Little Black Book 

by Daniel DiStasio

We carried them with us, in case. A bar fight at Ty’s. A sting at the tearoom on 14th Street. Rumors that couldn’t cool their heels. Then there was the news that could wait. A sniffle. A fever. A dreaded spot on the chin, or the ankle, or the neck.  We didn’t know there would be smart phones with contact lists, and a world beyond paranoia and fear.

Act Up hadn’t written its first act. That came next. Along with conspiracy theories, and hazmat suits, and ghosts.  They disappeared. The waiter at One Potato had just returned the change with a wink. Handsome with his jet-black hair and diamond stud in his ear. The beefy bartender who overpoured the vodka with an anchor tattoo on his arm. The tall thin black man who strolled Christopher Street with bowler hat, bow tie and an umbrella.

We gathered for that first fundraiser in Madison Square Garden, where Leonard Bernstein directed the Star-Spangled Banner and we sang “Oh say can you see…”  but we were blind to a future of AZT, followed by drug cocktails, then Prep.  We only knew we had to paint on smiles and say you look okay. A few pounds off is not so bad. Everyone gets a cold at this time of year.

So we kept busy with our magic markers dividing names into here and gone. Slashing midway between the ascenders and descenders. The names still visible behind the dreaded slash—Jim Horran, Bob Nelson, Yorgos Jannelos, Joey Wilson, DJ Tanner. George the Greek from Thessaloniki drew crosses alongside the departed as a reminder. We carried the rapidly disappearing lists in our pockets alongside our wallets or money clips, as we jangled coins to payphones.  Dialed from booths with broken glass, or black rotary phones that stood sentinel in the hallway next to the men’s room. We checked the return shoot after the call to see if our dime came back to us.   It never did.  So, we drew. We drew line after line. Fat ones and thin ones. Straight ones and wavy. And a cross next to George’s name, when the time came. Too soon. Until the books were empty, full of nothing but memories and fading ink.

Daniel DiStasio’s work has appeared in The Louisville Review, Bodega, Summerset Review, Reed, Stone Canoe and others. His first novel, "Facing the Furies" was published in 2012. A New York transplant to South Florida, he lives in Wilton Manors and Key West. He earned his MFA at Spalding University teaches and designs on line courses. He has led adventure tours Peru, Thailand, India and Iceland. He is currently working on a gay adventure set during the Gold Rush in Alaska in 1898. When not work or writing, he is caring for his Shetland Sheepdogs: Nikolai Gogol, and James Joyce.