Birds of Paradise Lost

Love Leather

1 Love Leather Mr. Le looked up one morning from mending a vest at the Love Leather and saw a very good-looking Asian kid, his oldest grandson’s age, maybe, seventeen at the most, staring quizzically at him from the sidewalk. When their eyes met through the glass pane, the boy’s ruddy cheeks turned a deeper shade of red and Mr. Le had to look away. Behind him, Steven commented, “Ooh, a hotty! If he comes in—baby, hide the dildos! We’ll have to shoo our twink for browsing too long.” Then he offered his trademark baritone Lou Rawls guffaw, “Hahha­ hah, hahr, hahr.” “Personally, Mr. Lee,” Steven added, “I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-inch pole, know what I’m saying? Not ’less I want to be somebody’s bitch in the slammer in a hurry.” Mr. Le turned around. “Slammer? Shoe?” he asked, adjusting his glasses. “Sorry. I don’t know this slammer and this shoe you say, Steven.” “Oh, honey, don’t be. I’m sorry,” Steven said, slower this time, and with mild exasperation. “Shoo—S­ H­ O­ O, as in, ‘chase out 2 Birds of Paradise Lost somebody.’ As in ‘shoo, you crazy sex pig, shoo, get off me!’ Slammer is ‘jail.’ You know, ‘prison,’ like your re-­ed camp? And a ‘twink’ is someone too young, underage, you know? Hairless, smooth, smells like milk? And ‘being somebody’s bitch in jail’ means . . . oh, never you mind what it means.” An inveterate note­taker, Mr. Le committed “slammer” and “shoo, S­H­O­O,” to his growing vocabulary, to be written down later in his spiral notebook during lunch break. When he looked back out the window, the twink was gone. He already knew “twink.” And“dildos”helearnedrightawaythatfirstdaywhenheaskedRoger Briggs, the store owner, about them. In a con­trolled tone, and as heintermittentlyclearedhisthroat,RogerBriggstoldMr.Leabout their usage, including those with batteries. When Roger left, Steven thanked Mr. Le profusely. “That was simply precious,” he said, laughing, clasping his hands as if in prayer. “You made RB squirm.” Roger Briggs, a big, tall man, with most of his blond hair thinned out and a beer belly, once served in the 101st Airborne Division in Nam. He remem­bered enough Vietnamese to say “Let’s love each other in the bathroom” and “How much for the entire night?” When Roger said the latter in Viet­ namese, Mr. Le inevitably laughed, though why, exactly, he couldn’t say. Most likely, it was because Roger said it in a toneless accent, and it sounded almost as if someone wanted to buy the night itself. Still, whenever he listened to Roger Briggs talk of wartime Vietnam, Mr. Le would often get the feeling that another Saigon had gone on right under his nose. Were there many Vietnamese homosexuals? And were they finding one another in the dark alleys and behind tall, protective flame trees? Roger—who was once very handsome and fit when he roamed the Saigon boulevards at night, and who read entire biographies from furtive glances in the moonlight—said yes. “There are many versions of any one city,” he said, his eyes dreamy with memories. There was another Saigon that Mr. Le didn’t know, a Vietnam of hurried, desperate sex, of bite marks, bruised lips, clawed backs, and salty ­ sweaty nights and punch­ -in-­ the-­ mouth morning denials, and of unrequited love between fighting men that was just as pain- Andrew Lam 3 ful as shrapnel wounds. Just as there was another version of San Francisco that Mr. Le couldn’t possibly have imag­ ined when he was reading his English For Today! textbooks years ago, dreaming of the majestic Golden Gate Bridge and the cling-­ clanging cable cars climbing up fabled hills. Mr. Le’s last name is pronounced Lay, but Steven liked Lee better , and some­ how it stuck. If Roger Briggs corrected Steven half a dozen times since he hired Mr. Le, who had extensive experience working with leather, it was to no avail. Steven was “poz,” he told Mr. Le right away that first day at work, and his mind was out of control half the time because of some “cocktail.” It made him “a chatty­ patty,” and “so please, Mr. Lee, don’t you mind my rambling roses.” A few days later Steven mentioned AIDS again, but sounded oddly upbeat: “I’m kept alive by...