Belize's hands on my shoulders, like gentle supports, strong enough to carry me, but never willing to hurt me. Belize's eyes on my face, searching for a glimpse of the sanity I think I might have lost.
"Je t'aime."
Really, the French is not enough for a very sick and miserable man to convey the waves of gratitude that fill and suffuse me.
Millenium. I am the prophet, the Alpha and the Omega, the mouth of the Angels. I am the one who speaks to the Angels. Damn hallucinations. Damn visitations. I am the word and the annihilation in disguise. The body they will not see. The heart that doesn't want to beat.
I want my boyfriend, but I want him to see him suffer. God, I'm so fucking sick. I'm hungry and I can't eat, I'm restless and I can't walk, and I haven't looked at myself in a mirror in weeks - or is that months. Plagued and abandoned. What a prophet I am. And look what happens when I'm left to my own thoughts.
"Don't leave, chérie," I sound needy, fucking needy, and I know Belize will humor me if she can. Belize always humors me.
"I gotta be at the desk in forty-five minutes, ma chérie bichette." Belize sounds tired, his voice is strained like so many elastics about to break.
This life is shit... Why do I always want more? Why am I still clinging to it desperately, like a child sucking at his mother's tit?
More life. I feel an unbearable need to quench a thirst I can't even name.
"Je t'aime," I don't even know if Belize heard me. He kissed me on the lips, fleetingly, and ran off - it's not carelessness, it's friendship. He can't always be there, and there's only him now.
I'm just a lonely, sick man. Why do I even bother?
*** *** ***
Rewind to another time. Another life. The place where I used to wander when I was lonely. It was just college, then. Just another dorm and another bed where the heterosexual human male wanders in fear of the fag. Of me. Of all of those who have to stay hidden and cower in fear.
Then there was the Village and the Stonewall. History waiting to be hot off the press, marching on ineluctably. The little pub where I could finally look at them - they were beautiful, all of them - and not hide the desire in my eyes. The place where I didn't need to pretend.
And there, there was Belize. Belize who was still Norman, then, but already a brilliant queen. Belize who didn't care what people thought, who didn't live in fear. Belize who wore earrings, glitter and lip gloss gloriously. My friend and my lover, sometimes, when the going got rough.
The first time, I was just sitting, brooding, drinking alone and wondering what the hell I was doing there. I'd never been out before. If most queens start off in a dark place, I certainly wasn't any exception. Then there was Belize, sitting in front of me in all his shiny glory, and giving me a knowing smile.
"Come here often, baby?" He looked so at ease, so comfortable. He slipped a hand across the distance and touched my shoulder. "Oooh, she's nervous, isn't she, the little pretty one? Here," he waved the waiter over, "what are we having, tonight?" I must have flinched, but he went on, "don't worry baby, I don't bite. Call me Belize. Here," I think I'd lost all ability to make out any words, because he went on to the waiter - and I think he was smirking, the bastard, "Darling, bring me a mojito, and for my friend," - "Prior," I managed to squack, "My friend Prior, bring him a tequila sunrise. And don't skimp on the umbrellas," he called out, loudly.
I wanted to die, then and there, but Belize went on. "Now now, sweet darling. Chill out. Have drink and relax. It'll be aaall right."
*** *** ***
Guess I shouldn't be surprised - Belize signed on to be my nurse even before I became a mental patient. Some mental patient. Hallucinating angels that won't leave when I tell them to. Some legionnaire. Ha. What a red badge of courage I wear. With me, every day is Saint-Crispin's day.
Fast forward to 1995. I've been living with AIDS for ten years, and life still suffuses my body. The dreams of angels and the walk up to heaven is still one of those things I remember vaguely. They tell me that it was the illness playing with my head, but I still wonder. There are angels among us, I know, and one of them lives with me.
Belize had a man uptown, but he disappeared in the mysteries of time, swallowed by the eternal movements of the swarming human bees. Like the Marlboro man, off on his horse and driving in a Mormon sunset. Five years til kingdom come, they say, but we're still waiting. Hannah tells me sometimes that Belize and I should be together - and in so many ways, we are.
What's sex, if nothing more than the infection of the soul? Love is so much better. Louis is writing a novel of sorts, a kind of play, I think. It feels like long letters about the new Democratic era and how things have changed since the days of Reagan. Belize reads them to me when my eyes are buggered up - no longer a prophet, I still need help to wade through the pages and pages and words and paragraph that send me into a lost, oblivious vision of history.
And always his hands on my shoulders, rubbing the pain away with love and dubious lotions. Placebos, but they feel so good, I could explode in ecstasy.
The movement never ends - hospital home hospital home and through it all, Belize and Hannah, holding my hand, Louis hovering about, at a distance, inadequately. Linked with something that I can't name - phosphore or a candle's wax, luminescent and unmoving. Prophetic, prophesying and professing, I walk through light daily.
I wished for more life, but I got so much more.
Bethesda.