Diary of a Blood Ray - March 15th, 2005

I’ve been feeling a queasy discontent for a while now. I feel as though I have been worrying incessantly, yet if you asked me to name one thing I was worried about, I’d scratch my head. Money’s always a concern, but no more now than usual. It’s not that I’m desperate for a boyfriend; that mania has blissfully gone into remission.

It’s funny the way we choose to remember things, and how those memories decide to remind us of their presence. In a few days it will be exactly five years since The Reaper met me in Kansas City, and all these years later, I’m still not completely over it. I’ve gotten through it, sure, but I don’t know if this is the sort of thing one actually ever gets over.

 In February of 2000, I flew to San Francisco to celebrate Devon’s 25th birthday. It was my second visit there, my first since leaving New York. At that time, I’d been back in St Louis just under a year, and I was planning on moving to San Francisco in a few months. The trip started off wonderfully (indeed, I’ve never had a bad time in San Francisco. It could be due to the fact that I am generally fucked up from the moment I get off the shuttle till the moment I get on the plane to return home). As usual, I had a great time with Devon’s friends, and I resumed my love affair with that city. On my third day there, I attended Devon’s birthday party. The drugs flowed freely, and everyone was in great spirits. I hadn’t had that much fun in a long time (my adjustment back to the Midwest after my years in NYC had not been smooth) and I was happy for the first time in months. I couldn’t imagine things getting any better. And then I saw him. The Reaper.

Tall, with curly brown hair and the kind of nerdy Clark Kent-y glasses that used to be the rage, he wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but when I saw him my heart stood still. Without getting into the debate over whether or not love at first sight actually exists, I can assure you I felt something for him the moment I saw him and I could tell from the way he looked at me that he was feeling something for me, too.

After I composed myself, I began interrogating Devon. What was this guy? What was his story, etc. Devon knew him from work; he was the roommate of a friend of his. He didn’t know him all that well, but thought he was a decent guy. As the evening progressed, we were introduced and before long he and I were joined at the hip. As the party drew to close, he asked me what I was doing next. I told him that I hoped I’d be spending the evening with him. That was the response he was hoping to hear, and we left to go to his apartment. He showed me around his place, showed me the work he was doing to jazz it up, and then took me to his bedroom. He held me in arms and kissed me, and before long we were making love. I can still remember what his arms felt like around me, and how his hair felt between my fingers.

When we awoke, he took me for a walk through The Mission, holding my hand the whole time. I returned to Devon’s later that morning, exhausted and ecstatic. My trip was coming to an end, but I saw The Reaper later that day. Devon teased us about how cute we looked together, and he held me in his arms all afternoon. We promised to keep in touch after I left, and when I said good-bye to him, I fought the urge to cry. I was astonished at how quickly I’d fallen for him, and how I felt like I was leaving a part of myself in California.

I returned to St Louis a joyful man. My contact with The Reaper was immediately daily and constant. We’d email all day during work hours, we’d instant message in the afternoons, and we’d talk on the phone at night, three hours or more at a time. We told each other everything about ourselves, the right and the wrong, the good and the bad. Nothing I said scared him away. In fact, he told me he adored everything about me. At this time, I was living in my mother’s house, having a rotten time adjusting to her and to my life in St Louis. Having The Reaper in my life gave me a reason to keep going. I figured I’d be living in California by the summer, and my one wish was that he’d be there waiting for me, and we’d begin our happily ever after. The Reaper’s best friend lived in Kansas City, and he’d had a visit planned before he’d met me. A week or so after I’d returned home, he asked me if I’d meet him there. I didn’t have to think about my answer. There was no way I’d miss seeing him when he was so close.

We spent the next six weeks talking, laughing, watching Friends "together,"planning this big reunion. He told me how a friend of his was teasing him about his crush in St. Louis, and how he’d told her “this was so much more than a crush.” At the end of one especially enjoyable call, I realized that I loved him. After seven years of dating hell, I’d finally found the guy who made it all worth it. I couldn’t wait to see him in KC, and knew that it would be a matter of time before we were together for good.

