Cabin Fever

At first they were just bug bites. Simple bug bites. They were a part of urban lore. Something that would happen to a friend of a friend of yours and finish stories that began with "So I know this guy who went home a girl and..."

But then they started to appear.

My first experience with bedbugs was three years ago when a coworker curiously noticed itchy bites on the back of his neck. It was the dead of January. "That's odd," I thought "what kind of bug bites in the winter" and continued typing. How funny not to think anything of them then. It only dawns on me now that's that what those bites were. The beginning of it all.

Over the years the stories grew more frequent. They seemed to heighten during the summer. The friend of a friend became your friend and the consequence for drunken one night stands now included the only STD you could get without actually having sex.

Soho was the first to be hit. A giant warehouse sized clothing store shuttered for business because of these "little critters." They were nothing at the time. A minor inconvenience. But then South Street Seaport became infested. The expensive clothing stores were quick to act. They covered all stock clothing in plastic garment bags. Their newspaper ads touted "plastic encased clothing" in the same sunny manner as things like "free range chicken" or anti-bacterial soap. But then the New York Times and The New York Post reported stories of people leaving movie theaters with bites. Soon it was less about where you were shopping, and more about where you were going, and who you were seeing.

The bites continued. People stopped riding the subway. They stopped getting in cabs. The risk was potentially everywhere. People began wearing garbage bags over their clothing. Some even went as far as putting surgical masks over their mouths. The paranoia was setting in. And then, as if it were ordained, they began to appear. They flooded the city.

The laundromats and supermarkets were the first to be looted. Food and water was ironically much less of a commodity than containers and anything plastic. People started running for the exits with such haste they forgot about Manhattan being an island. The subways stopped running. The traffic clogged the tunnels. Ferries capsized due to overcrowding. People jumped into the Hudson. The power went out.

That was four days ago.

Through the crackled reception on my radio I can hear scientists trying to blame the outbreak on the heat: This summer has been (crackle) heat indexes in decades. The bugs are a species (crackle) they (crackle) respond to heat. Due to large underground (crackle) probable infestation (crackle) gross multiplication. After that there's nothing but static. I turn my radio off. Then on again. I leave it on.

I've been waiting for another emergency broadcast but one hasn't come for over a day now. I'm on my own. It's alright, really. I have resolve over it. Life sucks. Nature is nature. Bugs are born and if the planet says so, they'll take over. I just never imagined it would be this. What with all the trouble in the world, it just seems so easy and comical that I'd be taken out by humanity's break under a bug no bigger than a chocolate chip.

The gun shots echo up from the street and the screaming of women is endless but what kills me even more is that you guys are in Fire Island right now! Of course you are! Of course you're away from all this! But, what can I say? Work's work. Who knew this would happen? You lucky fucking queens, I swear...

I suppose I do have the last laugh though. I TOLD you this building in Murray Hill was worth something. I'm the only guy alive on my block! This, as you guys say, "dingy" post-war apartment of mine is so well built and tight that the bugs are at a minimum. I'm diet-bedbug here while the city has gone super sized. And, while we're at it, let's just call a spade a spade: You know David's Bagel is the best in the city. Can I get an amen?! Thank you. I'll tell the owner you guys say hi. Last I checked his body was still crumpled beneath the street light.

I can see you now. Speedo clad, mixed drink in hand huddled around the pool listening for the next radio update. The rescue boats from Maryland and Boston should be arriving any minute now. Hell, if they get there soon enough you can get toPtown in time for Tea. If that's the case, which going by your luck, probably is, please tell Tommy I always had an eye for him and if I wasn't being attacked by bedbugs, in a city bursting with chaos, I'd have asked him out.

I knew I shouldn't have picked up that call. You guys begged me not to, but it was just an ordinary day. Had I known I was going to be maggot-food in a week I wouldn't have taken the work call, but it was Saturday afternoon and I already had my fill of booze and boys. Now you guys are soaking it all up. Your own isle of male. I suppose Fire Island is now the literal Never-Never Land we've all been searching for. The place where you never have to grow up. Where you stay young and beautiful forever. Let me know some years down the road whether that legend actually proves to be true or not. That island, that glistening sliver of land. A swimmer on his back drifting at the edge of the ocean. Damn you lucky bastards.

The terror in the streets is growing. The glass is breaking all around me. My radio has been silent for more hours than I'd like to admit. This city, the high rent, the heat, the hustle and bustle and the creepy-crawlies which only exist in the shadows have finally taken me under. The city has officially caved in.

But hey, look on the bright side, at least they don't have to debate building that fucking mosque anymore.

It Wouldn't Have Mattered

I could tell you it was the White Party or The Winter Party or some weirdo after party where you dance in the middle of a zoo, but it wouldn't matter. I could also tell you that this was the party where the lights went out, or where the DJ collapsed on her turntables, or where Teddy and Eddy broke up, or where somebody took a dump on the dance floor, or where that guy I've seen a few times out died of a GHB overdose. I could tell you all that, but it wouldn't matter.

What matters is that it was Carmine and me, old pals, arms slung around the others shoulder, stumbling through loose-fit sneakers through the rocky terrain of empty water bottles and plastic cups. Danced-dazed-drug walking shirtless human apes, trudging for an exit. And we were with them.

It was balmy outside. Our bodies sticky with the crowd, the heat and sweat. The lights glowed, thumping lightly. We stood there rolling on our heels for awhile coming to our senses. Buoys in the middle of the sidewalk.

I lit a cigarette. "Where to now?"
"Let's go back to my room. We'll shower, sit down for awhile and head to the after party."
"Aye, Aye Captain."

The walk was pleasant and goofy. I kept grabbing Carmine from the back and squeezing his ribs, tickling him. Making him run away from me and then whining that he was too far away. Pals. Real true pals. It's the only word that comes to mind. That push-push, "I've known you forever/we've been through this thing together" familiarity and old-root strength. We've been there, with each other, the whole time.

At a stoplight I went to poke his ribs another time. He had a delayed response. He wasn't paying attention. He was somewhere else. He pushed away my arm and began walking closer to the wall. Our energy dropped.

"Hey," He said, "I have to tell you something."

I knew the tone. I stopped short, clenching my teeth.

Carmine and I go way back. Back to the gay.com days. Back to AOL Chatrooms. Back to the days when he would meet me after class and we'd take our fake ID's to the straightest Frat bar and pretend to be straight guys just "getting to know one another." It was good that we became friends and never had sex. There was never any interest on either of our parts. Instead we were allies. Comrades in a new terrain. The years of 19 and 20 were adventuresome. Flooded with memories of our delightfully shared secret amongst the keggers and house parties, of renting cars and driving to Phoenix on the dusky desert roads just to go to Pulse for the night. Man, how our hearts would pump. Together we were unstoppable. We we're going to figure this whole thing out.

I came out a little before him. And I was much more loud about it too. He was the jock. Played sports. Had a scholarship. Showed me how to work out. He was the reserved one. But what he enjoyed about my willingness to have fun, to be carefree I took from him his patient resolve, his even-keeled temperament. He challenged my urgent need to come out. He wasn't concerned about the fight or the cause or the plight. To him it didn't exist. It's not that he lacked compassion or was sheltered it's just that Carmine really is that guy who could live in the suburbs: "Give me a house, a dog a boyfriend and a 9 to 5 job and we'll call it a day." To which I'd respond with something like: "The Suburbs?! They'll lynch you!" He would shake his head, roll his eyes and continue sliding his tray down the line at the Student Union Panda Express.

He graduated earlier than I did. I had an additional semester learning how to put the useless "Fine" in Fine Arts. He held back, soaking up the desert sky. Going to the gym. Happy in his out-of-college entry level IT job making a buck and reclining before the sunset in his $400 a month Spanish style one bedroom house. I told him about my internship in Los Angeles. He wished me well. He told me he'd come visit and that I'd better too and with that we stepped out into the world alone, the first chapter of adulthood, waiting to be engulfed.

The years carried us. I bounced from LA to NY. Climbing up the ladder. Getting involved. Stirring passions and he doing the same in his own way. Finding a house, securing a job, jumping from one long term relationship to the next. Always these guys, his stability, contrasting my jump-about Rubik's cube restlessness. He was where he wanted to be, in the openness, and me in the thick of it, Tetris-like buildings falling all around me, encasing me.

The Cell phone crackled:
"So what are you working on now, big shot?"
"Big Shot? Please, I'm moving to Brooklyn."
"Still more money than I have."
"Yeah well, you've always looked better than I have."
"True."
"Fuck you."
"So are we going to this party or not?"
"Yeah, let's do it."
"Ok so I'll book the plane tickets and...we'll rage."
"I hate when you say that."
"....Is the latest coming? I promise not to say it around your beau. I want to meet him."
"Nahhh. He can't get away. It's cool. We're good."
"Cool. How you guys doing?"
"We're good, you know, I really like him. It's just that he's so young and, you know, with everything going on.... I just want to be there for him. It's really tough. But I really like him."
"I hear you, man. You just take your time, communicate. That's all I got."
"Ok speak to you later."

What I heard Carmine saying, although it wasn't actually said, is that Carmine's 22 year old boyfriend tested positive after a few months of them being together. Their lust for one another flowed in the turbulent waves that are the dramatics of the situation, the being there for one another, the passion, the taking of each other's hands through the complexity of this new found situation. The younger man coming to terms with his status the older man confronting it.

Through these waves they churned. Like magnets flipping sides. They were attracted and repelled by one another depending on the week. They loved, they split. They loved again. They saw one another. They loved again. They split. They opened things up. They split. They shared the latest information and medical research to one another. They visited the doctor together. Carmine remained negative, the younger man continued armoring himself.

A year and some months later we find ourselves back on that very same street. We're waiting for the light to change and I'm still clenching my teeth, bracing for an impact.

