A Horse Named Sorrow (15 page)

I stood dumbfounded, and then I opened my fist and the note and read what it said:

Want to hang out after work?

I get off at 7:00.

You can meet me here if you want
.

I was the nurse and the janitor and the candy striper, bouncing around the room in just a jockstrap, hoping to cheer up poor Jimmy.

“I'm pullin', Jimmy, I'm pullin'!”

“You're a motherfucker.”

The words of love.

But Jimmy had the libido then of a Zoloft droid, so I had to come up with something other than a sexy outfit.

I read him Rumi poems and put on Tammy Faye makeup.

But Jimmy lost the very things that gave him the strength to stick by me and stick around in general. Jimmy lost his humor and Jimmy lost his patience.

No good attitude for Jimmy. Shitting his pants and sweating all night was not for Jimmy. Jimmy was only patient while he was moving and independent. And he was pastready to go. Jimmy wanted morphine, and lots of it. And he wanted me to go get it for him.

“I can't do that, Jimmy.”

“You have to,” he said fatly.

I don't know how to love you
...

I was close to blubbering tears. Killing him would be killing me.

“Otherwise you'll have to smother me with a pillow, Shame.”

I just looked at him.

“Go find someone who will help me, Shame.”

We both knew there were people at ACT UP who would help him.

“I'll help you, Jimmy.”

But I didn't mean it how he meant it. I was his protector, his friend, and I was also selfish, scared, hung over with Catholicism. I needed Jimmy and I couldn't open the door for him, couldn't say goodnight.

“How about a massage?”

“I need Dr. Jack.”

“I'm no Dr. Jack, Jimmy.”

He looked at me, frustrated.

Then Jimmy got mad. And good. Jimmy was weak and unable, but he got himself up anyway, glaring at me sitting at the table. He put on his slippers—those sad little kung fu shoes—and his green army overcoat over his long underwear, his hair pitch-black now. Jimmy's roots had come in like death, they had. Black as a priest's cassock, black as carbon.

No pity. I can't pity him, but I doubted he'd be able to manage the stairs and thought to stop him.

He looked over his shoulder as he opened the door. “You fucked up.” And he left the house.

I was nail-biting crazy. Annoying inane. I'm the caretaker; I'm in charge of Jimmy. I'm a heartless coward and a dumb, confused boy in way over my head. I can't kill Jimmy. I heard him slowly shuffing down those stairs. I knew I shouldn't have let him leave the house. Paralyzed until I wasn't.

I got up and ran after Jimmy, who'd made it all the way to the sidewalk. “Don't you touch me!” he snapped. I embraced him then, squeezed him. And he shivered as he fell into me. And his legs went out from under him, and he slid down me, pulling me. But I got him back up, noting the twins watching from the window, and then slowly I guided him back upstairs. Reassuring Jimmy all the while: “I'll go, I'll go.” And once back upstairs, I helped him off with his coat and those sad slippers, both of which seemed to have grown huge around his withering body, and I settled him back into bed.

And all the way down to Sycamore Alley near the BART Station, where we first came up from underneath, to find Tony, who'd bring the morphine. But I hesitated with my thumb hovering over the buzzer. And I walked away. Jimmy will fall asleep, I told myself; he won't get up again. But I walked in circles all the same, orbiting Guerrero Street and lurking under the big acacia tree near the corner liquor store, just to be sure, watching to make sure Jimmy didn't come out. I thought of going to find Tanya. She'd get all the arrangements in order. But, unlike Jimmy, she wouldn't hear me out and she wouldn't collapse in my arms. Tanya was a warrior and would do the deed. So I didn't expand my orbit to Shotwell Street; I didn't want to get it started. I wanted to keep Jimmy right there for as long as I could. I wanted him to forget about death.

Selfish. Scared. Catholic. I was no Dr. Jack. No sir.

Jimmy was right. It was gonna take everything I had, and Jimmy
was
everything I had.

He did go back to sleep that day, but the next day I came home from the Y and there was a whole crew of ACT UP people there, gathered around Jimmy. They'd been talking, obviously, but fell silent as I swung open the door.

