Paradise Garage

When death comes knocking I tell my friends not to answer the door.

"Let’s have another cocktail." I say, to keep them from fading out.

It knows me well, that mystery called death-- for I have cheated the cheap bastard time and time again.

But the reaper is after another one of my friends. I’m not afraid of him anymore. I’ve watched him come and go like a one night stand.

"He has the death rattle," home health care workers told me today, regarding a close friend of mine who is close to death.

"That rattle means the angels are coming soon." I was informed by an Italian woman who works for $8 an hour, wiping shitty ass of the dying.

"Angels?" I asked. "What the hell am I, chopped liver?"

"I’m coming by on Christmas Eve." I inform my rattling friend, trying to offer him something to live for.

He can hardly talk these days, but he usually finds the strength to speak when I’m around.

When a person on their death bed finds the energy to talk it's like speaking to an angel.

It’s odd to watch a gay man die from old age and not AIDS.

I can tell he’s cheated death a lot too, my old friend. He smiled at me when I suggested that he live until Christmas Eve.

"Don’t worry, I’ll be here. I can’t go out, I have nothing to wear." assures my friend.

I know my friend was talking about the other side. That place where they cross over to. I’ve seen it all before through the eyes of lost friends and lovers.

I know it’s fabulous over there. All my gay friends who rattled their way into heaven always told me they wanted to be wearing something fabulous when they step through those pearly gates into "the light".

That light is something else I tell you! It’s like that old disco in New York City, "Paradise Garage".