In the City of Shy Hunters (46 page)

People everywhere. A man and a woman, both dressed in khaki shorts and Nikes, she in a lime-green Polo shirt, he in a navy blue, pushed a blue baby carriage. A skateboarder jumped the curb next to a
NO SKATEBOARDING
sign. A man with long silver hair, torn pants, and no shirt, asleep on a park bench. A woman in a red jogging bra and a blue hair tie, Nikes, carrying weights, running.

Just over from me on the rim of the fountain was an old man. He was smoking, wearing a Jimmy Stewart hat, an old tie with butterflies and dice on it. His shoes and socks were off too, his suit pants rolled up. The cane he leaned on was stuck in the fountain. He looked down into the water.

The water wasn't just milky green. It was blue too, and gray. The bubbles were white. Under the water, a Pepsi can, a straw, some blue plastic thing.

The sun made wavy illuminations on the water. I squinted my eyes and—abracadabra!—out of nowhere were the willows, the dark earth, the wet meadow grass of Spring Creek, Charlie's naked one long uninterrupted muscle diving through the blue Idaho sky.

Who knows how long I sat on the lip of stone sloshing my feet back and forth in the water.

My breath in. My breath out.

WHAT I CAME
up with was this: Since I was a Crossover, and a Crossover is someone who what he's afraid of happens to him, I might as well let it happen.

Let gay, let pride, happen to me.

I loved Charlie, and Charlie was a boy, a boy I had sex with. I couldn't get it up for Fiona. Now Rose.

MY LEGS WADED
through gray-green water. When I got to the splashing water, I looked up, raised my arms into the sky, reached.

It's the Gay Pride march today! I said, out loud to Bethesda Fountain. Then I turned around, cupped my hands around my mouth. Gay Pride! I yelled.
Ta-da!

The old man quick looked at me, poked his Jimmy Stewart hat up.

So, he said. You going?

How about you? I said.

Nah, he said. I'm too old for
mishegoss
. But
you
, he said, You're young. You should go give 'em hell.

All daring and courage, I said, All iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.

The old man flipped his cigarette into the fountain, rubbed his nose.

Ah fuck Teddy Roosevelt, the old man said. Just go be who you are. Who you are is what it is, the old man said. And you don't have much time.

ON THE STEPS
of the 42nd Street Library, I sat down next to a lion, around one-thirty, just about the time they were releasing six hundred thousand purple balloons into the air.

On the pink Gay Pride pamphlet, I read the marchers would observe one full minute of silence in memory of those who had died of AIDS.

One full minute of silence in Manhattan isn't that silent. The balloons were pretty, though. The whole sky was purple at first, purple shining down on the men and women looking up, but as the balloons
floated higher and higher, what we were staring up at was the bright sunny sky, unrelenting.

When the one full minute was over, people cheered, cried, waved flags, held each other.

The show must go on. A band started playing. Disco music from the Monster float.

I followed the parade on the sidewalk, not on the avenue with the marchers. I pretended like it was just another New York day and I was just another New York guy who was walking toward Washington Square Park.

At Washington Square, the parade turned west. The farther west I walked, and the closer to Sheridan Square, people were jammed in so close there wasn't enough air. Marching bands, baton twirlers, guys in tutus on roller skates, franticker and festiver, elaborate floats. Drag queens and muscle men and Dykes on Bikes and black gay men and black lesbians, and Latino gay men and Latino lesbians, Asian men and women—really, I don't think you could find a bunch of people who were so different yet so the same all together in the same place at the same time.

A half million homosexuals, showing off, parading, dancing, running, roller skating, strutting, skateboarding, rickshawing, you name it, through the streets.

Next to me on the sidewalk was a Latino woman in a wheelchair with a rainbow on the back of the chair. Her white silver-haired lover behind her leaned up against the wheelchair. They were laughing their asses off. And then there was these two Asian guys—I don't know if they were Korean or Chinese or Vietnamese or what, but they were scrubbed up and starched white, their thick black hair shiny in the sun, and they were both standing there like schoolboys waving little flags with pink triangles on them.

