That dark-haired boy with the censer in the church, his name was Yusuf, but of course that was not what he went by, Joseph was what he wished to be called. I felt the change to Joseph was a shame, for Yusuf of the Quran was the most beautiful. He was the only boy I recognized, so I gravitated to him, a mistake, of course, like a stray meteor, I always sought the wrong planet to crash into. But the first day or two were fine, he talked to me, he too needed an ear, before he found out mine was too foreign, I listened.
On the second evening, I accompanied him to the secret smoking area behind the old rectory, which had been turned into the school library, and he surgically extracted a single cigarette from a plastic pen case, It’s a Kent, he told me proudly, the match both lit and shadowed his beautiful face, he did not offer me one. He had a mother who loved him, he made sure to tell me between shallow puffs, but his father had died and the family needed help so he was boarding for only a while, not that he needed to, but, you know, the education was better than anything in his village, he chose to be at the school, and once he soaked up all the great influences he was heading back to his real home, where he would be welcomed with open arms and the most astounding meals this side of the celadon Mediterranean.
He was thirteen, an adult in my eyes, but not physically, for he had yet to mature, and before he stopped talking to me, before he joined the pack of ardent imbeciles who peed on me in the common shower room, he told me that he was born blond and his hair darkened to black, but he made sure to inform me that he was anxiously awaiting the majestic arrival of his pubic hair since it was guaranteed to sprout quite blond, just like the virgin hair he was blessed with at birth. I believed him, but he insisted that I examine the location for myself, I was not averse to that, as you can well imagine, Doc. There was some light, the moon was a weak silver, plump as a carp, presaging autumn, and he unbuttoned his pants and bade me kneel before him, before the smooth wedge of doughy flesh, Look, he said, look, and even though I could see his cock, I knew that was not what he wished me to notice, I told him I could not see any hair, which made him inexplicably happy, smug even, You would be able to see the hair if it was black, he explained, but not if it is light.
I wanted to explore further but I did not know how then, did not understand what I wanted, what I needed, but I felt the longing, the stirring of that elusive enigma we demystify by naming it desire, one whiff and the tectonic plates of that mystery shifted, delicately, subtly, they rearranged themselves. I was frightened, Doc. He above, me below, my natural place, we looked at each other and we both knew. I was frightened by what I saw in me, he repulsed. I was not a boy like him, I was not like any other boy. He buckled up and strutted away, left me there bound to the earth, my stained knees on browning pine needles that had gone soft from being crumpled, the night and my body darkened.
The psycho shower incident occurred at the end of that school year, when the boys who ignored me all the time discovered that their assumption that I was a simpleton was erroneous, egregiously so, if you ask me, that my schooling, whoreschooling if you will, was not so ludicrous, I was taught by Auntie Badeea and her pathetically broken French was easily correctable, her English better than most of the nuns’, and her Arabic, forget about it, I was Sœur Salwa’s favorite as soon as I set foot in that French colonial parody, and the converted old rectory that was the library with its lively spiders and broken beams, its torn ribs and dangling struts, I may have been unwelcome anywhere else on those grounds, but I lived and loved in that hive of words, the only one there I was, the earnest reader. Placed in the class for the weakest students when I arrived, la classe des cons, as it was called, I was moved up twice in two terms, and I aced the end-of-year exams, which was the signal for the guardians of the social order to remind me of my place in this world. I was part of the group that showered on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights, no showers on Sundays, five showerheads, five boys at a time, I knew I was in trouble as soon as it was my turn because the four who joined me were the standard-bearers of popularity, the deciders of right and wrong, as soon as we were within the dank, peeling gray walls, while a number of hooligans watched from the entrance, their shadows conjoining into a grotesque silhouette, the naked pack pushed me to the floor, four-cornered me, to the north, south, east, and west of me, yelling all kinds of insults and unimaginative curses, mostly variations on the whoredom of my mother and her blackness, and the gargoyles proceeded to spout pee on me as I hedgehog-huddled atop the swale of the drain.
