We been planning this dinner party for months because Adrian, our FTM tranny friend, is having some sort of pagan ritual which makes him a priest. Which means we had to smudge the house. I had to ask Darryl what that was because it sounded dirty to me. A few hours before everyone came over, we had to burn a big bundle of what looked to me like marijuana and I thought you know the neighbors are gonna call the police and the cops will bust in right in the middle of this coronation or whatever the hell it is and they will see all these fat bearded women with crewcuts and they will just be beside themselves.

Darryl moved here from South Carolina six years ago and he's fallen in with this hippie witch crowd, so whenever we have a party there are a lot of fat women in wheelchairs and we have to move furniture to make everything accessible. I was on the phone with Mama earlier and she said we shouldn't move anything that if we have to take off our shoes when we go to their house then the least they can do is buy some crutches. Course Mama only gets off that couch to reach into the lefthand kitchen drawer for another pack of Winston Light 100s, so I'm not saying she's an authority on big city manners.

Seeing as how we just went to war and all, Darryl wanted to start the dinner off with a moment of silence and I told him if he did that I would have to fart in the middle of it or make some kinda noise to disrupt everyone's phony grief because it's a bunch of bullshit. Darryl even wanted to have little flags on toothpicks at each of the place settings, poking out of the Flexi straws in everyone's water glasses and I told him "I did not move all the way from Eastern Georgia to be white trash like that. Everyone knows you don't put Flexi straws in water glasses at a dinner party and if you even think about putting out flags I'll take a Bic lighter to each and every one. You don't believe me, push me. I'll do it."

Darryl said I was disaffected, which I think is one of those half dollar words he picked up at a séance somewhere in the Mission. But I won't let a flag into the house. Darryl came home from the Castro the night of the attack and already there was a big shrine at the corner of 18th and Castro where people were leaving flowers and burning incense and putting little oriental rugs right down on the sidewalk. Darryl comes racing into the house with a handful of flags saying "Honey you've got to see this." He'd apparently been having group hugs with total strangers for the past two hours, right next to the bus shelter. People sobbing and talking about how they don't feel safe anymore. And the stores are all stocking up on blankets and flashlights because you know all these yuppies are building earthquake kits to put in the trunks of their SUVs. Darryl put the flags down on the kitchen counter and I snatched them up and marched out into the hallway and put them right down the garbage chute.

"I'm gonna incincerate the motherfuckers!" I screamed at him and that's when William, the queen across the hallway, cracked his front door so he could hear better. Darryl calls him Ethel right to his face. It must be nothin in the world like having two southern queens for neighbors, carryin on in the hallway, not afraid of being tacky.

"You can't burn a flag! It's against the law!" Darryl said.

"How about a whole handful of em?" I said. "They'll probably give me more time than if I fucked a second grader."

Darryl started beating on the wall, which made Mrs. Chin come out and say "Quiet!" real loud. Just "Quiet!" and then went back inside. All businesslike. Darryl calls her Mrs. Ha-So, which I think is not right.

Darryl knows I don't like flags. I grew up on a bunch of different Army bases and got the shit kicked outta me by boys my father kept saying I had to play with. Red is for blood. Blue is for bruises. And White was the color of every one of those crackers.

I told Darryl "You bring another one into this house and I'll wipe my ass with it and hang it out the window. You just watch."

Darryl made a marshmallow and peanut butter sandwich and went to bed early.

So this is the best. Adrian and his girlfriend, who really is still a girl (I don't think she has any plans to change that) emailed Darryl this list of demands for the dinner party, things like

No Lactose
No Wheat
No Meat
No Christian Prayer

I read it over the phone to Mama and she banged the receiver on the endtable and told me she didn't care if the airlines weren't working. "I want you to come home right now," she said. I think it was the Lactose part that upset her. It's an upsetting word. "Ain't no good can come from this." And with that she lit up another cigarette, muted the TV and said "I'll be right here." That's what she does when she gets really serious about something she mutes the television which is usually on Family Feud. That really fat man Richard Something, she just loves him. When he got caught paying six figures of hush money to guys in Hollywood who probably let him suck their dicks, that's when Mama called me and said how awful it was what they were doing to Richard and how much she loved me and even wanted to talk to Darryl, which shocked the shit outta me, because whenever that subject came up Mama would just crank the volume on the TV and say "I don't think I like that much."

I fixed a bunch of casseroles from recipes out of Linda McCartney's Vegetarian cookbooks and had to look some things up in the dictionary, ingredients I'd never heard of, herbs that I couldn't imagine would be legal in all 50 states, things like that. And the table was all set with the napkins sticking out of the glasses and everything and Darryl's cell phone rings. He's got it set to this little piece of classical music, Ode to Joy I think, which I told him was haughty but he likes it. It's Adrian and they're downstairs but the buzzer isn't working so Darryl runs down to let them in.

So Adrian and her—his—girlfriend show up with their dog Iggy and immediately Iggy raises his leg on the armchair I've been trying to get Darryl to get rid of for three years now so I can get a recliner and just as the dog finished I could see Darryl running to get the Fabreze and I just said "Oh, no. It's a sign from the Goddess." You know, because it was Witchy Night and I was trying to get into the spirit of things, trying to be the good husband and all. Bunch a god damn foolishness.

And it's Adrian and she—he—hands me a three day eviction notice posted on our front door. I go OFF, honey. It's Friday, which means that we don't have time to talk to a lawyer before Monday. I just tear the damn thing to pieces and Darryl is screaming "Stop it, Collin, stop it!" But I just keep tearing. That motherfucker thinks he's gonna evict my ass he can come kiss it first.