Then the leather guy drove by on his Harley-Davidson, long hair—looked like ZZ Top with his beard—and there was his big bare white hairy ass arched up out over the seat. The Asian boys, when they saw the Harley guy's ass, covered their mouths, little screams.

In the arch of shade under the Washington Square monument is where I saw them: four policemen on horses. I recognized the white stallion right off.

The cops were just sitting there, watching the parade, smoking and talking to each other. I mean Richard White was talking and the other cops were listening.

The Monster float went by: nearly naked men disco dancing. Sergeant White and the other cops didn't even look up.

What followed the Monster float was a group of people in uniform. Four women, six or seven men. Their purple and pink flag: Gay cops.

The crowd gave out a big cheer.

Even from where I stood, I could see Sergeant White's face get red. He threw his cigarette down, then quick pulled back on the reins. The white stallion reared and the other horses jumped, horse hooves onto cobblestones.

Sergeant White started shouting orders.

Yes,
sir
! Yes,
sir
!

Each cop, each white-guy cop, followed Sergeant White in formation and turned his horse to the right.

More shouts from Sergeant White.

Yes,
sir
! Yes,
sir
!

The cops turned their horses completely around and faced the other direction. Turned their backs on the gay cops. Pointed their four horses' asses at the gay cops.

If I'd had a gun, Rose's silver revolver, I might have shot Sergeant Richard White right then.

I DON
'
T KNOW
how long I stood there, but when I went to move on, a bunch of people had crowded in behind me and from the side. I was in a place no bigger than my body, stuck between a light pole, a garbage can, and a parked car.

From down the street, marching bands, drag queens on stilts, belly dancers, you name it.

The wilder the crowd got, the bigger the hard place inside my chest.

I pushed through the crowd of people, put my head down and just pushed. Then I was running in and out, in and out, through the crowd, heading as fast as I could to 205 East Fifth Street,
I
-A. So many people on the sidewalk I had to move into the street to run. Running against the parade.

I heard the drums and whistles a block before I saw them. Around the corner, a huge burst of dust storm, lightning, thunder, wind blowing tumbleweeds and sagebrush: Native American gays.

The song of the men and women dancing sounded like hundreds of waterfalls and wolves. Horses when they fight. Made you want to lie down and cry, or laugh your ass off, or both.

* * *

THE ONLY WAY
out is in.

If I barfed I'd feel better, but I didn't barf.

After some time, who knows how long, I raised my head and looked into the sun.

Nothing but heat and dust on my shoulders, June grass in my hair.

The drums, the bells around their ankles, the high
heya-heya-heya
cry to the Great Mystery. The bear claws, the whistles, the porcupine quills, the breechcloths, the smell of buckskin and sweat, the sun shining onto the gold, copper, turquoise, the silver glint.

From out of the dust came a rider on a horse. His hair was long and black and wavy and his horse was ayaHuaska.

Charlie 2Moons was doing the Hippodrome Stand; then he leaned down into a Crupper Jump. I reached my hands up and Charlie grabbed my hands and I was flying in the air; then my butt was on ayaHuaska's fortune-telling butt and my arms were around Charlie's middle, his hair in my face, and I was holding Charlie close to me, holding him safe.

Charlie and I on ayaHuaska galloped up Fifth Avenue, all the way up, through the riches to the rags, through the grid, downtown to uptown to out of town, all the way out to the shadow tunnel of cottonwood leaves and branches, kicking up dust and horse farts, then over the railroad tracks, across Highway 30, to the sagebrush plains, the low flatland and the tall grass, into the tules, down into gullies, to the bottoms.

But it's not the truth.

No Charlie. Nowhere.

RUNNING AGAIN
,
FASTER
and faster, the hard place in my chest a hurt where I didn't even know hurt.

I saw a space in the marchers and quick ran farther out into the street—and smack into the next group of marchers.

People with AIDS. Walking wounded. Thousands.

I sat down right there on the pavement on the corner of Fifth and Washington Square North, put my head between my legs. All around me, above me, the humanity. Several men stopped, asked if they could help. I could only shake my head.

