Like a Love Story(42)
When I enter Uncle Stephen’s apartment, he’s lying on the couch with Art next to him, a box of half-eaten pizza in front of them. Mommie Dearest is playing on the television. It’s almost over. They’re watching the scene where Joan replaces her daughter Christina in a soap opera, literally playing a part meant for a woman half her age. They’re reciting each line at the screen, so loud that you can’t hear the actors, and it sounds like the movie is dubbed.
“How was the date?” Uncle Stephen asks.
“Great,” I say, a little too quickly.
“More detail please,” Uncle Stephen says.
I sit in between them on the couch. “Let’s just watch the movie.”
Art pulls me in so that my head is on his chest. This is so simple, so easy. To rest my head on the chest of a boy I love as a friend, without having to worry about whether and how he loves me back, knowing we’ll be each other’s everything forever because friendship is so much easier than romance. Art’s heart is beating rapidly. On the end table next to the couch is a new picture frame. Inside is a photo of Uncle Stephen, Art, and me from this past Halloween, when we joined the ACT UP protest of Trump Tower, which Uncle Stephen explained to us is a symbol of all the real estate subsidies given to luxury buildings while ten thousand people with AIDS in the city are homeless. The protest was incredible. There was a man dressed as Dorothy holding a sign that read “Surrender, Donald.” There was a man dressed as Freddy Krueger holding a sign that read, “Nightmare on Trump Street.” And us. Uncle Stephen was dressed as Joan Crawford, and Art and I were Christina and Christopher. Art was Christina and I was Christopher. We were a nuclear family. We made sense. We still make sense. I start reciting the lines along with them. And I think how much less complicated things felt before we met Reza, back when we knew the roles we were playing and the script we were reciting.
#115 Taylor, Elizabeth
First she was a doe-eyed child star. Then the most beautiful woman in the world. By twenty-six she was a grieving widow, by twenty-seven a brazen homewrecker, by twenty-eight a near-death survivor, and soon an Oscar winner, and the world’s highest paid actress. She was married seven times (but not to seven men—you do the math), and she became the best friend to none other than Michael Jackson (who seemed unable to befriend anyone who wasn’t a child or a chimp). But her most important role is as a fighter. She fights for us. She throws fundraisers, starts foundations, testifies before the Senate. She even stands up to America’s highest-ranking bully and mean girl. The. Fucking. Reagans. Ronald Reagan . . . hadn’t he already inflicted enough pain upon the world through his abominable acting work? He was even out-acted by a chimpanzee in his most famous role. Now that takes effort. But he one-upped himself by watching as we died, silently enjoying the genocide like it was dinner theater for him and his equally talentless wife (try sitting through one of her movies). It was Elizabeth Taylor who lobbied her old Hollywood pals until he said the word publicly for the first time in 1987. Take that in for a moment. We had been dying in droves for six years, and our president had yet to say the word AIDS. I hope people remember that. And I hope people remember that without her, there would be less glamour in the world, but also less goodness, and less courage.
Reza
Being in JFK airport feels like you’re in every city in the world at the same time. Every language is spoken here, and every kind of person is represented. Families, couples, students, all coming and going. I stare up at the list of arriving flights and imagine myself flying to all these cities, disappearing into Paris for a week, or Rome, or Hong Kong. What would my life be like in Buenos Aires? Who would I be there? My mom sometimes watches that television show that takes place in a bar, and sings along to the theme song, which is about how nice it would be to go to a place where everybody knows your name. But what I’m thinking as I look at these cities is how I would love to go to a place where nobody knows my name, where nobody expects anything of me. Who would I be in Lisbon? Or San Francisco? I would have no mother there, no stepfather, no one to disappoint. I could even die without hurting anybody but myself.
“Where is she?” my mother says, exasperated. Her exasperation belongs to my sister, and her expectations belong to me.
“I don’t know,” I say, searching the crowd of arriving passengers for her. An old woman in a wheelchair being pushed by a flight attendant emerges to the arms of a family holding a banner that reads “Welcome to America, Grandma!” A beautiful woman coolly approaches an older man and gives him a peck on the cheek before throwing her carry-on bag into his arms. A men’s soccer team wearing matching maroon jerseys and shorts comes through the arrival door, talking over each other loudly in Spanish. I don’t know what they are saying, but I don’t care when they have legs like these. If I go to a place where nobody knows my name, I want it to be the place these men are from.
“Zabber!” She screams her nickname for me. “There you are.”
I turn my attention away from those soccer players’ bodies and see my sister. She doesn’t come through the arrivals door. She stands by the entrance near the street. She wears ripped acid-wash jeans with a pink heart sewn into them, a body-hugging black sweater, and a bomber jacket. Her lipstick is ruby red, her nails are hot pink, and her hair is crimped and piled atop her head in a messy bun. She holds a small suitcase.