“Oliver,” he finally sighs.
The clock strikes one. We’ve both been standing in the samespot for an hour. Finally, he gives up. Walks away. Throws the daffodil he had picked for me into a puddle of muddy water. I rush to the puddle when he’s out of sight. Fish the bright flower out. Hold it in my palm as I clandestinely follow him.
The city streets are packed. It’s Sunday and the clouds are moving south. So are we. He doesn’t look back as he crosses Blackfriars Bridge. The water of the Thames looks murky. Like there are secrets buried at the bottom of the river. I hate secrets. A secret destroys its guardian, always. Pulls him away from those he loves. Secrets isolate.
I didn’t plan on following him like this. I thought seeing him again would give me the certainty I needed. To be with him or not to be with him, that is the question. Now here I am, doing neither. Living in the indecision.
But I do have a plan. I’ll observe him in his new habitat. Try to understand why he feels this is our time. I’ll deduce how I feel about this city independent of him. I’ve been free of him for sixty years. Free and lonely. Free and yet chained to him by the fate only we share. What’s a little more time to figure out how I feel when all we have is time?
The winter of discontent I read about in the papers is officially over, but the smell of garbage still fills the city. Trash is everywhere. Heaps of it. A couple of rats scurry in and out of a trash bag. I watch as a fat rat shares its bounty with a feebler rat. I almost stop following Shams to watch the rats a little longer. I had no idea rats had empathy for other rats. All these years, and still I have moments of revelation. Perhaps there’s more empathy in the world than I thought.
The smells change as Shams approaches the Brixton Tubestation and turns onto Railton Road. The warm smell of food fills the air. Spices from faraway islands, brought to London because of economic necessity.
A handsome adolescent approaches me. Wavy brown hair. Bright blue eyes. The Oxford shirt he wears is about three sizes too big, his jeans a size or two too small. “You lost?” he asks.
“I— No, sorry—” Shams turns another corner. I need to keep him in my sights.
“Here, this’ll help.” The guy hands me a copy ofGay News. “We’re working on a new paper. We’re calling it Gay Noise. Get it?Gay News.Gay Noise.”
“I get it, yeah.” I see a bookshop on the corner Shams turned on. I walk toward it.
The paper boy follows me. “Not implying it’s me starting it. I’m the errand boy. The guys in my squat are the heroes. We’re one of the last squats standing. You’re American, aren’t you? I’m good with accents. I’m from Sheffield. Up north.”
I ignore my overeager new friend as I search for Shams. He’s gone. Disappeared on Chaucer Road. It’s almost too poetic. Shams and his love for poetry. He infected me with it. I must’ve read hundreds of thousands of poems by now. Neruda and Rumi and Emily Dickinson. And yes, Chaucer. He who said,So short our lives, so hard the lessons.Well, he was half right in my case. If a short life is full of hard lessons, what is the longest life full of?
“If you’re new to the city, you can peek through the London section of this. Lots of great spots. If you’re sticking around Brixton, just avoid the George at all costs.”
“The George?” I ask.
“Racist pub. They banned gays a few years ago. One of my friends was beat up in there earlier this year.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“That’s why I dream of travel. There must be somewhere on this planet where we can be truly free without fear, right?” He pulls a copy of theSpartacus Gay Guidefrom his bag, and hands it to me. On the cover is a photo of four macho white men in front of an eighteenth-birthday cake. A birthday I’ll never reach. Eternally stuck at seventeen. “Sometimes, I flip through the pages and dream of going to some gay beach in Spain, or to a disco in New York. But look who I’m talking to. You been to New York?”
I flip through the pages of the gay travel guide and feel shocked to find not just guides to gay bars and gay-friendly hotels in cities all over the world but also a “Paedophile Vacations Holiday Help Portfolio,” for “boy-lovers.” It makes me feel sick. Thinking that this book lumps me in with men booking their travels based on a country’s age of consent. I thrust the book back into his hands too aggressively. “I’m sorry, I’m meeting a friend,” I say. “I’ll need to say goodbye now.”
“Right.” It’s not until I let him down that I see his loneliness. That’s why he wouldn’t let me go. The poor guy is desperate for love, company, belonging. I wonder why he’s living in a squat. What kind of home did he escape from? He shuffles away.
I enter the bookshop, wondering if Shams is inside. It would be just like him to drown his sorrows in the poetry section of some charming local bookshop.
“Can I help you?” I look up and see a young butch standing in front of me. She has dark skin and a short Afro. She wears a long-knit sweater that travels down below her knees. The pattern is captivating. Colors blend into each other, like she’s wearing an Impressionist painting.
“Oh yes, I... Do you have a poetry section?” I ask.
She nods. “We do, but it’ll be Black poets only. This is a Black bookshop, yeah?” She looks at me hard, like she’s trying to see if this scares me. “You did know that, right?”
I didn’t know that. But how wonderful that a Black bookshop exists. A gay newspaper. A Black bookshop. All unimaginable when Shams and I met. Perhaps someday I’ll be accepted too, as this strange immortal creature I am now.
I stupidly recite a poem aloud to her. “I know you’ve heard the boogie-woogie rumble of a dream deferred.”
She laughs with the warmth of someone who is letting down their guard. Whereas the squatter emitted desperation, she glows with contentment. “All right then, the white boy from America knows his Langston Hughes. But do you know Phillis Wheatley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Claude McKay?”
“Yes, yes, no,” I say as I follow her to the poetry section.
She recites a poem as she pulls a book out for me. “If we must die, O let us nobly die. So that our precious blood may not be shed in vain. Then even the monsters we defy shall be constrained to honor us.” She lets the powerful words linger a moment. “He wrote it in response to the Red Summer.” Seeing the blankness on my face, she explains, “Whites in America attacked Blacks in riots all over the country. In dozens of cities. Killed hundreds.”
“When was this?” I ask.
