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the post 8/15 issue
"the confrontation of aesthetics..."
vol. i,  issue xix
Sept. 11, 2003
writeThis
sept.  2003





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shut the
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magazine
Remember 8/15
art & man
roger bonair agard

“the artist…”  she tells me “is eons ahead of the man”
and when I hear this
  I think of Curtis’ smile  -  continuous mischief
always playful and attentive  always ready in a crunch
any danger;  any adventure
how he might be glad that I had become  ‘artist’
how the pain of his cramped closet
  the one my friendship with him kept shut and suffocating
might have become a little easier to bear 

how his liver must have shredded inside
  as he joined our absurd teenage games
the teasings and the drive-by stonings
just so as not to give himself away
how that pain   and the bitter syrup he drank as he mingled it with his love for me
     might seem a sip sweeter

the artist  has always been bane and darling
              protected by those we scorn
              abhorred by those we champion
Curtis wore me like a personal cross
  the thing under which he hid
  while he bore my cruel weight like a carcass
  to the hill of his own destruction

  We kept at this one-sided love
intersected by a woman whom we both loved
he;  as a sister – I;  in that new found worship of the flesh
we feted  fought   made art and laughter
tight together in our joy for one another
cramped together in the cannister of one another’s denial

so when Curtis disappeared for months
and my calls were answered only with
‘everything’s alright; I’ll see you soon…’
I’ll be back in time to drink for Christmas
                  in time to learn the holiday repertoire
                  in time for all the important performances…
I thought nothing of his illness

…and when Marcia pulled up to my house screaming
to finally announce curtis death
by AIDS
I was not ready
         for the cruel pop-quiz of a self-examination
  the question recurring like an insistent fraction

would you have been his friend…?
would you have been his friend if you knew…?
would you have been his friend if you knew he were gay?

…I still do not know the answer to that question
  only that I was never as good a friend as he deserved

Marcia fell into my arms that spring
  Curtis’ phoenix energy no longer a buffer
  and she loved me   more than I deserved
Like any ‘good’ disciple   I denied Curtis
when it appeared our association would fasten me to the cross of his imagined crimes
the punishable social court of his homosexuality
  and so escaped the bloody stigmata of his love for me

Sometimes I like to think…as I wish for a time I cannot take back
and apologies I will never get to make
    that Curtis knew what Staceyann tells me everyday I hold her close
  safe in my choices and hers
“the artist is eons ahead of the man…”
and that he saw    in the short mandate of his years
that somewhere in my future     the man might catch up
…and he decided right then and there to love me
    well before  I was worth it.








Roger Bonair Agard ©2003


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