y
own father choked to death from AIDS and there I sat a week later
in the reception room of a free clinic at GBMC waiting to be tested
for HIV.
Seventeen.
Passionately drunk and driving, bashing mailboxes in Roland Park,
and smoking dope out the bathroom window.
For a long time my father wouldn't tell me what he was dying from.
It wasn't until Richard was laid out in the hospital like a broiled
flounder that he dared to share his secret. I bet he got it from screwing
some hooker he picked up on Baltimore Street-not a block away from
the bank that he managed.
The first time I had sex I didn't use a rubber. I was too afraid
that she would have seen that I had more hair on my knuckles than
my nuts.
I'd been taking care of Richard for months: feeding him, helping
him to the bathroom, and sometimes washing him. It was impossible
to know if it was shame that kept him silent or the anticipation of
my plunge into isolation, denial, and sorrow. In a moment of weakness,
he cupped the back of my neck late one night and murmured into my
ear, "AIDS."
I'd phone school sick and spend the day leafing through magazines,
smoking Camels, and driving back and forth to the hospital in my father's
used crimson Accord.
Whenever my friends came to the apartment they kept asking me what
was wrong with my dad: Why does he never get out of bed? Why does
his room stink? Does he have cancer? Is he a fag? There was nothing
for me to tell them. I'd kick, fight, curse, and spit; whatever it
took to stop them.
Michael, the counselor at the free clinic, called me into his office
and sat me on a plush red leather chair. I wanted to nail him with
a quick upper-jab.
The first question out of my Michael's mouth calmed me. "What's up?"
Simple, and straightforward; I liked that-it wasn't expected, even
though his long wavy blond hair and Abe Lincoln beard made me wonder
if he was some kind of vegetable-eating-hippie motherfucker.
It was late August when Richard died. I'd quit my job at Video Americana
in early July, and spent my remaining days of summer taking care of
him. His face was as shriveled as a deflated volleyball, and his arms
were as thin as my wrists. He liked for me to read him articles from
Playboy.
As he grew closer to his destruction I started taking long walks
through Sandtown, a long forgotten black neighborhood given over to
heroin and Colt 45 in West Baltimore. I found myself relating to their
destitute and hopeless circumstances. The more sickly Richard became,
the more I searched their streets, stepping through doors never opened
by white fingers, thinking that I was one of them through my sheer
willingness to be there-with them-in their own sad, soulful world.
Michael, my counselor, asked me, "When was the last time you had
unprotected intercourse?"
When I answered, "Last night," he didn't flinch. I was dating-if
you could call it that-this girl Tisha. She had such a luscious ass,
and I wasn't the only one who thought that.
When I was forced to call an ambulance-no longer able to cope with
changing his sheets, wiping his ass, sticking Milk Dud sized pills
down his throat-to take Richard to the hospital, I knew it was over.
Richard still refused to let me call his brother who was unaware of
his situation. I was tired of carrying the burden by myself and I
forced Richard to let me call my uncle.
"I don't know man . . . she's never asked me to strap one on, so
I don't bother." I told Michael.
He replied. "Well, why don't you suggest using protection?"
I answered. "Would you?"
It was a fucking real-life nightmare.
I called Calvin and told him Richard was dying. He called me a liar.
I hung up. "He wasn't home," I said to Richard.
I asked myself again and again what my mother would have done if
she had found herself in my shoes, but that was unrealistic and flat
stupid. She died giving birth to me. I've never even heard her voice.
"Did you leave a message?" Richard asked.
"No." That was the end of that. My quivering voice revealed enough.
I wanted to pound a six-pack of National Bohemian and jump naked
into the harbor with the crabs. Instead, I walked streets where syphilis
and gonorrhea grew in the cracks of the sidewalks, where the eyes
I passed lingered for too long on my back, and windows were boarded
with cardboard boxes. Pressman Street, North Avenue, Greene Avenue-a
fist-full of disfigured redbrick row houses, bloated-belly children,
lonely mothers, and addicted men.
"Seriously," I said, "I've never used a condom. Not once."
Michael rubbed his eyes. "How come?"
I answered. "It's never come up."
I curled around my father's slackened body as he gurgled through
an entanglement of tubes. The skin around his eyes was as pink and
puckered as a rotten grapefruit. I wanted it to end. His mouth smelled
like a soggy shower rug.
"Believe me," I said, "I'm the first person to realize the risk I'm
taking, but goddamn it, old tricks are hard to break."
Michael chuckled. "Old tricks? You're only seventeen."
I roared.
Richard watched the rain smack against the window he shared with
the ashy elderly woman dying from lung cancer in the bed next to him.
They never spoke. The air conditioning worked if I complained enough
to the nurses, otherwise I sat drenched starring at Richard's fluttering
frame.
I couldn't sleep at night. Sometimes I'd wake in a midday sweat with
my head perched on the edge of Richard's stiff metal hospital bed,
but other than that, I remained numb with my eyes open and watering.
"So," Michael said, "If your results come back negative, are you
going to think about changing your actions? You know, start using
protection?"
I couldn't lie. "Probably not."
When I told Tisha what my father was dying from, she stopped talking
to me. I couldn't blame her. We weren't in love. But I do miss starring
down at her tasty thighs and mountainous breasts.
Since Richard died I've found myself flipping burgers, painting houses,
mowing lawns in Homewood, and selling fruit at Lexington Market. I
have descended into the underbelly of the city; my nails embedded
with grime and eagerness.
Richard died in the early afternoon. The old woman nesting in the
bed next to him snored loudly, farted incoherently... waiting. There
were no last words, only the unnerving flat line whistling of a boiling
kettle.
I left Mercy Hospital, and walked 5,894 steps back to Bolton Hill
to an empty apartment.
"So... if you never use condoms, and don't plan to... ?"
"My father died from AIDS last week. Why should I?"
I never returned for my results. My new girlfriend, Shari, isn't looking so
great, she's got the same damn spots on her tongue that Richard had. I hope
it's not because of me.
[END]
