Almost Like Being in Love (24 page)

VIA FACSIMILE

Craig S. McKenna, Esq.

McKenna & Webb

118 Congress Park, Suite 407

Saratoga Springs, New York 12866

Dear Craig:

Thank you for your prompt reply to my letter of Friday. I’d like to schedule a meeting with you some time during the next few days if at all possible. Please let me know if your schedule can accommodate me.

Very truly yours,

Wayne Duvall

MCKENNA & WEBB

A LAW PARTNERSHIP

118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

June 1, 1998

VIA FACSIMILE

Mr. Wayne Duvall

New York State Democratic Committee

151 State Street

Albany, New York 12207

Dear Wayne:

Sorry we keep missing each other. My calendar’s a little jammed this week, but I can rearrange Thursday to meet with you at your convenience.

If I’m out when you call, please schedule a time with my assistant, Kevin Grobeson. He’ll be expecting to hear from you.

Meanwhile, I’ve already begun to research Ken’s suit against the Republican mudslingers and will fill you in when we get together.

Very truly yours,

McKenna & Webb

Craig S. McKenna

MCKENNA & WEBB

A LAW PARTNERSHIP

118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

MEMORANDUM

TO
: Kevin

FROM
: Craig

DATE
: June 1, 1998

SUBJECT
: The Democrats

KG:

When this guy calls, get him in here as soon as you can. I need to kick some GOP ass.

CSM

P.S. If you’re not doing anything for dinner, bring your boy du jour to T-Bird’s. One of my college buddies is opening a sixties act he calls Johnny Angel and Venus (true names: Grid Tarbell and Rachel Schwartz), and in between sets we can all make fun of Charleen’s new steady.

MCKENNA & WEBB

A LAW PARTNERSHIP

118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

MEMORANDUM

TO
: Craig

FROM
: Charleen

DATE
: June 2, 1998

SUBJECT
: Boyfriends

Thank you for alienating my date. Had I known he was a fundamentalist, I would have done it myself. Remember when you and Clayton were considering the honeymoon in Greece? That wasn’t NutraSweet he kept dropping into his tea—it was Tylenol.

Jody sent me geraniums. Why is he doing this?! Is he stimulated by rejection?

Ch

P.S. Please assure me that Grid Tarbell wasn’t as erotic in college as he was at T-Bird’s. My “Missed Opportunities” dance card is already at critical mass. And I can’t believe it was actually Clayton who talked you and Grid into “Light My Fire” last night. Either he’s forgotten what happens whenever you wander near a stage (about as likely as Bill Clinton forgetting he has genitals), or else Harvard was a lot tamer than we remember it.

Craig McKenna

Attorney notes

By sophomore year, I’d already earned an entirely undeserved reputation across campus as a rabble-rouser. According to a highly illegal copy of my transcript—purloined at my request by a hunky swimmer in the dean’s office whom I’d once dated long enough to determine that the rumors about his cock were altogether understated—I was an instigator, a provocateur, a demagogue, and a seditionist.

“What the fuck is an agitprop?” I mumbled to myself, thumbing through the pages late one night when I should have been reading Dostoevski instead.

“It means you’ve got a big mouth,” shouted Clayton from the shower. “I told you so.”

Me?

Psychology 311

PROFESSOR:What do we call a patient with paranoid schizophrenic tendencies who still manages to assimilate himself into the social structure?

CRAIG: A Republican.

Mathematics 204

PROFESSOR:We accept that pi equals 3.14159 because theoretically it’s endless and there’s no sense letting it ramble.

CRAIG: Sort of like Jerry Falwell.

American History 126

PROFESSOR: Certain facts about Alexander Hamilton are still coming to light. His imperialism. His obstinance.

CRAIG: His boyfriend.

Government 210

PROFESSOR: If there’s one thing we’ve learned since the collapse of the polis in 509 B.C. it’s that change takes time.

CRAIG: Bullshit. If we had a Students for Human Rights Commission around here, it’d take about fifteen minutes.

ALETHEA: You got that right. Craig, I can get us the Freshman Union.

ETHAN: I can handle the fliers.

