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March 16, 1996
The chillblains of AIDS, like stalagma, may cut -- but at least I know I'm here.
Jack Green said that he and David, his lover -- and some other fellow who turned out to be a Christian -- were going to Kurt's to plan a trip to a motorcycle club run some months hence. Fine by me. I knew Kurt then only by sight and sound, nothing more. I knew of his home only by the phrase, "you should see his house, man." Jack had warned me to be alert as I walked through the door ... but alertness turned out to be entirely insufficient -- the mad rush of objects, cascading, crowding my sight, leaving me speechless. Only at the top of the stairs, did I point to a Barong mask to say, "That's from Bali." But that's all I had to say.
More on Kurt's home of mysteries soon enough. For now, what is important is that we made an agreement to go to the Southern Comfort bike run together with Jack and David, and that Kurt solicited my aid in setting up his magic tent. A few days later, I left for Indonesia, planning to return only days before the run. During my stay in East Java, I wrote Kurt a long letter, copied to a number of my friends, that consisted of a protracted erotic fantasy. Perhaps it was the experience of that long, hot Javanese afternoon's literary reverie that dulled my memory of Kurt's place ... whatever ... but when I returned to meet him in Big Basin State Park, I had somehow failed to make the connection between how he lived and how he would hold court in the redwoods. I didn't see him erect the tent because, as it happened, he had arrived hours before me, shlepped a van-load of stuff up a hill, and manufactured the whole mystery world that was his portable tent in an afternoon of toil and song. I first saw it as moonlit silhouette of woven walls, feather-crowned poles, be- bannered, with pond. His magical world.
And once the moon had set, and the day was again upon us, Kurt and I talked in a haze of incense as I lay upon a divan, as he reclined in an weaving-swaddled easy-chair, as sheer drapes shimmered in forest breeze. We talked about living, about fantasy, about retreating from the "madness". In the midst of our reverie, as if nothing at all, he told me, "I have AIDS." He told me, "It's the best thing that could have ever happened to me." But that second statement I only recorded for future reference, because as he spoke it I was choking back the chill of his words. Even as I shivered, I vowed to grab as much time I could with him until he died because he would be my teacher in the mysteries of making your way. But I knew he would die, and I imagined him dead not only then, but often thereafter.
I said this wouldn't be sanctimonious, and I've lied. Maybe I should play this as if he were my Yorick ... as in "Poor Kurt Yorick, I knew him well, and now I fondle his mortal remains, grabbing the privilege of the living over the dead. Poor Kurt Yorick, were he here, he'd smack me upside the head, say 'get yer fucking fingers out of my eye sockets.' But no, poor Kurt Yorick, my invading fingers are all that can see for thee." And, since then, I've had occasion to hold Kurt's ashes, and I scattered a fourth of them in a grove of Eucalyptus trees which encircle the cement base for the old eponymous tank on Tank Hill. And, since then, I go to Tank Hill, I thank him there on the night of the full moon. I remember the gossamer assertion that things are the best they could possibly be.
His wasn't actually the first chill of its kind. Rick Jacobi, the poet, occasioned the first chill. And Michael Merrill caused me the most chill when he caught me by phone at seven in the morning as I dressed for school. Nic, my second lover, lay asleep, and so I took the phone into the closet, drawing the door not so much that a sliver of light mightn't illuminate my dressing; and Michael said, "I think I have cancer." Chill. "I think it's AIDS." And I saw him right then dying -- and that, not for the last time. That closeted experience of the chill, alone among the chills, occasioned rejection. It would not happen, even as I glanced at him dead in my mind's unfaltering eye.
When Kurt told me he had AIDS, I did an accounting, as is the wont of those who like to speculate. I counted how many I would lose, and did the odds on how soon I'd lose them. I said six, and indeed, it's been six, although I sometimes substitute between two of my dead for one spot. I said they'd all be gone before I got my PhD. As to the men I've already mentioned: Jack is dead, David is dead, one of the other men to whom I sent the dirty letter is dead, Rick is dead and Michael is dead. And Tom is dead, and Ram is dead, and Gaetano is dead, and Robin is dead, and Stan is dead, and even some of my enemies are dead. But the six are, in order of their demise, Michael, Jack, Kurt, Gaetano, Tom and Robin, but sometimes Ram instead of Tom, which makes it Michael, Jack, Kurt, Gaetano, Robin and Ram last of all.
As I write this, I stop and try to think of more dead guys so as again to feel that crisp enervation when my mind withholds the name of another one dead. A moment's scrounging reminiscence ... well, there's Martin Xero, the artist and cappuccinist at the Flore; he's dead. And Joseph -- about whom I found out from the paper cold, a year after I last saw him at Cody's -- is dead. And that kid that Nic and I had the threeway with, all of twenty-three, and he carried a pistol which meant that I wouldn't let him back in the house no matter how sexy. He's dead, fortunately never having discharged the pistol. What was his name? Would I know his skull.
As I search for names, I remember occasions in which I have stood in a room with a group of men ... and I am the only one still alive.
Poor Pistolboy, I held that skull, and I confess, even at that moment, I imagined him dead, just to experience those blains again. [Cip was your name ... cute like you.]
So I call them "The Deaths", and I sleep with them, and walk with them, and I write with them. My fingers will probe their eyes again so only that I might tell their stories.
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