BODILY FLUIDS

Sometimes I wonder if I should kill myself before my body decides to shut down on its own. One night I had a dream that my organs were slowing down. They sounded like grinding gears, crunching, trying to work. But they were overcome with disease. I imagine that the disease is the color blue, the same shimmering sort of blue as windshield wiper fluid. I picture it dripping through me, drops of it mixing with my blood, dripping through my arms and my legs, and into my heart and kidneys. I picture it making a pool in my stomach, mingling with whatever I ate that day. I see chewed up bits of hot dog or Caesar salad, all one big clump in my stomach, and the blue pouring over it, skimming the surface at first until it seeps into the cracks and I digest it.

This is what goes on in my head.

I've seen friends become so thin that their ribs look like thick cables under their skin. Their faces become so sallow that they're unrecognizable, like skeletons of what they used to look like. Their eyes are tiny in their sockets, shimmering, because their souls are still alive but their bodies are ready to stop. They wear diapers because they can't get up to go to the bathroom. A nurse turns them so they don't get bedsores. Someone washes them, sitting them up to squeeze a washcloth at the base of their necks so the warm water trickles down their backs. It has been forever since anyone has touched them other than to bathe them or move them.

That will be me one day. Walking, eating at restaurants, dancing at clubs. These things are only temporary. My doctor tells me that I could carry the HIV virus for years and it won't manifest into AIDS. But I give it three years, maybe four. I haven't seen anyone get out of this alive.

Joan tries to understand. She tries to ignore it. She wants to go to the zoo, or to the club, or somewhere where everyone is smiling. But no one can understand this unless they're going through it. Some nights I watch her sleep, so pale and beautiful, her eyes moving under her lids as she dreams. Some day she will have a guy she can really make love to, without wrapping everything in latex. They will get married and have children and grow old in one of the little pink condos near the beach. And I will be long gone. So will Dark. I know it sounds sick, but somehow, the fact that Dark will be gone too comforts me.

_._._._

The Timex Club wasn't as busy as usual in that there was actually room to move my arms on the dance floor. I closed my eyes and swayed to the music, trying to absorb it. It was 80s night, although the Timex deejays were never content to just play the songs as they were recorded. They played pumped-up, remixed versions and put a millennium spin on songs like "Hungry Like the Wolf" by Duran Duran, so it sounded like Simon LeBon vs. the Sneaker Pimps.

I was dancing to "Major Tom" by Peter Schilling, the sweat trickling down my back, my forehead dampening until I half expected tiny rivers, blue from my hair dye, to slip down my neck and soak the collar of my shirt. I can keep a beat well enough, and when it's straight verse and chorus my feet move on their own. But if the deejay throws in something extra, a skip in the song or a break in the beat, I lose it. At the end of the first verse, where it's supposed to go "Four, three, two, one, earth below us" he stuck it on the countdown, so it sounded like "Four, four, three, three...." At that point my feet stopped moving, and I opened my eyes, waiting for the song to get moving, for those few seconds not really knowing what to do with my hands.

Suddenly I felt a heavy weight on my back, pushing me forwards and knocking me off balance. I scrambled to plant my feet somewhere, waving my arms to prevent from falling, and the weight lifted. I turned and saw some guy in a sweaty black Charles Manson T-shirt hit the ground long enough to push himself back onto his feet. "Sorry," he said, grabbing my arm, eyes wide like I was going to take a swing at him. "I'm really sorry."

"It's OK." I turned my back to him and noticed that the chorus had kicked in. I started dancing again, trying to regain the momentum I'd lost. I did.

I danced until my legs ached and my skin was sticky with perspiration. I danced to Dead or Alive, and Talk Talk, and Bananarama, and a hyped-up version of "Sweet Dreams" by Eurythmics, and I mouthed my favorite line, which is "Some of them want to be abused."

