Michael Tolliver Lives (12 page)

“Lenore would bring lunch to the Gospel Palms,” Ben explained, “and her and your mom would watch Fox-TV every afternoon. It was sorta their soap opera. Lenore would get so worked up she’d talk back to the set. She said that letting someone die like that was worse than abortion. Even if they want to die. Even if they requested it.”

I could feel my face burning. “And how does she feel about slaughtering children for oil? Does that offend her Christian principles?”

Ben was waiting indulgently for me to return to the war at home.

“So all I have to do is sign something?”

He nodded. “She had a lawyer draw it up. She asked me to be one of the witnesses. She wants you to sign before Irwin and Lenore get wise.”

“This doesn’t mean…” I just couldn’t find the right way to put it. “I mean…she’ll be comfortable, won’t she?”

Another nod. “They can make it that way.” He reached over and held my arm. “Nothing different will be happening, sweetie. Things will just…take their course naturally. She just doesn’t want the respirator.”

“Gotcha.”

“Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I guess I should call her.”

He shook his head. “I told her you’d do it. We’re gonna sign the papers on Thursday.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’re way ahead of me, aren’t you?”

He leaned closer and kissed me on the cheek. “Just beside you.”

I smiled at him. “This could get sticky, you know.”

“You think?”

“Well…they’ll put up a fight if they get wind of it. I’m sure of that.”

“Maybe,” said Ben, “but there’s nothing they can do about it. Once your mom’s made her wishes known.”

“I suppose.” I had a sudden, macabre image of Lenore brandishing her puppets at the Gospel Palms while Mama breathed her last natural breaths. I could hear those loathsome Little Witnesses accusing me, pointing their little felt arms at the sinner from Sodom-by-the-Bay as the righteous assembled at Mama’s bedside to sing hymns of devotion.

“She must hate it,” I said, “that she has to turn to me.”

“She doesn’t have to,” said Ben. “She wants to.”

No, I thought, she
has
to. Everyone else has drunk the Kool-Aid.

12

Camouflage

O
rlando’s oldest gay bar, the Full Moon Saloon, was a few blocks from our B&B down Orange Blossom Trail. The place had been a hunting lodge when I was a kid, but now it catered largely to bears—specifically the Bears of Central Florida—whose headquarters (and hindquarters) could be found there. On certain nights of the week patrons were encouraged to wear leather, latex, or uniforms. This particular night was a Wednesday, so men in camouflage could buy domestic beers for $2.25.

In my youth, and many years thereafter, camouflage would have meant the jungle-green Vietnam variety, but most of these guys were decked out in the muted buffs and grays of the troops in Iraq. One of them, a solid-looking black bear nearing fifty, was sporting that new computer-generated camouflage on which random pixilated shapes have replaced the old swirly shrubbery patterns.

“He might be real,” I said to Ben.

“A real what?”

“Soldier. I don’t think that pattern has hit the thrift shops yet.”

Ben gave me a dubious look. “Why would he wear it here? I don’t think that outfit is much of a fantasy for people who have to wear it for real.”

“I guess not.” I smiled at him, appreciating his practical wisdom. “I’ll get the drinks. What’ll you have?”

Ben, as you know, is alarmingly moderate when it comes to substances, so “What’ll you have?” is always a challenge. “How ’bout a Lemon Drop?” he said.

“Is that what our brave men are drinking now?”

He goosed me. “You can skip the pansy-ass glass.”

“Yes sir.” I gave him a smart salute. “No pansy-ass glass, sir.”

I wriggled my way to the bar, where a chunky bartender in a camouflage tank top obliged by serving the cocktails in whiskey glasses rimmed with sugar. “There ya go,” he said, setting them down. “Two butch Lemon Drops for the general.”

He was just teasing, or maybe even flirting, but, proud old queer that I am, I didn’t want him to think that I had masculinity issues about glassware—especially in a room full of faux soldiers. “The short ones are easier to handle,” I said. “In a crowd.”

“Gotcha,” said the bartender. “You from around here?”

“No,” I replied. “Well…yes…but not lately.”

“You sounded like you might be.”

“I grew up out on Abbot Springs Road. My family had some orange groves out there.”

The bartender shook his head. “Don’t think I know it.”