"Well, I am.......Positive."
I exhaled. I breathed in again. Turning toward him. Staring into his eyes. "Ok." I said in the calm way the voice allows for only the real life moments like these.
"And I don't need the lecture from you, okay?"
"I wasn't going to give it to you," I spit back.
The traffic light clicked. The blinking white man appeared in the black box across the street. Carmine started to cross, his back to me. I threw my arms around him, tight as a harness. I held him back, cupping my fists over the center of his chest and held him. Our bodies warm against one another. I kissed the back of his neck with one long meaningful kiss. A kiss which would translate how much I would be there for him, how much I loved him and how much everything was going to be ok. He took it in, allowing himself to be vulnerable. To let it all go and we stood like that until the blinking man had a chance to appear once more.

We released, dabbing tears from the corner of our eyes. Smiling at one another and sucking the loose snot back into our noses. Back to being pals again he pushed my shoulder. I pushed him right back.

"Alright asshole," he said, "Let's get going."
Nothing more needed to be said.

I received the call on a violet-laced Sunday night. The sun was fading fast. You could see your breath in the air and the bare twigs huddled together like fingers trying to stay warm. Autumn was almost finished, only giving an encore at this point.

The phone bleeped with Carmine's name as I took off my coat and ran upstairs away from the television my roommate had on. I tucked myself into my room. Not turning on any lights. I shared his call in the darkness.

"Hey dude."
"Hey," He said flatly.
"What's up?"
"I just don't understand it man. I don't know what he wants. He doesn't even know. One minute He wants to be together. Then on his own. The he wants a threeway. I just don't know. And on top of it I feel like a girl who just got pregnant and dumped."
"He's 23 years old! Do you remember us when we were 23 we had no idea what we wanted. Fuck, I still don't!"
"I just wish none of this gay ever happened to us. I just wish he could be an ordinary guy without all this gay bullshit to deal with. I don't want to keep going out, the drinking, the meeting people, I don't want any of it anymore! I want what I always wanted. Just a regular guy, with no issues and no hangups who just happens to be gay. I mean is that so hard? He wants to get all caught up in the scene and I don't want any part of it anymore. Positive or not, I don't want spend my time trolling around bars, trying to find a boyfriend who when the tough gets going all the sudden wants an open relationship. I just want," he yelled and then slowed his pace, "A regular fucking guy." "I don't want to do this anymore, man."

The room grew darker. The temperature dropping.
"I know, man. I know what you're saying. I see it too. I feel it too. We all do. We're all out there searching for something. It'll be fine. It'll be ok. Maybe you two just really need your own space. Break away from one another awhile. Take time to find yourself again. Weigh your own priorities. " I kept going, not waiting for pause. I didn't want him to interject. What he was saying was all too much, too real, too true. There was nothing more I could say. I finished another few sentence and when I stopped it seemed as though the phone went dead.

It had. I looked at the brightly lit LCD screen, the only light in the room. The screen bleeped, "call failed -- call failed -- call failed." I waited for him to call back and when he didn't I didn't attempt to call him either. There was nothing more to be said and anyway, it wouldn't have mattered.

96

Nothing really prepares you for seeing your 96 year old grandmother. My mother and I got off the elevator on the third floor of the retirement center. As soon as the automatic doors crack open and the fluorescent lights reflect off the linoleum floor the stench of old punches you in the face. The smell is sour, sticky and humid, nearly dead.

We walked past a reception area where the elderly, unmoving, almost drooling slumped over bean bags of people stared into space or seemed lost in a perpetual daze. Hanging above them was a sign that read "non-ambulatory."

My mother, having done this every other day since we moved my grandmother up from Florida last summer, was used to it. I, who had only visited my grandmother a few times, had to mentally deflect the surging thoughts of life and the inevitable approaching mortality. "Non-ambulatory" throbbed across my brow. My mother, sensing the onslaught of emotions from her sensitive son, grabbed my arm the only way a mother knows how. Delicate, soft, encouraging and lead me into a big open room with a dot-matrix printed sign above the door. "Rec Room."

The elderly all sat in circle. The wheels of their wheelchairs touching one another. Some rolled back and forth wanting a better angle around the perimeter of the circle. An overweight Hispanic woman with too much make-up and a heavy accent were encouraging the elderly to throw weighted balls on to a target on the floor. It was a game, like darts, where the elderly limp-lobed their balls on to the target gaining a score or hoping for a bulls eye. There my grandmother sat, her back to my mother and I.

"Excuse me," my mother said politely squeezing herself through the wheel chairs trying to get to my grandmother. She placed a hand on the back of my grandmother's shoulder and my grandmother turned to greet the hand with a delayed response. She placed a hand on my mother's, thankful she was there to relieve her of this game she hadn't been paying attention to anyway. My mother backed her wheelchair out of the circle in a k-turn and reminded her I was there to visit. When my grandmother's eyes met mine she smiled, dentures oddly placed, as a child would to a shiny object. She had grown older since the last time I had seen her just three months ago. A little thinner, her hair more disheveled.

"Well hello dahhhh-ling," she said as she had done so throughout my childhood. I bent down smiling to kiss her cheek and as my face met hers my heart cracked sending a surge of emotions to my eyes. My trembling lower lip the only protection against producing real tears. I cleared my thoughts while my mother and I walked her to a nearby table. We pushed her in and I sat very close.

"How are you, Gram" I asked. "Stuck in this place," she said dryly but jovial. My mother rolled her eyes. I pulled myself even closer to her because, for the last 10 years, I always went on the assumption that this might be the last time I would see her. My grandmother, too, for the last 10 years has been telling my family that she's ready to die. Her birthday is next week, March 21st so I wished her a happy 96.

"I never thought I'd live this long," she said aloud to myself and my mother but more so as a reminder to herself. Her brain is completely functional but her body is struggling to keep up. Fearing this might actually be one of the last times I see her I dug in with questions.

Born in 1914 in the Lower East Side of New York City my grandmother, Sarah Papish, was the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants. Growing up in a tenement on Delancey St. my grandmother was the third of four children. Two boys and two girls. Sarah at the age of 5, like many children her age, was given the responsibility of taking care of her younger sister, a job which she loved having. She went to school but states she mostly hung around and socialized within the Jewish community of the Lower East Side. "We were insular in those days. If you spoke Yiddish, you spent time with those who spoke Yiddish. We went to school together. We went to temple together."

"And how did you have fun," I asked wanting to hear something I haven't heard before hoping I'd peel back an unseen layer, a secret tidbit from within my ancestry. But it's always the same answer, "We didn't have fun like you have fun these days. We were poor. We worked. In those days girls didn't socialize with boys!"

"Yeah but Gram....Did you drink, smoke?"
"Who do you think I am?!"
My mother chuckles.

"Ok fine. Then, tell me about Grandpa." Grandpa Manny, Emanuel Lesser, the man from whom my name derives, died in the summer of 1980. One year before I was born. I never met the man and it stands as one of my mother's greatest sorrows that he was never an influence in my life.

"He was a great guy...a great, great guy," my grandmother remembers through a giant smile. Again my heart slingshots emotions to my eyes. I hold the forming tears back. It's funny how my grandmother has trouble remembering the name of her roommate in the retirement center but the memories of 70 years back are as clear and present as ever. "Oh! He was so handsome," she says reaching across the table and grabbing my mother's forearm. "You have his eyebrows and nose," my mother says to me.

"I met him at a party," my grandmother continues, "he was quite the man at the time because he had his own car. My friend Meryl introduced us and that night he offered to drive me home. He was living in New Jersey, taking care of his father and I was still in the Lower East Side taking care of my mother. I was old for a single girl. I was 30 and unmarried! He was 33 and single! I accepted the ride which was a little...daring. Women.... didn't accept rides from strange men in those days. But I took the ride and pretty soon we were dating. Before too long he was shipped out to the army but refused to marry me because he didn't want to leave me a widow with a kid, which was happening to couples all around us. Our relationship really began when we started writing letters back and forth to one another. He was overseas in god-knows-where and I was in New York taking care of my mother, but every day I would write. When he came back, we were in love. We got married." She quickly offered and aside, "He loved to dance. He loved to tell jokes. He was a great guy," she added once more.

"Maybe that's where you get it from, Eric," my mother suggested to me, knowing I love to tell jokes and love to dance. "Maybe," I responded knowing I'll never know the answer to that question.

Being around my grandmother and in the center of all this old made me think about life. How we go from infancy to adulthood to only return back to infancy. Again and again this cycle replayed itself in my head. Slumped over, old, achy with everything we did, and everyone we know, dead.

My grandmother's entire family is dead. At 96 she is the only one left alive. Her children now bear the responsibility of carrying the memories of her life. It seems impossible, unimaginable that I'll be there too one day. A place in life where all your artifacts, friends and family are gone. Memories become the only thing that validate your existence. My grandmother was incredibly well liked during her life, she knew so many people, but at her funeral there will only be a handful. My grandfather died nearly 30 years ago. More years than I'm alive now. This person, this love of hers, has been gone for nearly a lifetime.

This immediately made me think of my own life. What I have, don't have, what I've done, what I haven't. My heart suddenly grasped at the desire for a boyfriend, a husband. My confident independence no longer seemed like an asset. I craved somebody. Somebody to share this existence with, someone whose existence will be shared by mine. It's what we do now that matters because in the end we're all liable to be sitting in wheel chairs, throwing weighted balls at a target on the floor, just as a means to pass the time until our heart stops beating and our eyes no longer open. I thought about the stories I haven't written. The video projects I've left incomplete. The loves I've had and had not. I thought about the stresses in our lives, the achievements and for a moment it all seemed worthless and pathetic.

