Page 34 of Like a Love Story
“Not in the least,” Stephen says. “But I could have my way with Cardinal O’Connor.” Seeing the shock on our faces, he quickly says. “It was a joke. Jesus Christ, I’m not that desperate.”
I realize that both Stephen and Jimmy just took the Lord’s name in vain without thinking much of it, and it makes me think about how adeptly religion has seeped into every part of our language. Even those of us who want to shake the shackles of religion off us are tied to it somehow. I look up and take the vastness in. Thecathedral is majestic and so imposing, like the church wants to remind you of its power through its architecture. Near the entrance is a gift shop. Candles are for sale, and Bibles, and postcards, and pens, all there to raise funds for the church, the money going toward reaching more people with their message of intolerance. It feels completely absurd to me. I know that ACT UP meetings have a merchandise table too, but that’s because we have no money and no funding. The church has countless cathedrals just like this one, real estate everywhere, and they still want people to give them more.
We make our way to pews in the back of the church. I sit in between Stephen and Jimmy, but pretty soon, we are standing as Cardinal O’Connor enters in his ornate robe, looking like an extra from a Cecil B. DeMille movie. I look over at Stephen, Jimmy, and the rest of the activists as O’Connor enters, and daggers shoot from their eyes, all pointed straight at this man. This awful man, who was brought to New York to bring conservatism back to the Catholic Church by a Vatican that wants to push back against some of the reforms the church has taken on recently. Cardinal O’Connor made it his business to take our condoms away, so we can all die.
As the choir sings a song, Stephen whispers to the group, “So the idea being batted around is that we all lie down in the aisle when he does the homily.”
A woman in front of us shushes him. I close my eyes for most of the ceremony. It’s not my first time in church, and most of the memories it brings to mind are bad ones.But this time, something about the choir moves me. The sound of all those voices harmonizing together is undeniably beautiful, and the acoustics of the space make it sound like the voices are surrounding me. If angels do exist, I suppose this is what they’d sound like. And the voices remind me of the choir in “Like a Prayer,” and I think that if it weren’t for all the bullshit rules of Catholicism, then there would be no Madonna, because what is she if not a rebellion against all of this? I guess I need to be grateful for that. I hear her song playing in my head, and I imagine Reza’s face when he listened to it for the first time. I could feel it washing over him. I could feel him come alive, forming into something new in front of my eyes, and then he pulled away from me. I keep my eyes closed until the choir stops, and I imagine myself kissing Reza’s lips, his eyelids, his nose, his chest, his thighs. I imagine everything that would disgust the church and the Cardinal, all set to their holy music. I guess that’s the thing. I don’t want to burn this place to the ground. What I want is to make them see that I AM HOLY. These thoughts of me and Reza, they are holy. Well, except for that part about him being my best friend’s boyfriend now. That’s a sinful detail.
“The Lord be with you,” O’Connor says.
“And with your spirit,” the room responds. All except our row. We’re not playing this game. We’re not going to do his call-and-response and eat his tasteless wafer. We’re here on a mission, to get ideas about how to invade thisspace and open people’s eyes to the church’s complicity in our deaths. The mass is long and boring. In his homily, O’Connor makes multiple references to protecting “the unborn,” and I can feel the WHAM! woman’s blood boiling. It’s amazing how gung ho he is about saving the lives of fetuses, but then he turns a blind eye to all the actual humans DYING right in front of him.
When it comes time to take communion, we decide to head out.
But I’m not ready to leave. Not when I turn and see the prayer candles waiting to be lit. There’s a suggested donation to light a candle, but I know that God isn’t about money exchanging hands to make wishes come true. And I know that I don’t believe in a God who can grant wishes, but if there’s even a chance that such a God exists, then I have some wishes that I’d like granted. I figure making a wish is like an insurance policy, and so I close my eyes and light a candle.
I want to wish for Reza to come back to me, but that will be next. That can’t be my first wish, not when I’m surrounded by death. Not when Stephen looks so weak. So I wish for Stephen to get better, for a miracle drug to become available before his time is up, for the color to return to his skin and for the weight to return to his body. I light the candle and watch the wick come alive.
And then the next wish. Another candle lit. This wish, for AIDS to be cured entirely. Not just for Stephen to survive, but for every person with AIDS to becured. And for all the queer kids like me to get to fall in love without fear looming over us like the spires of this cathedral.
And now, another candle. This one is for Reza. I close my eyes as I light the candle, and I imagine him across from me.I’m wishing for you, I tell him in my fantasy.I’m asking a God I don’t even believe in to make you mine. And I think the only reason I’m having these doubts about God’s existence is you. That feeling of connection I had with you, it made me feel, I don’t know... that there must be something bigger than us. It made me feel that maybe there is a God. So I’m asking God, and all those angels and saints that I don’t believe in either, to make you love me, and to watch over you, and to make you happy, but most of all to make you mine.
I open my eyes. I feel a presence around me.
Is it Reza? Is it Andy Warhol? Is it God?
Nope, it’s that unbearably chipper woman who greeted us at the door.
“You made a lot of prayers,” she says, as she places five bucks in the donation box and lights a candle herself. As she reaches her arm toward a back candle, the gust from her arm extinguishes one of my candles. Which one was it, the one for Stephen, the one for AIDS, or the one for Reza? I don’t even know. My heart speeds up. Is this God sending me a sign?
The woman’s wick stays lit. “It was a beautiful homily, wasn’t it?” she asks me.
“Sure,” I say, and quickly scurry away.
Outside, Stephen, Jimmy, and the rest wait for me at the corner, already engaged in heated debate about what to do next. Some want this protest to be more peaceful, less in-your-face, because if they offend too many people, their message could get lost. Others want it to be even more aggressive and bold, because their target is so aggressive and bold. “Let’s not argue now,” Stephen says. “These are just ideas. They need to be discussed at the meeting.”
“A word of advice,” the WHAM! woman says. “Whatever you do, don’t become divided. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned from the women’s health movement, it’s that you need to build a true coalition. If you show them that you’re divided, creating change will be close to impossible. They’ll just play you against each other.”
Those words echo in my mind as Stephen, Jimmy, and I separate from the group and head toward downtown. It’s a beautiful day, the winter sun shines on us, the air crisp and fresh. I love early winter in the city, before the snow turns to slush, before the cold has been with us so long that we’re collectively frozen into a stupor. Come to think of it, I love the beginning of every season. Everything feels more vital, more exciting, when it’s new.
“Shall we walk downtown?” Stephen asks. “While we still can.”
“Speak for yourself,” Jimmy says. “I’ll probably make it a few blocks before I run out of breath.”
Stephen locks his arm into Jimmy’s. “Come on,strength in numbers. We’re not dead yet.”
Stephen and Jimmy lead the way downtown. I walk behind them, just like Reza walked behind me that night after I gave him the flower. I pull my camera up to my eye and snap a photo of them from behind as they walk.
“Two widows,” Jimmy says. “Who would’ve thought?”
“Maybe José and Walt are watching us right now,” Stephen says.
“I doubt it,” Jimmy says. “If there is an afterlife, Walt is too busy drinking martinis with Bette Davis to be watching over me. He was done with me.”
“Don’t say that—he was not done with you,” Stephen says. Then he adds, “Maybe he’s huddled up with Walt Whitman, commiserating over how they hated the name Walter.”
“Celebrating andsingingthemselves,” Jimmy says.
