He slowly walked out of the kitchen while Mom and Dad started discussing rising prices again. Meanwhile I slid under the table to scoop up the newspaper. I hurried into the hall with it. Sal followed, but not to read the paper. He was passing me to go up the steps. I heard his knocking and then him asking if he could come in. Grand’s door opened and closed quietly.
I frantically tossed through the paper until I found Ryker’s name written beneath the title, MY COMIC BOOK DREAM, A PERSONAL ESSAY.
In Victorian England, it was hypothesized that having sex with a virgin would cure venereal diseases such as syphilis. This came to be known as the Virgin Cleansing Myth. Myth, because that is in fact all it is. There is no truth to the story that a virgin’s blood will somehow cleanse the blood of the diseased. Yet, to this day, there are some with HIV/AIDS who are having sex with virgins in the hope of a cure. In most instances, this sex is not consensual, and the virgin is put at risk of being infected themselves without their knowledge or their permission.
I myself have not had sex since being diagnosed with HIV in November of last year. This is a very personal decision and one I made because I do not want to put my fellow men at risk. That being said, I do understand the desire to find a cure. I understand it, yes, but I’d never knowingly infect another person with HIV/AIDS. I just want to make that clear. I do imagine it, though, in a sort of comic book style, if you will.
When it’s you and HIV/AIDS, you become a superhero, if you want to survive. Your body becomes the city you must protect and the HIV/AIDS becomes every villain ever created. It’s the Joker. Magneto. Doctor Doom. And in the fight, some may call themselves Superman or Batman, but I call myself Dr. Michael Morbius.
Fans of the Spider-Man series will recognize this name as that of the villain first introduced during those AIDS-free days of 1971.
Morbius was dying from, funny enough, a rare blood disease. He set out to be his own hero, looking for a cure that ultimately turned him into the villain. A vampire.
I suppose it’s because of these similarities between myself and Morbius that I imagine I am him. He suffered, as I am suffering now, from a rare blood disease. And like he was a vampire, I imagine myself to be one as well. I imagine I have sex with a virgin and, by doing so, I am cured.
Of course, this is just me imagining a comic book hero and a comic book villain, a comic book story and a comic book hope. But in this real world, I have to rely on the heroes in the white coats to see me through. We all do. It is the only ethical way.
I read that last line a few more times before I closed my eyes and saw Ryker. I searched for something in his appearance or his mannerism that would’ve said he was sick, but he was the human saxophone with the golden glow, and he played no laments. Damn that spick-and-span man.
I hated him.
The only solace I had was of imagining him alone in that one life rotting away, smelling of shit and fear on some hospital bed somewhere. Just another lump under the blanket, waiting to be rolled off into the ground. I’d spit on his grave, dance on it, if I knew where it was. Because I don’t, I do on occasion suddenly start dancing and spitting on any ground. People passing by may think I’m just a happy, jiggy, slobbering old man, when really I’ve got a grave in mind.
The grave of that man, not really a man but the devil. After all, we never needed Sal or any devil to come from underground. I learned at that moment that the devil, the true one, is people like Ryker.
I knew I couldn’t show the paper to Mom and Dad. Only Grand could do that and he had decided not to, so I started a fire in the fireplace. Even with the heat, I sat so close to the flames. I thought for a moment I might just say fuck it and lean all the way in and come out the other side as nothing but ash.
Ash doesn’t have to worry about anything, does it? It doesn’t have to worry about a sick brother. It doesn’t have to worry about what it all means. Ash just turns gray and blows away. That’s what I wanted. I just wanted to blow away.
As I watched the paper burn, I remembered the day me and Grand made his shoestrings red. It was a couple years back. We were sitting in the tree house. Grand’s shoes were brand new, having just come from the factory.
“Always white shoelaces.” He stretched the untied laces out to the sides like bleached worms. “Why you think this is, Fielding?”
“You’ve got a tongue of the shoe right there, and the laces are the teeth. Teeth are white.”
“Bad design, ain’t it? Puttin’ the tongue so close to the teeth. I’m always bitin’ my tongue. You’d think if God was so smart, He’d have come up with a better design.”
He took his pocket knife and studied each finger on his left hand like he was determining their value. Deciding that his ring finger was the least valuable, he took the knife and cut deep into his finger tip.
“Whatcha doin’?” I sat up on my heels but didn’t try to stop him.
“Since I’m always bitin’ my tongue and gettin’ blood on my teeth, I reckon it’s only right for my shoes to bite their tongue and get blood on their teeth.”
“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”