In the Deadlands Read online

  But now that’s not the case anymore. Now there is a choice—they can fix it—so when I say to a person, “I’m gay,” they look at me as if to say, “But why? Now you can be happy. Now you can be normal. Why do you continue?”

  Shit. I’ve given up trying to make them understand.

  The answer is Michael. Michael, with the childish face and the slightly receding hair, dusty red and frazzly. When he wakes up in the morning, all grumpily and rubbing sleep from his eyes, he looks like Bozo the Clown.

  The last time I saw him was in front of the University library.

  I saw him across the grass, like an island in a sea of frozen-in-wax summer greenery. I called him, but he didn’t hear me. I had to run across the lawn after him. He was wearing that corduroy English-style hat he liked so much and a matching jacket, and when I came charging up beside him, breathless and looking perhaps a little like an overweight madman, he blinked in sudden recognition and said in surprise, “Why, Dove—?” But he did not smile, nor did he seem glad to see me, as if I were something embarrassing from his past and I knew immediately that he had become one of them. He had let himself be convinced. Converted.

  He had bought the lie.

  They were very persuasive. They hot-boxed him. They love-bombed him. They invited him to experience “a new way of being.”

  “If you aren’t happy,” they said, “we can change you back. But, of course, you won’t want to. You’ll feel so much more complete. That’s part of the process—the sense of completion.” And because so many of them were “formers” he listened. He trusted. They were very convincing, and I think, he wanted very much to be convinced.

  I begged him, pleaded with him, cried on his knees for him not to go. I told him that this thing he was contemplating was wrong and horrible. Everybody feels broken inside; it’s the normal condition of humanity—that paranoid sense that something isn’t right. It’s the residual impact of the birth trauma, compounded by the submersion of the juvenile mind into the linguistic maps that our culture imposes on the experiential self, further exacerbated by the cascading angst of puberty, peer group anxiety, and adolescent depression, finally expressing itself in the adult as an unformed but impacted alienation—and that all those people walking around claiming to be “transformed” and “complete,” that was the real lie. That false sense of self—that’s not human, that’s inhuman—they were all plastic pod people, wired for permanent slow drips of dopamine and endorphins and God knows what else. They’re in a conversion-induced haze of “I feel fine” and there’s no room for any other emotions—like fear or grief or anger—even when the plane is crashing or the building is on fire.

  “But that’s what I want,” he said. “They’re happy. They are so happy. All the time. Is that so wrong? To want to be happy too?”

  “But we’re happy—” I argued. It was a desperate claim. Unconvincing. But I insisted anyway. “Michael, our relationship is real. It’s honest. All right, yes; we have fights. So what? That’s part of living with another person. And making up is always so much fun—”

  He shook his head.

  I was raised not to cry. Big boys don’t cry. Men don’t cry. So I’ve never let myself cry. Not out loud. I didn’t cry when my father died. I stood stiff and immobile as the casket lowered into the ground. And I didn’t cry that time I was caught and beaten and publicly shamed. I stood stiff and immobile then too, not meeting anyone’s gaze. They couldn’t hurt me. Not inside, not where I really lived.

  But when Michael said he had a brochure from the clinic, that he was considering it, I went into the bathroom, sat down on the floor, wrapped my arms around my knees, buried my face in my arms—and wept. Michael came to me. He sat down next to me. He put his arm around my shoulders. I thought for a moment that he had been so moved, so touched by my anguish, that he would give up the whole idea.

  But no. He pulled me close against his shoulder, stroked my hair, and said, “Maybe we should do it together—”

  A man my age should not have to cry on his lover’s knees and beg him, but it happened and I knew no other way to show him just what he meant to me. I’d never poured my heart out so completely to anyone.

  I asked him to reconsider, to remember all those times when all we had was each other. Remember, Michael?

