"}In the last days of his life, Jesus Christ experienced what many have, and many have not. \u00a0His love and tenderness for mankind were boundless, and he poured out his affection to every person he encountered, or failed to encounter. \u00a0As he saw someone dying, he would literally embrace them, whispering, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but I\u2019ll have to let you go.\u201d \u00a0He would cry out to the people of his city, \u201cIt is enough. \u00a0I thank God I am not responsible for your sorrow.\u201d \u00a0He would cry out to his disciples, \u201cThese are not the times that you dealt with the disciples; were it so, you would not have had to answer such a multitude of questions.\u201d \u00a0And he would become frustrated in the end, and he would be sorry and he would be upset, and he would cry out, \u201cMy God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u201d
And we do not know how much this was real and how much this was a beautiful, mythological portrayal of Jesus Christ, but we do know that it was a real experience. \u00a0This was the personal heart of the man in whom we are now so very terribly disappointed, but who in his last moments we have somehow been consigned to forget that he is no less a person, that we are merely wasting time with the unreal. \u00a0We have been told that all of his human intimacy was for the purpose of performing some intricate drama for which he was solely responsible, which can be seen as a mere reflection of our own ego, a petty drama that happens to involve our own people. \u00a0But we do not believe this.
\u201cI remember that in his last illness,\u201d a friend has written, \u201che would have been glad to discuss the future with you.\u201d \u00a0"This was the sickness of a dreamer,\u201d said another. \u00a0We know that this was a human being, in whose own time, perhaps, we shall one day wake up. \u00a0He was a very unique man, with no equal in history, in the way that this moment could be nothing less than a mere passing detail. \u00a0There is something that causes us to feel strange about these last days. \u00a0In these days, we must admit, the nameless, the unknowable, enter into things that we cannot even hope to comprehend. \u00a0The womb of this age is yet incapable of fattening the blood of this earthly revolution. \u00a0It is up to us.\u201d
And I would wish for an instant that all of the myriad people I have encountered were still in their last breaths, as I know they would be if I were to ask them all the questions I am about to ask, and to be able to actually say what I am saying now, as they would like me to say it. \u00a0But they are gone now. \u00a0I am alone in this time of transition, in which my male identity has broken down and cannot be recomputed. \u00a0I do not know whether I have been wrong to break down or not. \u00a0There is no continuity here; the words are there, the little lock-picks of the dialogue from many lives on many planes. \u00a0I do not know the colors of my adopted gender. \u00a0I cannot see the faces of my many companions. \u00a0The human soul can do so much in such a short time, and then, at last, it is at an end.
And so I am here, with the last person I knew, in this impossibly small gesture. \u00a0The boy who is now dead, who has been torn away from this tiny world to die in the void, who would