A Horse Named Sorrow (19 page)

Down through the wind I went, shifting into high gear and pedaling long slow strokes as I peeled away the miles, coming upon and passing those forewarned trucks and keeping up with a good number of cars as well. I zoomed down arcing arms of pavement under great tunnels made by towering forests, whizzed by pastures that opened so wide I got dizzy watching the torporous cattle who, upon seeing me, startled and bolted away from the road, looking like flocks of birds, all in unison running. Made me whistle it did, made me sing: laughed like a brook.

What had taken me hours to climb dumped me down its other side in forty-five blissful minutes. The slippery slope of surrender. Down into the town of Sisters eventually, which I half-suspected was a lesbian settlement, but which turned out instead to be a jackpot of rangy young men, slinging pizzas, gasoline, and burgers—or shirtless, painting houses and carrying planks, lolling about on corners. Eugene had done something to me alright, and I wasn't so sure I wanted all that back. Hot damn. I went for pizza—and afterward, stuffed and lethargic, I considered finding a motel, but being that there were still several hours of daylight left and trouble brewing in my loins, I headed out of town, hoping to reach the Deschutes River, fifteen miles up the road, where I'd been told by the pizza waiter (man, he had a sweet Adam's apple) that the red circle on my map was actually a state park I could camp in.

I tried to forget the Adam's apple, tried not to think about Eugene, who had a fine one of those himself, along with his other attributes. And Jimmy's—I'd licked it often like the salt lick that it was. In my elation that afternoon, I so wanted to kiss him, to feel his scruffy chin against mine.

And speaking of which, that's what eastern Oregon was once I headed out of Sisters—scruff, sagebrush, stony, and only occasionally dotted with pines and solitary clumps of cottonwoods down in the creek beds. So my imagined idea of a river campsite in a forest dell was clearly delusional, so much so that when I did reach the Deschutes River, and stopped midspan on the bridge to view it, what I saw made me wonder if I wasn't right back in California: a red rock canyon chiseled into the fat landscape around it, dry and dusty other than the ribbon of water, and with just a single cottonwood tree and a few picnic tables. There was a chained-up gate to the right on the other side of the bridge and it was blocking the road that led down to the river, so I guessed that was the state park, which was obviously closed. I rode the rest of the way across the bridge anyway and then up to the chain-link fence, intending to climb over it and have a look around. I leaned the bike against the fence, but just as I began to climb, I heard a woman shout: “Hey, you there!” When I turned, I saw her at the screen door of a small house that sat up on the bluff overlooking the road, and she called out: “You can't sleep by the river tonight. The rattler are shedding, blind and snapping.” I paused, poised on the fence like a cat or a thief, mulling over what she'd just imparted.

She offered me her yard to camp in, but quickly closed her door the minute I assented and climbed down off the fence to take her up on it.

I walked my bike up and pitched camp on her vibrant green lawn under a little grove of birch trees, wholly anomalous to the dry barrenness of the surrounding landscape and somewhat an answer to my earlier wish. I unpacked and fell asleep while it was still light as I was dead-tired.

That night I dreamed of a big buffalo wandering around Eugene, getting honked at by cars and meandering down alleyways, sniffing around in dumpsters, before returning to the bridge and the river and Eugene's graffiti, where it curled up like a dog, preparing to sleep. And it looked at me then, and it had Eugene's green eyes.

Startled, I awoke, on my back and looking up into the stars, which could have been his green eyes as well. Venus all around. Resolving it was just my soup boiling in the night, I burrowed back into my sleeping bag like a little rat. But I couldn't get back to sleep, and then it felt to me like someone was there watching me. I sat up.

The moon was big and lit up the whole yard—
is that you, Jimmy?
—and I could hear the river whispering. I got up and hustled into my clothes. It was freezing cold, and I scurried down the road and up over the gate (I knew enough to figure that cold-blooded rattlers wouldn't be out at night) and made my way down the dirt road past the big cottonwood tree and the shadowy picnic tables to the rocks at the river's edge. The river flowed slow and shimmering in the moonlight, vital, as if it were bringing something—something welcome and abundant—before passing by, making me think it might be taking something too.

