Eric
I’ve known Eric for some time now; we really grew up together, ran the streets, did school, smoked dope behind his fat-assed mother’s house. Eric didn’t even live with his mother; he stayed over at his sister’s because he couldn’t handle the way his mother hounded him, always sticking her nose in his business.
I had been over the one time that Eric lashed back at her because she’d been checking his sheets, seeing if they’d been tucked in right or if he was hiding something. It’d been building up for some time; I could tell by the way she said hello to me when I came to walk with Eric to school. If it was a good morning, she’d be drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette in front of Good Morning America. If it was a bad morning, she’d be dusting, complaining no one ever helped her out and stuff.
This morning when Eric let me in the door, the living room was filled with piles of clothes, freshly washed; even Eric smelled of detergent. When we were about to leave, his mother started yelling to get back here; she’d been in his room, had ripped the covers off the bed and wanted him to do his bed all over again. She kept on yelling, “Why can’t you do this right, you’re just in my way, can’t wait till I can kick you out of my house.”
Eric had been saying what a wack his mom was being, tearing the place apart. The day before, she’d grabbed him by the collar and pushed him out of the house because he’d left a towel on the bathroom floor. His mother was hard-faced, right up next to Eric’s, nearly spitting words at him. I guess Eric snapped because he just shoved her hard against the wall. She wanted to strike him, but he held her fist in his hand and then tossed it back to her. She started screaming some more, “I’m going to kill you, god dammit!” I grabbed Eric by the arm, his white T-shirt twisted in my fingers as I tore him out of the house, nearly ripping the screen door off its hinges.
Eric hid in my garage while his mother’s boyfriend went looking for him. My parents didn’t give a shit. “No motherfucker is going to be messing in our backyard!” My father’s voice shook as he asked, “Do you want me to get my gun, or would you like to get your ugly face away from my garage?” What a joke, but you got to love my dad; he didn’t own a gun because my mother would have harped on him forever.
They had always left me alone with Eric. Actually, my parents liked him. Eric did have a cleanliness about him, hair cropped short, a twenty on him at all times, in his wallet’s secret slot, folded, moist and accordioned.
We hung behind the steam plant, next to the hill and his apartment. He waited for me to come by, squatting on the brick wall that held the ivy lawn back, next to the pay phone where he had called me over. As a greeting I brushed my hand discreetly along his inner thigh, disturbing the perfect curls of hair on his body, fed my fingers down, inside the crotch of his loose cotton shorts, till they swam in his humidity. For the rest of the day, I’d be conscious of him, his odor distinct and comforting under my nails.
Eric and I would watch the columns of steam being pumped out of the electrical plant. There was a mattress flung out in the nearby dried grass. We would rest on it, the material warm from the sun, and listen to the water rushing down slatted wood, a part of the process to give the city energy. We’d talk long stuff, like did we believe in God or whatever. I told him I couldn’t; it was kind of pointless. I couldn’t possibly know any of his intentions, so why worry if he knows you believe in him or not. Eric sort of hated these discussions I’d bring up; he was more interested in getting out of this hellhole he was living in, and if I would go away with him. We’d finish a lunch, large bottles of Cokes. Sometimes Eric would pull out his dick and take a piss on an old, withered oak. Sometimes I could see it splash till the last few drops fell. He’d turn to me and stuff it back in.
The street over, I had a job at Bobby’s Liquor on Fair Oaks. I lied about my age; they never checked. I took the late shift, worked minimum; it paid minimum. Eric and I spent the money going to clubs and shit. I swept floors, pinned up posters of Dos Equis women, a beer bottle in one hand, a two-fingered tequila in the other.
I’m half Mexican. My mother grew up here; she looked pretty. Her sisters would call her güera, making sure she never felt good about being so pale. They made jokes about me before I was born, wondering what I’d look like because my mother’s boyfriend was white. When my mother turned thirty, I was already fourteen. I was watching a video while she argued on the phone with her older sister, saying,“You’ve got to respect me, you can’t treat me like a dog. I don’t want to hear from you again.”
I never got on my mother’s bad side either because she could drop you like that. She always acted like I was delivering bad news to her if I mentioned anything, would grab her lungs, relieved that the problem was minuscule, unimportant. She was a good lady, though, died of cancer a few years back.
My father got into AA, best thing for him. He doesn’t like me working at Bobby’s, but fuck it, I’m not, as he says, codependent. Sometimes he waits for me parked in front of the store so I don’t have to take the bus at night. When I open the passenger door, he says, “Hi.” His breath smells of coffee; I know he’s wired.
I tell him, “Let’s go out for dinner.” We drive up the street to the Salt Shaker, let the little old ladies serve us. He orders his steak and eggs. I don’t really want to eat, but he gets lonely after his meetings, tells me I really should go with him.
The year my mother died, Eric hung out at our place. His sister didn’t want him much either; he was seventeen, could join the army or get a good job. One time, my father wanted to go after Eric’s throat. Dad worked nights, molded plastics. One morning, Eric and I were at the kitchen table, breakfast almost finished; we were half-dressed for school. Eric sat there on the dinette chair, turned away from the table, shirtless, jeans on, the fly still unbuttoned. He slipped on one white cotton sock, then the other. I sat watching him, his legs opening then closing, slowly eating my maple syrup pancakes, my eyes focused on his every move, sinews twisted, then the sudden glint of his smile my way. I was near naked, just my white jockeys when my dad stepped in. He took one look at me, one at Eric. I could feel his thoughts right where they say the soul is, a feeling that yelled, ‘Why are you taking the one thing I have left in my life?’
