"We're the Addams Family of the queer community," said Billy. This was my formal introduction to the only polyamorous, gay Tibetan Buddhist monks I have ever known, their decrepit century-old mansion and the spiders and cockroaches who lived there. I gazed around at the narrow staircases, ornate wood trimmings encircling every door frame, stained glass windows. Book cases towered shoulder high to a titan, overflowing with scholarly tomes written in French and Vietnamese, obscure treatises of Buddhist canon and philosophy. "I'm in the process of translating some of those," said Billy. "Here, come take a look at the meditation room." I was shown into a room filled with Tibetan prayer flags, Indian rugs, and mandala posters featuring deities with lots of arms and eyes. Buddha statuettes, brass incense burners and purple crystals lined various alters, all looking well used and broken in to a life of intense spiritual pursuit. Like the rest of the house, the room smelled heavily of dope and sweat. I thought wow, this is how I would've decorated my room back home if my parents had let me.
I was eighteen, pie-eyed and still spiritual. Two weeks before Billy gave me a tour of his house, I was just finishing up my first quarter at college away from home. I thought that perhaps I too could become a Buddhist monk if I read enough Castaneda books. There was still time. Maybe the right guru was out there somewhere. Yet I was beginning to suspect that the truth lay somewhere in the opposite direction, that spirituality was just another niche market, that gurus were the car salesmen of religion. As I sat cross-legged on my bunk, I took another hit off my oney. My spirit animal will reveal itself when the time is right, I told myself. I will find a guru when I am ready for additional training. Or maybe a guru will find me... I picked up the phone and dialed home.
"Hi Dad," I said, when he picked up.
"Oh, its you. Well, what's new at college?"
"Not much. I just finished up with finals. I think it's looking good so far, probably nothing less than a B in any of my classes."
"Probably huh? We've heard that before." Chuckle, chuckle.
"Yeah, well in high school I never got a grade higher than a B, so I'd say I'm in good shape." I thought, parenthetically: fuck you, you snide prick.
"Say uh, I was just looking at your school calendar. It says you have the whole month off in December."
"Uh huh." There was something in his tone that made me edgy. It was the tone Dad used, unconsciously, when he was about to declare I HAVE A PLAN FOR YOU, MY RETARDED SON, AND THIS IS HOW IT'S GOING TO BE.
"Well, I was just wondering what your plans are," was all he said.
Silly question, but I had better just humor him. "No real plans, Dad. I'm just going to come home, chill out, visit with friends. What else would I do?"
"Oh," he said tersely. "That's too bad... Your mother and I have talked. We decided that it's not a good idea. We have decided that it would cause too much mental stress if you were here." As he spoke, he sounded like a government spokesman explaining an unpopular policy decision. I could feel my heart beat a little faster as I translated Dad's bullshit into plain truth: Your STEP mother is a stark, raving bitch who hates your guts. The longer you stay in her house, the more crazy she gets and the less chance I have of getting laid this holiday season. She's crazy enough as it is, and I don't like you that much either. I have to pretend that this is my decision too, and not just a mandate from your STEP mother. By saying "we" instead of "she" I am less emasculated.
Thanks for the honesty, dickhead.
"Dad, you sure picked a great time to spring this on me. Two fucking weeks before the end of the quarter! What the hell am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go? I've got ten bucks and spare change in my pocket. That's it."
Dad snickered. "What do you mean, `where are you supposed to go'? It's not going to kill you to spend some extra time in your dorm--"
"They kick everyone out of the dorms for the entire break you asshole!"
"Just calm down. I didn't know that. Quit your yelling. Cripes! There's no need to get bent out of shape over it. Fine. You can't stay in the dorms. Well, I'm sure there are other places. Maybe a hotel, maybe you have some friends. Maybe your friends have parents. Maybe their parents have houses, houses you can stay in."
"Yeah, yeah. I doubt it. I guess I ought to get my jacket and start building a fucking igloo out behind the dorms. How about that?"