I don't know if I loved dancing because it took me away from reality or because it made me face it. I didn't forget about anything from my real life - the trendy loft apartment I lived in, my dead friends, my girlfriend who gave me my disease and then died, leaving me to cope with it by myself. But I thought of everything with a little less clarity, like the pounding music was a buffer between the thoughts and complete melancholy, like the synthetic beats glossed over the emotions and just left me with the logic. All I know is that it cleared my head.

Joan's father was dying. He had a tumor the size of a fist in his brain and it was only a matter of time before it would make everything slow and eventually stop. She talked about her father whenever I would listen, leaving wads of wet tissues around her in a rough circle like rocks around a camp fire. She talked about when she was a little girl and her father would take her farther up the hill so they could see the Hollywood sign up close, and he would tell her that one day she'd be a star. Even as she told me these stories, and I listened quietly, I wished she'd cry for me. I wish she'd talk about what life will be like when I'm gone.

Finally, when my tongue was dry and my lips felt ready to crack and bleed, I let my rubbery legs take me across the dance floor to the bar. I pushed through the small crowd of people and leaned against the bar, the lacquered wood feeling cool on my arms. I ordered a Coke and waited, watching the bartenders buzz around, pouring margaritas and Bloody Marys and Long Island Ice Teas, and filling mugs with foaming beer. The bartender gave me a cold glass of Coke, dripping from moisture. The ice cubes clinked together in the glass when I took a sip, although it was a sound I knew from memory rather than heard because the music was loud. I shuffled away immediately, giving the space at the bar to someone who was ordering something that cost more than two bucks, and made my way to the chill out area. There were leather couches resting along the walls, and a few little glass coffee tables next to them. Most of the couches were taken up by friends, huddling together and laughing loud. I sat on the far end of a couch that had two giggling girls on it, leaning away from them and resting on the arm.

Now would be a good time to go, I thought. I got my kicks, I got my Coke, and I'd seen everything there was to see for now. I felt my pocket for my house keys, knowing it was just a matter of finding a new burst of energy so I could get up and walk out. I took a deep breath, listened to the high whir of the girls talking, and it still didn't come. It didn't come until the guy who bumped into me, Mr. Charles Manson T-Shirt, came from the depths of the crowd and leaned against the couch, on the other side of the arm I was slumped against. I looked up at him slowly, noticing the strands of black hair sticking to his forehead from the sweat. He smiled, looking sort of clueless like a dog would look if it could smile. In his hand was a bottle of beer, the brown glass slick with moisture. "Here," he said, holding it out to me.

I looked at it. I could smell the beer even from there, that cold barley sort of smell like a cross between a pub and a hay field. Finally I reached out and took it in my hands, feeling the loose label shift slightly from it being damp. "I'm not drinking," I said.

"I just feel bad about knocking you on your ass like that." Again there was the sleepy smile, and he pulled his hair back off his face. The hair stayed back for a few seconds from the sweat, and then fell back into its original spot.

"You didn't knock me on my ass." I pried a little at the corner of the label with my thumb, and it gave easily.

"You don't drink?" he said.

"No." I cleared my throat and raised my voice a notch to talk over the music. "No, I said I wasn't drinking tonight." Actually, I thought, what I said was *I'm not drinking*. That could mean tonight, or at that moment, or ever. A fair assumption.

The guy sighed deeply, looking around like he was surveying the crowd from a different angle now that he wasn't a part of it. It did look a little chaotic - girls with breasts jiggling under their tiny shirts, guys with strong arms and tight asses talking them up, everyone with a drink and a walk like they weren't used to their feet. When the guy didn't go away, I felt like I should say something to him. I peeled the label a little more, wondering if I should give the beer back to him, hating that moment of uncomfortable silence when you know you should be entertaining but you can't.

He leaned over and more hair fell in his eyes. "I'm Dark."

"Dark?" Already I wished I hadn't accepted the beer. People with fake names were usually unbearable. "Is that really your name?"

