Like a Love Story(80)

She is not ashamed, and therein lies her massive power. Because shame is their weapon. People who feel shame remain hidden, and that’s exactly how they want us. And then along comes Madonna. She was quickly written off as a flash in the pan, a one-hit wonder, but not by the people who recognized immediately that she was not just a singer, not just a dancer, not just a performer. She was, and is, a revolution. Just look at the way she responded when Playboy and Penthouse ran nude photos that were taken of her when she was young and broke. She said three words: “I’M NOT ASHAMED.” Those words are why her presence in the world gives me hope for the future, that more queer kids will come out sooner, that more women will feel the freedom to own their sexualities, that maybe someday shame will be something kids don’t feel anymore. Before I became sick, I was out with José one night, on a dance floor. Madonna came out and sang one song, “Holiday.” No one had heard of her yet, but within seconds, we were communing with each other, with her, and with a new way of thinking. “You can turn this world around,” she sang, and she meant it. To turn the world around is to create a revolution, isn’t it? She is a revolution in every sense, a radical change and a celestial body in orbit. She’s turning this world around and showing us how to follow in her footsteps. I don’t know if shame has a true opposite—perhaps pride, but that doesn’t feel quite right. So, as far as I’m concerned, the opposite of shame is Madonna. Long may she reign.





Reza


We all plan to arrive in Maryland separately. Stephen and Jimmy got there earlier than us, to prepare for the protest. Judy’s mom rented a car and is going to drive the two of them. And Art and I are on the train. I love trains. I think they’re my favorite means of transportation. The rhythmic rumbling of wheels on tracks, the windows that give you rapidly changing views of foliage and industrial buildings and car lots. And the mystery of them. Like we are in an Agatha Christie novel. I try to explain this to Art, and his face lights up. “Let’s play Count the Fags,” he says. “Decode the mystery of these passengers.”

“I hate that word,” I say, frowning.

“Get over it,” he says. “I’ve reclaimed it, and so should you. We’ll start at the top of the train, and we’ll get to the bottom. Which Stephen once told me is pretty much his journey.”

“What is?” I ask.

“He started as a top and ended a bottom.”

“Oh,” I say. I do know what a top and a bottom are. There was a notecard about that. But I don’t know which one I am. I cannot let my mind even think about all that. I think that being a top would be like invading someone, and being a bottom would be like getting invaded. And both sound scary and unsettling. When countries are invaded, it’s usually not good for either side in the end.

We make our way to the front car. Art is giddy with excitement, and it makes him even more beautiful than usual. “Look at me,” he says. “I’m away from my parents, on my way to a protest, with the man I love.”

Now that we’ve both said we love each other, we can’t stop saying it. We declare it often. Proudly.

“Am I a man?” I ask, amused.

“You will be when I’m through with you,” he says with a smirk.

Through with me? Will he be through with me? I don’t want that to ever happen. I want to be with him forever, preferably in a relationship that involves lots of kissing and cuddling, and no exchange of bodily fluids other than saliva, which I have come to see as the only bodily fluid that is my friend. And sweat. I like his sweat. I can see some now, just under his armpits. I love the smell of him. I breathe him in whenever he’s near me. He’s wearing a tank top, ripped black jeans, and leather motorcycle boots. He has changed his hair again—this time the sides are buzzed but the top is long, and a wave of dyed aqua hair falls over the left half of his face, like an ocean wave. He’s my queer Veronica Lake. I didn’t come up with that, he did.

Art begins the game by slowly walking down the aisle of the first car. Upon seeing a man sitting next to his wife and two children, he whispers to me, “Fag number one.”

“He’s married,” I whisper.

“So were Rock Hudson and Cary Grant,” Art says. “That guy was cruising us hard.”

We pass a group of men who Art says are probably going to the protest. One reads The Advocate magazine. John Waters is on the cover, gazing out at the reader as if he wants to tell them a secret. Another wears a SILENCE = DEATH T-shirt with a pink triangle on it. Art gives them a nod and keeps moving. As we make our way from one car to the next, he points out one man after another: a young college dude on the train with his buddies, a businessman using his briefcase as a pillow, an old man reading a tattered copy of Walt Whitman. He seems to know by instinct who is gay and who is not, and each time I question him, he tells me that his gaydar is impeccable.

“Gaydar?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s how I knew about you.”

What can I say to that? He did know about me, even when I did not want him to. When we get to the end of the last car, we make our way back to our seats.

“I counted sixteen fags,” he says. “Which puts this train right in line with the world at large, if it’s actually true that ten percent of the world of gay.”