February 18, 2002 - 10.26 pm
So, I'm workshopping a story in my creative writing class, and thought I'd share the first draft here, because I'd love any and all comments. It should be known that I'm totally re-writing this first draft per comments from my classmates. (Not edgy enough. Pah!)Be it known that I don't do so well with critisim. I really do enjoy sharing my work, but I get terrified of people judging it or me. I just want to be petted and purred that everything will be fine. So I've GOT to learn to take constructive critisms. This is where YOU come in! First draft. Comment. PLEASE comment. PLEASE! :)
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Emily Mills
Untitled
Where the hell is my other sock? Socks everywhere I look, but when I need one, no socks. I thought grumpily to myself. Outside my window, the sun was stretching its rosy fingers into the velvety purple sky of the very early morning.
A bright blue, cloudless sky, and cold morning air greeted me forty-five minutes later when I donned blue jeans, walking shoes and my AIDS Walk Volunteer tee shirt. My hair was pulled back into an efficient ponytail tied with a red ribbon, and my trusty Cannon EOS hung around my neck.
“Bye Mom!” I called to my lucky still be-bathrobed mother who stood at the door with her cup of coffee.
“Bye honey. Drive carefully. Have a terrific time.” The look of worry that had become a constant whenever she looked at me had returned to her face.
I was off to photograph the AIDS Walk. This idea was a brainchild of my mother and my shrink. My best friend, Matt died three months ago from an opportunistic infection. AIDS. After Matt died, I’d moved home and changed jobs and done everything I could to distance myself from anything that reminded me of my old life, of Matt.
Before I met Matt, I was living in a tiny little hole-in-the wall flat in SoHo. I had moved to New York to follow my dreams. I wanted to be a brilliant, bohemian photographer and my work was going to move the masses. Plus, I loved the city. I loved the lights, and the people and the skyline and the magic. I really did think New York was magical. I know what you’re thinking. New York is dirty and grimy and full of beggars and weirdoes. But it’s full of diners with poetry, and coffee for $.95 and people performing on street corners, and beautiful art and a huge park, and best of all, Matt.
Matt lived in the tiny hole in the wall flat adjacent to mine. I’d heard him strumming his guitar in the hall and introduced myself. That night, we pooled our collective fortunes ($15.37) and ordered a Thai food, watched an old movie on TV and were inseparable. Matt told me he was gay, and that he had AIDS, but you know, they say you can live for ten years after HIV has developed into full blown AIDS, so I didn’t worry much about it. Well, I worried about it in a societal sense, but not applying to my Matt.
Matt was a painter, and a musician, and like me, a waited tables to pay the bills. At night, I would fix dinner or work on prints in my tiny bathroom/darkroom and he would play his keyboard or his guitar or paint. We would absorb each other’s craziness and motivate the other’s creativity. We decided to share one shoebox sized flat, got a kitten we named Monet and I thought life couldn’t be any more perfect. We went to clubs and poetry readings and films and museums. Matt’s friends became mine; we went to ACT UP meetings and pride parades. We both dated, but it was nice to have someone to come home to, one flop date after another.
Then, the unthinkable happened. Matt got sick. Really really sick. Coughing, throwing up, hallucinating. He had a fever and the chills, and after two days of pure hell, we took a trip to the county ER. A myriad of pills, bureaucratic nonsense, IV’s, nutrition supplements, chanting, praying, meditating, reading, singing, crying followed, and Matt died anyway.
After the funeral, I sublet our apartment, gave Monet to one of Matt’s friends, and moved back to the town I grew up in. I packed my camera in the bottom of a box that I left in the corner of a pile of boxes in my basement. I got a job at a law firm downtown, and refused to answer phone calls or letters or e-mails from my New York friends. It hurt too bad. All they wanted to do was talk about Matt, and all I wanted to do was not talk about him. My parents tried to be as supportive as they could, and they let me have my space and my anger. Because, man, I was pissed as hell. But one day, my mother said I needed to see a shrink. I couldn’t go on living this half-life.
So, once a week, I started visiting Dr. Bergen and she told me that I couldn’t avoid Matt or his memory forever. I guess it was her idea that I do this whole AIDS walk thing, you know, embracing my pain and all that shit.
