I Had to Say Something (16 page)

I never saw Mark again. He may have beaten the leukemia or he may have died. The time we shared may have helped him get through the worst time of his life. I gave Mark comfort, just like I comforted hundreds of men before him.

CHAPTER 7

After almost two weeks of going from the bathroom to the couch to the kitchen to the couch, with few if any stops in between, I had to do something. One afternoon, I couldn't take my own stench anymore, so I got up and showered. Then I put on what few clean clothes I could find and went outside for a walk. It felt good, but I could only do it for an hour. Back home, I plopped down on the couch again, but at least I'd gotten out and done something. Everything in moderation, including moderation.

I started doing a little more each day. During one particular burst of energy, I went into my closets and started throwing things out. Just as my father and I had done a few weeks earlier when we'd gone through Mom's belongings, I wanted to get rid of whatever I no longer needed. Old papers. Old clothes. Most of my trophies from bowling or bodybuilding competitions. They just didn't mean anything to me anymore.

From California, I'd carried home my mom's collection of porcelain and glass angels. I created a little display in her honor on a desk in my bedroom, where I placed all the angels and some of her jewelry and perfume bottles. It wasn't meant to be a shrine but a reminder that she is here with me, in spirit.

“Please help me go forward from here,” I'd pray aloud to her. “I don't know what's going to happen, so please stay close.”

I called my father twice a day. I was merely checking in, so
we didn't talk much. Phone calls aren't like real visits, where you can touch someone or look into their eyes. My father assured me that he was fine and said that I didn't need to check up on him so often. I cut back on the calls, but to this day I talk with him two or three times a week.

Come the end of January, I had just enough money in the bank to pay February bills. Calls were coming in for massage appointments. I still had ads out there, so it was good to be getting calls. As a masseur, I can almost meditate while I'm giving a massage. Both parties benefit.

I also started getting modeling calls from an art school where I'd modeled before and from individual artists and artist groups as well. I even had a few weight-training clients call me to get started again. Those were great, too, because the workouts took place at the client's home on their own private equipment, making it very focused on them and their training issues and at the same time providing me with the perfect escape from my issues.

I had stopped actively advertising escort services in favor of massage and personal training. Occasionally an old client would call, but I was trying to limit the escort side as much as possible and was, for the most part, succeeding. I simply didn't have the strength to be “on” for those clients. I did, however, find that I had enough energy to play tennis again and enjoy the early spring sun, and I tried to focus on those positive things.

My friend John Kite, a piano player at the famous Brown Palace Hotel, invited me to come to the hotel and join their weekly sing-along in the bar. I hadn't done that in months, so I went, and it was nice to have people hug me and tell me how sorry they were to hear about my mother. My friend Lloyd Peltzer invited me to spend a few days with him in the mountains
relaxing and playing cards. I did that, too. It was good to be out again. After the trauma of my mother's death, I realized how short life really is, and I became determined to use the time I have well.

Valentine's Day was hard. I had always sent my mother a card, candy, or flowers. Her birthday and Mother's Day were only a few months away. I tried to prepare myself on the assumption that getting through those days would be a struggle.

I still had days when all I could do was sit on the couch and cry. What was I going to do with my life? I was forty-eight, I didn't have a partner, I was tired of escorting and tired of massage, I wasn't close to my brothers . . .

I was still hoping I would meet someone. I did meet a man on one of the gay sex lines, but as you can imagine, it went nowhere. The sex was boring and the one thing I needed—intimacy through touching—wasn't something he could provide. How ironic that I had spent my entire adult life touching other people, but when it came to my own desire to be touched, I went begging.

 

Art came to see me two or three times during this period. The first time he came to see me in 2006, he asked me how I was. Since I had already told him about my mother being ill, I confirmed that she had finally passed.

Art showed some emotion but not a lot. “I'm sorry,” he said.

I smiled and tried to think about the hour's work ahead of me.

“What did she die of?” Art asked.

I told him. He smiled, gave me a hug, and off he went to take off his clothes.

I wasn't expecting anything more from him. He was paying two hundred dollars for a good time, so he was entitled to a good time. I took a breath, went into the massage room, and began to entertain him.

I'd turn forty-nine in May.

 

Have you ever heard a voice that sounded familiar, but you just couldn't place it?

I've always been intrigued with history, and in 2006, like most of the nation, I was swept up in
Da Vinci Code
mania. I love a good mystery. I was never much of a reader, so documentaries like those aired on the History Channel are gems for me.

I was on my couch sometime in April watching a documentary on the Antichrist. I didn't know what to make of the concept, but I was fascinated by how it had been kept alive for thousands of years.

I can rarely sit still for an entire hour of television, though, even when I'm intrigued. So a few minutes into the show I turned up the volume and started straightening up around the apartment. I also had the blinds and the door to my balcony open, since there was wonderful, early summer, Rocky Mountain weather that day.

“Every generation thinks it's going to be the last one,” the television blared in the background. The speaker went on to talk about big churches, so I admit I was more focused on the papers I was filing.

Then I thought,
Boy, that voice sounds familiar
. I went back to the couch to watch, but the man I'd heard speaking was no longer on. As I continued cleaning, I heard how, throughout history, people have expressed the need for hell and punishment, and how the Antichrist has served as the perfect figure for attracting all evil so it doesn't infect others.

