Like a Love Story(99)

We leave the store and walk toward the security line. Art has his camera around his neck, and he points it at me and Reza. He snaps a photo.

“Really?” I ask, shaking my head lovingly.

“I want to remember this moment,” he says, smiling.

“You better come visit,” I say sadly.

“I’ll be here for my MoMA show next year,” he says jokingly.

I smile. Art dreams big, and he’s always let me dream big. “And I’ll be in San Francisco next year. They’re closing down the Golden Gate Bridge and turning it into a catwalk for my debut show.”

We both turn to Reza, wanting him to play the game, to make some grand proclamation of where he’ll be next year. “Stop looking at me,” he says. “I don’t even know what I want to do yet.”

“Just tell us what you dream about,” Art says. “In your wildest dreams, what would you be?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Happy?”

“Everyone wants that!” Art says. “It’s a cop-out of an answer. Say you want to be an astronaut, or you want to cure AIDS, or you want to be a movie star, or Madonna’s manager.”

“I think,” Reza says longingly, “I’d like to be a father someday. To have my own family. Does that count?”

Art looks genuinely surprised, like it’s the last answer he was expecting. “Yeah,” he says finally. “It counts.”

We stare at each other for a few moments, and then I say, “You really are gonna miss your flight, Art.”

“Okay,” he says. “Well, I guess this is adieu then.”

I smile. One of Stephen’s favorite songs is “Comment Te Dire Adieu,” and it’s like he’s here with us when Art uses that word.

“Okay,” I say.

“Good luck,” Reza says, and he gives Art a hug.

They clutch each other, their hands on each other’s necks, like they’re bottling this moment so they can drink it in when they’re apart.

When they let go, Art pulls me into a hug. I feel like I could stay here forever, in his arms, like we’re one being, sharing a heartbeat, finishing each other’s sentences. Who else knows who I had a crush on when I was ten, and how terribly my first attempt at shaving my legs went? Who else will understand when I want to quote old movies?

“Hey, don’t let anyone else call you Frances,” he says with deadpan seriousness. “You’ll always be my Frances.”

I don’t know what to say to him, so I say nothing. I just pull away from him and look deep into his eyes. They’re moist. Mine are too. I nod. I’ll always be his Frances. And he’ll always be my best friend.

He walks away from us backward, waving his hand, until he bumps into a lady, who doesn’t seem amused. Then he turns around, facing away from us, and disappears into the crowds going through the security lines, headed to different cities, other countries, fresh starts.

Reza and I stand there for a moment, frozen. Above us is the list of all the destinations planes are headed to. Some flights are boarding, some delayed. The departure times changing on the screen mesmerize us, and Reza says, “If you could pick one city from that list and go right now, which would it be?”

“Do I get to take anyone I want?” I say. “Because it’s not really the city that matters; it’s the people I’m with.”

He nods. I don’t answer the question, and neither does he.

“It’s Sunday,” I say.

“Movie night?” Reza asks, as if he can read my thoughts.

“Movie night,” I repeat. “Annabel might come over, but she loves old movies. Is that cool?”

“Of course,” he says. “She seems nice. And three is a nice number, as it turns out.”

We head out of the airport, toward the chaos of the taxi line. The air outside is thick with cigarette smoke and the scent of perfume. We get in the back of the taxi line, behind a woman traveling alone with three children. She holds a baby, and her two toddlers pull at her. She speaks a language I don’t know, making everything she says to her children sound musical. The taxi line inches forward, and we all inch with it. One of the woman’s children stares at me, and I stare back, playing peekaboo with her. I wonder who all these new arrivals to the city are. Where did they come from, and where are they going?

The woman turns around, and that’s when I notice her baby is holding a piece of paper, chewing on its edges. No, it’s a notecard. Stephen’s notecard. Love.

I asked a question, and Stephen answered. We all come from love. And that’s where we’re going too. Where we are now, that’s the complicated part.





June 2016


“It’s always wrong to hate, but it’s never wrong to love.”

—Lady Gaga





Art


Some traditions must end, but sometimes, in their place, a new tradition is born. Sunday movie nights couldn’t last forever. Not without Stephen, not after I left Reza, Judy, and New York for San Francisco. But we started something new after I left. Every June, on the anniversary of Stephen’s death, me, Judy, and Reza meet in New York City. Sometimes Jimmy joins us too, having survived just long enough for protease inhibitors to extend his life, though not without severe side effects. I was luckier, the drugs more sophisticated by the time I tested positive. But Jimmy fights on, lives on, and writes on—five novels and counting—in Paris, where he has chosen to live among the spirits of James Baldwin and Josephine Baker, two of his favorite ghosts. He told me once that if someone had predicted back then that he’d live longer than Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, he’d have told them they were crazier than the whole Psychic Friends Network put together. And yet there he was, in June of 2016, on the twenty-sixth anniversary of Stephen’s death, dancing the night away with us at, where else, an eighties night in the East Village. “Into the Groove” was playing and the sound of Madonna’s beckoning call made us feel young again. Judy’s children were sleeping soundly, her husband watching them for the night. Reza’s kids were with his husband in Connecticut, where Reza teaches classes about the sociology of pop culture. We were all dressed in outrageous and glamorous clothes designed by Judy, she being the preferred designer of rock stars, drag queens, and plus-size girls. It was Jimmy who got an alert on his phone first. A gunman had opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a place named to remember the owner’s brother who died of AIDS, in honor of his pulse to keep living, keep fighting. By morning, we would know more details. Forty-nine killed. Fifty-three wounded. We were all supposed to go home, but we couldn’t. We needed to be held by people who understood that every queer life taken is tragedy on top of tragedy, a loss of family, and so much trauma relived. We needed to be with people who knew our history. Stephen’s notecards will belong to my child one day, and now I’m adding some more. So much has happened since Stephen left us. Prop 8 and RuPaul and DOMA and Ellen and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and Tori Amos and Chechnya and Laverne Cox and Will & Grace and PrEP and Gaga and Queen Bey and Pulse.