Love Is the Higher Law (4 page)

“Hey,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” he said.

I pointed out the question. “What’s that about?”

“Oh, they need to know if you’ve had any homosexual intercourse.”

He looked a little surprised that I of all people had asked the question. Which is what I love about American guys, especially straight ones. If you’re not a flaming Filipino dancing queen, they never, ever expect the Asian guy to be asking about gay sex. They always figure you want to talk about math. Or the violin.

Normally in this situation, Amanda would be joining me in fighting the urge to laugh. But she was pretending like she was too busy writing everything she knew about heart disease in her family.

“Yeah,” I said. “I figured that. But they mean unprotected sex, right? I mean, without a condom.”

He shook his head. “No. It’s really any gay sex.”

I could tell that I wasn’t the first guy to ask him about this. And I really wasn’t in the mood to spell it out for him. I tried to keep it light.

“Let’s say I have this friend,” I said. “And the only times he’s had homosexual intercourse—we’re only talking a few times here, assuming you mean all-out intercourse—there was a condom involved, and never in any of those few occasions was that condom, um,
compromised
. So it’s been a hundred percent on the safety side. My friend would still be able to give blood, right?”

Again, a headshake. “I’m afraid not. I’m not saying it makes total sense, but that’s the law.”

Now I was getting upset. Because this was the only thing I could do, and now I wasn’t able to do it. For this crazy-ass bigoted reason.

“You mean to tell me, if my friend Amanda here had unprotected sex with a hundred guys and I had protected sex with two guys, she would be able to give blood and I wouldn’t?”

People were definitely listening now.
Let them
, I thought.

“I’m afraid that’s the law. Even if we don’t agree with it, we can’t let you give blood.”

“That’s the law
. Of course that’s the law! Because who would want to give a dying person
gay blood
. Even if it’s screened for HIV and AIDS and everything else—no, if that person got some
gay blood
, who
knows
what might happen? Better to go
without blood, right, than get it from a fag? That’s a
great
law. It’s, like, America’s
best law ever
. I’m so fucking glad I live in this country!”

I guess I was lucky my shade of yellow wasn’t any closer to brown, ’cause if I’d been Arab or easily mistaken for Arab, someone would’ve probably called the police. Don’t get me wrong—there were plenty of people saying it wasn’t fair, and there were even one or two leaving the line—whether because they’d had homosexual intercourse or because they sympathized with those of us who had, I don’t know. I even felt sorry for the guy who was telling me all this, because clearly it wasn’t his law, and clearly he had no desire to be having this conversation.

The line was moving forward, and we were just standing there.

“I’m sorry,” the guy said.

I turned to Amanda. “Let’s go. I know when I’m not wanted.”

But Amanda wasn’t moving.

“I can meet you later,” she said. “I’ll ask ’em to take double, so I can give for both of us.”

That’s not the point
, I wanted to say, but I honestly wasn’t clear what the point was anymore.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll see you later.” Even though I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t. Amanda would spend the next couple of weeks calling, but I wasn’t going to pick up.

I left the line and didn’t look back. The air was as tainted as ever—it wasn’t the kind of smell you got used to, the kind that
your nose or your mind adjusts to. I checked my cell phone, and now it wasn’t getting reception. I knew there were people around—even if my friends were off at school, many of their moms would have taken me in. But I didn’t want to see any of them. So I just walked around for a while, seeing all the aimless people, picking up papers as I went—some of them the pages that had been pushed across the Hudson, some of them our own Brooklyn garbage, left behind for no reason other than there was no reason to keep them. Coupon sections from Sunday papers. Those Chinese take-out menus. Law firm receipts. Printed-out emails. Take- out menus from the World Trade Center area.

At one point I found myself walking by the entrance to the park, seeing all the people there, and I thought,
It can’t be Tuesday
. It was unreal that it was a Tuesday and everybody was walking around. I could see the people who must’ve walked across the bridge, who were coming back from Manhattan looking exhausted, like it was night. You could tell that a lot of them had bonded in their journeys, and you really didn’t know whether it was because they all worked in the same office or if they had just met as they forged across. I was seeing a lot of goodbyes—then hellos as people headed up their steps and made it to their own front doors. More often than not, there was someone waiting there to meet them, hold them, bring them inside.

