Dear Mr. You (7 page)

As we left the restaurant you offered me your arm and I looked at you standing half in and half out of that bistro. The city instantly seemed to exist only to blend with the portrait of you there, poised to go for a walk with me. It was maybe like seeing Fellini in Rome. All of Manhattan was either moving past or revolving around you, creating the effect of the city explaining itself by way of a man representing it. The cafes and boutiques, all the well-dressed women going by became saturated with color when they moved into your frame and you completed their picture. The Guggenheim Museum, a group of little boys in school uniforms—all of it seemed constructed to exist as the atavistic backdrop that told your story.

I took your arm and it was clear you needed support. I found the place between us where I could balance and bring myself to you securely. The gesture found me for the first time trying to think of the right thing to say.

You spoke first. We were such a nice surprise, you said, and a reminder that things could still keep popping up. We had something unique you wanted to keep for your own, and you leaned
over when you said, “This is for me, I need this.” You looked down at me and said, oh, this is sweet and so good for me, but

this may be the world’s shortest friendship

We spoke again once or twice, I think. I came home from a trip a month or so later and a card was waiting from your girlfriend. She told me I’d mattered to you and given you a kind of boost. I held the card to my face, covering my eyes, and saw us walking down the street. I remembered how everything fell into place on all sides of you like someone was off somewhere pushing buttons and calling cues.

Thank you for giving me your arm and those four hours that I now understand you did not have an endless supply of.

It was short but I loved our little trip. We fell in love, but the way you love a view that comes along once or twice in life. You don’t want to leave it because it feels like, yes of course, this is the perfect spot. Those moments always come with a little shock and I love that sensation, when you think, this is too good, I’ll catch up with everyone else later. You just have to take in the truth of that expanse a few more seconds before it changes and becomes something else entirely, or before you do.

I believed in you, who knew God and still liked him.

One Sunday when I was maybe eight, I leaned out of my pew as you were passing after the service. I reached up and pulled at your robe.

“Father Bob?” I whispered. You bent down to hear me over the organ. “Is there anyone in Hell?” I asked, knowing you would know. You knew enough to give my brothers and my sister and me Cheetos when we came to your house to play Ouija board. You could answer this.

Putting your hand on my shoulder, you paused. Your eyes moved back and forth like you were reading invisible text while I stayed fixed on you, awaiting the truth. You started to speak and then stopped.

“Now? You mean is anyone there now?” you asked. I nodded a solemn yes and you scanned my face again, considering, and said, “No.”

“Okay,” I said.

You patted me on the back as if to say,
good for you for questioning what you think you’re supposed to believe
, as though the idea of eternal damnation was absolutely something to be revisited, years after having been ordained. As though the afterlife was worth examining upon being challenged by a third-grader. I realized that
it was your opinion, in that moment
. Faith to you was more clay than mortar, and if you could interpret the gospel, so could I. So should anyone. If God wasn’t mad at you for drinking wine and chain-smoking and being a homosexual, he might forgive me for stealing a kitten and trying to hide it under a blanket in the back of our station wagon. Certainly that God was preferable to others who wouldn’t let you in Heaven if you said bad words or drank Mountain Dew. If all your answers weren’t in the Bible then mine didn’t have to be, and potentially the point was to try to be honest and sweet like you, and not panic if you yelled or had too much spaghetti. You didn’t worry that the Parker kids were going to burn in a smelly inferno just because they were trying to conjure dead spirits courtesy of Hasbro.

All us kids have stories about you. My oldest brother remembers you driving him in your own car all the way to Bisbee so he could deliver his declaration against the Vietnam War to the draft board. They took one look at him, skinny and asthmatic and already spouting his political diatribe to anyone who would listen, and went to another section to find his name. They promptly informed him that he was F-4 status, a medical reject. He nearly burst into tears, having been robbed of the chance to articulate his opposition to the war by way of a narrative speech with footnotes. He paced the hall outside the draft board with you following him
and listening to him go all over the map. What on earth should he do now, when he had not gotten what he did not want?

