Silent Echo

Eddie settles for a gesture I’m used to. The gentle shoulder pat. I’m so used to the gesture that I barely notice it anymore, or let it bother me. Where once my close friends hugged me, they now pat me on the shoulder. And handshakes are nonexistent. It is my reality. I accept it.

Numi doesn’t accept it. Eddie’s little gesture bugs my Nigerian friend. I can see it in his alert eyes. He wishes people would treat me the same. Sometimes, he insists on it. But lately, he has eased up on people. Insisting that people act a certain way generally causes conflict. People do not want to be told how to act, especially towards someone with an infectious disease.

Eddie sits opposite me, next to Numi. I try not to think that he’s sitting as far away from me as possible, but I suspect he is. Such thoughts get me nowhere. Such thoughts remind me that I’m less than human, unworthy of contact or love or compassion. Sympathy maybe. Distant sympathy.

Do you blame them? I think again for perhaps the thousandth time. They value their lives. Contact with a diseased man isn’t valuing their lives, now is it? It’s putting themselves at risk, or so they think.

Wrong or not, I get it, and so I sigh as Eddie gestures awkwardly towards me. He opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out. His hand sort of flops around like something dying on a hook. Finally, he drops it to the table, unsure of what to do with it or himself or what to say to me.

So I help a brother out. “Eddie, I have AIDS. Full-blown fucking AIDS with a lung cancer chaser. I’m as good as dead. So stop behaving like a scared dick. I don’t have time for dicks. Just be real.”

He nods. We’ve known each other since high school, where he and I had been close friends. Eddie went on to marry his high-school sweetheart, Olivia, a girl who had been my sweetheart as well. Secretly, of course. Eddie and I had met Olivia on the same night. We both liked her, although I suspected that I liked her more. As I had been working up the courage to go talk to her, Eddie had beat me to the punch. I had hated him for that at the time, but went on to accept it. Eddie and Olivia hit it off, although once, when she had been drinking, Olivia admitted to me privately that she wished I had asked her out instead of Eddie.

My connection with Olivia would carry on into our adult lives. A sweet connection really, since we never acted inappropriately. Still, more than once we had discussed what life might have been like if the two of us had gotten together. It was a sweet thought, and often I caught her looking at me sadly. Eddie, I think, caught us looking at each other as well, but said nothing.

Now Eddie looks sheepish and finally says, “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“So am I.”

“I should have come by more often.”

Numi, who is sitting perfectly still with his hands folded in his lap, says, “By more often you mean never one time?”

Numi and Eddie have never liked each other. Numi had always thought Eddie was an asshole. Probably because Eddie made it a habit to cheat on Olivia. And Numi knew of my fondness for Olivia.

Eddie looks at Numi long and hard. Numi continues staring forward, hands resting comfortably in his lap. He literally doesn’t move a muscle.

Finally, Eddie looks back at me. “I just didn’t know what to say, you know?”

I nod. This is coming from my closest high school friend. A guy I had spent most of my youth with. Hell, I had been his best man, watching him as he married a girl I knew I had feelings for.

“It’s okay,” I say as Numi frowns. “You’ve been busy.”

I know I’m making excuses for Eddie; I’ve done this for most of my life. Eddie was always getting into trouble, and getting me into trouble as well. I also know that most people aren’t so busy that they can’t take a few minutes to visit a dying friend. But I’m not here to make people hate themselves. I do enough self-hating for everyone.

“No, man. I’m unemployed again. I have no excuse. I don’t know what to say.”

I like that about Eddie. He can be real and honest. Most of my friends are honest. It’s a trait I look for in friends. If you’re dishonest, then beat it. Who needs you, right?

Anyway, Eddie is growing a goatee and I see a tattoo hiding under his short sleeve. I wonder about both, especially the tattoo. I try to grasp its meaning: two vertical lines topped with a horizontal one, kind of like a capital T but the two lines make it plain it is a symbol of some sort. The horizontal top is curved a little. Maybe it’s his name in Chinese or Sanskrit or who the hell knows. I figure Eddie is going through some kind of midlife crisis with the tat and goatee.

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“Look, I’m an asshole. I’m the worst fucking friend.”

“No,” I say. He doesn’t need to be down on himself. His reaction is normal, after all. I didn’t expect any more, or any less. “You’re not an asshole.”

Numi makes the smallest movement of his head to indicate that he disagrees with me. I ignore Numi.

Eddie doesn’t notice. He says, “A friend of mine, a good friend of mine is…”

“Dying,” I say.

“Yeah, that. And I don’t even have the balls to see him.”

“You do have little balls,” I say. It is part of our humor. My balls are big, his balls are small, and vice versa. Har, har. It’s what guys do. Simple creatures we are.

But Eddie isn’t up to my playful ribbing. I’m barely up to it myself. That joke took a lot of energy. He says, “How… how did this happen?”

“How did I get AIDS?”

He nods and shrugs a little. Even mentioning the word makes him clearly uncomfortable. More so, I see that he’s embarrassed that others might have overheard us. Numi misses nothing. He sees Eddie’s embarrassment and frowns even more.

“I had a steady girl,” I say. “She had it and didn’t know it. A few weeks into our little relationship, the condom came off and never went back on. We saw each other on and off for a few months. Months that were filled with lots of sex. She had some random blood work done, and the results came back. She had it, and now I have it, too.”

Eddie turns a little pale. I avoid using the word “AIDS” for his benefit. He says, “But I thought, you know, guys didn’t really get it from girls.”

“Not common, certainly, but there are times when it’s not safe to have sex with a woman.”

He nods. “Her period.”

I nod. “Bingo.”