  There was that night we sat up till four-thirty in the morning, just talking about all the different things we wanted to do with our lives. There was the afternoon we hiked up to the highest peak overlooking the city and sat there at the top, holding hands, looking at the view and then looking into each other’s faces with such joy we could not believe we were real. And there was the morning I awoke before him and snuck into the kitchen and ruined his birthday breakfast, and we laughed all the way to the restaurant instead.

  And yes, there was that awful night he woke up crying and wouldn’t tell me why and clung to me close, and when I begged him to share what it was that scared him, he didn’t say anything for the longest time, and then finally, he blurted out, “I was thinking about our future,” he said. “All our days together...and I realized that...forever isn’t really forever. Not really. What if something happened to you? I’d be so alone and lost, Dove. I couldn’t go on without you, I couldn’t!”

  And I held him close and said, “Oh, Michael—is that what’s troubling you?” And he sniffed and shook his head and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and said, “And then I started thinking what if I died first, Dove, what would you do without me, and I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving you to be alone and hurting like that. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you—”

  I reminded him of that. He shook his head. This wasn’t the same. He held me—not close, but firm—and looked at me, and there was dreadful sorrow in his eyes. “That was then, Dove. This is now. I love you. I have always loved you, and perhaps I’ll still love you, in whatever way I can, afterward. But they have the weight of proof on their side, and—and I can’t go on like this anymore. I just can’t.”

  And then, with words that stabbed like knives, he added, “I have to know what it is to be normal.”

  There really wasn’t anything else for me to say. I’d given him all the logical, rational, arguments. I’d given him all the emotional ones. I had nothing else to say. I said it anyway. “Michael, don’t let them cut pieces out of you. Don’t let them take away the part that makes you special.”

  He listened, but he didn’t hear me. And I knew he’d already made up his mind. He went into the bedroom and closed the door against me.

  “Michael, please—”

  He opened the door again. “Dove, please stop. I’m sorry I brought it up. I knew we couldn’t have a rational discussion about this—”

  “Rational?!” I exploded. “What the hell is ever rational about two people loving each other—?”

  “That’s the point.”

  “Love is supposed to be irrational! Crazy! Wonderful!”

  But he was right, I’d run out of rationality, and this argument ended the same way all the others did—with me thinking that we’d mastered the crazy part, but we were still missing the wonderful.

  I argued that it was just the momentary bumps and bounces that occur when any two individuals live together, that we just hadn’t learned how to fine tune ourselves to each other; I tried to tell him that he was blaming the wrong thing—

  But it wasn’t enough. Not for him. One day I came home, feeling beaten and exhausted, having fought another small part of the good fight, another desperate piece of the never-ending battle for truth and justice, and I walked in, feeling tired and frustrated and very much needing his gentle voice and his comforting arms, and instead I found only his note that he would be gone for a week or so, perhaps a little longer, and I knew, even though he hadn’t said a word about it for weeks, where he had gone, and I went into the bathroom and opened up all the bottles of pills and poured them all out into a cup and took the cup into the kitchen and took down a tumbler and filled it
with alcohol and something else to hide the taste of the alcohol and then I went into the living room and sat down in my comfortable chair with the pills and the booze and I sat there and sat there, trying to order my thoughts and the more I thought, the more I realized that if I did do this, it would only prove everything they had been saying all along, that I wasn’t normal, so I went into the kitchen and poured the pills and the booze down the garbage disposal and turned it on. It gurgled and clanked, it chewed for a moment, and then—appropriately—it died.

  And now, here, Michael was in front of me, the first time I’d seen him in six weeks and it was as if he had been resurrected from the dead, except he hadn’t. I don’t know why I thought he might still be Michael, perhaps I was foolish and desperate and silly, perhaps I still had a tiny piece of hope in my heart; but I looked into his eyes and it was like looking into a vacuum. Whatever had lived there in those beautiful bright blue eyes, that thing that had always struck sparks in my life—it was gone. I searched his face and there was nothing I could find that was mine.

  In that moment, I hated them.

  I swallowed and I said, “Michael? Are you happy?”