Finally he arrived at an idea, announcing that he had the answer: he would combine law and the teachings of God. “I will go to school and get my degree in canon law!” he said, excitedly, looking to you for validation. When he asked if you’d help steer him to this chosen path, you took a long drag on your cigarette and said

Of course I will. You realize, though, that canon law is about as useful as tits on a butterfly

“I know someone who can answer that better than me,” I said to my children. It was thirty years after my question to you in church that day and my own kids had one now. They bounced on the bed while I dialed you at home.

“Guys, settle,” I said, “this man is a big deal to Mommy and I’m putting him on speaker.”

“Is he nice?” asked my son.

“Father Bob?” I heard coughing after a faint “hello.” It was your voice. I hadn’t heard you in years but the sound of you was a time machine. I asked how your partner was, and you said great and he was right there in fact. I said to give him my best and incidentally, would you mind answering my kid’s question about what went down when Jesus died and you said sure thing. I nudged my son, who was trying to pry a rubber chicken out of my daughter’s hands. He put his face up next to the phone and said hello.

“Hello to you,” you said.

“Well,” said my son, “why did he come out of that cave? That had the big rock in front.”

“There was a rock?” asked my daughter. My son punched her, whispered be quiet and she punched him back, said she didn’t have to. I’m killing you both, I whispered, just stop it now and then I said full voice to you,

“They were confused about how he came out.”

“No,
why
,” said my son, “I don’t know
why
he came out and left the door open.”

“I thought you said it was a rock,” asked my daughter, who was now lying down and close to sleeping. I nudged her over and scratched her back lightly. My son was staring at the phone and I could hear you breathing on the other end.

“He came out,” you said, “because he needed to get into the light.”

My son looked at me, then back at the phone.

“Okay, but why did he let them throw rocks at him? If he had a special Jesus power to open caves, why didn’t he use that when he was tied to the cross? And just fly up?”

You were quiet for a moment and then you said,

“Well, that was a good question.” Your end went silent again except for what was either the sound of you smoking or the result of you having smoked so much.

“Why did he let the bad guys hurt him?” asked my son.

“Because he wanted to live the life he set out to live. He wanted to show us about sacrifice and forgiveness, as the Son of God,” you said. My son turned to me and his mouth dropped open. He picked up the phone and spoke directly into it a bit louder.

“Wait,” he said, “God was, like, his dad?”

“Yes,” you said, “yours, too. I mean, depending on how you
like to look at it. We’re all loved by God that much. No matter what our powers or who our father is.”

I hoped your voice would soak into their brain chips, my son being too young to remember this conversation and my daughter being nearly asleep. I didn’t want them to discount prayer because some people sold it as a passport to an afterlife with vine gardens and a food court. I wanted them to feel freed by the mysteries of whatever doctrines they chose. As my children slept I looked at them and wondered who had taught you how to think, or perhaps how not to think.

I called you as my father was dying and you said, “Remember this: your dad is the most honorable man I have ever known.” I held the phone to my dad’s ear. I knew your voice, but the rhythm coming through the receiver was different. You were using another language with him and your tone was more strident. I suspected that you were passing along things the rest of us are not ready for, as my dad was nearly gone from this Earth and didn’t need to wonder anymore, or wander. I looked to my brother and knew he was remembering the same thing. You there at the dinner table with us all those years ago, sipping your wine and laughing your big throaty laugh. Echoing our commitment to the unanswerable, the mysterious. Mystery is endangered but need not be extinct.

When I spoke to you recently you told me that you were getting married. Not to be inelegant, but what are you, late seventies? That gives me hope for all humanity. I haven’t met your partner, Richard, but I can say he is a lucky man. It’s because of you that I can go to any church and take whatever the service has to offer, all of it up for interpretation except kindness.

(you)
“Hey Miss Girl!”

(me)
“Hey Miss Woman!”

Then, barely audible:

(you)
“Hey Miss Thing!”

