Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

“This blood.” He wiped the red from his mouth.

“Honey, it’s just strawberry jam.”

“Strawberry jam?” He closed his eyes as he pushed his chair back and stood, the newspaper on his lap sliding down onto the floor and under the table. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”

What had happened to the well-rested boy we’d sat down to breakfast with? How could that hollowing, a dig away from reaching bone, come so fast beneath his eyes? His tan of that summer seemed to lift up and float on pale water that went nightmare deep. It was as if he would go on emptying, coming to nothing before our eyes. Just collapse or fade or vanish away.

“I didn’t sleep last night.”

“Oh, I know. I heard the typewriter.” Dad feigned typing. “One day, when you are a married man, your wife will say the typewriter is your mistress, so be prepared, young journalist.”

“Yes, my wife.” Grand said wife as if he was almost sorry she would not exist.

“Go lie down, son. Get ya some rest.” Mom started clearing his dishes.

He slowly walked out of the kitchen while Mom and Dad started discussing rising prices again. Meanwhile I slid under the table to scoop up the newspaper. I hurried into the hall with it. Sal followed, but not to read the paper. He was passing me to go up the steps. I heard his knocking and then him asking if he could come in. Grand’s door opened and closed quietly.

I frantically tossed through the paper until I found Ryker’s name written beneath the title, MY COMIC BOOK DREAM, A PERSONAL ESSAY.

In Victorian England, it was hypothesized that having sex with a virgin would cure venereal diseases such as syphilis. This came to be known as the Virgin Cleansing Myth. Myth, because that is in fact all it is. There is no truth to the story that a virgin’s blood will somehow cleanse the blood of the diseased. Yet, to this day, there are some with HIV/AIDS who are having sex with virgins in the hope of a cure. In most instances, this sex is not consensual, and the virgin is put at risk of being infected themselves without their knowledge or their permission.

I myself have not had sex since being diagnosed with HIV in November of last year. This is a very personal decision and one I made because I do not want to put my fellow men at risk. That being said, I do understand the desire to find a cure. I understand it, yes, but I’d never knowingly infect another person with HIV/AIDS. I just want to make that clear. I do imagine it, though, in a sort of comic book style, if you will.

When it’s you and HIV/AIDS, you become a superhero, if you want to survive. Your body becomes the city you must protect and the HIV/AIDS becomes every villain ever created. It’s the Joker. Magneto. Doctor Doom. And in the fight, some may call themselves Superman or Batman, but I call myself Dr. Michael Morbius.

Fans of the Spider-Man series will recognize this name as that of the villain first introduced during those AIDS-free days of 1971.

Morbius was dying from, funny enough, a rare blood disease. He set out to be his own hero, looking for a cure that ultimately turned him into the villain. A vampire.

I suppose it’s because of these similarities between myself and Morbius that I imagine I am him. He suffered, as I am suffering now, from a rare blood disease. And like he was a vampire, I imagine myself to be one as well. I imagine I have sex with a virgin and, by doing so, I am cured.

Of course, this is just me imagining a comic book hero and a comic book villain, a comic book story and a comic book hope. But in this real world, I have to rely on the heroes in the white coats to see me through. We all do. It is the only ethical way.

I read that last line a few more times before I closed my eyes and saw Ryker. I searched for something in his appearance or his mannerism that would’ve said he was sick, but he was the human saxophone with the golden glow, and he played no laments. Damn that spick-and-span man.

I hated him.

The only solace I had was of imagining him alone in that one life rotting away, smelling of shit and fear on some hospital bed somewhere. Just another lump under the blanket, waiting to be rolled off into the ground. I’d spit on his grave, dance on it, if I knew where it was. Because I don’t, I do on occasion suddenly start dancing and spitting on any ground. People passing by may think I’m just a happy, jiggy, slobbering old man, when really I’ve got a grave in mind.

The grave of that man, not really a man but the devil. After all, we never needed Sal or any devil to come from underground. I learned at that moment that the devil, the true one, is people like Ryker.

I knew I couldn’t show the paper to Mom and Dad. Only Grand could do that and he had decided not to, so I started a fire in the fireplace. Even with the heat, I sat so close to the flames. I thought for a moment I might just say fuck it and lean all the way in and come out the other side as nothing but ash.

Ash doesn’t have to worry about anything, does it? It doesn’t have to worry about a sick brother. It doesn’t have to worry about what it all means. Ash just turns gray and blows away. That’s what I wanted. I just wanted to blow away.

As I watched the paper burn, I remembered the day me and Grand made his shoestrings red. It was a couple years back. We were sitting in the tree house. Grand’s shoes were brand new, having just come from the factory.

“Always white shoelaces.” He stretched the untied laces out to the sides like bleached worms. “Why you think this is, Fielding?”

“You’ve got a tongue of the shoe right there, and the laces are the teeth. Teeth are white.”

“Bad design, ain’t it? Puttin’ the tongue so close to the teeth. I’m always bitin’ my tongue. You’d think if God was so smart, He’d have come up with a better design.”

He took his pocket knife and studied each finger on his left hand like he was determining their value. Deciding that his ring finger was the least valuable, he took the knife and cut deep into his finger tip.

“Whatcha doin’?” I sat up on my heels but didn’t try to stop him.

“Since I’m always bitin’ my tongue and gettin’ blood on my teeth, I reckon it’s only right for my shoes to bite their tongue and get blood on their teeth.”

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”

“What is it they say? You’ve got to be crazy once in a while, or you’ll go insane.”

He reached the knife to me. “Go crazy with me, Fielding.”

I took the knife and looked carefully at each of my fingers like I still had a choice to make. Really it was the left ring finger all along, making for a strange wedding of us brothers and our blood. The initial tear of the knife is what makes you cringe, but the coming blood makes it worth it. That red river, too well ourselves, too well each other.

After the shoelaces were our blood, we made the handprints on the wall of the tree house. It was a moment shared between us when blood wasn’t dangerous, it was just the color of us. That was long before Ryker. Long before the blade followed the shine.

It never occurred to me at that time there was even the slightest possibility Grand had not contracted the virus, as I’m sure it did not occur to him. In those early years of the disease, some feared a kiss was enough. Fear is ignorance’s first shadow.

After the newspaper burned, I doused the fire and went upstairs, finding Sal in the hall. He looked like something returned to shape after having been pulled this way and that way and almost in two.

“What were you and Grand doin’, Sal?”

“Just talking.” He seemed to be gnawed at, as if of himself only a sliver remained.