Where the Rainbow Ends by Jameson Currier

Author:Jameson Currier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: aids, gay fiction, gay novel, gay literature, gay men, aids fiction, gay studies, aids literature, gay debut
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions

ELEVEN

Nathan always believed that I looked for too much meaning in insignificant things, when I always believed myself that I was perceptive of living in a time of unrivaled change. “Remember when we used phones with rotary dials?” I would remind him, “or the days before there were answering machines and videotapes?” It seems so odd to me now, though, stepping back and looking again at those years, how easily I could point out technological progress though I could be so unaware of sociological changes.

It was Nathan who had suggested that I go to Washington that weekend in 1987. It wasn’t important for me to march, wasn’t important for me to feel as if I were a part of a larger community. Nathan had wanted to spend a weekend alone with his parents in Connecticut and he thought it best that I get out of the city for a weekend, too. In the last few weeks I had seen Nathan grow weaker and weaker, at night he was unable to sleep because of nausea or fear; I had even heard that Nathan could seldom finish his work at his desk, often slipping away to lie down on a couch in someone’s office. Every time I heard something like this from someone—someone confirming my own fears about the declining state of Nathan’s health—I would slip into a silent hysteria. That hysteria would soon fade into a furious hatred, a hatred that I kept so checked and tacit within myself that I often thought I would someday explode.

That Saturday I had spent alone in Washington I had wandered through the museums that framed the Mall—the various wings of the Smithsonian, the Air and Space Museum, the National Gallery of Art. I wasn’t really interested in connecting with anyone; I wanted, instead, to accept my solitude. I remember it felt good to be looking and moving, flowing, like a documentary film, in and out of the rooms, pausing before an impressionist painting or touching, briefly, a rock brought back from the moon. I had always believed that tourists at museums are often more interesting than the art itself and that day it had proved to be true once again; everywhere I went I noticed rooms not full of art or wonder but of cruisy, good-looking guys. It had been hard not to notice them, really, hard not to wonder what it would be like knowing just one of them in any sort of permutation: friend, lover, trick.

The day had not been without other anxious moments though. I had never been comfortable in museums, never knew what to do with my hands, feeling like a bull in a priceless china shop, and I had spent most of the afternoon with my hands shoved into the front pockets of my jeans as I had walked around, my shoulders hunched forward but my elbows jutted away from my body. I had always believed that that kind of posture pushed me into too pensive a mood—more so than normal.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.