by William Poe
An apt song given the circumstances, I thought.
Twenty-One-Year-Old Billy came onstage dressed in a cowboy outfit, complete with Levi’s jeans, pearl-button plaid shirt, Stetson hat, and red bandanna. Billy moved to the driving beat of the song, seductively removing an article of clothing with each new verse. He snapped off the shirt and tossed the Stetson hat into the audience. Then he toyed with the pitiful men sitting in the front row, lightly raking the bandana across their faces.
The audience members adjusted their coats to conceal the action of their hands. Billy turned his back and lowered his jeans, exposing just enough to tease everyone. He repeated the motion until someone squealed in frustration. The jeans had snaps running up each leg. In a thrilling move, Billy reached between his thighs and tore off the jeans in a single stroke, exposing muscular legs and a straining jockstrap.
Gyrating to the music, Billy ran his thumbs under the elastic band of the jockstrap and tugged forward, then slid the strap low enough to reveal a tuft of blond hair. In a stunning display, his swollen cock sprang from its confinement. The audience gasped. Billy squatted at the edge of the catwalk, teasing the same men he had previously tormented with the bandanna. He came close to their gaping mouths, only to pull away at the last second. I’d never seen such greedy, disappointed expressions.
If there were any truth to my long-held beliefs, an angel of God would have swooped from Heaven—flaming sword drawn—to smite us woeful sinners! But the only god in sight was a Ganymede named Billy and the only sword the one jutting from between his legs.
Billy caught my stare and threw a kiss before he left the stage. The audience sighed in collective disappointment—until the appearance of Downtown Tom, who strolled onstage in a business suit.
After the third dancer, G.I. Jimmy, dressed in military fatigues, had completed his routine, Billy opened a door near the row where I was sitting, pushed aside the silver tinsel, and scanned the audience to find me. He was dressed in a tank top and nylon gym shorts. My heart pounded so hard I thought it might burst from my chest as Billy sat beside me. He put his lips to my ear and pressed his leg against my knee.
“Will you massage my thigh?” Billy asked. “My muscles are so tense. That was my third set tonight.”
The hair on Billy’s leg bristled against my palm as I felt my way up his thigh.
Billy took my hand and placed it on his crotch. “This is where it gets the stiffest.”
I slipped my hand under the leg of his gym shorts. At the moment my fingers contacted the object of my desire, Billy pulled my hand away.
“My last performance is over at two,” he said. “Do you want to meet me outside? We can go to your place and have some fun.”
“I’m in a hotel,” I said.
“You have a hundred dollars, don’t you?”
“Sure,” I said, nearly choking on the word.
Billy kissed me on the cheek and disappeared through the tinsel.
I left the theater, welcoming the cold night air as I walked aimlessly around Times Square, all the while fending off drug dealers and prostitutes, the latter more desperate than usual because of the late hour, not to mention the heavy snow that had begun to fall.
“Here’s what you want,” said an auburn-wigged woman as she opened her rabbit-fur coat just wide enough to expose near-naked breasts, then pleaded, “Come on, sweetheart. I’m fuckin’ dyin’ out here.”
I hurried into a bar and knocked back two shots of rotgut gin, the best the dive had to offer. The hour hand on my wristwatch finally crawled to two o’clock. Billy was outside the strip club just as he’d said he would be. Except for the addition of a sheepskin jacket, he wore the cowboy garb of his performance. Billy stood a little taller than my six feet. Blond hair brushed against a dimpled face splotched cherry red by the cold air.
“Can we get a taxi?” Billy asked. “I’m freezing.”
A short ride, and Billy and I arrived at the Algonquin. The elderly doorman didn’t say a word as we darted into the wood-paneled elevator. As soon as we entered the room, Billy asked me to put the agreed-upon cash next to the lamp on the night table.
“So, what are you into?” he asked.
I held back a laugh. “I have no idea.”
Billy was going to stand there until I told him what to do, so I said, “Take off your clothes and lie on your back.”
He did as I’d asked, removing his outfit and peeling back the bed covers, then stretching out to offer his body for my exploration. At first, I sat on the edge of the bed, frozen by a feeling that, if I went through with this, there would be no returning to my former life. It was one thing to sin with a brother like David; both of us could repent one day. Billy was a lost soul that I should have been trying to save, not engage in a sexual act.
