Like People in History (14 page)

The demonstration turned out to be impressive.

By the time Wally and I had dropped down the ramp and around to the front of Gracie Mansion, it was in fall swing. Camera trucks from three networks, two local stations, and a cable station with pretensions had taken up positions as close to the action as possible—it was some of their brights we'd seen from the promenade. Their sight and sound crews, their equipment, their endless coiling snakes of heavy wire filled the gutters, swathed fire hydrants, and threatened to trip up those senior police officers assigned to the first line. Behind them, across the street, several squads of riot police had been lined up, complete with helmets and shields and who-knew-what-else that constituted their fullest gear, but it appeared that—especially with all the media present and all the dignitaries inside with the mayor—no one had decided whether they'd be used; behind their Fascist-newsreel drag, the men seemed relaxed, talking among themselves, fallen out of phalanx. The street they'd commandeered—only after the demonstrators and TV stations had arrived—was closed, all traffic diverted, except, as it turned out, official cars from within the mansion's parking lot, which were allowed to come and go.

To our amazement, somehow or other, this demonstration had remained a secret. Amazing really, given how many hundreds of us had known about it for days. The first wave of demonstrators had arrived, exactly as planned, at the front gates just after the sixteen Mayors of World Capitals had gone in to have their never-to-be-forgotten dinner with our own city's mayor.

Exactly as planned, seventy-nine of the demonstrators had then proceeded to disrobe until they were wearing only some sort of loincloths (with matching top pieces for the women à la Raquel Welch in
One Million Years B.C.),
then allowed themselves to be chained by cohorts all along the fence around the mansion, in positions meant to be reminiscent of the Crucifixion.

In the intense glare of the television lights, they looked pretty awful. I later found out that more than two-thirds of these volunteer martyrs were truly ill: the rest were the thinnest, scrawniest men and women to be found, with body and face makeup liberally applied to make them look really bad. All seventy-nine were covered with hundreds of KS lesions on their faces, arms, legs, and chests, some of which as one got closer appeared to have been painted on. Most of them had blood bags hung from the fence and attached to their wrists—each plastic bag marked "Contaminated!" And each of them wore a sign around his or her neck reading "Infected—Dying." Every once in a while, by some signal I never managed to catch, one of them would moan even louder then usual, or shriek suddenly, and slump. Other demonstrators patrolling the fence in full medical drag would then go up to them, check their pulses, and turn the signs around their necks to read "Dead— of Neglect!"

Several hundred more demonstrators had formed a human chain and were marching with the usual Silence = Death and Ignorance = Fear signs, being led in their chants by men and a few women who I knew from their yellow armbands were the demonstration marshals, trained in civil disobedience to keep order and to interact with police if necessary and media if so fortunate.

Another group had chained themselves together to the front gates— which had been closed by the mansion's guards in a predicted panic when the place was first invaded—and they were mostly sitting or kneeling around the gates, upon which a large cloth banner had been hung reading "Release The Funds And Save Lives!" The microphone I'd heard being set up was located here, and scores of demonstrators waited in line to stand in front of it and say a name very solemnly—presumably of a relative or friend who'd died.

As Wally and I pushed through the wooden horses set up everywhere willy-nilly, someone in riot gear actually made an attempt to stop us. But another cop dressed in blues waved us through, saying to the other in true New York cynicism, "Two more! What's the difference?"

In my growing excitement, I felt Wally hug me. "Isn't this great?" he shouted into my ear so as to be heard over all the noise.

"Terrif! Where do we go?"

"We've got to find Junior and the others."

Someone laid a hand on me. I expected another cop. Instead it was a tall, balding gay man my age with nice tits prominently displayed in an ACT UP black T-shirt, four rings in his left ear, and a yellow armband— a marshal.

"Do you belong to an affinity group?" the marshal asked, and I knew from his tone of voice and self-important air that he was that type of homosexual Bob Herron had first and forever defined as A Very Efficient Queen.

"We're looking for them!" Wally shouted into the VEQ's ear.

I thought the VEQ looked familiar.