They gave me the whole solemn, do-the-right-thing talk, and I looked at the ground before finally saying, “You guys need to go.” They who'd stood by me, and now I was kicking them out of my house.
Everything
. Them too, then.

They marched out.

But they'd left it sitting there on the table next to the bed. I looked at Jimmy and he looked at me. I noticed then how hollow his cheeks had become, how the bones next to his eyes, at his temples, suddenly looked as pronounced as his clavicles. I looked at his “good” tattoo and how big his eyes had become, dwarfing the third one.

“Take me back the way I came, Shame,” he said quietly.

“Why do you always say that, Jimmy?”

“Road's the place for lost souls … promise?” I worried again about dementia.

“Where'd the money come from, Jimmy? I'll trade you my promise for your answer.”

“Came from a book.”

“Vague, Jimmy.”

“Promise?”

“Sure thing.” I longed for his smile, but his face remained expressionless.

“You gonna help me, Shame?”

“No.” And I started to cry. He glared. He took a deep breath, watching me.

Jimmy had to inject his own morphine while I bit my nails near the window—behind me the corner liquor store, the tree, the buckled sidewalk, the fire escape—watching (unforgivable, inexcusable), wincing, his hand shaking, missing.

Again.

The blood. Bingo.

He looked at me, open as a fower. “Promise?”

I nodded vigorously.

Then I climbed into bed with him and made a pocket for him. Held him all those hours while he faded. Muttering and blubbering “sorry,” and “please don't go,” and “I love you, Jimmy”; “forgive me, Jimmy; I couldn't, I just couldn't. I'm so sorry for everything. I want you to stay. And I promise … I promise … I promise.” Nothing left to do but promise.

And then I just hummed to him through my tears—
The Blue Danube
I think it was—as black eyeliner ran down my cheeks.

I ate the carrots and treats and amazaki—and even the tempeh raw—my sad little seder feast for Jimmy, sitting against the parking lot wall with Jimmy-in-the-bag and my bike under the big mural of Gaia and her cornucopias and prancing cherubic black children, swinging around fir trees, the big Cascade mountains looming like fairyland behind them. Eating through my tears. I wasn't going to be able to come back here. No sirree. No morphine, and no boys who don't talk, with secret Indian names.

But my emotions were like a crowd: give 'em what they want. Barabbas or the J-man. I
was
twenty-two. I couldn't be some old Pilate, washing my hands of it all. I was young and horny, widowed or not. Shadowed in grief sure thing, but my dick jumped like a Jack Russell terrier all the same at the sight of a boy like Eugene. Jumped up and down, tear-proof, grief-proof. People have dogs for a reason—and guys especially. They are exactly like dicks.

Jimmy'd even told me he thought it was good if I had sex with other guys once he couldn't anymore. But I'd only shook my head. Other than the occasional backroom blowjob when I was in a mood, I had zero desire to be with anyone else. “You're twenty-two, Shame. You gotta live.”

Twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-two. I was still twenty-two. And still alive. And I still loved Jimmy. So …
if I thought about it like a three-way?

Only one thing I knew for sure: If I returned to that organic Jerusalem at 7:00 p.m., there would most certainly be a crucifixion, no two ways about it. Because, like I said before, the promise of sex with someone you're starting to like puts you smack dab in the center of time, history, and the universe itself. The birth of a new religion, and all the madness that ensues. Just like it had been with Jimmy. Jimmy of the platform and Eugene of the bins. Like saints.

More paintings to think about—but this time in the Byzantine style.

Lust rose in me like sap. The kids were singing and dancing all over the wall behind me.

Fate.

Okay then, Jimmy. I'll come back.
My shorts swelled a Greek chorus.

But first I had to find a place to stay.

I was in a city, so I wouldn't be able to find a campground or sleep in a park. Towns of a certain size are either dangerous or full of cops or both, and sleeping in parks is thus problematic. And Jimmy's hoops were never specific… perhaps there was a state park just east of town? I remember he had friends here; he'd likely stayed with them, but he didn't include names, addresses or phone numbers on the maps, so I was on my own.

