anyone not living in Manhattan or San Francisco or Los Angeles at that time what it was like. Lily worked for a newspaper and freelanced at magazines. I wrote for some magazines and taught. We were around some of New York’s best creative people—graphic designers and writers, playwrights and poets. We were in our twenties and believed we were invincible, that we were having the time of our lives. Only for some of us, it was borrowed time.
One by one, people started dropping. Friends who were beautiful young men not a month before when we saw them had Karposi’s, their faces covered with the purplish lesions that marked them the way leprosy used to mark its victims. They grew sicker and sicker, some of them going insane before the end, often alone, just skeletons, disowned by family, ignored by neighbors—or worse, vilified.
A lover of mine, one I buried in 1987, once asked me when I knew I was gay. It was a rare moment when we weren’t fighting or drunk or breaking each other’s hearts with our cheating and lies. We were lying in my king-size bed, staring at the ceiling after smoking a joint, and he asked me, “When did you know?”
I shrugged.
“Come on, Michael. You always shut me out every time I try to get to know you.”
“I didn’t shut you out ten minutes ago.” I grinned, then, as always, aware that my looks offered me a sanctuary. A grin. A seduction. Hiding always came so easily to me.
“Come on. When did you know?”
I thought about it in my pot-fogged mind. “Part of me wants to say I always knew. I was born knowing. But I guess it was in junior high when everyone was paying dollars—whole dollars!—to look at a magazine of Swedish porno that my friend Greg’s father brought back from one of his trips overseas. Mr. Morgan was a pilot. It was hardcore stuff, and Greg found it in the bottom of his father’s sock drawer. Blond women with enormous tits screwing two guys at once, a lot of times black men. Some kind of Swedish obsession. All my buddies were going ga-ga over the blonde, and I was going crazy over these pictures of cocks the size of loaves of French bread.”
“That was a good clue,” he laughed. And then, like the two high idiots we were, we laughed ourselves silly for fifteen minutes until we couldn’t even remember what we were laughing at anymore.
He was dead eleven months later. Not that it stopped me. I never thought anything would stop me. Not the AIDS crisis. Not my own HIV scare—I’m negative, though, thank God. Not lovers settling down into couplehood. I eventually got tested, but I was still running from myself. And then Noah was born.
Noah Michael Waters (middle name after yours truly) was born at five o’clock in the morning the night of a massive blizzard. Lily’s ex, David, who was not yet an ex, was stranded in a Manhattan snowstorm (and please, what bullshit that turned out to be) with no trains leaving the city. I had gone to keep Lily company before the storm hit and ended up sleeping on Lily’s couch. If the new baby decided to make a grand entrance, I didn’t want to worry that I couldn’t get to her.
Just before midnight, Lily came downstairs and poked me.
“Michael?” she whispered. “My water broke.”
The next fifteen minutes played like an I Love Lucy episode. I panicked. I jumped off the couch and started putting on my Reeboks with no socks—which was fucking frigid in the snow. I was running around looking for my coat, looking for Lily’s coat, running into the bathroom to brush my teeth, screaming, “Be calm, Lily. Be calm!”
Lily just laughed. “We have a little time yet, Michael. But with the snow we better get going.” She called up her next-door neighbor, a sweet older lady named Marjorie, to come and stay with Tara.
“Breathe…breathe…” I urged Lily. “You can do this naturally.”
“Fuck that. I want my epidural as soon as we get there.”
I kept watching Lily, expecting the baby to drop down between her legs
One by one, people started dropping. Friends who were beautiful young men not a month before when we saw them had Karposi’s, their faces covered with the purplish lesions that marked them the way leprosy used to mark its victims. They grew sicker and sicker, some of them going insane before the end, often alone, just skeletons, disowned by family, ignored by neighbors—or worse, vilified.
A lover of mine, one I buried in 1987, once asked me when I knew I was gay. It was a rare moment when we weren’t fighting or drunk or breaking each other’s hearts with our cheating and lies. We were lying in my king-size bed, staring at the ceiling after smoking a joint, and he asked me, “When did you know?”
I shrugged.
“Come on, Michael. You always shut me out every time I try to get to know you.”
“I didn’t shut you out ten minutes ago.” I grinned, then, as always, aware that my looks offered me a sanctuary. A grin. A seduction. Hiding always came so easily to me.
“Come on. When did you know?”
I thought about it in my pot-fogged mind. “Part of me wants to say I always knew. I was born knowing. But I guess it was in junior high when everyone was paying dollars—whole dollars!—to look at a magazine of Swedish porno that my friend Greg’s father brought back from one of his trips overseas. Mr. Morgan was a pilot. It was hardcore stuff, and Greg found it in the bottom of his father’s sock drawer. Blond women with enormous tits screwing two guys at once, a lot of times black men. Some kind of Swedish obsession. All my buddies were going ga-ga over the blonde, and I was going crazy over these pictures of cocks the size of loaves of French bread.”
“That was a good clue,” he laughed. And then, like the two high idiots we were, we laughed ourselves silly for fifteen minutes until we couldn’t even remember what we were laughing at anymore.
He was dead eleven months later. Not that it stopped me. I never thought anything would stop me. Not the AIDS crisis. Not my own HIV scare—I’m negative, though, thank God. Not lovers settling down into couplehood. I eventually got tested, but I was still running from myself. And then Noah was born.
Noah Michael Waters (middle name after yours truly) was born at five o’clock in the morning the night of a massive blizzard. Lily’s ex, David, who was not yet an ex, was stranded in a Manhattan snowstorm (and please, what bullshit that turned out to be) with no trains leaving the city. I had gone to keep Lily company before the storm hit and ended up sleeping on Lily’s couch. If the new baby decided to make a grand entrance, I didn’t want to worry that I couldn’t get to her.
Just before midnight, Lily came downstairs and poked me.
“Michael?” she whispered. “My water broke.”
The next fifteen minutes played like an I Love Lucy episode. I panicked. I jumped off the couch and started putting on my Reeboks with no socks—which was fucking frigid in the snow. I was running around looking for my coat, looking for Lily’s coat, running into the bathroom to brush my teeth, screaming, “Be calm, Lily. Be calm!”
Lily just laughed. “We have a little time yet, Michael. But with the snow we better get going.” She called up her next-door neighbor, a sweet older lady named Marjorie, to come and stay with Tara.
“Breathe…breathe…” I urged Lily. “You can do this naturally.”
“Fuck that. I want my epidural as soon as we get there.”
I kept watching Lily, expecting the baby to drop down between her legs
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