One
The Sun, The Moon, The Stars
To those hovering, relentless, pesky angels surrounding me, never giving me a moments peace, thank you. I’ll try not to forget.
One
Max sat on the edge of his bed, groggy but awake. His head dipped slightly forward and to one side, and his shoulders slumped. He was contemplating his next move. Should he let gravity take over and flop back down on his bed, or grab his cushioned mat and toss it on the floor to begin his morning routine of stretching? He did neither. He stood up, had the usual five to seven seconds of lightheadedness and kaleidoscope vision, then made his way into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. It was the better decision. While the coffee was brewing, he ambled into the living room, grabbed the tv remote and headed back into the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast bar, turning on the tv. Max paid no attention to what was on, the tv’s primary purpose these days was for background noise. Besides, he was already preoccupied with rubbing his face and eyes to the point of making his skin raw, trying to get some relief from the plague of allergies that greeted him each morning.
Max was fifty-nine; sixty in just over a month. He’d recently begun to have reoccurring nightmares about becoming one of those kinds of older gay man, the kind who’s outlived his usefulness in a youth-obsessed subset of the gay population, spending his days as a recluse. An antisocial shut-in, living in his low-income rectangular apartment made of concrete with abysmal lighting that made the place look like a decades old pedestrian underpass; a dingy hovel with cement walls and a yellowish glow. Sometimes included in this nightmare scenario, he would have more than a few missing teeth and wear an ill-fitting partial that incessantly rubbed his gums raw, preventing him from wearing it every day so the denture would perpetually sit in a little plastic case on the tiny bathroom counter more than it sat in his mouth.
Being an obsessive-compulsive type, this was one of his more intrusive thoughts that played in his brain loop as he aged. Thankfully, he didn’t smoke anymore, otherwise he would be the version of the elderly gay man who lived in a dingy hovel, suffered from missing teeth, and had the added misery of reeking like stale cigarette smoke. Max had encountered their kind, and it scared the shit out of him that he could end up being one of them. He would never let that happen. It was an absurd idea, but he still fixated on that storyline. “Goddamn brain loop.”
Max had a solid job with the city, working in the accounting department. He had been employed there for over two decades and made a good living, so he’d have a good pension and excellent health care when he finally walked away. He really had it better than most, except for the obsessive thoughts, assorted afflictions, countless number of disorders, rampant personality issues, and the general sense of gloom and doom endlessly tormenting him. All those maddening, grim, and persistent companions in his life, imagined or real. He would have gladly traded all those obsessive thoughts, assorted afflictions, countless disorders, rampant personality issues, and feelings of gloom and doom, imagined or real, for one slight facial tick. It would be less exhausting. There was no bargaining at this point. The universe had spoken. His brain had been wired and there was no factory reset. “Goddamn obsessive thoughts.”
Max lived in a smallish apartment, that part was true enough, but he chose to. He didn’t need a lot of space and loathed clutter. It suited him fine until retirement, then he’d decide what came next. The most positive way to describe the apartment was that it wasn’t a dump, and it was in a semi decent area. It had a picture window, with a decent view of some of the city. That was, for him and his melancholy episodes, the selling point of the place. Any wistful personality understood what that meant. He’d spend hours staring out the window thinking about being somewhere else, or being someone else—or being gone, just gone, never to be heard from again. Maybe one day he would just up and leave, walk away from everything and fly off to the South of France, and lay down in some random lavender field for the rest of his days, hoping nobody would notice he was gone. That sounded like a nice ending to him. Max could never really figure out who he really was, other than a bunch of moving parts that never synced up. He never experienced being whole. What a ridiculous human being, he thought.
There was never a day in recent memory that he didn’t go to bed hoping he’d never wake up. Max didn’t find that morbid in any way whatsoever. He thought it was practical. Why be somewhere you don’t want to be? He was surprised every single day when he woke up that he had made it this far. His heart was not in the best shape, and the decades of anxiety, fear, obsessive thoughts, (and a stint of heavy cocaine use in the eighties) had worn him down, not to mention the years of risky sexual behavior. Everything had taken its toll, not that the outside world noticed.
The wear and tear on the outside wasn’t so obvious to the casual observer. He didn’t look fifty-nine, almost sixty. He turned a few heads in his day, but he wasn’t one of those gays. Not the level of gay man who could walk into a crowded bar, turn some heads, create a sudden hush, then induce a noticeable buzz—level of gay. Those gays got a human energy fueled enthusiastic response as if a hive full of queen bees had just been disturbed by somebody walking by the nest and giving it a good thumping. A collective heart flutter with an audible gasp, in the human world. Max wasn’t a member of that pearl clutching club, but he did have dimples, so those helped enhance his otherwise ordinary face. He had made peace years earlier with the fact that he wasn’t gold standard gay. He considered himself one or two steps above generic—or having ‘middle of the pack’ gay appeal. That was a position you didn’t want to be in if you were terrified of being alone or aging rapidly while actively looking for companionship. Max didn’t fall into those categories. Those who did, would have to find an alternative path. Possibly one that led to a cruisy park at night. There was less competition, and lower standards on that path for companionship.