“Come on, take off your clothes,” Billy said, grabbing himself.
I knelt at the foot of the bed, placed Billy’s feet on either side of my face, and caressed his legs, luxuriating in the manly odor and salty taste of his skin. My cheeks brushed Billy’s fuzzy thighs as I watched him grow at my approach. Once within range, I took him into my mouth. Billy gazed down at me with a beatific smile. The tufts of hair under his arms glistened with sexy beads of sweat. His muscles tightened with excitement.
When it was over, Billy took his clothes into the bathroom to clean up and get dressed. Returning, he stuffed the money in his jeans and lit a cigarette. As the lighter brightened his face, he gave me a squinting look through the first puff of smoke. A twinge of sympathy flashed across his face. He walked to the bed and kissed me on the cheek, saying, “You needed that, didn’t you?”
I looked up with pleading eyes. He knew I wanted him to stay, but for Billy, this was just a business encounter.
When he left the room, closing the door quietly behind him, I experienced a sense of loneliness unlike anything I had ever felt.
The next morning, I searched the sheets for Billy’s scent. His parting kiss had evoked memories of Ernie—someone who never shared a moment of affection with me, someone who used me as little more than a body to satisfy his sexual needs. Billy had been that person for me. Had I been wrong about what I felt for Tony, and for David? Was there no hope of finding a genuine relationship with another man? Was gay love a myth? Was it only about sex?
A phone call from Maury jolted me from my self-pitying revelry. He invited me to breakfast. I had barely slept, but went downstairs to meet him anyway.
“You were out all night, weren’t you?” Maury challenged.
His question went unanswered, so he continued to probe, cajoling me about the hookers walking Times Square the night before. I confessed to nothing.
“I thought we were friends,” Maury pouted.
Still getting no response, he admitted defeat.
After breakfast, we took a cab to the New Yorker and met with Mitsui. When I explained how Carol had treated us, he began speaking in Japanese to a group of brothers gathered in the room. His tone betrayed his anger.
Maury and I waited patiently for Mitsui to settle down. Every time I heard him say “amerikajin,” he looked in my direction. Whether it was Bozeman, Joseph, Carol, or me, Americans were the problem.
When an opportunity presented itself, Maury interjected. “If I can’t communicate with the lawyers representing Reverend Moon, there is only so much I can do.”
Mitsui listened intently.
“Allow me a chance to speak with Reverend Moon,” Mitsui said. “Until then, I have another request.”
“I’m at your disposal,” Maury offered.
“Reverend Moon wants to set up an offshore bank account, a trust fund for his family,” Mitsui explained, “in case the worst happens. No one must know about this.”
“No one will know what Simon and I do for you or Reverend Moon,” Maury assured him.
It was clear that Father and Mitsui anticipated a dark future.
Maury and I flew to Freeport, Bahamas, to meet with bankers. Freeport was famous a
s a haven for trust funds, and Maury had been there other times representing clients. During the flight, I became lost in thought. After my encounter with Twenty-One-Year-Old Billy, it was obvious I should leave the church. But what were my prospects? From the world’s perspective, I was a university dropout with a decade-long absence to explain. What would I tell people? That I had been in a coma and just woken up? As always, I thought about those I would hurt by leaving—not the least of whom my wife, Masako.
Could I allow myself to become the type of person I had so despised as a teenager, living a clandestine sex life while pretending to a marriage? Most of Darsey’s friends led double lives, making excuses to their wives and slipping out of the house when the Drummers Club switched over to its gay clientele. They would spend a few hours of pleasure in a hotel room and then go home to a suspicious wife. What was it like for them when looking into the faces of their children?
If I prayed for anything in that moment, it was to avoid Martin’s solution or the slow death Ernie had experienced as a drug addict.
By the time we changed planes in Miami and skirted the channel to Grand Bahama Island, I had processed as much anxiety as my brain could manage. Fortunately, the beauty of the Caribbean overcame my doldrums and prodded my inner artist into action—I literally began painting in my mind, mimicking the incredible sight by mixing streams of color from tubes of ultramarine streaked with cerulean-blue and light-green pigments. Ivory-black shadows accented shoreline splashes of titanium white.
