The Price Of Dick (17 page)

In gut-
churning anticipation of Dick’s return on Friday, I planned a full day of errands and diversions. You might think it shallow that I didn’t want to be sitting there as he walked in with his luggage, all dark tan and contented smiles. I was coping, of course, but not to the extent of willfully enduring psychological torture. There’d be no incident, no confrontation. That would assure my creativity would remain focused and I’d keep my muse. Purposeful passive-aggression. I didn’t want to hear the lies come out of his mouth about his
conference.
I could go on with my happy-go-lucky pretense that nothing had happened. If it played out right, without drama, things would return to normal by next week. The wound would scab over. I could successfully delude myself.

I have to admit though
, that Dick’s behavior with Mike gave me considerable pause. Not the sexual aspects of it. All of us have sexual idiosyncrasies. Pat and I once knew a top political official who’d wear nothing beneath his three thousand dollar suits but women’s lace panties because he liked the feel of them against his skin. With Dick, his actions came across as miscalculated attempts to seduce a man, and not knowing how to go about it. His fixation on meeting Mike’s parents for business was just a rude, boundary crossing intrusion caused by his blind ambition. Combining the two things made him look like a hustler using sex to manipulate someone into doing what he wanted. I figured he probably didn’t even realize what he’d done had made Mike feel like he was being stalked.

The good news of that week was that by
Thursday night the first full draft of
The Cover Model
was completed. I celebrated with a bottle of wine and some delivered pizza. Typing “The End” gave me an immense sense of accomplishment. I emailed it to the publisher, then turned on the television, caught a decent buzz and fell asleep.

Checking online for the incoming flights from
Puerto Vallarta that Friday, there was only one, arriving around noon. I’d be long gone from the apartment, taking in a film. I chose the longest one playing. Some historical, nearly three hours in length. Time for him to land, get his luggage, drive home and unpack in solitude. Then I’d treat myself to some dinner and some late evening shopping.

My delay tactics worked well. I didn
’t walk through the door of the apartment until after eight. His car was back in the parking lot. The engine was cool. The apartment lights were off. He was in bed asleep. I welcomed the darkness and quiet of the house. The door to his bedroom was closed. I could still smell his wake of alcohol and coconut-scented suntan lotion.

Soon I was sound asleep on my sofa. Later I awakened to the harmonious strains of vomiting and moaning coming from the bathroom. It was a satisfying noise that lulled me back to sleep.

Life went on in what is best described as the
‘biting my tongue’ phase. Business plodded along. As I did laundry, I kept discovering discarded nightclub and bar receipts from Puerto Vallarta establishments in his pockets. The poor boy would make a horrible murderer, leaving this many clues to be found. Everything I found, including unopened condoms, I dumped at the bottom of the trash and covered over as if they didn’t exist.

Yes, it hurt. But he was a muse, not a lover. I told myself
each and every time I found one of these bits of evidence to stamp down the bitter flares. None of us were angels. Not even me. Pat had tolerated a lot of my shit and said nothing. If I made mistakes he’d say I was just growing up. Those mistakes were, in fact, choices. Mistakes are missteps in judgment. Choices aren’t. So I was as guilty as the next person of willful stupidity. But Pat never got on my case about those things. When he wasn’t pleased, I could tell by his silence, the extra glass of blackberry brandy. However, there was never a nasty word between us.

I would have healed and scarred over from this incident
with Dick if I hadn’t overheard a phone conversation in the middle of the night. My fault. I had to get up and press my ear to the door wondering who would call him that late. His laughter had woke me up. The curiosity pulled my feet to the door, pressed my ear against it.

“
I know, I had a great time with you too. It was a wonderful vacation. We’ll definitely do another together. Next time is your treat.”

That
’s all I needed to hear. My brain inhaled gas fumes, my thoughts struck the match. It took every bit of my restraint to not kick the door in—and after that—I don’t know what might have happened. Certainly something violent; definitely something I’d regret. I backed away into the cloak of darkness of the living room. I thought of Pat and his calm resolve. It wasn’t going to work. The rage was building unchecked inside me. I wanted to break his jaw...