I went back to my house. I sat down and turned on the TV and didn’t get up for another six or seven hours. I flipped from
newscast to newscast—they were all saying the same thing, and I guess it all depended on who you wanted to be telling it to you. I decided I wanted to be with Peter Jennings the most, because there was something about his accent that calmed me down. He made me know he was going through it along with me, that he was trying to figure out how to deal with what he had to do, too. They kept showing the same footage of the planes hitting the towers—then the fires at the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania, and everyone wondering if there were more targets, if more things were going to happen. At one point they’d repeated everything enough, and I wanted to tell them to stop showing the planes hitting the tower. We didn’t need to see it again. And yet I didn’t turn it off. Because I was hanging on every minute, wanting to be there when whatever was going to happen next actually happened. I tried flipping to other channels—the Food Network and Nickelodeon and VH1 Classic. But these channels felt like they were being beamed in from another planet, or even from the past—like the airwaves were taking a little longer to get here, so we could live in yesterday a little while longer, even if it felt wrong.

Around dinnertime, the phone rang again. I picked up and heard Mom’s voice. She was just checking in, she said. She’d been trying for over an hour to get through.

“Isn’t it early in the morning there?” I asked her.

And she said, “Do you really think I can sleep?”

There wasn’t much I could tell her—she was watching the same news I was. And I wasn’t going to tell her about giving
blood—there was no reason to do that. I wasn’t even sure she would take my side. If anything, she’d think I was using a roundabout way to tell her I had AIDS.

It wasn’t like they were using the blood. They kept collecting it and collecting it for survivors who weren’t being found. Maybe that’s why I kept watching, and why Peter Jennings kept talking, and why I’m sure the streets of Brooklyn that night were lit by the blue flickerglow of all of our TV screens—because what we needed was that one moment of good news, that one person pulled from the rubble. I remembered how, when I was little, there was a baby girl who fell in a well, and it was like the whole country held its breath until they got her out. It’s not that survivors would have erased what had happened to everyone else, but it would have at least told us that our hope was justified, that it was still the kind of story we were used to.

Instead the only victories we had were the things that hadn’t happened. The fourth plane hadn’t made it to D.C. There weren’t fifty thousand people in the World Trade Center at 8:46 in the morning like there would’ve been at noon.

Darkness came, and I had to turn on the lights. The TV became too repetitive, and I had to put it on mute. My phone started working, and I had all these messages. And the whole time, all I could think about was how I’d really wanted to give blood and they hadn’t let me.

I took a pizza out of the freezer and preheated the oven. I got a call through to my best friend in St. Louis but we only talked a little while. I unmuted the news and listened to it
enough to know that nothing had changed since the last time I’d checked. I ate my pizza. I didn’t pick up when I saw Amanda’s number. I tried to watch a movie and couldn’t.

I washed my dishes and put them on the rack to dry. Then I went back to my computer to tell more people I wasn’t dead.

LOVE AND THEFT
Peter

The songs are wrong. The songs are wrong. This is what hits me: The songs are wrong.

I am at Tower Records, waiting to buy the new Bob Dylan,
Love and Theft
. I have Ryan Adams in my ears, but I turn the music off when the guy from Tower sees me outside, comes over early to unlock the doors, and says, “Man, do you know what’s going on?”

It’s the way he looks so sorry for me that makes me feel like I’m about to lose something. I can only stare at the blue dragon tattoo on his forearm and shake my head, not knowing until he tells me the news. I think for a moment it’s a joke. And then I think, no, it isn’t a joke.

I keep the music off, walk to Washington Square Park, look downtown—and there it is. I see it clearly. I’m standing there with strangers, and we’re all talking as we stare at this dark, jagged hole in the right-hand tower. It looks, we all say, like a special effect from a big-budget science-fiction movie. This is our first way of
grasping it. We are still in disbelief. More people come up and stop in shock. In the shadow of the crater you can see the fire. It seems so small to us—it isn’t until we think about it that we realize the mark of flame is stories high. And the crater is the size of any of the buildings around us. The smoke has just started.