(me, even softer)
“Hey Miss America!”

(you, only ants can hear)
“Hey Fantasia!”

We bonded in about five minutes over lemonade and fries at the Chateau Marmont. Our shared devotion to skincare was only the cherry.

•  •  •

“Well, Hey, Miss P-Town!”

“Hey Miss Can’t Find Me a Place to Park in Front of the Sunset Marquis!”

Miss Woman, you always greet me with a bright face on. Even when one of us is a tad suicidal we manage to laugh about something. I thought of you when I met that priest from Opus Dei, that sect of hard-core Catholics who believe to the seams of their Filene’s Basement blazers that homosexuals will fry in a sweaty ring of Hell that has no TCM channel or Streisand. Miss Girl, I have to tell you that when this man asserted that “the only happy homosexual was a dead homosexual,” I saw us rolling on the floor laughing just from sharing pictures of our hairdos from the eighties. This man said that homos usually commit suicide, and that there has never been a truly happy homosexual. I said, I don’t know, have you ever seen Richard Simmons? He said, “Sadly Richard will be burning in Hell for all of eternity,” and I said, “At least he’ll be sweatin’ to the oldies!”

When he narrowed his eyes and retorted, “I think you know what I mean,” I was all sweetness back. “Sorry, but do you really mean
burn
?” I queried and he crossed his arms, said, “Yes, eternally,” and I said, “Wow, so are you going to put them in space suits or something?” “I don’t follow you,” he said, and I was like, “I’m just saying, you better get flame-retardant pods to nestle those gays in, because
nothing?
can burn eternally without melting? not even a flip-flop, or one of those Japanese knives they sell on QVC?” His face was vermillion as he informed me, “There is another set of rules waiting for us in the Afterlife,” and I said, “Oh goodie, can Poppycock be good for you? Can Twitter give you eczema?”

•  •  •

“Hey Miss Militant Gay-Lover!”

“Hey Hey Little Miss Flip-Flop!”

“Hey, Betty!”

Here’s the thing, chicken wing. I know that as a homosexual born before the year 2000, at some point someone with a Bible or your lunch money said you were a sinner. Maybe they claimed to be quoting the American Psychiatric Association, which classified homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1973. If those party poopers had their way, you and I would have no drag shows to attend. Drag was looked upon like schizophrenia, which, to me? is some flimsy researching. Someone calling any of those drag queens crazy is bewildering, because when Miss Manischewitz sweeps out and takes our breath away, I can only think: How could a mental patient possibly mastermind a ball gown that also doubles as a deli case? And while we’re at it, how on earth could a bunch of raging psychopaths keep a place like Fire Island so clean and crime free? It’s really just finger pointing by a dangerous few who lack imagination and the keen ability to accessorize. We know that story, morning glory.

I grow misty when I realize you’ll never know the homo husbands I lost in the eighties. Oh Miss Woman, you would have loved Hal— He could have sat and cried with us at
The Color Purple
, and his passion for exfoliating was on par with yours. Back in college we’d pack our T-zones with Queen Helene Mint Julep Masque and hang off the edge of the bed while the blood circulated to our olive green faces. We’d dangle there and he’d smoke while explaining Fosse to me, or Jesus, or the combo platter of both. Once the mask became hard we’d see who could make the other laugh to crack it. He died before he was even thirty, “off to meet my maker,” as he said. I hope he got a big welcome party, with the disciples greeting him in footless tights with leg warmers and sweet tea. And Frank! You can take your Rambo’s
and 007’s; if the apocalypse were approaching and Frank nearby, I’d have hid behind him. He could slay anyone with an actual fencing foil, or build a house from a hammer and some twine. He was Excalibur, Mercutio, and Robin Hood. Had he lived, he would have played every armor-wearing, sword-toting hero that enters on a horse and saves the day. I wish to God I could have seen that.

•  •  •

“Hey Cindy Lou Who!”

“Hey Ladybug!”

“Hey Miss I Cried at the Harvey Milk High School Awards!”