"Unfortunately." He sighed deeply again, leaning his head back against the wall. His eyes seemed focused on the lights making wide circle patterns on the ceiling. There was no more explanation. There was nothing like "My parents are hippies." Just an "unfortunately."

"Keenan." I reached out and he shook my hand, his skin as clammy as mine was from the heat and the dancing.

When we let go he slid down the wall, his shirt sticking to it a little so it exposed part of his back. Finally he was sitting on his heels. "My life just sucks," he said slowly.

I wasn't sure what to say, so I just looked at him. Yet another person who felt the need to tell me their life story as soon as I met them. I thought about saying something like "That's pretty pessimistic." I certainly wasn't going to ask him why it sucked. Finally I just mumbled "Yeah."

"I had a thing for this guy, and he was, like, so beautiful. And just when we were about to do something, he turned into a bug." Dark took a deep drag of his cigarette and shook his head at the club.

I blinked, studying him long enough to realize that he was serious. Then I started to laugh. Dark rolled his head against the wall until he was looking at me, frowning at my laughter, and then started laughing too.

"A bug? As in a real bug?" It was rare that someone could grab my attention like that, but even if Dark was insane, he was interesting.

Dark flicked his cigarette, still shaking his head. "A giant bug," he said. "I mean it. No shit. And his last words were 'I'm outta here.'"

_._._._

Dark lived with his parents in a white clapboard house on a back street near downtown Hollywood. His room was painted various shades of blue, and with the lights off, laying in bed, it looked psychedelic.

"This is where he was laying," Dark said, tapping my chest. I was on the side of his bed closest to the alarm clock, under the covers but still fully dressed. My arms were tucked behind my head and my feet warm under his blankets.

"You think I'll turn into a bug too?"

"I hope not." Dark's eyes narrowed, his nearly black pupils looking like they were going to disappear under his eyelids. I saw his lips come closer to me, searching for mine. His hand slid farther down my stomach.

"Dark," I said. "I have HIV." Normally I wouldn't come out with it that easily, but I also wouldn't be laying there if it were just a routine night. But something inside me sensed that I could tell him.

"So do I," he said quietly, his eyes opening until they were fixed on me.

I cocked my head. "Really?"

"Really." He laid his head down on the pillow, his body snuggling a little closer to mine. "The wrong ex girlfriend."

"Me too." I wanted to ask him why he let me lay in his bed if he had HIV. Did he plan on fucking me without telling me if I hadn't said anything? But I guess the same question could have been asked of me. Maybe that was the whole reason we'd met in the first place. Maybe we both had that blank look in our eyes, those frozen features like we knew this was all preamble. Maybe we were both missing that brightness in our eyes, the brightness people have when they think they have forever to live. The brightness I saw in the rest of the world, including Joan. Joan once told me that she wanted to be nominated for an Oscar before she died, so she'd get to hear her name called as she sat in one of the front rows at the awards ceremony. I wondered if she realized who she was talking to. My time to do things I wanted to do before I died was dwindling quickly. I was starting to narrow things down. I was never going to climb a mountain, or publish a novel, or be in a great rock band with a gold record. Time meant much more limited options. I had stopped dreaming a long time ago. All I wanted was to touch someone without worrying about what part of me was spilling into them. All I wanted was to fuck.

Dark's eyes were focused on me, intent and unwavering. "Kiss me," I said. I needed to feel it. He leaned over and our lips bumped together, his tongue wet when he slid it in my mouth. Our mouths opened and our lips were slippery against each other. I took a deep breath, feeling that familiar rise in my chest and that familiar pull on my cock, aching to be touched.

The kiss grew harder, and deeper, and sloppier. I felt his saliva mixing with mine, making my lips wet, wanting to escape from our mouths. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling. It was bodily fluids. We weren't supposed to share bodily fluids, and yet here we were. I wanted to come inside of him, and cut my arm open so he could drink my blood. He was pressed against me now, his hands clawing at my back. "Spend the night," he said. "There are a million things we could do."

