It was the beginning of September and a few mornings after the unsuccessful stoning attempt, which was a moment that showed us what they were capable of but it was also a moment that showed us we could win. I suppose that’s why we didn’t pack up and leave. We thought we could win it all with a flower.
We were sitting at the table, having breakfast. Dad was pouring syrup on his pancakes and Mom was sizzling sausage.
“God bless the woman who cooks in such heat,” Dad said. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was something we just thought.
Sal was sprinkling cinnamon on his buttered toast and Grand was reading the newest edition of The New York Times. As Dad talked about the rising prices of gasoline, Grand tightened his grip on the paper until it pleated and the ink smeared in little wisps from his sweating palm.
“Food prices will be rising with all the drought,” Dad was saying as the paper began to tremble with Grand’s hands.
When he lowered the paper enough for me to see his eyes, they looked like a lot of something gathered in one place. A whole pile that towered too tall and wobbled, about to fall.
“What’s wrong, Grand?” I spoke under Dad’s voice, but still he heard me and stopped talking about rising prices.
He too saw the wobbling pile in Grand’s eyes and reached for the paper. “Bad news in the Times, is it, son? Another Dred Scott v. Sandford?”
Grand jerked the paper to his chest. I thought he was going to crumple it up the way his hands wanted. Instead he forced himself to fold it and lay it on his lap as he became determined to spread strawberry jam on his toast without shaking.
Dad was about to ask again for the newspaper, but Mom’s short exclamation stopped him. Grease had popped from the pan to her arm. She rubbed out the sting, saying she wished she had some yellow mustard. Sal looked down at his toast while Dad shook his head with a smile, the way husbands are quick to do at wives they love beyond measure.
Dad had forgotten about Grand and the newspaper, but I hadn’t. I watched Grand as he took a bite of his toast. The strawberry he piled upon it oozed out around the sides of his mouth.
“It looks like blood.”
I don’t know why I said it. I suppose I thought it would make him smile. But he didn’t smile. Instead his eyes fell strange.
“What?” He sounded hoarse as if in the span of those few moments, he had going on inside him an internal dialogue that had drained him of his voice.
“The jam. It looks like blood.” I gestured at the sides of my own mouth to mean his.
Mom was at the table by then, dropping off the carton of orange juice. She stopped by Grand and pulled up the dishcloth tucked into the waist of her apron to wipe the jam from his face.
He jerked back and grabbed her wrist.
“Did you get it on ya, Mom?” The angst in his voice is with me still.
“What?”
“This blood.” He wiped the red from his mouth.
“Honey, it’s just strawberry jam.”
“Strawberry jam?” He closed his eyes as he pushed his chair back and stood, the newspaper on his lap sliding down onto the floor and under the table. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”
What had happened to the well-rested boy we’d sat down to breakfast with? How could that hollowing, a dig away from reaching bone, come so fast beneath his eyes? His tan of that summer seemed to lift up and float on pale water that went nightmare deep. It was as if he would go on emptying, coming to nothing before our eyes. Just collapse or fade or vanish away.
“I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Oh, I know. I heard the typewriter.” Dad feigned typing. “One day, when you are a married man, your wife will say the typewriter is your mistress, so be prepared, young journalist.”
“Yes, my wife.” Grand said wife as if he was almost sorry she would not exist.
“Go lie down, son. Get ya some rest.” Mom started clearing his dishes.
He slowly walked out of the kitchen while Mom and Dad started discussing rising prices again. Meanwhile I slid under the table to scoop up the newspaper. I hurried into the hall with it. Sal followed, but not to read the paper. He was passing me to go up the steps. I heard his knocking and then him asking if he could come in. Grand’s door opened and closed quietly.
I frantically tossed through the paper until I found Ryker’s name written beneath the title, MY COMIC BOOK DREAM, A PERSONAL ESSAY.
In Victorian England, it was hypothesized that having sex with a virgin would cure venereal diseases such as syphilis. This came to be known as the Virgin Cleansing Myth. Myth, because that is in fact all it is. There is no truth to the story that a virgin’s blood will somehow cleanse the blood of the diseased. Yet, to this day, there are some with HIV/AIDS who are having sex with virgins in the hope of a cure. In most instances, this sex is not consensual, and the virgin is put at risk of being infected themselves without their knowledge or their permission.
I myself have not had sex since being diagnosed with HIV in November of last year. This is a very personal decision and one I made because I do not want to put my fellow men at risk. That being said, I do understand the desire to find a cure. I understand it, yes, but I’d never knowingly infect another person with HIV/AIDS. I just want to make that clear. I do imagine it, though, in a sort of comic book style, if you will.
When it’s you and HIV/AIDS, you become a superhero, if you want to survive. Your body becomes the city you must protect and the HIV/AIDS becomes every villain ever created. It’s the Joker. Magneto. Doctor Doom. And in the fight, some may call themselves Superman or Batman, but I call myself Dr. Michael Morbius.
Fans of the Spider-Man series will recognize this name as that of the villain first introduced during those AIDS-free days of 1971.
Morbius was dying from, funny enough, a rare blood disease. He set out to be his own hero, looking for a cure that ultimately turned him into the villain. A vampire.
I suppose it’s because of these similarities between myself and Morbius that I imagine I am him. He suffered, as I am suffering now, from a rare blood disease. And like he was a vampire, I imagine myself to be one as well. I imagine I have sex with a virgin and, by doing so, I am cured.
Of course, this is just me imagining a comic book hero and a comic book villain, a comic book story and a comic book hope. But in this real world, I have to rely on the heroes in the white coats to see me through. We all do. It is the only ethical way.
I read that last line a few more times before I closed my eyes and saw Ryker. I searched for something in his appearance or his mannerism that would’ve said he was sick, but he was the human saxophone with the golden glow, and he played no laments. Damn that spick-and-span man.
I hated him.
The only solace I had was of imagining him alone in that one life rotting away, smelling of shit and fear on some hospital bed somewhere. Just another lump under the blanket, waiting to be rolled off into the ground. I’d spit on his grave, dance on it, if I knew where it was. Because I don’t, I do on occasion suddenly start dancing and spitting on any ground. People passing by may think I’m just a happy, jiggy, slobbering old man, when really I’ve got a grave in mind.
The grave of that man, not really a man but the devil. After all, we never needed Sal or any devil to come from underground. I learned at that moment that the devil, the true one, is people like Ryker.
I knew I couldn’t show the paper to Mom and Dad. Only Grand could do that and he had decided not to, so I started a fire in the fireplace. Even with the heat, I sat so close to the flames. I thought for a moment I might just say fuck it and lean all the way in and come out the other side as nothing but ash.