After It All Comes Around
fiction by Samuel E. Cole
The apartment is ill-lit and small, each room obstructively uncomfortable with its purpose and position. The refrigerator is partway in the dining room. The bathroom shares laundry and rust linoleum duty. The front door is so close to the living room’s sliding glass door, I can envision delivery people standing in confusion as to which is the main entrance and which is the most deteriorated. It’s the kind of place in which people who aren’t bothered by white walls, flattened carpet, and one tiny bedroom subsist. Poorly. Thank god he’s hot and horny, which is all that matters. I’m not looking to move in, at least not my possessions.
“I’m into low maintenance,” he says, flicking tennis shoes across black scuffmark faux wood. “People with lots of shit usually offer much the same.”
I remove tennis shoes on a blue rug and stand still. Growing up, my mother said politeness waits to be invited inside and then moves with respect, even inside an ugly home.
“You coming or not?” His shirt is flung on the floor, shorts halfway down a high, curvy ass. Tantalizing shoulders. Scruffy beard. Gym rat. Cat tat.
That’s when I see it; the one picture hanging on the wall. In the hallway. An eight by ten photo of Tyson Andrews. My ex. A man, who, because he found me in our bedroom with another man, served both a two-month moving notice and a promise to pay it forward by having sex with all sorts of men, like this man, with a name I can’t recall because I didn’t ask.
“Nice looking guy,” I say. “He must be pretty special.”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s the only picture on the wall.”
“I forgot it was there.”
“He has a sweet face.”
He scoffs. “Trust me. It’s an illusion.”
“Is he not sweet?”
“We gettin’ naked or what?”
“Of course. Sorry.”
We do what we came to do, binging on the pieces of each other we desire to possess before ending on a high note of satisfied culmination. He’s as rough as he is hung, proving what I had hoped from a first glance in the Macy’s bathroom to the ten minute drive to the house. His bedroom acuity embodies spectrum sexiness, a power bottom relinquishing control, not too fast, not too slow. Experienced. Breathtaking. Raw. Side by side, winding down, we land on a simultaneous breathing pattern. “May I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” he says, eyes closed, red cheeks, hands buried inside expanding chest hair.
“How do you know the guy in the picture?”
“He’s no one.”
“Was he a boyfriend?”
“He’s lost and broken.”
“What’s his name?”
He opens his eyes and turns onto his side. “I’m telling you, he’s a nobody.”
“We’re all somebody, aren’t we?”
“Are we?” He lays on his back. “I’m not sure I believe that anymore.”
“Do you not feel like a somebody?”
“It’s not about feeling. It’s about knowing.”
We lay in silence for a short time.
“Was he a husband?”
He stands and walks to the picture, removes it, and tosses it on the bed. “There. Now it’s yours. Take it. Please.”
I hold the frame like a mirror and stare at a face overnight dreams continue to enunciate with care, violence, and betrayal. Experience, I’ve learned, impedes one’s ability to disremember history. Yes, we are who we are, and yes, we are who others make us.
“He looks nothing like that, now,” he says. “Talk about run down and out.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“I don’t know. A week ago. A month. Six weeks tomorrow.” He sighs. “Are you always this curious about guys you don’t know?”
“I’m a curious guy and I cannot lie.”
We laugh.
“What are you, about thirty?” he asks.
“Thirty-seven.”
“Then you must be aware of the AIDS look of the eighties and nineties.”
“AIDS look?”
“You know, gaunty and lesiony, like a skeleton walking its own death.”
“Does he have AIDS?”
“He says no, but I don’t buy it.”
“Do you have AIDS?”
“I’d have experienced at least one of red flag side effects by know if I had it, right?”
“How can you be so cavalier about something so serious?” I sit on the edge of the bed. “We just raw-dogged it
and now you say you might have AIDS.”
“I’m sure I don’t have it.” He sits on the edge of the bed. “I was tested a while back and I’m clean.”