I smelled Jimmy then. What was it? I crouched down, shivering in the night air, and took a big whiff of a squat little bush, and sure enough I knew—sage. The kind Jimmy used to burn in the apartment on Guerrero Street and at ACT UP demonstrations. I looked around and saw it was everywhere. I sat on a big fat rock and held my knees close to my chest for warmth for a while, breathing in Jimmy, watching the river flow. I knew I had to jump in. Didn't know why, just knew I had to.

I stripped fast and scrambled up a reddish boulder that jutted out over the water.

I barked when I dropped myself in. Good God, it was cold. I climbed out immediately, muttering to myself that I'm either crazy or I'm not—same difference. Then I huddled on the fat rock like a monkey momentarily, feeling too cold to even dress, with my hands scrunched up at my chest, remembering Jimmy the same way that first day I'd bathed him. I shivered dripping and watching the cottonwood, big slow rollers of night wind undulating its branches and making a sweet night whisper of sound.

“I love you, Jimmy,” I shouted, and after a quick calculation, “Day thirty-nine.”

Finally, with one last shiver, I jumped up, and in a frenzy dried my skin, hopping about clumsily in the painful gravel as I got back into my biking shorts and piled on my clothes. Then I scurried back up the road, teeth chattering, climbed up over the fence, and made my way back up the road and into the yard and my sleeping bag, where I quickly nestled with Jimmy-in-the-bag, wondering if I should have left a bit of him down there in the stream. But he said “the way he came,” which was from Buffalo by bike, and not from Oregon by water. Still, I got to thinking about salmon in a stream and all that, and then about how I took things too literally generally—or too metaphorically, or both, or neither. Arguing with myself, until I was so confused, I had to pull. Jimmy's in the bardo—drop it.

And when I dozed off, there were Eugene's eyes again, which woke me up.

And then that echoing sound of birds in the nighttime started up. Nightingales, I supposed.

Such a moonlit night wasn't about sleep, so as soon as I saw a hint of dawn on the eastern horizon, I figured I might as well get my start. I thought I should thank the lady, half-fearing she'd spied my little transgression, but there wasn't a sound from the house, the curtains still drawn. I got my things together, and once again like a Dharma Bum, I clasped my hands in prayer and thanked the lady and the place both— the moon and stars, the rattlesnakes, the cottonwood and the river too—wondering how strange it was that I'd never seen her eyes, but couldn't shake Eugene's, with all the snakes blind and snapping down at the river that smelled like Jimmy.

My friends kept calling to cheer me up, leaving invitations on the machine. Jimmy's friends, Julie and Sam, appeared one night after several unreturned messages. There they were, all in black, showered and beaming.

“We're taking you out to dinner and Uranus.”

I managed a smile, but I knew I'd never be able to handle a night out with them. “Jimmy's dead, you guys—
we're
staying in.” And I tried to close the door.

“No.” Sam's motorcycle boot held the door open. “Come on, Shame.” He pushed his way in and the two of them dug up an outfit for me and took me for Pakistani food on 16th Street, where I was overly fascinated by the blood-orange color of the tandoori chicken; it was the only thing strange enough to seem interesting.

We went from bar to bar; I gave it a go. It was great sometimes that in San Francisco you could go to queer clubs that welcomed straight people and that straight people weren't afraid of. But this wasn't one of those times. Because all I could do was scan the room for Jimmy, mesmerized by every dark-eyed gangly boy. Like some particularly tormenting obsessive compulsion, I kept searching, even though the minute I saw one I was full of regret for having even looked. I even hated them a little for playing at Jimmy. Couldn't they save that for another day? Be someone else?

