Sunday Memories: In three acts G dies in Manhattan in 1993

I
He’s in Cabrini on 19th Street. The nurse who loves him the most is six feet tall and just finished becoming a woman. Her hands are huge. She could pick G up when he was bigger and now as he dwindles into the bed she still swoops him up into her arms and we see how much he has left from how small he is in her arms.

His family comes in from Queens to visit. Four of G’s six brothers are wearing his suits. They are either too tall or too short, too thin or too fat for the suits. Looking at them in G’s clothes is like looking at G in funhouse mirrors.

When they leave, G turns to M “Couldn’t they have just waited until I died?,” he asks.

II

I turn the corner onto 14th street to go to the wake at the funeral home and see the big straight brother who hates gay people beating the shit out of the thin delicate gay brother who in his own words is “a screaming queen.” Somebody calls the cops. The gay brother’s suit, formerly G’s, is ripped in many places.

III

It’s the day of the funeral. I turn onto 14th street to go to the church across the street from the funeral home. Cop cars line the street. My heart sinks. It’s only 10 in the morning. More trouble already? When I get to the steps of the church I find out it’s just Law and Order setting up for a shoot later on in the day.

The Map to My Heart

Little Asian girl about four years old, a NY city subway map firmly in her mouth - it protrudes down like a single buck tooth. She holds, with all this commitment, her mother's hand, who juggles a stroller and cell phone, lost on the corner of 27th and Broadway.