"You'd better stick with me. Lilly Law was taken quite by surprise by all this, and she's getting a little nervous," the marshal yelled. He turned to me. "Don't I know you?" he shouted in my ear.

I shrugged and thought just what I needed in all this tumult was to play what Alistair always used to call Fag Genealogy: comparing lovers, boyfriends, tricks, jobs held, neighborhoods lived in, college, high school, junior high, and other schools attended right back to kindergarten and sometimes earlier.

"You do look familiar," I admitted.

After all, how many gay men in their forties still remained in the city? Not a hell of a lot. Only a few weeks before, I'd been walking around the Upper West Side with a friend from my days as a textbook editor who'd gone off to northern Michigan to teach Chaucer and had remained there for the last several decades. He suddenly stopped at Seventy-second and Amsterdam and said, "I've been here for a week. Where are all the men of our generation?"

"Dead!" I said.

"Come on!"

"They're dead. It's a fact. There's about six of us left."

That being so, I ought to know who this one was.

"What's your name?" I shouted into the marshal's ear.

"Ron Taskin."

"Not Ronny Taskin from Vanderveer Street?" I asked.

"Now I know who you are," he said, and swept me up in a hug. "I told Coffee I used to know you when your book came out. Where is he? He'd love to meet you. Coffee's my lover. Thurston's his real name. You know that old joke: like my men—black and strong and very sweet!"

Ronny Taskin! I couldn't believe it.

"Are you still using Indian clubs?" I asked.

His mouth flew open in surprise at my memory. "Not after the last one had to be surgically removed from my behind in the emergency ward!" He wiggled his rear end in emphasis, and we both laughed at his joke. Then I grabbed Wally and introduced him to Ron and tried to explain who he was. But Wally was distracted, looking for Junior and the others.

"There's hundreds of people here," I told Wally. "We could join any affinity group."

"We've
got
to find Junior and the others! I promised!"

He moved away into the crowd, and Ron found a slightly quieter spot among the wires of a CBS truck for us to talk.

"They're
so
intense at that age," Ron said. "You carry Pampers?"

"I can't believe you're gay," I said.

"As the nineties. Or you! As a boy you were so butch it hurt. Bike racing champ, marble wizard. Solitary and brooding. I thought you'd end up becoming a serial killer."

That was an odd thing to say. I'd always assumed I'd lived and died for social acceptance. "Me? You're kidding."

"Well, maybe until that incident with your cousin."

A subject I didn't feel like talking about. I deftly turned the conversation: "Do you ever see any of the others? Guy? What was the little prick's name? Kerry White?"

"Died in 'Nam."

My spirits began to drop. "Kerry? You're kidding."

"Closed coffin. His mother freaked out at the funeral, demanding it be opened. When they did, all she found was dirt and a few charred bones. She went bonkers after that. I lost track of the rest. What about your cousin?" Ron asked. Evidently he was going to insist. "The Ineffable Alistair Dodge? If he wasn't a baby faggot in training, I don't know who was. He knew virtually all of Clifton Webb's lines from
The Razor's Edge
and
Laura."

"He turned out gay," I said, but now my spirits were plummeting. "He's here in town." And since it was Ronny Taskin, I had to add, "He's sick."

Ron's face fell into that set pattern we all knew how to use by now to give and receive bad news. "How's he doing?"

"Not good," I said, using the current euphemism to mean he was about to die. "How about you?"

Ron aped someone taking pills. "Five times a day," he sang.

Meaning AZT. Meaning he was sick too. "Damn!"

"And you?" he asked, concerned.

"Don't tell anyone, but I'm negative."

"You needn't be ashamed," Ron said.

"I don't know how it happened. I did all the wrong things with all the wrong people in all the wrong places at all the wrong times."

"Someone's got to escape."

"I know. But it's, well, embarrassing at times. Not to mention highly uncomfortable in existential terms."

"'Me only cruel immortality/Consumes,'" Ron said, sympathetically.

That was the second time the Tennyson poem had come up.

"Something like that," I admitted.