I had an idea and hopped on my bike and headed toward the University of Oregon to find frat row. Jimmy's friend Sam had told me once that when in a university town, fraternities were a sure way to get free shelter. He'd been doing it for years, and it allowed him free lodging in almost any college town when he went to see concerts or whatever. Of course he was straight, but I figured I could pass when I really had to. According to Sam, all you had to do was say that you were a brother from the chapter at U of ABCDE, etc., and a year—say '91—and they'd say “cool” and let you sleep there. I figured in the modern world, considering, Jesus himself would have likely been born in a frat house.

I picked one with beat-up '60s-era architecture, too intimidated by the Colonial and Georgian-style behemoths, with their suggestions of Biffs and Muffys within. I wasn't a good liar and I didn't need to make it harder by lying to someone who would consider me a freak or a loser.

I pulled up and leaned my bike near the door of my chosen domicilic prey just as some guy holding a bunch of books stepped out—on his way to the library, I guessed.

“Hi,” I said, in my best, friendly, regular-guy manner.

“How's it going?” he answered, a little suspiciously.

“Well, I'm traveling cross-country on my bike and I'm a brother from U.C. Berkeley. I was wondering …”

But he finished my sentence. “Cool, dude, you can stay here if you want. Use the living room. There's a keg in the library.” Then he added, looking a little perplexed: “I didn't know we had a chapter at Berkeley.”

I didn't even know what fraternity it was, but I was quick to respond: “Uh, it got kicked off campus a couple of years back, right after I left. Real partiers, you know?” And we both smiled.

“Phi Delts are wild,” he guffawed (thanks for the info). “Well, let us know if you need anything, man. The guys here are real cool. Just tell them you know me. Name's Jeff.” We shook hands.

“Thanks, man. See ya!” And I dragged
Chief Joseph
into the frat house. An odd place for him. I stashed my gear in the corner of the enormous living room near a brick fireplace, behind one of the several threadbare couches. Then I got unpacked, took a shower, had a beer with the brothers, and told them lies about the guys at Berkeley and how they got kicked off campus for a drunken brawl (all while I washed my clothes with their free washer and dryer, stage left). You didn't have to be that creative to pull this particular con, I was finding out—but it helped—and I was grateful for that, since I had other things on my mind. If they'd only known what. But frat boys are easier to lie to than you'd think, and not half as bad as you'd assume either, so it was with a tinge of guilt—shooting fish in a barrel—that I told them my shameful lies in order to save thirty bucks.

I was back at the organic grocery at 7:00 sharp—sans Jimmy, the first time I hadn't carried him with me on this whole trip, and I was feeling kind of skittish. (I'd hidden him deep in the bowels of my sleeping bag back at the frat.)

I went and peered in the big front window, and there I saw his grin coming at me from down the aisle—that shy, crooked-mouthed smile on that handsome, unknown face. I had a feeling then he was gonna haunt me. And I remembered then what Jimmy had said:
Attraction is a message.

Sure thing, Jimmy.

And Eugene had his hands and his brows up with all his fingers splayed, saying: “Ten minutes, okay?” He made me smile, and I felt my heart crack slowly like a pomegranate, showing its seeds. I nodded and went to lock up my bike on a parking meter, after which I sat out front on a bench watching all the hip people, just like in San Francisco, sitting and eating whole-wheat burritos or hummus and tabouli or some such, or lugging their full-to-bursting cloth grocery brags down the sidewalk back toward home.

While my heart beat like a piston.

At least the rain was gone.

The rain had stopped when I woke up that morning back in Roseburg, post-Ralph, and the sun was breaking through, making the whole city of Roseburg into a big steam vent, with rising mist, the still-wet sidewalks and trees and cars all shimmering like glass. It made me want to whistle as I strutted down to Denny's two blocks away. Every crack in the sidewalk was lousy with moss, and even the signs and the billboards were all rusty and molded, thick weeds at the base of them, growing mad and wet at the stems. It was unnerving after living all my life in California (it's only the golden state because all the grass is dead), and I didn't know whether to be reassured or horrified by all this green fecundity. I was used to plants wilting and being sort of perennially desiccated, but it looked to me that morning that if you were a plant in Oregon, you couldn't die if you tried. There was even a rainbow, and it was so close, I followed it to see what really lay at the end of it.