"There you go again with the swearing and the sarcasm, like that's going to help anything. Look, no one is going to let you starve to death or freeze to death but you have to figure something out because you're not coming back here. This is not your home anymore. Besides, you were just back here for Thanksgiving. Haven't we seen enough of each other for now? If you can't find a friend to crash with, maybe I can lend you some money for a motel--but don't think this means you'll be staying at any place fancy. Think MO-tel not HO-tel. You've lived like a high roller when you were here with us, but now that you're on your own you need to start thinking like you're on a budget, not a Learjet."
I hung up the phone without listening to another word of it. I had no desire to share the same space with him or his wife. But for the first time in my life I had nowhere to go. I really had nowhere to go. I was scared shitless to contemplate it. Never mind the disappointment of not being able to see my old friends after three months in a lonely, alien, alcoholic environment. Never mind the prospect of being totally alone on Christmas. I had...No. Fucking. Place. To. Go. Period. I was eighteen years old, a man. But I was crying like a kid. I banged my head against the wall. I took out my Swiss army knife and ran the blade over my arms a few times. It didn't bleed but it hurt. The blade was too dull, I guess. It felt good. I breathed deeply three times and reached for a bottle of Southern Comfort that was resting beneath my steel bunk.
There was a knock at the door. "Hey dude, you in there?" came the voice of an acquaintance (I didn't call my new, college acquaintances 'friends'. I thought they might find that offensive). I hastily folded up my knife and dragged a dirty shirt sleeve across my red eyes. I got up and unlocked the door. "Dude, there's a poetry reading tonight at this guy's house. He's an old guy, has all these old hippies over. Everybody drinks a lot of wine and reads. Definitely a different venue from the coffee house thing. Sounds cool. I'm going. Probably be some free wine for the underaged among us. Wanna come?"
In those days I still fancied myself a poet. Funny thing was that other than my own, I didn't really care for poetry. I read some Baudelaire and Blake. I even liked some of it, but I did not let on that I understood even less than I liked. I was a spiritual Beat poet, but one with a pragmatic bent. My best stuff was sort of Kerouac meets Snyder meets Burroughs meets Aldous Huxley meets Timothy Leary--or so I figured. Never mind that Kerouac's poetry sucks. My worst stuff was...well...not thought about very often. Little did I know that it was ALL my worst stuff. I wanted to be a hipster and be liked and maybe even loved and respected, and I wanted my life to have meaning. I felt that all these things were possible if only I wrote some lines in my college ruled, spiral notebooks.
The reading was dull. It made me glad that one day I would not grow up to be an old hippie and write old hippie poetry. I had other things on my mind that kept me from deeply contemplating others' words. My own words, for instance. I made a beeline for the wine. Although I was easily the youngest there, no one stopped me from openly chugging straight from the bottle. After my third or fourth greedy draught, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. I turned around to find a gnome standing behind me. Shit, I didn't think I had that much to drink.
"Hi," said the gnome. "Can I have a drink before its all gone?" His tone was matter of fact but not annoyed. I handed him the bottle. He was a freaking gnome. He had a full, black beard that descended to his midriff, long black pony tailed hair that went down to his belt line. He was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans and stood about as tall as my shoulders. He was perhaps forty-five years old. He had a red, bulbous nose but not like an alcoholic's nose with all the broken capillaries sticking out. Not like that. He could have been a mountain man too, but if so he was first a gnome and then a mountain man. I often applied the term "old hippie" liberally to describe just about anyone over the age of thirty who wore tie dye and smoked dope, but this guy was the real deal, the genuine article, a perfectly preserved human being from the age of Aquarius. "Thanks for sharing," he said. "I'm Billy."
