Read With or Without You Online
Authors: Brian Farrey
With or Without You
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or
real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are
the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or
locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse paperback edition May 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Brian Farrey
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Designed by Cara Petrus and Karina Granda
The text of this book was set in Stone Serif.
Manufactured in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Control Number 2010038722
ISBN 978-1-4424-0699-5
ISBN 978-1-4424-0700-8 (eBook)
Excerpts from KEITH HARING JOURNALS by Keith Haring, copyright © 1996, 2010
by The Keith Haring Foundation, Inc. Used by permission of Viking Penguin,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Lyrics from the song “Hard” used by permission of Gregory Douglass.
All rights reserved.
The author has been remiss in expressing his heartfelt thanks
to those teachers in his life who encouraged and nurtured him
as a writer. He’d like to make up for that now by
dedicating this book to them:
Donna Weber
Sheila Pervisky
Lois Dassow
Ann Kroll
Mike Hensgen
Mary Greenlaw-Meyer
Helen Cartwright
Priscilla Voitman
Anton Dern
Dick Cavanaugh
Ted Moskonas
Bob Slaby
J.D. Whitney
Bill Deering
Mary Jo Pehl
Deborah Keenan
Sheila O’Connor
Lawrence Sutin
David Haynes
Patricia Weaver Francisco
Mary Logue
Susan Power
Brian Malloy
Looking at the list now, it seems smaller than I imagined.
I guess it’s their fondly remembered contributions that make
it all seem much, much more vast.
Pure Art exists only on the level of instant
response to pure life.
—Keith Haring
Hit the ground.
Curl into a ball.
Cover your head.
Don’t cry. Ever.
All this I know. It is instinct, as automatic as any breath, any blink, any beat of the heart. I repeat eighteen years’ worth of these hard-learned lessons over and over in my head, waiting for the hail of blows to stop.
I worry it won’t be enough.
Over the war cries and laughs from above, I hear a whimper. It’s Davis. He’s nearby and while I can’t see him, I know he’s gone fetal, mirroring my position on the ground. I’m still, silent. I offer no sport. But Davis just made a mistake. His groan earns him the undivided attention of our attackers. I venture one impossibly short glance out between my elbows. Four different pairs of feet launch into a vicious, steel-toed assault on my best friend.
“You got something to say, faggot?”
Pete Isaacson, of course. I dare another look and see five of them total. The usual suspects. Pete’s mob from the wrestling team: the troglodytes. Pete lords over them all in his trademark bowling shoes, burnished emerald and ochre. Two glints of gun-metal silver, dog tags on a chain around his neck, shoot the sun’s reflection like a laser. He’s grinning. “Come on, faggot. Lemme hear you howl.”
When Davis doesn’t answer, Pete stomps on Davis’s hip, eliciting a scream. I’m too sore to take in a breath. I can only send silent pleas to Davis:
Shut up, shut up, shut up
. Davis sobs. The savage blows pitch his short, skinny body this way and that.
Don’t cry. Ever.
I’ve never cried during a beating. I used to think that I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing they’d hurt me. The real reason? Crying solves nothing. I only do things that make a difference. Like now. When I summon the strength to cough.
The effect is instantaneous. Three of the trogs break off and renew their assault on me. One of them falls to his knees, pummeling the side of my head and my right arm with his fists. A year and a half ago, Kenny Dugan broke that arm when he slammed me into a locker. That might be him now, trying to recapture the glory. So, I do all I can do. I take a diversion.
LOCAL TEEN DEAD IN
GAY-BASHING INCIDENT
Madison, Wis.—Authorities are questioning five local wrestlers in the death of Evan Weiss, a senior at Monona High School. Just one day before all six were set to graduate, the students are facing charges of first-degree murder in what authorities are describing as a clear case of gay bashing.
Weiss and his best friend, Davis Grayson, were walking home after the last day of school when the suspects allegedly jumped the pair in a field behind the school and beat them.
Grayson remains hospitalized in critical care.
Perhaps most tragic is that Weiss died mere blocks from the state capitol, where Governor Doyle Petersen is days away from signing major hate-crime legislation into law.
When asked to comment on the incident, Governor Petersen said, “It’s difficult to comment without all the facts. But once these boys are found guilty, I plan to lobby for the death penalty and see those little fuckers fry.”
