A Way With Words - Chapter 61
23-29 July 1989
I first began to write down my dreams the morning after the first time Jack Tornado called me in London. The moment I awoke, spent and sticky, I reached for my notebook. I wanted to remember everything I'd just dreamt so that someday I might understand it. My scrawled fragments show that I was barely awake. But seeing my handwriting brings back every detail.
I’d slept badly after our brief, midnight conversation. It had stirred up in me all the longing for connection I suffered in high school. Jack Tornado was here in London, right in this house, but the man in person was so unlike the voice on the phone. I woke up several times to see that the green clock numbers had advanced only an hour at most. It was dawn the fourth time I awoke but I didn’t feel at all rested. I pressed my face into the pillow and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will myself into oblivion. It seemed like only seconds later I was walking slowly uphill, pavement under my feet. In the dream it was dusk and I was walking on a path up Parliament Hill, the lights of London spread out below. Darkness fell quickly as I climbed.
When I reached the first bench close to the top of the hill, I noticed on the dark ground nearby a long, blacker shape. It moved; then like a page in a pop-up book a figure folded itself and rose to sitting position. I understood it was the man from the dream that Jack Tornado’s call had interrupted, the one I’d been lying next to, watching kites.
“I was sure you weren’t going to come back,” came his voice out of the dark. Then I was confused, because the man in the other dream had had an English accent and this one sounded American, and familiar. But I couldn’t identify him.
I lowered myself down next to the man, our shoulders brushing, warmth in the cool dark.
“A friend rang me,” I said, straining to make out his features but his face was in shadow. Was this Jack Tornado? I asked hopefully, “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Rang me,” he repeated. I could hear his smile if not see it. “Will you call me old chap next?”
It was him! At last I was meeting my old confidant in the flesh. I reached for him and he pushed me onto my back and rolled on top of me. Or was it Joe? It felt like his body, the way I remembered it from the dream in the Motel Siesta. In my old notebook I see that I wrote Remembered two dreams while in a dream - and knew I was dreaming!
He shifted and I could feel his hard dick pressing, then sliding back and forth against my erection through two layers of denim. His mouth was close to mine, hot puffs of breath tickling my lips. I strained to raise my head and kiss him - whoever this was, I wanted him badly - but his fingers gripped my hair and the grass at the same time, pinning my head to the earth.
“There’s nothing you can do for him. What’s happened has happened.”
Where had I heard that before?
“Right, Ennis?”
My whole body was swelling and straining, like a hot air balloon trying to lift off and fly home. One word, I only needed to say one word to be released.
“Yes!” And then lips on mine, a tongue sliding in like a slice of mango, so sweet, warm juice splashing on my chest and belly.
God I hated waking up alone after coming, touching only my own skin, my shout echoing in the room. The lungi was bunched at my groin; I’d put it on after the phone call, the first time since I’d been in London. I rolled onto my side, breathing hard, feeling the tingling subside. On the floor lay my research notebook. I reached down and picked it up along with a pen, opened to the last page and wrote what I could remember.
It was ten o’clock when I went downstairs. No one was home, but Chris had left a note for me. He had to go to Brighton, would be back Wednesday.
I stood in the kitchen gazing through the window to the back garden but seeing nothing, hearing but not listening to the traffic over on the high street. Garden instead of yard, high street instead of main - I’d been over here only six weeks and was already using different words in my thoughts.
I was relieved to be on my own. Except for the times asleep I’d been with people almost continually for 48 hours. Saturday morning I’d gone to play softball with a new group in Hyde Park. Then to the party with Chris and Eve, then Jeffrey, Jack’s letter, the Quaker meeting, Janet Turner, Jack Tornado… I wondered how Jay was doing with Jacques. I’d missed Joe’s wedding. Was Randy pregnant? Would Jack send another fax?
Twenty-four hours earlier I’d been all reaction and instinct, running away from Jack’s fury. I would try something different today. Just like I had the previous morning I needed to go out, right now, go someplace. I didn’t know where, but this time I wasn’t going to leave everything to chance. I would make my own, deliberate decisions and not just wander aimlessly.
What I wanted to do was look at people without being seen. I thought about the winter five years earlier, when Jay and I drifted apart and I’d withdrawn, spending my time going to movies. Was that what I wanted? When I thought some more, I decided I didn’t want to watch other people - I wanted to look at them while they did… nothing. Where could I go? The Heath?
Then I had a brainwave. A brainstorm, that is, but the idea did come upon me gradually, like a wave, as I mentally scanned the parts of London I knew at that point. I’d been to the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square once, but not the National Portrait Gallery around the corner.
I made sure I had money and house keys. On the high street I saw buses pass but decided to walk to Camden Town tube station. The sky was overcast and the air warm. Not threatening to rain, therefore a fine day. (My standards had lowered in such a short time.)
A sign outside Camden station warned of southbound delays on the Northern Line, Charing Cross Branch because of engineering work. Usually this would irritate me enough to make me change my plan. But I decided to stick with it.
On the train, someone had left a folded newspaper on the seat next to me. The Guardian; I didn’t touch it. But I realized I hadn’t paid any attention to the news in several weeks. So before I went out of Charing Cross station, I stopped at the newsstand to buy a paper to read. I chose the Independent.
I was hungry, so I scanned the street looking for lunch. I didn’t immediately reject the idea of going to the Indian restaurant when I spotted it, but thought it over. Was I ready to eat curry again? I determined that I was not. I kept walking until I saw a place selling sandwiches. But when I looked up from the glass case to give my order, my heart jumped: facing me was a handsome middle-aged Indian man. I thought, That’s what Kaj will look like in twenty years.
He smiled at me when I hesitated. I managed to say, “A ploughman’s, please.” When he looked down to pick up the sandwich the change of angle erased the resemblance, mostly. But I still felt heartsore when I was back outside, and the ache had only just faded away when I arrived at the entrance to my destination.
But first I was going to go eat my sandwich. I crossed the street to Trafalgar Square and chose a stone bench as far away as possible from the masses of pigeons. I unwrapped my sandwich - while kicking at two pigeons that seemed to recognize food before the paper was even partly off - and unfolded the newspaper.
