his hand to draw, but he made an effort. All he drew for her was a single stick man in a stick bed.

  "That’s wonderful. We’ll keep working on it. We’ll draw every day, until you can put another man in that bed. And then you’ll tell me the name of that man, and every other man who was ever in bed with you. And then I’ll give them a phone call and pay them a visit and say that a very thoughtful man from their past just wanted me to contact them and tell them that he’s very, very sick."

  She came back every day for a week, and every day Eddie just drew the single man in bed alone.

  "Try a little harder to draw another man in bed. I know we can make a breakthrough," the social worker said.

  It might have continued that way indefinitely except for the fact that Eddie was growing so weak from the treatments they were giving him that one night he began to have hallucinations. The following morning when the social worker gave him the pad, from somewhere inside him he miraculously found the energy to draw for a few hours while the social worker sat in shock.

  What Eddie was drawing was no mere sketch of a stick man in a lonely stick bed. Even though it was only done in pencil, it was a fully realized illustration that almost looked like a classic oil painting—the details and gradations of dark and light were so subtle and profound. The drawing looked like it was coming from the hands of Andrew Wyeth or Thomas Eakins, rather than Eddie. He completely ignored the social worker’s request to draw two men in bed, and instead had drawn two exquisite men in the nude on a beach. In the distance over a magnificently rendered dark churning sea, he had drawn a sun with a vaguely human, optimistic, smiling face. It gave the portrait an otherworldly, almost mythological effect. The two princely beings were lying on a blanket, and the miraculous precision of Eddie’s sketch was so good that the social worker said, "My God, he’s feeding his friend bruschetta, right? Eddie, what is the meaning of the bruschetta? And Eddie, what are the names of the two men? Where do they live? Did you sleep with both of them? What kind of sex did you have with them? Were you on the top or the bottom? Did you use a condom? Do you remember their phone numbers?"

  The effort had completely wiped Eddie out and he fell back on his pillow and lost consciousness.

  The social worker ran three floors down to Eddie’s doctor with the drawing. The doctor was just as astounded as the social worker. "Do you think it is what I think it is?" asked the social worker.

  "Absolutely," said the doctor. "It’s a near-death art experience. It won’t be long. I’d better call the administration."

  In Eddie’s final hours, he was surrounded by dozens of doctors and nurses who all watched in awe. Virtually everyone who worked in the hospital came by to see Eddie. And it wasn’t just inside the hospital that attention was being paid. Outside on the street a huge throng of reporters was gathering. T
here were also representatives of every AIDS organization in the world, even some from as far away as Africa. There were balloons and cannons loaded with confetti. Eddie was wheeled over to a window so he could see the crowds of well-wishers. Some had placards that said "Happy One Millionth!" Eddie’s vision was going and he couldn’t quite make them out. He was however, able to speak for the first time in many days. In a faltering but determined voice he asked, "Who are these people? Why are they here? Do they love me?"

  The doctor, who had attended many seminars on ethics and terminal illness, had a strict code about talking to the dying; she believed in always telling patients the truth.

  She leaned over and said, "Darling, you are the millionth person to be dying of AIDS. You’re going to be on the front page of every newspaper in the world. You are a very special person to all of us. You’re very famous and you’ve never looked more beautiful. We do love you."

  Thank God we only hear what we want to hear, because all that Eddie consciously took in at the end was that he was special and was loved. The last human sounds that penetrated his consciousness were the huge rounds of applause that came from the doctors and the cheers from the street. It was very difficult for anyone to hear in the room, but those closest to him could make out the one final word that emanated from Eddie: "Bruschetta."

  Daddy’s Little Clown

  The father was not doing the greatest job of hiding his disappointment. The mother looked at him in horror as she stood behind their son who had just told them that he’d decided he wanted to be an attorney.

  The father mumbled something about supporting his son, no matter what he did in life. The son should be the best of whatever he wanted to be. Money would be no object. The father’s voice was so low and tentative that the son wasn’t sure whether or not he had really meant that he was proud. The mother nervously jumped in and started hugging the son and telling him that this was one of the greatest days of her life, while the father excused himself in a whisper and went into the bathroom.

  The father selected the largest, fluffiest white bath towel and buried his face in it so that he could muffle his sobs. He was disgusted with himself, but he just couldn’t control his emotions. As he tried to drown his face in the towel, a second round began. It wasn’t crying, it was deep, almost funereal weeping. This was his first born, the one in whom he had invested his keenest hopes. He still had four other sons who could make his dreams come true, but the oldest one is always a prince in his father’s eyes. His eldest, a golden law school-bound lad, would have brought feelings of complete masculine fulfillment to just about any father in the land. But this stunning eldest son had not given his father his fondest wish: that his first born become a clown.

  The mother urged the son to phone the grandparents with the news and then she headed to the bathroom. She knocked on the door and told the father to meet her in their bedroom. He had barely closed the bedroom door when he collapsed in his wife’s arms, and together they fell into a heap on their bed.

  She begged him to be strong.

  "I won’t let you down," she said. "I haven’t failed you yet."

  "It’s not your fault."

  "I’ve given you four other wonderful sons. One of them is bound to be a clown."

  "Do you really think so?" he whimpered.

  "I know so."

  She really didn’t know any such thing, but she was desperate. She couldn’t stand it when men who have hair growing on their backs started to cry.

