The Price Of Dick (24 page)

However, I had two very good reasons
for excluding him. I didn’t want to chance someone saying something that would inadvertently set off his temper. I also no longer felt he brought anything new or exciting to the shoots except his volatile behavior. His straight act had lost its luster with me, as well. And I certainly wouldn’t condone name-calling and hate speech. I began this venture to further the cause for equality, not let its opposite invade my workspace. I found it hard to forgive him for what he had called Ran. He’d never apologized. Never explained. It was impossible to forget.

I was feeling poorly two hours into the shoot and had to take my
plop-plop-fizz-fizz
remedy. I complained about not being in shape. That was enough to start a conversation with one of the models who had just gotten seriously into fitness training.

“
You should work out with my trainer,” he said. “I love him. He’s great and you might be able to do a trade-off in shoots. He’s been talking about getting some photos of his boyfriend and him done.”

I heard all of this through the tribal
drum pounding in my head. So a lot of it just didn’t register past the pain. I probably made a noncommittal answer, and told him to have the trainer call me to set up something. It makes you wonder how much conversation we have in life that is completely disengaged from thought.

We all three heard the unexpected opening of the door at the same time and turned toward it. Afternoon light spilled in with Dick
’s long shadow. He was home in the middle of the day. Unannounced. Naturally, by this time both the boys were naked, wrapped in the red satin sheets that were my standard, a trademark in every one of the romance shoots. He looked at me, then them, then back to me. It was the first eye contact we’d shared in ages. He didn’t have to say anything. His dilated black pupils were angry and accusatory. He gave nothing away to the models. His color momentarily fluctuated between tan and blanched, but he covered it with his practiced smile. He apologized for the interruption. I introduced him as my roommate. He sat down at the edge of the studio in a chair, pretended to read mail he’d brought in with him. He’d carried in that ‘bad vibe’ sensation. It now clung to him like cheap cologne.

I finished the shoot in record time, thanked the boys and promised to have copies of the shots in their emails by that evening. That left me with
Dick moving through the house acting as if he wasn’t angry, but I could feel it there swimming beneath the surface. He’d caught me in a lie. I didn’t want to feel guilty and didn’t know why I did. I think that’s the difference between people who have consciences and those who don’t. Dick would never have felt guilty for lying to me.

He didn
’t say anything. He didn’t have to. What began to happen after that made it clear that everything between us from friendship with occasional sex to business would never be the same.

I
drank even more, had more frequent hangovers, and worried ceaselessly. It was one thing to have a friendship temporarily on the rocks, but we were business partners as well. We had tied ourselves together like kids in a three-legged race. I had held on to hope that things would get back on track. That he’d recover at least some of his old self, that I wouldn’t have to lie awake and worry about someone I no longer trusted, who no longer trusted me.

The problem for him was that I was the problem. The longer we
lived together, the harder I was to explain away. There aren’t too many supernatural things I believed in, but the one thing I know is that humans have a built-in sense of intuition. We can sense something bad or dangerous. I was sensing both.

*  *  *

Together Dick and I had reached our tipping point. It’d taken many years and a near tragedy for me to overcome the hurdles of his family and friends while maintaining his secret sham. I could finally behave in a normal manner again. This time I was being pushed down and back because of his homophobic employers. I didn’t know how many more sacrifices I would be expected to make on his behalf. I was living a twilight life.

This wasn
’t fair to someone pushing into his forties. Dick's life of lies was impeding my personal freedoms. I was making endless concessions and he was making none in return. I was being met with hostility because he considered me more of a liability than a friend. I was depending in vain on the value he placed on our friendship to redeem us, and salvage everything that seemed to have taken a left turn in to hell.

I respected
his intelligence too much to think he didn’t see this. He had to understand why I was reluctant to have him in another shoot after his homophobic outburst at Ran. His ego had been scraped down to raw nerves because Ran had cottoned to his secret. I couldn't have someone so explosive at a shoot; always worrying over what might flip the switch that turned him into a monster. The distance we had to go to find our way back to our friendship just kept getting wider and icing over.

He would test my honesty more frequently now to see if I
’d booked any more romance shoots, but no matter what answer I gave him, I wasn’t believed. Skepticism doesn’t have to be seen to be felt. I had plenty of unused shots from over the years that had never been seen that I could sell. He began to spend more of his weekends out at the ranch, but occasionally he’d sneak back early, and I knew it was to see if he could catch me in another lie about a shoot. The seeds of mutual distrust blossomed quickly. I was going through cheap boxes of Cabernet like they were lemonade. Hangovers, extra calories, and added weight were the unwanted side effects of leaning on that crutch.

