I Will Be Complete by Glen David Gold

Author:Glen David Gold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2018-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

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Rick’s apartment, in the Greene & Greene style, was so nice that in summer 1983 it cost $1,100 a month. How he managed this on $3.85 an hour from the bookstore was suspicious to Melanie. Sugar daddy? Kiting checks? It wasn’t secret family money. His family didn’t speak to him.

“Right,” I said, “and there are all those expenses for Lolly.”

I’m not sure how she looked at me when I said that, because the door was thrown open with force, as if the party within was too big to be contained. Rick pulled us in, apologizing for his “breath out to here.” It was a nice place, beamed ceilings and original tile and hardwood and Moorish touches.

Rick pointed out a tall, curly-haired man who was slouching shyly against the stove in the kitchen. He wore, badly, a Greek fisherman’s cap. “That’s Philippe,” Rick hissed to me. “He used to be Catherine Deneuve’s lover. He was in Valley of the Dolls. He’s only been gay for a few months so forgive the hat. He doesn’t know anything yet, but he’s really really really gay, like a thirteen-year-old boy is really really really Jewish after being bar mitzvahed.”

Melanie went into the kitchen to get something to drink while Rick showed me the rest of the place. There was a stack of Moleskine journals in the hallway, by the phone alcove. They came up to my thighs. Rick said, “Those are my thoughts. I’m transcribing them now for a book.”

“What’s it about?”

He thought about it, as if this was the first time someone had asked. “About being a man. In this culture.”

There was more to the house tour, but I was watching Mel, still in the kitchen. She was in deep conversation with a woman whose posture was described by her hips pointing toward Mel in aggressive slouching.

Rick had a roommate. His roommate was depressed because he’d just learned he had HIV and he was worried it might become AIDS. “He slept with this flight attendant who gave it to, like, everyone.”

Recently, a young gay friend who hadn’t even been born in 1983 reacted with awe when I started telling him this story. He wanted me to explain every detail of what it was like to be at a dinner party in Hollywood then with gay men discussing AIDS. But I would be a disappointing witness. It’s hard to account for how Rick was talking. He wasn’t really worried. It seemed to me that night that the men in the room, who were smart and funny and who had learned how to ask the right questions, would be genuinely shocked that they were supposed to be more concerned. Also I wasn’t paying close attention. I was a straight nineteen-year-old with a little bit of empathy, but with a deeper curiosity about what Melanie was doing in the kitchen.

I decided I should go there to get a beer or something, leaving the men behind, and Mel showed visible joy when she saw me.

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