Bequest by Amy Cook

“Just put it in your bag.” 

Saturday afternoon, just after Christmas. Morgan has been dead for twenty days, but his garden apartment in the Chelsea section of Manhattan brims with festivity. Alan, who is the not the legal executor but who is the gatherer of friends, has delayed the landlord’s invasion, so that we may divide Morgan’s accouterments among the living. We are mostly men but not exclusively. I am the daughter of a gay man, glued for life to these people since the first time I sat in on a rehearsal of the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, where they all sang together. Rather queer, rather bright— artistic sorts. Familial.

Among the possessions are: a library of queer themed books that would rival any bookstore in America, a collection of Polaroids, programs from the events he chaired at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and an absolutely incomparable closet of jewelry. Most of it is costume – bought on the cheap in winding Manhattan garment stores – but some of the pieces are worthier. When he died, he was wearing some of the cheap stuff. Aaron (elfish, acerbic) was put in charge of sorting the jewels, and I was tasked with the books.

“Keep whatever you like, and pack the rest,” Alan directed, turning his attention to the bedroom’s pile of sex toys.

All these years later, I cannot remember what the bookshelf looked like; whether it was crafted out of some cherry-colored wood, or whether it was sleeker, modern, and metallic. I do remember the books. There were volumes of poetry, and novels of graphic sexual escapade. High-minded literary works and pamphlets that could only be described as hard porn. One by one, I placed the contents of each shelf into a donation box, wondering whose hands would turn these pages next.

And then I came upon Borrowed Time.

It is subtitled: An AIDS Memoir. When he wrote it, the poet Paul Monette was living alongside the virus that had already robbed him of a best friend and lover. Men fell like leaves; they were decimated by the indifference of a government that, if anything, was glad to be rid of them. Paul’s book is an elegy to his Roger, yes, but also the best rendering we have of what AIDS was like in the U.S. outside of the Northeast Corridor, where the Fire Island gays stonewalled Larry Kramer, and where Howard Ashman wrote a lament called“Sheridan Square” that wouldn’t be performed until his memorial service.

Borrowed Time was suggested to me in college. Almost as self-help. A friend, thousands of miles away, was dying of AIDS and hepatitis C. Bereft, and singularly lonely in the menacing Ohio winter, I found rage and direction in Monette’s lyric prose. Here he was, at the end of the world, able to wrestle cavernous and unyielding grief into prose and purpose. It was the art of translation. This is how to approach death, I understood.

In my 20s, I tore through Monette’s library of work, eager to recapture the transformative knowledge he’d imparted in Borrowed Time. He had, in his forty-nine years on Earth, published poetry, memoir, essay, and fiction. A veritable feast of literature. The now-defunct Oscar Wilde Bookshop on Christopher Street, and the overstuffed basement of The Strand on Broadway frequently had used copies of his books, which I gently carried home and stacked on my own shelves. My bookcase was pilfered from the street, having been abandoned in East Harlem. 

I like it when I can find autographed copies, and I prefer ones that are personalized. There’s a trail of ownership, like the way we used to sign the card in a library book; the book has a heritage. On a soggy April Saturday, I came across Monette’s first foray into poetry, The Carpenter at the Asylum – in purple ink, the poet had inscribed my new find to a Bruce, “with all best wishes.” I thought about Bruce for years, and how his personally inscribed book ended up in my apartment.

In Morgan’s home, I am surrounded by piles of books, but now there is only one.

We hardly talked about matters of weight. Morgan and I were two decades apart in age, and our mutual admiration was based on how our personalities tipped in polar directions, his towards humorous rancor and mine, fatalistic gaiety. We laughed. Sang. Mocked people who weren’t us. The current between was often electric, and I was stuck on him. He drank martinis, so I drank them, too.

In my favorite picture of us, we are backstage at Carnegie Hall. He’s in his tux, and I’m wearing the black, glittery gown that I wore to homecoming in high school, and then wore for fifteen years, because it fit my form so delicately.

He has his arms wrapped around me, and his eyes are closed, his head resting on my shoulder. I look straight into the camera, grinning. We both wear red ribbons that are pinned to our chests like war medals.

This copy of Borrowed Time on Morgan’s shelf is a first edition hardcover. It is heavy in my hands.

I turn to the title page, expectantly.

And it is signed. It is… signed.

Morgan

I love you bestest of all!!!

Paul

19 Mar 91

There is wine flowing all around me, and the noise of men. I stare, moving not an inch, until I begin to weep.

Our friend, Jim, kneels beside me, taking me in his arms.

“Just put it in your bag.” 

Amy Cook is an MFA candidate at the Rainier Writing Workshop, and was a participant of the 2021 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Amy’s work has appeared in The Advocate, Queer Families: An LGBTQ+ True Stories Anthology, and more than two dozen literary journals.

18 January 2024