I know immediately that this is going to be one of the true historic moments of my life—that the personal and the historic are converging. I know people will ask,
Where were you when you first heard?

Someone has a radio. We ask her our questions.
Did the plane go through the other side? What kind of plane was it? Are people getting out?

I am not thinking in terms of people. I am thinking in terms of the building.

We say,
It’s amazing it’s still standing
. We say,
I can’t believe this
. None of us—the ones watching from the park—seem to know anyone who works there. And we’re sure we have to know someone who works there. New York isn’t that big.

And then.

The middle of the second building shoots out in flames. We gasp. We cover our mouths. Some of us cry out.

There is a minute there, maybe less, where I stare at the Twin Towers and think there is some way that the fire has jumped from one building to the other—that it actually shot through the air and spread to the other tower. It makes no sense. But of course, I don’t want it to make sense.

Then someone says he saw another plane. He says he’d noticed it, was wondering why it was flying so low. And that’s when we cross over from disbelief into unbelief.

The second fire is stronger. Debris is falling. It looks like sheets of paper falling. But they are big. Too big. We know.
How many minutes was it between explosions? People could have evacuated, right? How can you fight a fire like that? Isn’t it incredible that the buildings are still standing?
Horror on top of horror. Realizing each row of each tower is a floor. Each slit is a window. That there is nothing anyone can do. Sirens. We can hear sirens. I know I should be going to school. But I can’t move. I cannot think of a single word to describe what we feel. I think we all feel it, to varying degrees. Perhaps in some other language there is a word for
the world is terribly wrong
. That feeling of stun and unbelief and abandonment and shock and horror and distress.

When the first tower collapses on itself, I feel it taking something away from us. And I’m sure it’s something we won’t get back again, at least not for a while. Maybe this is the moment that our unbelief turns slightly to belief.

Even as I start walking to school, I can’t press play, because suddenly the songs are wrong—there’s no music anymore, just news. Like when I would go on car rides with my parents, and as soon as I fell asleep, they’d pop the CD out and the car would be full of the news, repeating every half hour, only now it’s like it’s repeating every half second, and to hear anything else would be wrong. So my headphones stay around my throat as I stumble away. I know if I press play, the song will never be able to work for me again, because instead of the song playing under the moment, the moment will weigh on top of the song, and I am never going to want to remember this, I am never going to want to be here again, so I walk without anyone else’s words in my ears, and all the music falls away from the world, because how can you have music on a day like today? White noise is not the same as silence. White noise is different because you know white noise is deliberate, composed to cancel everything out. It is the opposite of music, and it is all that I can hear and all that I can imagine hearing right now. I keep going back to that first moment—seeing the black hole on the tower, seeing the site of the crash. That image, that one image, is what I am picturing right now. That tower is our history, our lives, all the minutiae and security and hope. And that black hole is what I’m feeling. It is what has happened. It will affect me in ways I can’t even begin to get my mind around. This day is a dark crater. There is no room for songs. The songs are wrong. Every song is wrong. And I don’t know what to do without music.

THE NEXT HOURS AND
THE NEXT DAYS

(Part Two)

