The Dark Eclipse: Reflections on Suicide and Absence by A.W. Barnes

Author:A.W. Barnes [Barnes, A.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, LGBTQ+ Studies, Self-Help, Death; Grief; Bereavement, Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Psychology, Suicide
ISBN: 9781684480449
Google: NWbcDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2018-12-14T04:15:06+00:00

Prospero’s Books

When I was living in Washington, D.C., and Mike lived in New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he came to visit me only once. I knew that he’d been to D.C. many times before then for work—he often lobbied Congress as a tax lawyer for Morgan Stanley. But every other time he’d been to D.C., he just rushed into town and then rushed out when he was finished without calling me.

That weekend, however, he called and said he wanted to see me. I didn’t know why. I thought that maybe he missed me and finally had time in his busy schedule for a visit.

Once, when I was in my early twenties and still living in Indianapolis, he came home for a weekend visit. (After he left Indianapolis, he rarely came home.) I hoped that he would want to spend some real time with me. I suggested that the two of us go downtown for a fancy lunch at the Rathskeller—one of the oldest restaurants in town—or maybe catch a matinee at the Indianapolis Repertoire Theater. They were my ideas of what kind of life Mike lived in New York—good restaurants and Broadway shows. But he said he wasn’t interested. He just wanted to hang around the house and catch up on his sleep.

“It’s no big deal,” I said offhandedly.

When Mike said he wanted to see me in D.C., I told him that there wasn’t any need to spend money on a hotel. There was enough space in my apartment, even though it was a studio apartment. I thought that it would be nice to stay up late talking, and to wake up early and have coffee at the small foldaway table that I kept pushed up against the wall next to the micro-kitchen.

He said that he preferred to stay in a hotel.

“Besides,” he said, “money isn’t really an issue.”

In preparation for Mike’s visit to D.C., I made elaborate plans without consulting him. I would meet Mike at his hotel in the morning, and we’d have the continental breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant—I convinced myself that this would be much better than having breakfast in my small apartment. I had an image of Mike and me strolling up the Mall—beginning at the Lincoln Memorial, ambling past the Washington Monument and the Smithsonian, and up to the Capitol—as if we were brothers used to spending time together. As if we were intellectual equals discussing democratic politics and contemporary literature and the AIDS epidemic.

I thought it would be nice if we ate lunch at one of the restaurants congressmen and senators dined, like Charlie Palmers or the Bombay Club.

I thought I’d take him to my local gay bar, JR’s, for a drink. I imagined us talking openly about men that we saw at the bar that we’d like to have sex with. I imagined us staying out late and drinking too much, stumbling home early in the morning and making too much noise so that the neighbors would yell out their windows for us to be quiet.

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