Brad, HIV, and Headless Goblins

Portrait of a man, galloping

I thought about the Headless Horseman as I slouched down my four flights of steps. Thought about the rental car waiting on the street, engine growling. Thought about how Lenny called to invite me. Wondered why Jim hadn’t. Wondered why he hadn’t been holding up the back wall at Act Up Monday night with Herman.

I gave Jim a look when I scooted into the back seat with Lenny. Kinda like …What the fuck, man, where you been?

He went, “I’m sorry,” real soft, but I heard him just fine. I dint know what to say, so I just looked at him.

Lenny patted the seat beside him like I should sit closer, which was fine by me. David was pissed as hell, Greg was furious, and Jim hadn’t said shit to me in over a week… So I scooted over and leaned into Lenny and let him put his arm around me.

People touched me all the time at work, but that was the first time anybody really touched me since I got my results back.

Jim started the car and headed west to shoot uptown toward the George Washington Bridge, everybody just talkin about the weather and Sleepy Hollow. Jim put some Madonna on as we hit the West Side Highway, but I spoke up over the music.

“I thought when you found out you had HIV, people were supposed to be nice to you?”

Lenny squeezed my shoulder and Jim glanced back. I could see his face wasn’t tensed up. His hands were loose on the steering wheel. When he answered, his voice was sad. “I guess … there aren’t any rules for when your best friend tells you he got the virus on purpose.”

All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils. ¹

Ichabod Crane was weird.

He grew up in Connecticut and went to college or something. But he was superstitious as fuck. At least that’s what I learned in high school. I loved the Headless Horseman story because I grew up on the Hudson in a town almost as old, Dutch and spooky as Sleepy Hollow.

I knew Kill means creek in Dutch before I went to middle school. Norman’s Kill? Vloman Kill? Names like that creep out tourists who come to see our old bridge.

Like they think we call places after murderers.

I used to wonder if my teachers were like Ichabod. Most of them grew up someplace else and moved to Castleton to teach… like Ichabod moved to Sleepy Hollow. Did they act all smart and in control during the day only to get weirded out by ghosts and witches at night? Was Castleton haunted for them like it was for me? Like Ichabod’s new home was for him?

I thought about Ichabod running away to Manhattan. If the goblins dint get him.

I thought about everything as we drove up the Jersey side of the Hudson toward the Tappan Zee. Zee means Sea in Dutch, which I also pretty much always knew.

Jim was like, “This is wide as FUCK,” as we crossed the bridge back over to the east side of the river. “Scary!”

“They don’t call it a Zee for nuthin,” I said.

I couldn’t help lookin back down the river as we got to the middle of the bridge. Even though we’d been on a freeway for almost half an hour, Manhattan was still huge out the rear window. Twin towers, Chrysler building, everything.

Lenny went, “Don’t look back. Let’s have fun today,” as he squeezed my shoulder.

Drivin down into Tarrytown was cool. Kinda reminded me of going home, even though Castleton was hours upriver yet. Tarrytown smelled like growing up, like memories I could taste. Trees and grass and muddy river water. Mixed with diesel.

I scooted all the way over and rolled the window down. Stuck my head out as Jim drove north real slow, frowning and checking a map. Lenny told him to put it down and follow the signs to Sleepy Hollow.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m gonna buy lunch when we get there, but you guys gotta promise me something.”

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of SLEEPY HOLLOW, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. ¹

We started out climbin all over the deserted old mill, me and Jim, kinda gettin used to each other again, not really talkin. Then Lenny asked some guy to please grind us a sack of flour, which I was like, what the hell? But the guy, dressed like an old Dutch settler, went “Why not? No school groups today, might as well keep busy.”

He jumped up in the air and swung on some old black iron lever, pulling it down real slow. I heard a bang, then the floor started to vibrate under my body, like the whole word started to buzz in my teeth.

“Check it out!” Jim shouted, pointing at the giant water wheel above us. It was turning, slow but not too slow.

The Kill below us looked so gentle and peaceful. Like the water dint even move. But once that wheel started to turn and squeak and shake, you changed your mind fast. The fake Dutch guy grunted as he threw a burlap sack over his shoulder, pulled a string loose, and poured a gold colored stream down a wooden spout.

