Page 471 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 441

you so.
“Not today. But what about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is another day.”
“Let me tell you something about tomorrow. Dr. Shrink said that by
the end of the decade, fifty percent of us will be dead from AIDS.”
“I thought he was supposed to cure your depression.”
“Fifty percent. Between the two of us, you and me, that’s one of us.”
“If I were gay and if you had AIDS—which I’m not and which you
don’t.”
“But I have this fear....”
“When you’re not a hypochondriac,” I said, “you’re a paranoid.”
“Why not combine the two? Have you ever thought that AIDS anxi-
ety may be worse than AIDS itself?”
“Leave it to you to find some complicated way to suffer from some-
thing you don’t have.”
“I’m not guilty.” The words bounced off the wall.
“What?”
“I don’t want to be punished for all those nights of fun. I don’t want
someone to say I got sick and died because I was a homosexual.” He
paused. “Do you understand that I liked being a homosexual? I took pride
in it. Even before I was with Kick, I had a positive vanity about it. People
can undo every good thing we did by saying we finally got ours. It’s all
so twisted.”
“So let Dr. Shrink untwist you.”
“That’s easy for you to say with your life record of six sexual contacts.”
Ryan laid out his diversionary tactic. “You don’t even know what’s the
length of a heartache.”
“That’s a non sequitur.”
“I’m a Gemini. Besides, it’s very sequitur after what I’ve been through.”
“Okay. I’ll bite. What’s the length of a heartache? Ten inches?”
“Very funny. It’s twice as long as the affair was itself.”
“So three years with Kick means six years to recover?”
“It’s compound interest.”
“Then there’s something to be said for one-night stands.”
“I dreamed last night I was being whipped by a man with muscular,
tattooed arms.”
“Ryan Steven O’Hara,” I said. “You’ve got to learn to let go.”
“Let go? Of the best thing that ever happened to me? No. I can’t. I
don’t know how. I don’t want to. If I had been straight and had suddenly
seen Kick, I would have turned gay like that!” He snapped his fingers.

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