I threw on random clothes, grabbed my keys and fled like an escaping prisoner out to my car. The
green digital numbers of the dash clock read two a.m. A great time to go for a drive.

The park was a shadowy landscape of dark blue
s and greens, strung with pearls in the form of old-style globe streetlamps that lined the lanes. I pulled the car into a dark space between two pearls and shut off the engine. My intention was to quietly think. Inside of us we all have that psychic beast from hell that when we feel betrayed or violated, surfaces to show us visions of revenge and retribution. I wanted to knock his teeth out of his boney head. I wanted to kick his balls out through his ass and then back again. I wanted to break his legs and leave him to die on a beach like Blanche Hudson, and dance away like a mad Baby Jane. Instead, I screamed. Full volume. Nothing held back. Windows rattled against the pressure. I steamed the glass trying to expel the hell from inside me. It didn’t rid me of the sickness. The void that was left after all the screams was immediately refilled. This time with sadness. And I cried. The tears came from my frustration at needing to understand but being unable to find even an inkling of reason in his actions. I am one of those people who, when I promise something to someone, I will do it if I have to tightrope over Niagara Falls. I have never let anyone down by breaking one of my promises. My word is golden. I want my friends to depend on that.

For whatever reasons, Dick had
intentionally disappointed me. Maybe it had to do with his dilemma being in the closet, that he couldn’t be seen with me around his work colleagues. He could have told me this and lessened the blow. For him to not say anything, to pretend that he went to a conference and then take someone else on a trip I helped him win was like sticking a knife in and twisting it. I was wounded but I’d to try to find a way to deal with it. What bothered me is how I had made myself so vulnerable to him. He’d given me hope, and delivered it on a magic carpet that he could ruthlessly pull out from beneath me.

I
’d survive this. I’d handled worse. I’d thrown all my worldly possessions into two plastic trash bags and had run away from home when I was seventeen. Tossed my own butt blindly into the wide, wicked world to escape falling victim to my parents' radical fundamentalist Christian beliefs. I’d endured the torments of living hell with their insanity. I’d been beaten, starved, and abused when I’d been disobedient. I’d once been locked in a metal storage shed in the back yard in the middle of summer because I’d sat in church in a manner my father deemed effeminate. When he suspected that I was having homosexual relations with a neighborhood boy, he’d beaten me so severely that I had bloody welts up and down both legs. When I realized that the situation would never improve because I
was
homosexual, I left them a note informing them of that fact and took off. It insured that they’d never try to find me and bring me back. We disowned each other. I’d never see my parents again. I read about their deaths in the newspaper. I recall feeling nothing when I learned they’d died together in a traffic fatality. Sometimes the only way you can get through the deepest pain is to distance yourself.

Did I want to do that with my muse? Van Gogh suffered for his art through madness. Could I endure the insensitivity of a liar whose promises meant nothing to make my work better?
Could I afford the price of Dick?
Then I laughed, glad I hadn’t voiced it aloud.

The two of us went on with daily life as if nothing had occurred between us. That was my choice. It was his secret lie. That made me the bigger man
in my opinion. After all, we had a company to run, photos to shoot. My muse was a flawed muse, but he could still make the magic happen in front of the camera. I wore a smile. I said nice things. We had dinners, watched television and trained. We ticked off the minutes like a normal life, while in every second, in the back of my mind I carried a bitter distrust of him.

My book,
The Cover Model
came out and it did moderately well. It wasn’t a flop, but it also didn’t make me into the millionaire I’d hoped. I still had to work. The critics didn’t kill me. I’d live to write that great American masterpiece another day. The millions could still happen.

His enthusiasm was geared toward the last triathlon event of the season. The
fraternity brothers would be competing with him. They’d trained individually to get ready for it, but talked to each other daily about their progress, diet, and strategies. He’d assumed I’d be there as a spectator as I had before, to take pictures. The idea of being in the company of his family, and especially the little black-helmet-haired inquisitor, and this time a number of his fraternity brothers, didn’t appeal to me. I planned to have a flat tire on the way there. I’d even substitute the skinny spare on my car as a visible proof of that unfortunate occurrence. I could use the time to try to scare up some more sales with the book publishers and magazines. Something that mattered to
me
, and was actually productive.

