by William Poe
That afternoon, in a nostalgic mood, I pored over photographs. I had a dozen pictures signed by Reverend Moon as well as hundreds of images of members who’d been under my leadership. I’d forever miss those brothers and sisters. Lifting the lid on a cardboard box filled with books and pamphlets, I came upon the official picture taken when I was married to Masako at Madison Square Garden. Legally, and in the eyes of the church, we were still married.
By evening, my head swimming with memories, I wanted to get drunk, and decided to go back to Sergeant Preston’s. By midnight, I was dancing with anyone who was willing to put up with my staggering. Pretty soon, the owner of the bar, Miss Phoebe, asked me to leave.
“You fucking sex-change!” I shouted. “Leave me alone.”
A finger snap summoned the bouncer, who threw me out the front door. Several patrons applauded.
I stumbled through the parking lot, setting off car alarms as I pulled on random door handles. At some point, I must have found my own car, because suddenly I was zooming down the freeway. Then, I heard grinding noises and realized that sparks were flying over the hood. I managed to exit the highway, pulling into a twenty-four-hour service station—a hangout for policeman stopping to get coffee.
Flashing lights and sirens started up from one of the cars. A voice rang out, “Step out of the car and place your hands on the roof!”
I opened the door and collapsed onto the pavement. The next thing I knew, I was in the police station drunk tank, yelling obscenities.
“Shut up,” commanded a cop as he raked his nightstick across the bars. “With your blood alcohol, you ought to be dead. You might have killed someone. But you don’t care, do you?”
“Is that a question?” I asked.
Another policeman approached. “Your mother’s here to bail you out,” he said.
Derek had also come. Passing in and out of consciousness, I wasn’t sure what was going on as I was processed out of jail. I certainly didn’t recall having telephoned anyone. Derek convinced the police to release the car, which had been towed after my arrest. Except for a bare rim—the source of all the sparks and noises—it was actually in good shape after putting on the spare. Derek drove me home in it, and Vivian followed in her car. When we arrived, Derek supported my weight as he helped me get inside the house. I collapsed onto Lenny’s recliner.
“What were you thinking?” Vivian asked, her voice piercing the haze.
“You don’t want to know what I think,” I said, more hurtfully that I meant for it to sound.
Vivian rushed into the dining room, sobbing.
“You need sleep,” Derek said, sternly. “You shouldn’t upset your mother more than you already have.”
“Right, wouldn’t want that. Not poor, long-suffering Vivian.” I turned my head toward where she was sitting. “Right, Mom, let’s pretend everything’s fine. That’s what we do in this family, isn’t it?”
Derek took a position as though he were going to hit me. I kicked down the footrest of the chair and tried to stand. I managed to get to the stairs but had to use the banister to drag myself up.
Vivian’s voice carried all the way to my room. “Did you hear what he was saying?”
“That’s the alcohol talking,” Derek said.
“That’s what you’d like to think!” I yelled before slamming the door.
Connie was waiting for me downstairs when I emerged the next day. I found her nursing a cup of coffee. “Vivian hasn’t come out of her room all day,” she said. “After what you did, I wonder if she’ll ever come out.”
“I was drunk, Connie. What do you want from me?”
“Is that your excuse?” She grabbed her cup with both hands.
“Should I try to apologize?”
“I wouldn’t, Simon. Give her some time.”
The church president called me that evening to say that the payment arrangements were being made. “We need to get that property quitclaimed right away,” he insisted. “We’ll meet our obligations.”
So he said, but I knew how he could justify screwing me over. I was now speaking as Satan, after all. Then an idea struck me. We could work out the contractual details through Scott and Sandra’s boss, Maury Fender, after I returned to Los Angeles.
“How about arranging the transaction through Maury’s office in Los Angeles?” I suggested.
The president agreed so readily, I wondered if he’d already considered it himself.
“I’m going to Los Angeles in a few days. How long to work things out?”
“A week, at most,” he said. “But I hope you will consider what you’re doing, Simon. This will affect your eternal life.”