The days before the trip were a heady time, full of nerves and excitement, and if I can resort to cliché here for a second, those days were really the last days of my innocence. I had no way of knowing how things would so drastically change, and the lasting impact they would have on my life.

On eighteenth of March in the year two thousand, I boarded a plane for Kansas City. I remember catching my breath when I saw him, as he was more beautiful than I remembered. He took me in his arms and held me, and I breathed in every inch of him.

The ride to his friend’s home was surreal, hearing this voice I’d heard disembodied for six weeks coming out of the man sitting next to me. All I knew was that it felt so right to be with him, and if there was any justice in the universe, I’d be next to him for the rest of my life. His friends dropped us off and let his have some time alone. We made out, screwed around, and talked about where things were with us. I talked about my impending move, and we talked about what that meant for us. To my delight, he told me that he hoped that when I was in California for good that we’d be together.

We joined his friends for dinner. They were both really smart, fun people, and they took an instant liking to me as well. It was my first double-date, and I passed with flying colors. That evening The Reaper and I returned to his friends’ apartment, which, through a stroke of luck (doom?), we had to ourselves. We returned to the making out and screwing around and soon took our act to the bedroom. We lay in the bed, and The Reaper climbed on top of me to kiss me. I looked up at him. “Before we go any further,” I said, nonchalantly, “I just want to make sure there isn’t anything going on here that I don’t know about. There are no secrets or diseases you haven’t mentioned, are there?” Those were the last words I spoke before the bottom dropped out.

This is getting horrifically long. I’m going to have to conclude this in a second entry.

This is a continuation of the previous post.

Before we go any further,” I said, nonchalantly, “I just want to make sure there isn’t anything going on here that I don’t know about. There are no secrets or diseases you haven’t mentioned, are there?”

He said nothing, and I knew.  The look on his face, the chill in the room, the pit in my stomach said it all.  “Well,” he said uneasily, “this is something I’ve been trying to find the right time to tell you … I’m positive.”

Immediately, I began to cry.  In retrospect, my reaction my have been a little extreme, but in my sheltered life, I’d never even met, let alone dated, someone who was positive.  My mind began to race, and I found it hard to breathe.  I asked him why he hadn’t told me before.  He said it was never the right time, and as things progressed he knew he had to tell me, but it was getting harder and harder.  I was angry, I was hurt, I was afraid, in shock.  Not knowing which reaction to have first, I continued with the tears, which were coming harder. 

I tried to regain some composure, to ask him what he was thinking in not telling me sooner, not before we had slept together in California.  He knew it was wrong, but we had been safe (relatively) and he was so happy to meet someone like me that he wanted to enjoy it with me before it inevitably got all fucked up.

The rest of that evening is a blur.  I remember standing up and going to the bathroom, where I collapsed on the floor, as though I were in a bad tv movie, sobbing hysterically into the soft burgundy carpet.  I wanted to get out of there, but being without transportation and two hundered miles from home, I had nowhere to go back to the bedroom, the tomb that the two of us were to share for the rest of the night.

I returned to the bed and slapped him as hard as I could.  He looked horrified, and I felt awful, but I did it again.  I dissolved into more tears, and told him that at this point I might as well tell him that I loved him.  To make the evening even more macabre, he told me he loved me, too.

I asked questions.  How long did he know?  Was he taking care of himself?  What the fuck was he thinking?  It was around this time that I realized that my own life my now in jeopardy.  We’d played it pretty safe in San Francisco, but not 100%.  He blamed himself for that, but I knew that some of the responsibility for that was mine.  He’d not told me, yes, but I didn’t ask any questions.

I don’t know if we spent minutes or hours talking about all this.  Time had stood still that night.  I told him that I felt selfish, because I kept thinking about how I’d been dreaming of my happy ending, and how that was effectively ruined.  “You can still have a happy ending,” he told me.

“Yes,” I replied, “but I wanted it to be with you.”

