Let's Shut Out the World by Kevin Bentley

Author:Kevin Bentley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: hiv, aids, san francisco, gay literature, gay men, gay history, gay memoir, aids literature, gay essay
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions

Halloween night: As I rode the crowded bus over to Hayes and Laguna, I felt a clear sense of doom about Sam. We’d broken up and gotten back together several times in the last month, one of us buckling each time and calling when the other toughed it out. We’d agreed to spend Halloween together; my old friend Steve and his boyfriend, Billy, were driving up from Monterey. They liked Sam because he liked to go dancing and could always get MDA, and they lectured me for being jealous. “He loves you, anyone can see that. Stop being so possessive!”

When I walked into the flat, the disco was thumping and the place was full of the roommates’ boyfriends and friends pacing around, passing joints and drinking beers. I could tell Sam had shot up—he was jittery and joking, smiling at me sheepishly now and then with a quick little nod or wink. Harlan looked at me sympathetically. “You can do a lot better than him, you know,” he breathed in my ear. It occurred to me that he knew Sam was already seeing someone else.

Steve and Billy arrived, and we swallowed capsules of MDA—this was Halloween, after all—and headed for the End-Up. It was odd being there at night; I’d only seen its false-twilit Sunday afternoons. We danced in the jam-packed throng. Sam disappeared for long periods and I was too high and occupied with Steve and Billy to bother looking for him. At two we moved on to an after-hours club where for a long stretch I stood gripped between Sam’s knees as he sat on a ledge with his arms around my chest, turning my head to be kissed now and then. In these moments, I had what I most wanted.

We got back to the flat and crashed at dawn. I woke only a couple of hours later to see Sam injecting himself in the chill morning air, the green toolbox open on the floor. He and Harlan were headed back to the End-Up for the 8:00 A.M. “Leftovers” party. In the early light the sight of blood rising into the syringe made my balls retract. He cupped my face in his shaking hands. “You know I love you more than anything? You know that, right?”

Around eleven, Steve woke me, and he and Billy and I went back to my place to shower and eat breakfast. If we were up to it, we said, we’d catch up with Sam and Harlan in the afternoon. Driving to the bar several hours later, Billy remembered he’d left his coat at Sam’s, and we detoured by Ivy to pick it up. Nobody answered the buzzer, but the door was open, and I bounded up the stairs. The first thing I saw was a dazed-looking blond guy sitting at the kitchen table in his underwear. “Um, hi…?” he said.

“Who’s that, Ricky?” Sam called from the bedroom. I pulled Billy’s coat off a chair, and plunged back down the stairs.

“Take me home,” I said.

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