Koolaids Read Free Page A

fairly attractive girl, ended up dying a spinster at an early age. Her father was able to be happy after her funeral.
    â€¦
    Cervantes told me history is the mother of truth. Borges told me historical truth is not what took place; it is what we think took place.
    So Billy Shakespeare was queer.
    Ronnie was the greatest president in history, right up there on Mount Rushmore.
    AIDS is mankind’s greatest plague.
    Israel only kills terrorists.
    America never bombed Lebanon.
    Jesus was straight. Judas and he were just friends.
    Roseanne’s parents molested her as an infant.
    Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat deserved their Nobels.
    And Gaetan Dugas started the AIDS epidemic.
    â€¦
    I met Scott in 1980. We were both twenty. I saw him across the dance floor at the Stud. I knew who I was going home with that night. Scott was my type to a tee. Pug-nosed, baby-faced, blond, with a cute butt was my kind of boy. I walked all the way across the space and cornered him. Convincing him to come back home with me was a piece of cake. All I had to do was mention I was a painter. He had a thing for artists, he said. I had a thing for cute blond things. He said he loved my accent. I said I loved his butt. Off to my studio in North Beach we went.
    We never consummated our desires. We arrived at my studio. I turned the light on. He walked over to the painting I had finished that day. He stood in front of it entranced. At first I was flattered. After the first five minutes I started getting horny. I stood behind him contemplating my painting and started rubbing my crotch on his behind. The scene was turning me on. Fucking the cute butt of a boy admiring a painting of mine was my idea of heaven. Scott then started to speak and I lost my erection. He started telling me about my life, my dreams, my fears. He started telling me about my mother, about my father. He told me about the war which tore my life apart. He related what he saw in the painting. It was the first 60 by 80.
    We spent that night in bed talking. We never fucked, ever. He meant everything to me. That first night he started calling me Habibi, which means “my lover” in my native tongue, a cognomen which nobody ever questioned, not even his future lovers. He never used my real name, or any of the numerous Americanized nicknames I picked up along the way. I had always assumed he found it difficult to pronounce. I was wrong. His last words before he took his last breath were, “I love you, Mohammad.” An impeccable pronunciation.
    â€¦
    We live in a neighborhood called Galerie Semaan. It is named after the furniture store which designates the edge of the neighborhood. The area will become famous years later because of the fierce battles that occurred there, but for now it is simply my neighborhood. It is on the southeastern side of Beirut, about a mile from the beach. It is right on the edge of Beirut, after which you have the mountains and the various suburbs. The neighborhood proper consists of about ten buildings, most of which have the six floors allowed by zoning in the area. It is bounded by the road to Chouifat and the South on one side, and an orange grove on another. On the west side, there is something called the New Road, which is neither new nor a road, but a wide gravel path beyond which are slums where Palestinians and some Shiites live.
    The northern side is dominated by the Beirut-to-Damascus road. Although we live in a flat section of Beirut, the Beirut-to-Damascus road starts a steep incline right at the edge of our neighborhood.
    For us kids, the boundaries are very important. We really cannot leave our neighborhood. We cannot cross into the orange grove because the guardian shoots trespassers, particularly if they are kids. I see him sometimes with his shotgun. He hunts birds that come into the grove. Hunting is everybody’s favorite pastime. My dad tells me the guardian is harmless. None of us kids wants to risk it. We also do not go