"I will." I untangled myself and pushed his shoulder down so he was laying on his stomach, my hands tugging off the sweaty Charles Manson T-shirt and dropping it on the floor next to the bed. I ran my lips along his spine, extending my tongue to get the dark taste of sweat and skin. His arms tightened, and I saw his hands clutching the pillow, his back arching more every time I went farther down an inch. I thought about how he'd probably moan my name if he could remember it. I wasn't sure if he did because I hadn't heard him use it since I introduced myself. His name was swirling around in my head. It was a person, place, thing and state of mind. Dark. What a great name. It didn't even matter if it was his real one now.

I kissed down to his ass, sliding his pants off as I went, and ran my tongue down the crack, finding the tight little bud there that became more relaxed under the pressure of my tongue. His muffled groan just encouraged me and I started lapping at it, spreading his cheeks with my hands, knowing from memory that my tongue probably felt rough and wet. I reached up and nudged his hole with my finger until it slid inside easily, and left it there as I moved down between his legs to lap at his balls.

His body jerked, and I knew how he felt. He was probably aching to be fucked, to feel someone inside him without a thin shield of latex in the way. I buried my head farther between his legs until my tongue reached the base of his cock, moving my finger in and out and in quick circular motions. This was a calculated fuck. I wanted to work his body until I knew the exact moment when he would come. I reached up and let my fingers tickle against the head of his cock, and they came away wet.

My cock was aching, sliding against the cool sheets on his bed. I moved my mouth back to his hole and made it wetter with my saliva, pushing my tongue inside him to make sure he was loose and ready. It had probably been just as long since he'd done this. Anything would have made us ready - brushing against someone on the dance floor, a seductive-looking billboard, a kiss. I moved back up to my knees and unzipped my pants, shoving them down my hips until they bunched around my knees. Otherwise, I was still fully clothed. I mixed spit with precome to wet my cock, stroking a couple of times enough to make me want to jerk myself off right there to put an end to the torture. He was on his knees now. I pulled his hips toward me and my cock practically fell into him, he was so open.

I worked my way in slowly, inch by inch, and when I was finally in I pushed hard so my hips slapped against his ass. He grunted and pushed back into me. I backed off and pushed into him again, squeezing my eyes shut, knowing that I was going to come inside of a minute if I didn't get some control. I knew I was filling him, no latex involved. He clenched his ass around me and shuddered.

"Fuck it," I muttered, and started a rhythm. He pushed back into me in time with my thrusts. I saw him touch himself, running his fingertips up his leg and along his thigh until it disappeared between his legs. "Jerk yourself off," I said, clenching my teeth. "Come for me, Dark."

He rested his weight on his elbow, his hair falling in his face so it brushed the pillow. He looked so alive. I could see a thin sheen of sweat on his skin and the muscles in his back move in time with my quick thrusts. We continued in perfect rhythm until I felt myself ready to burst. I tried to think of something to take my mind off it, like Joan or dying or the drunks at the club. Dark had stopped pumping himself, so either he had already come without me noticing, because I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts, or there was no chance of it. "Come inside me," Dark said, and I couldn't help it. I slammed into him one more time and shot inside of him, filling him up, feeling the tension drain and my body lapse into a shaking mess.

I pulled out regretfully, not wanting to leave him. He rolled over on his back and gave me one of those lazy dog smiles, his fingers absently smearing the semen on his stomach. I laid down next to him, letting my muscles relax, and let my fingers drift across his belly too. I wasn't sure what risks were involved in reinfection, but it didn't seem to matter.

_._._._

Around 8 a.m. I walked out onto the sun-soaked streets, past foreign women on front porches watching their children, and young mothers pushing strollers. I headed towards home without a phone number in my pocket. I couldn't really go back. Joan was my connection to the outside world, and she could warm my body with a smile. Dark was my last hurrah, giving me the injection of energy that I needed just to get up in the morning. A car passed blaring rap music, the bass coming from the open windows, and I almost danced.