I gave him a crooked smile. “Don’t think I do, either.”

“Say what?”

“Nothing.” I left him a ten-dollar bill, then lifted the Lemon Drop glasses in a double toast. “Keep the troops happy,” I told him ruefully.

Two drinks later, the Full Moon was jammed, and, as usual, I was feeling both claustrophobic and disconnected. You wouldn’t think those two would go together, but they do for me, especially in a bar, where it’s all too easy to feel suffocated by nothingness. I was never a bar person, even as a young man; I preferred the wide-open spaces of the bathhouses, where willing members and stoned cuddling and a seven-grain sandwich with sprouts were never that far away. A noisy bar, on the other hand, is all posing and chaos; sooner or later I reach my limit and have to make a break for it, find some stars, breathe some clean night air, get Christina Fucking Aguilera out of my head.

So Ben and I retreated to a bench under a big live oak that must have been there when I was a boy and the place was exclusively dedicated to the joy of killing animals. From this distance the pounding music in the Full Moon sounded almost bittersweet, like an orchestra heard across a lake. The actual moon was far from full—just a little nail paring caught in the branches—but it was lovely. My body was starting to remember the precise feel of a balmy Florida night—that easy, velvety containment.

Ben slid closer, tucking a palm between my thighs. “This is better,” he said.

“Ain’t it?”

“Are you okay?”

I didn’t speak right away. “You know what gets me?”

“What?”

I searched for the best way to frame it, the best way not to sound like a monster. “People always say, ‘
Of course
you love her, you have to, she’s your mother,’ but that kind of love can die as easily as any of the others. It has to be fed by something.”

“She loves you, Michael.”

“Not enough to question her preachers.”

“Well—”

“You know they hauled her to the polls…oxygen tank and all…so she could vote for Bush one more time? The guy who wants to protect marriage from you and me. And they expect us to act like everything’s fine, like they’re not
really
waging a holy war against us. And what do I do? I make it easy for them. I’m a good boy and joke about speedboats and alligators and Mr. Grady with the drool rag.”

Ben smiled benignly, letting me vent.

“I’ve had thirty years of forgiveness,” I said. “I’m fucking over it.”

Ben nodded. “I’m sure.”

“She’s spent all that time trying not to know who I am, and now she’s entrusting me with her death. I should feel touched or something, but I don’t. I don’t feel much of anything. I let her go a long time ago. I’ve done my mourning already.”

Ben kept his eyes on the moon. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“I mean it,” I said. “I wish I didn’t, but I do. “

Ben just shrugged and smiled. “There is no fifth destination.”

This takes some explaining. Last year I bought a Prius, one of those cute, high-butted hybrids that are multiplying like rabbits in the streets of San Francisco. As you might imagine, I love how it saves on gas and cuts pollution. I also love its eerie silence at stoplights and its wacky rearview camera and that disembodied voice—female, elegant, and a little bossy—who can somehow lead us back to Noe Hill (beguilingly labeled
HOME
) from anywhere in the country. During our trip through the Southwest, Ben and I grew so familiar with that voice that we named her Carlotta—well, all right,
I
did—after “the mad Carlotta” from
Vertigo,
because our own lady of mystery can sound downright loony sometimes.

One night, for instance, when we were driving home from a trip to Tahoe, there was a serious chill in the air, so Ben poked the little face on the steering wheel to call Carlotta.

“After the beep,” she said, “please say a command.”

So Ben said: “Seventy-two degrees.”

And Carlotta replied: “There is no fifth destination.”

“What did she say?” asked Ben.

“She said there is no fifth destination.”

He chuckled. “Well, that’s real helpful.”

“I don’t think you waited long enough after the beep.”

“Well, okay,” said Ben, “but why was that in there in the first place.
There is no fifth destination?
If that’s the answer, what’s the question?”

Intrigued by this conundrum, I told him to push the button again. He did so, reluctantly, and Carlotta returned. “After the beep,” she said, “please say a command.”

I leaned toward the steering wheel. “Go fuck yourself,” I said.

“Pardon?” she replied.

“I said, eat a big one!”

Her voice, I swear, grew starchy: “System is showing beauty-shop icons.”

Ben hooted. “I think she just called you a queen.”

