I Loved You More by Tom Spanbauer

Author:Tom Spanbauer [Spanbauer, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780989360425
Publisher: Hawthorne Books

Book Two

Ben & Ruth

12.

The real world

MANHATTAN, OCTOBER 1988. A LATE SUNDAY MORNING, hungover from Saturday night beers on the stoop. Outside, it’s hot, bright, gray, and humid. Garbage all over the sidewalks. Inside, Little Ben is sitting in front of the Darth Vader fan. Way too much coffee. Sweat dripping in my eyes, down my neck, under my arms. The Sunday Times is all there is.

Fucking Sundays, man. Sisyphus Sundays – in the morning it’s the hangover from Saturday night and the afternoon’s spent tripping on all you have to do Monday morning.

The deep longing for someplace green and wild and soft. I don’t go to Central Park because Central Park ain’t Atlanta Hot Springs. Designer Nature only makes my desire for wilderness worse. Manhattan will never be the same after the Atlanta magic. Nothing will be the same, because I’m not the same. Before I didn’t know what I was missing. All those years the fear my body remembered, now my body also remembers the sunlight on the water in the porcelain pans, the falling rock at Alturas Bar, the mushrooms, my thumb and what it taught me, Hank’s Hercules, my fair Adonis – all these things are now a place in me, too. A place where I’m hard and healthy and there’s hope. A place I won’t forget.

But I’ll forget. You can count on it.

We are so fragile.

What’s coming up – destiny, fate, fucking fortune – whatever it is that’s in store for me, no fucking way I could’ve had any idea.

All I know is it’s a Sisyphus Sunday and I’m hungover and I miss Hank and Atlanta. Maybe there’s a movie somewhere. A movie about someplace green and wild and soft.

My apartment is clean, I’ve washed the dishes, I’ve taken a long shower. Side one of George Michael’s Faith. Side two to shave. In the bathroom fluorescence in the mirror, my Idaho tan is gone. I tie the white towel around my waist and sit down in front of the computer. But I start to cough and the cough goes on so long I have to stand up and lean against the kitchen sink.

It’s so French and so cool to smoke. The pack of Gauloises in the ashtray I grab with my fist and crush and throw into the garbage can under the sink. The white towel falls from around my waist. I look down at my body. That’s the moment Big Ben decides it’s time. To cowboy up and go get tested.

ON THE DAY of the test, I take the number six train up to 86th and Lex. The train is hot and Little Ben is hungover again. You can get HIV tests for free at clinics all over town, but Big Ben won’t have it. I call up my editor and ask her for the name of a good doctor. With a proper doctor, Big Ben decides, I’ll have a better chance.

The doctor’s office is a well-appointed brownstone. Maple trees turning yellow and red-orange. Dappled shade on the set of broad granite steps that curve up from the street to the first floor door.

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