After more sobbing, we finally fell asleep.  We awoke in the middle of the night, and soon we were fiercely making out.  Not long in, I began to sob again.  This went on for the rest of the night.

The next day, his friends returned, and we tried to put on our game faces.  I think they knew something was wrong, but they couldn’t have known what.  The Reaper had also intended to use this weekend to tell his friends that his was positive.

As we drove to the airport, The Reaper held me in his arms.  I remember thinking, quite simply and without melodrama, that I wished I would die right then.  I knew there was no way this was ever going to be fixed, and even if it was – if I got tested and came up clean, and we still decided to make a go of it, etc – it was never going to be the way it was supposed to be.  At twenty-five, I began to imagine what it would be like to be with someone who most likely would predecease me by decades.  It was a far cry from the dreams I’d had before I left for Kansas City.

I cried the entire flight back.  My friends picked me up, and I imagined to keep it together until we got to the car.  I told them the whole story, and they were surprisingly without judgment, considering the stupidity of what I’d done in California.  I tried to map out my plan to get through this, not the least of which being the year of blood tests I had to look forward to. 

I talked to The Reaper the night of my return.  I told him that I still loved him, and that I still wanted to be with him.  He wanted to be with me, too, and I set my mind to making this work.  My intentions were good.  I can say that much.  But I did start to go a little crazy.

I became monolithic in my plans to get to California for good.  I started researching different treatments for him, gave advice, tried not to talk too much about the big A (or the fact that I still had no idea where my blood was going to fall in all this), and essentially lost my mind.  I suggested I move in with him when I got there, which he wisely thought was a rotten idea.  As I got more insane, he began to pull away.  And these were just the moments in which I was actually talking to him.

I spent my most of the first week back in fog.  My mother had known I was going to KC to meet a guy I’d met in California, but I didn’t fill her in on the details of my trip.  That, I maintain, was a wise decision, but it left me stranded when I was home.   I’d wander around the house until everyone had gone to bed, when I’d resume my sob-fest.   The first night back I remember having to actually hold on the walls to keep myself standing.  And it only got worse from there.

I was temping then, and though I’d been at this assignment for a while, I had no real friends at the job, and certainly not the kind I could tell something like this to.  I’d sit at my desk and calmly do my work, but I’d be dying inside, and every hour or so, I’d calmly leave my desk, walk to the bathroom, and lock myself in a stall and cry. 

At home, I’d keep it together in front of my family, and lock myself in my room to weep when I had to die.  Not only was I dealing with this, but I was also dealing with the fact that I’d gone from constant daily contact with The Reaper to none at all.  I’d lay in my bed at night, and consider just running out the door, in the middle of winter, with no clothes on and just run and run and run until I dropped.

I considered taking my own life.  I don’t think anyone who actually knew what was going on with me at the time knew how close I came to packing it all in.  I don’t know what stopped me from doing it.  I had no epiphanies, no moments of clarity in which I screamed, “I want to live!”  I just kept going.

The Reaper finally resumed contact with me, essentially to tell me that I was crazy and that it was best to end things with us completely.  I’d given up by this point.  I bid him farewell.

 All right.  Hopefully the next installment will be the final chapter.

And now, the conclusion.

The first few months after the whole Reaper ordeal were the toughest.  I survived my first post-Reaper HIV test, and I threw myself into the production of Hair that I was cast in (side note – That’s the show in which I met Shania).  After a few more months had passed, The Reaper and I resumed contact (I’m not sure who contacted whom).  We got ourselves to a point of quasi-friendship, and this went on for about a year.  We’d talk here and there, send emails, write letters.  It felt like the damage was being repaired, and by the summer of 2001 we were close again (as close as we could be with two thousand miles between us).  We’d talk about how if only we were together, maybe things would work out, and when I did Hair again, he made plans to come visit me.

I don’t know what I expected in having him come visit. I was still here and he was still there, and at this point I had no idea if and when I’d ever move to San Francisco.  And he was still going to die, and I finally accepted that nothing was going to change that, no matter how much I loved him.

