Have A Little Faith In Me (18 page)

Dex grinned from ear to ear, and tipped his black cowboy hat to the crowd.  “Thank you, Jackson!  Now…I know what y’all are waitin’ for.”

The crowd screamed.  Dex and the Delta Devils had run through about 2/3rds of their playlist, mostly B-sides.  They’d just performed “39.5,” the song that Sam Griggs had discouraged him from recording…until Dex had decided, to hell with Sam Griggs, and to hell with the big machine, and started playing it live. 

The song had become a blue collar anthem, the sort of songwriting that makes critics stop sneering, at least for a moment.  It was hard to get it played on the radio on a lot of country stations, because as one station programmer said, “it sounds like Socialism to me.”  Others said, “You tryin’ to be the Dixie Chicks or something, stir up trouble?”

But all he had to do was grin and break into his hits.  “I’m a Gonna” was one of those songs that, under the surface, was deep and profound, but on the surface was so rockin’ and funny and danceable that nobody noticed if they didn’t want to.  Like the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” or Gang of Four’s “I Love a Man in a Uniform,” the audience was free to ignore the message and just rock out.

Fame was power, Dex had discovered.  And fame meant that he could say “fuck you” to Sam Griggs…from time to time.  It meant he could test out songs onstage that Sam had said “no” to, and see how they went over. 

Fame also meant a “get out of jail free” card when he needed it.  He couldn’t say why he did it – why he went out to shitty bars where his famous face and his big build would get him challenged by some dumbass.  Why he relished it, why he was so exhilarated in those moments when the two of them headed out to the alley, a crowd in tow, to punch and crunch and smash… 

He had an anger in him he didn’t have a name for.  A sense that something had been stolen, something had been lost, and it was someone’s fault, and someone had to pay.  Anyone.

He closed the set with a roaring finish, making sure they were pumped up by “Six Pack, Four Wheels, Two Dogs.” That song was all the more popular because it had been denounced by the humorless for “encouraging drunk driving.” 

“Maybe we should ban brooms,” Dex had responded, “so that kids don’t try and imitate Harry Potter and try and fly off the roof.”

“Thank you!  Goodnight!” he said, thrusting his guitar in the air.  Of course it wasn’t really goodnight – just part of the ritual, in which the audience would stomp and cheer for an encore.

Sam was waiting for him in the wings.  “Dex, I just saw your set list.  That encore song…that’s not…”

“Sam,” Dex said firmly.  “Here’s the deal.  I did the Charlotte thing.  Now you leave me alone.”

“I’m just trying to help you out here, son…”

Dex turned away, fuming.  He was learning to do that.  To just…walk away from these situations. 

He was a millionaire now.  His family was taken care of.  He could do anything he wanted.  Well, almost…

He and the band went back onstage for the encore, the screams getting louder. 

“This is a change of pace for us, I hope you like it.”  He had wanted to cover this song on an album, but Sam had rejected it as “too gay.” 

“This is not your brand, Dex,” Janet.  “Your brand is…”

“I’m not a brand, dammit.  I’m not a…box of cereal.  That you open up and every time you pour it out, you get the same damn cereal.  I’m not gonna spend my life makin’ the same damn cereal, every day for the rest of my life.  That’s not me.”

She shook her head.  “Dex, Dex, Dex.  That is what people want.  The same damn cereal, every time they open that box, every day, forever.  They don’t want it to change.”

That day, Dex went out and got his first tattoos.  If he was just a bowl of cereal, he was going to redesign the fucking box himself.

He started to play the song, its light and happy melody in contradiction to the melancholy words. 

Ooh! Get me away from here I'm dying

Play me a song to set me free

Nobody writes them like they used to

So it may as well be me

He loved the Belle and Sebastian song.  Its lyrics spoke to him as a musician, as a man, as…someone who’d once, just once, almost been a lover.

He closed his eyes when he sung it.  It was a cry from the heart, the song’s refrain the truth, the real truth, of his life.  He was dying, inside, and he knew it. 

This was the moment, the only moment, in which he could unlock the door.  Go in to the room.  Where someone was waiting for him, with a smiling face, a kind word, a warm embrace…

Alex.  The only person he’d ever really loved.  Who he’d turned away from, for…this.  To save his family, to make his way in the world, to…to save his soul, too, he supposed.  Though more and more often these days, he wondered what kind of soul you could still have if you denied yourself love your whole life.

