Taking out her anger at a cheap gym after work was Issy’s concession to the doctor’s advice. Otherwise, she suppressed the diagnosis, pushed it down inside her. If the doctor said she didn’t have to worry about it, she wouldn’t. And she wouldn’t tell anyone, either. But life became very stressful and she found herself constantly short-tempered, or breaking out privately into tears. She felt as though she may as well be walking around wearing a sign that said I HAVE AIDS. She feared that if her brother ever found out that she knew all along she had the virus after she’d held and played with her little niece, he’d turn on her in a rage, hit her.
Then, a few months before, she started noticing in the papers and on the news that there was this group, mostly gay guys, who were out there blocking traffic and getting arrested, demanding that the city and the country do more to stop the disease. She followed them with a secret thrill. They weren’t afraid if anyone thought they had the disease or not — they were all over the papers. It had all led to her creeping to the meeting tonight, and to a feeling of colossal relief.
So now, the music stealing up into her feet, she let herself collapse in Hector’s arm a bit. “No, I’m okay,” she told Hector. “I wanna dance a little!”
“Yeah, I know, girl, we haven’t danced together in a while.”
“Oh my God, shut up!” She slapped his arm, mortified but smiling. He tossed back his head and let out a deep, satisfied laugh. Suddenly she realized he’d lost those nerdy, chunky glasses he’d had the night he met her. That’s why he seemed sexier and looser. That, she figured, and his new muscles. And maybe because he was so popular in this activist crowd.
“Come on, chica,” he said.
They got beers and went downstairs, which was packed and sweaty. A huge drag queen with oversize false eyelashes and a blond cotton-candy wig sailed through the crowd like a cruise ship, kissing hello left and right. “That’s the Lady Bunny,” Ricky shouted into her ear. “She’s a southern girl.”
Issy nodded Ohhh. The music got her excited and she jacked her body along with the boys. Except for her periods, she wasn’t sick yet — she felt fine! She started to let herself think that maybe everything would turn out okay.
Then she noticed frail Korie standing by the bar, alone, with his beer, sort of staring into space. But Hector and Ricky were with her. They watched her jack her body, went, “Work, girl!” They were bumping and grinding on either side of her, pressing her in the middle. “Wooooh!” she went. She felt better, and she didn’t see, nor could she hear them over the music, when Ricky pressed a little pastel smiley-faced pill into Hector’s hand.
Hector glanced down at it. “Where’d you get that?” he shouted in Ricky’s ear.
“Korie gave them to me,” Ricky said.
“Korie? He shouldn’t be doing this shit.”
“That’s why he gave them to me.”
Hector frowned. “I have a lot of work and meetings tomorrow.”
“One pill’s only gonna last you a few hours,” Ricky said. “You’ll be fine. It’s only ten thirty.”
“I suppose you already took yours.”
Ricky grinned a Cheshire cat grin. But Hector felt a rage rising. “You don’t fucking care about yourself, Ricky! You make me so fucking mad.”
Ricky grabbed his arm. “Don’t go there tonight. Let’s have fun with this poor girl.”
“Don’t you dare fucking give her an X.”
Ricky looked offended. “Do you think I would?”
They just stared at each other for a second, mechanically dancing in place. Finally Hector shook his head and popped the pill in his mouth, washing it down with a swig of beer. “Ooh, bad boy,” Ricky gibed him.
“You just don’t care,” Hector said again.
Ricky shrugged. “You care too much,” he said, but said it smiling, then thrust his tongue in Hector’s mouth before Hector could respond. We always hang in a buffalo stance, we do the dive every time we dance, went the song now. Hector could feel Ricky’s powers of assitude begin to exert themselves over him now, and when he finally pulled away from the kiss, he saw the new girl, Issy, slipping away through the crowd, which now included about three dozen people from the meeting. Where was she going? He resigned himself to wait for the X to kick in, danced — something he’d “taught” himself to do in the intervening years, how to move his body. They should feel good about themselves, about parallel tracking, he told himself, watching Ricky bump it with Micki, the magenta-haired dyke. Ricky was in really good spirits now, Hector knew, because Ricky loved X’ing and dancing all night, even if it was a Monday night with Ivana’s roots to do in the morning.
Data suggested that AZT plus ddI would squelch the pathogen, Hector reminded himself. Things were probably going to change in the rest of 1989: symptoms and mortalities were going to plunge. Then bang! That moment when the X kicked in and the world popped to life in Day-Glo colors. That feverish wave of horniness and joy.
“Can you feel it?” Ricky asked, in his arms. And now, oh God, the Shep Pettibone remix of the song of the summer: When you call my name, it’s like a little prayer. I’m down on my knees, I wanna take you there. The room screamed and collapsed into the pounding beats. Hector followed suit with some of his more extroverted buddies from the meeting and pulled off his T-shirt, stuck it in the band of his jean shorts. Ricky’s ass was in his hands, Ricky’s tongue in his mouth — Ricky was here, Ricky was here, it was summertime, Madonna was on their side, parallel tracking was coming. Everything was going to be okay.
Part II. The Left Coast, 1992–2012
Nine. Silver Lake (2012)
Should she walk to the AA meeting or jump in the Prius? After nearly twenty years in L.A., Drew still believed in the goodness of walking places. Like all New Yorkers who move to L.A., even those like her who’d lived in New York but briefly, she clung to her New York identity. It didn’t matter if life in L.A., frankly, was sweeter, milder, easier, prettier. Being a New Yorker was cooler, partly because it was such a pain in the ass to live there. So walking Lewy — her drooling English bulldog — around Silver Lake while she did errands and such was one of the ways Drew held on to that New York period of her life, when she was a messy, lost party girl booty-grinding to Mary J. Blige on a coffee table at somebody’s after-hours party.
Of course, nearly twenty years after the fact, Drew felt she could finally afford to set aside the tragedy of her life back then just a bit and allow herself some nostalgia for the sassy New York girl she’d been, despite her messiness. And when she allowed this, she pictured herself walking: her hair, with not a strand of midforties gray, pulled back from her forehead with one cute barrette; wearing some kind of black eyelet minidress and chunky platform boots, a duffel coat if it was cold; walking at a breakneck clip in the morning, her breath exploding before her eyes as she exhaled her Camel, which had deep red marks on it from her Mac lipstick.
So she walked to the AA meeting. She was supposed to meet Mateo there. A few hours before, when she was writing in her study, after Christian had left for the studio for a long day and night of editing, Mateo had called through the door.
“I’m going to Intelligentsia to do some sketching, okay? I’ll meet you at the meeting later.”
Intelligentsia was a coffeehouse down on Sunset where Mateo had a part-time job. When he’d said he was going to see if he could get work there, Drew’s first instinct had been to tell Mateo to wait, that she could call a friend who owned another coffeehouse that might be easier. But then she checked herself. Mateo was taking responsibility for himself, trying to make his own decisions. That was good.