Time Travel

I've always been a twentieth century boy. I should have been there in the trenches, or storming the Winter Palace. I could have been a wasted Belsen cadaver, a starving famine victim, a castrated black youth hanging from a tree in the Deep South. If I'd been Marilyn Monroe or Chairman Mao or even, for that matter, Andy Warhol, my repeated image -- photograph, painting, screen print -- would have iconized me.

I always wanted to be an icon, and always feared it would happen. Perhaps they might have been my footprints on the moon; or teenyboppers might have screamed my name and fainted when I played Shea Stadium; or, failing once again to get the girl, I might have twirled my cane and walked off into the distance as the credits silently announced The End.

But what a terrible prospect -- in a century of atrocities I would surely be more likely found at My Lai, Sharpeville, Guernica or Jonestown; been just a shadow cast on a Hiroshima street. Even Marilyn fit the archetype: victims make the most enduring icons.

So while I longed for fame -- a twentieth century conceit -- I dreaded the ways it might happen. Rightly, in the event, though who could have known it would be like this?

Martin says I overdramatize, and he's probably right. For myself, I suspect that my hold on reality is slipping. No-one seems to know for sure -- or they're not saying -- but it looks like your mind goes to pieces in the final stages. At times -- especially at night when, as the song says, "the minutes seem like hours, the hours go so slowly" -- I slip free altogether and float to and fro across the years and decades. Time and space are my playground, then; who cares if it's only dreaming or delirium?

I've always been a twentieth century boy, but such a late arrival on the scene. Is it a specific malaise of our era to be always keenly aware of what you've missed? It sometimes seems that every important event took place before I was there to witness it. Seemed. But not any more.

I've been to see the riot at Stonewall. I'd like to think that if I were 10 years older I'd have been there, but probably I wouldn't. It's a thrill to watch, but it's not like I imagined -- more real, I suppose, dirtier, more boring and uncomfortable.

The other night I went for a drink at a Chicago speakeasy. I danced the Charleston with a fat prostitute in laddered stockings. The place stank and the booze tasted like battery acid. Very disappointing.

Sometimes, wandering the years, I worry that there's no romance at all, never was. Back in the present it doesn't matter anyway. The alternative is to lie and wait for death with indignity -- that's the twentieth century way. In Spain I watched a fascist soldier stick his gun up Lorca's asshole and fire twice -- because he was queer. Lorca was already dead, but still I felt sick. Sicker.

There's been a lot of loose talk about the "wrath of god" and all that, but it's only a disease. They don't know what causes it, or why it mainly affects us -- some people are just lucky, I guess. They can't tell me how or when I caught it, but I know -- I've been back there, seen myself on all fours in the orgy room -- September 7 1978. Not the only time, but the one that counted. If I had known the risks would it have made a difference? Probably -- but I've promised not to torment myself with such speculation. I didn't know -- none of us did. We did nothing wrong.

I went to the Cavern to watch The Silver Beatles play. I wasn't much impressed, but the beer was cheap. These places have so much attached significance that they can't help but disappoint. Can't blame me for trying, though.

People don't like to touch me anymore; even Martin keeps his distance. I tell them if it was that easy to catch everyone I know would have it by now, and it wouldn't be a "gay plague" that's for sure. Such logic seems lost on them -- but hey, my mind's going, what would I know?

I'd never left the country until I became bedridden. Now I've been everywhere -- Mardi Gras in Rio, Nuremberg rallies, London for the coronation, Paris to see Josephine Baker. I wandered through the labyrinths of the Vatican and read the Fatima letter, climbed the pyramids of Egypt, witnessed Gandhi's cremation. I saw Judy Garland live on stage and attended the opening night of Turandot at La Scala (I still don't know how it ends). Tonight I'll see West Side Story on Broadway. Maybe I won't come back. I don't want to know what they do with my body.
Posted by matt at February 5, 2004 01:50 PM