I was too hungover to argue. I simply told him to give it a rest.
Connie had been straining her ears to catch the conversation. “Are you going back to California?” she asked.
“It’s where I belong,” I said. “I’ve outgrown this town.”
Connie emptied the pot of coffee into her cup. I could almost hear what she wanted to say without her words—I wasn’t acting as though I’d grown out of anything.
I left a message on Dean’s answering machine, saying that I was leaving for California, and I’d stay in touch. By midmorning, I was on the highway.
Though I should have waited to speak to Vivian, I simply left a note apologizing for my behavior and saying that I thought it best if I simply left town after the way I had acted.
For miles, I considered going back and saying I was sorry in person, but I didn’t do it.
CHAPTER 7
Four days later, I was in Hollywood, after spending a night in Needles, California, hoping the weather would improve. It had been a slow drive with lots of snow and icy roads. From Needles, I drove straight through, all the way to Scott’s house. He was drunk and barely realized I was there until I got him to drink a pot of coffee, and he took some pills he had stashed in his medicine cabinet. When he was somewhat lucid, I told him about the arrangement I had made with the church.
“Twenty thousand,” he slurred. “Why didn’t you call me? I could have negotiated some real money.”
Sure, I knew the money was a pittance compared to the years of my life given to the church, but that fact didn’t stop me from feeling guilty for taking it. If couldn’t justify the feeling to myself, how could I make sense of it to anyone else?
Scott had taken up smoking cigarettes again, having quit for a couple of years. We went onto the split-level deck. As he lit up, I looked out at the view of Hollywood. Sharing rent with two friends, Scott was able to live in a large house perched high in the Hollywood Hills. It felt like a summer day as the sun’s heat reflected off the redwood planks. I dipped my hand in the warm water of Scott’s hot tub, installed at one end of the patio.
“Let’s get in,” Scott said, stripping down to his boxers. “Take off your clothes.”
The hypnotic whir of the jets and the pressure from the waterspouts massaging my back made me doze off after the long drive. I was startled awake by Scott’s voice. He had gotten out of the tub and was sitting on the edge of his bed, just inside the patio door.
“I’ve got drugs,” he said with a wry smile. He had always been thin, but as he was sitting there, he looked as though he hadn’t eaten in a week.
I wrapped a towel around my waist and came inside, immediately spotting a mirror on the side table. Scott had laid out rails of cocaine and rolled up a dollar bill to use as a straw. After sucking drugs up his nose, he reared his head back and snorted to dislodge any cocaine stuck in his sinuses. He swallowed hard to push the drainage down his throat, and then, choking on his words, said, “Good shit, man.”
He handed me the rolled-up dollar bill, and I snorted a line. The sting told me it had been cut with speed.
Scott increased the pressure from the hot tub jets and turned up the heat when we got back in. I could see that he was horny. The steam melted some cocaine stuck to the lining of my sinuses, and I was hit by such a narcotic rush that I nearly pass
ed out. Scott lifted his hips to the surface, making his erection look like a buoy in the turbulence. I watched transfixed as he grabbed himself, stood, and worked himself to climax. I ducked under the water to keep from getting sprayed.
“That is so rude,” I said, irritated, grabbing a towel and throwing it at him.
He dabbed his body with an impish grin, and said, “Welcome back to Hollywood.”
All was forgiven as we went back to snorting coke. Hours later, when it was gone, we got the bright idea to mellow out the experience with alcohol.
“Let’s go to the bar,” Scott suggested, devilishly adding, “I’ll call Sandra so she and Lyle can meet us.”
A voice inside shouted, Don’t, but of course, seeing Lyle—and figuring out what he was doing with Sandra—was the real reason I had come back.
“What about the Spotlight?” I suggested. I knew that Sandra hated the place, a low-life hustler bar in the middle of Hollywood, and it would make Lyle uncomfortable since he had once been a regular there.
Scott relished the idea; he loved intrigue. I went to the car to wait. When Scott came out of the house, he said, “They’ll be there, or they won’t. Sandra wouldn’t commit to it.”
