I Should Be Laughing: Harry Talks To John

Calmly and methodically, without looking where he was headed, for there was no need, Harry walked on. He instinctively knew where to go, which trees to walk around, which hedges were in flower. He knew the graves he wanted to see, the ones that would have fresh flowers, and he knew the names of those he passed along the way: Agnes Nolan, someone’s grandmother; Faye and Ben Holiday, a married couple; Erin and Joey Wilson, a mother and son; Charlie Groves, James Sanford, someone’s friend or son. Harry felt as though he was on a first name basis with these people because he had walked among them so often.

After a leisurely stroll, he stopped, and knelt down to brush away the newly cut grass from one marker in particular; his hand came away damp and covered with lawn clippings. Wiping it on his pants leg, he then proceeded to pull a few of the longer blades of grass that were growing onto, and crowding, the flattened stone. He plucked off the damp leaves and cleared away the rubbish from the chiseled name of his friend.

“My mother passed away this week, John.” Harry said, still crouched down, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together for warmth. “And I keep thinking that I should have told her about you…about us. I wonder how different life would have been if my mother had known the wonderful things you did for her son when I felt so lonely. I wonder if it might have been better for us, too, if we all hadn’t been such liars.”

Harry raised his eyes to the sky, toward the silver dollar sun hiding behind a bank of clouds. He enjoyed visiting John, even with everything that had happened between them. The beatings Harry endured. The times he’d let John move back into the house even though the locks were changed, even though he swore he wouldn’t do it. Harry believed he owed John something.

“I never thanked you,” he said softly, “for what you did for me. God,” he laughed a little. “I was so afraid when I first came to the city and you made everything okay…for a while.” Pausing, Harry remembered the good times, of which there were many to recall, enough to make him smile in spite of the chill and sadness. Dancing with John at The Stud; John, on the bar, threatening to pull his pants down, and then doing so. The parties they had on the rooftop of their apartment building, watching fireworks explode over the bay on the Fourth of July. The times they rented bikes to ride through Golden Gate Park to the beach; laughing over a comic strip in the Sunday Chronicle. Staying in bed all day on a rainy Saturday, watching “Sunset Boulevard” or “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

“Why did we lie so much, John? Neither of us would admit it, but we were ashamed of being gay. No matter how we pretended otherwise…acting as if we were so fabulous when we…. I mean, we told cab drivers and store clerks, bartenders and newspaper boys that we were gay, but we never ever told our own families. I realize now that’s why you hit me, because you didn’t like yourself very much. I know that’s why I let it happen. We didn’t think we deserved to be in love and happy…”

Reaching into his pocket, Harry retrieved a snapshot he’d come across inside the cardboard box. He looked at it again. “I brought this for you…something to remember me by, the good times.” He laid the picture on the marker, careful to slide it close to the edge where it would stay until the winds picked up, or when the big mower came by. Harry brought his fingers to his lips and then touched John’s name.

“I’m going now, John. I just came by to tell you about my mother. To tell you I miss you…and Wyatt misses you, too. He sends his love.” Rising, his knees cackling from being crouched for so long, Harry wiped his eyes and then started down the hill, knowing which way to turn without thinking, which headstones to touch. He said goodbye to the others as he passed by.

Up the hill, on John’s marker, the photograph began to stir in the breeze. And yet that snapshot stayed in place on the stone; it remained there through the weekend rains and the passage of the lawn mowers. It was a photograph taken on the beach at LaHaina in happier times: Harry, on the right, his forehead blistered and burned, Wyatt on the left in sunglasses and a straw hat. John stood in the middle, smiling, sipping a Mai Tai.