A Way With Words - Chapter 25
Late March 1988
Ennis didn't dwell on Jack Twist's cryptic postscript that week. He was too busy with the Tamils - trying to assuage Ravi's anxiety about his case and fielding Kaj's chatty calls in the evening - to give it a lot of thought. He did find himself studying Lureen at work. She was beautiful but in so many ways she signaled Stay away. Was it because of Jack Twist that she was in self-exile from love-land ?
On Saturday evening, he went with Jay to a special party. The group of Eliot’s friends who had worked on the AIDS quilt panel for him were gathering one last time to add the finishing touches. The next day it would be displayed after the Quaker meeting before being sent to the Names Project organizers, who would sew it into a block of eight panels. In June the whole quilt would begin a tour of twenty US cities. Ennis thought that was fitting, because from what he'd seen of Eliot's apartment he could tell the man had loved to travel.
Jay took pictures of the panel that night to distribute to Eliot's friends. Ennis hadn't known him well, so most of the images and objects sewn onto the fabric meant nothing to him. He did recognize the shape of the floor to ceiling window from the Beacon Hill meeting house. Sewn onto it was a pair of red suspenders. He seemed to have been very fond of them. Ennis remembered he'd been wearing that pair the first time they'd met nearly four years before, and that he’d insisted on calling them "braces."
On Sunday morning Jay asked Ennis if he wanted to come to the Quaker meeting with her, but he knew Eliot would be on everyone's mind. Three years on he was still a presence among them. Ennis declined her invitation; he would do the laundry and then maybe they could take a long bike ride in the afternoon, since the weather was fine. But he knew he wasn't going because he felt guilty about the things he'd found among Eliot's belongings. And kept.
Late the next morning, however, as he was stuffing the dirty laundry in the canvas bag, Kaj called. He told Ennis he'd played soccer the previous afternoon with some other Tamils and was hurt.
"My leg is broken," he complained.
"What? Broken?"
"A guy kick me in the top of my leg and it's killing me."
"Oh, your thigh hurts?"
"Yes. I put some heat cream on it but still it hurts."
Ennis was about to ask more details about his injury but Kaj suddenly seemed to change the subject.
"Ennis, I want to ask you a personal question." His tone was hesitant, and Ennis felt his own heartrate speed up.
"Okay."
"Were you born head first or feet first?"
"Uuuhhh...well... ummmm... neither. My... uh... my mother had a Caesarian." Whatever vague dread he'd had about the personal question to come was replaced by bafflement.
"I'm not understanding."
"I was turned around the wrong way so they had to cut her open to get me out."
"They do all that because you are just turn around?"
"Well, yeah. Otherwise it would've been a difficult birth."
"So if they didn't cut her open you come out feet first."
"Yeah, I guess eventually." It wasn't an image he cared to dwell on. "So why do you want to know?"
"In Sri Lanka if a baby is born feet first he will have power in his feet. If you hurt yourself you find somebody who is born like that and ask them to put their feet on you."
Ennis snorted.
"It's true! In my village there is a young girl like that and this guy is hurt his back working so they bring her. He lie down on his stomach and she stand there next to him and put her foot on his back for some time and then the pain stop."
"If you say so."
"So maybe you are having this power even if you come straight out of stomach?"
"I kind of doubt it."
"Well maybe we can try? I'm really hurting."
Ennis rode his bike to Harvard Square and then took the Red Line to Dorchester. While pressing the doorbell of the residence, he wondered how he would explain this mission to Jay later. Kaj answered the door wearing what looked like a long brown skirt with big gold flowers and a sky blue tank top that contrasted pleasingly with his brown skin. He grinned when he saw Ennis on the doorstep.
"Thank god you are here, Doctor Feet! I'm needing you bad."
Ennis couldn't stop staring at the skirt that reached to his ankles. "Is that a sarong?"
"We call it a lungi," Kaj said. "Very comfortable."
Kaj led him up a flight of stairs and down the hall to a simply furnished bedroom with two single beds against opposite walls. His Ugandan roommate was at church, he said.
"Sit on my bed and take off your shoes. I lie down here."
Kaj stretched out on the floor parallel with the bed and hiked up his lungi to just below his groin. Ennis sat on the edge of the mattress and removed one red Converse.
"Sock too," Kaj said. "Must be skin on skin."
Once his foot was bare, Ennis wasn't sure what to do but Kaj obviously did. He grasped Ennis' ankle and told him to lift his foot, then guided it to his leg.
"You have very hot foot. I think this going to work," Kaj said, grinning up at him as he planted the sole of Ennis' foot high on his thigh. He held on to Ennis' ankle with his left hand, lay his other hand on top of Ennis' foot and closed his eyes. His hands were cool against Ennis' skin.
