HIS NAME WAS DAVID AND HE WOULD HAVE BEEN
fifty the week after he died by the hand
that ripped-out the shunt implanted in his
chest (so that needles could be inserted
into the heart veins because those in his
arms and legs by now had collapsed). David
was an outdoor worker, big and lusty, before
he acquired immune deficiencies surrendering
his body to every invasion. When he was
forty-four, just short of his forty-fifth
birthday, he'd entered into a longterm love
with a twenty-five year old man named (?)
Bill. Call me Bill. The third year he began
his death journey that he completed last
month. The week before he died he'd invited
his special friends to celebrate and say
good-by to another California forty-niner.
The next Saturday he gathered his pills and
told the thirty-year old goodbye and asked
him to come back in two hours and call the
police. Time to die. When I came back at
three (call me Bill) he shouted from behind
the bathroom door it was taking longer and
to go away again. Please, Bill. The pills
they'd given him were weak or slow. Then,
in the warm tub, thin man now in commanding
water, hair patchy, lower limbs wasted away,
David ripped-out the tubes to his heart.