THE MALL OF THE INEVITABLE

David gave these gryphon candlesticks to Craig,
who promptly died and left them to his lover, John.
Before he phoned the family, John lifted
the gryphons from Craig's mantel. David helped
select a funeral suit from the closet, while I rummaged
gingerly through the drawers beneath Craig's platform bed.

Keep looking, said John, you'll know what for when you Änd it,
then, breaking into sobs: He just wanted a little
more time! David held out a tuxedo jacket. My hand
closed on something squashy wrapped in cellophane:
I pulled out the most enormous pink dildo
I'd ever seen, thicker than my arm. Held it up, blushing.
That would be it, said John. Can't have the mother finding that.
Then softly to David: He never got to try it out.

John died at home the following spring,
attended by his ex-wife Anne and former lover, Buzz.
One day Buzz dropped by our house, handing me
two heavy paper sacks—John's gardening books—
and gave David the candlesticks and John's bishop's ring.
Buzz got John's apartment, died there three years later.

How to diagram the vectors of promise and loss
among David and his friends? Patrick was David's executor
but Patrick died first. David gave Patrick's car to Jim, who died next.
Craig and David and John promised to be there for one another.
David loved those gryphon candlesticks. When he finally
gave them to Craig, was it with foreknowledge of reinheritance?
If you love something, give it away: it will come back
to you, but dragging sorrow. In these times, we loved.

I remember most the weekend the Quilt came to town:
colorful circus of loss, memorial grid laid across the Convention
Center floor. Walking those canvas aisles, it was easy to parse
one's intake of grief: simply focus on one block at a time, and—
as in any war—keep your head down. But I made the mistake
of wandering upstairs. Drawn to a porthole window large and deep

enough to cradle a sleeper, I looked out at the enormity below,
the staggering rush of more than I could name. It felt
like a dream of falling. I stumbled back downstairs, found David
photographing the panel he'd made for Patrick. John was there,
bony and gaunt. He said he'd stopped counting. I felt like
some kind of fraud, a glitch spit out by a chewing beast intent
on swallowing them all. Craig shuffled up in his leather jacket,
his eyes a little scary. He grabbed John's hand: Let's get out of here.

____

Living in Houston in the 80s meant
losing a huge number of friends and neighbors to AIDS. I don't think people who didn't live through that time can fully appreciate its enormity, or the oppressive fearful inevitability that pervaded our lives. It truly felt like none of us were going to be spared. I want to document both that queasy reality and the enduring, spirited, dark humor—I think of it as "death camp"—with which we faced those times.

Editor's Note:

Ron Mohring's chapbook, The David Museum, can be purchased from the New Michigan Press at the NMP storefront.