It's not like we have any other option. We must live. We must complete this cycle. Having a boyfriend or a husband isn't the benchmark of our lives, it is neither a success nor failure whether we fulfill that societal norm or not. The same goes for completing that project or getting to that level of success but to try is to live, and to play the game is to experience and when all is said and done and the decades of my life flash by like chapters in a book, I'll know what is written on those pages and those pages will be what I know of life.

The Cars Drive so Fast Here

The Cars Drive so Fast Here

The cars drive so close to one another here you would think accidents happen more often than they already do. I forgot how much of a car city Los Angeles is and my friends drive wildly. Their swerving, speed and cursing at other drivers make me nervous and force me to slam the break that doesn’t exist on the floor by the passenger seat. Every driver has either a gadget or a wire dangling from their ear allowing them to talk to people on their way to work or the gym or while they’re stuck in traffic. I truly forgot how much one needs a car here. I’ve been out of LA for more than three years and part of me can’t believe that I used to live here for two. I too had done the same as everyone else; driving, talking, swerving. But by how I react to my friends’ driving you’d think I’ve never been here at all.

I sat at the Starbucks on the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Santa Monica Blvd., just a few blocks north of where I used to live and sipped an iced coffee while I watched the cars zoom by. Every time a car would fly through the intersection I would startle and tense up because they were just missing, by mere inches, the cars on the other side waiting their left turn. I couldn’t believe the speed of some of these drivers. Everyone seemed so busy, speeding terribly and half talking on their “no-hands” gadgets. I forgot too, how expensive and new looking so many cars were and that also left me puzzled about the drivers’ seemingly desperate need to speed. Wouldn’t they want to be more careful? Wouldn’t they want to slow down, just a bit, to ensure the safety and condition of their cars? After all, it’s just a matter of inches between safety and collision. Four inches making all the difference between smooth sailing or a body flying through the windshield. Inches. Just inches and seconds. Life and death. Everybody’s got to go somewhere, sometime, I guessed.

The intersection of Santa Monica Blvd. and Fairfax Ave. is just on the edge of gay-town West Hollywood. That said, the fence sectioning off the outdoor patio of Starbucks where I was sitting was painted rainbow. A blue SUV with 3 men in their mid-twenties stopped at the light and snickered, pointing at the rainbow colored fence. Maybe it was the traffic, the sound of the cars driving by or maybe even because of the book I was reading but I drifted off into a terror-fantasy world, thinking that if these men wanted, they could pack their car full of explosives and detonate it right here at the edge of the fence. The impact would obliterate me in milliseconds and everything would be over. There would be nothing left. I would be dead. Finished. Gone. All of it happening before the smoke even had a chance to clear.

The fantasy reminded me of the time Eric-the-Roommate and I were driving down Beverly Blvd. and talking about terrorism.

“Really, the bombs are all for show,” he said driving west past the Beverly Center, a huge urban mega-plex of a mall. “Terrorism can exist in any form. The bombs are just sudden and impactful but really anyone can stick an Uzi in each hand and walk into a place like the Beverly Center and just mow people down.”

The light turned green outside of Starbucks and the blue SUV drove past pulling me out of my memories. I sat in the sun for a while, thumbing the pages of my book but not wanting to open it. It was too noisy, the sun just a little too hot and I was distracted.

An elderly woman walked across Santa Monica Blvd. and without ordering a drink or even stepping inside pulled up a chair at the table next to me. Earlier a homeless woman with stringy blond hair and pants falling below her waist had bummed a smoke from a seated customer so I assumed this was a frequent sit-and-rest for the wayward and destitute. The elderly woman took a few breaths and popped open an umbrella to shield herself from the sun. I studied her briefly. At first I thought she was a bag lady but after further scrutiny realized she was simply an old lady with an arsenal of shopping bags and a pushcart. The elderly were frequent in this neighborhood. This neighborhood is one of the rare walkable areas of LA and so it was littered with old age homes and retirement centers. She noticed me noticing her and smiled through decaying teeth to say hello. I said hello and turned my head back to the street. I felt her studying me.

“What book are you reading? Are you enjoying it,” she asked. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk with anyone, especially an off-the-street crazy, but I smiled and said, “I don’t know if enjoying would be the right word but yes it’s very good. It’s called Afterlife by Paul Monette.”

“Oh is that something you’re interested in – the afterlife?”

“I suppose, but the book isn’t about that after life. It’s more about the lives of people after someone close to them dies.” I just went for it. “The book is about the 1980’s, set right here in West Hollywood, actually and everyone is dying of AIDS.”

“Oh yes,” she replied quickly, “I remember those times. They were very tough. I remember asking, “how long is this going to last?” I was surprised at her response. How she had said everything so casually as if the time period and the subject matter of the book was something that was just yesterday for her. Maybe she too had lost a friend, read the newspapers or was in someway affected. Despite her verge of bag-lady appearance it was clear she had more of a mind than I assumed.

“I just lost my husband a few years ago and oh, the grief is so hard! It takes forever to get over. Sometimes you just don’t think it will end. I had no idea what I was going to do without him. But time goes by and slowly things get better. Life writes itself. But the loss, the loss is never filled. That’s the part that stays with you.”

I absorbed what she was saying. She closed her umbrella and began to get up to leave. “You just make sure you live every day to its fullest. You appreciate what you have.”

“I always do,” I said, “I have shoes on my feet and water when I want it and a roof over my head which is more than I can say for millions of people on this planet. I should only be so lucky to have a problem, right? Life’s too short so I appreciate it very much."

“That’s right, my dear.” She smiled and left.

As I watched her leave I thought about grief. About how I dip into and out of it like a familiar friend I choose to hang with from time to time. I know this feeling. This comfortable sense of loss, of mourning. Holding the book in my hand and staring out at the cars I couldn’t decipher which I grieve more. The dent in our community caused by AIDS, the deaths of all those men and the havoc I wasn’t able to experience. Or is that indescribable black heavy pit of our community’s nonchalance toward those times that were, how we seemed to have learned nothing and in some ways are denying AIDS’ very existence.

I thought about the first sentence of the book: “If everyone hadn’t died at the same time, none of this would have happened” and, later on, “he knew they were laying in comas all over the city.” I swirled in my grief. Hello friend. How have you been? Is it that loss, that unforgettable unfilled crater or is it where we are now?

Just the other night at The Eagle’s wet underwear contest while the contestants were doing the Q&A portion of the show someone from the audience yelled out, “Bareback or condoms?” The MC ignored the catcall by casually giggling. But the man who had yelled the question was hoping that one, if not all four contestants, would say bareback as if in today’s world this revolution against the condom, against the very thing that protects our well being, should be celebrated as something cool or edgy or fringe. This is where we are now - our bright hopeful future.

I felt the buzz of my cell phone in my pocket. Bret was finished with the gym and he was ready to pick me up. He pulled up to the corner of the intersection and I climbed into the car. He flew through the intersection like the other cars I had seen and as we drove home I felt my fingernails digging into the rubber door handles.

200 Steps

The underground transfer between the L Train and the 123 Trains is approximately 200 steps. I made the mistake of counting one day as a means to pass the time during my every morning commute. Now those steps are all I can think about.  Every morning I'm plagued with the thought of how I am going to spend those 200 steps.

"How today will I spend these steps?  What will occupy my time? What will I think about? What will I ignore? Will I pay attention to my walking, every step and beat of the way, or will I reach the end without even realizing what all I have traversed?"

There is no skipping them.  No fast forwarding.  They are an every morning constant and those steps never become more or less than what they are: 200 in total.

To take my mind off the 1 to 200 count I've created games that I play with an unknowing public. I'll jump off the train in haste and clamor up the steps before anyone else.  My game is to remain the first person up the stairs and to remain the leader of the pack from all who have just gotten off the L Train and are making the same underground transfer to the 123.  Other times I'll give someone I've spotted a lengthy head start and try to catch up with them, if not beat them all together, before the 200 steps are out.  

Then there are those days when I put my body on auto-pilot and let my mind dream wildly.  I'll find myself in the heart of a zombie Apocalypse, dodging those who have been recently infected and walk briskly to my desperate point of escape.  Other times I walk past the advertisements, roll my eyes and cringe at the world around me.  Often, I'll take in the graffiti, wonder about who left it there and why it tickles me so to see a moustache painted over a sickeningly thin female model or the words "I smile because I'm complacent" written over Scarlett Johansson's face on the He's Just Not that Into You movie poster.   I'll dream about the movies I want to make (but never will,) the books I want to write (but won't get to,) the blogs I want to post (but I have work!) the world I want to save (but why?)  When the 200 steps expire, these thoughts will become ghosts.  There one moment - gone the next.

There are the mornings when I study people.  The way they walk, the swagger in their step, the shoes they decide to wear.  How women can spend lifetimes walking in high heels and how people regard or disregard the man selling poetry and the youth strumming his guitar.  I'll half cruise the men walking against me.  Men wearing suits or dirty jeans and work boots.  There are those who still carry lunch boxes, possibly still sitting on steel beams, overlooking an ever expanding city and there are those still carrying briefcases - what these days cannot fit on an iphone, I don't know - yet the briefcase remains in hand, a trench coat flowing behind them.

I have teased myself with the thought of counting the number of fluorescent lights or the number of lightly tainted, now off-white tiles but it all seems too much.  200 steps in addition to an umpteen number of fluorescent lights and the ungodly amount of tiles stretching across the transfer is overwhelming enough, let alone knowing the count.

In 200 days I will have left a younger version of myself behind for every step of the way. So strong these evaporating thoughts, my younger self. Five steps now. 

Ten and I'm ancient. 

Checking In / Three Shelves

Hi!

I'm not gone. I just took a new job and I'm busy busy busy. I'll have to figure out some sort of new blog-work balance but until then hang in there and enjoy the story below.

