Nineteen
SOMETIMES I WOULD GO TO the Charcoaler all by myself. Just to grab a bite to eat. I don’t know why. Part of it was the nostalgia of having worked there. And I still picked up a shift when they needed me. But nostalgia was only a part of it. I had this deep need to be alone sometimes. And I didn’t always have time to drive out into the desert. So I just came to the Charcoaler and got a burger, some onion rings, and a Dr Pepper. I just sat in my truck and ate and listened to the radio.
That Sunday afternoon when I drove up to the drive-in window to get my order, I noticed Gina Navarro’s blue Volkswagen parked in the lot. So I pulled up next to her and said, “Hey, you!”
And she said, “Ari! What are you doing here?”
“Same thing you’re doing. Came to eat a burger.”
“By yourself?”
“Oh yeah, well, I don’t exactly see a carful of people in your Bug.”
Gina laughed. “It’s actually one of my favorite things to do. Come here and be by myself and listen to music. I don’t always want to be around other people. Sometimes I just want to be. Just to be. You know?”
“Yeah, I do know.”
We were both smiling.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said.
“I won’t tell anyone either.”
We stopped talking. I let her be. And she let me be.
I was lost in my own thoughts and the taste of my onion rings when I heard the beep of Gina’s Volkswagen. She waved at me as she drove away. I waved back.
And we were both smiling.
That’s the thing about friends. Each one of them is different. And each friend knows something about you that your other friends don’t know. I guess a part of being friends is that you share a secret with each one of them. The secret doesn’t have to be a big secret. It could just be a little one. But sharing that secret is one of things that makes you friends. I thought that was pretty amazing.
I was learning a lot of things about living in the country of friendship. I liked living in that country. I liked it very much.
Between the Living and the Dying Is the Loving
No one asks to be born. And no one wants to die. We don’t bring ourselves into the world, and when it’s time for us to leave, the decision will not be ours to make. But what we do with the time in between the day we are born and the day we die, that is what constitutes a human life. You will have to make choices—and those choices will map out the shape and course of your life. We are all cartographers—all of us. We all want to write our names on the map of the world.
One
DANTE AND I WERE REDISCOVERING the word “friend.” You learn a word and you know it and it’s yours—and then you learn the word again and get to know it again, but in a different way. “Friend” was a word that contained an entire universe, and Dante and I were just beginning to explore that universe.
“Friend. We throw that word around too casually,” Dante said.
“I don’t. That’s why I don’t have any.”
“That’s not true. You have as many as you can handle. And I wasn’t talking about you. I’m talking about most people.”
“Well, most people don’t respect words as much as you do. Just like most people don’t respect the water that they swim in like you respect it. It’s something deep inside you.”
“Words are deep inside you, too, Ari.”
“Not deep enough. Not by a long shot. It’s like when you read a poem to me. You read it like you wrote it.”
“Maybe I’m just a frustrated actor.”
“You’re not acting. You’re being yourself.”
“Yeah, well, I can be a drama queen.”
That made me laugh. “You’re very sincere about that, too.”
“I’m not perfect, Ari. You always tell me you struggle with your demons. I have my own demons. I know that love is difficult for you—and yet you love me. But love is difficult for me, too—it’s just that our difficulties are different.”
“But I think we’re doing great.”
“Yeah, we are, Ari. But it’s more work than I thought it would be.”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I’m thinking of a camping trip—and nothing about that trip seemed like work to me.”
Dante smiled. “Let’s go back there.” His eyes were crazy, alive at that moment. And then he said, “When are you going to make love to me again?”
“We’ll find a way.”
* * *
Dante and I were students. That’s something we had in common. We wanted to learn. We were both learning words and their meanings, and we were learning that the word “friendship” wasn’t completely separate from the word “love.”
I wondered where Dante and I would wind up. I think he wondered too. Would we wind up as friends? Would we wind up as lovers? Or would the differences between us turn us into enemies? I wanted us to be lovers because I liked that word. It was a word that appeared in some books I’d read. But seventeen-year-olds didn’t have lovers—because we weren’t adults, and only adults had lovers. Seventeen-year-olds only had sex that they weren’t supposed to be having—but it didn’t have anything to do with love, because that’s what we were told—because we didn’t know anything about love. But I didn’t believe that.
Nobody was going to tell me that I didn’t love Dante. Not anybody.
I never knew I could feel all the things I felt for Dante. I didn’t know I had it in me. But what in the hell was I supposed to do with that knowledge? If Dante were a girl and I were not gay, I would be imagining a future for us. But there was no imagining a future. Because the world we lived in censored our imaginations and limited what was possible and what wasn’t possible. There was no future for Ari and Dante.
To imagine a future for Ari and Dante was a fantasy.
I didn’t want to live my life in a fantasy.
The world I wanted to live in didn’t exist. And I was struggling to love the world I did live in. I wondered if I was strong enough or good enough to love a world that hated me.
* * *
Maybe I just worried too much. What Dante and I had was now. Dante said our love was forever. But what if it wasn’t forever? And what was forever? No one had forever. My mom says we live our lives one day at a time, one moment at a time. Now is the only thing that’s real. Tomorrow is just an idea. My mom’s voice forever in my head.
Two
Dear Dante,
In my dream, we were walking along a riverbank. We were holding hands as we walked and there were dark clouds in the sky and you said, “I’m afraid.” And I didn’t answer because I couldn’t talk. And then I saw my brother on the other side of the riverbank. And he was yelling something at us.
And for some reason I could see his face as if I were standing close to him. And he spit into my face and then I was standing next to you again and I was afraid because you were afraid and when I turned to look at you, you were gaunt and I knew you were dying and I also knew you were dying from AIDS. And I heard what my brother was yelling: “Faggots! Faggots!” And there were thousands of marchers moving toward us and then you were gone. And as the marchers moved past me, I could see that they were holding your dead body up and carrying it with them to wherever they were going. And I was yelling, “Dante! Dante!”