Another marshal came over looking for Ron. As they stood aside talking, I saw Ron's face darken just the way it used to when he got angry as a kid, and I heard him suddenly burst out with "Shit! I warned him but he insisted!" As the other marshal left, Ron said, "Someone really sick collapsed on the fence. They're giving oxygen, but..."

Two other marshals came up to him. I heard him say, "Tell them he'll
die
if we don't have an EMS unit
now!"

"I'd better see you later," I said.

"Let's get together sometime," Ron said. "I'm in the book. Under Ron Coffee. Tom! Wait! Where
is
that precinct lieutenant? I'll give
her
a piece of my mind!"

I was certain Ron would.

"I found them!" Wally said into my ear, then added darkly, "I think someone's in real trouble healthwise."

Junior Obregon, James Niebuhr, and their buddies were on line with the others, waiting to say their special names into the microphone. Two of them were arguing over the name of a friend both had been planning to say. James was trying to calm them down. I saw a solution:

"You want names," I said, "I've got a coupla score."

"You're kidding," Junior said.

"Got a piece of paper? I'll write down the first dozen or so that come to mind."

That sobered them up a little.

The EMS truck arrived with a police escort, which of all places in the city tonight was least needed here. Removing the stricken demonstrator, however, wasn't so simple, since one tenet of chaining demonstrators was that no one would admit to having keys to the locks. As a result, while a beefy guy with a plastic mask was busily blowtorching the chain, the EMS people were attempting to get the ill man stretched out on a gurney and attached to lifesaving equipment. I could see Ron Taskin among the group of ACT UP legal observers, ACT UP doctors, and high-ranking police officers surrounding the poor guy. Leave it to Ronny to become a Mover and Shaker, even with four earrings and highly visible erect nipples.

I wondered again about what he'd said concerning me being brooding and solitary as a child. I thought I'd worked my ass off to be just one of the guys. Serial killer, my foot! Since I'd become a Buddhist, it was all I could do to kill a cockroach. And look at the tailspin Alistair's request for death drugs had thrown me into.

"Do you know what name you're going to say?" James asked.

Just then I was shocked to hear a woman I didn't know at the microphone say the name Cleve Atchinson. Cleve used to be a fuck-buddy of mine back in the seventies, a sweet boy from Kentucky I'd lost track of years before. I remembered Cleve telling me in those ten- or twenty-minute periods between sex and him getting dressed to leave that he was an artist and was trying to get accepted into the School of Visual Arts for more training. Since he hadn't asked, I arranged to have a graphic artist I knew write up a completely bogus recommendation for him. I'd never seen any of Cleve's paintings, and I never found out if he ever was accepted. Hell, I didn't even know if he had any talent—besides his spectacular cocksucking. I'd left the city for a year, then Cleve had gone away, and I never heard from him again. Naturally, I hadn't known Cleve was sick.

Another page in my life erased, I thought, a page, an entire relationship, I'd probably never told a soul about. Without the young Kentuckian around anymore, did that mean my relationship with Cleve was now, in some twisted Lockean manner, relegated to the purely empirical—just one man's experience, forever uncheckable, doomed to unreliability? And didn't that make it tantamount to it not ever having happened? What about all those paragraphs and chapters others had filled in my life—Alistair most notably—would all that soon cease to exist? Was that what had made the past decade's losses so increasingly horrendous: the knowledge that my life was being reduced before my eyes from the richly detailed Victorian triple-decker we all supposedly carry, to a mere chapbook, a pamphlet of few pages, with wider white margins, spelling out a single, unclear thesis, accompanied by a single sheet of footnotes?

I had to tell someone about Cleve—find something trenchant and important about him and tell someone. What about Cleve had stood out? What had made him special? And who could I tell? Wally? Would he understand what I meant? What I feared?

"Well, do you know what name you're saying?" Wally repeated James's question into my ear.

"Give me a break, will you?"

"You'd better. 'Cause you're up next!" Wally said.

He slid up to the microphone, took it in his hand, and with those large, sad brown eyes, said the name of a graduate student who'd tutored him, added a few words about the man, and added his year of birth and death.

I was next. Jostled from behind by Junior Obregon, I went to the mike, gave my suddenly downcast lover a discreet pat on his ass—and froze.