Seconds of Yes

One of the ironies of COVID is that our extended isolated downtime has forced me to confront the traumas of a pandemic that came before.

In 1981, the New York Times published an article with the headline of “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.”  I was a young, sexually-active man of seventeen who, a month before, had graduated from high school. The previous autumn, I’d engaged in one of the grander deceptions of my adolescence: dead set on escaping the suffocating South and finding other men like myself, I’d defied my parents and secretly applied to a university in Manhattan. I’d sent for the application materials on the sly, paid the fee from my own sex work savings, copied numbers from another financial aid application, and (in the biggest betrayal of all) forged my parents’ signatures. I was determined to be a resident of New York City in the nineteen-eighties.

The university accepted me and extended a scholarship, but I ended up declining. My mother had burned out, physically and emotionally, trying to get Carter re-elected in 1980; she seemed so fragile in the following months that though I yearned for life in the big city, I chose a college close to home. My betrayals might break her completely, I feared. I mourned the loss of the metropolitan existence torn away from me, though. All that summer and during my undergrad years, I pored over the pages of the Times and the Voice, trying to imagine what my alternate-universe self attending school in the Village might be up to—what clubs he’d be exploring, what seedy little shows he’d be seeing, what personal ads he’d be answering.

I read that first article in the Times with unease. In a cubicle in my college library, I searched through the New York newspapers to find any follow-up. I obsessed over any articles about what was for months called GRID, and then AIDS. Early on, I recognized that if I’d stubbornly followed my whims, I would have landed in an epicenter of this mysterious disease.

But I didn’t live in a big city like New York or San Francisco, so I convinced myself that whatever the new syndrome was, it would pass me by.

During college, I majored in magical thinking. I conjured reasons I’d weather what was shaping up to be a serious storm. I was safe because I’d never sniffed poppers, which for a very long time was suspected to be a cause. I was in a very small college town; the disease would never reach as far as its dirt roads and sidewalks of brick. The men fucking me were either professorial sorts, whom I could of course count on to recognize the signs of disease before they allowed it into their beds, or rednecks who never ventured into the big cities where a virus was on the rampage.

I imagined myself immune because I was good at heart, or too young to catch anything, or too important for the world to lose, or simply because I willed it so. When people I knew in college began dying immediately after graduation, those fictitious protections dissolved like tissue in a thunderstorm. Men died I’d known in my home town parks, from the days and nights I’d cruise there. I saw my old mentors emaciated and covered in sores. A colleague of my father's, known to be a confirmed bachelor, suddenly developed cancers that my parents discussed in hushed whispers. Mornings, I’d read the obituaries for names I might know, like an elderly person might. My college classmates attended each other’s weddings; I only entered churches for memorials.

Death surrounded me. Even when I left my native state for an unknown new home, I couldn’t escape its reach. I witnessed my best friend, a wide-eyed boy my own age, wither over the course of mere weeks; as dementia ossified his brain, I would hold him in my arms to calm his distress when he couldn’t remember where or who he was. I felt his skin, hot and fevered, against my own, while he wept at the unfairness of it all. Close to the end, his family took him away to die. I never saw him again.

And how did I react to this decade and a half of horrors? Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Then I’d circle back to denial again, never managing to achieve acceptance. Day after day, loss after loss, I’d reassure myself that I was still alive, that I was okay. Never once did I acknowledge that survival alone was insufficient. I put out of my mind the cost of longevity. I concentrated on anything else instead.

I’ve kept journals since my teens, but I suspect any future historian looking through them would be puzzled how the word AIDS never appears in their pages. They’d find plenty of memories of good times with friends, but nothing of the hospital visits, nor of the funerals, nor of the consolation I might try to take in another survivor's arms. I aspired to be a writer, but never could I put pen to pad and confront the disease ravaging everything and everyone I knew. Writing about it, accepting it, would make it too real.

I was sinking fast, those years. Yet I refused to admit how deep were the waters I tried to tread, or how overpowering their current.

The current pandemic has really done a number on the creative writing classes I teach. For a while, they were only on Zoom, which I disliked. Admittedly, I didn’t have to get dressed up for Zoom classes, nor did I have to commute. The students were amused whenever one of my cats would climb up onto the desk and stare into my laptop’s camera for minutes at a time, so that it appeared she was talking instead of me. But I hated the electronic lag; the virtual classroom felt impersonal in the most personal of seminars. 

Last autumn, I was at last allowed to teach in person again. Because of the school’s precautions, however, we were masked up and spaced around the perimeter of the room, and a custodian hovered outside to evict us the moment the class was supposed to be officially over, so he could spray down the place with disinfectants.