THE DATE
Peter

After two days of being at home and not having school and not being able to go anywhere, I’m ready to leave the apartment. I tell my parents I’m going to stay over at John’s house, because that’s easier than the truth, and John’s told me if it doesn’t work out with Jasper717, then I can always show up late at night at his place, because his parents will assume it’s Nicole sneaking in. John calls him Jasper717 because that’s his email name, but I call him Jasper, and I’m really excited to see him, even though Mitchell’s party seems like it was a long time ago, not this past Saturday. I’m nervous because I’m doing a lot of things I never do, such as (a) lying to my parents, (b) having a date with a boy who’s in college, (c) leaving Manhattan, (d) wearing a deliberately tight T-shirt. This last one, (d), is because that’s what I wore to Mitchell’s party, and the first thing that Jasper said to me was, “Hey, that’s a pretty tight T-shirt”—and at first I was all embarrassed, and then he said, “No, that’s a good thing.” The only people who flirt with me are usually the people who flirt with everyone, so I just thought, oh, he’s playing a game. But every time he’d leave me for something—to get a drink, to talk
to someone else—he’d always loop his way back. When I went to Mitchell and asked who he was, Mitchell said, “Good—he asked who you were about fifteen minutes ago, and I’ve been waiting for you to catch up.” I thought maybe it was my lucky night for once, because he seemed really nice, or at least like he knew what he was doing. Even when people started to leave, we kept talking—he was trying to tell me to apply to his school, and kept saying he’d love to host me for a visit, and I still wasn’t convinced that he was really interested in me, and then he sat on my lap, which is about as unambiguous as it gets (other than actual sexual contact). I started to wonder if something was going to happen that very night, but when it got to be two in the morning, John and Veronica said they had to go, and Jasper said he was from Brooklyn, and I didn’t know where he was staying, but I couldn’t really ask him to stay at my place (because of my parents), and it didn’t feel right trying to stay later at Mitchell’s, because he’d started to gather all the bottles and glasses, which is a pretty obvious sign for everyone to go home and go to sleep. So I shrugged and said I had to go, and Jasper told me he was Jasper717 and even wrote it down so I’d have it, and I asked him if he’d seen
Hedwig
, and he said he hadn’t, so we made a date, even if we didn’t use the actual term
date
. I spent all of Monday worried and excited about it, and then Tuesday happened, and instantly the world was all out of whack, and I couldn’t help being concerned about him, because all of a sudden he wasn’t just this guy I’d met, he was the guy I was supposed to go out with on September 11th, and I felt that had to mean something. So
we emailed a couple of times, and when the subways were mostly working again, we rescheduled for tonight, only instead of
Hedwig
he suggested I come over and watch a video, because his parents were stuck in Korea and not getting home anytime soon. I think this means something, too—not that his parents are in Korea, but that he’s inviting me over. That seems more personal than a movie. So that’s how I end up lying to my parents and telling John the truth, and then when the time comes, I take the F train out to Park Slope for this date that might not really be a date. When I get there, he meets me at the door and suggests a restaurant nearby. I say sure, because it isn’t like I know anyplace else in the neighborhood. It’s awkward at first, because even though we have this big thing in common—this September 11th connection—we still don’t know each other that well. Even before we order, he asks me where I was when the planes hit, and I ask him where he was, and we compare notes. He’s the first person I’ve known who missed it, who slept through it, and part of me is jealous that he didn’t have to see it, and part of me is glad that I saw it, because otherwise it would be harder to believe. I feel I can tell him this, because it’s not like it is with my parents, who are so worried about me being worried and who are so sad when they think I’m sad. He doesn’t have to be affected by how it’s affecting me, and that allows me to be honest. He’s such a good listener that I don’t even realize he’s listening—I’ve been on dates before where the other guy makes it really obvious he’s listening, and that’s not really being a good listener, because that’s asking to be noticed. But Jasper lets
