Boys of Life (25 page)

I think I even remember the exact instant I stopped resenting it. I'd been at this bar and got picked up by some guy I didn't find all that great-looking, but that didn't matter. During the big sleep—which is what I call those years—I was interested in just seeing whatever would happen and I didn't really care with who. So we were walking down the Bowery toward this guy's apartment—it was late at night, probably four o'clock—and somebody was coming toward us along the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, and I thought to myself how that person looked completely lonely and sad.

□ PAULRUSSELL

Then I saw it was Carlos. I don't know where he was coming from—he might have been up all night editing and just taken the tram in from Brooklyn. Maybe he'd been trailing some boy around town but he'd finally lost the scent. Who knows.' We didn't say anything—but we looked at each other and just nodded as we passed. It was like we were saying to each other, Well, what do you know? Like we knew everything we had to say, so there wasn't any reason to stop and talk.

The guy I was with—I've completely forgotten everything about him—didn't know a thing about what was happening, and that was the way it should be. It was still me and Carlos, however things looked, and we both knew that. I remember thinking, almost saying it out loud while we walked on down the street, You've got me in your hands, Carlos, you know you've got me in your hands.

One other big thing happened to me in all that time: 1 stopped drinking. I mean, I didn't stop drinking totally, but I changed a lot from that kid I used to be, who couldn't get through the day without taking B couple ot shots of Canadian Club every hour to keep me Steady. Now, a couple oi beers and I was content. No more Canadian Club. It's funny, but part of what stopped me from drinking was hanging out m bars trying to pick up guys I thought were sew. The hist thing I wanted was to K sloshed in Uncle Charlie's—there was tOO much to pay attention to.

It's hard to put my finger on why I stopped being the drunkard kid I

was and started being some kind of adult, but I think it started in that

house in Brooklyn. I don't know whether Carlos knew it at the time,

but those three days he locked me up m that warehouse were the longest

tune m five years I'd gone without a drink, and it was pretty severe. To

be honest the main reason I wanted to leave there, thai time Carlos

pulled the pistol on me, wasn't because I'd seen Scott shooting up. rhat

just in excuse. The real reason was, I needed a drink, and 1 was

cml > tell Carlos 1 was dying for a drink, I was out of control fot

/hen I sa* Scott with bis needle, that did it

tually, c.«rlos must've known what w on with me. I hat

he locked me up there In the first place.

I'll nevei kro . but what happened was, when 1 1 ame out of that

was that I had the i Into my system tola

mtstde that wan house, with Manhattan, and wondering how I u.«s i here w

D 186

B O Y S O F L I F E D

whether there might he some bai around the corner where I could just

disappear.

I set OUt to ICC. At the end of the street, under these concrete piers that held up an elevated expressway, there wafl this stripped-down car. I wandered over to it—everything you could take out (A it had

gotten taken away, there was nothing left. And it'd been burned too— it was this rustv-hlack color. So while Carlos and Seth and Verbena were loading the camera equipment, I climbed inside that car skeleton. I don't know why I did—it was odd sitting in there, not going anywhere. There were a bunch of needle works lying around on the floorboard, and a couple of condoms—which made me remember this story I'd heard, I can't remember where, of somebody who went around picking up used condoms off the ground and sucking the come out of them. I just sat there and looked at those condoms and thought about that. It didn't make me sad or gross me out or anything—it was just something to think about while I could hear Carlos's voice talking in the distance, and then Verbena, and the sounds of them loading the van. I thought about all the things that must've happened in that burned-out car, and how nobody would ever know.

I picked up one of those condoms from off the floor and held it between my fingers. It'd been there for a while, whatever come was in its tip dried up a long time ago. But I remembered something from way back—what Carlos had once said to me the first time he ever gave me a blow job, when he said how your come holds all the information there is about you, and I thought about the dried-up come in that condom and how that was true here too, only here it was just thrown

. all that information.