An article about East Germany caught my attention; it chronicled the experience of a family from a suburb of East Berlin that had decided to “go on holiday” to Hungary, to take advantage of the recent and unexpected opening of the border with Austria. The father had family in West Germany that he’d never met and they were going to help him and his wife and two children settle in the West.
Eve had been in a strange mood lately. I’d thought the AIDS work was getting to her - she’d lost several patients in a single week. But I wondered if this leaking border was reminding her of her lost family.
I swallowed the last bite of my sandwich as I turned the last page. It was lucky my mouth was no longer full when I saw the picture on the back page.
I hadn’t been aware of the controversy over the exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs planned for the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington that summer. Republican congressmen outraged over some of the images had threatened to cut public funds for the arts if the collection was displayed, so the museum director caved in. Another, smaller private gallery took the exhibit instead and it was hugely popular. The feature story in the Independent was about the crowds thronging to see it and what people thought of the more startling photos. The news photographer had stood next to the most shocking self-portrait, one showing Mapplethorpe with the handle of a bullwhip stuck in his anus (so said the caption), and taken a shot of the reactions. In the second row of spectators I recognized someone I knew.
Joe’s expression was neutral; it was the half dozen people in front of him whose startled faces were the main focus. Next to him was a blond woman, though there were so many people crowded around it was impossible to tell whether they were together. There had been no wedding invitation in the mail Don had forwarded to me but that didn’t mean it hadn’t taken place.
It felt very strange to be looking through a window to someone from my life in Boston from a bench in the middle of London. I continued to stare at the picture, trying to glean some hint about the state of Joe’s life from a black and white image of his face no bigger than my thumbnail, until a gust of wind made the paper flap. I looked up and saw that the overcast sky had become a mass of black clouds. I got up and jogged across the square to the gallery entrance as thunder rumbled.
I spent an hour wandering among the frozen faces - yes, this was exactly the right place for me that day. Looking at paintings of famous people (most of whom I’d never heard of) who didn’t move was very soothing. In one room was an exhibit of photographs, black and white portraits of famous British writers and artists. From across the room I noticed one of a nude dark-haired woman reclining on a chaise longue, one knee raised and with a sheet draped across her hips. Surrounding the couch were statues of female nudes, and smaller ones were lined up on the mantel of the fireplace behind her. From a distance the subject appeared to have a scrap of black veil across her breasts, but when I walked up to it I was startled to see that it was a man with a hairy chest. He looked perfectly relaxed, even languorous in that classical pose. Sensual. I glanced at the name and had no idea who he was, had never heard of the photographer..
I couldn’t look away from the picture. Particles of a memory seemed to float just below the surface of my mind. A naked man on a couch. Not me. Who, and where? The guard in the doorway with his arms folded made me self-conscious of my staring and I moved on. The room next to it had a window; rain was pelting against the glass. At the main entrance visitors coming in were discreetly agitating their umbrellas as they closed them.
A knot of people were gathered in front of a portrait I hadn’t noticed when I arrived. “Isn’t she lovely,” I heard a woman sigh before turning away. I edged closer. The vertical photo was a striking study in black and white of a young woman wearing a simple white blouse and a slim black shirt. The background was white but she was leaning casually against a pure black rectangle that took up a third of the left side of the image. One half of her very wide black belt caught the light and seemed to glisten. Back in Boston I would have only thought that she looked vaguely familiar but here in London you couldn’t escape that face. Something about Princess Diana’s outfit made me think of Eve. It was the type of shirt she often wore, and I wondered how she’d look in a straight skirt. I couldn’t imagine her in that pose, though, one hip making a soft S of her body. Eve’s leanness wouldn’t make such curve. And she just never looked that relaxed. Nor could I imagine her body languid and nude on a chaise longue. Why not? I turned and watched the rain from the gallery entrance. Here I was trying to clear my mind of people and all I could think of were my friends.
The rain had stopped, but the clouds weren’t breaking up fast enough to promise sun. I thought about where I should go next. It was only two o’clock. I suddenly craved a beer; surely there was a pub close by.
I found one next to Charing Cross station. The bright red front of the Ship and Shovell was hard to miss even though it was down a foot passage between streets. It had a nautical decor (I learned later that Shovell was the name of an admiral whose ship had sunk in the 18th century) and the walls were lined nearly floor to ceiling with etched, beveled mirrors. The lunch rush was over and after I bought a pint of lager at the bar I found a seat near a window.
The two photographs in the gallery were still on my mind, as well as the picture of Joe in the Independent. I turned to the back page and once more studied his face as he looked at a photograph I couldn’t see. It seemed to me he hadn’t changed since the day I first met him in our dorm room - not in any way that really mattered. I smiled to remember how I’d been startled when, behind me, he suddenly sang along with the Talking Heads as I was looking at an album cover. I’d sent the vinyl record sailing out of the jacket and into the wall next to him.
That album cover - now I remembered it was Patti Smith, dressed in a white shirt and black pants. Robert Mapplethorpe had taken the photo.
Maybe the picture of Princess Diana had evoked that time for me. Or did it remind me of my elevator ride with Jay and Andy Warhol when we’d all been wearing black and white? But there was something else, I was sure.
When I was lifting my glass to take the final swallow of beer, my gaze drifted down to the coaster, which had an intricate engraving of an anchor in the center. I set my glass directly on the wooden table and picked up the coaster to study it. When I replaced the coaster and moved my pint back onto it, I saw there was a wet circle on the dark wood. I had a sudden vision of a finger drawing rays out from a ring of water. Jack had done that in the Cantab Lounge when we met there, a long time ago it seemed. But really, it hadn’t even been a year.
We’d drunk many beers together, Jack and I, over the short time I’d known him. There was the time, at the Colorado Public Library, when I’d had too many before he arrived and he had to… I’d woken up in my bed at Don’s place and couldn’t remember… Jack had told me all about his past, he said later. When I told him I remembered nothing of it, he was relieved. Except… except that fragments came back occasionally after that. Like they did now. Jack on a couch, naked. The best sex he’d ever had, he said. A man in a white shirt. Jack had met him in a dark doorway, the man smiling, touching Jack’s face, saying You don’t belong here. Not here.
