“Hi. I’m your new nudist neighbor.”
“Hi. I’m your new nudist neighbor.”
He stood in my doorway in a tattered, worn-thin terry cloth robe, red hair ablaze in the light that filtered through the rainbow and shattered glass adorned corridor between our two doors. His grin betrayed an innocence that most humans forego at an all too tender age. He flipped his long red mane like a practiced drag queen, and produced a hand to shake, then waltzed decadently into my new apartment, squinting at trinkets and fixtures, oohing and aahing at the plum faux-paint job and Asian lamp fixtures.
I’m motionless, still holding the door open, my head cocked inquisitively to one side.
“Yay.” I surmise.
I like this new neighbor.
Moments later – he’s fixed his robe a bit more securely now – he assists me in holding up some wall hooks as I arm myself with a hammer and aim at his plump and hairy hands. “Be careful with that. You don’t want my blood on your walls. Or anywhere near you, in fact.”
I’ve never – to my knowledge – actually known anyone who is HIV positive.
In contemplating writing of my new friend and choosing a pseudonym, I momentarily toyed with the idea of calling him Positive.
Sick.
Sick the way we choose to identify people with labels “Dready Boy or Plug Chick or Black Conservative in a Suit Guy”. And of all the many fascinating characteristics inherit in this fabulous man, a nanosecond of a moment flashed through my story-weaving brain waves that instinctively called him Positive.
I’ve settled on Red. Far more fitting. If not for his amazing mane and the constant dramatic usage of it, then simply for the undeniable similarities between him and the other “Reds” in my life. There’s been two. One was a cartoonist who accurately depicted himself in his toons; the other a puppeteer who relied on a similar tactic. All three: characters. The sort of person you expect to find in a movie like Priscilla the Queen of the Desert or The Royal Tennanbaums, but to have as a constant in your own reality makes you continuously pinch yourself…and smile.
The rarity of a dull day is completely diminished by the eternal flow of fascinating characters passing through my space.
So there’s a new Red in my life. One for each city in which I’ve taken up a lengthy residence. Amazing how everyone has a twin, or at least a close cut-out, somewhere in the world. So many of my relationships, friends and characters repeat themselves in each new life I create. Perhaps that is why I’m eternally single: I never want to recreate the hell that was my first! ;)
So many carbon copies – so many unique individuals. The juxtaposition of that truth resonates through my veins. We all came from the same blood. Black or Jew, Mohammed, too, all initiated from the same creator, or from a fucking fish, if that’s your view. When did we deviate? A Positive took precedence over O Negative’s weak disposition. HIV, Gee when did that infection first offend? And O y oh y did hatred ever infect the bloodstream of a select few who ruin the progress of this much blessed city?
These thoughts flow through my veins as news spreads of my neighbor, mugged last night. Stopped to give a brother a cigarette, walked away and a brick smashed down upon the back of his skull. He was less than a hundred feet from the gate of safety that is our front door. He stood underneath Red’s window. The mugger – mother fucker – is lucky he didn’t bash in Red.
He stood in my doorway in a tattered, worn-thin terry cloth robe, red hair ablaze in the light that filtered through the rainbow and shattered glass adorned corridor between our two doors. His grin betrayed an innocence that most humans forego at an all too tender age. He flipped his long red mane like a practiced drag queen, and produced a hand to shake, then waltzed decadently into my new apartment, squinting at trinkets and fixtures, oohing and aahing at the plum faux-paint job and Asian lamp fixtures.
I’m motionless, still holding the door open, my head cocked inquisitively to one side.
“Yay.” I surmise.
I like this new neighbor.
Moments later – he’s fixed his robe a bit more securely now – he assists me in holding up some wall hooks as I arm myself with a hammer and aim at his plump and hairy hands. “Be careful with that. You don’t want my blood on your walls. Or anywhere near you, in fact.”
I’ve never – to my knowledge – actually known anyone who is HIV positive.
In contemplating writing of my new friend and choosing a pseudonym, I momentarily toyed with the idea of calling him Positive.
Sick.
Sick the way we choose to identify people with labels “Dready Boy or Plug Chick or Black Conservative in a Suit Guy”. And of all the many fascinating characteristics inherit in this fabulous man, a nanosecond of a moment flashed through my story-weaving brain waves that instinctively called him Positive.
I’ve settled on Red. Far more fitting. If not for his amazing mane and the constant dramatic usage of it, then simply for the undeniable similarities between him and the other “Reds” in my life. There’s been two. One was a cartoonist who accurately depicted himself in his toons; the other a puppeteer who relied on a similar tactic. All three: characters. The sort of person you expect to find in a movie like Priscilla the Queen of the Desert or The Royal Tennanbaums, but to have as a constant in your own reality makes you continuously pinch yourself…and smile.
The rarity of a dull day is completely diminished by the eternal flow of fascinating characters passing through my space.
So there’s a new Red in my life. One for each city in which I’ve taken up a lengthy residence. Amazing how everyone has a twin, or at least a close cut-out, somewhere in the world. So many of my relationships, friends and characters repeat themselves in each new life I create. Perhaps that is why I’m eternally single: I never want to recreate the hell that was my first! ;)
So many carbon copies – so many unique individuals. The juxtaposition of that truth resonates through my veins. We all came from the same blood. Black or Jew, Mohammed, too, all initiated from the same creator, or from a fucking fish, if that’s your view. When did we deviate? A Positive took precedence over O Negative’s weak disposition. HIV, Gee when did that infection first offend? And O y oh y did hatred ever infect the bloodstream of a select few who ruin the progress of this much blessed city?
These thoughts flow through my veins as news spreads of my neighbor, mugged last night. Stopped to give a brother a cigarette, walked away and a brick smashed down upon the back of his skull. He was less than a hundred feet from the gate of safety that is our front door. He stood underneath Red’s window. The mugger – mother fucker – is lucky he didn’t bash in Red.
posted by Lindsay at 12:26 PM
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