He
’d mentioned the name of the ranch, and out of curiosity I Googled it. It was one that was classified an historic location and was being refurbished and revitalized by a fifty-five-year-old woman named Selma, a divorced mother of five youngsters ranging in age from eight to twenty-one. Her help came in the form of a band of volunteers, a member of which Dick could now be counted. There was a picture of her. She was a short, zaftig woman with long, dark hair she pulled back in a ponytail for the picture. What you might call handsome. Time may have given her a few pounds, but her looks transcended them. She seemed completely at ease with herself, and had no qualms being photographed in unflattering positions in overalls, while saddling or shoeing horses.

My
first thought was one of nagging worry and fear that Dick would try to do to her, this honest hard-working woman, what he’d done to Mr. Walsh and all the rest of his victims. She was already a client, but she had something that meant more than money to Dick. She held the key to the door of his fantasy life as a cowboy. An entire ranch on which he could act out his Lonesome Dove dream. I could only feel dread over her proximity to him. I hoped she was a smart woman and would see through his bullshit.

We were spending less time together during the week. He worked very late, sometimes until after ten. I
first assumed he was taking on new clients and getting buried in paper work in an effort to avoid me. However, I knew Dick and recognized his patterns of behavior. This was the one he used when he was plotting damage control for his reputation. I’d been here several times. I didn’t have to see the motor to know what drove the car.

There would be a new girlfriend. Call me Nostradamus.

*  *  *

It happened less than a month after the opening game fiasco with his boss. He came in during the middle of a week, friendly again. Inordinately friendly: convers
ational, even pleasant. He smiled at me. Looked directly at me like I’d re-emerged from the walls into the room itself. He’d bought a roasted chicken and some premade potato salad for us to split for dinner.
A guys night
. He rented a movie. All the things that reminded me of the “old” Dick. The guy I’d liked, some years ago. All the signs of the con about to begin anew.

Midway through the movie, he paused it to bring me a glass of wine. He poured
himself a beer cup full. All indicators I knew too well. The beginning of the end was heralded with these words: “I wanted to let you know that I’ve been lying to you about working late. I was set up on a date a few weeks back by some friends and I’ve been seeing this girl.”

Ta-da!
Another sacrificial lamb had been chosen to be led to slaughter. He needed me to play along to make this work. If he played his cards right, if he could convince this woman that our relationship was nothing more than that of platonic roommates, if she could disseminate that information everywhere necessary...

He was opening his closet door again and asking me to willingly step inside.
And like the serial Prince Charming he was, he’d plotted out how to manipulate another female’s emotions to stroke his ego, build his libido and bury his secret one more time.

The plastic beer cup of wine in his hand was gone in three swallows.
“Her name’s Dolores. She’s a Private Investigator. Owns her own company. Nothing but female investigators. You’ve probably seen it advertised on late night TV. One of my clients set us up. I’ve already introduced her to my boss and his wife, and my family.”

The game was afoot. Now he just needed
my cooperation. I was, after all, the dirty little secret he was trying to bury with this pretense. Dolores was his smokescreen to obscure my existence in his life.

The wine tasted like vinegar on my tongue. I wanted to gag. I felt something I hadn
’t felt in a while. A surge of unmitigated hatred. He turned my stomach. It was a revelation that suddenly appeared like a blinding truth to me. This cycle never ended with him.

“
She wants to meet you. I told her you’ve been the best roommate a guy could ever want.” He emphasized the word
roommate
as if to make the point solid in my mind, which stories were to be told.

I felt too sober to deal with this. I rose to get another glass. I tried to sound polite
; as I always had before. The words came through grinding teeth, though. “What’s she like?” My back was too him. He couldn’t see the expression of distaste.

He laughed. It sounded false, uptight
, nervous. “She’s kind of a tomboy. Dresses a lot like a dude; doesn’t wear makeup. Likes the kind of things I like.”

Nothing had changed.
It was like he did the same puzzle every few years. Took the box out of the closet, blew the dust off the top, tossed the pieces out on the table and put the thing together. Disgust coursed through my veins, along with vino and a few remaining blood cells untainted by either. I didn’t even want to be in the room with him, I was chomping down on my tongue and swallowing curses.

“
Where is this going, Dick?” I asked. I was too old, knew his patterns too well now to condone him leading another woman down the garden path of false hope for the sake of his precious image. I didn't have enough energy to pretend to be straight for her, her friends, and her family should they stumble onto the game board to play. I was too experienced in his machinations to turn my back on the fact that each time he did this to a woman, he made her a victim. I didn't care enough about him anymore to ignore the fact that he used his closet to prey on people.