When they were done, cheerful and laughing, they began to shower. I shrugged, got up, showered, and went to bed. I was mildly traumatized, but I had been expecting the attack forever, and when it finally arrived it was minor, they peed on me in the showers, for crying out loud, how witless was that? In some of the bars I frequented in later years, I found men who would pay good money for that privilege, they knelt, sat, or lay in tubs or on the floor and begged to be showered by the patrons’ recycled beers. I was afraid, on edge for my entire time at l’orphelinat de la Nativité, a condition that seemed to satisfy both the boys and the nuns, no further abuse was needed, or at least not much more.
Remember the time I slept at Lou’s when a Kaposi lesion made its first appearance on his inner left thigh, remember? Well, we spent the entire night talking instead of resting, he could not sleep and nursed a mild buzz, sipping anodyne wine, finally regaled me with his hellish anecdotes of high school. What a night, death a glimmer not yet mature, Bach measured stirring counterpoints and cool intervals, Lou looked so lovely in yellow pajamas with an Elmer Fudd print, his brown hair still lush, incarnadine cheeks under soft light, Yusuf of the Quran, the most beautiful of all, yes, like Satan before his fall. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till femininity was found in thee. On Lou’s lips a trace of pinot and out of them poured tales of acts of viciousness worthy of the great Lucifer himself, stories told through the night, the tortures, the beatings, the broken bones, every school has its Tigellinus, but his had more than one and each with followers, all-American boys who delighted in discovering how much pain a soul could withstand, two suicide attempts and all his parents and school could do was try to make Lou change his behavior, his behavior, his behavior, his, his, his, to modify his being just a bit. It gets better, Doc, fucking gets better, no one dared suggest that maybe the family and the school should change, or heaven forbid, that it was the all-Americans who should be modifying their beings, no, the homo should grin and bear it dumbly, punch me harder now because when I grow up I’ll be working for Google.
My time in school was pleasant in comparison, I was shunned and shunted to the periphery, not one boy wished to spend time with me, no student could think of a worse calamity than being assigned as my bunkmate, I was kryptonite, I was the plague, I ate my miserable lunches and dinners in Cain-marked isolation while the boys mocked me and guffawed, but no violence, at least not till graduation day, and that beating turned out to be a blessing more than anything else since I ended up in a hospital in Stockholm.
When I was with the whores in Cairo, if I needed to be admonished, Satan entered the conversation, if I ran too fast, I’d risk tumbling into Satan’s domain, Iblis would enter the room if I left its door open, when I was with the nuns in Beirut, if I needed to be admonished, it was forever my mother, if I spoke out of turn, I would grow up to be impetuous like her, if I was tardy, unreliable like my mother, if I did not confess my sins. I could grow up to be evil like Satan or my mother, why not both, I ask you.
I ate alone for years, always alone, boys came and went, new boys, graduating boys, no one sat next to me during breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Joseph and his brothers graduated, they passed the Lebanese baccalaureate, not the French, don’t ask me how because their combined intelligence could not outwit an ass, he returned to the orphanage a few years after, while the Lebanese civil war was in full glorious swing about us, to proudly exhibit his plumes, his militia outfit and phallic weapons, Joseph even allowed the young boys to play with his loaded revolver and its six-chambered cylinder, much to the consternation of the nuns, who, like me, watched the armed criminal from the sidelines, the man they used to cane on a biweekly basis, he in full gloat, his eyes excited and hashish-dull, he asked loudly how my mother was, and not thinking I answered rashly, I wish I knew.
Pinto died peacefully during a violent night of storms, a garnet-colored sack above his hospital bed. As per his request, the doctors had turned the machines off, his mind was morphined, his pain alleviated. Strangely carved features adorned the thinnest face he had ever had, badged with the purplish lesions of martyrdom. Pinto’s emotional-support volunteer wept alone in one corner, younger than all of us, he was new to all this dying stuff, Pinto used to tease him by suggesting that his dying was deflowering the virgin. Such a boy he was, stooped upon himself, his hands covering his face, crying silently, it was true, he was no longer inexperienced, my memory of him is foggy, tender hands, freckles, brown eyes, and long lashes, I can’t recall his name.