I purposely hadn
’t booked anymore of the male-male romance cover shoots for a couple of reasons. I still had a ton of photos from the last several shoots that could be sold. If I got them out there, I could make some good cash. It was just a matter of buckling down and doing it. My second reason was that I knew he used my shoots because they brought in guys and he had an opportunity to get his nuts off. He’d never be able to go out in the real world and pretend he was straight and solicit his own guy sex. Trying that would ruin his own perception of himself and destroy his carefully crafted act. He needed people to worship him, to think they were breaking his will down, making him give into them so they’d do anything he wanted. So it was my call at this point to make him suffer. I’d change the scenario to one where he’d do anything I’d say to get his gay ‘fix.’

I personally felt like Dr. Doolittle
's mythical creature, the Push-me-Pull-You. The beastie with two heads at its opposite ends. I felt like I needed him in my life because he made it better, and I felt I needed him out of my life because he made it worse.

I didn
’t go to the triathlon. I did exactly as I planned. I took the good tire off my car and replaced it with the skinny spare. I left him a voicemail telling him I was on my way, and then a half an hour later, one that declared I’d a flat. When dealing with a liar you just have to be a more creative one.

I worked hard that day, thinking how productive I was
while not standing around pretending to be excited to see him for thirty seconds at a time in a span of the five hour event. But I was distracted thinking about his parents and friends cheering him on, and how they all seemed to co-mingle so easily. How I didn’t fit into that cohesive group. How the contention resided solely in one domineering Hun of a woman who probably lay in bed every night thinking, “My son’s a queer and he’s taken up with a middle-aged queer and they do queer things in their apartment and that’s why he left me.” She probably lay there like Moriarty in a competitive mental battle for superiority, plotting how to separate her precious jewel of a son from my clutches. She would make me the culprit, her son a blameless victim. She’d save him from his queerdom with her almighty Bible verses.

If I
’d thought I’d engineered myself a safe exit from all of them that day I was mistaken. Five hours later I got the harried voicemail from Dick recounting his phenomenal success, his rankings, how he smoked his college buds and...oh yes, his folks would stop by to pick up some belongings for him. They were giving him a small celebration at their home and he’d stay overnight there.

I
’d barely had time to absorb that deluge of information when the knock came. I sensed more than recognized the sound of those skeletal knuckles on the door. I was too young for it to be Death, so it had to be his mother.

As I opened the door
, she storm-trooped herself inside to the middle of the living room. Her husband was in tow, head bowed, on his invisible leash. The alcohol vapor surrounded him like a cloud of incense. I could see they weren't going to bother with courtesies. She announced what they were there for, wanted to know where they could find Dick’s belongings. I pointed to the door of his room. Her eyes urged her husband toward the room with a silent command. She stood and stared at me, arms folded in front of her. In the unshielded window light I stared into the prune pit of her face, the dour pinched mouth, and the glowering eyes. We listened to each other breathe.

She attempted small talk
, “You missed a spectacular event.”

I
’d been to triathlons. It was only spectacular on the other end. “Car problems,” I carried through with the lie. With any luck they’d spied the skinny tire on my vehicle when they parked.

Her head pivoted on
her otherwise motionless body, taking in her surroundings. “So this is how you live?” she asked, first taking in the blankets and pillow on the sofa, the crushed beer can on the coffee table and the empty, wadded chip bag under it. It was her first time at the apartment.

I tried to lighten the mood.
“It’s the maid's day off,” I said.

Her
mouth wriggled like she was having difficulty chewing those railroad spikes. In the long, endless Twilight Zone of silence that followed, I tried wishing her into the cornfield. I failed. I'd always wanted to believe that the majority of people have a good heart, but I actually believed evolution had traded hers with her bladder. I knew exactly what pumped through her veins.

Her husband returned carrying a small bundle of Dick
’s clothing. She looked through them. A blink indicated her imperial approval. They left. Only her husband looked back and gave me a nod, showing a semblance of humanity. If I’d been a polite host I’d have given him one for the road. He looked like he was losing his buzz.

In instances like this, one could feel an immense empathy for Dick. I came from a family of physical abuse. He came from one that had a psychological terrorist.