He was straining to be someone he thought I might like, but he was coming off like a poorly cloned
doppelgänger.

“
It’s going to go where it always goes, buddy. No worries. You know the routine. Just taking care of business. The investment—”

The way he said
buddy
made me cringe.

“
So you want me to pretend to be someone I’m not again, so you can pretend to have a girlfriend, so your boss can believe that you’re someone you’re not? That routine?”

The argument was descending into
the arena of meanness. A darkness drew like storm clouds across his features. I wanted no part of it. I grabbed my wine, went to my room, and closed the door. I wasn’t going to allow him to demean me. I had to stay out of the way of the bricks raining down from the house coming down around me.

I was
one of the walking dead the next day; hung-over and struggling with trying to make peace with the mess I was in. When I was younger, still a dreamer, and more tolerant, this wasn’t what I thought middle age would be like for me. Being yanked in and out of someone else’s closet; play-acting a life that wasn’t mine. All for the benefit of a group of people I wouldn’t invite to a party, much less into my life. Everything Dick asked me to do was about catering to those whose belief system I despised to the core. He was forcing me to participate in a charade that the very nature of my work was trying to end the need for. I was using my gifts to bring gay men out into the light, to encourage them to demand equality. What I was being told to do would undermine the very cause that motivated me.

I plodded through my work with a headache and sick stomach. Periodically I found myself shouting at the walls like they were the judges of my debacle
of a life. I imagined conversations with Dick in which I told his ass off. It was just my normal need to vent. I actually questioned the notion that he might be losing his marbles. People go nuts all the time.

Pat once had a favorite waitress at a restaurant in our neighborhood. They were
well known for their fried chicken. He claimed that she was the best waitress in any place he’d ever eaten. He always tipped her extravagantly. She was only in her twenties. On one occasion during a tableside conversation, she joked with him about going to her first séance, using a Ouija board. She asked him if he believed. He said that he didn’t, but he’d never use one either...just in case. We hadn’t seen her for a month when we stopped in for a plate of the chicken. This time she looked haggard and blank-eyed; almost ill. Her service was impeccable, but just before we left, she told Pat that the Ouija board was now talking to her. I remember the looks he and I had exchanged. A few months later she was no longer at the restaurant. Pat inquired about her with the owner who told us she’d been hospitalized with schizophrenia. All within a matter of months. Mental illnesses could strike anyone at any time.

The stress of all this
new upheaval made me want to drink around the clock. I felt trapped; I didn’t know what to do to free myself. I once had Pat to turn to for advice. He’d never be a convenient escape for me again. That was when the scope of my isolation struck me. I gave in. I had my first cocktail after lunch. I knew what was coming. Dick needed my cooperation for his plan to work.

I got the first
text after lunch telling me he’d be picking Dolores up after work to bring her to the house and make introductions. He would cook dinner for her. I had no say in this. I’d have to grin and bear it to maintain the peace. The false outward peace. There certainly was none to be found internally. Maybe a few more cocktails would help. Double shots.

Around four,
I showered and shaved, both difficult tasks while drunk. I mouth washed the liquor-smell into an antiseptic minty-smell. I put on fresh clothes and checked the mirror to see if my
I’m-completely-straight
mask still fit properly. It had, after all, been awhile since I'd been made to wear it. And cursed, then cursed some more. I was “in hate” with my life. I hated what he was putting me through. I’d never be able to sugarcoat that sentiment.

I heard the door.
It roused me from my self-loathing stare in the mirror. I was too inebriated to make an entrance. It was as if the alcoholic effects of the day were accumulating and hitting me all at once. I heard them talking through the door. I made my way the short distance from the bathroom to my bedroom; closed myself in. It was strange hearing a woman’s voice in the house. It was stranger still to be hiding in my bedroom from that voice. Pans banged, cabinet and refrigerator doors opened and closed. Her fairy prince was cooking her a romantic dinner. I laughed, amused at knowing how disappointed she’d be if she knew he was more fairy than Prince.
Yep, I was drunk.

That he brought her here made me curious. He said she was an investigator. He was really tempting fate. If she didn
’t have gaydar pinging like a Geiger counter after this visit, she needed to go back to school. I wondered what she was like, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t sober up enough to leave the room. I had the unsteady dancing feet of a drunk. That meant one misstep and I’d fall into something. I tried to walk a straight line in my room and couldn’t. That was a sign. I fell into my bed and passed out.