How We Live Now Read online

  I remember as if it were yesterday what it was like when there was nothing—and I mean nothing—to treat HIV/AIDS, much less to prevent it (something I truly thought I’d never see). Screw that. I remember what it was like when we didn’t even know what caused the nightmarish illness that at first mainly struck gay men, rendering them mortally ill in weeks, gone within months. I remember when the mysterious virus—Human Immunodeficiency Virus, as it was named—was identified at last in 1983, and when the modes of transmission into the bloodstream were finally made explicitly clear (unprotected sexual intercourse, whether vaginal or anal, and injection drug use being the riskiest). I remember when some of the first drugs to treat AIDS were introduced and tested—they were almost as toxic as ingesting disinfectants. And I remember the day—the moment—when I fell in love with a twenty-six-year-old named Steve, who told me on our first date that he had tested HIV-positive. I was twenty-eight and had tested HIV-negative. This was in 1989. Soon after, I moved in with him. We were together, a “mixed-status couple,” as such couples were known, for almost seventeen years. Steve died unexpectedly, not from AIDS, paradoxically, but from a heart attack at age forty-three. He was in bed next to me when I woke to find him in cardiac arrest. EMTs came, but it was too late. It’s been almost fourteen years since that morning in October but I still think about him, still have dreams about him, still remember the last words we spoke. They were not goodbye. There were no goodbyes. We were in bed the night before, reading, around eleven or so. I decided to turn in first and shut off my light.

  “Good night,” I said and kissed him on the lips.

  “Good night,” Steve said, “I’m just gonna read a couple more pages.”

  15

  Delivery Biker at a Red Light

  I took his picture just as

  the light turned green

  and he began riding off.

  “What’s your name?”

  I called

  as I got out of the way.

  He turned his head and said—

  said it—

  as he rode away.

  But I couldn’t hear.

  I watched him disappear

  up the avenue.

  16

  Yesterday, feeling fine physically but going stir-crazy in my apartment, I decided to take a walk. It was a beautiful afternoon in New York, after all, and taking a walk is still permitted. My hour-long walk—winding through the West Village, down to the Hudson, and by the river—was mind-clearing. I headed home via Christopher Street. Nearly everything was closed, of course. But balancing out the spookiness of the deserted streets and all the shuttered restaurants, bars, and shops were the sweetly worded handwritten signs posted by small business owners—expressing thanks to loyal customers, wishing everyone well, and promising to “be back soon.”

  On a whim, I decided to extend my walk and see if Three Lives & Company was open. Although I happen to have thousands of Oliver’s books in storage in my apartment—any one of which might be fascinating—somehow, I felt I needed a new book. I suppose I wanted to give myself a little gift, but I also wanted to see how my local booksellers were faring.

  There’s no way they’ll be open, I thought to myself, it’s such a tiny shop. Alas, as I approached, I saw that the bookshop looked dark inside, no lights on. Ah, but then I noticed, from half a block away, the door was open …

  … An old wooden chair, propping open the door, blocked entry into the shop. How sad—maybe they’re closing for good and packing up? But no. I peeked my head in and there were Miriam and Troy, stalwarts of independent booksellers, smiles on their faces. We greeted one another with cheer and affection, and Miriam explained how they’d adjusted things: No one was allowed inside—Troy was sequestered behind the counter and Miriam was standing halfway between him and the entrance—but if you’d “Just call out the title of the book” you were looking for (or the author, or the genre), they’d find it for you. And they did! I had specific titles in mind—a big thick book called The Dolphin Letters about Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, and others of their literary circle—and the new Rebecca Solnit memoir, which I was eager to read. Miriam went in search.

  Behind me a small line had formed. I stepped aside. One woman called out for “the new Hilary Mantel, please!” (They had a towering stack of those.) A couple was seeking “a new cookbook—anything you suggest?” (Between them, Miriam and Troy had a bunch of creative ideas.) A family was looking for books for their little kids to read. I felt like I was in a metaphorical breadline—a breadline for feeding the brain and the soul.

  Miriam placed my books on the old wooden chair propping open the door after I’d taken a few steps back, and then I picked them up with my begloved hands.

  “Should I toss my credit card in, or leave it on the chair here?” I asked.

  “No,” Miriam told me—they were being very strict about social distancing, she explained. “Just read out the numbers on your credit card—Troy will ring it up!” she called back.

  And so I did, yelling out my VISA numbers unselfconsciously. Troy, thoughtful as always, asked if I wanted a receipt or a bag?

  “No, no, I’m happy to carry them,” I replied.

  And I was. The big thick book and Rebecca’s memoir felt so good in my hand—substantial, weighty, as if they were heavy simply because of the promise of several days and nights of reading ahead. I bid goodbye as Miriam and Troy took care of the other neighbors.

  “We’re going to try to stay open as long as we can—as long as it’s safe and we’re permitted,” Miriam said.

  I wished them well with all my heart: I felt I had gotten many gifts on this outing, not just one. “Bless you both,” I said.