We struck up a conversation about Buddhism. He was into it. He mentioned that he was a Tibetan Buddhist monk-in-training. Cool. He had a lover who was occupied in similar pursuits. Right on. They lived in a big old mansion with lots of empty rooms. Sweet. Before long, I explained my situation, and asked if they might be able to offer me cheap lodging for Christmas break. I expressed my willingness to sleep on an old couch, even one with urine stains. "I think that would be fine," he said. "If you haven't guessed already, we're gay. And I gather you're...not?" He asked this question somewhat hopefully, with raised eyebrows. His idea of adequate social distance left barely enough room for a piece of paper to slide between two people. I took a step backward, shook my head and lowered my eyes a bit.
I hoped I had not offended a potential, temporary landlord by not being gay. That's the way my mind worked. Then, a second later I was embarrassed, realizing how stupid it was to worry about offending someone by not being gay. Most people are not gay all the time, and they don't offend anyone. "That's great," said Billy, obviously disappointed. "You seem open minded. I want you to know that if you stay with us, we'll respect the fact that you're straight. In fact, we have a straight guy who lives in the basement. You can have your girlfriends over whenever you want." Girlfriends? My 'girlfriends' consisted of a palm, four digits and a prehensile thumb. Still, the compliment was appreciated. Straight guy in the basement? Better not ask, I thought. Too many details and I might want to pass on my only opportunity for shelter.
Billy handed me his phone number and told me to call in a week. I did. "So you still planning on staying with us pretty soon here?" I was. His partners (partners? I thought there was only one) were cool with everything, looked forward to meeting me, 'girlfriend' okay, etc. I set the phone down and it rang. Dad.
"Ha! Merry Christmas to you too, son. Listen, I talked to your mother and we have decided that you can come home for Christmas and New Years but no longer than that. How does that sound?"
"What's the problem? I thought that's what you wanted to hear. I'll wire you some money for bus fare to home and back. Anyway...did you find anything for the rest of your break?"
"Actually yeah. I'll be staying for awhile with some gay, Tibetan Buddhist monks in their Victorian mansion. I met one of them at a poetry reading. I haven't met his gay lovers yet."
"Oh," said Dad. "Oh...well isn't that...unique." He was trying to conjure an appropriate reaction. I could sense the inner conflict he had, reconciling his politically progressive façade with his inherent disgust for the weird and abnormal. I took momentary pleasure in his discomfort. He laughed. "I suppose you better watch your ass while you're with them!"
"Wow. What an abysmally stupid thing to say."
"You know, I had to pull some strings just to have you up here for a few days. It wasn't easy. Your mother thinks she'll have to take more time off work and go back to the mental hospital just from having to see you. Believe me, your mother and I are not looking forward to it."
"Mother, mother, mother! Jesus Christ, you're killing me! Tell you what, you stop calling her `mother' and I'll stop calling her `it.' Cool? Dad, I hate to say it but if you had any balls you wouldn't need to ask your mentally ill wife for permission to have your son over for Christmas. You would simply tell her I'm coming and that's it. And if you had any sense of decency, you wouldn't turn me away no matter how much you didn't want to see me because I've got no place to go. Besides, you won't even see me when I'm there. I'll be out with friends most of the time anyway. I just need a place to crash. We're talking about three weeks here, dad. Why do you have to be such a prick?"
"You have a lot to learn about life, Mr. Cynical. About Everything. You just want to take and take and take until those around you have nothing left. `Ah,' he says, `the easy road is for me. I like that.' But the easy road is not so easy, is it? Hmmm. Life is always about where you're going to crash, right? Yes. But you know what, Mr. Has All the Answers? Sometimes when you crash, you also crash and burn and its not pretty. Hmmm, no, not pretty is it? Maybe you think it would be a little easier, that there will always be someone to pick up after you and wipe your ass after you've gone to the toilet, but as you're beginning to find out for the first time in your sheltered life, the real world is a little bit different. Isn't it? Well all I can do is say `welcome to the real world, my son.' Don't whine to me about having no place to go, not when you just told me about these...transsexual Mongolian Hindus that want you to shack up with them! Don't tell me that you don't have any safe haven in this cruel, cruel world." I hung up on him so that the great Socrates could continue his dialogue with himself.