  "We’ll take them to more circuses," she said soothingly.

  "But they’ve already seen them all."

  "Well, we’ll just do it all again until they get the point."

  For years the family had been coordinating its holidays and vacations with circuses all over the country. With their balloons and funny hats, they caused general mirth on every airplane that they spread out in. The slightly disheveled, mischievous little family could often be seen waiting with autograph books at the performers’ entrance to circus tents. Each of the boys always wore an elastic bound ball-like nose, sometimes under protest. The little red noses often had a runny little human nose beneath them. At an early age, the boys were thrilled with the family outings to circuses, but eventually most of them sensed that there was something terribly odd about their family.

  It all started in the early Cold War, when the father, then a young recruit, had been assigned to bodyguard a four-star general in Paris. The general was supposed to figure out how to protect the Eiffel Tower in case of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. During his free time, the young soldier explored the cultural treasures of the City of Lights. One spectacular spring day, he stumbled upon a little French circus on the outskirts of Paris, and after the confusion of finding the right currency for the ticket, he went and sat down inside the musty tent. Before he knew it, his entire future had been transformed.

  As the father sat in the audience with a croissant and a glass of red wine, the planets conspired to bring him together with Annie Fratellini, inarguably France’s leading clown, and from the perspective of connoisseurs, the greatest clown in history. Annie Fratellini was the archetype of a clown.

  The father had come from a poor family that didn’t even have enough money to introduce its children to the joys of the circus. He had never even seen one on television because his family didn’t own one. The father was a Big Top neophyte, and Annie Fratellini was his first live clown.

  When Annie Fratellini waddled out to the main ring of the circus in her big shoes and floppy hat, it might as well have been Venus herself. Every light inside the father went on. Her big sensuous painted smile and her eyes darkened like black moons from another world simultaneously brought laughter and tears to the audience. For a man who had never slept with a woman, her wildly feminine, hilarious performance was equal parts spirituality and sexuality. She was cosmic. He was having what only can be called a spontaneous mythopoetic awakening complete with all the psychosexual trimmings.

  Each one of her routines, drawn from the long history of clowning, was a sublime revelation to the father. When she juggled, it was as though she was tossing stars in the air. When she sang, it was like hearing all the rivers of the world sing to him. And he didn’t even understand what she was singing, though in his soul he imagined that she was singing about the unfolding of his own life. Her act defied logic and chronology. One moment she seemed to be a young, rambunctious clown, and the next she was a loopy, arthritic, ancient clown. Her sleight of hand took his breath away as she made the largest bouquets of beautiful flowers disappear into her body.

  He didn’t know how she did it, but she was able to play several instruments at once, a virtual one-woman band. She seemed to play the saxophone by bending all the way back and coming out from under her own legs. Annie Fratellini was showing him all the amazing things that a creative woman can do with her body. He was totally aroused. Every time she did a pratfall, he longed to be on the ground beneath her to prevent injury. But she was invulnerable and indestructible. For the father, the image of Annie Fratellini altered for the rest of his life his deepest desire to merge with a woman: love and sex would henceforth be intimately intertwined with the vision of the great clown, Annie Fratellini.

  Back in his room at NATO headquarters that night, Annie Fratellini continued performing in his imagination. While other men in his unit might fantasize about their scantily-clad pin-ups, the father conjured up all the incredible things he could do in bed with a clown.

  The father went back to the circus as many times as he could before he was transferred back to the states, and when he left Paris he didn’t care that he was leaving the Louvre and the Seine behind. The only treasure he would miss was Annie Fratellini. The stewardesses on the plane commented to each other about the lovesick soldier who stared at a photo of a clown throughout the flight.

  Shortly after he returned to the states, to Dubuque, he left the service and tried to decide what to do with the rest of his life. He thought about findi
ng a fully-accredited clown school, but he was honest with himself and had to admit that he did not waddle or wiggle like a clown. He just didn’t have it. His body movements were more like those of an accountant, which is what he became. Instead of becoming a clown himself, he would sire one. He would marry and have a daughter. And he and his wife would give the child the kind of zany upbringing that was necessary to nurture a great clown like Annie Fratellini. But before he had a daughter who could become a clown, he needed to find a good woman to marry.

  Fortunately, Dubuque had caught on to the Mexican food craze early, and one evening the father was chowing down on a burrito when he noticed the woman who would become his beloved. She was sitting with her secretarial pool sisters in a margarita-and-nacho celebration of one of the women’s five-pound weight loss.

  It was the Fifties, and in those days people were not aware that margaritas are more of a drug than a drink. The restaurant had what is called a bathtub margarita, a nearly bottomless bathtub of the aforementioned drink with twenty- and thirty-foot straws extending from tables all over the restaurant. Nearly every diner was having the bathtub margarita, including the father and his soon-to-be wife. When the future wife went into the bathroom, she was so tanked she could barely locate her face in the mirror as she freshened her make-up. She was so out of it that she even got lipstick on the wall of the ladies room. Well, of course this cosmetic disaster made her look like you-know-who.

  When she emerged and the father saw the wild colors and unprecedented designs on her face, he was so overcome by flashbacks to Annie Fratellini that he was a goner. Years later neither could recall what was said, only that they met and somehow managed to give each other correct phone numbers, despite the fact that the margaritas had begun to make everyone in the restaurant sound like they were speaking a foreign language.