  He smiled, a warm and genuine smile, and he said, “Yes, Dove. I am very happy.” I searched his face—but no, if the expression was plastic, it was perfect plastic. I couldn’t find the flaw in it. I had to believe it was real. It was real. I knew him too well—

  So I smiled back at him, my reassuring smile number two, the one I hide behind while scrambling frantically for poise. “I’m glad. I’m really glad. Because I want you to be happy, more than anything. Whatever it takes, Michael, that’s what I want for you. Your happiness is essential to my own, you know, and even if that means we have to be apart, I can be happy knowing that you’re happy—” And I stopped suddenly because I realized how stupid I sounded. It was true and it wasn’t true, and we both knew it.

  Michael looked at me pityingly. “You really should go ahead with the treatment, Dove,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt. Not at all. In fact, parts of it are very pleasant. You’ll discover parts of your soul you didn’t know existed, and you’ll be surprised to find they’re really very nice.” He was so stiffly formal that I blinked in surprise and cleared my eyes to look again.

  He still looked like Michael. And he didn’t. He was wearing the salmon sweater he had bought himself in one wild impulsive shopping spree in London, and his heavy wingtip shoes as well. He was looking quite dapper; but then, he always did. But, no—it wasn’t Michael, only a stranger who looked like him, but held himself so differently I couldn’t imagine how I had ever mistaken him for my Michael.

  There was pity written on his face and hunger on mine. I wanted to hold him and I was holding myself back, but finally, I had to ask it, I said, “Michael—tell me, is it gone? All of it?”

  He looked puzzled.

  “Do you feel anything at all for me? Do you remember—?”

  “I remember,” he admitted. “But.... Dove, it’s like something on the other side of a dream. I remember it as if it happened to someone else, as if I wasn’t there.”

  “And—” I had to ask—I had to explore the hole in my mouth where the tooth had been. “—and, and what do you feel now?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”

  The numbness crept up around me, but I pushed on anyway. “If I said I wanted to kiss you, Michael, what would you feel?”

  He looked uneasy, but he said, “I would probably feel nothing.”

  “Would you—kiss me goodbye anyway?”

  And he looked at me and asked, “Why?” Before I could answer, he said, “I have different feelings now, and these are the feelings I want, Dove. You have to accept that.”

  I leaned forward anyway and brought my lips to his. I touched my mouth to his and waited for his response. I pressed to him and I put my hands on his shoulders. He let me kiss him. He even let my tongue nip quickly across the threshold of his mouth, and yet, despite it all, he never kissed back, and when I broke away and looked into his face, all he said was, “I’m sorry, Dove. I’m sorry. I really am.” And then he stepped back and looked down the walk. “Oh, I’d like you to meet Anne.”

  She must have seen, but she gave no sign. She was sweet and pretty and pleasant. Even as I hated her, I knew I couldn’t hate her; I envied her. But I shook her hand and smiled. She said, “Oh, I’m so glad to meet you, Dove. Are you here for the treatment too? You’ll be so much happier. Michael is.”

  I looked at Michael, and there was that look on his face—the way he used to look at me—but now it was for her. That smile, that sparkle—in that instant, if I’d had a gun, I would have killed them both. But no, I wouldn’t, because that would have only proven what all those others had been saying all along, and it would be one more argument why the treatment should be mandatory—it was just a matter of time anyway. The bill was already moving to the Senate floor. I would have to renew my passport. There were still a few places I could go—I hurt all over.

  I said to Anne. “No, I’m not going to have the treatment.” I turned and walked away. Behind me, she asked Michael, “But, why not?”

  And Michael said, “I don’t know. There’s a lot about him I never understood.”

  He was right about that. He never understood.

  I wouldn’t let them steal it from me. If I cooperated willingly with their soul death, then that would only prove their argument—that it was never true love at all.

  Maybe it is just a little piece of this and a little piece of that; something in the genes and something in the hormones; maybe it really is all those things they say—but whatever it was, I felt it and it was real to me.

  They could take it away from Michael and they could even take Michael away from me, but they cannot take away the fact that it happened. They can deny it—I won’t. Never.

