A Place at the Table (21 page)

At night I study Sebastian’s art: the Chuck Close print, the Rosenquist lithograph. I listen to the long-playing jazz albums on his record player, try on the African masks hanging on the wall. I wanted to mark Hanukkah by lighting candles in the brass menorah he kept on the mantelpiece in the living room, but early in December Dahlia asked if she might have it and I willingly handed it over. Dahlia also wanted the photo albums of Sebastian as a child. It pained me to part with them, but I told her to, of course, take whatever she needs.

Though I often see Gus at the café and I occasionally have dinner with Mike, my old friend from the residence hotel, who, like me, is perplexed by his HIV-negative status, the only person I allow to come to the Belthorp is Dahlia. She stops by every few weeks for a cup of tea and a little something sweet to eat. When we are together we do not speak of Sebastian’s death. We do not speak of our choking grief or our gaping yearning. Instead we speak as if Sebastian is still alive but simply not around, as if he were traveling, like Holly Golightly, whose calling card read just that in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
. We act as if Sebastian has taken a trip to a distant but
knowable place—Paris, perhaps, or somewhere even farther, Sydney or Hong Kong.

It would make sense to assume that Dahlia has become a mother figure for me and I her replacement son. But ours is not a relationship of transference. I remember hearing Mr. Morgan, my RA leader from so long ago, speak with fierce loyalty about a friend he made while fighting in Vietnam. Side by side, they survived the war, then both returned to the States to resume normal lives among people who had no idea what they had been through. I imagine my feelings toward Dahlia are similar to those Mr. Morgan had for his friend. We walked through something unfathomable together. We came out on the other side, changed, only to find that much of the world remained the same, callous and indifferent.

While I see Dahlia every few weeks, I rarely speak to my own parents. They do not even know that Sebastian is gone. I never told them much about Sebastian when he was alive, saying, simply, that I was moving in with a friend to a very nice apartment. They did not ask many questions. They remain hesitant to know any but the most general details of my life. Were I to tell them who Sebastian really was to me and that he is now gone, died of AIDS, I fear they might say that Sebastian’s death was fitting punishment for a decadent lifestyle. I have no capability to handle such condemnation. If faced with it I imagine I might fly down to Georgia, arrive at their door, and show them the meaning of Old Testament vengeance.

I am sane enough to recognize that I have gone a little crazy.

•  •  •

I never venture to bars or clubs. God forbid I meet a man, bring him home. Even though I have been spared (for now at least), I cannot separate sex from death, no Larry Kramer dramatics needed to convince me of that. I know some gay men who are still fucking their
way to oblivion, just to escape the constant pressure AIDS exerts on our lives as we do the hospital-to-memorial-service shuffle, again and again. But losing myself in suicidal sex is not the way through. Instead, I become a hermit, a monk, a ghost. Wryly, I think of myself as the phantom of the Belthorp, an apparition haunting my six-room flat. I cook only at the restaurant, never at home, but instead stock the freezer with Stouffer’s frozen entrées: macaroni and cheese, spinach soufflé, lasagna. I watch television religiously but live for Thursday night comedies, for
The Cosby Show
and
A Different World
, relishing the escape into the loving antics of an intact family, followed by the adventures of happy undergraduates coming into their own. I drink too much red wine on too many nights, grow accustomed to a low-grade hangover for much of the next day. I cling to ritual, to coffee made in the stovetop espresso pot each morning, to my jog through Riverside Park, to showing up at Café Andres each night ready to methodically prepare the meals ordered, no longer itching to transform southern classics into haute cuisine, happy now to stick to the standbys demanded of me: my cheddar biscuits, my crawfish spread on toast points, my fried flounder, my potpie. And always the banana pudding made with pound cake instead of vanilla wafers.

The dazzling young chef is no longer dazzling and certainly no longer feels young. At twenty-eight, I am exhausted. At twenty-eight, I have lost everyone I have ever deeply loved.