I was looking for a particular receipt when that familiar voice started speaking again. I couldn't tell you why this voice intrigued me. I remember thinking that there was nothing spectacular about the voice. It was kind of mousy, actually. In fact, it sounded kind of gay.
Maybe he was someone I knew
, I thought briefly,
or maybe he had been a former client
.

I continued shuffling through my receipts and doing other things while the moderator and his interviewees spoke about the human spirit and how it drives people to do what they do. After giving up my search for the missing receipt, I took a break and lay on the couch, watching the last thirty minutes of the documentary.

As I watched, that voice came on again, and now I could see his face. Front and center sat a man in a collared blue shirt and tie sitting before a library of books. I sat up and leaned in closer to the television so I could see the screen.

“Oh, my God!” I shouted. “That's Art!” By the time I recognized him, his name had disappeared from the TV screen. But I could hear his voice—and see that trademark smile of his.

“Wow,” I said to myself. I had thought Art was connected with a church of some sort, but since I saw books in the background, I figured that maybe he was a professor of religious studies at some university down in the Springs. That would make sense. Too bad it was my policy never to ask clients about their personal lives. I'd have loved telling Art how I'd seen him on television and how good he looked.

I continued to clean once the documentary was over, but something wasn't settling right. I kept thinking about the show and about Art in particular. My curiosity was piqued. Why would Art be part of a documentary on the Antichrist, and why would he be on such an important show? I was curious
as to what the connection was and decided to order myself a copy of the show.

As the day wore on, I kept thinking about Art. Thoughts of my mom and prayers to her still dominated, but now Art shared her stage. I did a little more paperwork, washed the evening dishes, and lay on the couch without crying that night, but I couldn't fall asleep until about midnight.

When I woke up the next day at my usual 4:15 a.m., I threw some water on my face, put some fresh clothes and a bottle of water in my gym bag, and headed out the door to the gym, stopping only for a quick cup of coffee. I started with half an hour on the treadmill. I've always found that doing some cardio before you lift weights makes for a good exercise routine, and that's what I have done almost every day of my life since I was a teenager. Exercising on a treadmill is also a great way to wake up. Many people listen to music when they exercise, but I've never liked wearing headsets, so I normally listen to whatever is playing overhead. At the gym where I work out, there are several televisions facing rows of treadmills, stationary bikes, and other machines. They're all usually set on mute and tuned to different channels.

For some reason, Daystar, a religious network, was on one of the monitors directly in front of me. That was a bit unusual, since that's a channel you wouldn't usually see anyone watching in an inner-city gym. Lots of sports and soap operas, yes, but rarely overtly religious programming.

A full-figured woman with big brown hair talked directly into the camera.
She must be Joni
, I thought, since that name had flashed across the screen a minute earlier amid stylistic shots of clouds and people staring up to the heavens. Then a man appeared on screen, showing a lot of emotion and excitement
as he spoke. He was wearing a blue collared shirt and had a big smile.

Oh, my God!

My eyes blinked with disbelief. There was Art on the screen again, less than twelve hours after I last saw him on television.
It couldn't be
, I thought. I had to stop and think. This was Daystar, not NBC or another big network. This was religious programming, and apparently Art is an expert on something religious. Besides, it was five in the morning. This had to be a rerun, and probably an old one.

Next, in a flash, his name appeared underneath his profile. I stopped the treadmill so I could focus on it. T-e-d. Hmm, his name isn't Art, but that's not a surprise. His name is Ted . . . H-a-g-g-a-r-d.

When I got home, I sat down at my computer and typed “Ted Haggard” in Google's search box. A second later, a slew of Web sites came up and listed prominently among them was
www.tedhaggard.com
. I double-clicked on the underlined phrase and up came the official Web site of Ted Haggard. Right in my face was Art's smiling portrait: clean-shaven with light brown hair and wearing a blue collared shirt with a white T-shirt underneath. He looked just as he did when he came to see me, just no motorcycle helmet.

I couldn't believe my eyes. Art is a reverend, and he has his own Web site and a lot of followers. Bouncing around his site, I found sermon after sermon, though I didn't feel comfortable enough to read any of them. The entire site was one big promotion for Ted. I clicked on a link to something called New Life Church. It sounded New Age to me, so I was a bit surprised to see just how Christian it was. There were so many places with references to Pastor Ted, “our” pastor and founder. Oh dear, not only is he a pastor, but this church is his handiwork.

My eyes grew wider the more I read. New Life Church was attracting some fourteen thousand members every year, according to the Web site. Then I came across something called the National Association of Evangelicals. I was not surprised that such an organization existed, but the number of members it claimed to have—30 million—caught me off guard. And Art was the president of this organization.

It was all too much for me to process in just one sitting. I got up to get some water but came right back to my desk to poke around some more. I thought of my last encounter with Art at my apartment, when he wanted to try out some new sex toys he had just purchased—and do meth. It also occurred to me that he knew my mother had just died and he had not offered to minister to me.

I've been around enough fundamentalists to know that they have very strong opinions of people who they deem sinners. These New Life people seemed pretty solid in their belief of what's right and what's wrong, so I could only imagine what they would think of me. And of Art.