I Had to Say Something (9 page)

Since Art was ready to leave, I put on some gym shorts, gave him a hug, and wished him well as he left. I tidied up the massage room, put on a shirt and shoes, and headed down the street for some coffee.

 

“One guy hired me to spank him while his girlfriend watched,” I told Art. “Two friends of mine, a gay couple,
hired me to pose while one did a sketch of me and the other one got off on it. And once, I was even asked by a group of professional gay men to be a naked centerpiece on a table of food.”

Art laughed as he rubbed my chest. “You've had an exciting life!”

I smiled. “I'm sure you've had some excitement in your life, too.”

He sighed and said, “I ride a motorcycle, and that's about all the excitement I have going on right now.”

During the warmer months, Art sometimes showed up at my door carrying a motorcycle helmet. It was solid black and had the letters DOT on it. I had no idea what they stood for, but they were big and obvious.
Could DOT be his initials?
I wondered. I did not ask him any questions about the bike. I am not a big fan of motorcycles. I know nothing about them, and I've lost two good friends to bike accidents. Still, it was no big deal to me that he rode one. My only concern was that he would do meth in my apartment and then hop on his bike an hour later.

“Just be careful when you ride,” I told him. “You're too beautiful a man to get hurt like that.”

Art's face lit up. “You really mean that, don't you?” he said.

“Of course I mean it, Art. You are a wonderful man.” I had the feeling it meant more to him to hear that from me than from anyone else in the world.

He said nothing more, then gave me a big squeeze and left.

I guess I was still trying to bring him out of his shell. Even though I knew that might never happen, I thought I could still make him feel like the sexiest man on earth.

I got a call from a young man who wanted to see me while he was on vacation in Colorado for six weeks. I said sure and scheduled an appointment. Right on time, he rang my buzzer and came upstairs to my apartment.

He was a good-looking man, probably in his mid to late twenties. He was about six feet tall, 220 pounds, fairly muscular, and had one of the best postures I'd ever seen. That, and his high-and-tight haircut, told me he was in the military. You can spot U.S. military guys a mile away. Great posture, sharp looks, and the most gentlemanly manners you'll find anywhere. When Lowry Air Force Base was open, guys who were staying there on temporary duty would come see me.

I showed Roger (not his real name, of course) into the massage room, where he proceeded to take off his clothes. I got the massage lotion, the candles, and the music ready. Before I could say at ease, he was facedown on the massage table, totally nude. I love giving massages to military men. Their bodies are so hard and tight that they are usually perfect specimens of what the human body can be. Okay, it turns me on, too.

He didn't say much while he was on his stomach, even as I was massaging his butt. Once I rolled him over, he got chatty, so we started having a pretty lively conversation. He told me was staying in Golden, Colorado, “with family.” That usually meant a wife and child, but it could have also meant his parents. I didn't really want to know.

Sensing that he wanted to keep the conversation going, I jumped in with what I thought was an innocuous question. “Are you enjoying your vacation here in Colorado?” I asked.

A moment later, tears started trickling down his cheeks. He didn't move, even to wipe his eyes. He just lay there, struggling with an emotional pain that was ready to burst.

“I'm not here on vacation,” he told me as he reached for my hand. I leaned toward him a bit, turning my ear toward his face to show that I was listening. “I'm here for a few more weeks . . . and then I have to go back to Iraq.”

How I hated to hear that. I've learned over the years to keep a cool poker face, even when one is not required, but I could almost feel my cool coming apart. I kept holding his hand as he talked.

“I've already been over there once,” he said. Maybe he thought I was going to ask him something specific, because he quickly followed up with, “You don't want to know what I've been through.”

I tried my best to muster a smile. I wanted so badly to tell him everything would be okay, but how could I tell him that? All I could do was hold his hand and, I don't know,
comfort
him, whatever that means. I was taken aback by what he was saying. Here was this good-looking young man coming to see me for comfort and joy before being sent back to the battlefield, and once he got there he could face a court martial if anyone found out what he and I had done back home.

So I cracked a smile and wound up saying “it's okay” anyway, even though I didn't want to say that. I leaned down over him and gave him a big bear hug, a powerful one where our chests pressed firmly against each other.

He was still crying. I almost felt like crying, too. I finished his massage, and then he wanted me to jack him off, which I did. The intensity in his body as he was getting ready to shoot was extreme. I don't recall ever having any man who became that intense. Once he was finished, I could almost see his tensions—and all his demons—leave his body. He was clearly exhausted and wound up falling asleep.

I let him lay there, unconcerned with time. With all the
stress he must have about going back to Iraq, being on a short vacation, and having homosexual tendencies, no wonder he was ready to explode. I wondered if he had a wife and kids and if he was getting ready to leave them, too. I admit I had to force back some tears as I watched him sleep. Suddenly, he began to look like he was lying in a casket, so I quickly woke him up.

“You okay, handsome?” I asked briskly as I shook him back to life.

He wiped his eyes, yawned, and stretched his arms and legs. “I'm good . . .”

“It's okay,” I said again.

After a short pause, he got up from the table and got dressed. “Thank you, Mike,” he said as he gave me my money. His eyes still had tears in them as he left. As I watched him walk down the hall to the elevator, I couldn't help but wonder if I would ever see him again. As it turns out, I did not see him again, but I hope that's because he's moved on to bigger and better things, not because he was killed.

