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Survivors
by Kim Addonizio
(12/01/02)
He and his lover were down to their last few T-cells and arguing over who was going to die first. He wanted to be first because he did not want to have to take care of his lover's parrot or deal with his lover's family, which would descend on their flat after the funeral, especially the father who had been an Army major and had tried to beat his son's sexual orientation out of him with a belt on several occasions during adolescence; the mother, at least, would be kind but sorrowful, and secretly blame him, the survivor -- he knew this from her letters, which his lover had read to him each week for the past seven years. he knew, too, that they all -- father, mother, two older brothers -- would disapprove of their flat, of the portrait of the two of them holding hands that a friend had painted and which hung over the bed, the Gay Freedom Day poster in the bathroom, all the absurd little knickknacks like the small plastic wind-up penis that hopped around on two feet; maybe after his lover died, he would put some things away, maybe he would even take the parrot out of its cage and open the window so it could join the wild ones he'd heard of, that nested in the palm trees on Dolores Street, a whole flock of bright tropical birds apparently thriving in spite of the chilly Bay Area weather -- he would let it go fly off, and he would be completely alone then; dear God, he thought, let me die first, don't let me survive him.
©1999 by Kim Addonizio
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Kim Addonizio is the co-editor of the new anthology Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos. She is the author of three books of poetry from BOA Editions:The Philosopher's Club, Jimmy & Rita, and Tell Me, which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. A book of stories, In the Box Called Pleasure, was published by Fiction Collective 2. She is also co-author, with Dorianne Laux, of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. Her awards include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal. Her poetry and fiction have appeared widely in anthologies and literary journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, Chick-Lit, Dick for a Day, Gettysburg Review, Paris Review, and Threepenny Review. She currently teaches private workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Survivors is reprinted from In The Box Called Pleasure, by permission from Fiction Collective Two.
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