I brought Jack to this pub in 2009 to show him the place where I’d been thinking about him at the very moment that he was sending a fax to me from work, twenty years earlier. When we got there Jack asked, “Well, which one were you in?” Because opposite the pub, on the other side of the foot passage, facing the one I’d had a beer in, was an identical Ship and Shovell. Same sign, same red front, like a pair of twins.
When I got home, the house was still empty. In my room, a short length of fax paper was hanging off the machine.
Goddamn you Ennis. You fucking kill me. Like a sniper. No a sniper does it slow and deliberate. How is it you can say so much with just three words? Hit you again. It means nothing and everything. First I want to kick the shit out of you I'm so mad, then I get this and I'm weak. Fuck.
What the fuck are you doing over there anyway?
Before I went to bed, I wrote to Jack.
K got married in SL. Forced into it. Real long story.
Would you believe me if I said I got hit on the head and woke up in London? Didn’t think so.
Started to call you at your work number when I was in Toronto airport but got distracted. I’m really sorry.
Should I keep faxing you at this number?
I didn’t know else who might be seeing my faxes at the law firm. Jack debated for all of two minutes whether to buy a fax machine of his own. The dark, bitter side of him said to forget me, move on. But the other, lighter side couldn’t resist. At five o’clock Tuesday morning I was awakened by the fax machine buzzing.
Marriage is like a saddle between you and the horse. Think about it.
Send faxes here: 617-524-3428
I didn’t fall asleep for a long time after that, mulling over the saddle - and not really getting it. I thought about all the married people I knew. For some, marriage seemed to mean something, and for others it was a means. When I woke up at noon, I sent another fax.
Saddle??
Did I ever tell you about Jack Tornado? The radio guy I used to talk to when I was in high school? He’s here, turns out. That’s why I wound up in England. But he’s not like I remembered. You know what? You look like the way I imagined him. I bet I never told you that. His real name is Chris and he doesn’t look like you at all or even sound like Jack Tornado anymore. Like he never existed. Except that
Remember when you talked in the bar while I was dead drunk and the next day I told you I didn’t remember any of what you said? Little things are coming back.
Who was the guy with the white shirt in a black doorway?
The phone in my room rang five times late Tuesday night, then the answering machine switched on. Surprised, I looked up from my book at the clock and saw it was midnight. Chris was still in Brighton but I’d had dinner with Eve. Maybe she was a sound sleeper.
“Ennis? It’s Jack Tornado. If you’re home, pick up the phone.”
I got up, pressed the red button to stop the recording, picked up the receiver and lay down again.
“Hi Jack.”
“Hey. How’s the boss treating you?”
“You mean that asshole Chris?”
“That’s right. He still making life hell for you?”
“Not lately. He’s disappeared. Left a note that he went to Brighton. Wherever that is. I used to live in a part of Boston called Brighton. I hope he went someplace nicer.”
“Brighton’s a seaside town on the south coast. There’s a big gay scene there…. so I hear.”
“That’s funny, I got the impression he wanted me to handle the gay research.”
“So is Chris gay?”
“He claims he’s straight.’
“And you don’t believe him.”
“I’m not sure… But I don’t think it matters.”
“A lot of people think it matters if you’re not straight.”
“Yeah that’s true. Unfortunately. Anyway, he has a girlfriend, even if…”
“Even if he can’t show her off.”
“He can’t?”
“She doesn’t want to bring attention to herself. People she used to know before might recognize her, blab to the tabloids. I mean, you know, that’s what I’m guessing.”
I felt ridiculous talking to Chris this way. Why couldn’t he just tell me what was going on with him directly? Then I thought of Jack and our faxes. What was the difference? Why wasn’t I just calling him? Chris had his reasons for doing this. But I didn’t have to take it so seriously.
“Maybe that’s why she cut her hair,” I mused.
“What?”
“Her long hair was so distinctive. Now she looks like, I dunno, Princess Diana.”
“What?”
“Listen Jack, I’ve gotta get some sleep. But I’ve got a song request.”
“Wait, I-“
“The Smiths. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others. Got that? Cheerio!”
The next morning Eve was just finishing her muesli when I came into the kitchen. She was glaring at the Guardian opened out on the table.
“Bad news?” I asked as I switched on the kettle. I’d gone native at breakfast, even spreading marmalade on my toast. But I drew the line at Marmite.
“No, the news is not bad. There is a new centre for AIDS patients in south London. The ceremony for the opening was yesterday and Princess Diana was there. Look at this!” She smacked the newspaper. “Now they are making a big noise because she shook the hand of the director who is HIV positive and she touched on the shoulder a man with AIDS. Oh yes, that is so brave!” Eve’s spoon clanked loudly when she dropped it and pushed the empty bowl away from her.
“Have you ever thought about cutting your hair?” I asked.
Eve stared at me, clearly failing to see the connection.
“It’s just… I saw a portrait of Diana yesterday and something about it reminded me of you. The clothes she was wearing and her… her beauty.” That wasn’t the word I meant to use, because I wasn’t thinking of her face. But Eve blushed deeply so I guessed it was the best word if not the right one. I turned away and fiddled with the tea bag and mug.
“Yes… I might cut my hair,” Eve said slowly.
I looked back at her in alarm. “Chris wouldn’t like that!”
She looked at my face searchingly. “No. But it might become… necessary.”
I didn’t understand. Did she have another, newer secret?
“Time to go to work,” she said lightly as she rose from the chair. She went to the sink next to me and washed out her bowl.
“Is there any more volunteering I can do?” I asked plaintively.
She looked at me for a moment. “Just be a good friend to Chris,” she said, so soft and low. “This is what I need you to do now.”
After that I lived with a vague sense of dread, and whenever the phone in my room rang at midnight, I answered it myself.
***
“Just checking up on you.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
“Have you made any friends there in London? Besides that asshole Chris, that is.”
