A LOVE STORY
Mel Waldman
“I was molested by my stepfather for years,” my new patient confessed.
“Did anyone know?”
“I told my mother. She didn’t believe me.”
I sat on a reclining leather chair in my Greenwich Village office and waited. My patient sat across from me. He had refused to lie on the couch.
“I was a victim until I ran away from home last year at the age of 15.”
“Where did you go?”
“The Streets.”
Silence. (My office is small and rectangular. There’s no place to hide except in the anguished silence that sometimes surrounds us, engulfing us in a claustrophobic universe. If the Void is not filled with sound, from time to time, my office is a tomb of silence. Still, I wait for my patients. They choose when they wish to communicate.)
“Got high, drinking and drugging. Sold my body. Blacked out. Broke down. OD’d. Flunked at that too. Didn’t die. Woke up in rehab. Ran away. Freaked out. Went to the funny farm.”
Silence.
“The shrinks played with my brain. Shrunk my madness. Straightened me out against my will.”
He glared at me.
“Released me to you. Here I am.”
Silence.
“What do you want?”
“To die.”
“Do you plan to kill yourself?”
“No. I’m HIV Positive. Don’t have to do nothing.”
“You’re young. You can fight...”
“Don’t want to live.”
“So what do you want from therapy?”
“Yes, what do I want?” my patient whispered.
Silence.
Waiting for the boy to speak, I studied him. He was at least 6 feet tall, thin and muscular-perfectly sculpted with blond hair and azure eyes. He didn’t look sick. Although he wore a white T-Shirt, jeans and white sneakers, he still looked like an all-American model from GQ. But he was only a boy.
“I want to tell my girl,” he announced, grinning wickedly, revealing movie star-white teeth.
“You haven’t?”
“Never got the guts.”
“So why now?”
“Therapy’s a lot of B.S. Garbage. But maybe I can accomplish this one thing.”
“When do you want to do it?”
“Now. She’s in the waiting room.”
“Okay. Bring her in.”
She looked about 14 or 15. And she was short, about five-three even with high heels. Her jet black hair cascaded down her shoulders. She wore a black mini dress and a see-through tight silk blouse. She was braless, revealing small breasts. Her eyes were turquoise, covered with thick lashes. And if I had to rate her, I’d say she was drop-dead gorgeous. Yet I suspected she was a man in transition, with the help of an underground doctor, searching for an elusive identity.
I sat with them. And he told her he was HIV Positive. Didn’t know what to expect. But what happened next shook me a little. She grabbed him unexpectedly. I thought she was going to assault him. Then she kissed him passionately. And he responded.
“I love you!” she shouted. “And now we are the same. Now we are one!”
“What do you mean?” he asked, wearing a quizzical look.
“I’m HIV Positive too. Found out last month. Wanted to tell you. But I couldn’t. Prayed you were too. So we could be close.”
“Now we are one!”
They were on Cloud 9, high with an inexplicable joy of sharing a death sentence. And they were deeply in love, sharing an intimacy few lovers ever experience.
I met them over 20 years ago. After our first session, they came to see me once a week as a couple for 6 months. And then they died of full-blown AIDS at Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan. I spoke to a few big shots who bent the rules and let them stay in the same room.
Too weak to hold hands, they gazed at each other, their lusty eyes swallowing their last moments together in a visual caress. I saw their deep love. I felt it. And then I watched them pass away.
They taught me a lot, especially about love. I still remember.