“I think she did, too…the tart.”

“Well, talk nice to her, then.”

“Push it again.”

“No, Michael. That’s enough.”

“C’mon. I wanna see how freaky she gets…”

“Honey, you can’t just sit here harassing machinery.”

“Why not? It’s a rare opportunity.”

From that moment on, “There is no fifth destination” became our all-purpose pronouncement. It sounded important, like something Gandalf might have uttered, yet it was patently ridiculous at heart. It became our way of saying “Big deal” or “Who the hell knows?” or “Lighten up, for God’s sake, you won’t get out of this alive.”

Maybe we only get four destinations in life, and Carlotta’s trying to tell us not to be banking on the fifth, not to be wasting precious time on pipe dreams of eternity.

That’s the way I hear it, anyway.

“Do you smell something?”

We were still sitting on the bench under the oak tree, and Ben’s nose was tilted skyward. I followed his lead and noticed the same thing: the sweet, teasing pungency of marijuana. Tracking it to its source, I found a couple of bar patrons wreathed in smoke, standing in the shadows next to a Dumpster. “Man,” I said, “the scent of home.”

“Go get a hit,” Ben whispered. Since I haven’t traveled with grass—except sometimes by car in Northern California—since the “heightened security measures” of 9/11, my husband seems instinctively to feel my pain when I’m potless in a foreign city.

“I can’t,” I told him.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s rude, when they’re strangers. And they haven’t offered it.”

“Let’s just stroll by, then. I need to go to the bathroom, anyway.”

So we proceeded to stroll, ever so casually, until one of the tokers—the shorter of the two—was startled by the sight of us and palmed the joint with guilty efficiency.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “We’re from San Francisco.”

They laughed uneasily. They were both in their forties, both in polo shirts and chinos, both gazing carnivorously at Ben. I’m used to this, of course, and these two weren’t in the least threatening, since neither one of them was exactly embracing his daddyhood. Their highlighted hair and fake tans (visible even in the dark) betrayed just how hard—and how long—they’d been clinging to the conceit of youth. And it’s not Peter Pan who makes little Ben’s heart beat faster; it’s Captain Hook.

These guys seemed pleasant enough, though—especially when the shorter one held out the joint. “Would you care to partake?” His voice was Southern and smooth as sorghum. I found it familiar and comforting and deeply repellent.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, matching his Victorian formality before sucking the blessed weed into my lungs.

“What about you?” the taller one asked Ben.

“No, thanks,” Ben said. “You guys go ahead.”

I handed the joint back to the taller one. “He’s disgustingly clean.”

The shorter one locked his eyes on Ben. “Well, good for you. You stay that way.” His tone was slightly patronizing, as if he were addressing someone’s teenage brother. He flashed an empty Tom Cruise smile. “Are y’all friends or something?”

“No,” I said evenly. “We’re a couple.”

He blinked at me for a moment. “Well,” he said, raising an eyebrow as he took the joint from the shorter one. “Didn’t
you
hit the jackpot.”

Before I could compose a sufficiently punishing answer, Ben had taken care of things. “I think we both did,” he said.

“Of course,” said the taller one, scolding his partner with a glance.

“We were married at City Hall,” I told them, changing the subject.

“That’s great,” said the taller one. “We couldn’t do that, of course, but…our pastor gave us a commitment ceremony.”

I was surprised—and impressed—to hear that. “Around here, you mean?”

“Yep. Tully Memorial Baptist.”

“Well, I’ll be,” I said. Three days back in Central Florida and I was already sounding like Mammy Yokum.

The shorter one sucked on the joint with a vengeance, making almost the same noise my mother made with her nebulizer. “We quit that congregation.”

“Why?” asked Ben.

“Well, the pastor started preaching about how all religions are the same and how (ssss) they’re all just guidelines for goodness and the Buddhists are just as good as we are and shit like that. Well, call me old-fashioned, but (ssss) when I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior (ssss) I didn’t sign up for no Buddhism.” He handed the joint to the taller one, then turned back to us. “I mean, can you imagine such a thing?”

I didn’t dare catch Ben’s eye for fear of uncontrollable smirking. “Oh, well,” he said, struggling for something to say, “I can see how…so it was sort of…a question of—”