My eyes looked only at the feet.

Who knows how long I sat there, how many pairs of shoes, flip-flops, Nikes, sandals passed over and around me, how many shadows walked by.

Below me, a puddle on the pavement, sweat and tears and snot, a river of mucus run out of me.

I got up, made it to the curb. An old woman in a babushka gave me a drink of water from her Evian bottle.

The sun, it's so hot! Drink!

My breath in, my breath out, I stood up straight, made myself look.

One after another, every way a person can look—old young white black brown red yellow men and women—some in wheelchairs, some on crutches, some of them blind and walking with white canes, some of them just skin and bones, some of them healthy-looking as can be. They were marching, smiling, waving at the crowd, elbow, elbow, wrist wrist wrist.

One guy my eyes went to right off was walking close to an older taller guy. You could tell it was his first time, first time in a gay parade, first time with AIDS. There was nothing special about how this guy looked, just a thirty-year-old white guy in khaki pants and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, socially shy, terrified, mostly his eyes on the ground or looking into his lover's eyes.

In that moment, my body understood what it was to be brave. I'd always thought that brave people were just brave. Martin Luther King, Jr. was brave. Malcolm X was brave. Harvey Milk was brave. Rosa Parks was brave. Red Cloud was brave. Brave was something in their bones they just did.

But looking at that guy in the khaki pants and white shirt that day—that whipped-dog look some people have, that he had—I knew: Brave meant you were afraid, real afraid, but you went ahead with it anyway. You invited fear in for a Brandy Alexander and kept going on with your life.

WHAT WAS NEXT
on the street was causing a commotion. People were cheering and clapping way before you could see what was coming up.

When the crowd parted, what charged up the crowd this time was Rose, beloved Rose.

It's the truth.

The gold vestments, the pointy hat, the miter and staff of a bishop: Rose in drag as the cardinal. Rose was walking like Palm Sunday,
In nomine patris, filii, et spiritus sancti
, blessing the crowd. On Rose's right, a young bare-chested brown man waved the censer, the Catholic incense floating through the crowd. On Rose's left, another brown man, all in white, who was a woman in drag to look like Jesus, carried a crucifix.

Six-foot-four Rose, a bright spot of yellow sun. Rose's face and hands were blacker than ever in the sun and the gold. As he walked, Rose bowed to the left, bowed to the right, always making the vertical and the horizontal with his hand.

As he passed, the crowd fell to their knees and cried, Papa! Papa! Everybody scrambling to get to kiss his ring. One guy from the crowd ran up to Rose, unzipped, and pulled out his cock. Rose didn't even blink; he bowed down and made a cross with his thumb on the man's cock.

Rose was only ten feet away when he passed in front of me. I could see the sweat on his forehead, could smell him.

I stayed behind the lamppost.

ONE LAST THING
: A man in a red ball cap, T-shirt, and plaid shorts. Just a gray-haired old guy, maybe sixty, ordinary-looking except he was smiling extra lovely. He wore signs on the front and back of him that said
I AM THE PROUD FATHER OF A WONDERFUL GAY SON
.

In my forearms, up to my shoulders, down through my arms, splash down onto concrete.

When I got my eyes open, I was surrounded by Catholic nuns.

Some of these nuns had beards and mustaches.

The sister holding my head said, Now just go ahead and have a good cry, honey, we've all been there.

In all the world, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square North, snot flinging, crying my fucking eyes out, my head held by Sister Mary Fellatio, I was surrounded by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

BUT THE DAY
wasn't over. That same night, about midnight, the front door opened and my Art Family gasped.

The vestments scratched against the walls of the narrow blue hallway. Rose's step was heavy past my door, past the mailboxes. On the stairs, I heard him fall.

My Art Family froze in position.

Just like that I had my door open.

Up close, Rose's gold vestments in the unrelenting fluorescents looked like cheap jewels.

My hand through the balusters, I reached and put my open palm against Rose's cheek.

Never touch me.

Rose, I said, Are you OK?

Rose's eye opened up, and the way that eye looked at me I stepped back.