Thirteen Crucifixions, 44

1986

The sinuous triangular shadow fell on the Roman numeral III, and Stephen stared down at the granite in stupefied wonder.  He was mustering the courage to go into the house and break the news to Pierre, to Pamela.  He didn’t know whom to tell first.  Perhaps whoever was there to see him.  The doctor in the clinic had been very gentle about breaking the news.  Stephen had taken it well, having always lived as one who is under a death sentence.  He was worried about Pierre….

                                                              2001

It was beginning to rain.  Michael had sat already for three hours in this café.  He still didn’t feel like moving.  It was the weather. No, not the weather, since he had often gone camping in much worse.  It was the fact that his two favourite waiters were both working at once for a change.  They were holding him captive?  Maybe.  He didn’t want to return to his mother?  But he did.  To Glen?  They had lingered last night in the hallway chatting before bedtime.  Michael had just had a bath and had nothing on but a towel wrapped around his waist.  He invited Glen in to see his room and admire his view of the mountains.  But just as he was removing the towel and standing at the window completely naked he turned around to see that Glen had already left the room, bidding him a hasty, whispered good night.  Michael, who was not easily embarrassed, was too embarrassed to see Glen right away?  He would have to think about that.

            The public library, where he was going to check his e-mail, since his mother refused to get a computer, and his had been lost in the move, was just upstairs from the café.  He hadn’t been in yet.  He was going to look for word from Matthew.  His real reason for lingering, Michael was procrastinating.  He didn’t want to hear from Matthew, but he didn’t want not to hear from him either.  He was afraid of not getting any news at all?  He was worried about him, dammit!  He was still in love with Matthew: who was so completely and so totally gone from him.  Away.  Like an impregnable barrier had been formed between them, which was already well in place before he left.  Where was he?  Michael knew he was afraid of finding out.

            The dark-haired waiter offered him a refill on his coffee.  Which he gladly accepted, scarcely looking up from his crossword puzzle.  As smitten as he was by both the dark and the auburn-haired waiters here, Michael had taken the greatest pains to betray nothing of what he felt, instead affecting an insouciance that seemed even a little like hostility.  He didn’t know their names.  He didn’t want to know their names.  This was far better than anonymous sex: anonymous platonic desire.  And of course it was platonic, since whether he could or not he really didn’t want to have sex with either of them.  Much as he didn’t really want to have sex with Glen?  Whom he merely had wanted to taunt and torment?  See what he could get away with?  Michael up to his old tricks again.  Not that he could think of anything else to do.  He couldn’t.  He couldn’t remember even when last he’d written anything. But he might never write anything again.

            “Ten across: five-letter word for “obsolete”.  Easy.  “Passe”.  So that was it?  Sex is passe?  Why should this surprise him?  Fourteen down: five letters again for boredom and melancholy.  “Ennui”.  But the background music was Raggae.  “Is it love, is it love, is it love, is it love that I’m feeling?  Is it love, is it love, is it love--”

            “Apathy”, said the dark-haired waiter.

            “Huh?” Michael almost jumped out of his seat.

            “Oh sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.  But six down should be “apathy” for indifference.  Don’t you think so?”

            “Yeah, you’re right.  Great journalist I must be if I can’t figure that one out.”

            “You’re a writer?”

            “I was a writer.  Taking a break from it.”

            “I’m trying to write a novel.”

            “Well, good luck to you.  What’s it about?”

            “Life.”

            “Yeah.  Good start.”

            “It’s about all these people stuck living together in the same house.  They can hardly stand each other.”

“Autobiography?”

            “Yeah, sort of.”

            “Write two more.  When you’ve finished the third one, send it out to a publisher.  Shred the first two.”

            “You’re not serious?”

            “I am.”

            “But—“

            “—First novels are always autobiography.  They get it out of your system.  Second novels are a practice run.  Number three might work.”

            “Might?  You sound optimistic.”

            “Gotta work at it, and you gotta work at it good and hard if you’re going to produce anything of consequence.”

            “Have you published anything?”