Ennis thought he should close his own eyes but he found it impossible, just as it was impossible to drag his eyes away from Kaj's body stretched out at his feet. He felt Kaj's thigh muscles flexing under his foot and the pad of his thumb brushing rythmically against his heel. The sensations were... undeniably erotic and troubling - could Kaj feel his pulse speeding up under his hands? Shit, he could even feel an erection coming on.
The doorknob rattled. Ennis jerked his foot away. At the same moment Kaj shoved the hem of his lungi over his thighs. He didn't sit up, but put his hands behind his head and crossed his ankles, as though lounging on the floor was perfectly normal. The door opened and Ennis saw mild surprise in the dark face in the doorway.
"What are you doing?" The young man was dressed in a midnight blue suit; the white of his collar and cuffs seemed to glow in the harsh overhead light. He was gripping a small black bible.
Ennis wracked his brain for an innocent explanation to offer. Kaj, though, seemed to believe the truth was perfectly acceptable.
"I hurt my leg playing football. Ennis was born feet first so I ask him to put his foot on it for healing."
The Ugandan stepped into the room and looked down at Kaj with a skeptical expression.
"That is a ridiculous belief," he said. "Anyway, you must have faith in Jesus to heal with your hands. Or your feet." He looked at Ennis. "Hello, my name is Joseph."
"Hi, I'm-"
"It's okay, Ennis is Christian so it will work."
"Have you accepted Jesus into your heart, Ennis?"
"Well, uh-"
"So everybody in your country just pray to get better when they get kicked in the leg?" Kaj demanded.
"Of course not. For that you would wrap a piece of goat skin around with special plants under it."
"I am very unlucky then because no goats in this place. Anyway, my leg is feeling much better now. Thank you Ennis."
When he got home, Ennis embellished the story of the healing session and conversation with Joseph and quickly had Jay laughing.
That night in bed, he bent his knee and pressed his sole against her inner thigh. When she demonstrated how much she enjoyed that, he tried something new with his toes.
25b
December 1983
When our junior year ended, Joe and I made different decisions about how to spend the summer of '83 - our previous, perfect one was not to be repeated. For Joe, months of badgering paid off and he was offered a part-time job in Barney Frank's Brookline district office. At night he waited tables at Legal Seafood.
I didn't want to wash dishes again. Instead I got work at Kinko's Copy Center in Harvard Square, which was open round the clock. I signed up for hours that matched Joe's at his two jobs. He had bought a very used Toyota Celica that spring and would usually pick me up when I finished. If his shift ended late, I watched the street performers while I waited for him. We didn't hit the clubs they way we had before though, because he had to work in the morning.
There was no joy in my life that summer, only a constant sense of dread. Had I chosen the wrong major? In the spring I had submitted articles to the BU newspaper, The Daily Free Press, and none had been accepted. The final blow had come when I’d written one about a successful street protest by Boston residents to prevent the Citgo sign from being removed by its company. I’d decided to try being clever, and typed the article so that the text had a hole the shape of a triangle in the middle of it. It was rejected because it would be too much work for the typesetter. Instead of my story, the paper ran a single photograph with a caption. I understood why they chose it - it was a startling image - and a year later I would find out how it was done. Joe tried to console me by joking that now I knew a picture really was worth a thousand words. Still, I was beginning to be afraid I’d chosen the wrong major.
I was confused about choice in another, more personal matter. I couldn't forget that night we'd listened to Dr Ruth on the radio. I was sure that behind the couch, Joe hadn't been having the same thoughts I was about ice cream cones. He'd claimed at Miriam's that you could choose and she had disagreed. I'd spent the past three years trusting Joe's judgement in all matters. Now I was having doubts.
I'd been with a lot of girls since Sandy, but the attraction only came in the presence of music. I had only once looked with desire at a woman outside of a music club: the girl outside the Greyound station the day I arrived. Since then, I hadn't felt the slightest stirring unless we were in a dim room with guitars and drums making conversation difficult. I had to admit to myself that there was something strange about that.
Yet... I wasn't gay, I was sure. I wasn't like some of those guys you saw on MTV. But that summer, events in the larger world made me both lose respect for journalists and smother any further introspection concerning my sexuality.
The disease Miriam had called GRID had a new acronym because now it wasn't just "gay-related". It was an immune deficiency that was acquired. Heroin users also got it, and hemophiliacs, people who had blood transfusions. Haitians, for some reason. And the people who had sex with anyone who had it. And yet, suddenly at the beginning of summer the news was that some children of drug addicts had acquired it, too. Therefore, it followed that you could catch AIDS just by living with someone with it. Read: by touching them.
Just about that time I went back to Kansas for a visit. KE and his wife had just had twin boys. When my sister picked me up in Wichita to bring me to the farm, she brought up AIDS. A friend from nursing school was working in a hospital in St Louis, where there was one patient with it, and she refused to care for him. Kathy was incensed.