Slowly, methodically, deliberately, he’d cut Alex out of his life.  After he got to Nashville, he made their phone calls shorter, took longer to return Alex’s messages, then failed to return them at all. 

I can’t.  I can’t be gay.  I can’t do it.
  To acknowledge Alex’s existence was to acknowledge his own desires.  To blot out Alex was to blot out the gayness in himself.

It was funny.  He and Alex had smoked pot and listened to that album over and over.  “If You’re Feeling Sinister” was one of Alex’s favorites.  He hadn’t thought of it in years, until the day that Sam and Janet had laid down the law, just a few days before this concert.

“Dex, there’s someone we want you to meet.  You know who Charlotte Deakins is?”

“Yeah, I know her,” Dex said.  Charlotte was one of the promising young singers in the Griggs stable. 

“Good.  We’ve set the two of you up on a date tonight.”

“What!”

Sam raised a warning hand, steel in his eyes.  “Now listen to me,” he said, his voice as sharp as a razor.  “It’s time you paired off.  Country fans want to see a family man up onstage.  Either that…”

“My dad’s a family man,” Dex retorted.  “And he’s a fucked up piece of shit.  Gettin’ married and poppin’ out kids doesn’t make you a family man.”

“Either that, or a cocksman.  And.  You’re not dating.  You’re not fucking strippers.  And, you’re not Jesus Boy, either, savin’ yourself for the Right One.  So…the question arises, Dex...”

Sam let the question hang in the air. 

Dex read his meaning.  He opened his mouth to say something.  He looked at Sam and Charlotte.  In that moment, he knew that they knew.  How, he didn’t know.  Or was it just his stubborn celibacy, his refusal to be what he wasn’t? 

Janet stepped in, playing good cop.  “You don’t have to knock her up, Dex.  Just go out with her.  See how it goes.  I think you’ll have a good time.  We’re not setting you up to be miserable here, you know.”

Dex nodded glumly.  It was true.  He’d reached that level of success in country music where attaining the next level meant getting on the cover of “Who’s Pregnant” magazine, which could only be accomplished through a “date and mate” synergy with some other star. 

“Okay.  I’ll go to dinner with her.  But that’s it.”

He should have known.  He picked Charlotte up at her apartment, another Griggs-owned building.  She was slight, perky, and blond – she looked like Jessica Simpson. 

“I’m sorry you got lassoed into this,” was the first thing she said.  “I guess it’s to help both our careers.”

“Umm…yeah.  I mean no, I’m not sorry.  I…”

She smiled.  “It’s okay, honey.  It’s all part of the business, I know.”

Dex exhaled, smiled.  “Yeah, okay.  You’re under orders too, huh?”

She winked.  “You’re Tom Cruise, and I’m Nicole Kidman, right?”

Dex chuckled, but on the way to his truck, he thought about that.  Why had she chosen that couple, of all people?

He should have known that Sam had set him up.  When they got to the restaurant, sure enough, there were the paparazzi, click click flash flash to get the two of them together. 

“I’m gonna need sunglasses if this is my future,” Charlotte said when they got inside.  “That hurt my eyes.  You’re lucky you got those dark brown eyes.”

“Yeah, it’s not so bad,” he said, noticing her bright blues for the first time. 

“So,” he said awkwardly as they waited for their meal.  “Where you from?”

“Charlotte, North Carolina.  If you can stand that.  Charlotte from Charlotte.”

Dex laughed.  “Hey, my name’s Dex Dexter, I’m in no position to laugh.”

“Our parents had strange senses of humor, huh?”

“I’ll say.  Or no sense of humor.”

“No sense of irony, that’s for sure.  Now mine,” she said, taking a deep swig of her wine, “is…well, you ever see that movie, ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’?”

“I read the book.”

Charlotte raised an eyebrow, surprised.  “Well, then.  You know my family.  Or the type, anyway.  Decayed aristocracy, no money but they still live like they’ve got it.  Private schools for me, all that horsie shit, you know.” 

Dex nodded, shocked.  Charlotte was from “old stock” but seemed to despise the whole idea.

