Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

The guest-house tub was empty. Taj wore a mask and gag, his wrists and ankles tied with leather. He could hear the voices of the party outside. The associate producer laughed through the gag as he imagined his mother stumbling in to find the toilet. She’d been visiting from Chicago and had only just left to see his sister, in Walnut Creek. He took her to City Walk and Rodeo Drive and the Ivy; Cybill Shepherd and Sarah Jessica Parker were there, but not together. His mother didn’t like the way Taj was looking. He was too thin, she said, too “drawn.” They bought a ton of groceries at Gooch’s and she packed them away while he sat at the kitchen table and smiled. When she asked if he was having “girl trouble,” his mind kinked up like a hose — for two seconds he thought she was hip to his errant faggotry. When Taj realized her earnestness he laughed so hard that if he screamed, he was certain the frequency would shatter her heart. Yes, he vamped, he had fallen in love but the girl wouldn’t love him back. Then it wasn’t meant to be . Do I not know my son?

He was cold. He went over the details of the Reporter article again. There it was on the mindscreen — Whole Document, Cursor here, Cursor there, Pg Up, Pg Dn — and it warmed him. What he really needed was a tape of Dante’s Inferno ; as yet, Taj had only read a précis in TimeOut ’s movie guide. Spencer Tracy played a “ruthless manipulator” who opened a carnival featuring the eponymous ride. The nineteen thirty-five film was supposed to have a spectacular “vision of hell” sequence that was technically ahead of its time. It was all so drolly ironic — in college, The Divine Comedy happened to be Taj’s favorite book; he even learned Italian to apprehend its beauty.

More voices outside as the party grew. Taj shivered. He thought about the Harvard years and hummed a little doggerel. Then it came back, inexorably. On the outskirts of Hell, the poets heard lamentations. Virgil tells him,

… Questo misero modo

tegnon l’anime triste di coloro

che visser sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo .

“Such is the miserable condition of the sorry souls of those who lived without infamy and without praise.” In that snowy collegiate world — the dormitory of his own soul — Taj already heard his voice rise up unaccomplished to take its place in the infernal suburbs, a sad tenor among the meritless Dead, their complement unworthy of Hades proper.

A door opened. Voices. Men laughing. Splash of a Hockneyesque dive. Taj prepared to bolt — he hadn’t agreed to this. If Zev was accompanied, the associate producer would thrash and bloody himself, make a ruckus…The door closed, separating them from the sounds of the world. Zev was alone. He made a few calls, but Taj couldn’t hear. He hung up, rummaging in a drawer before coming to the bath. He smoked a cigar. His breathing was heavy, labored. The producer sat on the toilet and defecated. The air grew musty and fetid. Zev puttered in the other room, casually talking on the phone again. He came and stood over him, breathing calmer. Taj felt the mouth at his groin like a fish feeding on aquarium bottom. Then, mouth skirted nipple: hovered over belly while a stertorous groan scared Taj half to death: and gilded him with throw-up. The producer regurgitated a warm rhythmical hail of egesta that put the rookie in mind of Jeff Goldblum in The Fly . Zev finally off his knees, washing at the sink. Cigar relit. Dreamy party voices through the door as he leaves, locking it.

Taj shifted in the puky tub; he would endure. Tomorrow, the rewards would come — Prada jacket from Maxfield’s, vintage Rolex from Second Time Around, thousand-dollar gift certificate from Burke Williams — he was generous like that. Maybe Zev would bring him along next weekend when he sailed to Catalina with Dustin and the kids. Such a gift was precious and intangible, an investment in the great career unknown.

Taj Wiedlin, Associate Producer .

This was his time. He would live it with infamy and with praise.

Chet Stoddard

The dentist and his wife finally took the viatical plunge. When Horvitz brought the cashier’s check to Philip, the dying costume designer, Chet went along.

The bungalow on Cynthia Street had a Grecian façade. An Abyssinian slept through its sunny sentinel. Ryan, Philip’s roommate, showed them in. The house was clean and bare, low-budget minimalist: in the living room were a few Noguchi lamps, a tulip in a tall vase and the requisite Mapplethorpe photo book. It sat on a low boomerang table like a stage prop.

Philip lay in a hospital bed, neck craned back, eyes closed, mustachy open mouth. A male nurse smiled at the visitors, lowering the volume of “The Flying Dutchman.” The closest he’ll get to Greece , Chet thought, is inside a fucking urn . The lids fluttered and Philip coughed. Totally blind? Ryan handed him a glass, guiding the straw to his mouth.

“I knew you were awake,” said the roommate. “He always pretends to sleep.”

“The Great Pretender,” Philip muttered, clearing his throat while lifting himself up on sharp elbows.

“Stu and Chet are here,” Ryan said, pitched a little louder. “Looks like you won the lotto.”

Philip smiled broadly. Horvitz asked how he was doing. The lucky policy-seller coughed while Ryan answered for him.

“Not so good.”

“Not so good,” Philip echoed rheumily.

“Yesterday was better.”

He closed his eyes as the roiling clouds of a coughing jag loomed, then passed, chased by merciful winds. “Yesterday was definitely better.” Cued by Ryan, the others laughed. “As David Bailey said”—eyes opening again—“there is nothing uglier than the sight of four men in a car. Well. Maybe four men with Kaposi in a car.”

“Forgive him,” said Ryan, with mocking affection. “He slips in and out of dementia.”

“Why, pastor! You must try Dementia, the new altar boy — I’ve been slipping in and out all day! It’s heaven .”

“Now listen, my son—”

They went on like that until more cough clouds overtook their cabaret. “He might have pneumonia,” said Ryan, sotto voce. The elder viatical rep took this opportunity to remove an envelope from his attaché case. Upon Philip’s convulsive recovery, the roommate placed it in hand.

“Mr. Horvitz brought us a little check.”

“Checks and balances,” said Philip, with that mustache smile; it made Chet forlorn. He fingered the paper. “Well, this is glorious. We must call the limousine company, at once.”

“When do you leave on your voyage?” asked Horvitz.

“Friday,” said the roommate, somewhat skeptically.

“Will you manage?” Chet thought his boss’s grave, stagy modulation had belied the euphemism.

“Better believe we’ll manage,” said the plucky invalid.

“Big boys don’t die,” Ryan said.

“And white men don’t jump — but boy, do they Gump.”

“So wish Jason and his Argonaut well.”

Just before dessert, Aubrey Turtletaub took a fistful of pills from a Kleenex. She pressed each to her lips as if to divine a code word before letting it pass — admitting them one by one, with slow, steady intimacy while Chet confessed. Well, half confessed, because there was no way he was going to discuss his short-lived career as a rising viatical settlement advocate.

He said that a Narcotics Anonymous buddy told him about her party — Chet knew it was for positives only, but hadn’t been deterred. Aubrey smiled mordantly and called him a “singles night bottom-feeder.” Shamefaced, he apologized for misleading her on his HIV status. It’s just that he got so flustered when she asked, How long have you known?