Arts & Culture / Health / Politics / The Reading Room / Vol. 2 No. 1-2

Last Night While I was Dreaming

By on August 1, 2019
Charles Frederick, Una Noche del SIDA

Image Credit: Charles Frederick, Una Noche del SIDA, 2018, Courtesy of the artist

last night while I was dreaming

                two of my dearest friends (old loves) visited me (needing a place to stay they said         as
had once always been so)

                                                   (long ago, now, they both had died from AIDS)

they were each in two different rooms each lying in a large bed with brilliantcoolwhitesheets/ in
each room/ lying on suns/ pouring out light (haloes around their aurora of brownandgolden
bodies)

so in each room/ I lay down next to him/ still naked for him

(the way only love can make you and     forever naked      just to say exposed is far too
innocent and imprecise a word       lacking the fullness of all shame all need all eagerness
all that is tender all that is ferocious all that is both fleeting and forever now/ without a
tomorrow without a past)

I held him close/ brushed his red hair with my hand/ kissed his eyelids his brow his ears his nose
his mouth

             his neck/ his chest (every ocean beach in the world is a different color and shape
and reason to be/ I noticed absently/
             just like every man=s bare geography of chest)

             my naked cock (slowly rising like from an underwater depth     we existed in a fluid
realm of space and time wherewewerewhere   neverwantingmore      (never wanting either of
them to go from here)     caresses/always going      from room to room      (we had once been
a trio/ of three boyos)     my cock also swelling from within with not blood but the warm water
I noticed in my eyes     I was crying

             but nowthedream presented me with a problem of impossible logic (I was surprised but I
was always the one relied on/ to find our way out of the labyrinth/ of our caprices) this time I
didn=t know how to solve     neither of them knew they had died    neither of them knew the
other had died

                                                                (neither of them knew death/ as I did with them everynewday
gone)

              and I began to wonder first     how would  I tell them/ shouldn=t they be allowed to know?

              but then (suddenly the dream asked) was it true?

(how could it be so/ when their bodies still felt/ so whole and well and aroused in my arms (we
dreamed together)    how? since it was still exactly the same as I had always said/ I never wanted
to let them go (we dreamed) their smiles of agreement evolving in expanding concentric/ oval
waves of water/ spreading larger and larger and larger/ even with the coins on their eyes)

the only thing true was      the how the way   I loved them was    the all that would ever be (or ever
true)   the I could never

leave the dark fluid space of them/and us/ even though this sleep/ was so full of sorrow/ so full of
dread/ perhaps that was where/ I had always wanted to stay/ in this dream/ regardless of its price/
at least with them/ perhaps too/ in death (and I decided I would never tell them) please don=t
wake me up please please don=t let them/ ever know

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Author: Charles Frederick is a writer, performer, theatre artist and cultural activist (cultural animateur). He has been active in social and environmental justice, anti-war and anti-racism struggles and movements since a teenager, most often with cultural interventions and instruments. He has created mass performance forms for community political activism and mass movements. His work most often is created in the midst of political struggles, functioning as an organic intellectual in the movements for social change, seeking expressive forms of a new imaginary in history for a new egalitarian and democratic future both for the planet and its peoples, utilizing new forms of revolutionary political activism. A gay man, he worked during the AIDS crisis (a continuing world concern) both with activism and caregiving, two sides of the same struggle. (He led a decade long cultural/political action called the Cathedral Project, for which he wrote Roman Catholic Masses to be performed on the street, ending each time in civil disobedience arrests.) He has written for (and edited) movement art and cultural periodicals, such as Upfront, Cultural Democracy, Cultural Correspondence and others, publishing poetry, essays, fiction and other forms. He has often collaborated with other artists in many mediums. The Hudson River, an Autobiography is a chapter in a book he is working on entitled, Imagining Myself in History.