Page 32 of Exquisite Things

The young lovers, like the boy who transformed me, are frozen in time. The bronze they’re sculpted from makes them appear

ageless, genderless. Love, in its purest form, must be beyond age, time, gender, mustn’t it? I wish I had the answers. Seventy-seven

years on this planet and I understand less than I used to about life’s biggest questions. Perhaps knowledge isn’t accrued

over time. Sometimes I wonder if we’re smartest when we’re born. When we’re nothing but instinct. The young lovers, clutching

each other tightly, don’t look like they knew much, other than how to love.

Is that all there is to learn in the end? Life’s one, only, and hardest lesson.

Bright yellow daffodils grow from the ground around the young lovers. A hint of spring sunshine gives them a technicolor sheen.

The sun also lights Shams, or whatever he calls himself now, like a movie star. His brown skin glows with youth.

Are we young? Or old? I don’t know how to answer that question.

Do I love him? Hate him? No answer for that one either.

If I still loved him unconditionally and passionately, wouldn’t I run into his arms like he wants me to as he glances back at the St. Paul’s cathedral clock? Then again, I’m here, aren’t I? I came, didn’t I? I couldn’t stay away.

The minute hand of the cathedral clock ticks forward: 12:01. I pull the straps of my backpack tighter. Make sure my synthesizer

keyboard is safely on my back. It’s lighter than the accordion I relied on for decades. Playing music in Berlin U-Bahn stations.

On the Miami Beach boardwalk. In the medina of Marrakech. Survival through music. Living off whatever money people threw into

my hat. Francs and liras and dirhams. Exchanging currencies each time I escaped a farm, a city, a country. Exchanging my identity

too. Being everyone and therefore no one. Feeling empty. Sometimes, not getting out of bed for days, weeks, months if I had

enough food to survive. Then again, I always survive.

12:02. He taps his feet anxiously on the pavement. Leans over when no one’s looking and picks a single daffodil. Holds it

close to his heart and whispers something to himself. A silent prayer, no doubt. That I’ll show up. That we’ll live happily

ever after like he thought we would when he made me immortal.

There is another version of this moment. A fantasy as grand as a Tchaikovsky concerto. In this fiction, I do run into his

open embrace. We clutch each other like the bronze young lovers. Declare our eternal love for each other. Live our endless

days inseparably, dancing and laughing and kissing. That version would be the end of something. This is only the beginning.

12:03. His hair is different. Long on one side. Chopped short on the other. What’s left of it is dyed mauve. His tight, torn

jeans reveal the smooth skin of his knees. He wears a blazer with large words on the back. The National Front Is an Affront. He’s the same person I knew sixty years ago. He’s also completely different.

The cathedral clock keeps moving forward, one minute at a time. He glances at it. Looks around at every face, wondering if

it’s me. I keep myself safely hidden behind a tree. The cherry blossoms are in bloom. Mother always loved them more than any

other flower. She would take me to the Esplanade to see them every spring. We would stare out at the Charles River as we bathed

in the mesmerizing explosion of pink. The last time she took me was just before that fateful spring day when I met Shams.

On that day she said to me, What makes the cherry blossoms so special is how ephemeral they are. They last such a short time.

I’m ashamed to say that I felt a pang of hurt in that moment. In my mind, I was wondering whether Mother appreciated Father

and Liam more than me because they too lasted a short time in her life. Father died so young. Liam chose Yale instead of a

closer university. My plan was to stay by her side forever.

I wouldn’t be a cherry blossom. I would be the perennial flower that would never go away. Until I had to. I left her and never

spoke to her again. No matter how desperately I wanted to call and hear her voice.

“OLIVER!” Shams yells out my name. He sounds like Marlon Brando yelling out for Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire . “Oliver, are you out there? Oliver!” I was in Vienna when that movie came out. Saw it in a theater full of enthralled Austrians.

I stayed in Vienna as long as I could, among people who cared for classical music as I do.

“OLIVER!” he roars.

“Oliver?” he asks.

“Oliver,” he finally sighs.

The clock strikes one. We’ve both been standing in the same spot for an hour.

Finally, he gives up. Walks away. Throws the daffodil he had picked for me into a puddle of muddy water.

I rush to the puddle when he’s out of sight.

Fish the bright flower out. Hold it in my palm as I clandestinely follow him.

