Page 100 of Exquisite Things
“Pearl’s shebeen is gone.”
Closed after the Brixton Uprising changed our neighborhood. At first with an eruption. And then more slowly. Bit by bit, street life disappeared. Trust between people eroded. Something was achieved, no doubt. Even a government as vile as Thatcher’s had to listen to a crescendo like the one that was heard that weekend. A report was commissioned. Lord Scarman, the ancient white man put in charge, unsurprisingly claimed not to find any evidence ofinstitutionalracism. To admit to such a thing would be to put theinstitutionsat risk. But Scarman did find evidence of racialdisadvantage and police bias. A fire had been lit that could not be ignored.
“Pearl is going to open a café,” Bram argues. “She’s not giving up and neither should you.” He curls my hair around his fingers. “Let me cut your hair. Tomorrow is a new year. A new beginning.”
“Do you promise it will be better than this year?” I ask snidely.
“How about I promise that next year will be the worst year of our lives?” He smiles. “Since my promises seem to have a way of not coming true.” He leaps out of bed. Fishes our secret journal from beneath the floorboard. Writes on the next blank line,Next year will be abysmal and atrocious and simply harrowing. I promise.
I run my hand on the smooth, thick paper of the journal. Paper. The very thing that transformed me into whatever I am now. I read his last few notes in the journal. They’re full of love and hope. Still. I don’t know how he doesn’t see what’s happening as I do. It’s a skill few have, perhaps. Tofeelthe direction of history before it’s become clear to others. Then again, I don’t feel it exactly. It’s more like Ihearit. Like a film score playing in my head. The composer is Fate herself.
I place my fingers back on the synth. PlayVertigoagain. Changeling meows. “Do you know how the score to the movie captures the lead character’s decline so brilliantly?” I ask.
He shrugs. “You know I don’t understand music like you do.”
I take his fingers and lead them to the keys. I guide him in playing the score. “The easy answer to capturing a decline would be to descend in pitch. Down, down, down, right?”
“I suppose,” he says quietly. There’s an eeriness to his voice. He doesn’t like where I’m taking him.
“But that’s not how decline happens, is it?”
“I—” He tries to pull away from the keyboard, but I won’t let him. I move his finger up now. Ascending.
“This is how declines happen.” I close my eyes. I don’t need sight to play music. It’s all instinct. I hear better with my eyes closed. “You fall, yes. But then you get back up, a little weaker. Like us, wouldn’t you say?”
“No,” he says. “No, we’re stronger. With each challenge we survive—”
“Then you fall again. And you’re weaker still.”
“Stronger,” he insists.
“Listen to the melody. This is the genius of Bernard Herrmann’s score.” I make his finger play again. “You see what he’s doing, don’t you? He descends four pitches, then ascends two. Again and again. It gives you the sensation that you’re free-falling, and then getting back up. But when you get back up, you don’t rise as high as you were before. And so each time, you find yourself plunging lower and lower into the depths of—”
“It’sjusta score.”
“It’s madness itself. Melancholy itself. Music is neverjustmusic. Just as poetry is never just poetry. You should know that by now. The music is telling us something.”
“Maybe we’re not meant to be listening,” he asserts. I turn to him, intrigued. “Maybe the whole point of life is to live free of these kind of premonitions of the future.”
“It’s not a premonition,” I insist. “It’s happening. The Blitz is gone. Pearl’s is gone. Thatcher is in power here. Reagan is in power back home. Gay boys are still disappearing from the streets of London and no one cares. There’s a war on our people. Our time isnotnow.”
“You’re being too dramatic.”
“Gay men are dropping dead.”
“In New York!” he blurts out. “In San Francisco! That’s across the pond. It could be something about the environment there. The air.”
“Do straight people in New York not breathe the air?” I ask. “It’s aboutus.” In the back of our journal, I’ve collected clippings.
I pull one out from July. TheNew York Times. July 3, 1981. One day before Independence Day.Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals. Next to the thin and alarming article, sheet music for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Above the music, the wordsSING OUT ON THE 4TH!Exclamation point and all. The most poetic juxtaposition I can think of.
On one side... “Doctors in new York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men...”
On the other... “And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air.”
On one side... “No apparent danger to nonhomosexuals from contagion.”
On the other... “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