The falling of a few, bitterly cold flakes of snow harkened the official end of the quarter. I hid my envy as I watched groups of students haul luggage out to their parents' sedans and minivans from outside my second floor window. There were too many smiles and warm embraces. I wanted to know what gave these stale conformists the right to be happy. Oh mama, oh papa I silently mocked, I'm soooo glad to see you! I'm so proud of you, boy! You don't have to do anything to be my son. I love you no matter what. I wished they would all die in car wrecks on the way home. I was an evil person and I knew it and knowing it made it worse. I returned to my room, packed some bags and saddled them over my bicycle, fastening them with bungee cords like a pack mule. I pulled my hat on tighter and locked the knobless steel cell door behind me. I was feeling a little nervous about this arrangement and these people, but at least it would be educational. Before meeting Billy, I'd never met someone who I knew was gay...or Tibetan...or a Buddhist monk in training. An unknown future was awaiting me, and I had to go out into the cold and meet it head on. From experience I'll now tell you, if you plan to meet anything head-on in life, wear a fucking helmet.
As soon as my bags were unpacked and the Grand Tour had been given, I was introduced to the other occupants of the mansion. First I shook hands with Rufus, who I later learned was Billy's oldest and primary lover. Rufus looked exactly like Billy, except that his beard was longer and his head hair hung in long, natural dreadlocks rather than a ponytail. I stooped down in order to shake his hand because he was paralyzed from the knees down. It did not immediately occur to me that Rufus was disabled, because I not see any of the usual tools of a disabled person in the vicinity: no wheelchair, crutches, canes or such-like. After greeting me, this mystery was solved when I watched him amble toward me by lifting up his crossed-legs with his wiry arms and setting them down again. It came to freak me out a little, how fast he could get around this way.
"Billy tells me that you'll be staying with us for a month," Rufus said.
"If that's cool with everybody," I said.
"You're more than welcome. You aren't the only one who has a bitchy stepmom. Believe me, we understand. In this house, we feel that all life is sacred, all different philosophies are valid and all friendly strangers are welcome...especially those who are around eighteen years old...just kidding. Teeheeheehee." Billy whispered something in Rufus's ear and then stepped back, head hung. This interaction was instructive. I would see all of the longtime occupants of the house address Rufus this way, with eyes lowered and shoulders drooped. Immediately I understood that the legs of Rufus may have been fucked up, but it was his legs that wore the pants of this queer Buddhist outfit.
"Ah," Rufus said, "Billy tells me you have not met Herman-Henriette." As though on cue, a tall, slender, black person emerged from the shadows. I say 'person' because I could not tell his/her gender identity or sex. He/she came forward and thrust out his/her hand awkwardly, looking away from me and obviously uncomfortable, like someone displaying their private parts to a doctor during a medical examination.
"Nice to meet you. I'm Justin." She/he nodded his/her head quickly and stepped back.
"Herman-Henriette is our other lover," Rufus proudly explained. "Unlike most transgendered persons, Herman-Henriette identifies as both a male and a female. Buddhist traditions look favorably on someone who is mature enough to have transcended the dualistic illusions of male/female dichotomy...Herman-Henriette has been taking hormones for months and his/her breast development is finally progressing." As Rufus spoke, Herman-Henriette squirmed and tapped his/her foot, clearly very uncomfortable with this recitation, yet acting as though she/he just had to stand like a zoo specimen and tolerate it. Rufus's black pupils looked so dilated I wondered if had dropped some acid as he looked back at Herman-Henriette and then at me with a slight smile, seemingly savoring our mutual discomfort.
Finally, Herman-Henriette said, "can I go now?" Rufus raised his arm and flicked his hand casually. Only then did Herman-Henriette leave, and then with haste.
"Billy and I have a spiritual and physical relationship," said Rufus, unbidden. "Herman-Henriette has a spiritual relationship with me and a spiritual/physical relationship with Billy. In that way, we fulfill each of our needs..."