After much dragging of my feet, and whining, and saying it was too soon, and that I wasn’t ready, the day arrived. At an ungodly hour I got in the car and drove to Schubert Park where they were starting the walk.
Even before I got out of the car, I saw the rainbow colored streamers and balloons, and the red ribbons fluttering like butterflies on the gentle morning breeze. I felt the familiar knot in my stomach, and flirted with the idea of taking the car and driving as far away as I could. But I didn’t. I swallowed hard and got out of the car. I had only walked a few feet when I saw a huge, hand lettered banner announcing that VOLUNTEER CHECK IN was housed at a cheerfully colored tent below.
Like I was walking to my own execution, I plodded toward a warm, motherly looking woman with a button proudly proclaiming, “I love my gay son!” and a smile that said she’d been doing this for a while.
“Hello dear.” she said kindly.
“Hello. My name is Ellie Meyers. I’m here to take pictures.”
“Ellie, yes hello. You’ve come to us on high recommendation.” She smiled with her whole body.
“Um. Thanks.” I said.
“Well dear. Here’s your clipboard and your film. You just write a description of every picture you take and the number frame it is.”
“OK.” I said.
“That’s all dear. Have a great time.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh dear!” She said. “You forgot your red ribbon!”
In her soft, round hand, she held a bright, red ribbon.
“Oh. Sorry. Thanks.” I said absentmindedly. And with my red ribbon pinned jauntily to my tee shirt, I wandered away.
Down a grassy hill, a stage was set up, with banners from local radio stations, and an arch of rainbow colored balloons, which was unmistakably the starting point. To the right was a large crowd, and beyond that a host of vendors.
The day was getting warmer and the park already growing crowded with people. A popular DJ from a local station began leading warm ups, and after snapping a couple of shots of the warm-uppers, I wandered over to where the crowd had gathered.
As I drew nearer something in me screamed to turn and go the other way as quickly as possible. But like motorists who witness an accident, who don’t want to see what’s there, but can’t seem to tear their eyes away, I kept walking. “Pictures.” I thought. “You’re taking pictures. It makes sense to go where the people are.” But I knew that wasn’t it.
The Quilt. I’d only heard of it and how moving it was. Matt and I were supposed to go to an exhibit and a candle light vigil, but in a wicked twist of irony, he’d gotten sick and we missed it.
At first, I tried to take it all in. A sea of fabric in bright colors, photographs; pieces of lives carefully stitched together, and the vastness of it boggled my mind. And then, as if someone shifted the focus of a camera, I started seeing the single squares. The poems next to snapshots, rainbows, teddy bears, names, and numbers. Birth dates and death dates, so close together you think they must have made a mistake. But it wasn’t a mistake. It was an obvious ache to make sense of something senseless, a cry to remember, to be remembered.
I watched as a tiny, toe headed boy lay his cheek down on a square and say in a gruff baby voice “I love you Uncle Jimmy I miss you,” rubbing his cheek on the material. His mother was standing behind him crying quietly. When she tried to pick him up, he wouldn’t have it. He wanted to stay and talk to his Uncle Jimmy.
My eyes shifted to an older couple gazing at a bright blue square featuring a bright-eyed blond woman in her thirties. “Carol Anne Hayes”, it said, “beloved wife and mother. We will always miss you.” The tiny gray haired woman standing over Carol-Anne’s square was discreetly wiping eyes that could have been a mirror image of Carol Anne’s, as her round, comfy looking husband hugged her tightly. A beautiful, tall, young man with skin the color of mocha stood over a square, unapologetic tears cutting dark paths in his beautiful face. I could feel a sob rising at the back of my throat. All the people in these quilt squares died like Matt. In hospitals, with lesions, and bloody diapers, sweating, throwing up, not recognizing the people they loved most in this world by the end. It wasn’t fair. Before I could go down completely, I lost myself in my camera. The mechanics of the art separated me from the people grieving for loved ones they’d never see again, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, lovers. And the anger that was always behind. The anger because this is a totally preventable disease; and because no one talks about it. I took some pictures and moved on.
