Fade to Gray

Chapter 1-2

Monday, March 27:

Last night, I so badly needed a member of the fashion police. Anyone, even the lowest recruit, could have made this arrest. I’m going to be very catty here, Richard. This woman was as big as a cow and wearing the most revealing little black tent, as you would have called it. If only you could have been here and we could have been boys again, with that fearless sense of bitter superiority we (and so many of our friends) had back then. Do young queers still have this acidic tongue? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

“Does this muumuu make my ass look fat, John?” I picture the woman saying to her husband.

He raises his eyebrows, tests his will to live, and replies, “No, Buttercup.”

Hysterical laughter ensues (for us).

Oh, dear Richard, you would have laughed again at me. I got up the courage to go to the hot tub. I was just getting a towel when a very heavy-set woman headed up the steps. I wondered what you would have said about water displacement, and I nearly choked and repeated the thought out loud. I would have died if she’d heard me. You know I don’t exactly look svelte and handsome myself with my surgery scars, pot belly, and funny hairline (nor have I shaved my chest since you left me). But you know what, once I got in the tub, we all had so much fun laughing at the temperature and daring each other to get into the ice-cold pool behind us, which was sloshing and rolling, that I forgot to be embarrassed about how I looked.

I was reminded again that it’s what’s in a person’s heart. If there’s a sparkle in their eyes, that matters, not what our physical body looks like. Mine, I would say, looks like I have lived. You were still so handsome when you died. Me, it’s probably a good thing my hair was going gray early. I never did appreciate whatever Irish ancestor gave me the red hair and freckles. I’ll keep the green eyes, though. Now that my ass is no longer my best feature, I do like my eyes.

I’ve had some funny glances come my way, you know. I do look like what I am, stereotypes and all. I try not to look gay, but I just can’t help being what I am after the childhood and teenage days when we tried so hard to not look like what we are. For God’s sake, our lives depended on it in those days. Now I’m either too old to care or just sick and tired of not being seen. I want to be a visible man, a visible gay man. I don’t think anyone will pitch me overboard because of it, but it’s sad that the thought even has to be in our minds in this day and age. I had such hopes for us, for the younger us coming up, but youth today are still being mocked, beaten, and kicked out by their parents. When does it end? Goddamn it, when does it ever end?

While we’re being morose, you know I’ve come on this cruise not just to place your ashes in the ocean, but to join you. I don’t know when, but you can imagine why. My dear, I’m unable to see any reason to go on without you. Nobody wants me, nobody cares about me, nobody will miss me when I gone. I’m too old to say, “I’ll die and then they’ll be sorry,” like we used to as kids, but just quietly slipping overboard in the dark of night…well, then.

“Well, then, there now, as James Dean said in the movie Rebel Without a Cause—remember how we could quote all the lines to each other? Remember when we found out Sal Mineo was not only gay, and had a crush on James, but had posed naked for a classical-type picture? The New Adam, right? Oh, good times! Whenever he looked at James with those cow-like eyes, with his devotion and desire, oh, my God, I about came in my pants right there in the theater and every time later watching the video I’d swiped from the video store.

I chose a Worldtour ship, Something Something Rain, I think, perhaps because of its slightly weird name or because, while huge, it’s not mega-huge. I got a stateroom near the top, with a balcony. I’m so sorry we didn’t do this when you wanted to. I’ll always regret that.

I ate dinner in the formal dining room last night, and I wish I hadn’t. I sat at a table for eight, part of which was a family, another couple, and the rest of us strays. There was wine, lobster, soup, waiters, the whole thing. But during the dessert, there was the most awful scene. Quiet and tasteful, you understand, as befits the upper classes, don’cha know, but the undertones were right out there in plain sight, if you know the signs. In short, this ritzy asshole and his b***h-thin wife with one of those costly wedge haircuts had been quietly but continually ragging on their exquisite teenage son the whole meal.

Of course, my please be gaydar was buzzing furiously! And I think, accurately, from the various things I overheard.

“Why can’t you be like your brother Junior? He’s already earned a full football scholarship, and he’s a year younger than you.”