"Oh," I said, wanting to know less than I now knew. "Oh." I did not like the way he said, "needs" or opened up about the intimate details of their relationships on our first meeting. What the hell is this place? I wondered. The Island of Dr. Moreau? And who was Rufus really, a benevolent, crippled gay gnome or some kind of Charlie Manson cult leader? And I had yet to even meet the 'straight guy in the basement.'
Wanting to change the subject I said, "I like the way you get around, Rufus. It's very...graceful."
"Thanks," Rufus said. "I like the way you get around too."
Despite the overall creepiness of the unique social milieu, and the shell-shocked stares I was given, I liked house and its occupants. At first blush, it appeared to be a no-holds-barred, no-expectations environment of perfect compassion and perfect permissiveness. During our first, group meal together we had homemade wine around a giant, oak table lit by a candelabra in the middle. Everyone passed a loaded pot pipe around afterward and I got drunk on a forty of luke warm Mickey's right at the table--and I was only eighteen! These people were all, like, five hundred years old. They were adults. Didn't they care? As the days passed, Billy even accompanied me to the liquor store and bought for me. During the day, no one got up earlier than noon, and Rufus didn't have to get up at all, usually having spent each night passed out in front of an old, black and white TV that only picked up one channel.
Given what I perceived as Rufus's unique and physically demanding method of ambulation, I wondered if he made any adaptation for getting around outside during wintertime. I was delighted to discover that the challenge posed by that situation had been met by my gay Tibetan Buddhist monk landlord with an equally unique solution. On trips to the grocery store I walked alongside Billy as he pulled a two-wheeled, wooden rickshaw containing a lotus postured, thickly bundled Rufus poised like an abbot coming down from his monastery home from high atop some distant mountain pass to purchase monthly supplies of yak tongue and goat butter from the village bazaar. Multi-colored Tibetan prayer flags streamed from poles attached to the cart, and gay pride stickers adorned the sides of rickshaw, proudly declaring war on all things normal. When people talk about raising one's freak flag, I understood exactly what was meant as cars slowed down and confused glares and ugly Minnesotans with their portly, winter reddened faces paused to take stock of the queer gnomes in their midst. I have to admit that I would be tempted to stare too. The neat thing was that I didn't have to stare, because I had already gained a sort of temporary, backstage pass into this world. I knew that a big threshold of trust had been reached when Rufus asked me to give poor old Billy a break and let me pull the rickshaw for awhile. "Look at those fuckers," he said gleefully as another vehicle rolled by bearing a fresh cargo of open mouths. "Make no mistake," he said in his wise, girly voice, "the other queers in this town gawk just as much as jocks, except that for the queers we're an embarrassment not a novelty. They really wish we would quietly go back in the closet. Tooooo late!" He winked and waved at another car.
I still couldn't get over the fact that my 'room' was little more than an informally organized but well stocked and much frequented repository of pulp gay porn novels. All around the tiny red couch I used for a bed were precariously laden bookshelves, bursting with titles like HERE CUMS THE POST MAN or A MAN'S BEST FRIEND...IS A MAN or TOM'S DICK IS HAIRY or the subversive Christmas story GAY FOR THE HOLIDAYS. This place was going to give me all the street credibility I would ever need. All I had to do was go with the flow, be a good, respectful guest and take notes later. I was thankful. It was almost too easy.
It took awhile to notice because of the thousands of eye-popping oddities presented by Billy, Herman-Henriette, Rufus and their lifestyle, but bit by bit I began to grasp that there was sociological order to this chaos, codes of personal conduct, and a tribal council to castigate those who infringed on them. It was through trial and error that I stumbled blindly into hidden rules, unspoken agendas, and a hastily drawn shitlist of my shortcomings and character flaws that would eventually lead to my mutually agreed upon ouster from this enclave of insanity.
The first faux-pas occurred as I blundered my way through 150-year-old kitchen cabinetry, looking for a plate so I could make some lunch. When I finally found a plate, I pulled it from its perch and a cockroach slid down onto my arm. I freaked out and stomped the roach as it fell to the floor. After I finished grinding it as hard as I could beneath my heel, I looked up and noticed Rufus staring at me, from his seat at the dining room table, eyes ablaze. "Was that really necessary?" he demanded.