Max thought about getting a small dog, or cat for company, but that seemed a bit desperate in a sense. He felt it announced to the world that he wasn’t satisfied, comfortable, or fulfilled with his own company. Then there were the allergies, and the fact that he lived alone gave him reservations, thinking that if he suddenly dropped dead, his little companion would end up chewing his face off to keep itself alive. Regardless of the lengthy list of cons, he’d still think about it. “Goddamn intrusive thoughts.”
Max assumed he’d probably die at some ridiculous age, like seventy-three. Seventy-three is a ridiculous and horrible age to die. Not that he really cared, he’d be dead, but he still obsessed about it. He felt seventy-three was an age when you’re too old to accomplish anything new and noteworthy, in general. Seventy-three is a rotten age to die and leave the world with any amount of dignity. You’re not young enough to be considered a martyr, and you’re not old enough to be honored like a hero. When you’re twenty-five and you die of cancer people say, “how brave—he fought the good fight until the end,” and when you’re ninety-nine and you die of natural causes people say, “what an amazing life—what a legacy. How did he do it?!” When you kick off at seventy-three, mourners (if there are any) collectively shake their heads, have a light snack, engage in a quick conversation about how you were too young to die, then go home and forget all about you. Max didn’t have to worry about any of that nonsense anyway; he doubted anyone would even take notice of his death—at least not until a suspicious neighbor followed the scent of a rotting corpse to his door and reported a foul smell coming from the apartment. His immediate family was already gone. He had a handful of nieces and nephews scattered about, but rarely had any contact with them. He wasn’t particularly close to any of them, and the truth was, he didn’t have an overwhelming interest in being a part of their lives.
Max had a lot of regrets. People who say they don’t have regrets are full of bullshit was his motto—one of them. It’s like admitting the fact that you have flaws, is itself, flawed. It was an insane way to think as far as he was concerned. How could a person not have regrets?! Max thought he probably had more regrets in one day than most people have in an entire year. At his age he started to believe a person was closer to the judgement of God more than anything else if you believed in that sort of stuff. He naturally had his doubts, but he did wonder what God thought of him—Goddamn liar, hypocrite, cheat, thief, blasphemer, coward, and self-destructive pain in the ass jerk, probably. At almost sixty years old there were no do-overs, and there was no turning back. You were committed to the course and had to finish the ride, hoping that it wasn’t going to be bloody, painful, or drawn out. Max wanted to believe he wasn’t a thorn in God’s side, but he had to be honest about his failures, his shortcomings, his poor decisions, and his lack of courage throughout his life. It wasn’t looking good. “Goddamn negative thoughts.”
Max finished his cup of coffee, showered, and headed out the door. As he walked down the street, avoiding eye contact with the public, he realized he was having one of those days— ‘people’ days. The kind of days where a person has duties and responsibilities to conduct in the outside world, but the person doesn’t really want to spend time out in that world, around other human beings, performing those duties. Not every day felt like that, but there was some level of that feeling every day. On any given day, the world was a cold, mean, unjust place he couldn’t care less about; days when he felt like he could lash out in anger at any moment if he failed in his mission to avoid other people. The next day, he wanted to protect the world, fight for it, and save it from all the evil in it. Max could never figure out why he was so extreme in that way. Was it some undiagnosed mental disorder, or was he simply a fickle bitch like some people thought?
Max walked into the local flower shop and bought his usual bouquet of a dozen yellow roses. Every Sunday like clockwork. He’d arrive at his favorite park in Cherry Hill somewhere between nine, and nine-fifteen, sit down, roses in hand, on a colorfully painted park bench positioned just across the paved path from his favorite Japanese Maple tree. He loved that tree. It had been there ever since he could remember. Max only remembered bits and pieces of his first visits to the park back in the day, when he discovered it was a wonderful place to visit at night. He could only remember a few of the faces of the guys he encountered on those night visits too. Some still flashed in his mind on occasion, but most of them had faded away in time. He got to know Madeline Park and its regular inhabitants pretty well in those days. The warm summer and early fall nights were his favorite. Times were different then. People were different then. The park had changed quite a bit in the years since then, becoming family friendly. The bushier areas had been cleared out and more lighting was added. It was less seedy now. Max missed that bit of seedy atmosphere. I guess they probably got tired of picking up all the used condoms, he thought.
After a few minutes, he got up and walked over to the tree, gently dropping the roses on the ground. He stood over them briefly, then made his way back to the bench. He closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the warm sun. He began to think about them. Each one of them.
