Dolosse

tintinnabulum

David was an architect who loved acid.
Jussi tended bar and composed jazz.
Mack was a hotel guard, an ex-priest.

This is how I think of them, a single stanza, defining them by first name, occupation, and hobby. I don’t think of them often, and when I do I handle each memory quickly, a mid-air juggling of recollections. David loved to hold hands, especially when it was dangerous. Jussi told good stories, all middle, with meager beginnings and endings. Mack begged me to grow a beard, he wanted me to be his cowboy. It’s good to toss them in the air. It lightens the load.

✦

Jussi took me on a trip to a small resort, out in the countryside. We drove five hours on the motorcycle, down rural routes and state roads. Late September. The weather had just turned cool. I rode on the back, arms around Jussi’s chest. When there was no one else on the road, I stood on the back seat, holding onto Jussi’s leather jacket at the shoulders. The dare-devil stuff was O.K. by him, but he insisted on me wearing a helmet. He laughed at me, shaking his head. When we reached the hotel I filled an enormous porcelain tub with hot water. Covered with dead bugs, sweat and dust, Jussi laid down on the bed. As I lowered myself into the water, Jussi started snoring.

✦

Mack was a big man, older than Jussi or David. During the day he worked as a hotel guard. Two nights a week he worked the door at Spike’s. I followed him around for three weeks, hanging out by the door, pretending to watch the crowd. One night I followed Mack a little too closely and bumped into him. I bumped into Mack hard enough that he had to put out his arms, grabbing me before I could fall. After last call, we walked around the neighborhood a while, wandering up and down alleys. I talked about how much I loved the Texas desert, and Mack talked about how handsome he thought I was. Mack lifted me up and sat me down on the hood of a pickup truck. When I felt Mack’s beard against my lips, I closed my eyes. I was feeling uncluttered. Mack was a mighty fine kisser.

✦

I don’t like to think about it. We never used a condom. David was on the bed, on his stomach, one arm underneath, gripping his prick. I was behind him, fucking him hard. We were making a mess, but we didn’t care. Vodka got in the way of that sort of worry. I was enjoying myself, I usually felt like I didn’t know what I was doing. There was an easy rhythm to my fucking, persuasive, like knuckles rapping at a windowpane. Just enough pressure, reliable speed, an even tempo that said Come on – it’s me. Let me in. All of a sudden I did something wrong – did I push too hard, was the angle too high? David let out a loud yelp. I pulled myself out in a hurry and laid down on top of him. “Are you O.K.? Are you all right?” I hated the sight of fresh blood, the deep color of panic; I hated the thought that I’d hurt anyone.

✦

In Chicago, it was a different job, another apartment, every year. Sometimes twice a year. I got up at six to be downtown by seven, and by seven thirty I would proofread, or edit, or design. Filing, typing, answering phones, bookkeeping. Bullshit work. Get home at seven, take a nap, eat dinner. Go out. Meet friends. Dance and drink until three. Take a cab home and then, up at six again. I was twenty-one. I was looking for a kind of portal, a doorway. It was outside of me. I was sure of this. Inside someone else, it was waiting. All I had to do was find it: step through it, and my world would be unmade. Disassembled. Then, I would begin again.

✦

Jussi loved Tom Waits, Jimmy Scott, Sara Vaughn. He sang along with them, badly, in his thick Finnish accent. When he came to the States, he explained, he hadn’t had meat in twelve years. He was hitchhiking cross-country, out of money, out of traveler’s checks, no credit. He was waiting at a roadside diner with his thumb out, trying not to faint from hunger. An elderly couple from Michigan gave him a lift and a cheeseburger. Half an hour down the highway, he leaned out the window, heaving against the side of the car. It is the greatest cultural contribution ever made, he told me. Meaning jazz, and not the cheeseburger.

✦

“Yes,” I told my mother. “Yes, I am.” She disagreed with me again. “No, no you’re not.” We were standing in the hallway, shouting. When I tried to hold her, she pulled away from me and sat down in a chair in the corner furthest from where I was standing. She was shaking and sobbing, she crossed her arms against her chest and shuddered. She was born and raised in a hole of a town in the middle of Oklahoma. Barely made it out of high school. She wasn’t an articulate woman. I mention this because she shocked me then, when she opened her mouth and said,


“I cannot imagine a more loathsome,

hideous, disgusting thing

than one man touching another.”


I could think of plenty, but I didn’t tell her that. I slammed the door behind me, got in the car and headed for the highway. I drove in the slow lane, cramped with anger, trying not to run the car off the road. One day, I thought, my entire life will consist of moments beyond her imagining. The world I had known until then fell away. Like the too-small skin of a snake, or the down on the horns of a buck. You find the right rock, a rough stump, and with a little friction, you’re good as new.

