Bob came from a place he called Cheeseville in southern Ontario. It was not literally that, but the nickname he gave it, and to which all his friends derisively reminded him, for it denoted its agricultural industriousness (read: boring, small, and straight). His father was already dead. His mother, saintly, fragile, and beloved, was just hanging on. I met her once, briefly. She died in the course of our friendship. I got to know Bob just before he lived on Sultan Street, at another place at 55 Charles Street. He and his best friend Patrick occupied a suite of rooms at or near the top floor. I only remember this because the windows more resembled a greenhouse in their expansive suspension, reaching from almost the floor to the ceiling. I recall eating breakfast one morning at the round table for two - and feeling my acrophobia creep up on me as I turned to see the city spread below me. Under my feet, so to speak.
Patrick was gorgeous. I called him Errol Flynn for the sake of his very square jaw and small moustache. Green piercing eyes. A dark brown head of hair. He was swarthy, with the face of a matinée idol. He drove a jeep of course, that paragon of rugged masculinity on wheels. I think he played team sports, which would have perfectly fitted him for he was bursting with testosterone. Like many but not all of Bob's friends Patrick also worked for Air Canada, but not in the cabin. Bob told me Patrick would often regale him with stories of the latest handsome fellow in his life. I suspected even then that he had considerable appetites, behind that quiet charm he chased the best bet he could find. And why not? He had the money and the looks to carry out his life as he pleased. Bob was frustrated by Patrick's obsession with the physical presence of a man more than the quality of their mind.
It may have been shortly after this that Bob moved to Sultan Street. I reached out by phone one day, letting him know I was probably going to travel down to the city very shortly. I asked about Patrick, Bob having told me a few months before that Patrick was Positive. "He's dead," Bob said, his voice catching. He had died a few weeks beforehand. In seeming good health he had travelled to the south western United States to visit a man he knew. While there, some sort of spore had entered his body. Something, Bob said, that wasn't really common "up Canada way." It had taken hold, and it felled him like a tree. Men died quickly in that first decade. Opportunistically.
At Boots one Sunday soon after, I saw the first man I had ever seen who was really markedly ill. It was a beautiful sunny day. On Sundays in those days Boots would have Tea Dances on their back patio. I can't recall if I was alone, just having a beer, or waiting to meet someone. He came in with friends. He looked like an old grey iguana. I am ashamed of my reaction now, but then you must remember, it was 1988 and I was young and untried. I almost physically recoiled, like an aboriginal witnessing for the first time an arquebus go off. And in that sense indeed, it was a New World. Only a year before Diana had shocked and impressed the planet by shaking hands with one poor fellow such as this.
His friends around him treated him as friends do with a convalescent, and clearly this was an outing for him, something special. I thought he was going to drop dead right there. He was wizened, sunken-cheeked. A crypt-keeper. He was probably not even forty, but looked ninety-five. I suppose convalescent is the wrong word. There would be no recovery. And yet here was a man who harboured in his heart the same lusts and desires as I did. I knew it then, and it sent a shiver down my spine.
One thing funny about healthy people is the way they treat the ill. For some reason we try to reassure the sick by offering as many alternatives as we can. Pillow? Water? Magazine? We are comforting, knowing comfort is lacking. One of the three or four friends with him turned and asked him what he would like to do. "Let's talk about COCK," he said, and exploded in a hyena laugh that turned into a wet pulmonary hack. Nothing ever changes.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice-Cream
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