  Young Woman on Fourteenth Street

  August 6, 2018

  17

  I had a dream about Oliver, one of the few I’ve had since he died: I see him opening the door to the coat closet in the apartment. He has his shirt off and his soft pajama trousers on. It seems as if he is looking for something that’s gone missing, as he often was, and I hear him murmuring softly to himself:

  “… Now where is it …?”

  I come up from behind and wrap him in a big hug, startling him—“Oh!” But he realizes it is me, and even though I can’t see his face, I can feel Oliver smiling. His body goes from tensed to relaxed in my arms. He keeps looking for whatever he was looking for, reaching up to the top shelf, while I keep hugging him.

  “… The important thing is stay active,” Oliver says.

  I run a hand over his shiny head.

  Then I wake up.

  18

  3-18-2020:

  • Stretch + Yoga:

  5 min.

  • Sit-Ups:

  Some

  • Push-Ups:

  100 (50/50)

  • Chin-Ups:

  45 (15/15/15)

  • Leg Raises from bar:

  30 (15/15)

  • Standing Squats:

  0

  • Cardio:

  30-min. walk

  19

  I haven’t heard from Jesse, who lives with his mom and sister in Brooklyn, in several days. This morning, I texted him three times in a row, increasingly, irrationally frantic, to see if he is okay.

  Finally, around four P.M., I hear from him: Babe, babe, I’m okay just been sleeping—lol

  I text a smiling emoji with sunglasses, trying to play it cool.

  “Thank God,” I say to myself.

  Young Couple in the Park

  July 28, 2018

  20

  I live kitty-corner from a Mobil gas station, one of the very few gas stations left in Manhattan. For the past decade, I’ve heard so much honking, arguing, drunken yelling in the middle of the night, fistfighting even, emanating from that tiny piece of New York real estate, home to four precious gas pumps. What’s so interesting but bizarre right now, at 6:31 P.M. on a Friday—when there would normally be a long line of cars lined up to get gas before driving home—is
how quiet it is.

  21

  It is so quiet:

  You can hear a bird singing.

  You can hear a baby crying.

  You can hear a single voice rising up from Eighth Avenue.

  You can hear a bus idling near Horatio.

  You can hear a conversation under my window.

  You can hear a guy at a gas pump talking on his cellphone.

  You can hear a kid on a scooter in the park.

  You can hear a person with a walker walking, the walker scraping the sidewalk.

  You can hear a madman ranting and raving somewhere.

  You can hear someone hammering something someplace uptown.

  You can hear delivery guys’ bike bells.

  You can hear someone whistling as he walks.

  You can hear yourself crying by yourself.

  And in the enforced solitude and silence, you can sometimes hear yourself replaying moments in your life, things said or not said, done or not done, love expressed or not expressed, all the gratitude you’ve ever received, all the gratitude you’ve ever felt.

  22

  It’s only a matter of days before all businesses not deemed essential will be shut down indefinitely by the city. My local barbershop, King of Cutz, saw it coming, packed things up, and closed its doors early, as I discovered when I went by to get a last haircut from my longtime barber, Alex, today. I felt crestfallen seeing the lights off, the red-white-and-blue barbershop pole not swirling. I then went straight home and shaved my head in solidarity. I’ll return, with what hair I’ve got regrown, when Alex, the “King,” reopens someday.

  One doesn’t usually appreciate how places like this—though deemed “inessential”—are, in a certain light, essential to the life you lead. Getting a haircut and a beard trim is always a source of pleasure for me. But it’s not just the grooming a barber can provide; it’s the overheard conversations, the company, the stories.

  Alex first started cutting my hair two weeks after I arrived in New York. At the time, I lived in an apartment further down in the Village, and Alex worked for someone else, at a barbershop on West Fourth Street. I still have a vivid sense memory of the first time he trimmed my beard and moustache: how his fingers, holding scissors, smelled vaguely of a mix of Dial soap and Parliament cigarettes. Alex, an immigrant from Russia, is straight, married, and happens to be strikingly handsome. The majority of his clients in the Village are gay, and he’s cool with everyone. Not long after Alex began cutting my hair, I started taking Oliver there, too. Lulled by the low hum of the buzzers grazing his skull, Oliver would fall asleep almost immediately, silently, in the chair. Alex would gently work around him, never waking him until he had finished.

  After years of hard work and saving, Alex was able to open his own shop in the West Village about two years ago; it is right around the corner from my apartment. There’s often a wait for a cut and I don’t mind; he’s always got some trippy EDM playing. “I come for the haircut, but I stay for the music,” I tell Alex half-kiddingly.

  I once asked him who cuts his hair—whom he trusts enough to do it—and he let out a sorrowful sigh: “It’s sad, bro. Sometimes I wish I could take my head off and cut my own hair.”

  I laughed so hard my smock fell off.

  More recently, I got into a good-natured argument with Alex about my overuse of the word beautiful when it came to men—men I photograph, men I see on the street, men I had seen in his shop’s seats next to me.

  “Billy, you can’t just go around saying every man you see is beautiful,” Alex said.