I just caught wind that The Oscar Wilde Bookstore on Christopher St. is closing its doors. The story below was inspired by my visit there last year. This was originally posted on: Feb 7th 2008.

Three Shelves

I got out of work earlier than expected and Wayne wasn't available for another hour and a half. I headed out of my office, got on the subway and eventually jumped off at West 4th St. figuring I'll slum around the West Village for awhile. The weather was unusually warm and a light drizzle came and went as if Mother Nature could not decide upon her mood. The city is out. People are getting home, going to dinner and music plays from the restaurants out onto the streets. I sucked the city in deeply through my nostrils and headed in an aimless direction toward the West Village.

Call it instinct or a natural gravitational pull but I always find myself at some end of Christopher St. The street is narrow and the boutiques are hip and artistic. Rainbow flags fly and neon signs blip and buzz. As Manhattan changes again and again it always seems as though this one part of the city, is and always will be, quaint and unique. The streets are narrow and tree lined with old and gorgeous brownstones and a feeling of vibrant history rattling beneath the pavement.

In the distance I notice The Oscar Wilde Bookshop. Actually, I don't notice the little independent bookstore as much as I notice the giant rainbow flag waving outside. Having been there before I know that's the calling card of the bookstore, letting everyone know that despite it's size, it's there. Colorful, loud and proud. It's the only queer focused bookstore in the city and one of the only few surviving independent bookstores that has yet to be gobbled up by the corporate book and music malls.

The inside is quiet and clean and one can expect to hear some nostalgic acoustic music playing. Dylan, Cat Stevens, Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco... A smooth green carpet matches well to the light brown bookshelves filled with paper back and hard cover books. Posted on many of the shelves are yellow tags alerting customers to "staff picks" and critic's choices. There are never more than 5 customers in the store at any time. Today there is only one. I'm happy I saw the store in the distance, it reminded me to pick up a copy of James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room" for the first meeting of a book club I recently joined.

I wasn't able to grab the book right away because the section of fiction I needed to pull it from was being occupied by a seemingly frantic and excited young lady pulling out books left and right, top shelf, bottom shelf, flipping through the pages, reading backs, studying the price, compiling piles. I didn't mind waiting and looking at the new arrivals but I couldn't help but wonder what this girl needed or why her interest in so many books. I watched her for awhile. She was nearly out of breath. She would take a pick from the pile she created, study the cover, flip to the back and judge whether or not to put it back on the shelf. "What is she doing," I thought to myself. Judging from her level of stress I could only suppose that whatever it was she needed carried a great importance. "A research paper? A thesis?" I shrugged and continued to browse the selections.

Holding a book in the air and showing it to the cashier the young woman asked in a hard accent and broken English, "What about dis vone? Will I like dis vone?" The store clerk advised her there are others she would like better and left the counter to assist her search. As the store clerk approached the young woman said, "There's just so much! Where I am from there are only three shelves...Just three..."

Upon hearing this my breath caught itself in my throat and my arm goosebumped. "Just three shelves," I repeated to myself. I understood immediately the girl's frantic search and how important it was to her. I waited until the store clerk escorted the girl to another section and grabbed my book off the wall of fiction. I looked around the room. This whole book store: for me. Everything from fiction to non-fiction, biography to auto-biography, gay to lesbian, bisexual to trans, fantasy and reality, porn to prude- everything is here and it's an entire store. Maybe it is just one store with this specific focus but any store in this city has more than just three shelves!

I hung around the bookstore checking out other sections keeping an eye and ear on the girl and the store clerk. I wanted to know where she was from, what country or place she was visiting from that only allowed her three shelves. I wasn't granted any of that information but hearing what I already heard was enough for me to wish her the best of possible searches. She stood in front of me paying for her books. Almost 100 dollars in total. A pile that would keep her busy for months, if not a year, and will be with her for a lifetime. Having a few extra dollars left over she asked the store clerk, "What rainbow things you have else?" "Well," the store clerk responded, "we don't have too much this time of year, more in the summer, but here take this bracelet." The young girl took a rainbow colored bracelet and slipped it over her hand, securing it on her wrist. "Oh tank you," she said overjoyed, placing her hand over the bracelet and smiling.

After she left I said to the store clerk, "Wow. Only three shelves, and here we have this entire bookstore. It just goes to show- despite the amount of work we still have have ahead of us, how much we already take for granted." "Yes," the store clerk responded, frowning, "And I'm not even sure you can find more than three shelves in other places in this very country. I'm not sure if Montana, Idaho, Kansas or North Dakota offers much of a difference..."I shook my head, realizing the impact of what the store clerk was saying. I thanked her for the books and headed out of the store onto Christopher St., the very same street where 39 years ago a group of people demanded they weren't going to take it any more and have allowed the rainbow flags to fly, without apology, ever since.

Quiet City

The apartment is solely illuminated by the blue-black flicker of a television set airing football against the white walls. I am just waking up. It's morning, but it might as well be dusk, or even later- maybe somewhere around the edges of this deep winter's midnight. I check back at my clock twice, making sure I hadn't somehow slept through the entire day. I hadn't. It's only 11AM on Sunday and my roommate is plopped on the couch. Our "Emergency Only!" television set has been brought down from the closet shelf and is now propped on our kitchen chair airing ESPN. My roommate stares at the flicker, an entire day of watching football reflecting off his eyes. I need to get out. Our apartment is so dark. So cold. Everything is cold and dark and the walls of our tiny apartment are finite and looming. There must be errands to run, I think to myself, trying to conjure up a day of aimless, just-to-make-you-feel-better productivity. I look up to the ceiling. In the television's dull bleeps I make out a dust web in the corner and think to myself that cleaning my room is at least something. But, that's not going to happen. It can't. I need to get out of here. I shrug off ideas in my head as I slip on my sneakers and pat my coat making sure I have my gloves with me. For a moment I consider my cell phone. Friends to call? Brunch? I buckle. The thought of scrolling through my contacts, picking or choosing, waiting for whomever, whenever, wherever- texting, it all becomes too much and I tease myself with the idea of leaving my cell phone at home for the day. This, of course, is an impossibility. Leaving my cell phone at home is about as far fetched as confidently leaving my house naked. I'd constantly pat at the front of my jeans, my pockets won't feel exactly right and each square of the sidewalk would bring thoughts of "what if" or missed opportunity. Truth is- I wasn't expecting any calls and knew I wouldn't be making them. I drop the gadget into my pocket, feel the correct weight in my jeans and decide to head to The Strand bookstore. If I am feeling this dismal, this early on, then reading the next book on my list about The 80's and the AIDS crisis would only validate my utter nonchalance, if not snap me out of it all together.

The air is cold and the wind twacks my nose like a snap of steel. My shoulders hug my neck and I feel knots starting to spitefully muster up in my traps. There's no sense in taking the L Train, I might as well brave the cold and walk to Union Square. I stop for a coffee, hoping the heat and caffeine might cause me to straighten up or rewire my brain to form some semblance of glee. Something's got to work. This is a rare mental state for me, yet it continues to linger, overcast and heavy. Maybe The Strand will hold an unexpected something? This is New York, right? Adventure waits around every corner. Who knows, maybe I'll even get laid? I drift away with this thought and allow it to consume the distance of blocks I have to walk. Maybe I'll turn the corner of the Gay and Lesbian Fiction section and catch the eyes of some unsuspecting handsome Joe. We'll make eye contact, look away, stare at the floor, and look back, quickly causing the numbers of the combination to lock and he'll start a conversation with me as I pull a book from the shelf:
"Oh! You like David Feinberg," He'll ask and continue on with, "If you like that one I can recommend a bunch of others that you might enjoy. In fact, I have a whole collection of books just like this at my brownstone apartment on the Upper West Side! Why don't you come over, I'll make a fire and get into my underwear and you can cuddle up against my chest and spend the whole day reading whatever you'd like?"

Suddenly I'm excited to get to The Strand. I walk in, unzip my coat and flick on my gay sonar senses hoping the unsuspecting handsome Joe will bleep onto my screen. Nothing yet. I make my way to the back of the bookstore and hold my breath before turning the corner of the Gay and Lesbian Fiction section. I exhale. There's nothing here except packed, unkempt 10 foot tall bookshelves and the smell of paperback ghosts. Just as well, I think, that's what fantasies are: fantasies.

There are only a few titles by David Feinberg. Two paperback editions of Spontaneous Combustion and one hardcover of 86'd. I pull all three books off the shelf and flip through them hoping the mysterious previous owner made notes in the margins or underlined sentences, causing the status of the book to go from novel to treasure, but nothing is found. I feel a sad sense of guilt, clearing these books off the shelf and purchasing them for myself. It makes sense that I would have these books but what if there's some 19 year old NYU student or burgeoning AIDS activist for whom I am robbing this experience? The titles are obsolete enough as they stand and I have several friends who have copies of these books who would gladly loan them to me if I asked, yet still I want them for myself. I want to send one copy of Spontaneous Combustion to a friend and the other I want for my personal stash. I'm going to have to buy all three. I tick-tock my tongue off the top of my mouth and rationalize the purchase by proposing that I'll read the books, keep 'em handy for a few years, make my own notes in the margins and return them sometime during my mid-thirties, if the world still exists then. Fine. I turn on my heel, clutch the books by my side and head for the checkout line.

Back outside I stamp my foot and huff at the cold. The weather is far from announcing any invitations for me to sit on a bench in Union Square and begin my reading. I think of which coffee shops are within my radius but who am I kidding? They're going to be packed to the hilt, coffee cups themselves, overflowing at the brim, all the seats taken, John Mayer on the stereo and some twenty-three year old girl complaining to her friend that her father is finally making her pay her own phone bill. I sigh and head north to Barnes and Noble. Maybe, if I play my cards right, keep my alert on high-gear and hover correctly I'll find a seat in the bustling coffee area.

