The Price Of Dick (23 page)

Ran
transformed from whimsical fairy prince into near naked ninja as gracefully as he executed his dance moves. He spiked his blond hair with hair product, slipped into some skintight black leather pants. They beautifully accentuated his tiny butt. He couldn't have looked more physically opposite his towering, hirsute opponent who wore some simple black slacks.

“
Do you want to go at this for real?” Ran asked. The question was legitimate, which was the only reason I didn’t laugh out loud. His head barely grazed the top of Dick’s shoulder in height. Dick smiled with amusement and shrugged.

“
Sure,” he said, cockiness smeared across his face. “Whatever makes you happy.”

“
Loser gets fucked,” Ran said, face even cockier as he began to circle the larger man on tiptoes, just like when performing ballet. The muscles of his lean legs through the taut leather resembled the movement of a panther stalking prey through tall grass. His arms swept outward in graceful loops, hands pirouetting at the wrists. Dramatic and exemplary for each click of the camera

Dick turned in clumsy half-arcs trying to keep him in sight. Like the cat he resembled, Ran toyed with the taller, more
unwieldy opponent. His leg swung up at an angle that seemed too extreme to be humanly possible, toe pointing at the perplexed bony face toward which it was aimed. Dick reached out to push it away like it was an insult. Too late. Like a breeze, he was already behind him. The smile on Dick’s face slipped abruptly off as he tried to match the turn and found himself, once again, facing empty space. A finger snapped the back of his slacks on the way past.

“
What the fuck?” Dick's voice reverberated with annoyance through the nearly empty room.

I was working overtime to find the angles for the shots with
Ran's perpetual, and sometimes, almost imperceptible motion. I didn’t notice the actual tension between them. Something had changed. Something bigger, that wasn’t seen through my lens but beat in the space between them.

Ran stepped dead-on before Dick,
and looked right at him. Heart-shaped lips parted, a smile invited. Dick looked down at him, confused. Something about the blond didn’t look right. He seemed...almost threatening.

A crooked finger beckoned
, “Kiss me.”

A brow hooked,
skeptically, “What?”

Reed
-like arms opened wide as the boy arched backward, neck languidly inclining for a sensuous approach. He looked impossible to resist. Uneasily, Dick inched forward, bent to kiss him. Ran was like quicksilver. In a flash he’d flown upward, his legs entwined around Dick’s torso. His arms curled around shoulders and neck in a classic renaissance pose of passion. Instinctively, without intention, large hands gripped the boy's leather encased butt. One set of lips disappeared under the other. Through my lens the images were beyond incredible. Clearly one person was in control. It wasn’t Dick.

Ran
’s prolonged kiss seemed to magically drain the strength from his opponent. He pulled himself from Dick’s grasp, slid down him like a silk drape, tongue tracing the center of his chest to his navel. His teeth nipped the waistband of the slacks. Dick’s response already showed at the notable bulge in the black fabric.

Again, a blur of the swift hands.
A tug behind the knees. Dick hit the floor with an echoing thud. The blond cat perched atop him, legs askew at angles that delineated every muscle group in his back. The hard-edged older face was white with shock. He moved his hands to the boy’s legs. It was a contrived conciliatory gesture that Ran didn’t buy. In the next dazzling movement the large torso was flipped and held in an incapacitating chokehold. Dick’s face was all veins and strain. It was a peculiar sight to see, the younger and smaller dominating the older and larger. The unexpected actions flustered me as well. They were not anything we had discussed or planned, but I continued to shoot.

“
Jesus! Fuck! You goddamned little queer. What the fuck are you doing?” Dick bellowed from a mouth smashed sideways against the floor.

Ran
’s blue eyes were on me. His facial expression was similar to someone who’d caught on to a bad joke. “Do people really buy this asshole’s straight act?” he asked, pushing down harder on Dick’s head with the long fingers of his opposing hand, making it look like a cage.

“
Faggot!” Dick spat out the word, spit spraying the polished wooden floor.

Again, Dick surprised me with his name-calling. I
’d never heard him use names like this before. It upset me. I wanted to call him out on it. Their vibration filled the room with something very wrong.

Ran bent down close to the face of his name-caller.
“Faggot? You better get used to that name Mr. Macho, ‘cause you’re no more straight than George Freakin’ Michael. You’re gay. Every inch of you is gay. Every bone in you is gay. You can play-pretend in your head all you want that you’re a straight boy, but that ain’t gonna hide your princess shoes in the closet.”