  But, Michael, oh, damn you, damn you, Michael—I’m so angry!

  AFTERWORD:

  No, this is not about a real person. It is not about how I had my heart broken.

  But I do admit that getting into the narrator’s head, putting on his voice, brought up a lot of feelings about love and loss and that curious moment that occurs when someone you care about looks at you with distant eyes.

  Afternoon with a Dead Bus

  I was sitting at a stoplight, waiting. Breathing bus farts.

  It was hot. I was unhappy. I was impatient to go and I couldn’t see what the holdup was. All I could see was the billboard on the ass of a rabid-transit behemoth.

  After a moment, I realized I was fumbling around on the dashboard, looking for the button to arm the lasers and launch the missiles and wondering why I couldn’t find it.

  It should have been there. I had the Belchfire V8, with Mach-Turbo-HyperBabble and pre-Lucas Art Drecko Techno-Gingerbread. I had the passenger-eject button, the James Bond axle-grinders, and the sound system from Hell. But I’d forgotten to stop at the ammo store to reload the weapon bays. Q was going to be very unhappy with me.

  This was California in the 60’s. Our cars were the physical manifestations of our identities. And my identity had decided to be very, very bad. All I could do was go along for the ride.

  The light changed and I went home. I turned on the typewriter and this rolled out.

  A bus had stalled at the corner of Sunset and Vine, and a crowd of automobiles quickly gathered around it. It didn’t look good for the bus. The cars kept making ominous growling noises. The smaller ones kept dashing in to nip at the bus’s wheels.

  More cars kept arriving all the time, until finally the intersection was blocked on all four sides. It was as if they had caught the frightened monoxide scent of the stalled bus and converged on this corner from all over the city. The pack versus the beast at bay.

  Their motors were angry and incessant. The smaller cars were trembling with feverish anticipation. They kept revving their engines impatiently and their exhausts were blue and smoky.

  The bus was worried. It kept fre
tting and beeping nervously, as if to warn away the cars. The big yellow leviathan wasn’t any too happy about being hemmed in; the cars were small and vicious and hungry.

  It was a sad-looking bus, way past its prime. Its eyes were small and heavy lidded; it was half blind. Dirt was caked gray on its windows, and there were too many places where its paint was chipped and peeling. Its grime-encrusted flanks bore too many old scars; unhealed and untended, most had gone to rust. Even the billboards on its sides were faded and torn.

  A Mustang stamped and whinnied its uneasy defiance of the dispirited giant. Nearby, a Firebird screeched in anger. The two cars seemed to overcome their natural antipathy toward each other in order to direct the full range of their fury on the hapless bus. The Firebird kept belching clouds of hot smoke into the air. Its lidless eyes glared balefully.

  The other cars echoed that anger. There was a bright angular Corvette with flashing teeth; it mourned like a banshee. A sleek and brassy Barracuda lurked behind a toothy Cougar and a swollen Impala, while nearby a squat-looking bug tooted from an alleyway; the bug was a hated scavenger, it kept an uneasy distance from its larger cousins.

  Farther back a fat Cadillac smoked and belched, watched and prodded, and occasionally roared its chrome-plated hunger. The other cars echoed its cry in discordant cacophony. They blared obscenities at the bus and challenged it to battle, knowing full well it could not respond. The younger and flashier cars—the Mustang and the Firebird and an eager Camaro—vied for the chance to draw first blood. The rich Cadillac honked impatiently for it.

  It was not long in coming. A rough-sided Camaro elbowed the Mustang aside and faced the big bus head on. The bus rumbled warningly, deep in its throat; its big slow eyes watched the Camaro warily.

  The Camaro began to harass the bus. It began a taunting little dance just in front of the giant’s wheels. It showed the bus its tail and roared its motor. It puffed smoke from its rear end; it screeched its tires on the asphalt. Then it spun around, grinning, and made as if to attack. It chivvied and snapped and feinted at the other’s throat. Then it scuttled backward to the safety of the pack to start again.