I make my way through the huge doors and as they close happen to drown out the frail man screaming for people to leave "just one penny for the homeless." I self-consciously walk with my head down past the security guards. My backpack is full of books. Books I didn't purchase here and would hate to be mistaken for a thief. Everything in Barnes and Noble is clean and white and gleaming. Hundreds of sleek new books are neatly organized into little stacks and each table is clearly marked by their topic. So many books. Both old and new, fiction and non-fiction. Everything! I want to belly-flop fling myself upon each table like a brave soldier to a live grenade, letting the books detonate beneath me, sending shrapnel of words and stories and talent and technique and history to shoot throughout my body. I want to absorb everything. The idea is titillating and inspiring for a moment but then turns sour because I can't possibly consume everything in this store and I begin rattling off thoughts like there's never enough time in the day or the year or even a life. The books turn dark and cruel like sadistic children on a playground pointing and laughing at me, causing me to recount all the things I haven't completed in life, all the projects I left unfinished and suddenly everything seems daunting and unfair.

I shake my head from side to side and head toward the escalators. I make my way to the huge coffee area and the place is buzzing like Times Square hopped up on brains and New York based conversation. A homeless man tries to dissolve into a corner, babies wail in their strollers, girls gab to one another, a man listening to his ipod flips through a book and scribbles notes onto loose-leaf paper, a man with white hair and a red Kashmir sweater reads a self-help book and I eye my desperately-looking-for-a-table competition standing alongside me. There's about four of us and not one of us seems willing to give the next available seat away. This battle is going to be fierce. It's not about who was first or who has been waiting the longest. It's all about who spots what or if you're closest to the next table packing up to leave. Fortunately, I get the first ray of sunlight in my rather stagnant and stuck day and one of the mommies seated next to where I'm standing resigns to her crying baby by saying, "you know what? Fine. You've had enough for today," and gets up to leave. The moment the mommy reaches for her coat I take one giant step to the left and the table is mine. Victory! Ha! I try not to make eye contact with my competition and pretend as though they no longer exist. I sit, exhale deeply, put my coffee on the table, shed my coat and flip open the cover of 86'd. I take one last look around the room and look back down at my book. I drown out the rest of the chaotic world around me and begin reading the first few sentences.

100 some odd pages and god knows how many hours later I look up to discover an entirely new cast of characters seated around me. Startled and engulfed by 86'd I contemplate calling some of my friends just to check in on them, to make sure, unlike the plot of the book, that they're all still alive. I blink a few times allowing my eyes to adjust and notice the day is breaking into a dull yellow and pink dwindling twilight. It'll be dusk soon and full fledged night only moments there after. When the sun is out of the sky and the dark winter has consumed everything, I can finally say my day is done and head home, hoping for a clearer less dense head tomorrow. My ears begin filtering conversation around me. I overhear The Eagles won the game and I hesitate the decision to head home, wondering if I'm up for my roommates raging enthusiasm over the victory of his beloved football team. Maybe seeing him will be a good thing? I shrug and head out.

Union Square is almost entirely empty. I pull a cigarette out of my pocket and smoke it out of no other reason than dawdling in the cold, for just a bit longer, before committing to going back to my apartment. The day lessens overhead, a thin sliver of golden dry light is pushed beneath the darkening sky and I listen to the breath of the wind through my pinking ears. The city is nil. Muffled, dim and bleak. Nearly apocalyptic. I finish my cigarette and flick it hard against the ground causing the embers of the tip to explode into an orange dazzle. One last toast to my virtual palindrome of a day.

I stand at the south end of Union Square. I'm the only one here. Beneath me empty subway tunnels blow New York Post tumbleweed while in front of me cabbies seem desperate for fares. There is no honking, no sirens, no on-the-street chatter. There is no sound except for the monotone dull fuzz circling around my brain.

There is nothing but a quiet city today.

I Will Go With You

I posted this short story of mine entitled "I Will Go with You" sometime this past spring on a day which work was crazy and I just needed something quick.

Today, World AIDS Day, I will re-post the story. No matter how many years pass, this event and the feelings which caused me to write this story, will always be relevant.

"I Will Go With You"

It was 30 seconds. Ok, maybe 45 seconds but 45 seconds at the most! That's how long Rob's cock was in my ass without a condom. I really hadn't thought much about it until 3 weeks later when Rob called me and told me he tested positive. Now I was biting my nails, tapping my foot and desperately searching my doctor's face for an answer.

“We were caked in lube and we were making out intensely and he just slipped in. That was it and we stayed like for those few moments before acknowledging we should grab a condom. In fact, after that we never ended up having sex! I'm such an idiot! How could I be so stupid?!”
My doctor put his hand on my knee. “Slow down, Eric, relax! You're going to make yourself sick! You say you were covered in lube?
I nodded yes in a groan and a whimper.
“And from what you say, he had very little precum, if any, and there was no ejaculate whatsoever in your ass?”
“Yeah,” I said swallowing, out of breath. I wiped the tears from my face with the palm of my hand.
“Eric, now listen to me,” my doctor commanded, looking me in the eye, “it's unprofessional for me to say this, but from what you're telling me, if you're telling me honestly, I don't think you have much to worry about. You were covered in lube, that can often be a barrier. You can't get HIV without precum or ejaculate and from what you say there was none. But unfortunately, you're going to have to wait a few more weeks before we can get an accurate test result. Now don't beat yourself up. You practice safe sex, we've talked about this before, you do everything right. Just try and relax.”

Yeah, easier said then done, Doc. I rolled my eyes and exited his office. I walked across campus banging those utterly intractable 45 seconds around my head. I replayed those moments over and over hoping for a different outcome or shred of evidence which might prove he actually never entered me. But I knew the truth. He had done so and there was nothing I could do about it. After all I learned, all I experienced, the friends around me. It was all worth shit. Like Icarus I had flown to close to the sun, I never was the person I thought I was and my head, was never above the water. The outgoingness, the handshakes, the warm meet and greets, circuit parties, all the new friends I made, trusted and believed in, hanging with the big boys, feeling as though I was on top of the world- all lead me to this! “Positive at 21,” I told myself, “what the hell have I gotten myself into?”

Phoenix Arizona, 2001
19 years old.

This is my first ever big gay gathering. It's a house party and men and drinks are everywhere. The pool outside is huge. Everyone is walking around in speedos or boardshorts and there's not a body in here that's at least ten years within my age. The majority of the men are gorgeous well built short haired hulks. “Just be yourself,” I tell myself. “Smile politely and shake people's hands. You got this.” My host greets me, “Thanks for coming up from Tucson to come hang with us, go mingle!” he says patting my ass and running off. He's on drugs. I know immediately.

I stand there, shifting my weight from one leg to another, biting my bottom lip and wishing I could shrink up into myself. Someone comes up behind me. “Hi,” he says. I turn around and am taken aback. My mouth left open. Standing before me is a man, brutally East Coast Italian, short cropped black hair, tan skin, muscles pushing their way through his skin, and sunglasses perfectly complementing his full black-and-silver goatee. “I'm Mark,” he extends his hand. “Eric,” I respond, “nice to meet you.”

He tells me the host of the party sent him over since I might not know anyone. We trade background stories, I knew he must have been from Tri-state area so I confess I'm from New Jersey. He tells me he's from Staten Island, the land of firemen and cops, and I melt further into my immediate crush on him. I tell him I'm in school at University of Arizona, studying film and smoking a lot of pot. “Nice, we'll have to do that later,” he says smirking. We talk further well into the bottom of my second drink when I cannot take it any more. I desperately want to pat his muscled, hairy tummy and I concoct a way to do so. I run my hand down his torso and onto his stomach.
“Geez man, what's your secret to such great abs?”
“HIV,” he responds.

I jerk my hand away in shock and surprise. It isn't that I am afraid to touch him, I know better than that but I don't know how to react. “Oh-I-uh,” I stammer.
“Don't sweat it, kid. It's ok. It's the meds I'm on. I have to take steroids to supplement my body's loss of muscle. That's my secret to great abs.”

I don't know what to say and I don't want to offend him. The guy is obviously healthy. It doesn't seem as though he is outwardly suffering from anything so I just nod and take a sip out of my cup which we both know is empty.

“Didn't mean to scare you, kid. Come on, let's grab another drink.”
Mark walks me around the party introducing me to people. There was about a 100 guys at the party and Mark makes me feel at ease by placing his hand on the small of my back, stroking my hair and referring to me as handsome. I began to feel better and drunker. Mark and I spend more time talking and getting to know one another as we smoke a joint outside on the patio chairs. He introduces me to Tim, his partner who is equally handsome, massive and hairy. Tim is hanging out with a bunch of his friends in the pool. I get up the nerve to ask Mark about how he became HIV positive. If I offend him I'll just apologize and blame it on my young naivety but he isn't. He simply shrugs and tells me. He used to be married, wife, kids the whole deal and would take occasional “business trips” to Miami and rendezvous with men. There was a hustler he'd meet. Mark said he asked the hustler's status and after he said it was negative they began having unsafe sex. That's when Mark tested positive, divorced his wife and met Tim. They've been together since.

“Sometimes, I think it was a good thing, Eric. Not that I should wish you ever become positive but it helped me take control of my life admit to what I liked and I met Tim. As funny as it sounds, I've never been happier.”

I believe him. There's no reason he should lie to me and I grasp intuitively that he looks at his status as a way of being more free from the life he used to lead.
I thank him for telling me. That I am just starting to enter the gay community and clank his glass saying, “Hey, if you're happy. I'm happy.” Tim jumps out of the pool and asks us what's up. “Oh, nothing” Mark told Tim, “I was just telling Eric how I became HIV+.”
“That story again,” Tim said smiling. “Come on Eric, I've got someone I want you to meet.”