✦

We went to the Pride Parade together. On the hottest day in June we peeled off our shirts, tucked them into the waistband at the back of our shorts, we wandered up and down the parade route with plastic cups of beer in our hands. I had meant to go with David, but when I left him to fetch drinks I found Mack waiting in line alone. Before we got back, Jussi snuck up behind me, lifting me off of my feet, spinning me in circles. That day we were a clan, we passed around kisses and sweaty hugs generously, indiscriminately. I drank too much and sang – to the tune of the birthday song – Happy Pride Day To You, Happy Pride Day To You, and suddenly there was Kirby with his camera, lining us up for a shot. I stood in the crook of Mack’s arm, one ear on his shoulder; David stood to my left, he stuck his hand down the front of my shorts; Jussi was behind me, nibbling on my neck. Somewhere in the crowd behind us I heard a man say, “Such a handsome family!”

✦

Mack would not reconcile belief with practice. He believed in God, and he loved to fuck butt, and he always figured he’d go to hell for that. It never made much sense to me. “Properly executed,” I reasoned, “anal intercourse generates considerable pleasure for everyone involved. If God hadn’t meant for men to fuck, he shouldn’t have invented the prostate.” It was an interesting argument, Mack admitted, but he still believed it was a sin. He rolled me onto my back and fucked me then, gloriously, a supplication of grunts and groans.


Mack closed his eyes; sweat trickled down his neck into the hair on his chest. Reaching up I rested the palm of my hand there, over his heart, a firepit of flesh. I felt it knocking, steady and firm. Strong. After we came, Mack leaned forward and stroked my chin. “Let it grow, would you?” he said. I had a small, warm puddle in my navel and another up my gut. “Nah,” I said. “It grows out all wrong.”

✦

David liked to go for walks alone, very late at night. If he did too much acid, he brought me along with him, tightly clutching my hand. We wandered up and down the lively streets, the blocks with the tranny hookers. David knew them by name, he smiled and waved and passed out cigarettes. One night a truck went by, very fast. It squealed to a stop and backed up to where we were walking, hand in hand, underneath pitiful lamplight.


The passenger window rolled down. “Jesus Goddman Christ!” the man said. “Fuckin’ Pussy Faggots!” Leaning sideways, he spat through the window at me. David threw a cross-punch with his free hand. Knuckle on nose made a wet, snapping sound. I reached in and snatched the man’s cap off his head. Running around a corner, we ducked into an alley. We took the back alleys all the way home.

✦

I followed Jussi into his bathroom. This was the first place I ever sang for him. When Jussi unbuttoned his jeans and started pissing, I stood behind him and watched. “I’ve never tried one of those,” I said, meaning the foreskin that Jussi pulled back. Looking over his shoulder, Jussi chuckled, “What – you’ve never used a toilet?” When he finished I wrapped my arms around his chest and sang in his ear, slowly, sweetly.


“How lovely,” said Jussi, surprise in his voice. “Where did you learn how to sing like that?” I squeezed him tightly. “Sunday school,” I replied, and when he laughed at that I felt it in my fingertips, muted tapping from inside a door, a guest on the outside, waiting. The acoustics of the tile were remarkable. We spent the evening in the bathroom, only coming out to fetch beer.

✦

For seven dollars twenty-five cents an hour I worked in a queer bookstore. I wrote advertisements for the store, and reviews of fiction for local papers. Did the bookkeeping. Checked invoices, ordered more stock. Every day, for several hours, I unpacked books and shelved them. I used an exacto knife to cut through the packing tape. I’d cut the ends first, then tear the flap down the middle. Otherwise, the books might get slashed.


I was counting books, checking the quantity against the packing slip in my left hand. It was a large book, with full-color photos. What they call photo-essay. Expensive. On the glossy dust-cover I saw Kirby’s full name alongside his latest moniker, Photographer/Editor. We were eight books short. I picked up a copy, flipping through pages. I passed by a page, then turned back to it. There was David, in a hospital, bloated from medication, his skin an ochre, luminescent shade. His body was distorted, discolored, like a limb under heavy, sulfurous water. Mack was near the back of the book, in a coffin surrounded by priests, and Jussi had a two-page spread, propped up with pillows on his favorite sofa. I sat on a stack of books. When I left them I was angry, dissatisfied. My disappointment had me crossing streets and ducking out back doors, anything that I could do to keep them away. I hadn’t talked to them in over a year.

✦

David loved to pick fights; he took care of the hookers.

Jussi loved to sing in the bathroom; loudly, off-key.

Mack loved to fuck, even though it was a sin.

I try to think of them this way, to remember them by what they loved. I think of them often. Sometimes, when I walk alone very late at night, I sing something slow and blue for them. David was twenty-four when he died. Jussi was thirty-nine. Mack was forty-four. I turn the memories over and over again, I pass them back and forth from palm to palm. Like a half-dollar, or a whistle. Things you can keep in a pocket, I think. Things that stay warm when they’re close to your skin. When I reach in and finger them, they tumble against each other. They make a bright, muffled, jingling sound.