A bunch of Harleys rolled past, followed by a lesbian dojo—women kicking and chopping their way down the street, dressed in white. Miss Gay Wisconsin; earnest middle-aged women with PFLAG signs; a huge brass bed pulled by a convertible and occupied by two men making out with tremendous gusto, their torsos bare above a thin white sheet.
Yale asked Katsu how he was and Katsu said, “I’m becoming a legal expert.” He explain-shouted that he’d gotten new insurance two years ago. In January he was feeling terrible and finally got tested—and he had it, did Yale know? Yeah, son of a bitch, he hadn’t even told his mom—and his goddamned insurance was trying to claim that the virus was a preexisting condition so they wouldn’t have to cover it. “Even though I got the insurance before the fucking test came out! But they’re claiming I should’ve known because three years ago I was treated for thrush. One time. And that’s enough for them to turn me down.” He needed pentamidine treatments, and he’d need hospital care that wasn’t at fucking County, where he’d been a couple times, and was Yale aware what it smelled like in there? There was a reason it was free! So Asher was helping him apply for the Social Security he had to have before he could get Medicaid, because apparently that was how things worked in this stupid country. “And do you know what we have to prove? Okay, this is insane. We have to prove I’m disabled. Which I am now, because I could work maybe four days a week, but the fifth day I get the runs so bad I’m glued to the bathroom floor.” This was tenable for his part-time gig at Howard Brown but not for the administrative assistant work that used to pay the bills and supply the useless insurance. “But the runs aren’t a disability category, you know? So Asher’s finding me this junior litigator, I guess? And here’s what he has to prove at this hearing. He has to show that I can’t do any unskilled sedentary labor in the national economy. Like, the entire nation. And the fucking examples they use! You want to hear the examples?”
Yale was exhausted just listening to Katsu, but sure, he wanted to hear. A drag queen passed on stilts in an elaborate Statue of Liberty costume, all green sparkles and gauze.
“I shit you not. Nut sorter. That’s not a euphemism, by the way. Bowling ball polisher. Also not a euphemism! Silverware wrapper. Like, sitting there wrapping silverware in napkins. Everyone wants their spoons handled by a guy with the AIDS runs, right? Wafer topper. I don’t even know what that means. The last one—for real—is fishhook inspector in Alaska. They don’t care that I can’t get to Alaska and I could never get this job. They care that it’s a job in the national economy. So yeah, my survival now depends on my proving I can’t top wafers.”
Here came a bunch of guys in leather, a poster that read “Bound Up With Pride!” Some kind of garden club followed.
“But I’m gonna get in on whatever clinical trials I can, meantime.”
“And Asher’s helping,” Yale said.
“Yeah. Asher. He can sort my nuts whenever he wants, am I right?”
Yale felt his face catch fire.
“Oh come on, you’d let him polish your bowling balls!”
Yale attempted a noncommittal laugh.
And here, ridiculously, before he could properly recover, was Asher’s AFC float. Here was Asher, waving like a politician. Yale waved, but he didn’t catch Asher’s eye.
Three guys on unicycles came next, cutoffs and denim vests.
A series of aldermen and state senators in convertibles, most looking pained.
The Out Loud float. A red flatbed truck. Yale took a small step back so Katsu couldn’t see his face, so he didn’t have to worry what his eyes and mouth were doing.
Posterboard signs all over it: “Fight Out Loud for Safer Sex!” and “Out Loud Says / Cover Your Head!”
Six beautiful shirtless men—Yale didn’t recognize them, except for Dwight the copy editor—angling cucumbers from their crotches, slowly rolling rubbers onto them. Peeling them off, doing it again. Opening new packets with their teeth, milking the crowd for cheers.
From the side of the truck, Gloria and Rafael threw rubbers from a bucket.
He couldn’t see Charlie. And then suddenly he could. He had shaved his beard. He was the one holding the boom box that blasted “You Spin Me Round.”