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The Man in the Rearview Mirror
by Allen M. Price Have you ever watched your best friend die? Have you ever watched a grown man cry? Some say that life isn’t fair. I say that people just don’t care… I could hear it playing from inside my car as I dragged A.J.’s body into the underbrush along the side of the highway. It was one of his favorite Madonna songs. He played it and sang along to it every Saturday night on the way home from Boston. He loved Madonna, and wanted to live the American life. But life, ah, yes life: life was unkind to A.J., unwilling to give him the American dream, and his American love, Malik. He, Malik and I were med students. And the only black folks in the program. We were tight for the first two years, until A.J. flunked out at the end of the third. He said the pressure was too much. So to stay in the States he applied to another school and became a pharmacist. Malik and I finished the program, and then started our residencies. But shortly after that Malik got engaged and we hardly saw him. A.J. and I remained friends, and were best friends by the time I took the boards. We had a certain simpatico, people said, everywhere we went. Even after I found out he was gay, after I heard him turn down this smokin’ hot chick with a bootylicious ass who hit on him one night in a club. Dude, what’re you nuts? I asked him rhetorically. Only to find out the truth when the chick turned to me and said my boy’s a faggot ass nigga. I don’t know why he tried to hide it. Gay, straight, didn’t matter to me. I thought we were there for one another, like brothers. Well, almost. I’m African American. He was Black South African. And now that he’s dead I can verbalize it: quite the looker. A.J.’s shimmering brown eyes, deep black skin, bald head, thick chin beard, and South African accent got him mad attention. But he didn’t see it. He was too busy chasing the American dream to see anything besides making lots of money, buying high end clothes, eating out every night, having sex with straight men and trying to snag one of them for his own. He even stopped practicing his religion. I’ll admit now that gay sex tempted me, but acting on it wasn’t likely: my Catholic upbringing reigns over me like smog over L.A. But the only kind of dirt-filled air we get in this neck of the woods occurs late at night in the form of fog, especially on those long drives home from clubbing all evening in Boston, blanketing miles of trees on both sides of the highway, but doing little to dampen our spirits or stop us from going every Saturday night this summer. Perhaps it should have, tonight, because the fog followed us the whole way there. I drove with the windows down. When you go eighty-five to ninety miles an hour, there’s no need for an air conditioner—that is the air conditioner. An endless stretch of trees, dark and silent, ached for a touch of light. Dark. It was dark—inside and out—even though the yellowish full moon shone through the passing clouds. Silent. It was silent—inside and out—even though the car’s speed awakened the creatures of the night. A.J. was tweaked out. He had skimmed enough OxyContin from the drugstore he worked at for both of us. He didn’t give a shit about his job. After Malik got engaged, he stopped caring. Became depressed. Started taking antidepressants. And mixing them with the Oxys didn’t help matters. They heightened his disillusion. “Malik has everything,” A.J. repeated the whole drive there. “Everything is meaningless,” I repeated back. “A chasing after the wind.” A.J. was in love with Malik: who, he believed, had it all: African and American, finished med school, passed the boards, a resident, and engaged to an African American woman. A.J. wanted Malik as badly as an illegal immigrant working in the States wants to be a citizen. But at the same time A.J. wanted to be him. Wished he and Malik could be one and the same. It was becoming characteristic for A.J. to chase after something he couldn’t have. When we got to the club, I called my buddy who worked there so we could get in for free. A.J. gave me a dirty look. I tried reading his eyes to see where it was coming from, but it was like looking down a long and dark empty corridor, like the one we walked down to enter the club, bypassing the line. Then we went up the stairs, stood in front of the bar and scoured the room for a bit before A.J. went to get us drinks. I stepped over to the dance floor’s edge, and after waiting long minutes for A.J. to come back I turned to see him at the bar staring at me, like a guy who just saw his girlfriend kissing another guy. But he wasn’t staring at me, he was staring at Malik who was standing near the dance floor next to some half-naked bro—his hand on the back of the guy’s head, their lips inches away from each other’s. A.J told me on the first drive up to Boston that he had questioned if Malik was really straight. A.J. said he had messed around with more than enough straight guys to know. Then I questioned A.J. about his fascination with straight guys, his ritualistic behavior that consistently left him open to be anyone’s lock and key. “Straight