Mark and Tim take me over to where a DJ is spinning records. They introduce me. His name is DJ Buck. He's a bigger guy, fat and has deep lines in his dimples, near his cheeks, like heavily scarred wrinkles. He asks me if I like dance music and I tell him I go to a lot of raves.
“Oh so like glow-sticks, pacifiers and visors,” he asks.
“Something like that,” I say smiling.
“Well I don't know anything about that but look what I got here, signed by Donna Summer herself!”
He puts a record in my hands and I study it. Above Donna Summer's signature is a song title big bold and black it is called, “I will go with you (Con te partiro.)”
“Cool,” I shrug, handing it back.
“Cool?!” he questions, “you young guys know nothing! How old are you anyway, twenty-two?”
“Nineteen,” I say smirking. “But twenty-two is fine by me.”

Almost in chorus Mark, Tim and Buck groan in a he's so young tone. Buck flips on the record and people come to the dance floor as if this song is a particular siren calling them. I watch Mark and Tim dance with each other, holding one another, kissing and staring into each other's eyes. Other men gather around me. I begin dancing myself. I start noticing similarities of the men around me. Many of them have the same features as Mark, six pack abs or muscle stomachs, deep creases in their face like Buck, and prominent veins jut from their legs and behind their masculine features and bright eyes lays a grief and great sadness that I cannot describe. A feeling that I would find many years later still steals its way into my soul. This stands as my first of many experiences being surrounded by HIV.

The song is joyous and emotional to the same degree. All of these men dancing are alive but how many friends aren't? 1? 10? Whole address books? I swallow these new feelings and emotions and just continue dancing. I am happy and it's been a bumpy road for me to get here.

As Donna Summer sings the lyrics, “I will go with you, I'll go where you lead me, forever true, forever and ever we'll stay, in love together.” I look over at Mark and Tim and decide to do just that.

In the following months in New York and throughout the rest of the year Mark and Tim would be my daddies. We joke they adopted me that day on the dance floor. They take me everywhere, teach me about life, about being gay, about staying negative, about what to expect and what I'd be exposed to. They never make me feel uncomfortable or awkward or pressured and they protect me from the men who they refer to as having, “bad vibes.” We never have sex and they never ask for it and it is their hands I hold above my head in triumph as a giant rainbow flag of lights is unveiled at my first New York Pride Pier Dance. They are the first to tell me everything. Just like a year later they are the first to tell me, Buck is dead.

I walked through campus sobbing. I was programmed not to have unprotected sex. Not to do this. But I did. And it happened. And yes, Rob had slid in, pushing his way past everything I had absorbed from Mark and Tim, and up into my body. “I'm sorry guys,” I whisper out into the dry Arizona air, “I'm not the wonder boy you think I am.”

Five weeks later, just as my doctor said, I tested negative. And now, five years later I continue to test negative. I've lost both Mark and Tim to crystal meth and haven't seen nor heard from any of the men I met at the Pheonix house party. But despite their own failures, the advice to which they themselves did not live up to, their spirits still speak to me, like ghosts, from an everlasting shaman's fire. That great sadness I saw, lying behind their eyes on that dance floor is something I still see and something I still feel.

I often find myself grieving the deaths of men I never knew and of friends I never had, because this virus, this disease, this struggle of my brothers haunts me beyond repair because negative test after negative test I can't help but feel that those 30 to 45 seconds are still ticking by.

The Fence

Sure. I was a restless, unfocused, could-not-concentrate youth, which my parents tried to cure by putting me on Ritalin twice a day, every day from the age of 7 to 17, but it wasn't so much misbehavior on my part as it was the inability to sit still.

My teachers all liked me. I wasn't known for calling out or disrupting class or bothering other children. Rather, it was my constant seat-shifting or "perching," as my second grade teacher Mrs. Wilson called it. To this day, even as I type this post, I'm sitting with one foot tucked underneath my tush and the other foot on the ground, pushing back and forth so that my swivel chair is in constant motion. When I stop to take a thought I instinctively take my hand off the keyboard, put my finger in my mouth and gnaw at my fingernail. Then, back to the keyboard.

"You're a smart kid, Eric. If only you would sit still for a little bit would you get out of these classes in no time," my 5th grade special education reading and math teacher, Mr. Cantalosi, said to me as I bit my bottom lip and looked down at the ground. But something that day clicked. For the first time I felt recognized, realized, noticed and was given encouragement opposed to instruction. It wasn't the "Oh Eric, would you just sit down and pay attention" mantra I had heard ad nauseum throughout my entire elementary school career. I felt like I could do this and immediately I got a sense of breaking out. It was a feeling of wanting to kick, of wanting to punch my way through and succeed. I wanted to prove people wrong. This is the same feeling that would visit me when my mother told me I'd be seeing a "special doctor" who wanted to "run some tests." It was around Passover when she delivered this news and despite her code words, at 10 years old, I knew exactly what a "special doctor" meant. I was going to a therapist! What? Did she not think that I watched TV for hours on end every day and knew what it meant when a kid was told he was about to see a special doctor? My family was hosting that year for Passover and because of this my mother was clearing out the cupboards to find the once-a-year fancy plates off which we eat. When she removed the giant stack of plates I crawled into the cupboard and slammed the door behind me and shouted, "I'm not going!" My Mother opened the door and said quite sternly, "You're going," and shut the door, leaving me in the cramped darkness. I remember the feeling, laying on my back, that I just wanted to kick. I just wanted to kick and scream and keep kicking until the walls of the kitchen island were split apart and broken. Of course, I did none of this but instead kept a feeling of rage very alive within the pit of my stomach. Therefore, it was no surprise on the first visit to the therapist when the doctor asked quietly and softly, "Well Eric, why do you think your mother brought you here today?" and I responded dryly and smugly, "She's sitting right next to me. Why don't you ask her?"

The Special Ed classroom I went to twice a day was located in a separate building on the school campus. When school started it was easy to hide the fact that I wasn't in any mainstream classes, but by the time winter came around, I could not keep it a secret any longer, for I had to wear or carry a jacket which inevitably told the other students milling about the hallways that I was one of those kids who left the building each day to go to one of those classes. Everyday I had to walk along side James, notoriously known for his semi-retardation and who caused a stir amongst the students each time a teacher would reprimand him for having his hands in his pants. I remember walking past a group of students waiting outside their class when one of them got out of line and said, "Eric is going to class with James? Boy, he must really be stupid!" Once again I felt the rage build up. "I am not stupid," I said to myself as if I were saying it to that particular student, "I have a learning disability!" Regardless, I remember wanting to punch the bricks at the entrance of the separate building.

The days carried on. Winter became spring and the support from Mr. Cantalosi continued. I had made a plan to sit as still as possible, to take my Ritalin, to do well and by next year I would be back in classes with the normal kids. However, being on Ritalin, seeing a therapist and walking with James everyday had afforded me the perspective of being on the outside of the fence looking in. Before the weather called for shorts I was carrying a sense of confidence about being different, about not being just like everyone else, and I had Mr. Cantalosi, a teacher nobody else had. My confidence grew. I began to like going to a therapist and being able to talk out loud about anything and play games and get to answer questions, not based on math or reading but about emotions and feelings. Through Dr. Elfenbein I had learned that I wasn't taking "stupid pills" and that I wasn't "dumb," it's just that my brain functioned differently from others. Soon enough I was explaining to other students and friends what taking Ritalin actually meant, and I enjoyed teaching them about how every one's brain works differently and James no longer was an embarrassment for me to walk to class with everyday. In fact, he made me laugh and became my friend. I stuck up for him when the other kids made comments. He was under my watch now and that made me feel good.

By 6th grade I was back in mostly mainstream classes. I was out about seeing a therapist and all my friends knew I took Ritalin. In fact, a new friend Matt was also taking Ritalin and we shared our thoughts and feelings about being on medication quite regularly. I had a big group of friends and we became famous for playing handball every day during recess. We played against a giant brick wall next to the exit steps from the gymnasium doors. Everyday that we played handball, a girl named Marsha would sit silently on the steps and read her books.

Marsha was a brainiac- she was socially awkward, chewed her hair, wore pink 4th grade-esque jump suits while we all wore jeans and shirts from The Gap. She didn't curse, she didn't know about making out yet, she didn't have any friends and all she did was read. She was an outcast. Too smart for her own good and too geeky to be understood. I would notice her more regularly than I wanted to and I tried to avoid looking at her because I knew, at this point, what looking at her would cause me to do: feel. And I also knew, if I felt, then we would both wind up disappointed. But I couldn't help it and so the day came that I approached her and invited her to play handball. She stood in line behind me. Our hearts both racing at the same speed just waiting for the inevitable outcry from one of my friends. Then there it was, said by none other than Sherry herself. Go figure. "No, she cannot play with us!" "There's too many of us already," was Sherry's excuse but all three of us knew the real reason was simply that Marsha wasn't cool enough and we were no United Nation accepting open applications for friendship. Marsha, used to this treatment, simply walked out of line, found her spot on the steps and resumed reading her Beverly Cleary. I remember the feeling that surged through me at this point. I related to Marsha. I knew what it was like to be on the outside of the fence. It wasn't fair! She deserved a chance just like everyone else. I wanted to rip Sherry's head off and make her feel the pain that we felt. It's been more or less 15 years since that incident and I still cannot forget how Sherry acted that day and how Marsha just assumed her role.

This feeling would continue to aid me through my childhood and up into my adolescence. The feeling of pride-as-an-outsider. It was the feeling I had when I picked up Punk Rock to sooth the relentless pain of the stress-related canker sores I would break out in when I was reminded of my same-sex attraction I so desperately tried to avoid.