My father tried to act natural, tried to take a series of deep breaths, looking at the stacks of letters he had already opened, the magazine on the TV set, glaring at Eric lacing his shoes, pulling the striped bands tight. Eventually, my father walked into his bedroom, slammed the door, put on the cheap portable he bought off someone at work, wailed a tape of Lyle Lovett. It was a tape my mother had. She played it a lot after she lost her sight.
I had gone to the hospital every day, before and after school. We didn’t talk much. She stayed in her bed, sick from chemo. I would try some homework, read a magazine. I don’t remember the exact moment when my father and I found out she was going to die; we just knew. Once I came into her room; bandages wrapped her eyes and there was a sharp smell of her body, the room lit by a low-cloud day. A nurse walked in ready to soap my mother down; she left when she saw me. Sometimes my mother would know I had walked in, other times she didn’t know who I was. She’d ask for me over and over, and I’d say, “I’m here. Mom, I’m here.” I’d try to hold her hand, but she wouldn’t let me; she wouldn’t turn her head toward me. She kept on slipping her hand out of mine till my father would grab me from behind, pulling me away, kissing the top of my head, suffocating me in his arms, saying, “my baby, my sweet baby.” I would hit at him, my face on his chest, his arms locked around me, the heat of his body useless and unwanted.
I told Eric, “Even now I can feel her inside my hand.” He’d try to change the subject on our long drives at night in his sister’s beat-up old Cougar. His sister would lend it to him if she knew he was coming over to visit me. When I called Eric and she answered, she’d always ask about my mother. I guess she felt sorry for me.
There was a park above Foothill; a small wooden amphitheater was built on the incline. Eric and I would sit staring at all the lights in the valley, like an electrical grid. He’d pull a joint out and we’d get stoned. I would try to tell him what it was like, but he’d say, “Don’t dwell on it; it’ll just be worse if you do.” My chest and throat would burn, and I’d space out on the trees, where a sudden ember flared, a man smoking a cigarette, looking at Eric and me as if we were bones to suck on. Back in the car, I was more comfortable, slipping my hand along Eric’s chest, underneath his soft brown leather jacket, the silk lining, the pocket of his cotton T-shirt. My hand slipped inside the pocket, as his mouth opened and moved toward mine.
My mother passed away in the hospital when my father and I weren’t around. The late-night phone call of the doctor made her death real, made the walls shake, my father throwing himself against the doors of their bedroom. I tried to stay asleep, tried to pick up a dream where I left it, downtown L.A. at night, men ratty from the street, following Eric and me. I wanted to set the dream’s outcome right, to not let them throw empty beer bottles at us, the glass breaking on our heads, my father breaking open the door of my bedroom, saying,“You have to get up, baby, I have something to tell you.”
That night I called Eric, told him my mother had died. He came over right away. My father was out somewhere drinking. Eric brought a couple of six-packs from his brother-in-law’s cooler. We watched the news from my bed, our legs crossed over each other identically, Eric handing me cold beer after cold beer, till my stomach was ice. The local channels were talking about how the police were still looking for two men, last seen in another area of town, a bike trail near an elementary school, a fourteen-year-old murdered.
Eric shut off the TV, started pulling off my shirt, rubbed the insides of my arms, his palms dry against my skin. He folded each article of clothing with care, followed pleats and collars, placed them on the long wooden-backed chair hooked under the door. He was already shirtless and, as he started loosening his belt, the metal buckle picked up reflections of my room, my face on the bed, my look that this will solve everything, that I can lose myself here, that I can’t let my mother rule my life. When he pushed his dick up inside me, as far as it would go, I turned my head away, saw an image burned into the TV set, a young face, a school picture, could hear a car going down my street, a wail, a song, and Eric whispering with warm breath, like steam, “Everything will be all right,” his hands trying to hold onto mine and I won’t let him.
* * * * *
Detached
for Bill, whom I met at an AIDS support group
This time of year, night fell at seven;
We’d lie on the floor, beneath the church
on cushions we stole from the music room.
As a class of twenty men, we believed
the mind could heal, that infections
could be held back, that there were powers
and if we had conviction, we had hope.
In the dark, we saw our cells, fuchsia, cerise,
growing like flowers in spring,
burgeoning, our blood invincible, renewed.
After the session, Bill and I would eat the town —
Barney’s Beanery, Ernie’s Taco House, the Japanese Ai.
We were both ARC, one step away
from full-blown lesions, pneumonia, and death,
one step beyond HIV safety and “just only positive.”
As if it were a sin we ordered sushi,
aware of its dangers, and I had a beer
that made me dizzy and moist, my palms wet.
He stared across the table.
I wanted to hold both of his hands and laugh.
We talked about computers, software,
our lovers. His lover died in December too,
just like John, and Bill was as old as John
and I was as old as Pablo; we were both doing well,
learning about our bodies, our disease, our chances
of survival, watching our classmates drop,
too sick to continue, too disinterested to be led.
Later on, Bill caught a flu he couldn’t shake;
I was scared to see the muscles in his face fall
into socket and bone, his arms, stick and veins,
the fevers and chills, the long gaps of time
where I wouldn’t see him, and I was always surprised
at the amount of weight he had lost, like water.
One day he said it was CMV
that it gets into the lungs and marrow,
the liver and brain; he said he was weak,
that he had pains in his stomach,
that it was opportunistic, that he now had AIDS.
After that, I couldn’t concentrate on the bridge
in my mind, the one that led to freedom
and health, or so claimed the audiotapes
of smooth music and coma words, that said
that you allow yourself to be sick,
that it is rooted in your hate, that you hate yourself.
/ / / / /
“Eric” and “Detached” are included in My Body is Paper, Copyright © 2024 by The Estate of Gil Cuadros. Reprinted with the permission of City Lights Books. www.citylights.com. To acquire a copy directly from the publisher, click here.