Dick tried to yank, wriggle and buck himself free from the boy
’s hold and couldn’t. I was on the sidelines not believing what I was seeing or hearing.

“
How many guys fall for this psycho’s bullshit?” He was at Dick's ear again. “You thought I was gonna buy it? And you were gonna fuck me like,
‘Oh I never do this kind of thing. I like girls so much!’
Weren’t you? It's a whole Broadway show with you, isn’t it?” His eyes were on me again. “You need to inform this turkey his act is stale. You don’t even smell straight,” he directed back in Dick's ear.

He let him go, sidled next to him on the floor where he could watch him rise
, wearing his defeat from the inside out. Dick gasped for air. His face was fully flushed with anger, lips grimacing around teeth in a snarl that no longer held its bite. His searing gaze fell on me like I’d created the source of his anger. Snatching up his clothes from the corner, he blew out of the studio like a minor storm, feet pounding and echoing on the floor behind him as he exited. I watched the whole thing in disbelief.

He took the car and left us stranded there
, a good eight miles from home. I couldn't say I blamed him. It was the first time someone had ever called him out. I knew what to expect back at the condo. It wasn’t going to be good. Things had not gone the way he anticipated. He liked getting his way. I called a cab and Ran helped me load it up with lights and props. He didn’t seem disturbed by the turn of events. He was self-assured. I’d no doubt he could take care of himself in any situation, physically and verbally.

“
It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for people in the closet,” he said to me during our cab ride back to the condo. “There’re plenty of people out there who have to stay closeted for their own safety's sake. But this Bozo uses it to get what he wants, makes it look like you made him do it, and then denies responsibility. He’s a total lie. Textbook sociopath. He doesn’t care who he uses. In his head we’re all here for his use and entertainment. He’s a piece of filth.”

His insight was pointed. He
’d caught onto Dick wanting to use him and had nipped it in the proverbial bud.

Dick wasn
’t at the condo, but he had been before we arrived. It looked as if an earthquake had hit. Overturned furniture, a fist punch through the wall going up the stairs. The master bedroom looked like it had been hit by another disaster. He was long gone but his bad vibes permeated every inch of the place. I didn’t feel it safe for Ran to stay any longer. I helped him pack, took him to the bus station and bought him an earlier ticket home. He apologized; I did the same. We promised to work together again, sans Dick.

I wouldn
’t see Dick until the next night. I didn’t ask where he’d been or stayed. I’d cleaned the house, and patched and painted the hole in the wall. We both went on as if nothing had happened. This wasn’t something either one of us wanted to discuss.

It was shortly after this incident I lost Pat to a heart attack. It was time for my
own blue mood. My sadness drenched me. I cried more than I ever had in my entire life. Some say crying purges. I say it drains. There’s a difference. One takes the bad things from you to help close a space. The other opens you and leaves you empty. I felt empty and lost without his presence. He’d been more than a friend and lover. He’d been my mentor. When that abused and homeless teenager had nothing but all his worldly possessions in two plastic trash bags, it was Pat who had opened his door to him, greeted him with his friendly welcoming smile. He not only took me in, he wove me into the fabric of his life. His family and friends became mine. The person I became, he nurtured with his patience and understanding. We’d become lovers by osmosis. And when the relationship ebbed and ended, our phone calls never did. Not once did he forget my birthday, or a holiday. And even though I didn’t celebrate them, his friendly voice was always there to remind me that I was remembered.

There
’d be no more phone calls. No ear there to listen, no voice of comfort, no more advice to share. He was the last existing remnant of what had been my only family. I felt alone. I wept so hard I had to pull my car over to the side of the road after the funeral. I laid my head on the wheel, sobbing with psychic pain. A policeman stopped to check on me. He’d probably thought I was drunk. Until he saw my grief-swollen face, the cemetery only two blocks away, still in my rearview mirror. He gave me his own handkerchief before leaving, told me to be safe.

Because of Pat, I was a photographer. I
’d watched him at his job every day and become fascinated. For my eighteenth birthday he gave me my first camera and enrolled me in a night school course to learn the basics. But watching him had been my best classroom. When I was twenty he let me apprentice with him, to establish myself in the business. By twenty-five I had my own sustainable income and began branching out by working in magazines and book covers. Every step upward he had been there to help and offer advice.

I sat outside his house, which used to be our house, and stared at the blank windows. I looked down at the key in my hand that still fit the door because he never changed the lock after I left
. He said I’d always be welcomed. I cried again until nothing was left. I would need time for this wound to heal.