When it was time to leave Carlos came over to me—I guess he'd seen me sitting there in that car, but he hadn't wanted to bother me. He probably figured I'd earned a few minutes to myself.

"Tony, you okay?" he asked me, leaning in at the window.

"Dad," I told him, "you never gave me a car for my birthday."

It just came into my head to say that.

"Your old dad's not a rich man," Carlos said, playing along with it. I don't know whether he thought it was odd or not. "Your old dad gives you what he can."

"I know," I told him.

And I think I did know. I felt fine. I felt quiet. When we got back to Manhattan I didn't go to a bar like I'd planned. I went home and

□ PAUL RUSSELL

tell asleep for a long time, and when I woke up I wasn't an alcoholic anymore, which was the first time in probably six years.

Of course I've never stopped drinking completely. But even though there were always nights where I'd drift back to the Canadian Club, it was only once every three months or so and then I was back on the wagon again. It's some old self I have to get out of my system, and when I drain it dry, then that's it.

One other thing I should say here too, which somehow in my mind's all connected up with me not drinking anymore. About a month or so after we finished making The Gospel, Carlos dumped Scott Farris just like he dumped me. It was all for still some other kid who I don't think I ever met—there were a bunch of them in those years, though they never lasted very long. And for Scott, some pretty bad things happened one after the other. He got into big trouble back at his prep school for dealing, and there was some trial where he fingered somebody completely other than Carlos—which I'm sure is some twisted-up story if only I knew it—and then he ended up in a detox program.

Seth was the one who told me all that—Carlos never said a word about it, even during the trial when he must've been pretty nervous that anything could happen. But Carlos and I never talked about Scott after The Gospel— it was like he never existed. When 1 say Carlos dumped Scott the way he dumped me, (Jump's not the ri^ht word, even though I probably would've felt like it was exactly the right word at the tune. You could say he eased us back down— that's more what it was than dumping, because I have to say about Carlos that you never tor an instant ^>t the sense he stopped loving you just because he moved on to somebody else. In feet, 1 think 1 only started to understand

that he loved me after he did dump me.

I think now that in some wav he had tO move through that Stage mpletelv Jesper.iti fucking with somebody before- he learned how

to love them. Maybe I'm trying to make myself feel better 1 don't see

!i\ 1 should .it this point, but maybe I still am. But 1 really

thmk wl lation are had with each othei grew up the instant he

tt. I think in | w.i\ wh.it it told me w.is .ill n

from >ing to have help, you know where help is, but

the "mK person who's goii u Is you. Because, like I said, I

md foi i while I even got thl

nit up| ! I Avenue whit h

I |tisl did H 1 tO

md thinl

B O Y S O F L I F E D

got his head down against the wind but he's determined to make it. And I think the same thing went for Scott too, what with the detox program and everything. I think if you asked him he'd give Carlos some kind of credit too.

Every once in a while over the next few years I'd run into Scott. Whenever that happened, we were always friendly—I don't think he blamed me for the movie at all, I think in fact he felt like we'd been through this certain thing together, and that was some bond we had.

I think it was some kind of politeness on both our parts that we never talked about Carlos, even though something would come up now and then and we'd both just look at each other and know.

I remember the one time we ever did talk about Carlos. It was in the winter, late at night, and I'd wandered into this bar off Christopher Street. I wasn't drinking, I was just checking out various places to see if there was anybody I wanted to go home with. Or not even go home with—just guys to meet and talk to. And there was Scott sitting at the bar drinking some tropical-looking fag drink. Once the prep school kid, always the prep school kid. He had on this black leather jacket that looked great.

I edged in beside him at the bar.

"So, Tony Blair," he said.

I was always surprised when he remembered my name. In lots of ways it was like we didn't know anything about each other—though it was also strange to look at him and think, I've pissed on this guy's face, I've had my fist inside him.

Scott had had a few drinks already. I was standing with my foot on the lower rung of his bar stool, and he took my knee and pulled it in so it rested against his crotch. I was a little surprised by that, but I kept my knee there.