“Like one month ago, or ten, or how many?”
“Like I’ve got the test result around here somewhere.” He walks to a small desk in the left corner of the room and opens a drawer. “Now where are you?” He turns. “And what about you? How do I know you don’t have AIDS?”
“I haven’t been with anyone since I split with my ex.”
“And when was that?”
“A year ago yesterday.”
“Was it a bad break up?”
“Aren’t they all?”
He rummages the drawer, shaking ass cheeks and light brown hair. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
I scan the room—towering piles of books and magazines with as much dust as paper. No headboard. Or baseboard. Clothes stacked in a closet without one shelf or hanger. “How long have you lived here?”
“Here it is.” He lifts the paper and tosses it on the bed. “You can keep that, too.”
DATE 5/10/2014. PATIENT ID 4562901. PATIENT NAME MR. AGE 25. REFERRED BY PROF. DR. MAY 5. HIV ANTIBODY (AIDS TEST). RESULT: NEGATIVE.
“This test is five years old.”
“Yeah. So what?”
“It’s worthless. You can’t rest on a five year old HIV test to know your status. You have to get tested every six months.”
“Well, that’s all I have, so it’ll just have to do.”
I toss the test result on the mattress, swallow a snap of fear, and bring the framed picture to my chest, a picture I took three years ago, on a river cruise in early August, during the honeymoon phase, a time when attentiveness espoused fidelity and closeness eradicated any sense of anachronism. “I’d like to know when you took this picture.”
I didn’t even want it when he gave it to me. I was like, why are you giving me a picture of you in a frame. I mean, it’s not like we had a future. But since he was with this loser guy, some total slut who I told him to kick out, which I guess he eventually did, even though it killed him to do it cuz’ I guess this guy had a pretty rough childhood with some really fucked up parents and siblings, but because he was rich and he bought me stuff, I listened as inactively as possible without being caught.” He takes a drink from a beer sitting on the nightstand and lights a cigarette. “Then he hammered a nail in the wall and hung up the picture before I could say don’t, and I’ve just left it there ever since.”
“He must have really liked you.”
“He was old, saggy, and boring as fuck.”
“Did you not like him even a little bit?”
“All I know is that I never want to look like him, I don’t care how old I am.” He presses the cigarette butt into an ashtray, stands, and wiggles into a pair of blue boxers. “I gotta get going, dude. But this was fun. Maybe we can do it again sometime.”
“Please tell me his name.” I lift the picture. “It can’t hurt to say it aloud, can it?”
“I told you, old, saggy, and boring as fuck.”
I dress and leave without saying goodbye, setting the picture (and HIV test) upright in the passenger seat, wondering why so many gay men travel the condomless depths of risk in order to find, hit, and ride a more titillating orgasm. Perhaps we bareback (and cheat) to proffer connection, an attempt through omission to secure affiliation, to fit in by fitting in devoid of obstruction, to bond for a moment with someone who comprehends ostracism, somehow who is, and will always be, skin sameness. Or perhaps we do it in rebellion and out of spite against the majority class, majority religion, majority politics, majority intolerance who, because they’re ruled by expectancies and expect others to march the same path, hate us with venom for falling so far below the world’s red line of standardization. Or perhaps we do it because we’re fools who believe foolishness is an action verb branded to the word, homosexual. Or perhaps we do it because it’s easy, because it’s risky, because it’s exciting, because it’s gay.
I phone Tyson’s cell phone number, reaching a disconnected message. I can’t find him online and our old house mailbox now belongs to some Mr. and Mrs. Charles Niamo. So I drive to Best Buy and purchase a camera, a Canon 20-D, just like Tyson’s camera, the very one I used to take and retake his picture, and at one time put in a frame. And then I call the clinic and set up an appointment in six months for bloodwork, all kinds, top to bottom, vein and pee, wait and see, them and me.
“I’m into low maintenance,” he says, flicking tennis shoes across black scuffmark faux wood. “People with lots of shit usually offer much the same.”
