Page 409 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 379

doing for ages to women. Get over it. Get something out of it.” She took
his hand in hers.
“What am I supposed to get out of it?”
“Abort him. Forget him. Nothing goes on forever.”
“Being without him will go on forever.”
Kweenie turned to us. “You’re wrong,” she said to Solly. “Ry’s not
obsessed. He’s possessed.”
“Maybe,” Solly said, “we should call an exorcist before he says your
mother sucks cock in hell.”
“Why can’t you turn Kick free?” she asked.
“Because,” Ryan said, “I’m a carnivore. Because he’s a carnivore.
Because muscle is a specialty act. An eccentric act. Because muscle is about
incarnation, about becoming meat, worshiping meat. Because he wanted
me to love his flesh, worship his flesh, become his flesh...”
“As always,” Solly said, “Catholicism.”
“...because some tribes sacrifice blonds to the sun. Because we prom-
ised each other certain things, certain things only buddies can prom-
ise each other late at night, certain things that only a man can promise
another man...”
Kweenie stuck her index finger into her open mouth and made gag-
ging sounds.
“...certain things I no longer find it tolerable to live without now that
I’ve tasted them.”
“Is this love?” Kweenie asked.
“It’s addiction,” Solly said. “It’s harder to get over than love.”
“This isn’t funny,” Ryan said.
Life, John Lennon said, is what happens to you while you’re making
other plans. Life, Cicero said, is a play with a bad last act.
“Life,” Solly said, “is a joke.”
Ryan went for the punch line.

4

During the next month, Ryan holed up in his Victorian. He wrote fast
and furiously on a new manuscript. He called me on the phone. “It’s post-
gay. It’s post-Manifesto,” he said. “I call it Killing Time till Armageddon.”
“Finally, your memoirs?” I asked.
“No way. I hate sensitive little persons earnestly forging their souls in
the fire of life and emerging whole as Thomas Merton on the last page.
I’m an asshole. How can I confess that to the world? I’m an asshole. If

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