It's odd how one thing'll trigger something else. What I remembered the instant he did that was something I always told myself I meant to ask Scott if I ever saw him again, but then whenever I did see him, I'd forget. But this night I remembered it.

"That junk you used to be on," I asked him. "Who got that stuff tor vou. 7 "

He just looked at me like he didn't know what I was talking about.

"Carlos got it for you, didn't he? You can tell me. I never see Carlos these days."

□ PAUL RUSSELL

Scott smiled that smile of his that was going to get him through life. I put some pressure on his crotch with my knee, which I guess he liked. He ordered himself another drink.

"Don't you want anything?" he asked me. "I'll buy."

"I want to know if Carlos was giving dope to little kids. That's what I want."

"You mean me in particular.'"

"Yeah. For starters."

He swirled his new drink with the little umbrella that was stuck in it. I'd have been embarrassed to drink something like that, but he was smiling at it like it was some friend of his.

"If it wasn't for Carlos," he told me, "I wouldn't have gone into detox like I did. How's that for an answer?"

I didn't know how that was for an answer.

"You're saying he's the one who got you off drugs? But he was selling drugs, wasn't he? That's how he came up with the money tor his movies. He sold drugs to little kids. Toll me I've figured it out."

It was something that just hit me one day after we'd finished making The Gospel, and though 1 thought about it a lot, 1 knew I couldn't ask anybody in The Company. It'd gel back to Carlos, and it it was something Carlos didn't want me to know about, then maybe it was because he was protecting me, and 1 had to respect that.

"Beats iiu." Scott shrugged. "I don't know anything about making movies. All I know is, they're expensive. Bui everything's expen sive. And you know why? It's the |apanese. Where 1 work, this sushi restaurant, 1 take a look around me, and all my bosses you know, the guyi with the money they're all Japanese. All I heai la lapanese,

I think mi this is just wh.it it would be like it the laps won the

np m m\ |eani about halfway up nn thigh, and while

! lie slid his Bngei m ih.it hole and soil o( tubbed my ^m b ugh his • ,, still .is Ice o'ld as n used to be. He

md kmd <>t laugh* "S< he laid.

I I, u I'd run Into him .< total >>t

m.r. • in 1980 ind tins

. the wint( ' nearly

as cut used to i

We • this tiny little room with nothing

B O Y S O F L I F E □

in it bur a mattxesa and a lor of fancy stereo equipment—and I tucked him, and then because by that rime he was off the junk that'd kept him from being able to keep a hard-on the whole time we were doing

the movie, he tucked me tOO.

Thar was the last rune I saw him, because nor too long alter that

I left the city tor good.

B O Y S O F L I F E □

went ilinking off with this look on his face I'd never leen before, like my'd caught him at something. Caught him in the acr oi being

Carlos, maybe. Bur after that day, the carpets started to figure in Serb's

camera work—all those tight little curls of design, where anything could he hidden in them and you wouldn't know it. In tact, the movie starts and ends with a carpet—all those vines and flower shapes shown close-up, so they till up the screen, and then gradually pulling hack to show how the design's all locked in together.

Mrs. Jarique was so old she couldn't walk—there was this very nice black man named Maurice who wheeled her around. Not that she ever ted to go anywhere much—but sometimes, when it was nice out, she loved to sit on the terrace and look at the river. It's something I've spent a lot of time doing—not looking at that river, hut at the Mississippi— and I know how nothing can make you think like looking at the

I river goes hv. How it just keeps on going and nothing can stop it. There's worse to do than looking at a river.

I think she liked me, Mrs. Jarique, though she couldn't ever remember my name—she called me Tommy or Tim or sometimes names that weren't even close to Tony. Phillip was one of her favorites. And she called me Matthew sometimes. I never knew whether those were : ie she knew once upon a time, and she was so old now that everything blurred together, or whether she just plain couldn't remember my name.