He arrived on a Friday.  I hadn’t seen him in over a year, but he was just as I had remembered him.  We went back to my apartment, where we hung out and screwed around (safely, I should add.  I’d learned my lesson).  He came to the show, met all my friends.  It was like having a boyfriend for a weekend.  I told him I loved him.  He told me he loved me, and (this is important) he said it more than once and not always in response to me. 

On his last night here, he came home with me after a party, and we danced to the Mamas and the Papas’ “Dedicated to the One I Love.”  He held my face in his hands and said that he loved me.

Our last day together was uneventful.  If I remember it correctly, we spent most of the day on the couch, watching VH1.  Eventually, I had to take him to the airport.  I waited with him at the gate (still pre-September 11) and we shared a final kiss and “I love you,” and he was off.  I’d never see him again.

I talked to him when he got home.  He said he’d had a nice time, of which I was glad.  I said that I hoped it wasn’t another year and a half before we saw each other again.

Then I wrote him the letter.  I don’t remember all that it said, but I told him how I felt about it, that I didn’t know where life would take us, but that I loved him deeply and that I was glad we were in each other’s lives.  There was more to it, and I’m sure it wasn’t all sappy and sentimental.  I sent it off without a thought, and went on with my life.

I don’t remember exactly when I noticed something was wrong.  I don’t know if I noticed the letters and calls were less frequent.  When one is blissfully unaware that something is wrong, you don’t notice the writing on the wall, even when it’s in letters that are ten feet tall.

He and I have birthdays six days apart, in September.  His is first, and when it was approaching (about a month after he’d been to visit), I ordered a couple of books from Amazon.com and sent them to him.  A few days after the order, I got a funny message from UPS.  The package I’d sent had been refused.  Perplexed but still naïve enough to take things at face value, I told them it must have been a mistake and to send it back.  I even double-checked the address.  Once again, the package was refused.

At this point, while still not grasping it completely, I knew something was wrong (Hey, I was only barely twenty-seven years old at the time. That’s apropos of nothing, but I just wanted to remind myself I was once in my late mid-twenties.).  I called him, instant messaged him, emailed him.  I knew it was gonna be bad, but I did feel that he owed me a little more than just vanishing completely.  And I was going to make sure I got my due.

I got my due in the form of an email.  I don’t know what finally got him to respond, but I finally got my response.  I don’t remember too many details, save for a crack about my “oh-so-eloquent” letter and how “a rose is a rose is a rose” because I’d said “I love you” too many times.  In a nutshell, we’d had a few laughs, but I was crazy to think it was anything more than that.  Indeed, I think the general point of his letter was that I was as crazy as a shithouse rat.  He made it clear that if should ever find myself in San Francisco, I was to make damn sure not to find him. 

So, yeah, after it happened I was all “Oh, he can say what he wants, but I was there, too, so you can put any kind of spin you want on it, but we both know the truth.”  To quote my beloved Rilo Kiley, “If you think I’m paranoid, that’s fine, cause I’ve got evidence on my side.”

And yet (and I didn’t realize it until I started closing this entry), these five years have brought a distance and a wisdom that allows me to see I probably was a little crazy.  I was a lonely kid who wanted to be loved so badly that I couldn’t see it from his perspective.  I’m not trying to absolve him for the way he treated me, because he really did treat me like a piece of shit.  He was also just a kid, too, a kid who was dealing with more than I could possibly imagine, let alone understand.  For as good my intentions were, I would never have been able to deal with the shit when the shit turned to shit.  Not with who I was then.  Maybe not even with who I am now. 

Maybe he really did love me.  Maybe pushed me away because he didn’t want me to waste my life on him.  Maybe, in classic, glorious Stella Dallas form, he caused me all that pain to spare me even greater pain.  And maybe the moon is cheese.

I’ll almost certainly never know how he really felt about me, so all I can do is acknowledge how I really felt about him.  I loved him.  I loved him harder than I’d ever loved anyone before. 

Five years ago, I gave my love to a goofy-looking, curly-haired boy in cool glasses. 

And that, my dear Tyler, is the way I choose to remember you.