People in Trouble by Sarah Schulman Page B

did it with a shake of her shoulders that she had never used before.
     
    "Hey, you're in a good mood," he'd said.   He was clearly surprised that she should be so sexy when it was just a regular night, when he wasn't expecting to make love at all.

 
    But Kate got scared all of a sudden because something brandnew was making itself known.   She saw right then that she and Peter knew each other so well sexually that if either of them was to introduce a new idea or act or word or response or fantasy or direction, sexually or otherwise, it would be so disruptive as to be obvious, because these feelings had to come from somewhere.
     
    Either she had to tell him the truth or blame it on the movies.
     
    So, she had said it right away, that first night.   She said that she had a lover and it was a woman whose name was Molly and she was younger.   It would be half a year before Molly claimed he knew what she looked like.   But that first night Kate told him that she loved him.
     
    That she would grow old and die with him.
     
    That he was her best friend and her best lover and nothing was as important or exciting to her in the world as he.   Since then she had been losing sleep and walking home in the cold and heat and not having enough time for herself trying to keep all of that true.   But it was those statements alone that ultimately convinced him to accept this preposterous situation.
     
    r Another friend of Molly's died.
     
    "That's the problem with having friends," she said.   "You -have to watch them suffer and die."
     
    Jeffrey Rechtschaffen 1960-1988.   She was in a great rage.
     
    She was so angry, clicking her jaw, uttering a variety of obscenities.
     
    She spoke them with such a fury that a crease appeared between her eyes in the morning and by that afternoon it was deeply embedded.   She didn't know what day it was.   She didn't look both ways crossing the street.   She didn't think to button her jacket against the December wind.   All she knew was anger.
     
    She alternately burned and tightened on the way to the bus station to pick up Pearl, who had come down for the funeral.   Thank God for Pearl.
     
    Pearl let her know she belonged to someone.
     
    She couldn't call Kate because they had just seen each other -and she was supposed to wait for Kate to call her.   More accurately Molly just couldn't face "There's someone here, I can't talk," one more time.   Her head began to ache.   She saw other people noticing her acting peculiar, so she tried to think of something else, something calming.   But there was nothing else.   It wasn't like turning to another channel on the TV because AIDS was on all of them, but only in the most idiotic terms.
     
    Everyone on television who died of AIDS got it from a blood transfusion.   Or else it was a beautiful young white male professional with "everything to live for," and even then the show focused on his parents and not him.
     
    Why can't they just say it?   Why can't they just say "assfucking" on Channel Four?
     
    Jeffrey had been a journalist for a gay newspaper in Washington, D.C. He knew every politician on Capitol Hill who was sucking cock.   When a senator died of a "blood transfusion" Jeffrey knew he had been living with his boyfriend for years.
     
    "That's how they do it," he said.   "They keep the wife and five kids back in the house in Shaker Heights and the boyfriend's in the townhouse in Georgetown."
     
    When Jeffrey was first diagnosed he decided to move back to New York City and worked at the AIDS Hotline whenever he felt well enough.
     
    Sometimes Molly would meet him for lunch right near the office.   He ate strictly macrobiotic.   Jeffrey had looked around carefully at treatments and he chose the creative visualization approach combined with various medications.   He wore crystals.   He carried a teddy bear and went for daily massage.
     
    He did yoga and said "I love you" to himself in the mirror every morning and night.