‘SILVER DAGGER’
Alfonso Keller-Casielles
SILVER DAGGER
My mother and I were very close. She was demonstrative and loving and often able to overlook the stupid mistakes kids tend to make while growing up. She passed away more than a decade ago at the age of 91. Sad as I felt, she had lived a good, long life.
When I began college, I told her that I didn’t care about spending time with anyone but her. That declaration seems so foreign to me, considering the amount of close friends who have stuck by me for years. I wasn’t tested on that lack of self awareness until my good friend Brian was downed by cancer. I called Mom on the landline (there were no cell phones back then), heaving breathless and lying prostrate on the floor of my apartment, crying uncontrollably into the mouthpiece as she consoled me.
This was back in 1980. AIDS had not yet infiltrated our world. And though I did have other close friends, Brian was whom I connected with on a level that helped me to understand what unconditional friendship was.
Admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital, Brian had seminoma: testicular cancer. This was among the most common types of cancer affecting men under the age of 30. The word “cancer” scared the crap out of me, and still does. The physicians removed the tumor-enlarged testicle, and replaced it with a floating appendage made of teflon, allowing his scrotum to appear “normal.” In the months leading up to the surgery, I remember showing up at his apartment before he and I would go out for the evening, which was our tradition multiple times each week. We would listen to dance music and talk while he was dressing to go out. One night when he was coming out of his bathroom naked, I noticed his testicles looked unnaturally large. At the time, I thought it was weird, but bluntly, I just believed he had huge balls.
Simultaneously, Brian had a diagnosis that oddly ended up being fortuitous. He had a very uncomfortable abscess that needed to be lanced, forcing him to seek medical attention. While visiting the doctor for that procedure he thought, as long as he was there, he might as well show the physician his enlarged scrotum. Brian was admitted to the hospital that same day.
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Brian and I had a very volatile relationship. We were never lovers. But back then, I’m sure I claimed him as my best friend. I don’t like using that descriptive scale, since friendships hold a different importance depending on the circumstances and time.
I was 21 years old when Brian and I had an emotional falling out (it was the year that J.R. Ewing got shot on the tv show, “Dallas.” If you’re of a certain age, you’ll know how wide spread that television event was, not just in the United States, but throughout the world). Brian had gone to bed with a boy he knew I had feelings for. I was completely caught off guard. And though I acknowledge that this southerner had no interest in me beyond camaraderie, I felt that the “friend code” meant that Brian should not be with someone for whom I lusted after. Pretending to be mature, I told him if that amorous night was heading for a commitment in love, I’d come to terms with it. But if this was solely about his getting laid, I’d never forgive him.
They stayed together for a year. I don’t know what the reality is, but Brian told me that he stayed with him to keep our friendship in tact. That seems very odd to me. Not necessarily an out and out lie, but Brian was a strange man, so there may be a slice of the truth in that confession.
I battled to keep my out-of-control feelings in check. Other friends told me it was obvious that I was in love with Brian. I chose to accept that. Maybe, I thought, there was an unconscious part of me that had surfaced in a jealous cloud due to Brian entering a serious relationship for the first time since we’d known each other.
Looking back, I can say with conviction that I was not in love with Brian. That would have been an easy explanation. I admit I saw it as betrayal. And though I no longer consider myself to be an envious man, back then I was wrecked when discovering that my closest friend was sleeping with someone I hoped would want to be with me. Friendship can be as possessive as any
romantic relationship. During the entire time Brian and I hung out, he went to bed with different men night after night. Since I was looking for something completely different, for the most part, his behavior didn’t affect me. I was searching to find “the one.” And as handsome as Brian was, I
had not found myself attracted to him. Perhaps that was why his sexual patterns weren’t an emotional threat.
Concerning he and I in ways that mattered to me, I had Brian all to myself. Men of all types and backgrounds would fuck him, often getting their hearts broken, wanting much more. I know, from what he told me, that Brian was a passionate and romantic lover and most probably mislead a good deal of these men to believe that he was aiming for something more substantial than a night or two together.
To quote a verse from a folk song as recorded by Joan Baez, “Silver Dagger:”
“My daddy is a handsome devil
He’s got a chain five miles long
And on each link a heart does dangle
Of another maid he’s loved and wronged”
Replace “daddy” with friend and “maid” with man and you would be illustrating Brian’s sex life, if described by me.
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As the years passed, he and I grew apart. I would still see Brian on certain occasions, but our social lives went in different directions. We became more like distant relatives.
The last time I saw Brian, his parents were visiting him. Though he hadn’t told me, he was dying. From AIDS, not cancer. For months, he kept asking me to come to the apartment and take his records, which frankly, I didn’t want. When I finally did visit him, he was skeletal and looking decades older than his age. It was apparent he was wasting away. I later realized that a great deal of the erratic conversations we had been having could be blamed on the disease attacking his brain.
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The final scene was surreal, bordering on comical. The four of us sat around a coffee table in Brian’s living room. His mother, Dot, was seated in an upholstered easy chair. His father sat across from her in a high back kitchen chair, reading a newspaper. Brian was on his sofa and I sat across from him, completing the circle. We were listening to disco music and I believe we were all smoking cigarettes. Brian looked so fragile I thought he might break like delicate porcelain. We talked as if nothing was wrong, which probably was a good call.
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Brian died just before his 42nd birthday.
Early morning, on a Sunday in November, my phone rang. It was Brian’s mother. “May I speak with Della Reese?” Dot asked.
Recognizing her voice I said, “Dot, it’s Andy.”
She began to cry. “Brian has passed away,” Dot said.
“I know Dot. I’m so sorry,” I responded.
We talked for a while and cried together. Finally I asked, “Dot, why did you ask for Della Reese when you called?”
“I’m going through Brian’s Rolodex,” she said, “and I suppose he has you listed as Della Reese.” Though I knew the reason why, I asked, “And you didn’t find that bizarre?” “Not really,” she answered. “I just got off the phone with someone named Hedda Lettuce.”
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Weeks after his death, I met with Dot at Brian’s apartment. She gave me two of his belongings to keep. One was a red bomber jacket, which, to this day, I still wear. The other was the ashtray that had been planted on his coffee table. Painted metallic gold, shaped to resemble an angel’s wing and permanently stained by black and grey cigarette ash. It now lives on my coffee table as a permanent reminder of my friend.
Andrew Sarewitz has published more than 70 short stories (website: www.andrewsarewitz.com. Substack access is @asarewitz) as well as having penned scripts for various media. Mr. Sarewitz is a recipient of the City Artists Corp Grant for Writing. His play, Alias Madame Andrèe (based on the life of WWII resistance fighter, Nancy Wake, the “White Mouse”) garnered First Prize from Stage to Screen New Playwrights in San Jose, CA; produced with a multicultural cast and crew. Member: Dramatists Guild of America. Insta: @andrewsarewitz. Twitter/X: @asarewitz/twiter
