He hated disappointing people. For reasons more complex than his sexuality. He was only ten or so years old when his mother began traveling—to conferences, protests, to give lectures. His father had by now moved out, leaving Abuelita as their primary caregiver. He felt grateful for the sense of security she provided but also guilty that he and his sister were a burden on a woman whose life had already been hard. So, he strove to make her as happy as possible. To prove to her that he was worth the sacrifice. By doing well in school, by keeping an eye on his sister, by keeping an eye on his father. The more he did, the more she idolized him, bragging about what a strong young man he was becoming to anyone who would listen. The more she bragged—to neighbors, to family—the more he felt obliged to never disappoint her or anyone else.
Of course, the rational part of him that looked back on it, the part that was now a father himself, recognized that disappointments—large or small—don’t eradicate that kind of love. What could Lourdes tell him about herself that would ever make him love her less? Nothing. He wondered if she knew that.
* * *
HE STOPPED AT the bagel store on Sixty-ninth Street, surprised that he was hungry. The girl working behind the counter recognized him from the news, asked for a selfie, and tried to give him his bagel and coffee for nothing. Her hairstyle and dress were obviously different, but he was struck by how similar she was in mannerisms and speech to the kinds of girls he’d grown up with. The kinds who used to flirt openly with him in his junior high schoolyard, whom he’d pretend to like back knowing full well they were not the ones who gave him that butterfly feeling he sometimes got. He always was sure to have the name of a girl in his class ready on the tip of his tongue for when his homeboys asked who he thought was hot. He strung the girls in high school along just far enough to guarantee them always calling the house, so that Abuelita’s prophecies would seem true.
If he’d harbored any fantasies to be more open and honest about himself, they were tamped down by two things: Tía Lola and, more dramatically, the disease.
As Prieto became aware of his own sexuality and his subsequent efforts to avoid suspicion and detection, he began to reappraise his aunt. Even at a young age he sensed that they, his family, were only getting a part of her. That a chunk of her was hidden. As he grew older and heard people throw the word “lesbian” around—derisively and otherwise—he saw aspects of his aunt in the women they described. He recognized then, clearly, that whatever she kept concealed from their family, it was because she felt she was compelled to. He understood the sentiment and it reaffirmed his own instincts. He wondered now if she had sensed his truth as well.
But that was mere behavioral modeling. More than anything, for years, really, what had made the idea of calling himself gay or queer or bi or any of these things impossible was the disease. He had just developed his first crush—on a boy named Anthony who lived on the block—when suddenly all everyone was talking about was AIDS. But it wasn’t just called AIDS, it was the gay disease. They were dying, they were dying alone, and people seemed to feel they deserved it. When famous people started dying, he remembered his uncles and aunts talking about it: “Can you believe so-and-so was gay all this time?” Completely ordinary people were dying and he would hear the gossip: “Who knew he played both sides…？” He remembered how, when word got out about his father’s diagnosis, he went out of his way to tell people his father had been a junkie. As if somehow that was better than them thinking he was gay?
The disease made had him feel frightened and ashamed, all at once. And yet, also reckless.
The night he realized his father had AIDS, the first night he allowed himself to go to the Piers and meet someone, it was Prieto who was willing to consent to unprotected sex. It didn’t get that far, not that night. But, over the years, on certain occasions, despite his fears or maybe because of them, he took risks that defied logic. It was on one of these such nights that he met up with Jan.
* * *
HE PARKED HIS car on Shore Road, grabbed the bagel and the coffee, and made his way across the pedestrian overpass to the waterfront. He remembered for a moment crossing this same bridge one night with his friend Diego. It was that summer he realized Papi was going to die. The summer before he started college. He and Diego had smoked some weed down by the water and were crossing back to head home, play fighting each other. He didn’t know if it was the weed or what, but he felt the feeling behind their play shift, and in a brief moment he felt so free, he leaned in and kissed Diego and Diego kissed him back. When he pulled away and opened his eyes, he could see the cars on the Belt Parkway below, their headlights shining through the bridge’s chain-linked enclosure and into his eyes. How quickly his euphoria turned to terror that someone might have seen what they had done. He and Diego never spoke about that kiss again. Prieto wondered what had happened to him.