I walked very purposefully toward the starting point, where the air was thick with excitement, and sort of a frenzied sadness. Posters with “I’m Walking For . . .” and a picture were waving in the gentle breeze. The mayor was giving a modulated speech about a friend she had lost to “the Plague” in the 80’s and how we must never stop fighting. I laughed quietly and shook my head; she was so businesslike, with the emotion of one talking about this year’s crop of turnips.
A musical voice next to me said, “It’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it?”
I turned to see a tall man with thinning blond hair, a long face, and John-Lennon-ish glasses framing gray-green eyes standing next to me. He was probably about my father’s age, with bushy eyebrows, a long thin nose, and a scraggly mustache hiding thin lips.
“Unbelievable” I replied. And we smiled conspiratorially at each other.
When the mayor was finished, my friend and I clapped politely and an eager looking young man stepped up to the microphone and sung “I Believe I Can Fly”. My friend and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes.
“This song is so cheesy,” I said, focusing my camera on the enthusiastic young fellow.
“You’d think they could chose good music,” he said, watching me. A beat and then, “But I’ll never hear it the same way again.”
“Yeah” I agreed.
When I Believe I Can Fly mercifully finished, and another round of polite clapping, five people, three men and two women stepped up to microphones of their own, and a single keyboard hit an opening chord.
My breath caught in my throat. “Seasons of Love” from Rent. I knew that opening chord like I knew my name. My favorite musical, but the song that reminded me so much of Matt. I looked over to my friend, and saw him holding his hand to his mouth, tears streaming down his long, thin face. I touched his arm, not knowing if a stranger would appriciate the gesture, and he turned to me and fell into my arms, burrying his face on my shoulder and sobbing sobbing sobbing, all the way up from his belly.
Not knowing exactly what to do, I stroked his hair, and sang along softly tears prickling the back of my eyeballs, and then I saw it. The lesion. The size of a silver dollar on the place his neck met his shoulder, purple, jagged edged tell tale lesion, and I knew then he had a lover somewhere, a partner, either already dead or too sick to be at the walk with him and in that moment, I wanted to take his lovers place. I wanted to trade my life so that his lover could be there, holding his hand, stroking his cheek, whispering how lucky they were to have each other in the face of the storm. How lucky that they weren’t just another stataistic, because nothing on earth I could have done could have healed that man. When the song was over, I could taste the sob that was aching in my chest and the tears gathering in my eyes, but I held both back.
The song ended, and my friend straightend himself up, not making any apologies, or wiping his tears away, wearing them proudly. He took both my hands in his, and squeezed them, looking deep into my eyes before saying ‘Chin up, bright eyes’ and nudging my chin with his finger. I felt like my throat would close with unshead tears. He had no way of knowing that Matt always called me Bright Eyes. And I realized that’s what I was looking for. A little bit of Matt.
I felt as though despite the bright day, I was in a fog. I said ‘Take care of yourself’, insignificant, the words of two people who have just shared an intensely intimate moment and don’t know what to say next, and we parted. Me with my camera, him to walk; walk for his lover; walk for his friends, walk for himself, and for all the people who know as he does, what it’s like to watch the person you love most in this world die. To spoon soup and ice into their mouths, to change their sheets and their clothes, to look at pictures with them, and to realize they don’t remember the pictures. And to wonder who’ll be there when it’s your turn.
I walked too. Taking pictures of the flood of people who had turned out to walk, the old people with ribbons and buttons, the families with kids in strollers and on their shoulders, the people my age, the battle they were fighting shining on their faces. The posters that demanded those we’d lost not be forgotten. The mothers and daughters. The grandfathers and sons. The friends. The lovers. We would be heard. We wouldn’t forget. I wasn’t alone. People had watched their best friends die before I had. And they would after I did.
I went home that night with the songs of hope in my ears, and the images of the walkers burned into my memory. And still the anger. The anger that fuels the little bit of shining hope I held in the center of my being. We would be heard.
I hugged my mom really tightly, and kissed the top of my dad’s head before going up to my room.
“Hello, Brian? I’m sorry I didn’t return your call.”