The feeling would return as I read Jack Kerouac and learned that life doesn't have to follow a cookie cutter mold and that everyday can be its own special adventure. That life doesn't have to be an experience from one day to the next, but rather, an expansive journey with no end in sight.

The feeling would return when I was forced to grab my balls, suck it up and enter the LGBT Center at my college student union. It was the feeling that would force me out into the world, to ride my bike to IBT's, Tucson's premier gay club with my fake ID in hand, and just "do it!" This is the same feeling that would thrust me out into the world, meet people, shake hands, listen in and appreciate different points of view. To understand hippies and mushrooms and raves and music and goths and queers and punks and artists and people afflicted with disease. It would be this same feeling, which I would use as armor, to never again allow myself to return to that angst-ridden angry teenager with the painful canker sores and the plea to be just like everyone else.

It would be the same feeling when I would learn first hand of the thousands and thousands of deaths caused by AIDS and our government's slow response because the only people it seemed to affect were those on the "outside of the fence."

I've spent my entire life on the outside of the fence looking in and I would not have it any other way. So it was this same feeling that boiled up last night as I spoke with a gay man who is undecided, yet leaning toward McCain/Palin as his choice, because "gay is just one aspect of me." This feeling made me speak fast and point my finger in his face and shout, "They think they can pray away our lives! They don't give a shit about us! They would put us in camps! Don't let them put us in camps!" My friends pleaded for me to calm down. But I didn't want to. I wanted to kick and scream just like that little boy hiding in the cupboard because it isn't fair that they don't recognize our lives and feel like they can pray us away. They would put us in camps, I don't care how "radical" that sounds. Things like that have happened before, history will tell you, and I'll fight for my life to prevent myself from ever being on the inside of any of those fences.

The Reds

It's 4:45 in the afternoon and ominous clouds develop over my city. A storm is on it's way. It is inevitable.

In the distance another storm is brewing. Though this one is 8 weeks away. This storm is gathering, the clouds are darkening and in it's formation, the nation it stands under, is ripping apart at the seams. Under its formidable coagulation the citizens have been told to pick a side. Either Red or Blue.

I find myself a Blue and a true Blue at that. For the last 8 years the Reds have been in control with the power of two towers falling and the threat that others will fall, the resistance of accepting a moral code, a war in some far-off land and a man on a cross, twisted to unbelievable proportions standing as a symbol to all of what is right and what is wrong.

For this Blue who believes in true equal rights, a forfeit of personal wealth to support those who are in need, for one who sees love as love and not a moral code, for one who wants to end an aimless war and one who believes health care is the right of every citizen has heard terrible and hideous things. Things the like chant of "Drill! Drill! Drill!" as if the chorus were singing "We're right! We're right! We're right!" This Blue has heard the talking down of community leadership and a woman who refuses to look at her own daughter as an example of a flawed and old way of thinking. The hypocrisy already shows itself thick. But it doesn't matter, this Blue thinks to himself, resigned and tired. They have The Cross, he whispers to himself, and that Cross makes them think, rather whole-heatedly, that the mere believing in it, or the mere saying they believe in it, or the mere attendance of an every Sunday, makes them righter. More right than this Blue can ever be.

"Who are these people?" This Blue thinks to himself at the edge of hopelessness. "These people whose jobs are at the poverty level yet whose children are kept in Iraq, who are being hit hardest by a recession, who cannot afford health care - who are these people that keep voting the same powers to office?"

"They are people who carry an absence of introspection," a wise man muttered to The Blue. "They find no fault in themselves, yet only fault in others," he continued. "And you be careful, young Blue, for when they find their leader in power and the economy the same, if not worse, they will be unable to admit their own personal mistakes and they will come looking for villains. If history is any evidence to our future they will come for the immigrants, those who do not belong here, first. Then, after ridding those who are illegally here, they'll see that their situation has not become better and they will come for those who challenge their moral code. Those who live alternative lifestyles, who don't live by the literature of the unseen higher power, those who have educated themselves opposed to having been educated, will be next. Spit and fire and finger pointing and terrible accusations will become their daily bread and water. And, after those people have been rounded up, and the situation the same, if not worse, the other religions and thought processes will follow. For there is no room in this nation for anyone to think other than what The Reds are already thinking. They will be next. You mark my word."

"Then what must happen," the Blue asks the Wise Man, "must I delete myself from this nation?"

"No," the Wise Man responds, "for that would be abandonment and those who are like you, need you."

"But," The Blue tries to interject!

"But!" The Wise Man holds out his finger, not to the Blue's face but up toward the sky, "but, if and when you see these atrocities happen, and when you see this absence of introspection, you must do what you can, to raise your voice, and fight for the nation that is rightfully yours."

Tuesday

I find myself bouncing around locations like a pinball hitting a bumper. NYC, Fire Island, NYC (reprise) and now NJ for a few days. I figure I should spend the extra time I have off with my parents. I don't spend "city" money or keep "city" schedules when out here with Mom, Dad, a full fridge and the crickets of a suburban summer.

Life, a little less slower. A vacation from vacation. I'm sitting down to 6:30 dinners of London broil, spinach and corn on the cob. The big debate my mother and I had this evening was nothing more painstaking than choosing between ice cream or iced coffee.

There are stars out here. Slight punctures of darkness so easily forgotten in the city yet so commonplace here that their brightness goes unnoticed, as does the incessant chirp of cicadas and the rustling of lush leaves in the heavy-humid breeze.

Right now, the room is lit only by the blue-black flicker of the television airing the Olympics and my father snoring through the commercials. The hum of central air conditioning lingers above me and the couch is cotton-like and welcoming.

Tomorrow as part of my vacation fueled, aimless, do-what-ever coup de etat I'll go to Sandy Hook beach and re submerge myself within the with-it culture. I'll leave behind the sticky air and quiet hardly traveled pavement and trade it in for sand and noise and jelly fish and trash.

It'll be around 6 when I get home. The time of day when yellow touches upon gold and Mom walks in the door sweating and pink from a brisk walk or game of tennis. She will prepare dinner after taking a shower and Dad will leave the computer or his sport's scores to come to the table. We'll sit down and pass the salad with stories of the day and flick the salt shaker in between anecdotes. When we finish mom will clear the plates and Dad will return to television. I'll curl up on the couch, let the cushions take my form, and try just for a moment, to lie as still as this house, which stands in the grass under the suburban stars.

I Will Go with You

Work is outrageous this week. Because of this I thought I would post a story of mine that I wrote this year and performed at Rapture Cafe's Reading for Filth.

"I Will go With You"

It was 30 seconds. Ok, maybe 45 seconds but 45 seconds at the most! That's how long Rob's cock was in my ass without a condom. I really hadn't thought much about it until 3 weeks later when Rob called me and told me he tested positive. Now I was biting my nails, tapping my foot and desperately searching my doctor's face for an answer.

“We were caked in lube and we were making out intensely and he just slipped in. That was it and we stayed like for those few moments before acknowledging we should grab a condom. In fact, after that we never ended up having sex! I'm such an idiot! How could I be so stupid?!”
My doctor put his hand on my knee. “Slow down, Eric, relax! You're going to make yourself sick! You say you were covered in lube?
I nodded yes in a groan and a whimper.
“And from what you say, he had very little precum, if any, and there was no ejaculate whatsoever in your ass?”
“Yeah,” I said swallowing, out of breathe. I wiped the tears from my face with the palm of my hand.
“Eric, now listen to me,” my doctor commanded, looking me in the eye, “it's unprofessional for me to say this, but from what you're telling me, if you're telling me honestly, I don't think you have much to worry about. You were covered in lube, that can often be a barrier. You can't get HIV without precum or ejaculate and from what you say there was none. But unfortunately, you're going to have to wait a few more weeks before we can get an accurate test result. Now don't beat yourself up. You practice safe sex, we've talked about this before, you do everything right. Just try and relax.”

Yeah, easier said then done, Doc. I rolled my eyes and exited his office. I walked across campus banging those utterly intractable 45 seconds around my head. I replayed those moments over and over hoping for a different outcome or shred of evidence which might prove he actually never entered me. But I knew the truth. He had done so and there was nothing I could do about it. After all I learned, all I experienced, the friends around me. It was all worth shit. Like Icarus I had flown to close to the sun, I never was the person I thought I was and my head, was never above the water. The outgoingness, the handshakes, the warm meet and greets, circuit parties, all the new friends I made, trusted and believed in, hanging with the big boys, feeling as though I was on top of the world- all lead me to this! “Positive at 21,” I told myself, “what the hell have I gotten myself into?”

Phoenix Arizona, 2001
19 years old.

This is my first ever big gay gathering. It's a house party and men and drinks are everywhere. The pool outside is huge. Everyone is walking around in speedos or boardshorts and there's not a body in here that's at least ten years within my age. The majority of the men are gorgeous well built short haired hulks. “Just be yourself,” I tell myself. “Smile politely and shake people's hands. You got this.” My host greets me, “Thanks for coming up from Tucson to come hang with us, go mingle!” he says patting my ass and running off. He's on drugs. I know immediately.

I stand there, shifting my weight from one leg to another, bitting my bottom lip and wishing I could shrink up into myself. Someone comes up behind me. “Hi,” he says. I turn around and am taken aback. My mouth left open. Standing before me is a man, brutally East Coast Italian, short cropped black hair, tan skin, muscles pushing their way through his skin, and sunglasses perfectly complementing his full black-and-silver goatee. “I'm Mark,” he extends his hand. “Eric,” I respond, “nice to meet you.”