This semester, Omicron hit at an inopportune time in the enrollment window, causing most prospective students to look at the spring catalog, shake their heads, and stay at home. I’ve never had such a low enrollment. But the class is relaxed; we’re at a point in the pandemic in which we aren’t as freaked out, hearing someone cough down the hall. Each week, I ask my students to bring in whatever they’ve been working on. They read aloud, I listen, and we we all provide our feedback. When there are a quorum of writers present, the system works. With low enrollment, even one absence can put me in a tough position in which I need to fill time in a constructive way.

So I’ve stockpiled some essays of my own. For the last year I’ve been working on my own book-length project, and I’ve been mining it for short sections to share. This last week, however, it occurred to me I’ve been sitting on god knows how much old material of mine from my twenties, when I was about the same age as many of these kids. Why not pass some of those, and let the students have at them?

I’ve always archived and backed up all my writing projects through the years. I’ve a folder on my hard drive dedicated to any fiction I might have worked on before 1995 or so—at least, from the years when I stored all my labors on floppy discs. It’s a jumble of miscellaneous files and subfolders all (thanks to the vagaries of various operating systems and having copied them from floppies) without any dates to identify when I might have worked on them. Some I can remember. The murder mystery that was supposed to be my first big breakthrough: I remember working on it in the summer of 1988, when I was teaching an undergraduate course in Shakespeare and needed a frivolous project to fill out the long hot Detroit afternoons. The post-apocalyptic science fiction novel I abandoned after a hundred pages, I remember writing in 1989 while I considered giving up academe altogether.

Still searching for something I might take in for my students, this last week, I browsed through the files. Some I remembered vividly; others I didn’t recognize at all. The more I read, though, the more I realized that all of them, in some way or another, were about the terrible times I was living through. They all were about death, and disease, and loss.

My murder mystery, which an amateur detective who worked in a funeral home, and who lived my experiences of feeling beaten down from having to attend countless memorial services—all identical in their basics, each populated with families hostile to outsiders. My SF novel, in which the protagonist wanders alone among familiar, now-empty streets, missing the people who once lived there. A play I wrote, in which a longterm same-sex couple, both deceased, are helpless to prevent young, straight newlyweds from moving into their former home. Another play in which a wealthy family watches without emotion as an apocalypse descends upon the town beyond their closed gates. A short story in which the protagonist fashions charms to ward off a deadly plague threatening his village. Another science fiction draft in which two sleight-of-hand artists are stranded on a planet suffering from a disfiguring ailment. A strange thriller in which a woman refuses to allow her lover to touch her, for fear he harbors a terrible secret.

They all were about AIDS. Everything I wrote for fifteen years, every novel draft, every short story, was about the pandemic roaring its way unchecked through my population. I don’t think I ever was fully conscious of what I was doing. It’s so obvious, though, reading everything from the vantage of decades later.

As I sat there last week, reading through these old files created with software that hasn’t existed since before Clinton was President, I really wanted to reach back through the decades and give my poor young self a hug. Years later, that kid is still trying to unpack the trauma and guilt of surviving. Even at this remove, it’s still tough for him to admit how much and how many he lost.

One of my folders, labeled simply, From Davy’s Chair, is a collection of short stories. I don’t remember composing them, but I’m guessing by the fact they were saved in MacWrite format that they were from the late 1980s. The titular Davy is a barber; each story is a monologue from a client who speaks while Davy works in silence. 

There’s a rowdy story from one customer about meeting his current husband at a gay bar; another is the stream of consciousness of a drag queen about finding someone to look beyond the wigs and makeup at the man beneath. There’s a story I actually kind of love about a man who, in trying to escape the romantic interest of female coworker, makes up elaborate stories about an imaginary boyfriend to keep her off his back. When she loses interest, he continues fabricating the stories because he’s lonely, and can’t stop.

Then there was a final story told in Davy’s Chair, probably the closest I ever came to directly addressing the disease stealing the people in my life: Seconds of Yes. Is it good? Well. I was young when I wrote it. Reading such an old draft triggers the editor and critic in me. I see hundreds of ways it could be improved. The teacher in me want to fix it, just as I want to help my own writers make their own work better. But I’m going to reproduce it below with all its flaws intact.

Imperfect as it is, the story reminds me of a boy so intent upon surviving that, as the tide pulled him down, he didn’t realize his frantic prose gestures weren’t waving, but drowning.

Seconds of Yes

I don't lay out. The idea's always turned me off. When I see people slathered in grease, half naked in the sun, it reminds me of bacon. I don't like thinking of myself as sizzling pork product, you know? But yes, I've been getting more sun lately. I need to get out of the condo, sometimes. Thanks for noticing, Davy. Just the usual, this time—I’m getting a little shaggy.

