AIDS and the Muse

by Shannon Joyce Prince

Chapter 3

Everybody in our ghetto had a dream, you know. There was a whole lot to believe in here. A whole lot. Everybody had an airtight story. They were all flesh insulation for a jar, maybe hair on top, maybe long, maybe a baby inside, maybe twins, but at the deepest part was always the jar of dreams and creeds which was bloody and poisoned by the polluted air, sunken low, and anchored by tragic events. The events are what led them to need to create their own tolerance and religion and blow a glass jar in the first place, and believe me, in the ghetto, everyone has had plenty of these events.

Everybody had a doctrine on what a human was, although not everybody tried to preach. We had bag ladies, keeping every jar they could find. Their religion had no redemption, only capabilities of making them saints if they could collect enough things pretty, things uniquely shaped, or things finely colored.

But the winos were often wise. We didn’t know about sanitary, but wise. They’d give an encouraging word that was the key to unlocking the next day, a sympathetic eye cocked back in haze, a shift of the mood that changes the matrix the slut’s cheaply attired limbs are caught in, because it would have been burlesque — anyone else’s look, but his casual shift, the forgiving shift, his precious pity made it seem like a daddy’s acceptance. A wino’s religion was gentle. It was the ocean itself. It crashed them down and swung them low, but it provided the venue to be a gentleman.

Then you had the prostitutes who were nearly an institution. What they did, they did par excellence. And often times their tackiness was just prettiness too brightly woven, like over-sugared cotton candy, or an over-pitched song. It was so, so sick, how dizzy you’d get when you saw all of them in just one.

All those women, like a harem in one skin. You’d know it was just another wig, but each time you’d go to them it was like somebody fresh and special was welcoming you. They’re good because when you saw all those women in one body, and the body wasn’t even fat, it made you think optimistically about all the possibilities running around inside.

The prostitute’s religion is that of a pimp. Pimping out whatever design is very, very, necessary. And the steady pimping, cranking, motion is a lull — their song. Their religion is the steady.

It was funny how everybody had a belief and a goal, and we were so crazy, so they didn’t think we’d get ours. Funny how we ran past. Ask that ghetto how it could make us so strong, and our hearts so delicate. Ask the lady at the grocery store why her oranges were so perfect and her hands so gnarled.

I hated that lady, because she disproved my theory, because until then, I thought that magic had a contagious sphere around it that could catch and multiply. However, I was mostly wondering, “Will our dreams ever come true?”

I pushed only 5 oz. the first time. You were hired by gangsters to do their graffiti. You could paint pictures of the others. You had talent, boy. Me? I was trying to make it any way, seriously. And I was sometimes selling drugs, sometimes myself. I was coming in front of and going back behind that alley. We got away with our schemes. You and I got away with my good hoop earrings, and my brown eyes.

And eventually we had enough money for a tenement apartment and easels and turpentine. The super came by and we paid him casually to not tell about the bootlegged DVD’s we sold outside the hair salon. And that was our one lazy time, sitting in that apartment, eating green apples, looking out the window at the high school dropouts.

So, I’m home, baby. It’s hard pulling my self here to you. What? Don’t use that word in front of my brown eyes. I’m not. If I was, could I be here, lifting my head up to your eyes.

I promise I’ll be good if you help bring me back every now and again. When I come, I can sit for your portraits. And you need help around the house. A woman’s touch. Do you know what? On the edge, it’s pretty, it’s warm, they give us lots of good food to eat. But I’m always scared. I’m scared of falling off. I’m scared no one will pull me back. So if you need anything, I’ll sit for you or stand for you or whatever you need. Just bring me back sometimes.

Please don’t say that word. Dead. I’m not really dead. AIDS, mmph, its just a little thing, Baby. I didn’t die. Aren’t I here with you now? Aren’t I loving you now?

Look at me. I’ve been touched. Touched by life with your love and your art and just you. And once you’re touched, you can never die. And my heart breaks when I think of you saying goodbye to me when I took my last breath. I watched you. I wanted to ask — is this the last time you’ll see me? Are you for sure?

You weren’t, and just like that, after all our memories together, all our years, you put me away. My gentle baby. I didn’t even know I was gone. No one explained it to me. It was so scary, hurtful, and cruel to be lain down for people to stare at me, and locked in a box, and imprisoned in an underground dungeon with a weight over me.

I begged you to take me someplace safe, but you wouldn’t listen. I banged on the box you put me in, and begged for mercy, for freedom, but you were heartless. You shut me up as well as possible, but I kept coming back. And it would have comforted you if I had said goodbye back. But I can’t stand the sound.

There had never been a day in life when I believed you were bad for me, no matter how crazy you were. And I wasn’t ever scared of death, man. Because I just knew that you would hold on tight even with me there. Would fill my world with color even with me there. Would give me life — even with me there. There has never been a day in life when I knew fear, no matter how perilous the future looked. I didn’t know fear because I knew you.

Proceed to Chapter 4...