I Had to Say Something (18 page)

One of my favorite TV shows of all time is
The Golden Girls
. The main characters—Blanche, Sophia, Rose, and Dorothy—are four mature women trying to get by and hopefully having fun and finding a little love in the process. Indeed,
it is a show that appeals to women and gay men. Since I am gay and grew up as the daughter my mother never had,
The Golden Girls
has special appeal for me.

Sophia reminds me of Nanny, my great-grandmother. Dorothy reminds me of my grandmother, who was a very strong woman. I guess I'm the most like Blanche, even though the character was not a call girl, just easy. My mother would have to be Rose, then, which isn't exactly right. My mother was not ditzy like Rose, but she did have a sincerity and naïveté about her. My mother was a lot like Blanche, too, and in my opinion was every bit as beautiful.

Many TV shows from the 1980s are dated. I loved watching
Designing Women
during the Reagan-Bush years, but today, the four women from Atlanta don't hold up as well. My golden girls are timeless in their designer gowns. When the first season came out on DVD, I rushed right out and bought it.

When I watched the show, I felt like I was watching my Nanny, Grandma, Mom, and me. I could fantasize endlessly about the four of us sharing a house, taking care of one another for as long as we could. These three women meant so much to me, it wouldn't have taken more than that for me to find the happiness I was seeking.

Just like my father, I sat on the couch pretending I was living in another time and place, one that didn't really exist anymore. Since I couldn't deal with my life, my DVDs and some junk food from the 7-Eleven were the closest things to my perfect companions.

 

I went back and forth between appealing to my mom and lashing out at Ted Haggard.

I still hadn't fully accepted the fact that my mother was gone. I needed to talk to her. I needed her advice, especially about what to do next with Ted Haggard.

I consider myself a Christian. I don't pray to a particular deity, and I don't envision my God as a man with long brown hair, a beard, and white robe when I pray. Perhaps I shouldn't call it prayer, because it's more like meditation or throwing a request out into the universe to see what answers come my way.

When in pain, lying in the fetal position can sometimes be the best way to ease it. Since discovering who Art really was, I'd been in pain. My stomach was tied up in knots, and I was all nerves. It seemed that I woke up every day with a migraine. I had started vomiting occasionally and that concerned me.

I would kneel in front of the couch with my arms folded on the cushions. I would clasp my hands together, but only so I could massage my fingers and my hands. There I was, on my knees, but not so I could worship God. I was sick. I began to feel dirty. I started questioning everything.

“What do I do? What do I do?” I pleaded. As I knelt on my living room floor, I thought of those paintings of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he kneels in front of a rock and places his hands on it. I kept hoping beyond hope that a ray of light would beam down on me and tell me what to do, just like in those paintings. “I'm so lost,” I cried.

When I stopped crying long enough, all I could hear was silence. That hurt. In frustration, I pounded my fists into the cushions. My tears literally drenched the couch, so not only did I still not know what to do, but my couch was now ruined.

Over the course of the next few days, my dreams started turning to Ted Haggard. His smiling face, his business-casual
attire, his charming personality. I could almost see horns growing from his temples. It wasn't as if this was the first time I'd discovered something unpleasant about one of my clients. I had been with politicians, professional football players, and some of the biggest names in the world—all men who turned out to be less sure of themselves than their public personas might suggest. The main reason I never said anything—and still refuse to say anything about these other men—is that they have not, to my knowledge, done anything intentionally to hurt anyone else.

It was a different story with Ted. Here was the leader of 30 million evangelicals. Thirty million. That number astounded me. That's almost one-tenth of the entire population of the United States, and this man was their leader. Ten percent of a corporation can be enough to make you the largest share-holder. Ten percent of the population meant that you might really determine the future course of America. And that's what Ted Haggard was doing, all while enjoying gay porn and experimenting with sex toys on the side.

Ted was not like my other clients. Many, if not most, were hypocrites to some degree. We can all be hypocritical, if you think about it. The difference for me was that Ted was a very powerful hypocrite, one who could shape the nation's agenda by mere pronouncement. Bouncing around the World Wide Web, it became clear to me that gays, lesbians, and anyone else who was different would not fare well in one nation under Ted Haggard's god.

I had to do something, or at the very least, I had to say something. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I was David and Ted was Goliath. For starters, I was sure Ted had better lawyers and handlers. Hell, I didn't have even one lawyer or handler. I wasn't sure what course of action to take, and that's what was making me sick.

I kept thinking about his wife and children, because to me, they were the true victims of this situation. They would be caught right in the middle of it. Would I be blamed for their pain and suffering?

I wanted to talk to Ted, and yet I didn't want to talk to Ted. Every time the phone rang, I prayed to the universe that it would not be from a 719 area code. Often, it was just another client who wanted an hour of my time.

Before a client came over, I had to spend some time bringing myself out of my funk. I had every intention of returning to my funk once I was done, but prior to my appointment, I cleaned up and tried to pretend that everything was fine. I threw away the snack wrappers, fluffed the pillows, and tidied up. These men came to me to get away from their problems, not to deal with mine. Besides, it was a good distraction for me, if only a temporary one. Once my client left, I would plop back down on the couch and start crying again. When I did get up, it was either to throw up or to get on my knees and pray.

“Please, just tell me what to do,” I asked my mother again.

 

“We think differently than the previous generation, the 1980s Moral Majority crowd,” Ted said in the
Philadelphia Inquirer
.

