Like a Love Story(67)
So I just think about it, and then I make him stop when he wants to put his mouth where I know it should not go, and his fingers where I want them to go.
“Clinical trials are like motherfuckin’ golf clubs,” Jimmy says. “Only rich white men allowed.”
We’re at an ACT UP meeting. The community center is packed with people. Men in tight leather pants. Women in blazers. Men with suspenders and no shirts. Drag queens. Men who look like they will die soon. People who seem to come from a different planet than the one I have known all my life.
“Apologies to the rich white men in the room,” Jimmy continues. “But y’all know it’s true, and it’s got to change.”
“No apology needed,” Stephen says.
Hearing Stephen use the word apology is hard. We had to apologize to him multiple times before he forgave us for what we did to Judy. But eventually he confessed that he saw our side of it, and he said his life was too short to punish himself by not seeing Art.
“Girl,” Jimmy says, “I wasn’t talking to you. You may be white, but you’re not rich. You burned through whatever you had in gay Paree.”
This is what we do on Monday nights. Art refuses to miss a meeting. He considers this romantic. I would rather be kissing under a Christmas tree.
“Focus,” a woman with a shaved head says. “This protest must feel focused. The government wants nothing more than for us to be off-message. But we will be clear. The NIH must include women and people of color in medical trials. How the hell are they supposed to heal our bodies when our bodies are not a part of their research?”
It’s so hot in this room that our palms are sweating profusely. We clutch each other’s hands here, in this room surrounded by other people like us. In the outside world, the straight world, I sometimes pull away from him when he touches me. At school, I fear the bullies. On the streets, I am terrified of being beat up. I wish for Art’s courage as his sweat merges with mine. I look down at our hands, his fingernails painted in different colors of the rainbow, glittery and bright. Optimistic.
The facilitators of the meeting—Jimmy, the woman with the shaved head, two other men and one other woman—lead a discussion about the group’s next action. They will storm the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. They will demand changes to medical trials. They will shine a light on the lack of inclusion, on the inherent corruption of AIDS research. I can feel Art’s body fill with excitement as the protest is discussed. He loves this, and I love watching him love something. He’s a force.
“Maryland isn’t New York,” Jimmy says. “There aren’t as many angry queens and fierce feminists there. We need to encourage people to get on the bus and haul their asses down there. This action is vital.”
I close my eyes and wish for just one hour without the fear of AIDS. I think about what I would do with this one hour, how I would get enough of Art to last the rest of my life. How I would fill myself with his fearlessness and passion.
My eyes open at a piercing, awful sound. I see whistles being distributed to everyone by the facilitators.
“Attacks against gay men are increasing,” Jimmy says. “And we need to protect each other.”
The whistles are meant to be worn around our necks, to be used in case of emergency. Is it not bad enough that our bodies are being attacked from the inside? Do they need to be attacked from the outside too?
Art places a whistle around my neck and whispers in my ear. “Do you, Reza, accept this whistle?”
“I do,” I say, giggling.
He looks at me with expectation. I place a whistle around his neck and whisper, “Do you, Art, accept this whistle?”
“I do,” he says. “I do and I do and I do and I do.”
“You do?” I ask.
He laughs. Then, his face suddenly serious, he says, “And don’t worry, if anyone tries to hurt you, I’ll kick their ass so hard, they’ll think they were hit by a tornado.”
“Like the storm that takes Dorothy to Oz?” I ask.
“Exactly like that,” he says.
Art is my tornado. He came into my life like a cyclone, and ever since, I have been in my own version of Oz. My life was once sepia toned, one color, bland. Now it is a rainbow world of excitement and anticipation.
He stares at me for a long time, and then, when it seems we can’t look at each other any longer, he leans in and licks my lips and smiles.
When the meeting ends, people don’t leave. They cluster. They talk. They make plans. They trade numbers. They go to the fund-raising table to buy mugs and pins and T-shirts. Art wants to buy me something. He chooses a black T-shirt with a Keith Haring image on it, the words IGNORANCE = FEAR above the image and the words SILENCE = DEATH under it.
“Try it on,” he says.
“Here?” I ask.
“No one cares. And I want to see you without a shirt on.”
I take my T-shirt off and throw the Keith Haring shirt on. Art points his camera at me.
We saw Keith Haring at a meeting in January. Art worshipped him. After the meeting, Art told Keith how much he had inspired him, and Keith smiled shyly and thanked Art. A month later, he was dead.
Art snaps a photo of me in the Keith Haring T-shirt, and then he pays for two of them. One for himself, and one for me. “Why Keith Haring?” he asks, shaking his head. “Why isn’t this disease killing assholes instead of artists? God doesn’t deserve him.”