•  •  •

Early Sunday, mid-December, one of those New York winter mornings that make you consider moving back south after all. When you are exposed to such biting, pervasive cold, the South’s mean prejudices seem superficial, nothing a dry martini and a good sense of humor can’t conquer. Certainly I am not the same freezing boy I was my first winter in the city—I know now to wear long underwear, thick socks, a down coat that falls past my knees. Still, on this morning
I underestimate the weather and walk all the way to Zabar’s for a bag of coffee beans and some half-and-half. I stop at the café on the way out, order a cup of coffee to go, along with a still warm ham and cheese croissant, which I eat quickly, ravenously, finishing by the time I walk out of the store.

It is shocking to step outside again. The frigid air numbs all exposed flesh, my cheeks, my nose, the lobes of my ears. I slurp at my paper cup of coffee, trying to keep warm, but it is nearly impossible to walk and drink at the same time and I keep dribbling down the front of my coat. It makes me think of the
Airplane!
-inspired quip Sebastian and I used to trade when either of us would spill: “I think you might have a drinking problem.”

One more spill and I decide I’ve had enough. I look for a trash can, spying one on the sidewalk ahead. I throw my cup away, pausing for a moment to listen to the melodic sounds emanating from the stone church to my right. A sign framed in Plexiglas proclaims this diminutive fortress to be Our Lady of Sorrows.

I have been to too many churches over the years, wearing the same black suit to attend funeral after funeral of gay men, mostly young. I am so tired of memorial services. So weary of the eulogies and the dirges. Which is why I should turn away from Our Lady of Sorrows. And yet I inch closer toward the church, the choir’s plaintive hymns matching my own raw grief, its collective voice a swath of densely woven fabric, ripped from the bolt, the edges ragged, unraveling. The door is closed but not locked. I push my way in, look around the empty vestibule, at the stone fountain by the door, at the garish red carpeting, bright as fresh blood. I do not know much about Catholicism, but I know the water in the fountain is supposed to be holy. I dip my finger in it, press a drop against my forehead, figuring what could it hurt? There is a poster board, displayed on a long wooden table, showing photos of a youth mission trip to Guatemala, brown and white kids linking arms and mugging for the
camera. I think of my days as a Royal Ambassador, how I wanted to befriend Anjan, the orphan we sponsored in India.

Life runs in circles, I suppose. I was lonely then; I am lonely now.

I keep walking, through the swinging doors that lead into the sanctuary. The choir, taking their seats in the stalls in the nave, consists of only four people, a much smaller group than I imagined, given how powerfully their voices carry. There are not many in the pews, maybe twenty-five people, a few black, mostly white. Almost all have gray hair. One woman turns to glance at me as I make my way down the aisle, but everyone else keeps their eyes facing front, toward the preacher—priest—who is beginning a sermon.

The first thing I notice about the priest is that he is hooked to oxygen, clear tubes running into his nose. His voice is kind and lilting, marked by the effeminate cadence of certain gay men. I wonder if he is HIV positive, if that is the reason for the oxygen. But I notice no lesions, no wasting of the cheeks, no other signs of disintegration. Maybe he is just old. What a blessing in the middle of the AIDS epidemic: to be a gay man who simply grows old.

There is another priest behind him, a broad-shouldered black man with closely shorn hair, his body thick and substantial, his massive chest pushed out in front of him like a football player. I slide into a pew, taking note of the kneeler in front. Kneelers are not the Baptist way.

The priest on oxygen speaks of comfort, of how it is the job of Christians to offer comfort to the suffering world. “Mother comforted us when we were little, but she’s not always around to do that now,” he says. “So it is up to us to provide comfort and nurturance to each other.”

Well, that’s the damn truth
, I think. I sigh deeply, then inhale, incense filling my nostrils, that exotic musky smell of the Catholic Church.

The remainder of the homily is brief, kind, and unarousing. No one claps their hands in agreement, or murmurs amen, or
follows along in their Bibles like Mama used to do, her painted fingernail trailing below the verse. Everything is very staid, very orderly. It is nice, actually. To the priest’s point: comforting. Like the rituals I have grown to depend on, the morning espresso, the long runs through the park, watching sitcoms on network television. We kneel at certain points, recite the Nicene Creed—which I, unlike the other congregants, do not know by heart. A collection is taken. I slip a five-dollar bill into the straw basket that floats in front of me, attached to a long wooden pole, wielded by an usher who stands at the end of the aisle. We say the Lord’s Prayer. And then it is time for communion, something we only took occasionally at Clairmont Avenue Baptist, and with grape juice instead of wine.