I thought for a moment. “Not exactly. I’ve played softball with some Americans a few times and we’re friendly… but not friends. I’ve met two… no three people - English people - that I had pretty intense experiences with, though.”
“Intense how?”
“I read to a blind guy with AIDS until he died. I met a guy at a party and went back to his place. He was only the second man I’ve ever gone to bed with.”
“Will you see him again?”
“I don’t know. I liked him, and I’ve seen him swimming at the pond but…”
“If he was a nice guy and liked you too, you should reach out to him again.”
I was silent, remembering the letter from Jack that Chris had obviously seen. Now I understood where his questions were coming from. He wanted to help me. But I didn’t need help with Jack Twist, not him.
“The next day I met a woman.”
“Ennis…”
“An old woman at a Quaker meeting. She knew someone I knew in Boston, and didn’t know he’d died of AIDS.” I recounted my afternoon with Janet Turner and what I’d learned about Elliot and her son. “I keep thinking about Julian. It sounds like he still lives near her, and but she also says she might move now that, well, now that she knows Elliot’s dead. She didn’t say exactly what happened to her son, but if it doesn’t matter to him whether she’s there, he must’ve been very badly injured. Physically or mentally. I want to know the whole tragic story.”
“Why?”
“Because… because I think Elliot wants me to.”
***
The saddle. When I was 12 I used to ride around bareback sometimes, where my old man couldn’t see me. Just let the horse graze and I lay down on top of him. Let my arms hang with my cheek on his withers. Loved the heat and the smell and the muscles. Had a growth spurt after that and I didn’t fit right so I stopped. Still had dreams where I was feeling it though. I didn’t understand what it meant till Ed came to the ranch.
I told you about him. Don’t know why he came on his own. I mean, to a ranch. I asked him, Why’d you come here? He said to remember and forget which of course made no sense to me then. I thought he was kinda crazy. Then he said he was gonna start a job in a high school and was collecting different experiences. To be a better advisor.
I took him out riding and brought him to my secret tree, one of the aspens the Basque shepherds had cut into. An old tree that I didn’t show other people. The carving looked like a man lying on a horse. Ed said it was two men making love. It was like everything clicked for me. And he saw that. He didn’t touch me. He told me to touch them, the men on the tree, and not be afraid. He said “Don't fear it.” After Ed left, I used to go back regular and run my hands over that aspen, the smooth bark and the rough scars of the two men fucking.
First time I fucked a guy, in Houston, it was like being on the horse. Like having my arms around a tree. It felt 100% right.
Between Jack Twist’s ever longer faxes and Jack Tornado’s midnight calls, I didn’t get much sleep at night that week. Late Saturday morning I reached for my dream notebook as soon as I opened my eyes but soon realized I was writing to Jack. I tore out the page and faxed it to him.
Just woke up from a dream about Kaj. First time since I’m here. Must’ve been your story about the horse. And the tree. He has scars on his back, from burns. In the dream he was a brown horse with a black mane. Some people were putting a saddle on him but it hurt his back. I was holding the halter, stroking his face.
A couple minutes later a fax came through, much too long for Jack to have written it in reply. After I read it, I realized he was answering my question about the man in the doorway. It was like the floodgates had opened in him and it almost didn’t matter what I wrote back. He just kept writing.
It’s odd seeing his old screeds on a screen, typed neatly. The original faxes, which I keep rolled up, are in his messy handwriting, full of crossings out and additions, the lines gradually slanting downward because he was writing on unlined paper. I could discern the state of his mind and heart from the way his words looked. He hasn’t written that much in his own hand in years. I never throw out the occasional scrawled note he leaves for me. Seeing them always reminds me of this time when we gradually grew closer, even if not in miles.
I married Lureen for practical reasons. Like I told you before she had her own reasons to saddle me up. When we got to Boston it felt like I got a chance to start the game over. Be a straight man. You ever play Monopoly using a board from a different country, with different streets, different markers, different money? It was like that at first. But then you figure out that the high class places and the low class ones are just like before. You learn where to go.
Most of the first year in law school I was OK. We told Lureen’s parents I was at Harvard Law but I was actually going downtown to Suffolk Law, at night. Lureen was out at Tufts during the day. After a few months sex with her went to like nothing because of that schedule and cause we were working so hard. Even though it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, at least I’d been getting my rocks off regular in the beginning.
In the spring I cracked. Guy in my class told me about a bathhouse close to Suffolk and I don’t know how the hell he knew I’d be interested. I was being so fucking careful to play the straight game. Blew my mind the first time I went. Like a carnival. It was 84 and nobody in there talked about AIDS. The signs about protection were on a door that was way in the back in the dark. I left with my balls drained. Told myself it would be just the one time. Maybe once a year. But I went back in May, after exams. Wasn’t as good the second time, there were some creeps. Two weeks later decided to try another bathhouse, to make up for it.
I was walking up to the door when it opened. A man wearing a white button down shirt was standing there. Lumberjack shirts were the thing then, that’s why I noticed. He was older than me, nice looking. He looked at me and gave me this beautiful smile, like he’d been waiting just for me since forever. I wasn’t even spooked when he said my name. He put his fingers on my cheek, said I didn’t belong in a place like that. I remembered him then, it was Ed from the ranch. Was it my first time? I thought he meant at that place and said yes.
I went home with him. We made love on his couch all night. Best sex I’d ever had. Damn. He made me feel - I can’t even think of the right word. Like he cared about me like nobody in my life ever did before. He said he never forgot me because I was the first teenager he counseled outside of training, first time he felt he really did some good. But seeing me now as a man was very a different story. Oh yeah, the word is cherished.
He was the first man I let fuck me. We’d done everything else and it was 3 in the morning. One last thing is what he said. He was slow and patient. Didn’t hurt at all.
He cried when he came. That was the only part that disturbed me.
The portrait of Diana is by David Bailey. The subject of the other portrait is a British hatmaker named David Shilling. Ennis could not have seen it in 1989 because it was only just acquired by the National Portrait Gallery this winter.
The Ship and Shovell pub does exist...
