this is a funeral procession: chapter three

i remember that conversation clearly because it was that night that jackson killed himself. bill found him hanging in the closet, their shared closet in their shared bedroom with two twin beds that had replaced their original queen. their shared bedroom in their shared apartment where they had long since stopped fucking.

i found bill walking downtown, in the middle of the street with cars honking. i put my arms around him and steered him on the sidewalk, and you may imagine it like a good Samaritan leading the blind but it was nothing like that because he was seeing so much more than any of us.

the worst had finally happened and bill was ready to take the world down with him; there would be a revolution and it would be bloody, it would be bloody, it would stain the streets red from all his broken hearts and battle wounds. we didn't speak as we walked, with bill reaching in to the passing trash cans, pulling out glass bottles and smashing them in the gutter. "this is a funeral procession!" he yelled. and then he stopped at the corner of pine and 2nd, he took off his ugly brown jacket, he took off his shirt and jeans and shoes and socks and underwear and scarf and gloves and he stood there, so unafraid, naked in the autumn wind.

"bill," i said, pulling him close to me, "come on bill, let's go home."

but this was the breaking point and you can't go back from there, this was the breaking point and he smashed glass after glass into the concrete. naked and loud, interrupting lief as we know it, bill stood there, a spectacle, an eye sore, a Fuck You.

and then the siren came, the cop car pulled up, its driver eying us with something like disgust.

"arrest me, kill me, rape me in your back seat," bill spat at the cop as he read him him 'rights.' "no amount of cruelty could surprise me anymore."

"bill!" i cried, horrified and terrified for him, pleading with the cop and explaining what he had been through. and as the cop handcuffed him and ducked him in to the back of the police car, i followed behind like a worried mother. the officer held out his hand to stop me - "are you kidding me? this isn't a fucking ambulance, it's an arrest. you can just hop on in to provide moral support."

"arrest me too," i pleaded, hands up and palms together, my first prayer in years.

"you're not disrupting public, you're not even drunk; you're just standing there. i can't arrest you. now go home, lady."

i looked at bill sitting in the backseat, arrested on charges of being too honest. hands locked behind him and face red and wet, eyes full of ghosts. ghosts of love lost, ghosts of life lost, the ghosts of the empty space that is supposed to be full and alive between us.

these are the hardest moments. when everything falls apart and all the struggles and heartbreaks and nightmares inside of us all collect into one, into one culminating event, one convergence of time and place; something terrible, something tangible. and these are the things that we can't do alone. so i stood in front of the cop car and i took off all my clothes too, standing naked in the middle of the city, in the middle of the world, where bill had just been. and i held my arms out in to the sky and i gave myself away for jackson, for bill, for you, and i screamed this is a funeral! this is a funeral! this is a funeral! this is a protest!