me talk, and when I say I’m babbling, he assures me I’m not. I think we’re both a little shell-shocked from the week—there still aren’t words to really explain it. I tell him how I’ve only just started listening to my disc player again, and even then I’ve had to pick my music really carefully. I have to read tracklists before I play a mix, which is something I never usually do, but now you never know what song’s going to come on and bring it all back again. Like the new U2 album suddenly has this depth that it didn’t have last week, because now when he sings “Walk On,” he’s singing to all of us. And Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” appeared on a mix Dan had given me, and I almost lost it. Then I put on the mix Annie made me for my birthday, and this Amy Correia song, “Life Is Beautiful,” came on, and she was singing about lying in the gutter and looking at the stars, and I thought, okay, there’s still a lot of beauty in the world, even if I’m not feeling any of it. I tell Jasper about how the strangest things are making me cry, like this news story about these Starbucks employees who are staying up all night to stay open for hospital workers and rescue workers, and I ask him if he’s had moments like that, too, crying at silly things, and he says he tends to detach from it all. “So you just withdraw?” I ask, not really knowing how someone could detach right now. And he says, “Not totally.” Then, probably seeing I need more explanation, he adds, “I mean, you can’t let it get to you.” I say, “Because if you let it get to you, then the terrorists will have won?” This is a joke on my part, because for the past two days everyone’s been saying things like, “You can’t let the fear prevent you from drinking Coca-Cola … or the
terrorists will have won” or “You can’t put off buying that new Chevrolet … or the terrorists will have won.” But Jasper doesn’t seem to get my reference, or maybe he just doesn’t know me enough to know I’m joking. Because he says, “It’s not about them, really. It’s just about me.” I ask him when his parents are coming back, and he says they’re trying, but they’re not really sure. “When you stop all the airplanes in America, it tends to cause logistical problems.” We talk about the news, and how much of it we’ve been watching, and I’m trying to sense whether or not the spark is there, the one that shot through us at Mitchell’s party. Because even if it is there, I have to imagine it’s been dulled by all the other things on our minds. One person on the news was saying they were already predicting a slew of “9/11 babies” nine months from now, but I wanted to say back to her, do you really think this is putting people in the mood? Not just for sex, but to have children? And I start to laugh, and Jasper asks me what I’m laughing at, and I say, “If we stop having sex, then the terrorists will have won.” And I think, wow, he must think I’m a lunatic, but this time he actually laughs, too. I want to switch the subject before it takes us over again, so I ask him about college, but of course the answer he gives is that nobody knows if school’s going to start on time this year, because people are afraid it’s going to be hard to get there. And if … well, if there’s another attack, people want to be home. “Do you really think there’s going to be another attack?” I ask, and he says, “I don’t know. But I think that’s the whole point of it—that we have no idea.” This is already the strangest date I’ve ever had,
because it’s like
mortality
is factoring into it. And I can’t even tell whether he’s liking me, or whether we’re just two people who happen to be sharing the same space for a certain amount of time. The restaurant is crowded, I think because most people are tired of being in their apartments, watching TV. There are even some groups of people who look like they’re talking about other things, laughing and shouting over each other and debating. I ask Jasper what he’s studying, and he tells me he’s undecided—there isn’t one thing that he gravitates toward. “I wish I could concentrate in General Studies,” he says. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that.” I nod, as if I’ve given the matter much thought. In truth, getting through senior year is intimidating enough. Even though I’ve only had four days of it, the pressure has been insane. But I don’t tell him this, because I don’t want to emphasize that I’m younger. I like it when he looks at me as an equal. It makes me believe I could be an equal, someday. “Have you ever seen
Cabaret?”
he asks, and I wonder if it’s a trick question. I shake my head. “I mean, not the Broadway one, but the movie.” I shake my head again. “Well, it’s not
Hedwig
, but do you want to come back and watch
Cabaret
or something?” “Hells yes,” I say, perhaps a little too eagerly. He smiles. “Looks like we have a plan, then.” We split the check when it comes, then head outside. A gust of wind hits us, and I shudder. I wonder aloud when it’s going to stop smelling like death, and Jasper says that, once again, he has no idea. But he says the waves of it are farther apart now—maybe that means it’ll eventually wear itself out. His brownstone is only a couple of blocks away. It is not normal