  “Not ‘every,’ I don’t say every man is,” I objected.

  Alex, who’s about thirty years younger than me, turned off his clippers, leaned against the counter, and faced me, the picture of patience. “Here’s the thing: Women are ‘beautiful.’ Men are—well, a man might be ‘cute,’ but—”

  “It’s true, you are kind of cute, Alex.”

  He laughed, disarmed. “Thank you, but—”

  “Yes? You were saying …?”

  “A woman is beautiful, and a man is … handsome. You can say a man is handsome.”

  I let this sink in, milking the moment.

  “Alex, I think I can live with that,” I finally responded.

  “Okay, good.” He turned the clippers back on and finished my haircut.

  How We Live Now

  March 30, 2020

  23

  I saw a young woman kneeling on an empty strip of grass arranging what looked from afar like magnolia petals, and I thought to myself, I wonder if she’s making art? I approached, far enough away not to make her uncomfortable but close enough that she could hear my voice: “Hey, hi there, are you making an art piece?”

  She looked up with a smile but shook her head. “I’m making a mandala.”

  “That’s art,” I said.

  She shrugged and returned to her task. There was a slight breeze, which made arranging the petals on the grass without having them fly away a problem to solve. She pressed each one firmly into the grass and, by her touch alone, somehow made them stick.

  “Do you mind if I come closer?” I called out.

  “Not at all,” said the young woman, “come over.”

  I stood maybe twelve feet away and watched her consider her materials: twigs and sprigs in different lengths and widths, leaves, and grasses. She made quick decisions, stripping twigs of branchlets; breaking some in two; putting the leaves aside; and separating out the dried grasses from the green ones.

  She began making a pattern around the lavender-tipped magnolia petals, occasionally sitting back to assess her work, eyeing it with the unmistakable eye of an artist.

  “It’s beautiful,” I murmured, “beautiful …”

  She beamed a wholesome smile, as if agreeing with me—but quite modestly so. Her shiny, long brown braids fell over her shoulders. I introduced myself, as did she. Her name was Jen. I said aloud what I was thinking: “It’s pure intuition—the way you’re making the pattern—isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, mostly. I don’t know why but I just like making them, I always have,” she said.

  It’s because you’re making a whole universe out of what would otherwise go underfoot, unnoticed, I thought—a different universe from the one we are currently inhabiting.

  “Do you want to add something to it?” she asked me.

  I felt honored.

  I began scouring the ground. At first all my eyes could see were the geese turds everywhere. But the more I looked, the more I noticed other things: sticks and twigs like those she had selected. I found a good one and returned.

  She sat back and I placed my stripped twig on the northern side of the mandala.

  “Nice,” she whispered.

  I stepped back.

  She began expertly weaving the dried grass into a wreath shape with great concentration, clearly something she had done before, her beringed fingers moving quickly. She placed one wreath down then made another, larger in size, and placed it around the first.

  I thought of the sun and the moon. And of an eclipse.

  She sat back on her heels again. Gazing at the completed mandala, she nodded decisively as if it had said something to her, and she was answering in return:

  Yes, she seemed to be saying silently, yes …

  A Mandala

  April 4, 2020

  24

  When the city ordered all “nonessential” businesses to shut down on March 22, I would not have expected that to include city parks. We are still allowed to take walks, after all, to get exercise outdoors. But today I found the High Line closed at every entrance due to Covid-19. I felt disappointed at first, and then thought: I’ll bet all those plants, grasses, ferns, and trees up there will enjoy the time to themselves, grow as wild and unruly as they’d like, free of the scrutinizing gaze and trampling feet of human beings.

  25

  Skateboarders, traveling in packs of five or six or more, each a good two or three yards apart, have take
n over the empty streets in the late afternoon.

  Lying on my couch, I put down my book and just listen.

  I love the sounds they make—their wheels, their voices, their laughter: life, rumbling forward.

  26

  There’s one restaurant in my neighborhood that I especially love and would hate to see disappear. I like it not only for the food—simply presented, perfectly made grilled meats and vegetables, soups and noodles—but also because it is small yet quiet enough that you can have a conversation without yelling to be heard by your tablemate. The owner/chef, Joe, had to lay off all of his waiters, hosts, dishwashers, and cooks with the shutdown, though he’s still allowed to make food to go. He is now doing it on his own. I’ve ordered takeout a few times—hoping to help him survive—as have some other fans around here.

  I went in the other night to pick up my order (with gloved hands), and after I’d paid—sliding my credit card down the bar toward him—he said, “How about a drink? You have a minute?” (He looked like he could use one.)

  “Yeah, for sure,” I said, “but are you permitted?”

  He shrugged—no one else was in the restaurant—and reached (with gloved hands) for an unopened bottle of Pinot Grigio.

  “Not technically. Let’s just call it a drink between friends.”

  He poured two glasses and stepped back while I retrieved one for myself. We raised our glasses to one another.

  “Here’s to New York,” I said.

  “Here’s to New York,” Joe said.

  We drank a glass and talked from either end of the bar.