J -- The Cruise

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You mustn't profit from acts of violence committed by yourself. J had had a friend named Arthur, a "pillar" of the gay community (a pillar with no building!) and Arthur had fallen in love with a hustler from P Street. Arthur died, the hustler inherited, no one questioned. The ex-wife grieved and wrung her hands -- no one paid attention to her. Then the hustler took on a name and an identity: Johnny People. Johnny disappeared from the community, money lets you do that. Then about a year later J took an exotic cruise to a semi-imaginary country far away from all probability. No pillars here, my Lord. Johnny was also on the cruise with yet a new name and a new persona for him to "people". And Johnny developed a sexual fixation on the elusive J but that didn't matter too much, as it turned out.

They stood in their life jackets. I feel I know you, Johnny said. My name is Kevin.

I don't know you, J said. You are a total stranger.

Maybe, Kevin said, but still... it's the strangeness that feels so familiar. Flowers in windows. The all-clear whistle.

The rocking of the boat made it difficult to think. Strangers were "exchanging the peace" in the so-called library, filled with best-sellers and out-of-date travelogues. How I am missing my daily dose of the Times, Kevin said. Also of course the Internet. One needs these things.

Did you know that I am 14 years old and horny as hell on the Internet? Kevin asked. That's the role I play there, that's my "space". My list of dear friends goes scrolling for ages. It's all just a lovely fantasy perhaps. I have this beautiful sense of freedom.

His clothes were vulgar and at the same time very drab. Without Arthur he seemed loose, directionless.

The boat had a daily wine-tasting yet it always seemed to be the same wine. Something from California with a screw top.

A midnight costume party. Many didn't have much costume to speak of and didn't speak anyway. J would haunt the library hoping someone would return a new "sensation novel". Most of the sensations one knew of had been flogged to death.

The cruise ship had filled the ship's chapel with sound equipment. You couldn't move or see the altar. A blasphemy but no one said anything. People averted their eyes. Down the corridor, Kevin won Bingo hands down and grabbed J in the crush on the way out. I want you to come celebrate with me. Thank God for J that Tina was there. Tina pushed with that amazing pectoral strength, pushed and exerted her will. Get lost, you loser. Pulsing bystanders with their shoulder-hair a-bristle. We run a polite ship here. There will be none of this, there will be none of that. Slap slap. Push the blighter to the deck's edge, push a little farther. They say he murdered Arthur. No no, Tina, it's all right. Vacationers lifted their parasols as they strolled up and down the passage, and it was up and down, such was the naughtiness of the waves. Then the parasols fell like missiles. Kevin's knocked an old man down from his walker. No. No. There will be none of that, my good man.

Tina asked: What do you think? Should I push this asshole overboard?

Relax Tina, J said.

Arthur would not have wanted such a thing. Dear gentle Arthur.

There were open sores all over Kevin's back and he was "peopled" with bruises worse than Johnny's were in his street days. When the boat lurched, his cocktail would spill and the syrup would linger in the pocked spaces. The sky was purple but not a bruisy purple, more a livid color like a piece of carbon paper that had gotten wet. There was nothing left in his glass. Kevin, you just threw it overboard. That's a crime of the sea.

The glass was just glass, Kevin said. You are what I'd call litter, man. Leave me alone.

You left him suffocated in an alley, J said. Gay people were the only family he still had. We don't do that to each other.

J said all this but kept his mouth closed. Kevin rocked into the wee hours. Disco had been resuscitated for the 100th time. When the man disappeared overboard not even the purser said anything. It isn't as though these were ties that broke down. All ties were broken. The thing about "you mustn't profit" was really more structural. That is, the person who broke human laws had then to submit to different ones, to animal ones. And then it didn't matter. Nobody notices say a dead seagull when its body disappears. Or a dead squirrel. Gurus say that the right to be human is precious, has to be attained -- not earned exactly but at least not spurned exactly. Money is so beside the point, sex is so irrelevant. Anyway it had taken this orgiastic cruise to turn J into a quasi monk. He ended up hardly leaving his stateroom. The purple light poured into the window and thickened like glue. It was hard to read by. Lots of time for thinking. No hangover, he didn't drink. No pain, no nothing. So what is this nada nada, where is your faith? He tried to pray, managed a little, but couldn't shake the hatred in his heart, not completely. This was just one more piece of damage that Johnny had done to things. The kid had maybe just been scrambling for security but but. But to let a person die. How did you pray around that? The truth is that evil is suffocating. It exists. It exists. Or if it's an illusion then equally so are the people who give into it. Surely they are the ones who don't exist. Can we just forget about them? Why not, why not? When the ship docked at some wretched unknown port, J got off and then refused to get back on. Let the world be my monastery. What I renounce is having any preference. So he turned his back on the cruise. Because he never went back, he also never heard that a man had gone overboard.

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