Things would never be the same
with Dick after the Ran incident, either. Someone had found a gap in his armor big enough to sink a blade, wound and bring blood. I believe it did something to him mentally; created a doubt that hadn’t been there before, stripped away a layer of ego he had never fathomed could be taken. He felt pain. He felt vulnerable. The one thing a confidence man needed, first and foremost was...confidence.
Did he still possess that?

He was getting older,
was still unmarried; not dating. He’d lived with a man more than ten years his senior for quite a while at this point.

The volatility of life, it
’s unstable progression, guarantees that we will all have moments that create turning points. Something that makes us change in our direction or perspective. Or, a tipping point. Something that brings us downward to a place that we do not want to be.

I had a turning point as a teenager when I realized I was gay.
That it wasn’t a phase because of a masturbation incident at camp. That I liked men, was attracted to them, and had no means of changing that. My tipping point came from the beatings at the hand of my father when I’m certain he figured that fact out about me. The physical abuse scarred me so badly mentally, it took me down to a depth of despair that threatened to cripple me, that the wiring in my brain changed. I thought in a manner that wasn’t like myself. Fear had made me fearless. The anger yanked me up. I could hate them and know it wasn’t wrong. I could leave them and never look back. They could die and I wouldn't care.

I think with Dick
, his turning point came when he was young and discovered he could use his looks to manipulate people into getting what he wanted from them. It gave him an ambition that most of us don’t have because we’re not given that advantage. He was intelligent, but a lot of intelligent people in the world weren’t successful. He learned to hustle and dream big. He used his body to get things from men who wanted him. He used women to hide his identity. As long as he could keep his identities separate, his world could spin without complications.

The tipping point came when his boss,
Tom invited him to the opening game at the ballpark with a select group of clients, friends and business acquaintances. He handed him two tickets. I don’t think he thought twice about inviting me, or how odd it would look to take me to the game. I sure didn’t. I didn’t live in that world of repressed thoughts and feelings. I was excited to go, to snap pictures of the game and crowd. To finally meet, after some number of years, the people he worked with.

They
’d expected him to bring a date. That was clear when he showed up with me. The looks on their faces were as though carved in stone. Their smiles were strained. Even I could see the suspicion in their eyes as they glanced from me to their young, handsome protégé. Every other male was there with his wife, girlfriend or fiancé. I wasn’t a third wheel. I was a sore thumb.
My mistake
. I should have known that in the white-collared world of Big Capital, Dick was surrounded by the same conservative, right wing people as he was in his family. Bringing me to this event was as good as announcing he was gay over the loudspeaker.

I think Dick
realized his mistake at the same moment as I had: his boss shook my hand as stiff as a mannequin, with as much warmth.

“
We thought you’d bring a date,” Tom said to him, his wife nodding behind him.

When two opposing worlds collide for a hustler, it becomes a tipping point. The distance between us began that day. He wouldn
’t even sit next to me at the game. He stayed by the concession stands, drinking and talking with his colleagues. The rest of them emptied out the chairs surrounding where I sat, leaving me alone with my nachos and beer and camera. They found other places to settle with their friends. When the game was over, he walked with them ahead of me, disappearing into the throng, leaving me to find my way back to the car. I waited for him. For half an hour. He had the keys. He behaved as if I wasn’t there; turning on the radio so there’d be no conversation. I remember it distinctly. You don’t forget when and where the end begins.

*  *  *

After that, he became glum, behaving oddly around me. An unsettling coldness crept in between us. I tried to ignore it. I tried to conquer it with more kindness and consideration. Anything I said or did was ignored. Many marriages end up failing because the people that start into them over time become different people. What love had found as common ground, time separates into distinct territories. It’s inevitable. As intelligent beings we grow by changing. No one stays the same. The person you fall in love with will always be someone different ten years down the pike. The same was true for friendships. Even curious friendships like ours.

I first noticed the
loss of levity in the house. The small things we used to do together to pass the time. He liked to play video games. I had terrible hand-eye co-ordination so I would watch. It was a pleasant past time. But it was the first thing to disappear. We no longer watched movies together. He watched them in his room with the door closed.

He
’d come home from work, eat dinner in silence. No more discussing our days. I tried. I did anything I could think of to break the freeze between us. I got one or two tersely worded answers. By about the fourth time, it didn’t seem worth the effort to try. If he talked to me now it was with his back to me. I rarely had him face me in conversation any longer. He began coming home later and later. He’d catch a fast food dinner on the way home without telling me. What I had cooked for him would get wrapped and put away. He’d never touch it. I’d heat it later for myself. He’d come in, shower, go to his room, turn on his western and close the door. All of this would happen without a word being exchanged between us.