Does this mean, Ted, that you are different from Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson?

I spent the rest of the night and well into the morning bouncing around the Internet. I'd bookmark Web sites that had some good information that I either could not read or could not stomach at the time. I tried to get through them all, but it was exhausting. There was so much out there. “He's huge!” I said to myself, and I wasn't referring to his anatomy.

So big, in fact, that Tom Brokaw interviewed him in 2005 for a story called “In God They Trust” that aired on NBC. As Brokaw pointed out, “Ted Haggard believes that America is entering a new period of religious intensity that will alter both souls and society.” Here's an excerpt from the interview:

Occasionally, I had the strength to get up and go to the gym, but I was underperforming when I went. Instead of doing a ninety- or 120-minute workout, I'd barely do thirty minutes. Instead of lifting two hundred pounds, I was lucky to get pounds off the ground. Sometimes, I'd get on the treadmill and just walk, feeling like I was recovering from hip replacement surgery. Other times, I'd just turn around and leave as soon as I got there. And when I got home, I either went to the couch or back to bed.

To be honest, I didn't cry anymore because my mother was gone. Now I cried because of
how
she died and for all the pain
and suffering she had to endure on her way out of this universe. She hadn't gone peacefully. I've always been sensitive to other people's pain, which is why I did well in the escorting business. More often than not, my clients' pain became my pain. In a similar vein, all the pain that Ted was causing was becoming my pain. What a unique form of queer bashing.

 

My mom and dad's wedding anniversary came and went on April 17. It would have been their fifty-third. Some couples stay together because they're afraid to be apart, but my parents stayed together because they truly loved each other. I called my dad to say I was thinking of him, and then I picked up a photo I'd taken of my parents some years earlier and realized that, in my eyes, my dad was still a strapping young sergeant and my mom a beautiful young entertainer.

It was May 7. Happy birthday, Mike, I said to myself. I was awake, fresh from the gym and a huge breakfast, and I was sitting on the couch. I wasn't crying or eating pastries, so that was an improvement. But then I realized that I was waiting for my mom to call, which she always did for as long as she was alive, even when she was in so much pain the year before, to wish me a happy birthday and tell me she loved me. Once again, I started crying uncontrollably.

I admit that my crying did make me feel better. They say that tears wash toxins from your body, so all this crying was a great start. I suddenly remembered one family vacation in the Rockies when my mother had fallen asleep while Dad was driving along one of those unpaved mountain roads. When he stopped at a cattle crossing and rolled down all the windows, a cow poked her head through the passenger window and started licking Mom's face, waking her up in a panic. We all laughed until we cried.

By the time Mother's Day arrived, the day I had been dreading more than any other, it was a bit easier for me to leave behind my grieving and remember how we'd celebrated in past years. I always sent her roses. Whether I bought her perfume or earrings, I could never go wrong. Her favorite fragrances were White Diamonds and Red Door. If I bought her a set of earrings, she would put them on right away. And she was never happier than when she got flowers, perfume,
and
earrings.

 

Finally, as I sat on the couch, some justice came into the world.

Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron Corporation fame were found guilty in May. When you're depressed like I was, something like that can really put you in a good mood. I took it as an opportunity to feel better about the world. That time, I believe my happiness lasted for almost an hour.

A friend called and invited me to a Tony Awards party that was coming up in June, but I said no. I had a client that night, I told him. That may have been true—I don't remember. I just remember lying on the couch watching another batch of
Modern Marvels
installments on the History Channel. I knew I was not feeling well when I preferred that to watching something live on Broadway.

Ted Haggard's face was still front and center in my brain. I was putting myself through hell over what to do.
Do I go to his church and confront him? Do I take pictures of him having sex? Do I call his wife?
Then I started pondering the one option that I hadn't thought about much.
Perhaps I should just say nothing.
I mean, was all this crap worth it? All it was doing was making me depressed and interfering with my normal life. I felt I owed it to the community, but really, would
any good come of making this public? If so, why was it
my
responsibility?

A massage client was coming in a few hours. Time to sparkle. That day I needed at least a couple of hours to get my poker face ready. With my luck, I would come forward about me and Ted Haggard, get my fifteen minutes of fame, and then wind up on daytime television with Jeff Skilling and Kenneth Lay.

 

Back on the Internet, I discovered that Ted had traveled to Israel with a group of Evangelical leaders to see about leasing some space for another megachurch. He made that trip around the same time that he'd first asked me how he could get some meth. Apparently, Ted Haggard was even a big shot internationally.

The first time I saw Ted after I'd learned who he was required extra preparation. I patted down my hair and pretended to press the wrinkles out of my clothes. I dabbed my eyes with a tissue just to make sure they had no tears. I kept rubbing my mouth, hoping I wouldn't say something or do something that would blow my cover.

“Hi, Mike,” Ted said as he opened his arms for me.

I smiled and let him kiss me on the cheek and squeeze me very tight.

“It's so great to see you again,” Ted said enthusiastically. I wondered if he told his wife that, too.

“It's good to see you, too, T . . . Art,” I replied mechanically. Why the hell did I say that?

Ted did a quick snort of meth before we got started. I turned off the few remaining lights in my apartment, and then, as usual and as requested, I lit one small tea candle in the massage room. I undressed completely and stood by the
foot of the massage table waiting for him. He came in, took off his clothes, and lay face down on the massage table. Just as almost every other time, I stood naked in front of his face and reached out my hands to massage his back while he rubbed his face in my dick.