Rainbows, Places, People and Things

by Steve Rider


I was driving. North of the Benicia Bridge, cruising on
Interstate 680, a flat stretch of road with hills on the left and
what looks like a flood plain on the right. The road was very black.
KQED FM was breaking up on the stereo, in my van. I could hear my
tires complaining as they were forced constantly to grab and let go of
the road. I had my shoes off, my feet were curled up on the seat and
tucked under my thighs, tight, secure and pleasantly alone. I was
alone in my van, alone on the highway and alone in my very own mind.
The cruise control was doing half of the driving for me, and my right
arm was slightly involved. I was thinking of how strange my life
had become.

It was October and the rainy season wanted to get an early
start. Autumn had stepped aside long enough to let some showers
scatter. Little patches of water lay clustered together in rows
beneath my van and I, where the tires of millions of cars had
threaded out lower spots in the road. They hissed in great misery as
my tires splattered them. Pools of even blacker, laying on a very
dark surface, completely submissive, waiting for the traffic to dry
them up. A dense fog clung desperately to the top of the hills on my
left, moisture seeking a way to reach the Earth, waiting for it's turn
to become rain. Grey, somber, warnings on the left, bright hopeful
sunshine on the right, over Fairfield and Vacaville, the way I was
heading. Hopelessness battling optimism, despair against faith in the
future, I was in a very strange mood.

I pushed a Pet Shop Boys tape into the deck, cutting out the
noisy radio interference I always get along this stretch of road.
The Pet Shop Boys were not scared, they did not care. I turned the
volume up and the sounds of tires and puddles and rapid gasoline
explosions took a back seat to British homosexuals making music.
I let go of the steering wheel long enough to put both arms behind
my head and pull up very hard on the headrest, a stretching exercise.
I looked over toward the huge bank of clouds and fog, pregnant
precipitation, and then I saw it, the most perfect rainbow I have
ever seen. Bands of every color, melting, merging, drifting into
each other, like lovers dreaming in each other's arms. It seemed to
start over the highway just ahead of me, arching up and over the bank
of drizzly fog, and the far end pointed down just in the direction of
where I thought the Bay Bridge must be. A Rainbow!! Over The City!
That's exactly the moment my idea hit me, about The City, you know, I
mean San Francisco. We should change it's name; it should be called
Rainbow City.

Add up the Queer music, the rare intoxication of being alone
for a moment on a California freeway, the strange weather, and an
absolutely perfect rainbow, I was momentarily in some sort of a
trance, in touch with a place deep inside myself that I rarely visit.
Every color ever seen was represented, each color just right for a
person somewhere in this world. Was this time and place somehow
important ? Had some power scheduled this rainbow here, then sent
me along to see it ? Was there a meaning hidden in this moment ?
The blending colors, the way one faded into the next, looking at
that infinite gradualness I had a new feeling. Deep in my gut I
suddenly felt something I had been fighting for a long time, that
my life was over. I realized that I am dead. A dead man. A dead
homosexual man, as a matter of fact. I can tell you for a fact
that it is possible for the dead to be gay.

A part of me opened up. Without concern for who might want
to reign me in, not caring whose sensibilities I might offend, I gave
thought to this rainbow and what it might mean for me. I felt set
free. Like no force outside of me could control my feelings or
reactions. Like I was my own person. And so it was that I began
to associate rainbows with personal freedom. Variations in color
and design with expression of an inner self. Experimentation with
the blending of influences, with art and self direction. And I saw
that my death a few months ago was the best thing that ever had
happened to me.

I suddenly was forced to face the fact that I am dead. I
laughed for a second, all alone in my van on interstate 680, looking
at an unexpected rainbow, and I imagined myself meeting someone. In
my daydream I said to this person, who, by the way, had no face:
"Hi, my name is Steve, and I'm dead." The man with no face laughed,
which was good, since I could not see his smile.

I died that night back in July. The night I was so exhausted
from all the travel, and the worry about my relationship. It was
the night that my lover left me. The night he insisted it had only
been lust. My corpse, it would seem, is refusing to accept my state
of death. It denies that my heart no longer beats. It refutes that
I have no pulse. It keeps moving, and doing service calls, and
making love to homosexual men. I suppose all of this dichotomy will
be resolved one day. In the meantime I pretend to get hungry every
few hours, and I try to eat in front of witnesses, since they expect
me to eat.

Suddenly it is still October but I am very far way. I am
standing on the floor inside a building. I have a rainbow teeshirt
on, and white shorts, white socks, and black leather shoes. I'm
looking at a display of jewelry, women's necklaces, they are from
China. I remember that I am in Florida, I'm in EPCOT Center, it's
the Chinese pavilion. A man is standing beside me. He is smiling.
I'm holding a necklace in my hand, it has many colors. Little beads
shaped like apple seeds, tiny gold balls, three rows of beads with
gold balls between each bead. The man beside me is still smiling.
He encourages me to buy the necklace, and I do.

Now there is a large plastic tumbler of beer in front of me.
I'm sitting on a bar stool. It is Monday October 11th. I'm in
Dallas Texas. I have a white teeshirt on. It has the word "QUEER"
on it, in large letters. Three men from Wisconsin are also sitting
at the bar. They are discussing a problem with a machine they are
enroute to fix. They take a few minutes to talk with me. I could
tell they were from Wisconsin. I recognized the accent. I lived in
Milwaukee once, for one winter, because Ricky Smith was going to
college there, and I wanted to be near him. But then I was alive.
Today I'm in Dallas waiting for a plane to San Jose. I'm dead and I
have a necklace on. It has many colors.