"I just got startled," I tried. "It won't happen again."
"In this house, all life is sacred, not just the lives of straight white BOYS with middle class parents!" After shouting these words, he took his fork and stabbed a piece of steak, bringing it to his mouth while staring at me with his burning, coal black eyes. He chewed and swallowed. "I only say it for your own soul's sake," he continued, "that might have been a former monk you just needlessly killed. It might have been your uncle or your grandmother. That's just it, you never know do you, you just never know!"
"Look, I said I'm sorry. I promise I won't do it again." The taste of fear was palpable on my words as I uttered them, hoping to produce the magic formula to stop Rufus from descending any further into his rage. He was trembling and mumbling to himself in rapid-fire phrases, barely audible now.
"He says he's sorry. Shhh. He says he's sorry. No, he won't do it again. I know. Yeah. I know. He says he's sorry." He began to shake as he spoke, waving around another piece of fork-impaled steak unselfconsciously. "No, no, no. We'll make sure. He's sorry. We knows it." Seeing the tremor shake his entire body, I envisioned his dreadlocks coming to life like monster tentacles, reaching out to strangle me. I had never seen a truly crazy person before, other than my stepmother. What the hell was I supposed to say to chill him out? Let's have a healing ceremony for the spirit of the cockroach that I wish I got to know better? It wasn't just that I found it creepy the way he went on, it sounded as though his voices were deciding my fate.
But as suddenly as the encounter began, it ceased. Rufus looked up, no more Friday the 13th glint in his eye. In a perfectly calm, collected voice he said to me, as though nothing had happened, "So we have an understanding then? No more killing things in this house?" Before I could finish submissively assenting to this rule, Rufus had turned his back toward me, ambled over to the fridge like a crab and pulled a another thick cut of steak off the meat shelf and began wolfing it down. I thought: huh? This dude thinks cockroaches are more important than cows. When it came to my food all life was not sacred, however much this bearded lunatic--and my own hippie instincts--wanted it to be.
While I was excited to be staying with people who were much bigger freaks than I was, I was lonely and depressed. Despite the fact that I was unwelcome in my childhood home, I longed for the order it imposed. No way in hell could I smoke a cigarette in my former bedroom back at my parents' sterile home, but neither did the smell of unwashed ass or urine-soaked jeans permeate any spaces there. As my loneliness increased, so did the ferocity of my first bona fide binge drinking cycle. It began in the weeks previous to finals and continued now with a silent, daily walk to the liquor store with Billy, my willing-but-disapproving legal aged gay Tibetan Buddhist alcohol buyer. I could tell that Billy was beginning to feel that these trips were a chore, and that I might be headed in the wrong direction. "What is it about alcohol, man?" he asked, exasperated. "We have plenty of good weed. These forties you keep buying, they're just cheap poison."
I said "I already told you guys I can't smoke weed right now. It makes me paranoid. This town is full of paranoid straight guys; do you want one in your house too? No, better to have a mellow drunk straight guy, even if he is underaged. Remember: I don't buy this stuff, you do." It was an amazingly dunderheaded thing to say. I immediately began slapping my head with the palm of my hand. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. Billy, what I meant to say is...uh...you're right...uh? Yeah, maybe I'll try some weed too, but in the meantime this business with the forties is uh...well its working out great for me." I slapped an extra five dollar bill in his hand and let him stare at me in disgusted silence.
That night we had the second group meal that I experienced with my hosts and it began to feel like things were getting back on the right track with them. I told some stories about my family and did impressions of my father, which had my gay Tibetan Buddhist monk hosts and their friends, lovers and symbionts in stitches. Even the normally dour and humorless Herman-Henriette cracked a half smile, which made me feel like I won the day. That evening we had a special guest, a friend of Rufus and Billy who was gay and dying of AIDS. His name was Calvin. I struck up a conversation with him, surprised by the compassion and warmth emanating from one of our very own modern day lepers. If I were Calvin, I'd be much more bitter, I thought.