Diary entry 21 April 2014 (2) >>
I first began to write down my dreams the morning after the first time Jack Tornado called me in London. The moment I awoke, spent and sticky, I reached for my notebook. I wanted to remember everything I'd just dreamt so that someday I might understand it. My scrawled fragments show that I was barely awake. But seeing my handwriting brings back every detail.
I’d slept badly after our brief, midnight conversation. It had stirred up in me all the longing for connection I suffered in high school. Jack Tornado was here in London, right in this house, but the man in person was so unlike the voice on the phone. I woke up several times to see that the green clock numbers had advanced only an hour at most. It was dawn the fourth time I awoke but I didn’t feel at all rested. I pressed my face into the pillow and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will myself into oblivion. It seemed like only seconds later I was walking slowly uphill, pavement under my feet. In the dream it was dusk and I was walking on a path up Parliament Hill, the lights of London spread out below. Darkness fell quickly as I climbed.
When I reached the first bench close to the top of the hill, I noticed on the dark ground nearby a long, blacker shape. It moved; then like a page in a pop-up book a figure folded itself and rose to sitting position. I understood it was the man from the dream that Jack Tornado’s call had interrupted, the one I’d been lying next to, watching kites.
“I was sure you weren’t going to come back,” came his voice out of the dark. Then I was confused, because the man in the other dream had had an English accent and this one sounded American, and familiar. But I couldn’t identify him.
I lowered myself down next to the man, our shoulders brushing, warmth in the cool dark.
“A friend rang me,” I said, straining to make out his features but his face was in shadow. Was this Jack Tornado? I asked hopefully, “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Rang me,” he repeated. I could hear his smile if not see it. “Will you call me old chap next?”
It was him! At last I was meeting my old confidant in the flesh. I reached for him and he pushed me onto my back and rolled on top of me. Or was it Joe? It felt like his body, the way I remembered it from the dream in the Motel Siesta. In my old notebook I see that I wrote Remembered two dreams while in a dream - and knew I was dreaming!
He shifted and I could feel his hard dick pressing, then sliding back and forth against my erection through two layers of denim. His mouth was close to mine, hot puffs of breath tickling my lips. I strained to raise my head and kiss him - whoever this was, I wanted him badly - but his fingers gripped my hair and the grass at the same time, pinning my head to the earth.
“There’s nothing you can do for him. What’s happened has happened.”
Where had I heard that before?
“Right, Ennis?”
My whole body was swelling and straining, like a hot air balloon trying to lift off and fly home. One word, I only needed to say one word to be released.
“Yes!” And then lips on mine, a tongue sliding in like a slice of mango, so sweet, warm juice splashing on my chest and belly.
God I hated waking up alone after coming, touching only my own skin, my shout echoing in the room. The lungi was bunched at my groin; I’d put it on after the phone call, the first time since I’d been in London. I rolled onto my side, breathing hard, feeling the tingling subside. On the floor lay my research notebook. I reached down and picked it up along with a pen, opened to the last page and wrote what I could remember.
It was ten o’clock when I went downstairs. No one was home, but Chris had left a note for me. He had to go to Brighton, would be back Wednesday.
I stood in the kitchen gazing through the window to the back garden but seeing nothing, hearing but not listening to the traffic over on the high street. Garden instead of yard, high street instead of main - I’d been over here only six weeks and was already using different words in my thoughts.
I was relieved to be on my own. Except for the times asleep I’d been with people almost continually for 48 hours. Saturday morning I’d gone to play softball with a new group in Hyde Park. Then to the party with Chris and Eve, then Jeffrey, Jack’s letter, the Quaker meeting, Janet Turner, Jack Tornado… I wondered how Jay was doing with Jacques. I’d missed Joe’s wedding. Was Randy pregnant? Would Jack send another fax?
Twenty-four hours earlier I’d been all reaction and instinct, running away from Jack’s fury. I would try something different today. Just like I had the previous morning I needed to go out, right now, go someplace. I didn’t know where, but this time I wasn’t going to leave everything to chance. I would make my own, deliberate decisions and not just wander aimlessly.
What I wanted to do was look at people without being seen. I thought about the winter five years earlier, when Jay and I drifted apart and I’d withdrawn, spending my time going to movies. Was that what I wanted? When I thought some more, I decided I didn’t want to watch other people - I wanted to look at them while they did… nothing. Where could I go? The Heath?
Then I had a brainwave. A brainstorm, that is, but the idea did come upon me gradually, like a wave, as I mentally scanned the parts of London I knew at that point. I’d been to the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square once, but not the National Portrait Gallery around the corner.
I made sure I had money and house keys. On the high street I saw buses pass but decided to walk to Camden Town tube station. The sky was overcast and the air warm. Not threatening to rain, therefore a fine day. (My standards had lowered in such a short time.)
A sign outside Camden station warned of southbound delays on the Northern Line, Charing Cross Branch because of engineering work. Usually this would irritate me enough to make me change my plan. But I decided to stick with it.
On the train, someone had left a folded newspaper on the seat next to me. The Guardian; I didn’t touch it. But I realized I hadn’t paid any attention to the news in several weeks. So before I went out of Charing Cross station, I stopped at the newsstand to buy a paper to read. I chose the Independent.
I was hungry, so I scanned the street looking for lunch. I didn’t immediately reject the idea of going to the Indian restaurant when I spotted it, but thought it over. Was I ready to eat curry again? I determined that I was not. I kept walking until I saw a place selling sandwiches. But when I looked up from the glass case to give my order, my heart jumped: facing me was a handsome middle-aged Indian man. I thought, That’s what Kaj will look like in twenty years.
He smiled at me when I hesitated. I managed to say, “A ploughman’s, please.” When he looked down to pick up the sandwich the change of angle erased the resemblance, mostly. But I still felt heartsore when I was back outside, and the ache had only just faded away when I arrived at the entrance to my destination.
But first I was going to go eat my sandwich. I crossed the street to Trafalgar Square and chose a stone bench as far away as possible from the masses of pigeons. I unwrapped my sandwich - while kicking at two pigeons that seemed to recognize food before the paper was even partly off - and unfolded the newspaper.