He pointed down into the works below. “See the millstone? Watch!”

Five minutes later, Lenny held a handful of fresh ground flour under my nose. Amazing. Flour smells THAT good? Who knew? Jim handed the guy some money and looked at me. “Sleepy Hollow sourdough tomorrow. Come over for dinner?”

It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travels homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him the Tappan Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters.

I threw a bread roll at Jim. “Bet these are as good as yours.”

He laughed as we drank fresh cider and ate sausages at the Old Mill Cafe, or whatever the hell it’s really called. The apples are pressed by the same millstone that grinds the flour. The cider’s cloudy. Every once in a while you feel grit on your teeth.

I wondered if people used to think that was normal.

“OK,” went Lenny as we ate. “We promised to listen and not interrupt. You ready?”

I looked down at my plate for a while, then pushed my last sausage out of the way. I lifted my glass and let cider wash my mouth. “Yeah.”

I felt like standing up and pacing around the table. Instead, I started in. Right in the middle, because they already knew the beginning. “First of all, what I done is my business. Can we just get that out of the way? I’m not a kid. I’m not stupid. I’m the only one who gets to decide how I live … or die.”

I glared at each of them. Lenny first, then Jim. He opened his mouth to talk, but Lenny set one of his big hands down on Jim’s wrist and shook his head.

I took another drink and stared off at the water wheel. “All my life,” I finally said, “I felt like a green alien from Mars. Even when I was a little kid. Dint understand it, but knew I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. Wasn’t with the people I was supposed to be with.”

Lenny looked at me funny, but Jim nodded his head, like he knew.

“Once I got to be 14 or 15, I figured it out. Knew why I couldn’t stay in Castleton. Once I got to Manhattan and met Luke, it’s like I met my real family. I wasn’t weird anymore. I was the normal one. Everybody not like me was on the outside. Right?”

Lenny sighed and Jim kept nodding.

“Then … it took a while. The Village? Fire Island? Uncle Charlies? I loved it all so much. My people, my places, my new life. But I couldn’t see, or maybe I just closed my eyes. I dint see how it was all being eaten up like cancer.

“Fuck! One of my roommates had the virus and my lover was sick with it. And I was just … lah di fuckin dah. Clue fuckless. All worried about Dykes and Fags Bash Back, all marching in the streets about violence, all … HAPPY.

“Then Luke died. One day he was fine. The next he was sick as fuck. A year later… the end. And I looked around. And everybody I knew was like that.”

Jim interrupted. “You never should have joined Act Up.”

“Why not? So I could stay blind longer? So I could pretend? So I could let OTHER people fight? I told you already, it’s MY life. I joined Act Up because I wanted to. Because I left Castleton for a reason.”

I picked up my cider glass and drank the rest. I picked up the last sausage and took a huge bite. “And now? I’m just like everybody else. Whatever happens to my people happens to me. I’m OK with that. Actually, I’m happy as fuck about that.”

Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. ¹

The drive back home was as quiet as the drive to Sleepy Hollow.

Jim played music, Lenny let me lean against him. We dint talk, because we had nuthin to say. I wasn’t gonna argue about my own business. But we were fine. I stopped Jim from apologizing about telling Greg, because that was his own business.

According to Washington Irving, who probably totally made the story up, nobody ever knew for sure what happened to Ichabod Crane. Did the goblins take him or did he run away like a coward? Was the Headless Horseman really nuthin but a jealous trick?

Most people say so.

Me? I grew up on the banks of the haunted Hudson, and I’m not so sure. Just look what happened. I was supposed to have at least ten years left. I was supposed to fight with my people.

Then the goblins came for me like they came for Ichabod.

What you just read actually happened.

I’m telling Brad’s story because I am probably the only person left in the universe who knows it.

Next chapter →

← Click below to read earlier chapters about Luke, Brad, how Brad got kicked out of the house when he was only 17, and how Luke died.

¹ From The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Read the full story on the Project Gutenberg Internet archive.

James Finn is a long-time HIV/LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Act Up NYC, an essayist occasionally published in queer news outlets, and an “agented” novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].