for me to go home with someone on a first date, but this feels like more than just a first date, and since Jasper’s friends with Mitchell, it’s not like he’s a stranger. When we step inside the living room, it’s a complete frat-house mess. Pizza boxes lie open-mouthed with congealed leftovers and petrified crusts still inside them. There’s a forest of Snapple bottles settled with tea sediment, and a gaggle of magazines left haphazardly across the furniture—even though there’s a couch and two armchairs, at first there’s nowhere for me to sit. “Sorry, sorry,” Jasper says, jumping in and clearing off the couch by moving everything into a makeshift pile on one of the armchairs. “I never did get that housekeeping merit badge.” “You were a Boy Scout?” I ask. He nods. “An Eagle, actually. But without the housekeeping badge.” He asks me if I want something to drink, and I tell him water would be great. And then he says, “No, I mean something to
drink,”
and I say I’ll have whatever he’s having. He goes to the kitchen and brings back two bottles of OB beer. “OB?” I ask. And he says, “It’s like Korean Budweiser. That way, if my parents catch me drunk, at least they’ll think I’m reaffirming my heritage.” Jasper turns on the TV, and of course it’s the news, and all of a sudden we’re sitting on the couch watching it, sipping our beers. Or at least I’m sipping; Jasper gulps. “Did you see Peter Jennings by the end of the day yesterday?” he says. “I swear, the man was up for forty-eight hours straight, trying to explain this unexplainable thing. If it weren’t for him and Brokaw and Dan Rather, I think we would’ve had riots in the streets. They’re the ones who calm us down. Not our fake of a president.” “I’ll drink
to that,” I say. He raises his beer. “To Peter Jennings!” “To Peter Jennings!” And then we clank our bottles, and I wonder whether this is the most contact we’ll have tonight, because we go back to watching the news and all the talk about the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and what America’s response should be. It’s not very romantic, except maybe if you take the long view and say that the two of us on the couch despite everything going on is itself a romantic statement.
If we don’t go out on dates, then the terrorists will have won
. After about an hour of CNN and ABC and NBC and CBS, with us providing our own commentary, Jasper (by now finishing his third beer, with me slowly imbibing my second) slaps his hand to his forehead and says,
“Cabaret
!” He digs up the DVD and puts it into the DVD player. “Is it okay if we leave the lights on?” he asks. “Or do you like it better in the dark?” And I say either way is fine. Truth is, I’m not really that interested in watching a movie. It’s getting late, and my mind is slipping into its usual Clash refrain: Stay? Go? The movie starts, and Liza Minnelli’s in pre-Nazi Germany, and it’s a little weird because everyone seems to think she’s amazing, but really she’s not that attractive, but I’m afraid of saying anything, because for all I know, Liza Minnelli is Jasper’s favorite actress ever, and even though I’m pretty new at this, I know that coming between a gay boy and his diva is a very serious offense. I personally don’t have a diva, unless Rufus Wainwright and Morrissey count, which maybe they do. It’s starting to feel like I’m over at a friend’s house, which isn’t a bad thing for a seventh date, but is pretty discouraging for a first. But there’s no way I’m going to make a
move without him giving me some indication that he wants me to make a move—which I guess is a way of me saying that he has to make the move, since indications are, in general, also moves. I try to motivate myself to take that first step, but the fact that it’s his house and the fact that he’s older and the fact that he’s clearly more experienced than I am—well, it all just shuts me up, until I find a dull and neutral fact to send in his direction, to see what kind of response it gets. “It’s almost midnight,” I say after the British bisexual has stopped singing. And Jasper says, “You can stay over, you know. I mean, or you can leave. I don’t want you to think you can’t leave.” “But I can stay.” “Of course. It would be stupid to head all the way back to the Upper West Side at this hour. Unless, of course, you’re going to get into trouble…” “No—my parents think I’m at a friend’s.” He raises an eyebrow. “You little schemer, you.” Sadly, my scheme doesn’t include what to do next. “Do you want to watch the rest of the movie?” he asks. And I say yes, because I think it would be rude to say no. So we watch, and the Nazis ruin everything, and I’m starting to get really depressed. I’m surprised by a noise that’s not coming from the screen, and then I realize—it’s raining out. For the first time all week, it’s raining. Then the movie’s over, and when he hits stop, the news comes back on, and while they’re not saying anything new—it’s just new people analyzing—we still watch. Then Jasper starts to yawn, and when he yawns, I yawn, too. He smiles at that, but it’s not an I’m-going-to-kiss-you-now smile. “We should probably go to bed,” he says. Then he leaves the room. I fix my hair a little when he’s gone, but when