He tells me the host of the party sent him over since I might not know anyone. We trade background stories, I knew he must have been from Tri-state area so I confess I'm from New Jersey. He tells me he's from Staten Island, the land of firemen and cops, and I melt further into my immediate crush on him. I tell him I'm in school at University of Arizona, studying film and smoking a lot of pot. “Nice, we'll have to do that later,” he says smirking. We talk further well into the bottom of my second drink when I cannot take it any more. I desperately want to pat his muscled, hairy tummy and I concoct a way to do so. I run my hand down his torso and onto his stomach.
“Geez man, what's your secret to such great abs?”
“HIV,” he responds.

I jerk my hand away in shock and surprise. It isn't that I am afraid to touch him, I know better than that but I don't know how to react. “Oh-I-uh,” I stammer.
“Don't sweat it, kid. It's ok. It's the meds I'm on. I have to take steroids to supplement my body's loss of muscle. That's my secret to great abs.”

I don't know what to say and I don't want to offend him. The guy is obviously healthy. It doesn't seem as though he is outwardly suffering from anything so I just nod and take a sip out of my cup which we both know is empty.

“Didn't mean to scare you, kid. Come on, let's grab another drink.”
Mark walks me around the party introducing me to people. There was about a 100 guys at the party and Mark makes me feel at ease by placing his hand on the small of my back, stroking my hair and referring to me as handsome. I began to feel better and drunker. Mark and I spend more time talking and getting to know one another as we smoke a joint outside on the patio chairs. He introduces me to Tim, his partner who is equally handsome, massive and hairy. Tim is hanging out with a bunch of his friends in the pool. I get up the nerve to ask Mark about how he became HIV positive. If I offend him I'll just apologize and blame it on my young naivety but he isn't. He simply shrugs and tells me. He used to be married, wife, kids the whole deal and would take occasional “business trips” to Miami and rendezvous with men. There was a hustler he'd meet. Mark said he asked the hustler's status and after he said it was negative they began having unsafe sex. That's when Mark tested positive, divorced his wife and met Tim. They've been together since.

“Sometimes, I think it was a good thing, Eric. Not that I should wish you ever become positive but it helped me take control of my life admit to what I liked and I met Tim. As funny as it sounds, I've never been happier.”

I believe him. There's no reason he should lie to me and I grasp intuitively that he looks at his status as a way of being more free from the life he used to lead.
I thank him for telling me. That I am just starting to enter the gay community and clank his glass saying, “Hey, if you're happy. I'm happy.” Tim jumps out of the pool and asks us what's up. “Oh, nothing” Makr told Tim, “I was just telling Eric how I became HIV+.”
“That story again,” Tim said smiling. “Come on Eric, I've got someone I want you to meet.”

Mark and Tim take me over to where a DJ is spinning records. They introduce me. His name is DJ Buck. He's a bigger guy, fat and has deep lines in his dimples, near his cheeks, like heavily scarred wrinkles. He asks me if I like dance music and I tell him I go to a lot of raves.
“Oh so like glow-sticks, pacifiers and visors,” he asks.
“Something like that,” I say smiling.
“Well I don't know anything about that but look what I got here, signed by Donna Summer herself!”
He puts a record in my hands and I study it. Above Donna Summer's signature is a song title big bold and black it is called, “I will go with you (Con te partiro.)”
“Cool,” I shrug, handing it back.
“Cool?!” he questions, “you young guys know nothing! How old are you anyway, twenty-two?”
“Nineteen,” I say smirking. “But twenty-two is fine by me.”

Almost in chorus Mark, Tim and Buck groan in a he's so young tone. Buck flips on the record and people come to the dance floor as if this song is a particular siren calling them. I watch Mark and Tim dance with each other, holding one another, kissing and staring into each other's eyes. Other men gather around me. I begin dancing myself. I start noticing similarities of the men around me. Many of them have the same features as Mark, six pack abs or muscle stomachs, deep creases in their face like Buck, and prominent veins jut from their legs and behind their masculine features and bright eyes lays a grief and great sadness that I cannot describe. A feeling that I would find many years later still steals its way into my soul. This stands as my first of many experiences being surrounded by HIV.

The song is joyous and emotional to the same degree. All of these men dancing are alive but how many friends aren't? 1? 10? Whole address books? I swallow these new feelings and emotions and just continue dancing. I am happy and it's been a bumpy road for me to get here.

As Donna Summer sings the lyrics, “I will go with you, I'll go where you lead me, forever true, forever and ever we'll stay, in love together.” I look over at Mark and Tim and decide to do just that.

In the following months in New York and throughout the rest of the year Mark and Tim would be my daddies. We joke they adopted me that day on the dance floor. They take me everywhere, teach me about life, about being gay, about staying negative, about what to expect and what I'd be exposed to. They never make me feel uncomfortable or awkward or pressured and they protect me from the men who they refer to as having, “bad vibes.” We never have sex and they never ask for it and it is their hands I hold above my head in triumph as a giant rainbow flag of lights is unveiled at my first New York Pride Pier Dance. They are the first to tell me everything. Just like a year later they are the first to tell me, Buck is dead.

I walked through campus sobbing. I was programmed not to have unprotected sex. Not to do this. But I did. And it happened. And yes, Rob had slid in, pushing his way past everything I had absorbed from Mark and Tim, and up into my body. “I'm sorry guys,” I whisper out into the dry Arizona air, “I'm not the wonder boy you think I am.”

Five weeks later, just as my doctor said, I tested negative. And now, five years later I continue to test negative. I've lost both Mark and Tim to crystal meth and haven't seen nor heard from any of the men I met at the Pheonix house party. But despite their own failures, the advice to which they themselves did not live up to, their spirits still speak to me, like ghosts, from an everlasting shaman's fire. That great sadness I saw, lying behind their eyes on that dance floor is something I still see and something I still feel.

I often find myself grieving the deaths of men I never knew and of friends I never had, because this virus, this disease, this struggle of my brothers haunts me beyond repair because negative test after negative test I can't help but feel that those 30 to 45 seconds are still ticking by.

Food Poisoned!

For the past couple of months I have been tormented by these cupcakes at a local cafe/bakery. These cupcakes are the most gorgeous things you ever saw. Nice moist, sturdy looking cake with about two inches of thick creamy frosting on top with sprinkles or peanut butter cups or butterscotch. Every time I pass by this cafe the cupcakes scream at me to buy them. I stand there over the cases like a child at a pet store puppy display thinking if I should just say, "oh to hell with it!" I'll get one. But the summer is here and I know just half of those cupcakes will plague me with two full days of gym going and buyer's remorse. That is until, Saturday night when I said, "to hell with it" and got one.

I awoke Sunday morning around 6AM feeling as though the center of a cyclone was in the right side of my stomach. Strange because I took it easy on Saturday night and didn't have anything to drink. I rolled side to side trying to see if the cyclone was just a thing or the way I happened to be sleeping but rolling back and forth only made me feel worse. And then it hit me, "yup, I'm going to hurl!"

I sprinted my way to the bathroom and crouched down on my knees just in time for last night's dinner and cupcake to chunk it's way up my esophagus and out into the toilet bowl. I let out a few good heaves, just enough to see what hasn't been fully digested since the previous night and let my body catch a few breathes. Heavy sweat began dripping out of my brow and I held my forehead against the cool ceramic sink. I felt better, temporarily. I checked and double checked whether or not I had anything to drink the night before. Nope, clear. I guess it's just a thing. I went back to my bedroom, crashed and didn't wake until 10AM.

10AM: The nausea was unbearable. I knew the slightest move was going to cause another horrific upchuck. I clenched my teeth and in a fast movement swung my legs over the side of the bed. I didn't even have time for a catch-up breath for the puke-express was already ahead of schedule. I mad-dashed to the bathroom once again and spewed forth whatever was left of last night's dinner. Oooh! Onions and broccoli! Oh! And there are those sprinkles! I took a slight whiff for two reasons. 1) taking a whiff of your own puke enables your body to get re-sick enough that you just puke out what's waiting to happen in the next 10 minutes and 2) I like to do things that judge my own personal strength. I asked myself, "can you do it? Can you really do it? Come on, do it! Sniff it! Sniff your own puke!" And I did, and it worked, yeah I know it's a little 2girls1cup of me but I was again, temporarily, relieved.

11:30AM: Eric, The Roommate gets up and I meet him in the kitchen. "Dude, what's up?" "Oh man, I don't know. I think I got food poisoning last night." "Was it the cupcake," he asked? And then it dawned on me- the cupcake did taste a bit strange but I figured it was all the butter and then as soon as that thought streamed across my mind, the cyclone in my belly erupted and there I was again crouched over the toilet bowl, spewing forth the only thing my stomach had left in it- bile and dry heaves. This time it hurt but then I kinda shrugged thinking, "well hey, at least my abs will look good for the rest of the week!" It's strange how, in the midst of puking, I discover how truly shallow I am. Eric, The Roommate (bless his heart) ran out and got me Red Gatorade and Pepto Bismol, neither of which stayed down.
"Maybe it's a stomach virus," he said.
"Maybe YOU'RE a stomach virus," I responded in a half joking/half over-it retort. And with that Eric, The Roommate picked up his dirty laundry, some overnight clothes and headed down to his parent's beach house in Long Beach Island, New Jersey.

So there I was, left alone in my small apartment with nothing but my puke and my BO to keep me company. The rest of the day was spent in foggy haze between sleeping and drinking ginger ale, sleeping and drinking ginger ale. I felt as though I gave my body sufficient rest and by the time I awoke from my third nap around 9:30PM I was well enough to watch a few episodes of The Office and I finally crashed into deep slumber around 11:30.

Today was much better. I took the day off from work as I am not 100% just yet but I should be ripe and ready to go by tomorrow. There is a silver lining to all of this though. After all is said and done, after the amount of crouching and hurls and toilet bowl flushings, I suppose I'll never be tormented by those damn cupcakes again!