My Name Is Venus Black(37)

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BACK AT THE St. James, I lie on my bed for a while with a wet washcloth over my face. I had no idea it would be so hard to find a reasonably priced room near the Big Dipper. And I’m not about to quit that job and have to look for another.

Times like this, I almost miss Echo Glen. Not the place itself, but the way everything was already figured out for you. You might not like the plan for the day, but at least you didn’t have to make one up and then make everything happen all by yourself. Your meals, housing, and even a few pseudo friends came as part of the deal.



After a while, I throw the washcloth on the floor and grab the journal from Diane off the nightstand. When I open it, I realize I forgot to read the card tucked in the pages. It says:

Dear Venus,

I came across this little story, which has been adapted from Loren Eiseley’s Star Thrower. I thought of how you are being “tossed” back into the outside world for a second chance at life. I believe you will experience the “welcoming sea.” I hope all of us here at Echo have been star throwers for you.

Rooting for you,

Diane Tamworth

Once, on ancient Earth, there was a human boy walking along a beach. There had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands. The boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But every time he threw a starfish, another would wash ashore.

An old Earth man happened along and saw what the child was doing. He called out, “Boy, what are you doing?”

“Saving the starfish!” replied the boy.

“But your attempts are useless, child! Every time you save one, another one returns, often the same one! You can’t save them all, so why bother trying? Why does it matter, anyway?” called the old man.

The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand; he answered, “Well, it matters to this one.” And then he flung the starfish into the welcoming sea.

The story affects me in the weirdest way. I think I relate so much to the poor starfish, flung onto a hostile landscape it can’t possibly survive. I wonder about its underside, that tender, pink, and fleshy part that had always found safety in darkness—now suddenly exposed to air and light. I feel the terror and shock of that.



I continue to think about the starfish while I use the bathroom down the hall. I don’t have a mirror in my room, so I use the chipped one on the medicine cabinet. By now the red puffiness of my newly plucked eyebrows has healed and smoothed—just in time for tiny caterpillar follicles to start to grow back. Shit.

I wash my hands, and then for some reason I catch my own eye in the mirror. Not the usual way, to check my appearance—but I look into my face to wonder who this woman really is and why she’s on the planet. I think again of the starfish, only this time I wonder why the boy assumed it wanted to be saved. What if it had been crawling across the dark ocean floor forever and it was weary and tired? Maybe it only wanted to rest for a while on the warm sand before it died.





It takes me a while to settle into the Porter household and figure out how things work. From what I can gather, Mike and his boyfriend, Jackson, have recently broken up, freeing up the third bedroom—the one filled with Jackson’s extra junk—for a tenant.

Mike himself is a contradiction in terms, a hefty, muscle-bound guy who makes me think of Rocky—but he works as a photographer at Olan Mills. He’s the most cheerful person I’ve ever met, perhaps because he has to make people smile all day long—which would have the opposite effect on me.

When Mike isn’t at work, he spends a lot of time pumping weights out in the small garage, in front of a full-length mirror. At first this seemed vain to me, but now I go out there a lot myself to check my clothes.

I don’t know if it has anything to do with being gay, but Mike likes to cook. Nothing super fancy—but nothing like the food at Echo Glen or Inez’s cooking, either. He even grocery shops twice a week. It’s almost enough to make up for the lumpy single bed, the bratty niece, the housework, and the way Mike snores through the wall next to me.

One afternoon in late October, I’m tidying the living room when I find a worn copy of People magazine in a large pocket on Mike’s recliner. It’s from August, and the cover story is about Rock Hudson, who recently died from AIDS. The article talks about how people in Hollywood are so scared of the disease, they’re afraid to use public bathrooms and swimming pools. They’ve quit inviting gay men to parties and have started to blow air kisses instead of actually kissing their friends on the cheek or mouth.



This last part gives me pause. First, I can’t imagine having a friend of my own close enough to air kiss, much less kiss kiss. Second, it reminds me of how Raymond used to make mean jokes about gay people, calling them “homos” and “fruiters.” At the time, I thought “fruiters” was funny. Now it doesn’t seem funny at all.

Especially given what Mike told me about Piper. How she has so few friends because all the parents in the neighborhood know that Mike is gay. So far, Mike has never said whether he has AIDS. But since he doesn’t seem sick, I’m not about to ask.

This is another thing I like about Mike. He doesn’t ask me personal questions. He rarely refers to my past or expresses curiosity about my life. Even though he makes no bones about being gay, I wonder if he can sense it when others want to keep part of their lives secret.