"Don't people read anything? You watch the news and see policemen wearing rubber gloves and what does that tell you? That the cops are ignorant, too."
"Well, the papers say the same thing."
"Just because I'm only a nurse, that means I can't read medical journals? Those kids who got AIDS were babies! Less than a year old! They must've got it when they were in the womb. Don't those newspaper people check anything themselves? I hope you'll do a better job when you're a reporter, Ennis."
My parents reacted to the AIDS hysteria mildly. It all felt remote from them. My mother didn't believe God was punishing homosexuals, like her pastor claimed, but remarked that "it can't be too clean what they do. Look what happens when you don't wash up."
By the time classes started, the AIDS hysteria had mysteriously faded and no more was written or said about it.
In December, Joe made a surprising request: could he spend Christmas with me and my family in Kansas? I was both horrified and thrilled. I couldn't imagine why he'd want to go there. He explained he was going to do an internship in Barney Frank's Washington office in January and he felt he should see more of the country. He'd never been off the east coast except for a family vacation to see the Grand Canyon when he was twelve. We could drive there. On the way back we could go to Washington and he'd let me take his car back to Boston.
So a week before Christmas we went down to New Jersey to see his parents, then went on the road. We stuck to just two interstates : I-76 through Pennsylvania and then I-70 from Pittsburgh through Ohio, Indiana, Missouri across to west Kansas. His car had a cassette player and we listened to music non-stop, mostly tapes we'd made but also the radio. When Joe wasn't complaining about the flatness of the land or talking about politics it was because I'd managed to steer the conversation to books or movies. Sometimes we even talked about music.
When we were halfway between Indianpolis and Terre Haute and I was at the wheel, he asked me out of the blue, "So tell me... of all the music you've been listening to since high school, what women do you like?"
I pretended to think about it. "Patti Smith," I said eventually. I knew he wasn't into her at all.
"Erg. Who else?"
Ever since we'd reached Ohio, one song by the Pretenders had been coming on the radio again and again. Middle of the Road was perfect highway driving music.
"Um, well Chrissie Hynde is really cool. That was a great concert at the Orpheum."
"Uh huuuhhh," Joe said.
"What?"
"Nothing. What about Madonna?"
"Who?"
"Okay, Cyndi Lauper?"
"Have you heard her talk?"
"Annie Lennox then?"
"Maybe." I wondered what was behind his question because this was the longest conversation we’d had about women in three years.
He was silent after that and it was just as well. It started snowing and I had to concentrate, which made me realize how tired I was. I told him we should stop; it was seven o'clock and we'd been on the road for nearly twelve hours. We were only halfway there.
We started watching for motel signs and finally chose one with a cheap room rate on the marquee. There was a liquor store next door to it, which was a plus. I'd been 21 for six weeks. It felt like a milestone to have caught up with Joe, who had reached that age in April. I wanted to buy a bottle of whiskey, just because I could do it legally.
The only rooms left had one double bed each, the young woman in reception informed us.
"Damn," muttered Joe. "Well, I'll sleep on the floor, if you want."
I saw the desk clerk roll her eyes.
If I wanted? I hadn't even had time to consider whether it was a weird thing to share a bed. But now that Joe was making an issue of it, I realized I was having a physical reaction to the prospect. Three years of staying my hand, of averting my eyes, of holding my tongue and just this one remark of Joe’s had created a fissure in my wall of denial. In my inept way I tried to patch it up.
"Why?" I said. "Do you kick? Hog the covers? Talk in your sleep? Grind your teeth? Wet the bed? Cause I can't think of anything worse, can you?" I said to the woman, who was giggling. She shook her head.
Joe was looking at me wide-eyed. I usually didn't say much but this once I was making sure to get my point across.
"Guess we'll be in one bed, then," I said, and signed my name.
Chapter 26 >>
Click to viewThis performance of Because the Night is from around 2006
Take me now baby here as I am
Pull me close, try and understand
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is a banquet on which we feed
Come on now try and understand
The way I feel when I'm in your hands
Take my hand come undercover
They can't hurt you now,
Can't hurt you now, can't hurt you now
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to lust
Because the night belongs to lovers
Because the night belongs to us
Have I doubt when I'm alone
Love is a ring, the telephone
Love is an angel disguised as lust
Here in our bed until the morning comes
Come on now try and understand
The way I feel under your command
Take my hand as the sun descends
They can't touch you now,
Can't touch you now, can't touch you now
Because the night belongs to lovers ...
With love we sleep
With doubt the vicious circle
Turn and burns
Without you I cannot live
Forgive, the yearning burning
I believe it's time to feel, reveal...
So touch me now, touch me now, touch me now
Because the night belongs to lovers ...
Because tonight there are two lovers
If we believe in the night we trust
Because tonight there are two lovers ...
This performance is from 2004. Chrissie Hyde was 52!
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