Sacred City by Theodore C. Van Alst

Author:Theodore C. Van Alst [Van Alst Jr., Theodore C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780826362872
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Friend (no air quotes). Men’s friendships are fucked up. I mean, I’m glad for this younger generation, our kids, I suppose. They’re doing it right, and for that I am grateful. They hug each other, genuinely ask each other how they’re doing—hell, they even tell one another they care about each other. It’s made it less awkward for our generation to be human while obligating us to be so, even if it’s hard sometimes. We grew up being unemotional and unloving, not showing our feelings, or being kind. Fuck, we couldn’t even put sugar in our coffee. Now I cry at songs on the radio, when I read great lines in books, when the light in the sky is just right. It’s fifty years of not saying or feeling jack shit poured into my adulthood, my fatherhood. It’s a river of grief that appears at inopportune times, but it’s also a joyful sadness I can share at least, tell to the folks who catalyze these grateful emotions into the world where they belong. And I don’t have to feel shame about them. Yeah. That’s okay to me. Real okay. But at this moment early in my twenties, me and Vassily are traditional men friends. That means we talk shit to each other constantly, never mention our love for one another, and beat the shit out of each other instead of hugging, unless we’re super drunk. That last moment lives in the veil between those two worlds. I’m determined to head out and break on through.

“Let’s fucking go, man!”

“Alright, alright, Feo. Are such prick sometimes.”

“You know I like the near dark. Come on.”

“Am coming. Having to piss now. Hold on.”

“Fine.” I light a smoke, lean back, tilt my face up, and lightly bang the back of my head against the plaster in the hall next to the front door. I can hear Vassily’s urine assault the bowl through the thin wall of the bathroom. I really should move.

We head down the two stories of staircase to the street in the almost-black gloaming, what’s left of the thin and spidery light leaking over the transom at the bottom of the stairwell. We jerk the door open, and a bum slo-mos over the threshold. “Never trust a junkie,” he croaks, and we step around him onto the sidewalk, taking in the fresh air.

“Where going, Feo?” Vassily asks.

“To the Courtesy, my Uki friend,” I reply.

“Jesus Christ,” he shakes his head.

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