CHAPTER 4

My parents met at a roller rink in the early 1950s when they were both still in high school. My father recalls being attracted to my mother's pretty and sincere face. The night they met, he was hanging out with his buddies and she was hanging out with her girlfriends. My mother attended Edgewater High School and my father attended rival Mountair High School. The conversation that night blossomed into a lifelong marriage and friendship. It was very apparent to me growing up that my parents loved each other very much.

After graduation, my father joined the Air Force to avoid being drafted into the Army. My mother was still in high school. While my father was on leave a year later, they decided to get married at a small ceremony at my grandmother Kaylor's house. My mother traveled wherever duty took him, having her first child, Russ, in 1954. She was not even eighteen when she first gave birth. Once my father got out of the Air Force, the family of three came back to Denver, and my father took a job at a lumber company where his father worked. After he had saved enough money, they bought a house in Edgewater.

And that's where my story begins, in a small sleepy suburb called Edgewater, just west of Denver. It's a lot like Mayberry, or any other small town of the 1950s you can imagine. There were only six thousand residents, but we had our own city
government, with police and fire departments, a city council, a mayor, and a court house. Everyone knew everyone else. My mother caught wind that the mayor was looking to hire an officer. She encouraged my father to apply and spoke highly of him to the Edgewater movers and shakers. Before long, Dad was hired as Edgewater's first paid police officer.

The steady income was good, but now that my parents had two mouths to feed—me and Russ—their finances became strained. I was still quite small, maybe not even two, when my mother was hired by the Colorado Health Department as a receptionist.

My older brother Russ was already in school, and my younger brother Terry had not yet been born. Having no choice, my mother left me in the care of my great-grandmother during the day. Before I could develop a meaningful bond with my mother, I developed a deep connection to my great-grandmother Grace. To this day, I am grateful I had that opportunity.

 

My great-grandmother, Grace Dougherty, was born in Central City in 1890. You could say she was a true pioneer woman, as she grew up right in the middle of one of the largest mining booms in the nation's history. Miners, prospectors, merchants, thieves, and gold diggers had all descended on Central City for more than fifty years. They were all in search of minerals or whatever else might make them rich quickly.

Grace Dougherty was a good-looking woman, a brunette with doe eyes and a very sweet disposition. She was tall and lanky and loved getting all dolled up. She could be dainty, but she was also as tough as nails. She had to be to deal with all the roughnecks that inhabited Colorado's mountain towns at the time.

Grace worked at one of the nicest hotels in Central City, one that also had a reputation for having ladies of the night available. And my great-grandmother's job there included being a madam for the other girls, as well as doing some entertaining herself. No one in my family ever tried to hide the fact that she used to entertain clients there. At the same time, no one, including her, ever went into detail about it. It was a secret we shared, something that was embarrassing, I guess. I never understood that until I got older and learned that keeping secrets could be a way of life.

“Remember, she was the bookkeeper!” My grandmother Allene would always say that about her mother. To my knowledge, my great-grandmother, who I used to call “Nanny,” didn't know a thing about accounting. All I knew was that she loved me and took care of me. At age three, what more is there?

My grandmother Allene, however, was a real bookkeeper and used to make a decent living back in an era when women weren't suppose to work for wages and benefits. They were both very strong women, as was my mother.

After her husband died, my Nanny moved in with her daughter, my grandmother Allene, and my grandfather Vernon. They lived in a house in Edgewater that seemed huge to me, even though it had only two bedrooms.

My great-grandmother was almost seventy years old when we shared afternoons together. In the 1960s, that was considered very old, but age never meant a thing to me, and anyway, she was young in spirit. The only time she showed her age was through her wisdom. Knowing what I know about her now, no wonder she was wise.

Nanny kept dozens of white carnations all around the house. Because of her, I developed an eye for beauty. That wasn't difficult given how beautiful she was.

Nanny loved to bake pies. She would have dinner ready for my grandmother and grandfather when they got home from work, and I usually helped her prepare the meal. About once a week, she baked pies, and she showed me how to make dough. She would make enough for her pies, and then she would give me a small ball of dough to play with. Yet rather than play, I used the dough for my own recipes, with Nanny assisting me.

When she had some extra money, Nanny would take me to Hammond's, a candy store in downtown Denver. They had the best candy, and I loved the smell of their store, which was also where they made the candy. My Nanny could drive, but it was more fun to take the bus because it was an adventure. We'd sometimes make our way to an inner-city lake named Sloan's, where Nanny and I would walk and feed the ducks with old bread that she had saved just for our walks.

On Saturday nights, I loved being at her house and sitting with her on the couch to watch
The Lawrence Welk Show
. My Nanny looked just like all the blue-haired ladies that appeared on the show, only she was more beautiful. We both loved listening to the orchestra play a waltz or a polka, and we loved watching all the beautiful women, like the Lennon Sisters, sing to the camera. I remember thinking how all the men in the orchestra, all with Brylcreem in their hair, sure were handsome. Only later did I learn what a sponsor was or what Geritol did. It was, indeed, “Won-da-ful, won-da-ful,” as Lawrence would say.

My Nanny and I would play sometimes and sometimes we'd just sit, and I'd watch while she did her chores. At an early age, I learned from my Nanny the value of touch. She instinctively knew that touching someone in a nonsexual way could heal many wounds. Her fingers worked magic every
time they came in contact with my skin. Even before I knew what massage was, she would rub me down and literally soothe away my worries, making me feel good all over.