DARBY: What about a permit?

JORDAN: We don’t need one. Hey, Craig. Can I chair a subcommittee?

And suddenly the sixties were back.

“It happened
again
,” I moaned to Charleen over coffee at the Greenhouse. “I was only being theoretical!”

“That’s what Einstein said after Hiroshima,” she snapped, slicing a chicken salad sandwich into eight equal pieces and handing me two of them. (Usually I got three. She must have been really pissed.( “Craig, if you think I’m going to spend the next six years—including law school—unchaining your ass from a series of Corinthian columns dotting this institution of higher learning—”

“Who asked you to?” I demanded.

“Who has a choice?! Have you told Clayton yet?” The blood instantly drained out of my face.

“Oh my God,” I groaned. “If he finds out about this—”

“Yes, Lucy. ‘If he finds out about this.’”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I should.”

“But you won’t.”

“I know.”

Eventually, of course, Clayton had to discover that he was married to an unintentional subversive. If nothing else, there was the little matter of a headline in the Crimson that required an adroit pas-de-deux to ’splain away: “McKenna Welcomes Cardinal Cook with Sit-in.” Not that I was completely successful with the ballet metaphor; as a matter of fact, we didn’t have sex for the longest two weeks of my life—but once the Archdiocese had slapped a temporary moratorium on its queers-burn-in-hell oratory, Clayton relented.
Maybe the little shit knows what he’s doing.

“But no bottles and no bricks,” he warned.

Our first SHR meeting was held in a lounge at the Freshman Union.

Thirty-four people showed up. A month later, we’d clocked two hundred members and Charleen had snared us a classroom. '“I employed the

‘wouldn’t it be unfortunate if the Boston Globe got its hands on a story like this?’ routine again. They fell for it. A second time. Have you ever heard of a flat learning curve before?”( Maybe our agenda was a little unrealistic, but hey—we weren’t even 20 yet. What the hell did we know?

Students for Human Rights

Meeting Minutes

1. Alethea Cathcart was refused admission to a dance club called Orion in Beacon Hill on grounds that they’d reached capacity.

However, seven Caucasians were waved through the ropes while Alethea continued to wait. Craig assigned a subcommittee to draft fliers and posters warning kids to stay away from Orion.

They’ll be papered across Beacon Hill, Back Bay, and the Fens.

2. Jordan Halper’s boyfriend, Kenji Fukuda, has been harassed repeatedly by members of the freshman soccer team. The assaults have included destruction of personal property, physical abuse, and a spray-painted warning on the door of his room in Lowell House: “Remember Pearl Harbor.” Craig organized a zap attack on the Freshman Athletic Department, to take place immediately.

3. Ethan Whaley read a statement from the Archdiocese of Boston, claiming that sexual deviates are a moral threat to Christianity.

Craig requested volunteers to help him stage a sit-in during Cardinal Cook’s visit to the university next month. He assured the membership that this was one of those rare occasions where we weren’t required to behave. One hundred and fourteen students raised their hands.

4. Darby Burnett reported on a sports bar in the South End that has a sign over the mirror reading “No Dykes.” Craig suggested that 150 lesbians show up during next Sunday’s playoff game, and then he appointed an ad hoc committee to spread the word.

We kicked and we screamed, but we got the job done. And nothing was going to stand in our way.

The honeymoon ended on July 3, 1981. Two things happened that day that made me wish Travis had never taught me what “irony” meant. First I received an unexpected letter from a kid with shy eyes who’d once been afraid to tell anyone his name:

Dear Craig,

Living in Indiana was like hiding out from the law. All they had to do was find out certain things about you and suddenly you had broken body parts.

I didn’t think Boston was going to be any different until you stood up in front of a class filled with mostly straight people and talked about your boyfriend. It was like hearing the Declaration of Independence read out loud for the first time, or getting to start your life all over again.

That’s why I joined the SHR.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks. Bet you never thought you’d be anybody’s hero before.

Ethan Whaley

Then I opened the New York Times. Buried on page A20 was a tiny headline that nonetheless packed the wallop of an impending nightmare: RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS

Yeah, right, sure
, I thought, beginning to sweat bullets.
Just another
excuse to scare us.