“They’re expecting her to make a Good Marriage. To some dried up old stick named Lucius or Jebediah or Stonewall or something.  They can’t stand that I’m trying to be a ‘career woman.’”

Dex laughed.  “And you want a career.  You want to be a singer.”

Her mouth smiled, but her eyes were serious.  “I want to be a star.”

The conversation flowed from there, lively and fun.  Dex wished he didn’t have to edit himself, wished he could be as brazenly honest as Charlotte.  Only now did he realize how many secrets he had – Alex, gayness, what he’d done in Biloxi during Hurricane Katrina…

“But hell,” she said, breaking his reverie.  “I don’t want to get married, but you know, if I could find a guy who wouldn’t expect me to be barefoot and pregnant, who’d let me have my career…”

Dex found himself on the verge of confessing to her.  Yeah, he wanted to say, I’m gay so let’s get married for show and we can…

“But,” she continued.  “The last guy I dated?  Gay as a goose.  Wanted me to marry him to keep up appearances.” She shook her head.  “I try and be open minded, but I just…I don’t agree with that lifestyle, you know?  I’m maybe not the best Christian I can be, but I know what’s out of bounds, right?”

Dex nodded against his will, his hopes deflating.  He knocked off his glass of wine and signaled the waiter for another bottle. 

You idiot.  You thought what, you could have it all?  The image, the good PR, and then go out and fuck guys?  Did you forget that you have to block that out, stuff it down, forever?  You fucking idiot.

Outside after dinner, the cameras were still there, click click flash flash.  Dex felt a little sick, in a strangely familiar way that had nothing to do with any physical ailment, and he nearly stopped in his tracks when he realized why.

It was the same way he’d felt in Biloxi, when they were searching for “the Angel.”  The sense that someone had picked him up and…

He and the other guys in the apartment had watched a Will Ferrell movie one night, drunk and a little stoned and looking for a laugh.  But “Stranger Than Fiction” was a departure for the star.  The story of a man who may only be a character in someone’s novel, with no agency of his own, a destiny written for him by some invisible hand…  Fuck this shit, had been the general consensus of the other guys, but Dex had stilled them, made them watch it to the end. 

This is me,
he thought. 
This is my life.  I’m in someone else’s story, not mine.

And that was when, standing there with Charlotte outside the restaurant in the glare of the flashbulbs, Alex forced himself into Dex’s consciousness.  Alex, “trapped” in the Deep South but not really, Alex who always wrote his own script and always would…

He could see his friend, the two of them in Alex’s room, Alex with his eyes closed singing the words to the song that expressed exactly how the two of them felt about Biloxi, Mississippi.

“Oh, get me away I’m dying, get me away I’m dying, oh I’m dying….”

Rocky clenched his fists.  He knew it was coming, of course.  The reporter had been clever, relaxing him with softball questions, as if he could just…slide this one in easy.  Like a knife.

“So you and Dex Dexter ended up singing a duet at CrossFest.”

“Well, it wasn’t supposed to be one.  It was a battle of the bands.”

“Which is exactly why it was so magical.  It really did embody what CrossFest was supposed to be about, Red State and Blue State music coming together.”

Rocky didn’t say anything.  It wasn’t a question, after all, and he didn’t really feel like agreeing.

“It’s got a million hits and counting on YouTube, you know.  They’re calling it the ‘duel that became a duet.’”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Rocky lied.  “I try and stay away from the Internet, especially things about myself.”

“So you haven’t seen the video?”

“No, I haven’t,” he said, truthful this time.

He didn’t want to.  He knew what he would see, what he didn’t want to see or think about again.  There had been something there, between him and Dex – a connection, and not just a musical one.  Something more, something that could only end in tears.

“Is there any chance that the two of you would…”

Rocky tapped his fingers on the table, the signal to Korey. 

“Sorry man,” Korey said to the reporter, “our time is up.”

As he ushered the reporter out of the hotel room, Korey turned back to Rocky.  “If you don’t watch the video, this is just gonna get worse.  Just watch it dude, and we’ll concoct some vanilla statement you can use next time.  Okay?”

Rocky sighed.  “Okay.”