I rubbed lotion onto Pinto’s dry feet, the streetlamp lit the rain from below as in a Romero horror movie, I watched through the picture window until forked lightning distorted the effect, a flood, a deluge to commemorate the passing. I felt a little guilty because I had sent Jim home, offered him the choice of not being there and he grabbed it. He had walked fifteen blocks to the hospital, arrived soggy and haggard, his mind a bit drifty, not morphined like Pinto’s, doped up on Jah’s blessing. Go home, I told him, go home, please, I’m here, Greg’s here, you don’t have to be, he would understand, and by he I meant either dying Pinto or his lover who had died not ten days earlier.
As soon as Pinto’s heart halted, his face turned green and uninhabited, not even a ghost of him remained, just his remains, I kissed the top of his head, smelled a whiff of sour sweat, tasted a hint of peat moss and earth, the Dormition of Pinto. Water collected in clear sumps on the lower lids of Greg’s eyes, his left dropped a tear before his right.
After Pinto had his first bout with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, the death sentence, he began to joke about wanting to be buried ass up, offering the world the choice part of his anatomy, he wanted an open-casket funeral so the men who had spent weeks and days and hours and hours worshipping his ass could pay it final tribute. He was joking, of course, but I believe he also meant it. In some ways, the fact that he had what most men consider an impeccable asset was what defined him, his pride, so of course that was one of the first things the disease deprived him of. After that first bout of PCP he descended a spiral of weight loss, and his butt shrank, melted, the seats of the designer jeans that used to hug and highlight began to flap when he walked, not long after he lost so much fat that his derriere floated in the denim as if it were in a bathtub. He loathed inchoate hip-hop and its sagging pants, it made him furious.
He made me promise not to bury him in Colma, Anywhere but Colma, he said, I’m a San Francisco boy, I can’t end up in the suburbs, God, the indignity. We cremated him. Poor Pinto.
On the walk back home
the moon hidden but full
an electric bus stalled
the long hook on its roof
discharged bright sparks
fiery into the night air
detached from the power line
it hissed like a vicious cobra
and fell flat death rattle
— — —
Your poison coursed
through my blood
wouldn’t trade it for anything
you flung my doors open
Every day
every moment
I miss you terribly
I couldn’t write, I couldn’t write, stop all the clocks, poetry has gone and left me and the days are all alike.
I was left alive so I could be lonely, bereft of any company but that of ghosts and automatons in this vapid city where I walked until the early dark deepened and a light sheen of mist formed on the leaves of trees, a little crepuscular promenade, my mind filled, to the exclusion of all else, with Satan’s voice saying, Pick up the pieces, numbnuts, pick up the pieces, you need a spring cleaning if not a colon scouring, you need an upheaval, a revolution.
The first revolution was Egyptian, of course, the Seth Rebellion of 2740 BC. That’s stupid, Satan said, the first rebellion was mine, I, the angel of light, I, all pulchritude and glory and blazing fire, I rejected blindness, I broke the chains of conformism, and you’re still paying for that one, all else fails and pales in comparison. I shrug you off, Satan. Shrug me off as much as you want, Satan said, but until you remember that the first sin is oblivion, your poetry will remain shit.
I decided to give up, poetry, that is, I should have a long time ago, I gave up on life, why not poetry, I ask you.
A man who does not engage life should not engage poetry, Satan said, accept Lucifer as your muse, when Adam, still unstained by guile, first bit into his luscious apple of gold and wax red and licked its juice dribbling down his chin, poetry came to life, through a dilating crack he and his buxom consort were hurled into this sunlit world of contrast, when they were tossed out of banal Paradise like yesterday’s used condoms, the serpent of old offered life and verse and art.
I hear you not, Satan, I hear you not.
I miss Eve, Satan said, she’s my homegirl.
I pelt you with stones, Lucifer, father of lies.
Listen to me, Satan said, his eyes infused with flames, get thee out of Eden, poetry can never be unstained.