As it turned out, Ethan was the first in our group to find out otherwise.

Petrified, I picked up the telephone and dialed our number, praying that
he’d answer. Please be home Please be home Please be home Please be home
Please—

‚Yeah.‛

‚Clay, it’s me.‛ The words tumbled out in a rush. I was so fucking grateful to
hear his voice, I swore

I’d never fight with him again. ‚Something’s the matter with Eeth.‛

‚Honey, stop crying,‛ he said, hugging me with his voice. ‚Just tell me what
happened.‛ Behind me, my study partner was doubled over on his bed,
retching violently.

‚I don’t know,‛ I sobbed. ‚There’s two more purple things on his face and
white stuff inside his mouth and when I tried to give him soup, he threw up
blood. Now he can’t stop.‛ In the background I could hear

Clayton picking up his car keys.

‚I’m calling an ambulance. Sit tight. It’ll only take me ten minutes to get
there.‛

‚Clay, I’m really scared.‛

‚I love you.‛

AIDS pretty much ended things between me and Clayton. Once the figures began pouring in from the CDC—with a polite “No, thanks” from Nancy Reagan’s husband—the message was loud and clear: We were alone in the trenches fighting for our lives, and meanwhile I had a lover who didn’t want me to make waves.

“How can you ask me to keep my mouth shut!” I cried, hurling a medical dictionary at him late one night. “Ethan was killed by a sheep disease and nobody gives a fuck! Including you!”

‚I said leave it alone!‛
he thundered, throwing it back at me and storming out of the apartment.

The phone rang at 2:14 in the morning. We were still pretzeled together
from our earlier ‚I-Love-You-I-Hate-You-Shut-Up-and-Fuck-Me‛ tango, but I
had enough of an arm free to grapple with the receiver.

‚’Lo?‛ I mumbled, trying not to wake him up.

‚I’m at Mass General,‛ said a barely controlled Charleen, a Code-Blue page
clearly audible behind her. Alarmed, I sat up in bed and dropped the whisper.

‚Darby again?‛

‚He’s got pneumonia and they can’t control it.‛ A deep breath. ‚Craig, have
you ever known me to panic?‛

‚No. Why?‛ The minute her voice cracked, I knew that Darby was going to
die.

‚Because I don’t think he’s going to make it this time.‛

‚I’m on my way,‛ I blurted, hanging up instantly. I kissed Clayton, hit the
dirt, grabbed my Jimi Hendrix T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and ran all
the way to Massachusetts General. This couldn’t be happening to Darby.

In spite of Clayton’s edict, I didn’t exactly leave it alone—I turned into a half-pint Larry Kramer in a Red Sox cap. Die-ins, bleed-ins, memorial marches—anything to wake people up. But no matter how many peaceful protests I organized, they always seemed to attract the National Guard: according to the box scores, I was arrested nine times in eleven months.

(Charleen usually bailed me out with a credit card. At an 18 percent APR. Activism converted to profit, courtesy of Citibank.( Jail didn’t really bother me, though. It was the only place I got any studying done.

By then Clayton and I were barely speaking: a pair of grunts at breakfast and a who-getsthe- bathroom-first parley at night. (Did we really used to shower together?) We were way too unhappy to fight any more—kind of like Lucy and Desi at the very end. It finally came to a head when I cooked up a three-state strike in front of the White House.

“I said no,” he demanded, spinning me around to face him in the middle of Harvard Yard. “If you start one more riot, we’re finished.”

“Clayton,” I hissed through gritted teeth, “three hundred people are dead, and Reagan’s head is still up his ass!”

“You’re gonna have to make a choice.”

“I hope you don’t mean this.” He glared at me for an angry moment, then let go of my shoulders and pushed past me wordlessly.

He meant it. When I got back from Washington, he was gone.

Charleen and I sat in matching ghastly blue plastic chairs and stared
vacantly at the swinging doors with the words Emergencies Only stenciled in
red above the glass. After a moment, they opened to reveal an apologetic
Chinese American intern whom, under other circumstances, I would have
found blindingly cute.