He knew why he didn’t want to watch it.  He knew what he didn’t want to see.  He didn’t want to see himself…
doing that again.
  Falling for the unattainable man.  Probably, on some level, falling for him because he
was
unattainable.

Rocky and the Boulders had reached the level of fame now where hotel rooms had gift baskets waiting for them – from the concert promoters, from the swag suppliers, from record labels currying the “independent” band.  That was a joke.  The big labels were like banks – a bank only offered you a loan when you could prove you didn’t need it.  These days, the bigs only offered you a contract once you were already successful.  In which case, why would you sign with them, if you were already responsible for all the star-making machinery yourself?

Because this was rock and roll, the gift baskets always had booze.  Rocky hadn’t had to touch a minibar in months.  He found a bottle of Bullitt Rye, cracked it open, and swigged from the bottle before sitting down in front of his laptop and searching for the video on YouTube.

It was just as bad as he thought it would be.  The joy on his face, the happiness…he knew when he’d had that face before.  Down on his knees, worshipping Nico Paulus.  In an alley behind a club, pushed up against a wall by Frank James.  And on a stage, looking up at Dex Fucking Dexter.

He closed his eyes.  Just…listened this time.  As if it were two strangers.  And damn, they were good.  Creative chemistry at its best.  Brad and Angelina in “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” so hot together you knew they’d end up married in real life.  Johnny Cash and June Carter.  The fucking Rat Pack. 

He opened them after the song ended.  One of the links on the sidebar was for one of Dex’s other songs, “I’m a Gonna.” 
Yeah,
he thought bitterly. 
Let’s hear some of his fucking redneck bullshit.  That’ll cure me.

The good time beat it opened with convinced him he was right.  Then he heard the lyrics.  It was a live recording, and the audience was laughing as Dex sang about all the things he was gonna get to doing, after he finished his beer.  But it was clear that he wouldn’t, that the truck would stay on blocks and the house would fall apart, that after this beer there would be another, and another.  It was a song about depression and the inertia that came with it, masquerading as a fucking good time party song.

Rocky knew exactly who Dex was singing about.  Small towns were full of such men, exhausted from monotonous jobs, aggravating families, for whom
one more thing they gotta do
was just too much.

“Dammit,” he said out loud.  “God damn it.”  He wanted to come out of that song hating Dex.  Ready to mock him, refreshed and satisfied that he was just a dumb hick whose shit sucked.

Damn, Bullitt Rye was smooth.  He knew he’d pay for it tomorrow, but he didn’t care.  Glug, glug, glug.  The booze rippled through his bloodstream, like oil on the waters of his troubled brain.  He sighed. 

His phone rang.  The caller ID told him it was Faith.  “Hello?”

“Rocky,” she said, her voice unsteady.  “I need you to come home.”

He was instantly sober.  “Are you okay?  What happened?”

“It’s your father.”

“Oh,” he said, his anxiety disappearing.  How many more rollercoaster rides could he take today? 

“He’s very ill.  A very aggressive cancer.  He doesn’t have long, a month or two, maybe.”

“Good.”

“Rocky!” she cried.

“It serves him right.  What he’s doing, he should suffer.”

All across Africa, the American Religious Right, with Reverend McCoy in the vanguard, had triggered a wave of violence, of hatred.  They had gone there with their speeches about how the gays “threatened the family, destroyed marriages, recruited children” all the little code phrases that were increasingly ignored at home. 

They got the African churches, and the African legislators, up in arms.  You see, their hosts had taken their visitors’ words literally.  They believed that the gays were literally going to kidnap their children, physically break up their families, destroy their marriages.  And people like that, well, they had to be stopped.  Killed, if necessary.  Uganda even had a “Kill the Gays” bill in the works, to make homosexuality a capital offense.

And now, the good Christian pastors threw their hands up in the air, like Pontius Pilate, crying “Hands clean!  We never told anybody to do that!”  As if their new audience was supposed to understand that these were mere code words – threaten, destroy, undermine, recruit.  Dog whistle words to incite fund raising, not violence.

America thought so well of Pastor Rick Warren, as if he was a kind and gentle soul, a spiritual leader.  A man who said that gay marriage is “equivalent” to incest, pedophilia and polygamy and said that gay people are “evil” and have “Christ-o-phobia.” Who had said that “homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right.” 