And then dear mother, “This art history thing is fine for a passing fad, but where will it get you in life? Some shop? Living in some attic? As a newspaper critic for small shows in some forgotten fly-over state? Is that what you want? You can’t make a living in art. Maybe you could teach kindergarten. But, really, Savin? You’re an adult; act like it!”

Finally, the boy stood, steaming under a white face, his upper cheeks burning, and excused himself, saying he felt ill. I’ll bet he felt ill. Hell, I felt ill! I felt so bad for him. It brought back so many sad and painful memories.

I was only able to finish the meal by thinking of what you might have said to them, and it brought me a small smile as well. I do miss you so much.

Besides, they said newspaper critic like it was a bad thing.

I went by the photo area, not because I wanted to see any photos of myself without you, but I did see the one of that damn family. The boy is just as sweet in the photo as in real life.

Oh, my God, Richard, did we look like that as teens? I doubt it! No, we were wearing plaid shirts and khakis with grease in our hair and trying to fit in. I felt like I had buck teeth and an overbite and overalls, compared to how neat the other boys looked. And out of one hundred kids in my high school graduating class, apparently, I was the only gay one, though later I heard that one of the girls who had never married had been very athletic in school.

You know what that means, right? Nobody had even heard of lipstick lesbians or, God forbid, transsexuals back then. I can’t believe there were no other gay boys. It’s not fair! Though if there had been, I probably would have outed myself, so to speak, in the locker room. It was bad enough on the diving board, but everyone got wood up there sooner or later. Sometimes, we had to swim nude. Nobody liked that. Well, two of the rowdiest, dumbest jocks did and were always poking fun at the less well-endowed boys.

I got smart and bought a block of Internet access. Just used it to check my f*******: page and see if anyone responded to my mass-email yet, but nope. I’m disappointed. I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. You were the one who attracted friends to us. It’s like we had your friends and our friends, but I had no friends of my own. I think I’ve made one on this cruise. I don’t even know if he’s gay or not, but we talked a long time in the hallway while the plumbing was being fixed. I feel like this cruise is damned, but why should I care? I don’t plan on finishing it, do I? Sorry to sound so bitter, Richard, but neither you nor anyone else is ever going to read this, so the hell with it, just like all my other casual writing. I guess I shouldn’t be greedy, though.

Anyway, my possible-friend’s name is Loren. Remember we knew a guy named Loren or Lauren back in college? He was a wild one, wasn’t he? Rode the mechanical bull at that cowboy convention and hit on a couple of the rodeo guys. It was one of them who killed him, wasn’t it? What a waste, so much of that going on back then. It was stupid of him, though, but no more stupid than you and me.

I’m thinking of when we found out we had AIDS, or as it’s known now, that we were both HIV positive. We never wanted to know who first or how or when. I was always afraid it was me and was so surprised when you finally told me you had been so sure it was you. It doesn’t matter now, does it? Just so rotten that it would carry you off and leave me still doing fine on whatever protocol my doctor currently has me on. I wonder if my remaining relatives will ever find out? They don’t like me anyhow, so why should I care if they do?

Even so, I hope my death looks like an accident so they can collect my insurance. Like your kids collected yours before your body was even cold and, God forbid, little moi, some asshole you lived with for forty years, even got his greedy hands on a penny of it. I was lucky to get your book collection, coins, and the treasures we had bought together over the years out into my car before they descended on our home and took everything else. And did those little bastards fight over things? You’d have laughed; no, you’d have cried. I did.

Well, enough of that. I’m going to walk around the deck for a while with my music playing on this iPod thing, like I actually know what I’m doing, and then sit in the library and write you some more.

I’m sorry to be so pitiful and negative, dear, I know how much you used to hate that depressive streak in me and always worried I might off myself in a fit of angst. Ha! Even though I always thought you were the dramatic one!

I stepped out on the balcony just before bed, watching the white water near the ship, shining in the lights from the sixth deck and wherever else. You could still see that faint aqua in the swirls between the white tips and froth and the deep blue of the unlit sea. Farther out, there was only black, with a few scattered sparks of an errant wave top capturing a reflection of the light, but few and far between. Above the horizon was a yellow star; maybe Mars, maybe not. Maybe if I go over, that will be my only companion.

Goodnight, dear Richard.