Like a Love Story(84)

Madonna is a safe topic of discussion, and so we talk about our favorite looks, hairdos, videos. Everyone seems engaged in the conversation except Mrs. Bowman, who confesses that despite liking that she’s a strong woman, she doesn’t “get Madonna.”

And then the lights dim, and in an instant, the crowd goes wild, no one more than me. We scream in unison, like a tsunami of sound that we are sending over to the stage, which practically vibrates with energy like a mating call. We are calling our goddess to us. Lights flash. An electronic beat begins. An industrial stage is revealed. Male dancers with sculpted bodies appear onstage, chains around them. And then, SHE is in front of us. Singing “Express Yourself.” No, she’s in front of me, because there’s no one else in this room but me and Madonna. I cannot take my eyes off her for the first half of the song. But midway through, Judy bumps into me. She dances, feels the energy. And we look at each other, both singing along. A moment passes between us. Maybe she, like me, remembers wearing that “Express Yourself” lingerie, and how horribly that turned out for us. By the time the next song, “Open Your Heart,” begins, I can feel something in Judy thawing, like the song is literally opening her heart. Judy smiles at me, a smile of forgiveness and empathy, a smile full of history. Here in this stadium, we are dancing, we are singing, we are forgiven, we are glowing, we are understood.

I glance at Mrs. Bowman a few times during the show. She watches with fascination, but with no sense of connection. When Madonna masturbates during “Like a Virgin,” she covers her eyes with her hands and yells, “Oh, no. This is too much.”

“It certainly is too much,” Jimmy says with glee. “And that’s why I love it.”

But the show takes a turn when Madonna sings “Like a Prayer.” She begins the song by simply looking up at the heavens and calling out, “God?” She speaks God as a question, like she’s wondering where he has gone, how he’s letting this world burn. The show goes from something fun to something challenging. After “Like a Prayer,” she sings “Live to Tell,” and at that point, the audience is in a hush. I hear a sob, and I turn to see it’s Mrs. Bowman, tears flowing down her usually composed face.

One by one, we all turn to Mrs. Bowman, shocked to see her crying. Judy holds out her hand, and her mother takes it. Squeezes it hard.

Judy cries too now, and soon I do too, and Art.

“Oh, God,” Mrs. Bowman says, still clutching Judy’s hand. She rests her head on Jimmy’s shoulder, her tears moistening the velvet of his jacket. He comforts her. It’s hard to hear her words over the music, but I think she says, “He won’t live, will he? He won’t live to tell anything.”

“Shh, baby, it’s okay,” Jimmy says. “Cry it out.”

And she does. I do too. Because I am so filled with emotion. So much love. For Madonna, for the dreams she allows me to dream through her magnificence. For Art, whose hand I’m clutching so tight, who I cannot get enough of. For Judy, my first friend. For Jimmy, who I once feared touching. For Mrs. Bowman, who is so kind. And yet, there is still fear. Fear that Stephen and Jimmy will be gone soon. Fear that all these beautiful dancers onstage with Madonna will be gone soon. Fear that this celebratory holiday we are experiencing will end. Fear that just as my life is beginning, it will come to a violent stop.

Will it grow cold, the secret that I hide?

I feel it all in the two hours that Madonna graces us with her presence. Joy and pride and love and fear and anger and passion. And one emotion I never thought I would feel: faith. Yes, faith. Because if the world could bring together this woman with these songs and these dancers in this place with me in it, then creation must be more powerful than destruction.

The last song she sings is her ode to family, “Keep It Together.” Before the song ends, she hugs every member of her crew, starting with the grips and electricians. Her dancers keep dancing, and that’s when it hits me that almost every one of her flamboyant, gorgeous dancers is a black man or a brown man. One of them even looks distinctly Middle Eastern. And they all seem gay.

Madonna dances until she is the only person left onstage, the audience’s clapping the only instrument she has left to accompany her. And to the sound of our beat, she repeats a mantra over and over, like her life depends on it. Like our lives depend on it.

Keep it together. Keep people together. Forever and ever.

We sing along. We cry tears, but now they are filled with joy. And we hold hands. By we, I mean Art, Judy, and me.

We are together again, just like Stephen planned. Whatever was unresolved between us seems to have been healed by this music, by this movement of our bodies and by the union of our voices. We find each other’s gazes, and we sing along together. Singing these words is what we needed, more useful and powerful than all the apologies and accusations. We have been reminded that our unity is important.





Art


I knock on Judy’s hotel room door an hour before we are set to go to the NIH. Mrs. Bowman opens the door. In the background, I can see Judy painting a sign that reads DEAD FROM HOMO.

“Good morning, Art,” Mrs. Bowman says.

“Hey,” I say. Judy looks up at me with a sad smile and a small wave. “I was thinking maybe Judy would want to grab breakfast before we go.”

“Can you finish the sign, Mom?” Judy asks.