guys don’t act all prissy,” he said, “I like a man. I don’t give a shit if he’s got a girlfriend.” “This too is meaningless,” I said, “a chasing after the wind.” “If I wanna chase after straight guys, what business is it of yours, anyway?” “It’s my business ’cause I’m the one who always has to pick up the pieces. Next time call your parents if you gonna keep doin’ this shit.” Well, he went off on me. Telling me that God had punished him the day he called home and told his parents that he flunked out of med school and then told them that he was gay, and they told him that gays were worse than pigs and dogs and should be killed, and to never come back to Johannesburg, because they weren’t his family anymore. It certainly explained why he stayed in the States. But I know better now. Steam fogged up the windows behind the shirtless bartenders; laser lights shot aimlessly in everyone’s face; smoke machines ejected smoke on to the dance floor; techno music blared from all corners of the room. A pair of baggy Polo jeans accentuated A.J.’s wide behind, and a Dolce & Gabbana embroidered t-shirt hid his stomach rolls while Malik showed off his muscular torso wearing a tank top and well-fitted jeans. A.J. didn’t work out like Malik did, but he had face, an attention-grabbing face that became austere the longer he stood there and stared at Malik—the drinks in his hands, implacable hatred seeping out his eyes. I could smell disaster in the air. It filled my lungs with each breath I took, and caused me to drift in and out of coherence. I tried to hold tight to the strings of reality because I knew the drip-drip-drip of A.J.’s accusations would cause a flood of problems Malik wouldn’t be able to handle. But the two hits of Oxy that A.J. had given me on the drive up were making my vision blurry and tripping my mind. It wasn’t until I heard A.J. shout you son-of-a-bitch that I came drugged to the surface, and realized that he had thrown both of the drinks in my face. It stunned me, just like the first time we drove by a rest stop on the way to Boston and he told me that he had had sex with straight guys in them before. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, “and don’t get on me either.” “The heart of fools is in the house of pleasure,” I said. “If you quote once more from that goddamn Bible…” he yelled. Then paused and said, “You make me laugh, you know that? You worship a god who strung up his own son to save the very people that He created. But call me a sinner, and tell me that I should be put to death cuz’ I’m attracted to guys, like I had any say in the matter!” It didn’t matter what I said. I couldn’t stop him. Nor could I stop him from going off on Malik. His voice screeched over the music. Fury, adoration, disbelief barked over every syllable. I closed my eyes, let the darkness consume me and waited for it to end, for everyone to stop gawking. But I waited and waited and waited beyond a point I know now put us in the situation we’re in right now. What made him think he’d get away with accusing Malik of being gay, confessing his love for Malik in front of everyone? What rules did he play by? What Hollywood movie was he living in? It was his choice to come to this country; use his initials instead of his real name Ayize Jama; chase a career that he’d never be able to attain; a guy that he’d never be able to have; a dream that’s not even real. He didn’t get it: the American dream is an illusion, and there’s a price one pays to create that illusion. It ain’t free. Nothing in this country is free. The white cracker who wrote the Declaration of Independence owned black slaves, and he knew what he was doing when he changed the pursuit of property to happiness. But I know better now. The trees cry with each swaying branch. Stars wink through the passing clouds. Darkness beckons for the moon’s light to dwindle. Fog blankets the highway I’m speeding down at 92 miles an hour. I look up into my rearview mirror, and all I can see are flashing red lights coming towards me, so I pull off the road. I peer deep into the mirror, and watch the police officer get out of his car, but as he walks towards me, all I can see is a white light undulating around him. Why do we have to pretend? Some day, I pray it will end. I hope it’s in this life… I sit staring at my face knotting with anguish while the lyrics hit my mind’s walls like never before. I can feel the pain without A.J.’s singing overpowering Madonna’s. Sadness taints my blood and floods the vessels of my body. But the sadness hasn’t anything to do with my murdering A.J., and making it look like a suicide. Nor does it have anything to do with my not telling him that I got a letter in the mail this morning saying that I won’t get my medical license because of the cheat sheet I was caught with while taking the last part of the boards. Or even the fact that I didn’t tell him my fiancée left me months ago when she followed me to a rest stop and saw me getting sucked off by my buddy. It’s seeing the real me behind my charades: a man who hides deep inside, who I have lost the real me behind: Malik. |
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