The Angel of History Read Online Free PDF Page B

me that way, an Arab faggot terrorist. Again I wanted to feel sorry for him but then I yelled, All AIDS books are out of print because of you, because you only read books sanctioned by the petite NPRsie and their indiscreet charm, your fault, your fault, your grievous fault. We refused everything, rejected their heavens and their hells, and you turn around and accept both and you keep saying I do and I do and I do and fuck me more daddy while they shove you in a tiny vestibule and you pretend it’s Versailles.
    Kitchen doors swung open and a trio of cheerful waiters walked behind me oblivious to my jeremiad, an overpierced juvenile carrying a birthday pot de crème and the other two hovering like moths about the candle. Desserts in restaurants had turned sophisticated, but birthday candles still smelled comfortably familiar. I took a deep breath and practically calmed down. Wherever my eyes traveled, though, patrons avoided my gaze.
    I was able to hear you again, to see you, your birthday is March 11. I put it aside for a while, forgive me. I couldn’t go on, had to move forward, couldn’t bear the burden of remembering and couldn’t come to terms with the unbearable. Remember my All Saints birthday? I was always Saint Catherine of Alexandria since she and I had the same birthday, November 25. Saint Catherine of the Wheel, cheese wheels for the day, my spouse was Jesus Christ, to whom I had consecrated my virginity, my constantly rediscovered virginity. Why did you pick Saint Margaret? Did it have anything to do with a dragon or was it because of Ann-Margret? I can’t remember. Have to say I loved it when my birthday fell on Thanksgiving and all of us would celebrate with candles on the saintly turkey, Tofurky for me. Better days.
    Frosted Tips whispered I’m sorry, insincerely, since all he wanted was for me to calm down and not embarrass him, and his tablemate added that he tried to watch as many AIDS movies as possible. It’s a good thing he didn’t tell me he watched
Philadelphia
or I would have stabbed him with his butter knife. Quietly they talked, sotto voce, hoping that I would follow suit in spite of the sprightly music. Frosted Tips reached out to touch me and I instinctively jerked back, but I was calming down. Tom Something said that he could understand my upset because he recently watched the movie
Rent,
which was probably not as good as seeing the
Pulitzer Prize–
and
Tony Award
–winning musical, emphasis his, oh how he wished he could have seen the original cast production on Broadway, and did I by any chance see
Angels in America
when it first came out? I almost went for the aforementioned butter knife then, almost, to dab their cherubic faces with room-temperature butter, palette-knife Bob Rosshappy trees on their button noses. It was hopeless, though, hopeless, and I realized that even as I showered the ingenues with a fusillade of fuck-yous. My screaming lacked punch, my late fuck-yous lacked the early oomph. I was done. I had aged into a text that could no longer be read. I was drained and unmoored and vanquished, hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky. I could feel discomfort all about me, gentrified diners staring and pretending not to. I’d jettisoned the social ballast, I’d laid down my mask.
    Please, sir, we have to ask you to leave, the man or manager was saying to me. He was a big boy with a push-broom mustache and I couldn’t see the features of his face but the name on his tag was Walter Benjamin. I am your angel of history, I said, smiling weakly, but then I realized that I’d misread, his name tag read Walter Bartender. Please, sir, he repeated, and his arm approached, but I snapped at him.
Noli me tangere!
You like that, don’t you? Walter Bartender must have thought me insane since in this world a symptom of losing one’s mind is a readiness to speak it. I walked out of that den of Kens on my own.
    I have to tell you that I wasn’t able to cry after you died. I’m