Did I tell you about my new hobby? You'll never guess. No, it's not basket weaving. Think bigger. I'm talking danger, adrenaline. I'm talking excitement. I'm talking about raw energy coursing through your body, your heart in your mouth. I'm talking bungee jumping.

Emerald City's been having it on weekends, the sports bar? Fridays and Saturdays—usually I go both nights. They've got that large parking lot, you know. The manager's hired a crane for the summer, set up bleachers around the edges, added more tables to the patio. The crowds are amazing—boys from all over the city come just to see people jump. You'd be surprised. It's like a roller coaster, but without the track, without the train, without the safety restraints. Not very much like a roller coaster at all, maybe.

The first time I did it I was trashed, I admit. I don't even remember the trip up. One minute I was drinking at a table with some of the guys—I don't even remember who, that's how bad off I was—and then I came to with a terrible crack in my neck. There I was, swinging upside down, feeling stretched like Silly Putty, with my wallet twenty-five bucks lighter. And everyone was cheering and clapping like crazy.

I didn't mind the attention, of course, but after I pushed through the crowd, I stumbled away from the parking lot thinking, never again. Too risky, too dangerous. Not worth killing yourself over. I've seen those videos on TV—some poor kid concussing herself on the bottom of the jump platform, or worse, the broken bungee.  I don't need this crap, I thought. But at home that night, I conked out right away. Then I woke up the next morning feeling, well, happy for the first time in a while. I have trouble sleeping these days, you see. Most nights I lie awake, listening to Bernard's breathing. I have to be ready to rouse him if he slips into a nightmare, ready to towel him down if he needs it.

How is he? Oh, Bernard's fine. He's fine. Yeah, really. I’ll tell him you asked.

Let me tell you about bungee jumping.

The first part's all anticipation. Getting on the rig and helmet, waiting for your turn, the ride up. All the while, you're taking deep breaths and steeling your nerves. Yeah, even when it’s not your first time. You’re preparing yourself for one moment, that swift passage between safety and uncertainty, between sane and loony tunes. The transition from the no screaming in your skull to everlasting seconds of yes.

At the top, the wind whips by. Sometimes it's hard to hear. At the top, the people you know vanish. If you looked for them—which you don't because you're concentrating and focusing on the moment—they'd be only featureless faces, lost among the other bodies on the bleachers. Everybody disappears, Davy. You don't think they would, but they do. At the top, you forget everything except the ground below, and your distance from it.

No, Bernard doesn't come to watch me jump. He won't leave the condo often, these days. He knows where I go and he knows what I do, but he doesn't say anything. Sometimes it surprises me how different we are. Most of our friends can't believe we've lasted for nine years. At first it was the superficial differences I noticed—the tomayto-tomahto kind of thing. I'd say vomit, he'd say puke. I'd say ejaculate, he'd say jizz. I'd say masturbate, he'd laugh and say jack off. It took me the longest time to say the word…well, the f-word…when we would…you know.

It used to be Bernard who took risks. Sky diving. Hang gliding. He would always urge me to go hiking with him in the desert or camping in the mountains. Once he took made vacation reservations for the both of us at a dude ranch. You heard me. A dude ranch. Can you believe it? It's just like you probably picture—a bunch of men in worn jeans and chaps walking around wearing ten-gallon hats. And Bernard? He was out learning to rope steer, trying to buck broncos. Don't give me that look, Davy. Real broncos. It was dangerous. He could’ve been thrown or trampled. His rear end was red for a solid two weeks after, but everywhere else he glowed with tan. Me, I was still lily-white all over.

Now Bernard stays at home and twice a week I'm throwing myself off a high platform into nothingness, with a stretchy cord the only thing keeping me from cracking my head against the asphalt. Funny, isn't it? And Bernard doesn't worry, like I used to worry about his adventures. Like I worry about him now, nights, when I lie awake to make sure he’s breathing. Sometimes I rest my ear against his ribcage, to listen for fluid in his lungs.

Bernard has a lot going on. He doesn't need to waste worry on me.

At the bottom, after the earth rushes to kiss you and time stops, after you've forgotten everything in that time it takes to fall, you swing in a gentle arc. Back and forth, over the crowd, over the yellow lines of the parking lot, over the patio where nervous diners watch. The world comes back, bit by bit—it starts with your muscles aching, where the harness pinches. You pick out your friends, waving in the bleachers. Then your memories return, along with your problems and fears. For a few moments you're trapped there, swinging, dangling like a side of beef in a butcher's shop. That’s when you realize nothing has changed. Not really. But there's always the next Friday night, so you let the anticipation build again.

Oh, that looks great. Thank you. And thanks for asking about Bernard. I'll tell him you said hello. Wait...I’ve got your tip right here. See you in three weeks? Some night, come over to the Emerald City and watch me jump, okay? Maybe you'll try for yourself—it's an experience you don't regret.