The food and ambiance were better than anything my folks ever produced; somehow candlelight, smoking cigarettes at the table and Rufus's homemade salad dressing outshined the yelling and shake n' bake, the preferred condiments back at my parents' home. After the meal I felt something was missing. As everyone passed around a pot pipe I went to the kitchen to a retrieve a bottle of my current intoxicant, a forty o' Mickey's. As soon as I came back with it, I saw Rufus shake his head. Fuck him. I uncorked my baby and began to drink, holding the bottle upright with both hands grasping the bottle like an alcoholic infant. As the pot pipe made its rounds, I dutifully passed it on to the next toker without taking a hit. More for somebody else, right? Before long, Rufus had his eyes locked on to me in a continuous, smoldering stare. It was that Friday the 13th look again. Whoa, I thought. He can't be that pissed about my drinking; he must be stoned. After an hour or two, everybody started to leave. I shook hands with Calvin and said goodbye to the only person with a genuinely friendly face I had met around here. Then, the reason why Rufus was pissed off dawned on me in a flash. Aha. Every time Calvin took a hit, he passed the pipe to me, and I passed it on without putting it to my lips. The implication, to any who did not already know I wasn't currently a toker, was that I was unreasonably phobic of AIDS germs, and rude to this poor, humble dying man.
It did not make sense. I already made it clear to Rufus et al. that I was NOT going to smoke pot with them. Well fuck it, fuck if I had any explaining to do. I sat and continued to drink while everyone else filed out of the room except Rufus. "You give off really bad vibes," Rufus said.
"Oh. Just right now, or when you were laughing your head off at my jokes awhile ago?" I could feel my face getting hot.
"Why do you want to drink yourself to death? Do you think destroying your body will save your soul? Any idiot can see you have a death wish."
"Fuck you," said two and a half bottles of Mickey's. It was the first time I stood up to Rufus. He was intimidating but what was the worst he could do, toss me out in the snow to freeze to death? That was the same fate I faced before I came to their dump and now depressed, drunk and defiant I was not afraid to face it again. In fact, I longed for it. I longed for him to tell me to leave, so I could stumble into some dark, Mankato ally and fall down and lie there without ever having to get up again. The dull Swiss army knife provided no release. Mickey's provided a little, but it was not enough. I hated Rufus because even though he was a hypocrite and a loser and had no right to judge me, his cold assessment of me was still correct. "You lie around here all day smoking weed," I said. "I drink far less than you guys smoke. You have the nerve to tell me I have a problem? Please!"
"You're a wreck and an asshole and the notebook you write in is worth far more than what you write in it. Look at you, you're surrounded by all this wonderful dharma literature and you haven't picked up a single book since you've been here. You haven't even meditated. You think you're a bohemian but you're just a dumb suburban white kid."
"Dharma literature? You mean `Two Cocks Are Better Than One' because that's the only `dharma literature' in my room! You act like I signed up for some kind of spiritual retreat. All I wanted was a place to crash for a few weeks; I didn't sign up to be a student in your goddamn queer gothic monastery."
"Good. We don't want you here either. As soon as you leave, don't even think about trying to visit this place again. It's people like you who come back as cockroaches in the next life."
Without another word I dropped my bottle and began to sob, quietly but visibly. Seeing me like that, Rufus softened a little. "Look," he said. "We're going up to St. Paul tomorrow to visit a Tibetan gathering in celebration of a visit from Tungsten Rinpoche. He is one of the consorts of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. You should come with. Visiting with anyone who has had contact with His Holiness will purify you."
"I don't give a rat's ass about His Holiness," I said, still blubbering. "I don't give a rat's ass about His consorts, His purity or what any of it means. It has no bearing on me. Have fun. You'll be rid of me in two weeks." As I wiped away the tears and started to sober up a bit, I wondered what circle of hell was reserved for those who talk smack about the Dalai Lama.
