New Orleans

I met Max maybe 15 years ago. He was living in a leaky shack that was too short to stand up in. It was in the backyard of a house that a mutual friend of ours was renting. Max was nineteen and working as a dishwasher. My bandmates and I convinced him to quit his job and tour the country with our us.

In the time that followed he became an accomplished tattooer.

A few years ago I flew to Dallas. Max picked me up from the airport and we headed to Waxahachie for the opening of his art show. He was successfully beginning an expansion from tattooing to being a gallery artist.

My personal life was more or less a mess when he convinced me to come to Texas. We planned to attend the show then go on a road trip to see another friend of ours in New Orleans, a photographer named Chris.

Chris was living in a house with a few other people. Max and I stayed with him. A couple nights after arriving he explained we had to make a drive across town.

The three of us crammed into Max’s truck and started driving over to the leather bar where Chris worked. He bartended there a few nights a week. We were supposed to meet up with Will there. Max had to reach between Chris’ legs to shift. We joked with each other and watched the lights of the city through the windshield.

Chris had asked around and gotten an asthma inhaler from a friend to give to Will who said every time he smoked crack he had trouble breathing. Chris wanted to help, to make easier what he could for those he cared for. On the way he told us he knew there wasn’t much longer, he knew Will would die soon. He was getting closer every time he saw him.

We opened our doors and got out, crossed the street.

“These guys are going to love you,” Chis said.

It was dark inside, not very crowded, two older men sat at the bar. They saw Chris, they smiled and said hello. The three of them bantered back and forth while. Chris leaned on one of their shoulders with his hand. He introduced us then went behind the bar and started talking to someone else.

“You have a lot of tattoos,” the one with the leather vest said.

“Yeah I guess,” I said.

“Is your whole body tattooed? Like, what about your dick?”

“Oh leave him alone,” the other one said playfully.

“What about you cutie?” He turned to Max.

This went on for a while, the two older guys sitting at the bar and taking turns hitting on us with the good cop bad cop thing they had going. There was a sort of sweetness to them, to their rehearsed bickering and flattery.

Eventually Will came in. He was large, slow moving, his hair shaggy. He sort dragged his body from one step to the next. Chris came out from behind the bar and gave him a hug.

“I’ll be right back,” Chris said. “Hang out with them, I’ll go get the inhaler.”

“Okay Chris, man, thanks,” Will said.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey man, I’m will.”

He shook my hand, shook Max’s hand. He didn’t remember me, that was alright. I had met him a few times a while back. The first time was when he stayed at the apartment I lived in when I was in New York. I had been sleeping on the couch for a few months, it was Chris’ apartment. Will had hopped a train up to New York or hitch hiked, I don’t remember, but he was selling Christmas trees from this shack in Manhattan from some time after thanksgiving up till Christmas. We had talked a little, I watched him dance in the kitchen and fry some food on the stove. He carried a lot of happiness when I met him, gave it freely.

“Do you live down here now?”

“Yeah I’m squatting in an abandoned funeral home,” he said.

“How is it?”

Chris came back and we followed Will outside. We walked down the sidewalk to where his bike was leaning against a sign post. It was small, I think it was a kid’s bike. He took the inhaler from Chris. He said his goodbyes and shook some hair out of his face. He turned around and started off.

On the ride back Chris talked a lot about him, his adventures and creativity, his problems and where they were leading. He fleshed out a character remarkable and complicated, there was a whole person there, enormous in the love Chris had for him.

The next morning Chris flew out to New York to interview for grad school. Max and I stayed on for a week in Chris’ house without him, drawing, picking each other apart, talking; He kept trying to get me to tell him about what was going on in my life and I kept trying to change the subject.

I got ring worm on my face from the mattress pad I was sleeping on.

Chris flew back to New Orleans. We spent a day at a cruising spot where he wanted to take pictures of us. Neither Max nor I am gay but we had fun with the pictures.

The next time the three of us got together was in New Hampshire the following summer. Chris told us about Will’s memorial.