He brought
eeriness into a room with him. He wore foreboding like his business suit. I grew increasingly uncomfortable in the house when he was there. I began to wonder if he was having some kind of breakdown. His personality had altered so much that I went online and researched mental illnesses, trying to match symptoms. I felt like I was living with someone who was becoming a stranger. He’d been in that coma for nearly three months. I speculated that any kind of brain damage was possible. It could manifest itself at any time in life, as he grew older. Like Alzheimer’s. Schizophrenia. Chemical changes. Personality deviations. One day your friend, the next day someone who can’t stand you. Because I had no concrete answer to explain the changes I was seeing, I turned the blame on myself: I had misjudged. It wasn’t him, it was me that was the problem. I hadn’t booked any more romance shoots since the one with Ran. I stuck to the bread and butters. It was just too scary for me to ask him to participate. His moods were too unpredictable.

What intimidated me most came a few months later.
He bought a gun. He didn’t tell me. I found it by accident while cleaning the master bedroom. He’d hidden it in a case beneath winter clothes in the bottom drawer of the dresser. I couldn’t come up with any reason why he’d buy a gun. We lived in a part of the suburbs that was virtually crime free. People left their doors and cars unlocked. Police cars cruised our streets at regular intervals. We knew all our neighbors. I sat looking at the gray weapon for the longest time wondering what could possibly go through someone’s head to make them buy something as unnecessary and deadly as a gun? Guns killed things. That was their sole purpose. People could call them a hobby or sport or whatever. Guns were designed for one reason alone from the beginning of time. To end life. I broke into a sweat looking at it, then tucked it back in the drawer under the sweaters like I’d never seen it. It had already scarred my mind. Another thing he apparently had no intention of discussing.

It took him a couple of months to finally ask me if I was booking any more romance shoots. He tried to make the question sound casual. The truth is I
’d planned on doing them, but without him. So I lied, told him that I hadn’t. I’d been in the process of booking a shoot with two new models for the middle of the week while he was still at work. My doubts were taking over. I imagined all manner of things wrong with him. He’d used words I’d never heard come out of his mouth before the incident with Ran. Words that were filled with rage and loathing and bigotry. I was understanding the new and unimproved Dick less and less.

With no photo shoots, that left him with a lot of free time on his hands.
He began volunteering along with his partner, Tom and his wife, at a ranch that belonged to a new client. In exchange for mending fences and doing grounds work and chasing foxes away, the middle-aged woman who owned the horse farm allowed them to ride her horses. He got to finally play-pretend his Lonesome Dove fantasies. I hoped it would be therapeutic for him. Bring him back to the person who was fun to be around, and the partner who could help me build the photography business. He’d disappear there for weekends, and come back looking revitalized. That revitalization didn’t spill over to our friendship, though. He still never faced me; never made eye contact during the few moments we conversed. There was something worrisome about people who couldn’t maintain eye contact. Especially a friend. Someone you had trusted.

He couldn
’t hide the fact that he was a gun owner any longer when the UPS guy delivered a box of rounds. I had to sign for them. Left them on the kitchen counter. He explained that the rancher had a firing range and he was practicing target shooting. The relief I felt with that revelation was enormous. He was channeling his inner Robert Duvall.

It would be dishonest to
deny that the stress of being around him like this was getting to me. I locked myself in the office to work more; I drank more wine, I exercised less and I worried all the time. I gained weight. I quit going to the gym. Little things began to get on my nerves. Mainly because he was treating me as if I were nonexistent, just as his family used to.

*  *  *

I confirmed the romance shoot with the two new models in the middle of the week, thinking it would provide a lift for me, as well as much needed business. Mental stimulation. I needed something to get me out of the funk I'd allowed myself to slip into. I’d shoot them earlier in the day so I could finish sooner and have them out of the house before Dick got home. No harm; no foul. If nothing else, my work would go on as usual.

The two models were attractive gay boys
who I’d classify as twinks. Even though they were both in their twenties, they looked much younger. They were very patient with me. I was out of sorts, having drunk one too many glasses of wine the night before. They knew my work. Took direction well. I’d scripted every shot I wanted ahead of time in order to stay within the time constraints. They delivered the shots like pros. There was little improvisation now that Dick wasn’t involved. Certainly no time for bonding or the other things that popped up as had tended to happen in past shoots. I was doing the work in secret. When I think about that now, it's very telling of the degree of the disintegration of all aspects of our partnership.