            “A few short stories.  Some poems.  Mostly prose.”

            “What kind?”

            “Mostly queer themes.”

            “Like, erotica?”

            “Some.  But mostly about relationships and their fallout.”

            “Yeah. I got a lot of friends who are gay.  Some of the crap they put each other through.”

            “Everybody puts each other through crap.  Doesn’t matter if you prefer women, men or sheep or all of the above.”

            “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”  By this time the waiter was sitting down on the edge of the opposite chair.  “That’d be something to write about.  Breaking up with a sheep.”

            “Hello Dolly.  Hey, do you know why they wear kilts in Scotland?”

            “Why?”

            “’Cuz over there the sheep can hear a zipper from a mile away.”

            “You’re sick.”

            “Why thank you.  I think I might be in love.”

            “Excuse me—customers.”

            And maybe he was in love.  So hard it was for Michael to tell these days.  What he had come to feel for Matthew, and whatever visceral stirrings this still nameless waiter stirred in him were such completely different emotions.  And this boy who served him coffee, who was so much younger than Michael, still lost somewhere in his early twenties.  Michael was glad to be over having been in his twenties.  The last two years before thirty were interesting, intense.  He was doing that series on “Living With AIDS”.  It was inevitable.  An erstwhile fuck-buddy of his who shared with him editorial duties on the Radical Faerie, the gay newspaper they both worked on had become lovers with one of the arts editors of the Globe and Mail.  He had admired Michael’s keen intelligence and professional integrity, and was quick to recommend him to this new find of his.  One thing led to another.  He met Stephen Bloom, whom he loved even as they were conducting the interview on a sun-drenched terrace of the sprawling Shaughnessy mansion where he was living out his final days.  There had not been a little controversy here.  The media piranhas from the major TV networks had closed in on the eccentric community that had taken root in this sumptuous home.  There he met and did public, televised battle with that Persimmon Carlyle, Media Bitch, whose kharma quickly caught up on her and swallowed her whole.  Even after hearing of her complete public humiliation, the destruction of her marriage and subsequent breakdown, it was till nigh impossible for Michael to summon forth so much as a smidgeon of pity for that woman.  Caustic, hard-edged, ruthless and bitter, she would destroy anyone to get her story.

            As it had later been proven, absolutely nothing indictable or ethically questionable had occurred in that house.  The TV networks along with the gutter press had tried to represent this house as an unlicensed and illegally operated AIDS hospice with cult and brain-washing activities included where patients were denied life-prolonging medications and often died prematurely from neglect.

            He looked up from the crossword puzzle and stared out at the rain falling in the gray reality outside.  So that’s where he had seen Glen long after he moved out of the neighbourhood.  He lived there.  A kind of unofficial guru in residence.  Rarely visible. Once he’d noticed him talking to Stephen when he arrived.  The smile, that kind shy and deferential smile Michael always would remember.  Stephen simply referred to him as the “Unofficial Guru” whom everyone loved.  Only once had Michael seen him there.  He had even successfully eluded Persimmon and the TV cameras, being simply named the “Unofficial Guru.”  And Glen said nothing.  Perhaps he didn’t remember.  It was after all more than ten years ago.  The auburn-haired waiter stood by the bar waiting to be summoned.  Being four in the afternoon there was only one other table occupied besides Michael’s. He often felt watched, observed by this waiter, who seemed more reserved than his colleague, less giving of himself.  Michael often felt his eyes, like a pair of deft hands, travelling all up and down his body.  His hair was very short, almost a buzz-cut.  He had a ring in his eyebrow and wore a silver bracelet.  Not very tall, slender—built more like a dancer than an athlete.  And he moved like a dancer.

            He remembered the dream now.  His mother had given him a peacock blue coloured duvet quite a few years ago, which was single bed size.  Michael at the time had assumed that it was her subtle expression of contempt for his arrangements with Matthew.  No longer needing it he asked her to store it for him.  Last night, as he slept under it for the second night in a row, the blue duvet expanded to double bed size.  He wondered what this could possibly mean.