An article about East Germany caught my attention; it chronicled the experience of a family from a suburb of East Berlin that had decided to “go on holiday” to Hungary, to take advantage of the recent and unexpected opening of the border with Austria. The father had family in West Germany that he’d never met and they were going to help him and his wife and two children settle in the West.
Eve had been in a strange mood lately. I’d thought the AIDS work was getting to her - she’d lost several patients in a single week. But I wondered if this leaking border was reminding her of her lost family.
I swallowed the last bite of my sandwich as I turned the last page. It was lucky my mouth was no longer full when I saw the picture on the back page.
I hadn’t been aware of the controversy over the exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs planned for the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington that summer. Republican congressmen outraged over some of the images had threatened to cut public funds for the arts if the collection was displayed, so the museum director caved in. Another, smaller private gallery took the exhibit instead and it was hugely popular. The feature story in the Independent was about the crowds thronging to see it and what people thought of the more startling photos. The news photographer had stood next to the most shocking self-portrait, one showing Mapplethorpe with the handle of a bullwhip stuck in his anus (so said the caption), and taken a shot of the reactions. In the second row of spectators I recognized someone I knew.
Joe’s expression was neutral; it was the half dozen people in front of him whose startled faces were the main focus. Next to him was a blond woman, though there were so many people crowded around it was impossible to tell whether they were together. There had been no wedding invitation in the mail Don had forwarded to me but that didn’t mean it hadn’t taken place.
It felt very strange to be looking through a window to someone from my life in Boston from a bench in the middle of London. I continued to stare at the picture, trying to glean some hint about the state of Joe’s life from a black and white image of his face no bigger than my thumbnail, until a gust of wind made the paper flap. I looked up and saw that the overcast sky had become a mass of black clouds. I got up and jogged across the square to the gallery entrance as thunder rumbled.
I spent an hour wandering among the frozen faces - yes, this was exactly the right place for me that day. Looking at paintings of famous people (most of whom I’d never heard of) who didn’t move was very soothing. In one room was an exhibit of photographs, black and white portraits of famous British writers and artists. From across the room I noticed one of a nude dark-haired woman reclining on a chaise longue, one knee raised and with a sheet draped across her hips. Surrounding the couch were statues of female nudes, and smaller ones were lined up on the mantel of the fireplace behind her. From a distance the subject appeared to have a scrap of black veil across her breasts, but when I walked up to it I was startled to see that it was a man with a hairy chest. He looked perfectly relaxed, even languorous in that classical pose. Sensual. I glanced at the name and had no idea who he was, had never heard of the photographer..
I couldn’t look away from the picture. Particles of a memory seemed to float just below the surface of my mind. A naked man on a couch. Not me. Who, and where? The guard in the doorway with his arms folded made me self-conscious of my staring and I moved on. The room next to it had a window; rain was pelting against the glass. At the main entrance visitors coming in were discreetly agitating their umbrellas as they closed them.
A knot of people were gathered in front of a portrait I hadn’t noticed when I arrived. “Isn’t she lovely,” I heard a woman sigh before turning away. I edged closer. The vertical photo was a striking study in black and white of a young woman wearing a simple white blouse and a slim black shirt. The background was white but she was leaning casually against a pure black rectangle that took up a third of the left side of the image. One half of her very wide black belt caught the light and seemed to glisten. Back in Boston I would have only thought that she looked vaguely familiar but here in London you couldn’t escape that face. Something about Princess Diana’s outfit made me think of Eve. It was the type of shirt she often wore, and I wondered how she’d look in a straight skirt. I couldn’t imagine her in that pose, though, one hip making a soft S of her body. Eve’s leanness wouldn’t make such curve. And she just never looked that relaxed. Nor could I imagine her body languid and nude on a chaise longue. Why not? I turned and watched the rain from the gallery entrance. Here I was trying to clear my mind of people and all I could think of were my friends.
The rain had stopped, but the clouds weren’t breaking up fast enough to promise sun. I thought about where I should go next. It was only two o’clock. I suddenly craved a beer; surely there was a pub close by.
I found one next to Charing Cross station. The bright red front of the Ship and Shovell was hard to miss even though it was down a foot passage between streets. It had a nautical decor (I learned later that Shovell was the name of an admiral whose ship had sunk in the 18th century) and the walls were lined nearly floor to ceiling with etched, beveled mirrors. The lunch rush was over and after I bought a pint of lager at the bar I found a seat near a window.
The two photographs in the gallery were still on my mind, as well as the picture of Joe in the Independent. I turned to the back page and once more studied his face as he looked at a photograph I couldn’t see. It seemed to me he hadn’t changed since the day I first met him in our dorm room - not in any way that really mattered. I smiled to remember how I’d been startled when, behind me, he suddenly sang along with the Talking Heads as I was looking at an album cover. I’d sent the vinyl record sailing out of the jacket and into the wall next to him.
That album cover - now I remembered it was Patti Smith, dressed in a white shirt and black pants. Robert Mapplethorpe had taken the photo.
Maybe the picture of Princess Diana had evoked that time for me. Or did it remind me of my elevator ride with Jay and Andy Warhol when we’d all been wearing black and white? But there was something else, I was sure.
When I was lifting my glass to take the final swallow of beer, my gaze drifted down to the coaster, which had an intricate engraving of an anchor in the center. I set my glass directly on the wooden table and picked up the coaster to study it. When I replaced the coaster and moved my pint back onto it, I saw there was a wet circle on the dark wood. I had a sudden vision of a finger drawing rays out from a ring of water. Jack had done that in the Cantab Lounge when we met there, a long time ago it seemed. But really, it hadn’t even been a year.
We’d drunk many beers together, Jack and I, over the short time I’d known him. There was the time, at the Colorado Public Library, when I’d had too many before he arrived and he had to… I’d woken up in my bed at Don’s place and couldn’t remember… Jack had told me all about his past, he said later. When I told him I remembered nothing of it, he was relieved. Except… except that fragments came back occasionally after that. Like they did now. Jack on a couch, naked. The best sex he’d ever had, he said. A man in a white shirt. Jack had met him in a dark doorway, the man smiling, touching Jack’s face, saying You don’t belong here. Not here.