I have long stopped believing in the ABCs of salvation. I have long stopped thinking of Jesus as my Very Best Friend. Still, through much of my life, I have been comforted by the presence of God. It wasn’t that I felt protected exactly, but rather accompanied by something holy when I should have felt most alone.

But after Sebastian’s death, my sense of God’s presence evaporated. AIDS destroyed God for me, the same as it destroyed an entire community of those who create beauty and art, the dazzlers among us, reflecting God’s creative spark. But the dazzlers died, again and again, and the response of so many—in and out of the church—was to say that their deaths were deserved. So what were we left with? A tortured male body hanging on the cross. But not resurrection.

Directed by the ushers, aisle by aisle members stand and approach the altar to receive communion. Again I compare this to the Baptist rite of my youth, to the stainless-steel trays passed down the aisle, tiny plastic cups of Welch’s nestled inside each indentation. Here the black priest holds an ornate silver chalice, filled, I presume, with actual wine. The usher comes to our aisle and I stand with everyone
else, suddenly aching to take of the body, the blood. As I walk to the altar I allow myself this sliver of hope: that God died along with the sufferers so he could be with them fully. That one day a shoot of green might emerge.

Because here is the truth: I want to return. I miss being a part of a church.

It is the priest on oxygen who hands me the round wafer, which looks like a small Carr’s cracker. I almost put it in my mouth but hesitate, unsure whether I am to dip it first in the wine. The black priest, holding the chalice, motions me toward him with his eyes, a shepherd collecting a lost lamb.

I stand before him, hungry.

“Are you Catholic?” he asks.

“No,” I say, noticing that he immediately looks angry.

He plucks the wafer out of my hand as if it were a cookie stolen from the jar by a naughty child.

He then murmurs some words over me, a blessing, I imagine, though I hear none of it. My head is roaring. I am no longer Bobby Banks, twenty-eight years old, head chef at a once-storied café that has had a second life under my influence, New York City dweller, sophisticated gay man. I am nine, watching Keisha’s shoulders jerk when Hunter calls her a nigger. I am fourteen, opening my science book in class to find an index card that reads “FAG” tucked between its pages. I am sixteen, staring at my parents in the doorway of my room as Pete, not yet aware that we have been caught, presses against me, my father’s eyes filling with grief as he is forced to recognize his own son as an abomination.

I walk down the aisle of Our Lady of Sorrows, chastened, no bread and wine in my mouth, no Jesus working his way through me.
Idiot, idiot, idiot
, I think, so ashamed at having tried to partake in a ritual that is not mine. I walk past the pew where I was sitting, then keep walking, exiting the sanctuary into the empty vestibule,
then pushing through the front door of the church to find myself outside once again. The cold air hits me hard.

•  •  •

Halfway down the block, I remember that I left the coffee beans and half-and-half in the church, on the pew. On instinct I turn to retrieve them, then stop. No. I will not venture back there. I will not prostrate myself before an authority that will not have me. As I turn back toward home I see Alice Stone, heading my way down Columbus, her posture as erect as a dancer’s.

Another authority who would not have me.

Alice wears a heavy green wool coat and a scarf wrapped around her neck. The bottom half of her slacks, a coppery red, is visible below the hem of her coat. Her hair, as always, is pulled into a high bun on top of her head, the exact same style Keisha wore as a girl, Keisha, whose image flashes through my head often, which is crazy considering I only really spent that one morning with her and then was never able to get her to play with me again, not after what Hunter said.

Alice doesn’t seem to recognize me, at least not at first, but after a moment she smiles and lifts a gloved hand in greeting. I walk toward her briskly.

“Well, hello,” I say. Oddly, I feel compelled to hug her, she who has distracted my thoughts from the aborted communion. But I hold back. I do not want to assume an intimacy we do not have when, in fact, we don’t know each other at all. Before Sebastian’s death I would have told you that I
did
know Alice, that she was prickly and imperious and rude. But now it occurs to me that I only really met her that one time and maybe she behaved the way she did because she was going through a trial of her own. Something that had nothing to do with me or the lunch I prepared.