The city streets are packed. It’s Sunday and the clouds are moving south. So are we. He doesn’t look back as he crosses Blackfriars

Bridge. The water of the Thames looks murky. Like there are secrets buried at the bottom of the river. I hate secrets. A secret

destroys its guardian, always. Pulls him away from those he loves. Secrets isolate.

I didn’t plan on following him like this. I thought seeing him again would give me the certainty I needed. To be with him

or not to be with him, that is the question. Now here I am, doing neither. Living in the indecision.

But I do have a plan. I’ll observe him in his new habitat. Try to understand why he feels this is our time. I’ll deduce how

I feel about this city independent of him. I’ve been free of him for sixty years. Free and lonely. Free and yet chained to

him by the fate only we share. What’s a little more time to figure out how I feel when all we have is time?

The winter of discontent I read about in the papers is officially over, but the smell of garbage still fills the city. Trash

is everywhere. Heaps of it. A couple of rats scurry in and out of a trash bag. I watch as a fat rat shares its bounty with

a feebler rat. I almost stop following Shams to watch the rats a little longer. I had no idea rats had empathy for other rats.

All these years, and still I have moments of revelation. Perhaps there’s more empathy in the world than I thought.

The smells change as Shams approaches the Brixton Tube station and turns onto Railton Road. The warm smell of food fills the air. Spices from faraway islands, brought to London because of economic necessity.

A handsome adolescent approaches me. Wavy brown hair. Bright blue eyes. The Oxford shirt he wears is about three sizes too

big, his jeans a size or two too small. “You lost?” he asks.

“I— No, sorry—” Shams turns another corner. I need to keep him in my sights.

“Here, this’ll help.” The guy hands me a copy of Gay News . “We’re working on a new paper. We’re calling it Gay Noise. Get it? Gay News . Gay Noise .”

“I get it, yeah.” I see a bookshop on the corner Shams turned on. I walk toward it.

The paper boy follows me. “Not implying it’s me starting it. I’m the errand boy. The guys in my squat are the heroes. We’re

one of the last squats standing. You’re American, aren’t you? I’m good with accents. I’m from Sheffield. Up north.”

I ignore my overeager new friend as I search for Shams. He’s gone. Disappeared on Chaucer Road. It’s almost too poetic. Shams

and his love for poetry. He infected me with it. I must’ve read hundreds of thousands of poems by now. Neruda and Rumi and

Emily Dickinson. And yes, Chaucer. He who said, So short our lives, so hard the lessons. Well, he was half right in my case. If a short life is full of hard lessons, what is the longest life full of?

“If you’re new to the city, you can peek through the London section of this. Lots of great spots. If you’re sticking around

Brixton, just avoid the George at all costs.”

“The George?” I ask.

“Racist pub. They banned gays a few years ago. One of my friends was beat up in there earlier this year.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“That’s why I dream of travel. There must be somewhere on this planet where we can be truly free without fear, right?” He

pulls a copy of the Spartacus Gay Guide from his bag, and hands it to me. On the cover is a photo of four macho white men in front of an eighteenth-birthday cake.

A birthday I’ll never reach. Eternally stuck at seventeen. “Sometimes, I flip through the pages and dream of going to some

gay beach in Spain, or to a disco in New York. But look who I’m talking to. You been to New York?”

I flip through the pages of the gay travel guide and feel shocked to find not just guides to gay bars and gay-friendly hotels

in cities all over the world but also a “ Paedophile Vacations Holiday Help Portfolio ,” for “ boy-lovers .” It makes me feel sick. Thinking that this book lumps me in with men booking their travels based on a country’s age of consent.

I thrust the book back into his hands too aggressively. “I’m sorry, I’m meeting a friend,” I say. “I’ll need to say goodbye

now.”

“Right.” It’s not until I let him down that I see his loneliness. That’s why he wouldn’t let me go. The poor guy is desperate

for love, company, belonging. I wonder why he’s living in a squat. What kind of home did he escape from? He shuffles away.

I enter the bookshop, wondering if Shams is inside. It would be just like him to drown his sorrows in the poetry section of

some charming local bookshop.

“Can I help you?” I look up and see a young butch standing in front of me. She has dark skin and a short Afro. She wears a

long-knit sweater that travels down below her knees. The pattern is captivating. Colors blend into each other, like she’s

wearing an Impressionist painting.

“Oh yes, I... Do you have a poetry section?” I ask.

She nods. “We do, but it’ll be Black poets only. This is a Black bookshop, yeah?” She looks at me hard, like she’s trying

to see if this scares me. “You did know that, right?”