Even when I wasn't looking for Jimmy, there was a huge empty mouth waiting inside the doors of all those clubs. It was in almost every face, and every heartless electronic song. Just because it beats like one doesn't make it a heart. I grew disgusted with the dumb same old dance, drink, blah, blah, blah, take home some sex like a doggy bag. Julie and Sam told me to cheer up, that I should have a better attitude. Great, I've finally gone clubbing with Dr. Pinski. I felt guilty, of course, for dismissing their good intentions. But not for long. Cheering someone upislike”What-Not-to-Do-for-a-Depressed-Grieving-Potential-Suicide 1A.” I knew where those clubs would take me as I started to tear up and ask Jimmy,
why'd you leave me here?
I saw the ropes fray and break that connected me to Sam and Julie. All it took was one trip to the bathroom, one cute boy's drug-addled stare, and the hole in the ozone of human existence gaped open to full flower like the speechless, screaming mouth of God himself. I knew my feelings weren't original. Edvard Munch and a few others had beaten me to it, but this was the 3-D holographic version. I pushed through the crowd and got out. And when I hit the sidewalk, I ran. I ran block after block, all the way home. Like a little boy, scared, not knowing what to do—running the same route I'd run with Jimmy.

Home to his bike and the ritual space of our love, which was just four walls and a bay window, an acacia tree and a corner liquor store and a rickety, rusted fire escape, and the smell of Chinese food, and two little boys' too-loud screechings and TV volume, and those forever-blinking multicolored Christmas lights chasing each other all through the strings on
Chief Joseph
, lighting up the ceiling and its plastic glowing stars and planets. And I draped his clothes all over the bike—the battered army shorts and the Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt—surrounding it like a makeshift altar with a whole slew of Virgin de Guadalupe candles, which lit up the shelves of dog-eared books, and in so doing, conjured James Damon Keane, who whispered, as always, God bless him, “Pull, Seamus. You gotta pull.”

“
Can't
,” I whimpered, on my knees.

Pull
.

And not ten minutes later, the lights and sound of an idling taxi yellowed the window, and the clump, clump, clump of Sam's motorcycle boots and the rap, rap, rap on my door.

“You okay, Shame?”

My red swollen face. “We're having sex, can you come back later?”

“Come on, Shame, we were worried about you.”

Then a crescendo of Chinese erupts as the twins' mother cracks open her door. I'll have to let them in.

The candles quickly tame them and they sit down on the bed while I grab the bottle of Carlo Rossi jug wine and a few jars to drink from. But they shake their heads. So we just sit on the bed, the three of us, like monkey see-no, hear-no, speak-no all in a row—with me in the middle—and say nothing.

Sam scoots closer and I let my head fall in his lap. But I don't cry. I only cry alone, or with Jimmy, or out on the street. I just stare into the candles while Julie holds my hand.

They exchange looks, and Julie, ever responsible, ruins the silence: “I think we'll stay here with you tonight, Shame.”

“No, Julie. Me and Jimmy, we want privacy.”

“Shame, you gotta . . .”

“No, I don't.”

“Julie, it's cool,” Sam chimes in.

I clasp her hand, give her what little I got. If she doesn't understand, so be it. As for Sam, he's loyal, I'll give him that—he digs male intimacy, in a soldier football player kind of way. I snuggle into his crotch, purposely pressing against his dick. I don't want sex; I just want someone who isn't afraid. He pats my shoulder, and sweet heterosexual Sam passes the test.

I look up at Julie, who still thinks I gotta . . .
Pull
. Now I can. It takes two straight people, I realize, where it only took one Jimmy fag boy.

I rode into the sunrise, followed it in my backasswards way, since all the time it was sliding right over me, going in the other direction. A backasswards wise man looking for a star over Bethlehem. Bethlehem Steel more like, because I was going to Buffalo.

I came into the town of Redmond in the bracing cold desert morning, passing an old rusted Army jeep on the edge of town as I arrived—how long sitting there? What story untold? What soldier? Whose father? Rusting in peace.

The geometry of the town soon shifted my brain to the left of those endless and unanswerable right-brain conundrums. I rode down streets past curbs and mailboxes and houses all in a row, street corners at ninety degrees. There were traffic lights and stop signs, auto repair shops, feed and grain, markets, gas stations and restaurants, a guy at the Shell station watering his Astroturf—a high school with a sign about the Spartans' big game Friday.

I entered a Hardee's, joined the early crowd, truck drivers and locals jawing about weather, the Spartans game, and the tragedy of Californians moving in with their German cars and fences. I wanted to chime in that I felt the same way about Californians, but I
was
one, and a wacked faggot one at that, so I thought better of it. Besides, they didn't even acknowledge my existence. They're yammering, that's all, that's what geezers in small towns do.