I remove tennis shoes on a blue rug and stand still. Growing up, my mother said politeness waits to be invited inside and then moves with respect, even inside an ugly home.
“You coming or not?” His shirt is flung on the floor, shorts halfway down a high, curvy ass. Tantalizing shoulders. Scruffy beard. Gym rat. Cat tat.
That’s when I see it; the one picture hanging on the wall. In the hallway. An eight by ten photo of Tyson Andrews. My ex. A man, who, because he found me in our bedroom with another man, served both a two-month moving notice and a promise to pay it forward by having sex with all sorts of men, like this man, with a name I can’t recall because I didn’t ask.
“Nice looking guy,” I say. “He must be pretty special.”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s the only picture on the wall.”
“I forgot it was there.”
“He has a sweet face.”
He scoffs. “Trust me. It’s an illusion.”
“Is he not sweet?”
“We gettin’ naked or what?”
“Of course. Sorry.”
We do what we came to do, binging on the pieces of each other we desire to possess before ending on a high note of satisfied culmination. He’s as rough as he is hung, proving what I had hoped from a first glance in the Macy’s bathroom to the ten minute drive to the house. His bedroom acuity embodies spectrum sexiness, a power bottom relinquishing control, not too fast, not too slow. Experienced. Breathtaking. Raw. Side by side, winding down, we land on a simultaneous breathing pattern. “May I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” he says, eyes closed, red cheeks, hands buried inside expanding chest hair.
“How do you know the guy in the picture?”
“He’s no one.”
“Was he a boyfriend?”
“He’s lost and broken.”
“What’s his name?”
He opens his eyes and turns onto his side. “I’m telling you, he’s a nobody.”
“We’re all somebody, aren’t we?”
“Are we?” He lays on his back. “I’m not sure I believe that anymore.”
“Do you not feel like a somebody?”
“It’s not about feeling. It’s about knowing.”
We lay in silence for a short time.
“Was he a husband?”
He stands and walks to the picture, removes it, and tosses it on the bed. “There. Now it’s yours. Take it. Please.”
I hold the frame like a mirror and stare at a face overnight dreams continue to enunciate with care, violence, and betrayal. Experience, I’ve learned, impedes one’s ability to disremember history. Yes, we are who we are, and yes, we are who others make us.
“He looks nothing like that, now,” he says. “Talk about run down and out.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“I don’t know. A week ago. A month. Six weeks tomorrow.” He sighs. “Are you always this curious about guys you don’t know?”
“I’m a curious guy and I cannot lie.”
We laugh.
“What are you, about thirty?” he asks.
“Thirty-seven.”
“Then you must be aware of the AIDS look of the eighties and nineties.”
“AIDS look?”
“You know, gaunty and lesiony, like a skeleton walking its own death.”
“Does he have AIDS?”
“He says no, but I don’t buy it.”
“Do you have AIDS?”
“I’d have experienced at least one of red flag side effects by know if I had it, right?”
“How can you be so cavalier about something so serious?” I sit on the edge of the bed. “We just raw-dogged it
and now you say you might have AIDS.”
“I’m sure I don’t have it.” He sits on the edge of the bed. “I was tested a while back and I’m clean.”
“Like one month ago, or ten, or how many?”
“Like I’ve got the test result around here somewhere.” He walks to a small desk in the left corner of the room and opens a drawer. “Now where are you?” He turns. “And what about you? How do I know you don’t have AIDS?”
“I haven’t been with anyone since I split with my ex.”
“And when was that?”
“A year ago yesterday.”
“Was it a bad break up?”
“Aren’t they all?”
He rummages the drawer, shaking ass cheeks and light brown hair. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
I scan the room—towering piles of books and magazines with as much dust as paper. No headboard. Or baseboard. Clothes stacked in a closet without one shelf or hanger. “How long have you lived here?”
“Here it is.” He lifts the paper and tosses it on the bed. “You can keep that, too.”
