Teaching Thomas

At the Corner of Bramhall and Congress

Below is a piece I wrote shortly after I moved to Portland, Maine last year.  I have submitted this as part of my coursework for school, and thought it might be an appropriate share here, especially as December is dedicated to the research, prevention, awareness, and efforts to ending HIV.

Thomas was my first boyfriend.  I’m dedicating my thesis work to him, once it is done.  Have a read, and let me know what you think.

At the Corner of Bramhall and Congress

The cars from the direction of the hospital come to a stop.  I approach, with long, measured strides. As I draw nearer to the intersection, a stiff late-October wind has captured the fallen leaves and loose sand, sending them swirling into a vortex around my legs and feet.  I can feel the light tapping of gravel pelting the loose pant legs around my calves.  The sky is a a brilliant cerulean.  Light clouds travel distant miles above me on their way to the sea.  Autumn blazes among the leaves dancing in the branches over my head, rustling, whispering.  I pause, as the traffic lights cycled, and wait for my turn to cross.

This corner sees tragedy every hour of every day.  I live where I can hear the sirens blaring by my house, nearest the largest hospital in the state of Maine.  People from as far away as Houlton and Caribou, and as near as Brackett street, go to Maine Medical.  It witnesses patients arriving in panic, blood pouring, bones broken, lives seemingly shattered, dead relatives.  It hears promises made, lives adjusted, situations up-ended.

I wonder if this corner saw Thomas.  I wonder if it witnessed his body dutifully taken into a holding tank, somewhere in the bowels of the hospital, under refrigeration, treated as toxic waste.  I can see the ambulance now, lights flashing, but no sirens (body transport but no life-saving measures being taken).  It leans deeply into the right springs and shocks of its frame, taking the uphill turn towards the hospital.  Shifting downward in gears, the weight of the vehicle requiring more from it’s engine, it’s transmission, it’s internal fluids and machinations.  Cruising up the hillside street, maneuvering deftly past ice and snow that lined the streets, the ambulance would have stopped under the covered entrance to the Emergency unit, but it wouldn’t have been an emergency.  It was protocol.

Thomas’ body would have been in a bag, his face blocked from ever seeing the sun again.  His sunken skin folding into deeper creases, jaw drooping, perhaps stiffening from the rigor mortis.  His dentures would have been removed.  His collar bone pushing upward, fighting against the forces of gravity to keep his chest cavity open, at least until the ligaments and sinews break down, or burst in the furnace heat of the crematorium.

It’s been over thirteen years since I left him standing there, behind two police officers in Exeter, in the only apartment I was every proud to have secured with him.  I had thought he’d turn violent on me as I tried to gather my things and leave.  I didn’t make eye contact with him that day.  I didn’t tell the officers how he tried to woo me the day prior, with flowers and candles and a shared soak in the tub.  He knew he was losing me.  The fist he had let fly at me a few days earlier had secured my decision.  He was scared too, I think.

He had lived through an entire outbreak of a disease no one in history had ever seen or dealt with before.  And just as new drugs, new treatments, new approaches to coping with the virus were made available, he turned and walked away from them.  He didn’t trust them, or the doctors that prescribed them.  His trust: Vodka. Cocaine. Sex. Lust. Disappearing. He believed in these things more than any microprint description of side-effects and symptoms.  These were the things he still had control over.  They were his response to the failures and hidden secrets that were being spread like gossip around and through his body.

I was told he died peacefully.  He wouldn’t have felt the bumps and shakes of the ambulance ride through the city streets.  He wouldn’t have been worried about how he looked, or the presentation he made when he arrived at the hospital doors.  None of that would have mattered, for the first time in a long time.  He wouldn’t have to work at keeping it all together, fiercely protective of his image, of his dramatic persona. His carriage would have turned the corner gracefully, and drifted out of sight from passers-by waiting at the corner for the light to change.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 10th, 2011 at 11:24 am. It is filed under Blog, Personal, Portland, Writing and tagged with memories, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.