I brought Jack to this pub in 2009 to show him the place where I’d been thinking about him at the very moment that he was sending a fax to me from work, twenty years earlier. When we got there Jack asked, “Well, which one were you in?” Because opposite the pub, on the other side of the foot passage, facing the one I’d had a beer in, was an identical Ship and Shovell. Same sign, same red front, like a pair of twins.
When I got home, the house was still empty. In my room, a short length of fax paper was hanging off the machine.
Goddamn you Ennis. You fucking kill me. Like a sniper. No a sniper does it slow and deliberate. How is it you can say so much with just three words? Hit you again. It means nothing and everything. First I want to kick the shit out of you I'm so mad, then I get this and I'm weak. Fuck.
What the fuck are you doing over there anyway?
Before I went to bed, I wrote to Jack.
K got married in SL. Forced into it. Real long story.
Would you believe me if I said I got hit on the head and woke up in London? Didn’t think so.
Started to call you at your work number when I was in Toronto airport but got distracted. I’m really sorry.
Should I keep faxing you at this number?
I didn’t know else who might be seeing my faxes at the law firm. Jack debated for all of two minutes whether to buy a fax machine of his own. The dark, bitter side of him said to forget me, move on. But the other, lighter side couldn’t resist. At five o’clock Tuesday morning I was awakened by the fax machine buzzing.
Marriage is like a saddle between you and the horse. Think about it.
Send faxes here: 617-524-3428
I didn’t fall asleep for a long time after that, mulling over the saddle - and not really getting it. I thought about all the married people I knew. For some, marriage seemed to mean something, and for others it was a means. When I woke up at noon, I sent another fax.
Saddle??
Did I ever tell you about Jack Tornado? The radio guy I used to talk to when I was in high school? He’s here, turns out. That’s why I wound up in England. But he’s not like I remembered. You know what? You look like the way I imagined him. I bet I never told you that. His real name is Chris and he doesn’t look like you at all or even sound like Jack Tornado anymore. Like he never existed. Except that
Remember when you talked in the bar while I was dead drunk and the next day I told you I didn’t remember any of what you said? Little things are coming back.
Who was the guy with the white shirt in a black doorway?
The phone in my room rang five times late Tuesday night, then the answering machine switched on. Surprised, I looked up from my book at the clock and saw it was midnight. Chris was still in Brighton but I’d had dinner with Eve. Maybe she was a sound sleeper.
“Ennis? It’s Jack Tornado. If you’re home, pick up the phone.”
I got up, pressed the red button to stop the recording, picked up the receiver and lay down again.
“Hi Jack.”
“Hey. How’s the boss treating you?”
“You mean that asshole Chris?”
“That’s right. He still making life hell for you?”
“Not lately. He’s disappeared. Left a note that he went to Brighton. Wherever that is. I used to live in a part of Boston called Brighton. I hope he went someplace nicer.”
“Brighton’s a seaside town on the south coast. There’s a big gay scene there…. so I hear.”
“That’s funny, I got the impression he wanted me to handle the gay research.”
“So is Chris gay?”
“He claims he’s straight.’
“And you don’t believe him.”
“I’m not sure… But I don’t think it matters.”
“A lot of people think it matters if you’re not straight.”
“Yeah that’s true. Unfortunately. Anyway, he has a girlfriend, even if…”
“Even if he can’t show her off.”
“He can’t?”
“She doesn’t want to bring attention to herself. People she used to know before might recognize her, blab to the tabloids. I mean, you know, that’s what I’m guessing.”
I felt ridiculous talking to Chris this way. Why couldn’t he just tell me what was going on with him directly? Then I thought of Jack and our faxes. What was the difference? Why wasn’t I just calling him? Chris had his reasons for doing this. But I didn’t have to take it so seriously.
“Maybe that’s why she cut her hair,” I mused.
“What?”
“Her long hair was so distinctive. Now she looks like, I dunno, Princess Diana.”
“What?”
“Listen Jack, I’ve gotta get some sleep. But I’ve got a song request.”
“Wait, I-“
“The Smiths. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others. Got that? Cheerio!”
The next morning Eve was just finishing her muesli when I came into the kitchen. She was glaring at the Guardian opened out on the table.
“Bad news?” I asked as I switched on the kettle. I’d gone native at breakfast, even spreading marmalade on my toast. But I drew the line at Marmite.
“No, the news is not bad. There is a new centre for AIDS patients in south London. The ceremony for the opening was yesterday and Princess Diana was there. Look at this!” She smacked the newspaper. “Now they are making a big noise because she shook the hand of the director who is HIV positive and she touched on the shoulder a man with AIDS. Oh yes, that is so brave!” Eve’s spoon clanked loudly when she dropped it and pushed the empty bowl away from her.
“Have you ever thought about cutting your hair?” I asked.
Eve stared at me, clearly failing to see the connection.
“It’s just… I saw a portrait of Diana yesterday and something about it reminded me of you. The clothes she was wearing and her… her beauty.” That wasn’t the word I meant to use, because I wasn’t thinking of her face. But Eve blushed deeply so I guessed it was the best word if not the right one. I turned away and fiddled with the tea bag and mug.
“Yes… I might cut my hair,” Eve said slowly.
I looked back at her in alarm. “Chris wouldn’t like that!”
She looked at my face searchingly. “No. But it might become… necessary.”
I didn’t understand. Did she have another, newer secret?
“Time to go to work,” she said lightly as she rose from the chair. She went to the sink next to me and washed out her bowl.
“Is there any more volunteering I can do?” I asked plaintively.
She looked at me for a moment. “Just be a good friend to Chris,” she said, so soft and low. “This is what I need you to do now.”
After that I lived with a vague sense of dread, and whenever the phone in my room rang at midnight, I answered it myself.
***
“Just checking up on you.”
“Thanks, Jack.”
“Have you made any friends there in London? Besides that asshole Chris, that is.”