People have a lot of fears around death. They think it must
be painful or unpleasant. It isn't really so bad. There is a lot
less turmoil, it's OK if the bills are late. The worst part, for me,
is the way my feet are always cold. Even with two pairs of socks on,
on a warm day, like we had in August, just a month or so after I
died. They were such tiny pills. The little white ones. I took
the whole bottle all at once and I washed it down with a big swig
of cold beer. It was a very cold beer. I said goodbye to the lady
at the 7-11 when I bought that beer. One of the pills got caught in
between two of my molars, on the right side, lower molars. I
circled my tongue around it as I was passing out. I remember how
dark the room got, the lights were moving further away. I wanted to
smoke a cigarette but I could not move. Then it was peaceful, so
peaceful. I heard the blood flowing behind my ears. I heard it
slowing down. I felt my chest moving very slowly, then it got
slower, the blood was barely moving, then silence.

It's October again, but this time I'm in San Jose. I'm
sitting in a waiting room. There are two men on a couch near me.
One of them has his arm around the other man's shoulder. They are
speaking softly to each other. I have a piece of paper in my hand.
It has the number 27 on it, and text which explains that this is my
number. It was printed in Pennsylvania. I lived in Pennsylvania
once, when I was alive. A black man walks into the room. He yells
out "Twenty Seven, Twenty Seven please." I know I'm supposed to do
something because that is the number on my piece of paper. I look
at him and I can tell that I am supposed to go somewhere with him.
I sense that we have some business together. I stand up and he
holds the door open for me. I'm wearing a dress shirt and Dockers,
black shoes and a tie. I must be dressed for work. There is a
pager on my belt. I touch it and it says "No Info" on the screen.
I was hoping it might give me a clue.

The black man walks quickly and I follow him. The hallway
reminds me of a hospital. I wonder if they have figured out that I'm
dead. Maybe he is taking me to the morgue. He walks into a room and
I follow him. I can tell this is his room. It has his karma in it.
He asks me to sit down. He seems like a very nice man. I sit in the
chair by his desk. I give him the piece of paper that says 27 on it.
I have another piece of paper in my hand too. He asks for it so I
give it to him. It has more numbers on it, and letters too. He holds
the paper next to one that was on his desk, and he shows me that the
numbers are the same. He never says my name. Then I remember that
he does not know my name, I'm just 27 and those other numbers on the
paper that matches with his paper. I wonder why I feel nervous, and
I wonder why I am in this room with the friendly, black man. He
smiles and he makes eye contact with me. He opens his mouth and says:
"It was negative".

I smile, and look at him, and I realize now why I am here.
He has just told me that two weeks ago my blood showed no evidence
of my body reacting to HIV. What a silly man I must be, to have an
HIV test while I am dead. I hope I have not wasted too much of his
time, and I thank him. He asks me a few questions about my sexual
behavior, and I answer him as if he was talking to a living person.
How strange it felt, walking down that hallway, knowing that I had
made it, I lived my whole life, and never once contracted that
disease. Oddly, I felt guilty.

It's October again. I'm shopping. I'm in Santa Cruz with
my roommate, Donald. We are looking at dresses, red dresses, I want
to be a dead transvestite for Halloween. He sees something that he
likes, and he calls me over to look at it. I say "Oh My" and ask if
I should try it on. People in the stores never seem to mind taking
money from a dead man.

When my friends ask me how I am, I smile at them and say
things they are expecting to hear. How I felt sad today, or maybe I
cried, or today was one of the good days. But it all comes back to
me, sooner or later, I cannot be happy if I am dead. But I don't
have to be sad either. I can just decline to participate in
anything at all, even my own emotions. The living are burdened with
feelings and aches and pains.

When you are dead you cannot feel things. Rainbows have no
importance. The latest news on TV seems almost ironic. The price
of gasoline is just a hoot. Death is a liberation. It means that
things no longer need to matter, that it is OK if we just do not
care. Death says that this phase is over. Like a ride in an
amusement park - we do not know what is next. Through the black
curtains, and you better hold your breath, no hint of what you'll
see, no clue on what the atmosphere might be.

As a dead man I do not need to care about air pollution.
The fact that my corpse drives 400 miles in one day is unimportant.
A dead man cannot kill the living. The dead are no threat at all.
I very safely install new wide area networks, problems are resolved
by an unusually warm corpse. I feel disconnected. I feel that
my "self" no longer exists. It is peaceful, it is a rest, death
gives relief to the worries of being alive.

Three months into the experience of being dead my body
finally gives up the fight. My soul accepts my fate. My existence
has run it's course. I have no more purposes to fulfill. My friend
Donald, my very dear friend Donald, who cares for me so unselfishly,
he notices that my body has not moved for days. He gets suspicious.
The Mountain View police are baffled. They cannot find a cause of
death. And of course, there is none. The pills I took have long
ago been flushed out of my system. The coroner insists I was dead
a lot longer than just a few days.

I wake up in my waterbed. I'm no longer in Sunnyvale.
Nobody else is in the room where I am. I hear Donald in the
bathroom, right next to my bedroom. He is peeing. It is 6 AM.
I vaguely remember a dream last night about rainbows. It was sort of
morbid, but I somehow needed to dream it. There is a rainbow
necklace around my neck. It seems to offer some sort of a promise,
but I have no idea what that might be.
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