I drove around until I found a well-lit parking place. That part of Hollywood was notorious for car thefts. We hurriedly walked to the bar, avoiding the coke dealers who seemed to appear out of thin air.
A burgundy curtain hung across the entrance to the Spotlight Lounge, a dense fabric with the texture of a rug. I pulled it back and welcomed Scott to scamper past. Coming from the artificial light of the street, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Soon enough, I was able to make out a few faces. I recognized several hustlers from the days when I was still a member of the church, living a double life—the period of time when I had picked up Lyle. The hustlers were skinny from doing speed, their thinness offering stark contrast to the girth of the paying customers. Both groups preferred that the bartender keep the lights low. The hustlers wanted the semidarkness to mask their gaunt faces, and the dimness allowed the tricks to pretend they were not so wrinkled and overweight. The hustlers were not as young as they advertised, and the old men were older than they admitted.
Scott and I mounted stools at the far end of the bar. Three shirtless hustlers lurked nearby playing pinball. Each boy had a jailhouse tattoo, one a barely legible name—Mary or Mariah—and the other, a lopsided eight ball.
As we ordered drinks, a commotion began near the entrance. A hustler wolf whistled as Sandra pulled aside the curtain and stood silhouetted in the doorway. A taller figure appeared behind her, lifting the drape higher.
Scott threw back a shot of vodka and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. Sandra darted toward us. She wore a striking yellow dress with a patent leather belt at the waist. Her auburn hair caught the neon glow of a Budweiser sign on the wall. Lyle approached more cautiously. He had on a plain white shirt tucked neatly into the pair of tight-fitting Guess jeans that I had bought him not long before I left Hollywood.
“Don’t be angry about Lyle,” Sandra whispered as she kissed my ear. “I’ll explain it all later.”
“Come here, Lyle,” I said, quietly.
Lyle’s face contorted in a hangdog expression that made me want to forgive him on the spot. “What was I supposed to do?” he said, pressing close so the others wouldn’t hear. “Go back to the street?”
“I’m sorry, Lyle. As things turned out, I should have stayed with you instead of trying to go back to that group.” Lyle barely knew anything about my experience in the church. I had not even explained what was going on when I left him in a motel room and flew to New York to marry Masako.
Lyle perched his foot on the lower rung of my barstool. He placed his cheek against my neck. The aroma of his silky blond hair brought back memories of our lovemaking. I ran my fingers through his hair and pulled him close. Lyle touched his forehead against mine and sighed.
Scott wailed, “Gag me! Get to drinking, you two. The night hasn’t even started.”
Sandra locked her arm in Scott’s. They spoke a private toast and threw back shots of schnapps. Lyle broke away and went toward them, acting as though his only purpose was to get a cigarette from Sandra’s pocketbook, but I noticed the glances they exchanged, even if I couldn’t interpret what they were communicating.
Scott and Sandra licked salt off their hands after knocking down shots of straight tequila. As he got drunker, Scott started pawing a hustler at the pinball machine. I knew his routine. He’d take the boy to one of the junkie dives along Hudson Avenue for a quickie and then take a taxi home. His roommates didn’t want hustlers in the house. Too many possessions had walked out the door.
Lyle finished a third cigarette, crushing the butt on the rim of an empty beer bottle. He went to the jukebox and played a Metallica track, swaying his hips from side to side and jumping in the air as he strummed an air guitar. Twiggy, the portly bartender who had been there since the first day I walked in, set down five shot glasses, paid for by admirers of Lyle’s ass, if not his performance. Lyle picked up the glasses, one to a finger, and came to sit beside me. Groans of disappointment rose from the men, who’d hoped to cop a feel, but at least expected a wink of recognition when Twiggy pointed them out. Lyle offered no acknowledgment at all.
Scott was now slobbering over a tall raven-haired hustler, having been outbid for the pinball wizard. I pulled Scott away for a moment, to the chagrin of the boy who’d yet to close the deal.
“We need drugs,” I urged. “Alcohol just isn’t cutting it.”