I thought for a moment. “Not exactly. I’ve played softball with some Americans a few times and we’re friendly… but not friends. I’ve met two… no three people - English people - that I had pretty intense experiences with, though.”
“Intense how?”
“I read to a blind guy with AIDS until he died. I met a guy at a party and went back to his place. He was only the second man I’ve ever gone to bed with.”
“Will you see him again?”
“I don’t know. I liked him, and I’ve seen him swimming at the pond but…”
“If he was a nice guy and liked you too, you should reach out to him again.”
I was silent, remembering the letter from Jack that Chris had obviously seen. Now I understood where his questions were coming from. He wanted to help me. But I didn’t need help with Jack Twist, not him.
“The next day I met a woman.”
“Ennis…”
“An old woman at a Quaker meeting. She knew someone I knew in Boston, and didn’t know he’d died of AIDS.” I recounted my afternoon with Janet Turner and what I’d learned about Elliot and her son. “I keep thinking about Julian. It sounds like he still lives near her, and but she also says she might move now that, well, now that she knows Elliot’s dead. She didn’t say exactly what happened to her son, but if it doesn’t matter to him whether she’s there, he must’ve been very badly injured. Physically or mentally. I want to know the whole tragic story.”
“Why?”
“Because… because I think Elliot wants me to.”
***
The saddle. When I was 12 I used to ride around bareback sometimes, where my old man couldn’t see me. Just let the horse graze and I lay down on top of him. Let my arms hang with my cheek on his withers. Loved the heat and the smell and the muscles. Had a growth spurt after that and I didn’t fit right so I stopped. Still had dreams where I was feeling it though. I didn’t understand what it meant till Ed came to the ranch.
I told you about him. Don’t know why he came on his own. I mean, to a ranch. I asked him, Why’d you come here? He said to remember and forget which of course made no sense to me then. I thought he was kinda crazy. Then he said he was gonna start a job in a high school and was collecting different experiences. To be a better advisor.
I took him out riding and brought him to my secret tree, one of the aspens the Basque shepherds had cut into. An old tree that I didn’t show other people. The carving looked like a man lying on a horse. Ed said it was two men making love. It was like everything clicked for me. And he saw that. He didn’t touch me. He told me to touch them, the men on the tree, and not be afraid. He said “Don't fear it.” After Ed left, I used to go back regular and run my hands over that aspen, the smooth bark and the rough scars of the two men fucking.
First time I fucked a guy, in Houston, it was like being on the horse. Like having my arms around a tree. It felt 100% right.
Between Jack Twist’s ever longer faxes and Jack Tornado’s midnight calls, I didn’t get much sleep at night that week. Late Saturday morning I reached for my dream notebook as soon as I opened my eyes but soon realized I was writing to Jack. I tore out the page and faxed it to him.
Just woke up from a dream about Kaj. First time since I’m here. Must’ve been your story about the horse. And the tree. He has scars on his back, from burns. In the dream he was a brown horse with a black mane. Some people were putting a saddle on him but it hurt his back. I was holding the halter, stroking his face.
A couple minutes later a fax came through, much too long for Jack to have written it in reply. After I read it, I realized he was answering my question about the man in the doorway. It was like the floodgates had opened in him and it almost didn’t matter what I wrote back. He just kept writing.
It’s odd seeing his old screeds on a screen, typed neatly. The original faxes, which I keep rolled up, are in his messy handwriting, full of crossings out and additions, the lines gradually slanting downward because he was writing on unlined paper. I could discern the state of his mind and heart from the way his words looked. He hasn’t written that much in his own hand in years. I never throw out the occasional scrawled note he leaves for me. Seeing them always reminds me of this time when we gradually grew closer, even if not in miles.
I married Lureen for practical reasons. Like I told you before she had her own reasons to saddle me up. When we got to Boston it felt like I got a chance to start the game over. Be a straight man. You ever play Monopoly using a board from a different country, with different streets, different markers, different money? It was like that at first. But then you figure out that the high class places and the low class ones are just like before. You learn where to go.
Most of the first year in law school I was OK. We told Lureen’s parents I was at Harvard Law but I was actually going downtown to Suffolk Law, at night. Lureen was out at Tufts during the day. After a few months sex with her went to like nothing because of that schedule and cause we were working so hard. Even though it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, at least I’d been getting my rocks off regular in the beginning.
In the spring I cracked. Guy in my class told me about a bathhouse close to Suffolk and I don’t know how the hell he knew I’d be interested. I was being so fucking careful to play the straight game. Blew my mind the first time I went. Like a carnival. It was 84 and nobody in there talked about AIDS. The signs about protection were on a door that was way in the back in the dark. I left with my balls drained. Told myself it would be just the one time. Maybe once a year. But I went back in May, after exams. Wasn’t as good the second time, there were some creeps. Two weeks later decided to try another bathhouse, to make up for it.
I was walking up to the door when it opened. A man wearing a white button down shirt was standing there. Lumberjack shirts were the thing then, that’s why I noticed. He was older than me, nice looking. He looked at me and gave me this beautiful smile, like he’d been waiting just for me since forever. I wasn’t even spooked when he said my name. He put his fingers on my cheek, said I didn’t belong in a place like that. I remembered him then, it was Ed from the ranch. Was it my first time? I thought he meant at that place and said yes.
I went home with him. We made love on his couch all night. Best sex I’d ever had. Damn. He made me feel - I can’t even think of the right word. Like he cared about me like nobody in my life ever did before. He said he never forgot me because I was the first teenager he counseled outside of training, first time he felt he really did some good. But seeing me now as a man was very a different story. Oh yeah, the word is cherished.
He was the first man I let fuck me. We’d done everything else and it was 3 in the morning. One last thing is what he said. He was slow and patient. Didn’t hurt at all.
He cried when he came. That was the only part that disturbed me.
The portrait of Diana is by David Bailey. The subject of the other portrait is a British hatmaker named David Shilling. Ennis could not have seen it in 1989 because it was only just acquired by the National Portrait Gallery this winter.
The Ship and Shovell pub does exist...
Diary entry 21 April 2014 (2) >>