DATE 5/10/2014. PATIENT ID 4562901. PATIENT NAME MR. AGE 25. REFERRED BY PROF. DR. MAY 5. HIV ANTIBODY (AIDS TEST). RESULT: NEGATIVE.
“This test is five years old.”
“Yeah. So what?”
“It’s worthless. You can’t rest on a five year old HIV test to know your status. You have to get tested every six months.”
“Well, that’s all I have, so it’ll just have to do.”
I toss the test result on the mattress, swallow a snap of fear, and bring the framed picture to my chest, a picture I took three years ago, on a river cruise in early August, during the honeymoon phase, a time when attentiveness espoused fidelity and closeness eradicated any sense of anachronism. “I’d like to know when you took this picture.”
I didn’t even want it when he gave it to me. I was like, why are you giving me a picture of you in a frame. I mean, it’s not like we had a future. But since he was with this loser guy, some total slut who I told him to kick out, which I guess he eventually did, even though it killed him to do it cuz’ I guess this guy had a pretty rough childhood with some really fucked up parents and siblings, but because he was rich and he bought me stuff, I listened as inactively as possible without being caught.” He takes a drink from a beer sitting on the nightstand and lights a cigarette. “Then he hammered a nail in the wall and hung up the picture before I could say don’t, and I’ve just left it there ever since.”
“He must have really liked you.”
“He was old, saggy, and boring as fuck.”
“Did you not like him even a little bit?”
“All I know is that I never want to look like him, I don’t care how old I am.” He presses the cigarette butt into an ashtray, stands, and wiggles into a pair of blue boxers. “I gotta get going, dude. But this was fun. Maybe we can do it again sometime.”
“Please tell me his name.” I lift the picture. “It can’t hurt to say it aloud, can it?”
“I told you, old, saggy, and boring as fuck.”
I dress and leave without saying goodbye, setting the picture (and HIV test) upright in the passenger seat, wondering why so many gay men travel the condomless depths of risk in order to find, hit, and ride a more titillating orgasm. Perhaps we bareback (and cheat) to proffer connection, an attempt through omission to secure affiliation, to fit in by fitting in devoid of obstruction, to bond for a moment with someone who comprehends ostracism, somehow who is, and will always be, skin sameness. Or perhaps we do it in rebellion and out of spite against the majority class, majority religion, majority politics, majority intolerance who, because they’re ruled by expectancies and expect others to march the same path, hate us with venom for falling so far below the world’s red line of standardization. Or perhaps we do it because we’re fools who believe foolishness is an action verb branded to the word, homosexual. Or perhaps we do it because it’s easy, because it’s risky, because it’s exciting, because it’s gay.
I phone Tyson’s cell phone number, reaching a disconnected message. I can’t find him online and our old house mailbox now belongs to some Mr. and Mrs. Charles Niamo. So I drive to Best Buy and purchase a camera, a Canon 20-D, just like Tyson’s camera, the very one I used to take and retake his picture, and at one time put in a frame. And then I call the clinic and set up an appointment in six months for bloodwork, all kinds, top to bottom, vein and pee, wait and see, them and me.
About the writer
Samuel E. Cole lives in Woodbury, MN, where he finds work in special event/development management. He’s a poet, flash fiction geek, and political essayist enthusiast. His work has appeared in many literary journals, and a first poetry collection, Bereft and the Same-Sex Heart, was published in October 2016 by Pski’s Porch Publishing. A second book, Bloodwork, a collection of short stories, was published by Pski’s Porch Publishing in July 2017. A third book, Siren Stitches, a collection of short stories, winner of the J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction, was published by Three Waters Publishing in October 2017. A second poetry collection, Dollhouse Masquerade, was published by Truth Serum Press in May 2018. A third collection of short stories, Young Thieves in a Growing Orchard, will be published by Weasel Press in April 2019. He is also an award-winning card maker and scrapbooker.
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