When my dad called the next day I was surprised and a little embarrassed to feel so glad to hear from him. It wasn't clear if I was glad because I was homesick for the brand name of abuse and insanity I was most familiar with or simply because it was someone else's turn to treat me like dirt for awhile. In any case, I felt prepared--even eager--to talk to my dad like he was my dad for once and not the puddle of piss or dirty diaper I usually envisioned when speaking to him. Rufus answered and played gatekeeper. "Juuuuuust a minute," he lisped into the telephone receiver. "Yeeees, he is here, but I'll have to see if he wants to talk to you. Hang on a moment please...Chuck." Rufus winked at me, rolled his eyes and held out the receiver. I had informed him that my father's name was Charlie and that he hated being called Chuck. Rufus, I had lately observed, related to others by joining them in their disputes. The more 'normal' the person on your shitlist, the more Rufus enjoyed heaping the dirt with you. Unlike his submissive cohorts, he had a genuine punk rock disgust with just about everything: the gay community, the straight community, the non-believers, the true-believers, you name it. I could not fathom how or why he had chosen to adopt Tibetan Buddhism--a philosophy that encourages letting go of anger, unconditional forgiveness and compassion--for an identity. There was nothing about this guy that wasn't conditional, or angry. Now I understood. It was only a matter of time before he had me pegged for some kind of phony. But here he was, trying to get back on the right foot--hand, rather--since the falling out last night. I realized then that this man was insane; I could never live with these people for more than the month we agreed on. But his gesture of solidarity informed me that something deep within him understood that he had gone too far, exercised too much bitterness.
It allowed me to think for the first time in a long while that maybe not everyone hated me--at least not as much as I did. Maybe I had gone too far, in my negative assessments of others. Perhaps my old man was owed a little more credit. He was torn after all, between a crazy bitch who loved him and a disaffected son who hated him. Though the old bastard was only to eager to nurture his ill will and contempt toward his spawn, he still felt some sense of responsibility toward me. His calls were always grudging, his attempts to reach out awkward, shallow and insincere and his judgments were Stalinesqe. But he at least bothered to make the calls, make the judgments and check up now and again to make sure his first born mistake was still breathing. And that was more than some who hold the vaunted position of "Dad" were, are, or ever will be capable of.
I picked up the phone. "Hi dad."
"How's the igloo coming along?"
"And your ass?" It was the same tone he used when questioning me about grades.
"Your ass? Has it been compromised?" If not for the previous statement, I would not have recognized the joke. Normally when my dad made fun of my troubles it pissed me off. But that day I just sighed and smiled.
"No dad. It's still there and in good working order. What's up?"
"Nothing. Just wanted to make sure you got that Greyhound ticket. Ought to be there by now.
"Yeah. It came in today's mail... Thanks."
"Okay, good. So you're getting along okay then...? With the...nymphomaniac Russian amputees?
"Good. We'll see you in a week then."
As I set the phone down, I turned around to an audience of gay Tibetan Buddhist monks and their symbionts and basement dwellers, their eager faces hanging on every word.
"So," Rufus intoned, speaking for all of them in his girly, mischievous voice, "what did Daddy have to say?"
Without hesitation or mirth I said, "He wanted to know how my ass was holding up in this, your humble den of sin." Everyone laughed at the same time.
"Papa worried about your ass huh?" Rufus emoted sarcastically. "Oh the trials and tribulations you have had to endure in our ssssssssssinful enclave, it is shocking to the Chris-tian ear isn't it? My, my, my, the things you straight people have to put up with. You're almost worse off than the mainstream gay community!" It would have been nice to hear the opinion of the straight guy in the basement on that, but after all this time I had yet to meet him. All I know is that for a moment we all forgot to judge each other by own prejudicial standards. For a moment I wasn't their spiritually lazy, straight white alcoholic and they weren't my queer manipulative, seedy Buddhist guru hosts. We were just freaks, sharing a moment of freak solidarity.