My self-inflicted fantasy does the trick and carries me away into unconsciousness. I don’t know how much later it is when I feel someone gently prodding my chest.
I move and my body explodes. A discharge of pain from my shoulder leaves my right arm flaccid. I wail and pull it to my chest.
I look up at Davis. His left eye is swollen; it’ll be completely shut by morning. His sandy blond hair juts out in every direction, decorated with grass clippings. Dark streaks crisscross his face like war paint and, with the sun disappearing behind trees and houses, shadow and blood fuse into one.
“A car drove by and they freaked.” His whisper is like grinding glass. “You were out. I didn’t know what to do.”
He holds out his hand to help me up but I shrink away, keeping my right arm against my chest. He sees this.
“Is it broken?”
I vividly remember what it felt like when Kenny broke it—a river of knives flowing up to my shoulder—and this does not feel like that. I shake my head and, using my good arm, push off the ground. We stand facing each other for a moment, each fading into a silhouette. We limp back to my house.
From the safety of my bedroom window, I watch day retreat, leaving a scarlet-toned dusk. Colors ebb into shadows, segregating the houses on our street. Two blocks over, I hear joyous shouts from James Madison Park, heralding summer vacation for one and all on Lake Mendota. I want to enjoy this, my favorite season, but enjoying hurts.
Davis sits at the edge of my unmade bed, his feet not even reaching the floor. He’s playing with the tear in his shirt. It’s his favorite shirt. His mother bought it for his birthday a year ago. He’s protective of things his mother buys for him. It’s ruined now.
Davis smolders—corrugated brow, blue-flame glare. Everything in him focuses on a single spot on the floor. He is gone.
“So close, eh?” I ask, shaking my head. “Almost made it the whole school year. Timing couldn’t be worse. I was
going to make us T-shirts—‘372 days without a work-place beating.’”
It should get a reaction. It doesn’t. I press on.
“I heard Pete’s going to Ohio State. Wrestling scholarship. I think they should offer a scholarship to anyone who can explain how wrestling is
not
gay.”
Still nothing.
I should know better. What happened today wasn’t typical. Pete and the trogs went all out. Way beyond being slammed into a locker or given a simple black eye. This wasn’t just bullying. With graduation coming, this was their last hurrah. They wanted a memento: permanent damage. So, I shouldn’t be making light of it. Why can’t I stop?
Because I have to reach him. I have to reach Davis. It’s what I know.
I pull our triage kit out from under my bed and kneel next to Davis. I can smell his blood. The scent overpowers the sharp sting of acrylic paint and turpentine in my room. I can only smell blood.
“I think Kenny Dugan is staying here in Madison but I heard he couldn’t get into the UW. I wonder if the Tech offers a major in ‘Duh.’”
Davis glares at the floor, avoiding my eyes. But the corner of his mouth shoots up, just for a second. Almost there. Drive it home.
I lower my voice and do my best Kenny. “Yeah, I’m here to major in ‘Duh’ and minor in”—I strum my lips up and down with my finger—“bebedebedbeebededebe.”
Davis shouts, “Quit being such a tardmonkey! This isn’t funny.”
His voice shakes on “funny” and his periwinkle eyes moisten.
We don’t say anything. I dab at his face with a dry sponge. He returns the favor. The routine is sad but has a strange, familiar comfort.
I stare over Davis’s left shoulder at the wall by the head of my bed where half a dozen of my own paintings hang. Each one evokes the style of a different artist—O’Keefe, Seurat, Van Gogh—but the subject matters are mine.
Unlike my predecessors, I don’t paint on canvas. I paint on glass. I go to auctions and pawn shops to buy old windows. Some still framed, others just sheets of glass. Oval, rectangle, I’ve even got a triangle. I built my own easel years ago out of an old music stand and a series of rusty vise clamps that extends out in a bunch of Shiva-like arms. Davis dubbed it THE CLAW. It’s heavy and awkward, but I can position the window with the clamps and angle it toward whatever I want to capture. Then I paint the image I see through the glass, stroke by stroke, until the world beyond the window is replaced with my acrylic reality. My sister, Shan, used to tease
me by calling it “poor man’s paint-by-number.” I miss my sister.