Paul came back to Paris from his trip to San Francisco with two marked up copies of my manuscript in his overstuffed suitcase. He had no concrete job leads in the U.S., and there was a warning from his business partner in Germany that he’d better land some contracts pronto. I got the idea that whatever had happened between Paul and his ex during the trip had confirmed that their relationship was indeed over.
In any case, whatever was going on with Paul and Gary had little effect on what was going on between Paul and me. We continued to allow ourselves to believe that it was anti-gay red tape that was the principal hurdle in our development as a couple. And perhaps there was some truth to that. As we’d never have the chance to explore our relationship in a world in which our partnership was rewarded with the full rights granted a heterosexual couple, we’d never know how things would have turned out had we been granted full privileges.
Instead of worrying anymore, I dove into the manuscripts, copying both Paul’s and Dan’s comments into one master copy.
Paul thought it was “excellent.” He asked me a lot of questions like, “Why did you include those lists?” and “Who was this character supposed to be?” He said there were parts that put him in a “strange” mood. If I wanted to get any more out of Paul I’d have to push his buttons, and I’d had enough of that during our years together in Paris. I copied a few of his questions into my master manuscript and went on.
Dan told me over the phone that he thought he’d “got off cheap.” He found my “negative” portrayal of everyone (including myself) too harsh. Perhaps it was indicative of a flaw in my otherwise entertaining literary personality. “Just let people know more about your humor. That will explain the fear behind your judgments.” Which served to remind me of aspects of Dan’s personality I’d left out—the way he always tried to apologize for anything that wasn’t pure fun, bursting with hope and optimism. Maybe he had gotten off too light. Should I have granted him the special privilege of playing victim?
It was almost useless to reflect on such things. There would be no way to rewrite the very core of the text. The words on the page could be manipulated, shuffled, clarified, cut and pasted, but their context would always be shaped by my personality, and the book would turn out more or less the same—longer or shorter, clearer or more ambiguous, more descriptive or more abstract—but it would never be anything but a little slice from the mass of language and references that had become my written identity. My book’s Dan would never be Dan, really, just as I would never be me. The book was never about Dan or Paul or even me, really. It was about itself—confined (like the actual people who had inspired the characters within it) to a limited range of characteristics and functions.
I’d grown up an angry young fag in America, and that had dictated much of the content of the timeline that was my life. I could have been an angry young American jock with a football. Or an angry young inner-city pimp with a switchblade. Or an angry young immigrant in Paris. Or an angry young rebel in Palestine. With all of these hypothetical boys, I shared at least one thing—the same insatiable surge of testosterone beating unpredictably through every nerve of flesh, the same desperate rush of chemicals known by any kid whose body has ever begun the cruel transformation into manhood. Mine led me to come out in high school, wear punk outfits and makeup to gym class, and make out with a boy at school dances. Theirs led them in other directions.
As I trace over the memories of the path my life has taken, I am surprised to find myself increasingly uninterested in their significance and increasingly fascinated by their content. I think of Derek, Paul, Dan, Bob—all my lovers. I think of the places I’ve visited, the work I’ve done, the rites I’ve staged… Everything is blurred together now in one massive concentration of little black marks on a few hundred sheets of white paper. But my job is not done. I must continue to catalogue each detail in the ever-expanding manuscript of my life, before it slips away. Eternally in need of revision, this timeline won’t be completed until the day I am finally unable to revise it.