“Give me five minutes,” Scott said, “and then wait for me in the bathroom.”
I told Lyle to stay put at the bar. “Drugs are on the way,” I said.
Lyle smiled weakly. I wasn’t sure if he was happy about it or not.
The urine stench of the Spotlight’s bathroom overwhelmed upon entering and smelled even more rotten the longer one stayed inside. I was just about to quit waiting when Scott pushed through the swinging door. He opened a Baggie full of cocaine. His hand was so unsteady, I was afraid he’d drop it.
I took a dollar bill from my wallet, expertly folded it into a rectangular package, and scooped out a gram’s worth. Scott rolled up the Baggie and stuffed it into his pants.
At the bar, Lyle was talking to a middle-aged man who had taken my seat. They clicked bottles of Budweiser in a flirty sort of way. Lyle winked at me as I neared, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling to let me know he was simply humoring the guy.
“That’s my seat,” I said, nudging the man aside.
“And who the fuck are you?” the man growled.
“His lover, that’s who.”
The man laughed. “Fuck off. We’re making arrangements.” He took out his wallet and waved a hundred dollar bill in Lyle’s face.
“Yeah, well, he’s my boyfriend. So you fuck off.”
I pushed the man hard. He lost his balance and fell off the barstool. When he regained his composure, he grabbed the neck of Lyle’s Budweiser and smashed it against the side of my head.
The bouncer, a brute with silver-studded knuckle gloves, tossed me through the curtained door. “Get your bleeding ass out of here,” he said.
“I called an ambulance,” someone said. Was it Scott’s voice? Lyle’s? The sound was hollow, as if spoken through a megaphone.
The next thing I knew, I was on the sidewalk in a pool of blood. My head hung off the curb behind a car whose driver was starting it up and placing it in gear. Tailpipe exhaust hit me in my eyes, already burning from the blood dripping across my face. Fortunately, the car pulled forward into the traffic without backing up.
“Simon, buddy,” said a desperate voice. It was Lyle.
Sandra was there, too. Blood was spattered all over her yellow dress. She got on her knees beside me and patted down my shirt until she found the packet of coke.
“You don’t need them finding this on you,” she said. “I can’t believe that bouncer threw you on the
street!” Sandra took a towel she’d gotten from Twiggy and wiped the blood from my eyes. “That gorilla who hit you needs to be arrested! I’m calling the police. This is just terrible.”
Lyle touched her arm and shook his head. “I don’t think we want the police running a blood test on him,” he cautioned.
Sandra looked at me sympathetically. “The ambulance is on the way, darling. That’s what’s important, getting you looked after.”
Sirens pierced through the other noises of the street, growing louder and louder until the fluctuations in pitch became steady. Capable hands gently lifted my head and placed a foam collar around my neck. I strained to hear what was being said, but all I could catch were a few utterances. “Look at that ear,” one of the paramedics said. Another commented, “He’ll probably lose it.” Suddenly, in a single motion, I was lifted onto a stretcher and seemed to soar through the back doors of the ambulance.
As we sped through Hollywood, I became aware of someone touching my hand. “You’ve got to stay awake, Mr. Powell.”
I struggled to open my eyes. They felt as though they’d been stitched shut. A warm towel pressed against my eyes. I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue, but no one gave me water.
“Do you have insurance?” someone asked.
I had the wherewithal to lie with a barely audible yes.
The ambulance pulled into Hollywood Presbyterian. I was rushed to a bed behind white, gauzy curtains in the emergency room. Several doctors came to examine my ear. One commented, “Looks bad, but at least the pieces are all there.”
More than anything, I needed liquid. I mouthed, “Water.” A nurse brought over a cup with a straw and held it as I sipped.
“Has someone taken this man’s blood pressure?” the nurse asked as she disappeared down the hall. A few moments later, she returned with a cart. I felt the pressure mount as the grip tightened on my upper arm. I flinched when the cold metal of the stethoscope touched the crook of my elbow. The nurse got her reading and rushed off, pulling the curtains closed around my bed before departing. Moments later, more low voices murmured around me.