Hands clean, hands clean, like a pack of lawyers they cried, “We never used the word ‘kill’ so we’re innocent.”

Men like Rick Warren…and Rocky’s father. 
Who had
done this with their words, yes, with their hands.
  Rocky always thought it was the most magnificent irony that Senator Jesse Helms, America’s greatest mass murderer, had died the way he did.  Even today he can be held accountable for the spread of AIDS across the world by his efforts to prevent treatment, education, everything that could have helped slow the spread of the plague, sped up the invention of new drugs.  In time, he might even be judged the greatest mass murderer in history – because even long after his death, his actions ripple across the world, bringing more and more suffering and death every day.

In the end, confined to a wheelchair, Jesse Helms had suffered a painful and debilitating condition known as peripheral neuropathy, in which the nerves of the hands and feet slowly die.  A condition that was common…to AIDS patients. 

God’s punishment, indeed
, Rocky thought.  And now his father was suffering, dying, slowly, painfully. 

Good
.  What other justice was there for people like him?  What other power but Mother Nature could ever make them pay?

“He’s your father, Rocky.”

“Is he?  Ask him.  Ask him if he is.”  The words his father had written to him when he’d come out publicly were blazoned before him, written in fire. 

You are no son of mine until you repent.

“I know,” she said gently.  “But this is your last chance, to forgive him.”

“Forgive him!  Why would I do that!  He’s done nothing to deserve forgiveness.”

She paused.  “Forgiveness isn’t something you do for the other person.  It’s something you do for yourself.  To let go of the anger.”

“No.  Forgiveness is a free pass.  I know him.  Whatever he’s done, however much – or little – he regrets it, he’ll just put himself in his…Forgive-O-Matic and be done.  ‘Oh!’” Rocky said mockingly. “ ‘I’ve been a sinner, but I’ve prayed on it, and God has forgiven me!’  They don’t have to do fucking jack shit to earn it.  They don’t have to pay for anything.  They give themselves a free pass and it’s all good.”

Then he pulled out the big gun.  “Why do you think he never remarried?  Did it ever occur to you that maybe
he
was gay?  That that’s why he hates us, me, so much?”

Faith was speechless.  “I…it doesn’t matter now.  He’s dying.  Please think about coming home.  Please.”

“I will.  I will think about it,” he said truthfully.

He was bleary and hung over the next day, and not in the mood for another interview.  But, being red-eyed and half-sick in the morning was the Divine Right of Rock Stars.  It figured it had to be a TV interview, he thought.  He’d done what he could about the bags under his eyes and the reporter for Infotainment Now! had thoughtfully brought along a makeup person. 

When The Question came, he thought he was ready.  He and Korey had prepared an answer that was neutral, bland, inoffensive and unquestionable. 

“We’re just so busy right now,” he said, the sacred and inviolable American excuse, the creed of the Church of the Workaholic.  “Maybe at some point in the future, if the time is right.”

“Have you heard what Dex said about the idea?”

“No…”

“He said pretty much the same thing you did.  Until someone asked him if he was uncomfortable doing it because you’re gay.”

Rocky said nothing.  Steeled himself.

“He said that he wasn’t comfortable with ‘that.’  Meaning homosexuality.  That he ‘didn’t agree with that lifestyle.’”

Rocky snorted.  Korey waved at him frantically, trying to stop him.

“Oh, he did?  Well, I have news for him.  It’s not a ‘lifestyle,’ like being outdoorsy, or collecting stamps.  And what the fuck does that mean, ‘agreeing’ with it?  Was I asking him if it’s okay?  It’s not like picking a restaurant.  It’s like…like saying you don’t agree with the weather, it’s a stupid thing to pretend you can change by not agreeing with it.”

She pounced.  “Are you calling people stupid who disagree with you on that?”

“Yes.”

“Your own father is…”

“I know what my own father is.  My father is an evil monster who is trying to do in Africa what he and his ilk failed to do in America – create theocracies built around hate and fear, to murder their alleged enemies in the night.  Gays are for my father and his ilk what Jews were to Hitler, a great single beast to be blamed for everything, then slaughtered.”

“You know your father is sick.”

Rocky stood up, ending the interview. 

“My father has always been sick.”