Page 54 of Like a Love Story
“YOU’RE KILLING US!” a man in the pews screams, standing up.
The church stirs. The activists lying down do not move.
The worshippers do not move.
Art stands up to photograph the screaming man. He pulls his hat off, revealing his hair has been dyed in streaks of pink.
“YOU’RE KILLING US. YOU’RE KILLING US,” the man repeats. “STOP KILLING US.”
Others join him. They scream about the church’s policies on condoms, abortion, and needle exchange. They say the church is causing teenagers to get sick, women to get sick, men to die in shame. The chaos that existedoutside the cathedral invades it now, swarming in, the floodgates open. People run, people push, and I hear Art’s camera clicking and clicking, capturing it all from the pew, while at the front the cardinal hangs his head. They are like opposing forces, the cardinal and Art, standing at opposite ends of this space, at war.
“Art, get out of here,” Judy’s uncle says. He’s standing up now. “Get out, go home before they make arrests.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Art screams back.
Judy’s uncle sees me. “Reza?” He speaks my name as a question too, just like Art did, but I don’t feel like a question anymore. I feel like an answer now.
Art keeps taking pictures as the protest gets more heated. When the police swarm in, he looks up at me, takes my hand, and says, “Come on, let’s go.” His hand in mine, I can feel both of our heartbeats in our fingertips.
“Isn’t this incredible?” he asks. “Don’t you feel alive?”
“Art, go home now,” Judy’s uncle yells. “The police are everywhere.”
Art leads me out the main entrance. When we taste the fresh air, he turns around and yells out at the church, “GO TO HELL!”
We try to get out of the chaos, but a video camera is pointed in our faces. A newscaster stands by the camera with a microphone. Art, unprovoked, grabs the microphone and speaks into the camera with ferocity. With his free hand, he tries to pull me close to him, but I squirm away.
“My name is Bartholomew Emerson Grant the Sixth,”he says, pronouncing each syllable carefully. This is the first time I have ever heard him use his full name, and I know exactly why he does it. He wants to be sure that all the powerful people who recognize this name listen. He will use anything he has at his disposal to make change. “And I am here protesting the Catholic Church’s policies, which are a direct attack on the lives of gay men and women, and all women. Cardinal O’Connor wants us dead. He wants us exterminated, and we won’t go quietly. Fags and dykes are here to stay. We are holy and we deserve the same rights as everyone else.” Art catches his breath, looks at the crowds around him. “We are on the right side of history,” he says. “And we are going to survive to write that history. Wait and see.”
The newscaster takes the microphone back and sticks it in my face. “And who are you and why are you here?” she asks.
The camera and the microphone feel like they are attacking me, shining a spotlight on my fears and cowardice. I had the courage to come here, but I am not Art. I am not ready to be seen on television, and more important, to be seen on televisionby my mother. I hide my face in my hands and turn away from the newscaster.
I am somewhere else now. I exist only inside my own anxiety, imagining what my mother will say if she finds out who I am. But the violence around me pulls me back to this moment. Protesters lie down in the road. Police arrest people. The chaos becomes louder, uglier, with screams ofGet down, andPigs, andWhere’s your badge?The arrested do not resist. When the police get them, they go limp, like corpses.
Luckily, the newscaster has moved on, but I am still frozen in fear. I want Art to protect me, but he has his camera in front of his face. He documents the arrests until he sees Judy’s uncle is one of the men being arrested.
“Stephen!” he yells, and runs toward him, and I run after Art.
Art yells at the police to let Stephen go. “He’s sick. Just let him go.”
I watch as Art puts a hand on one of the officers, attempting to pull him off Stephen. “Art, don’t,” I beg. “Stop.”
I rush toward Art. And that’s when I feel it. Something pulls us apart. Policemen. Two of them. One of them yanks Art away and handcuffs him. The other pushes me to the ground. My cheek hits the cold pavement hard. My heart beats so fast that I might have stopped breathing. All I see are our bodies, so many bodies on the ground like corpses. And the voices feel so distant. Stephen’s voice. Art’s. The police.
These are children, officers.
Get down and stay down.
They’re just kids! They were trying to help me.
I’m seventeen. You make a habit of harassing seventeen-year-olds?
Shut up.
Reza. Reza, come back. Where are you taking him? Reza? Let him go!
Art, don’t resist. Don’t fight.
