DEAD FRIENDS

He had been quite nice, but not completely straightforward. It was not the first time but it would be the last. Bullshit artists come a dime a dozen, and queens pretending to be grand and in some sort of fabulous state were not a rarity. The older man had to deal with lots of them during his seventy years on the planet. There was nothing in his persona that was new, nothing special about him: he was not rich, his family was unequivocally working class, both in education and careers, and his own work and education were as common as common can be. Yet he thought of himself as some sort of grand queen: a Truman Capote or Versace wannabe without the talents or connections of the two well known artists. He was the inconsequential character that appeared in some of Kafka or Kundera’s stories. Obviously, he had not read those two great writers. He was not the only one who went around New York City acting with some kind of “I am special” attitude, above everybody, except those he looked up to, and even those, the ones he kept as friends, invited to this activity or that activity, were as common as common can be. For someone who got to hear his stories and knew a little about children’s upbringing, he was a “mama’s boy” still attached to the mothers tits, milked. At a certain point, that type of person can be very tiring, and if they lie in order to be evasive, because they do not want to include this one or that one, claiming they lack this thing or that thing, as if people were pieces on a board game, coming from such a average person, oh well! Better to stick to people who were real and enjoy life at its fullest, including its diversity and richness. The older man looked at him and thought about the many gay men he had met that were just like him, so many he socialized with during the seventies and eighties who were infected with hIv: all of them, including him, dead ones.