This is the same piece a shit who's been tearing up our garden out back, trying to intimidate us. Last time he did that I threw a hand shovel at him so hard from the balcony that it cracked one of the bricks on the patio. I was about to push a geranium off the ledge right on his head but he scrambled out. He's the son of the property owner, who's this nice old guy who gave each of his children one of the buildings to manage. And his son is a greedy little fuck who has already thrown out two guys with AIDS from the second floor because they just didn't want to deal with him anymore. The best part is, he's a cocksucker. He's in debt I think because he's on speed. At least he acts like it. Maybe that comes natural to him. Anyway, he's throwing out everyone in the building because we've all been here for more than five years and he knows he can triple rent, even in this economy. People keep saying that vacancies are up and rents are going down but that's a bunch of bullshit. You go from charging 3400 for a three bedroom to 2400, it don't matter how you cook it up, it's still a shit pie. There's gonna be a special circle in hell for all the faggots who charge their own people that kind of rent. I'd like to see them burn. I'd throw pieces of shaved ice at em, just to hear the sizzle. As Mama would say on any day but Sunday, "God damn it all to hell."

I know where he lives. He's right down in the Castro, in one of the apartments over that bar where guys watch Janet Jackson videos on TV together. So I grab my jean jacket, the one Darryl hates with bleach spots on the front and I go under the sink and get a can of red spray paint that I bought when I thought we were going to get wicker furniture for the patio. This is before the new landlord started stealing shit off our porch and cutting down our clothesline while there were things drying on it. So we didn't get the furniture, which I said we would have to paint red because I would not have white wicker furniture, honey, because this is not the old Plantation. I moved out of that world and we are not bringing it here.

I'm scrambling to get out of the kitchen because Darryl is physically blocking my way.

"I've just had it," I said.

"Call your Mama," Darryl said, like that would somehow calm me down.

"You need to take your meds before you go anywhere."

Well, he was right about that, so he got me to sit down and open up the Friday box in my pill dispenser. Adrian opened the fridge and poured me a glass of milk so the chalky white horsepill wouldn't fuck up my stomach so much. I try to skip that one but Darryl never lets me. Darryl tries to slip in one of my anti-anxiety meds but I see him and I throw it back at him, flick it like it's a booger.

"Fuck you, Darryl. Why aren't you pissed off?"

Darryl and Adrian start talking like I'm a baby but I don't hear em anymore, it's just noise. Adrian's girlfriend comes out of the bathroom, where she's been the whole time. She just looks at me and cocks her head a little. She says something to Adrian and they start hugging. I can't take this lovey dovey shit in my house right now so I knock over a chair and run out the door. I can't make out their voices at all, just the thump thump thump of them coming down the steps after me.

I run the entire three blocks to where he lives. When I reach the corner of 18th and Castro there are people holding candles and some of them are singing "God Bless America" and I just start growling really loud, not saying words in particular, just growling GRRRRR. The Boy Scouts get all the money from that song. Stupid faggots. Why do you make it so hard on yourselves?

I get through the crowd and start banging on his front door. I can see his window open. He's probably up there smoking crack.

"You come down here now you motherfucker. I'm gonna kick your ass."

I could see him look out, then duck his head inside really quick. Then I saw him dialing his cell phone, probably calling the cops.

"Yeah, you call the cops, I'll tell em about all the drugs you got stashed."

He flipped his phone shut and said out the window "Please go away." Like he didn't know who I was.

Adrian and Darryl and Adrian's girlfriend, I can never remember her name, they call got there and Adrian tried to take the spray can out of my hand and I just reared back like I could hit somebody and they stepped back.

That was when some hippie in a rasta shirt came up. He called me brother and tried to touch my shoulder. He said we shouldn't "escalate."

And I start screaming "Fuck you, you little shit, you probably don't even pay rent!"

And he started breathing and closed his eyes and put his hands together like he was praying right there in the middle of the sidewalk. And other people gathered around and started trying to talk me down, like this was some sorta community fuckin intervention. One of them was a leather guy who had an American flag in his left pocket. Flagging Old Glory Top like it was some kind of weapon.

It was like a bunch of refugees from the sixties all around me having a love in and I wanted to open up a firehose and put out all their candles. It's easy to be peaceful when you're not getting evicted.

"Fuck all a you!" I screamed.

And on his door in big red letters I wrote WAR. I couldn't think of anything to write, so I wrote it three times.

WAR. WAR. WAR.

I hurtled the paint can up at his window but missed. He yelled down that the police were on their way and he had lots of witnesses. Adrian had been going around telling all the people gathered about how this guy was evicting people with AIDS and they were starting to walk away. None of them got pissed off. None of them went up to that door and wrote WAR for a fourth time. They just disappeared back into the throng of mourners. Which I guess is all you can expect in this day and age from queens who think they have everything. To look the other way.

That's a real war for you. Where there are lots of witnesses but no one's really looking. The next day, no one claims to have seen anything. No one puts their fist through a wall and says No More. No one skips all the going to court bullshit and says You Throw Me Out and I'll Burn Your Fucking Building Down.

The next morning someone had made a peace sign out of daisies and daffodils right on his door. Stems all poked into a wire frame like it was fuckin Easter Sunday. I stepped closer and saw that there were little American flags on toothpicks poking out between all the flowers. I just covered my mouth because I wanted to bite through my lip and kick the door down. But I just left it alone. I stared at it for a while. People walked by and took pictures of the impromptu botanical garden. A woman asked me if I made the peace sign and could she get a picture with me in it. I lifted the peace sign off its nail and put it around my neck so my bloody autograph would be show on the door. She counted One Two Three. I smiled wide enough to show teeth.

 

©2002 Kirk Read - Contributor's Bio