the crater where the World Trade Center used to be. How many of the buildings damaged in the disaster were palled in long black drapery, slated to be dismantled. How the neighborhood reminded me of a city under military siege: blown-out windows longing to be fixed; streets blocked off to traffic so that work crews could dig deep into the earth to repair ruptures and clot the steam devils. How rats, disturbed from their nests, ran amok in the fallen girders and broken pavements. How, on the day the airplanes rammed into the skyscrapers, James walked the streets, wading among the stricken, holding trembling hands, and blessing the dead. He strolled through the deserted Financial District in a black coat that draped to his ankles, his clerical collar gleaming white against his swarthy throat. He resembled some kind of mystical figure who one could imagine climbing off horseback to walk down Wall Street. What I don’t tell Marina is how he didn’t like to use condoms when we fucked and acted as though there was nothing to worry about.
Then somebody my father knew happened to see me in church and reported back to him. I got a call asking why I was attending Episcopal Mass. I tried to tell my father that I was a truth seeker, that I would embrace whatever religion that could get me to a more spiritual place. “A spiritual place, huh?” my father shrieked at me. “If you convert, Russell, say good-bye to your inheritance. See how spiritual you feel then! Obviously, you don’t get it. You don’t understand how so many of these Episcopalians sitting next to you in church secretly hate the Jews.”
“Our relationship depends upon your religious conversion,” James told me, upping the ante.
But then the conflict unraveled when a man approached me at the gym. Dark wavy hair, celadon eyes, he was a few years younger than I. He was one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen, and my first impression of him was that he bloomed with vitality. He spoke to me directly and seemed terribly nervous, claiming once to have been the priest’s lover. I told him that James had never mentioned him.
“I didn’t think he would,” the man said and went on to explain that several weeks after James mysteriously severed their relationship, he, the ex-lover, came down with a terrible flulike illness: high fever, rapid weight loss, and an outbreak of herpes. He was bedridden for two weeks and finally dragged himself to see a doctor who diagnosed an HIV infection. James had been the only person he’d slept with for six months.
“Didn’t you take the proper precautions?” I asked him, knowing that I hadn’t myself.
He claimed to have been fastidiously careful.
“Then how could it have happened?” I pressed him.
The young man’s doctor surmised that there could have only been one way. One morning before leaving to serve Mass, James came into the bedroom and told his lover that his closely cropped beard was irritating to his face and ordered him to shave. James had obviously just finished using the razor himself. His lover was nervous and cut himself while shaving; the doctor suggested that there could have been fresh traces of James’s blood on the blade, allowing the virus to be passed.
Shortly after the breakup, when the younger man called to announce that he had sero-converted, James thanked him for sharing the news and got off the phone quickly.
Marina is understandably sobered by my story. “This is very sad,” she says. “I didn’t know the disease could be passed this way.”
“Neither did I.”
“Poor young man. But with these drugs available he can still live a long time. Not true?”
I sigh and say that one can only hope.
“But now, when he found you at this gym, he was feeling okay, he was doing better, wasn’t he?”
“He looked remarkable. Like a god. You’d never know.”
I try to explain to Marina the paradox of sero-conversion. That often in the early months, in the early years of infection, the
Then somebody my father knew happened to see me in church and reported back to him. I got a call asking why I was attending Episcopal Mass. I tried to tell my father that I was a truth seeker, that I would embrace whatever religion that could get me to a more spiritual place. “A spiritual place, huh?” my father shrieked at me. “If you convert, Russell, say good-bye to your inheritance. See how spiritual you feel then! Obviously, you don’t get it. You don’t understand how so many of these Episcopalians sitting next to you in church secretly hate the Jews.”
“Our relationship depends upon your religious conversion,” James told me, upping the ante.
But then the conflict unraveled when a man approached me at the gym. Dark wavy hair, celadon eyes, he was a few years younger than I. He was one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen, and my first impression of him was that he bloomed with vitality. He spoke to me directly and seemed terribly nervous, claiming once to have been the priest’s lover. I told him that James had never mentioned him.
“I didn’t think he would,” the man said and went on to explain that several weeks after James mysteriously severed their relationship, he, the ex-lover, came down with a terrible flulike illness: high fever, rapid weight loss, and an outbreak of herpes. He was bedridden for two weeks and finally dragged himself to see a doctor who diagnosed an HIV infection. James had been the only person he’d slept with for six months.
“Didn’t you take the proper precautions?” I asked him, knowing that I hadn’t myself.
He claimed to have been fastidiously careful.
“Then how could it have happened?” I pressed him.
The young man’s doctor surmised that there could have only been one way. One morning before leaving to serve Mass, James came into the bedroom and told his lover that his closely cropped beard was irritating to his face and ordered him to shave. James had obviously just finished using the razor himself. His lover was nervous and cut himself while shaving; the doctor suggested that there could have been fresh traces of James’s blood on the blade, allowing the virus to be passed.
Shortly after the breakup, when the younger man called to announce that he had sero-converted, James thanked him for sharing the news and got off the phone quickly.
Marina is understandably sobered by my story. “This is very sad,” she says. “I didn’t know the disease could be passed this way.”
“Neither did I.”
“Poor young man. But with these drugs available he can still live a long time. Not true?”
I sigh and say that one can only hope.
“But now, when he found you at this gym, he was feeling okay, he was doing better, wasn’t he?”
“He looked remarkable. Like a god. You’d never know.”
I try to explain to Marina the paradox of sero-conversion. That often in the early months, in the early years of infection, the
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