Maury checked us into one of Freeport’s best hotels, a colonnaded mansion that once had been the home of a British governor. We took a stroll along the unpaved streets until dusk. The intensity of the sunset startled both of us, with its cadmium-red and alizarin-crimson hues brushed against a turquoise sea. Only the occasional touch of a gentle breeze or the exotic plea of an island songbird broke the stillness.
Walking along a palm-lined trail, we spotted a restaurant that Maury had read about in the airline magazine—another grand residence converted to commercial use. The porch, with its Doric columns holding up the portico, typified British colonial mansions. Maury and I entered the foyer, now the restaurant’s reception area. I commented on the parquet floors and the marble banisters leading upstairs to an area cordoned off by a red velvet rope hung between stanchions. We weren’t dressed in the formal attire of the other patrons, but the doorman allowed us inside. Our long trousers and buttoned shirts met the minimum requirements.
A tuxedoed maître d’ seated us on a damask couch located just outside the formal dining room. We ate hors d’oeuvres and sipped aperitifs. Maury selected our dinners from a leather-bound menu and ordered a bottle of single malt scotch. I asked for a long island iced tea—a drink popular with Sandra’s Dan Tana gigolos.
“What’s going on with you?” Maury asked, breaking a long silence. “You didn’t say a word the entire flight. Talk to me.”
Considering the unresolved conflicts raging in my heart, I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk, not to him or to anyone else. “I can’t discuss it,” I said, hoping Maury would relent.
“It’s about sex, isn’t it?” Maury pressed. “Joseph told me about the church’s repressive attitudes. Did you know that Joseph was scared of you?”
That got my attention. “What do you mean, scared?”
“Joseph said he used to confide in you, but that your solution to every problem was to get back to fundraising. Tote that bale, make that goal.”
I pictured myself on horseback, lowering a whip to a fundraiser’s back—that was the way I had acted as a young team captain. I liked to think I had progressed to become a leader who listened when members talked about their problems. But that was much later, after Kawasaki had sent me as his emissary to the teams having problems. Joseph had experienced the arrogant twenty-year-old who had no clue how to treat people and was scared to death of the responsibility thrust upon him.
Maury took a long draw from his glass of Glen Fiddich.
I knocked back the long island iced tea and ordered another.
“You don’t need to worry, Simon. I already know that a lot of people in the church lead double lives.”
Why did Maury have to keep fishing, and what could he possibly know about “a lot of people” in the church?
The waiter approached with a white towel draped over his coat sleeve. “Dinner is ready, gentleman,” he said, escorting us to our table. The plush carpet in the dining room muffled all sound, adding to the atmosphere of posh elegance.
The meals came on Wedgwood china with sterling silver place settings. Two gold-plated candelabra served as centerpieces.
“Romantic,” I said, intoxicated enough that I didn’t consider the import of my next statement. “I wish that waiter could sit with us.”
Maury perked up. “So that’s it. Simon Powell is gay.”
“And this conversation,” I said, “had better fall under attorney-client privilege.”
After buttering a thick slice of bread, Maury picked up his glass of Scotch and offered a toast. “Here’s to privilege.”
“Privilege,” I said, raising my glass.
Sharing a bottle of after-dinner port, I blurted out, “Did you know that I’m legally married? We won’t live together until Reverend Moon holds the next mass wedding. But I don’t think I can do this to her.”
“Do what?”
“Stay married to her if I’m gay.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean, why not? It’s obvious. I like men.”
“Come on, Simon. You can’t give up your career in the Unification Church.”
“You’re not listening, Maury. I’m gay. I can’t be married to a woman.”
“Sure you can. Get satisfaction where you can, then go home to her. It’s simple, Simon.”
I spewed port all over the raspberry tart that the waiter had just set in front of me. “You call that simple!”
“It is. You have to keep the right frame of mind.”
“This is not advice I expected to hear from you, Maury.”
“Look, Simon, get in bed with her. Let nature take its course. You like the woman, right?”
“The woman’s name is Masako. And, yes, I like her. That’s the trouble. I can’t lie to her.”
“Sure you can. People lie every day. We’re mendacious creatures, all of us.” Maury poured the dregs of our port into his glass. “It’s the way of the world.”
The Christian phrase about Satan being the Father of Lies came to mind, but I was too drunk to offer a challenge.
The restaurant staff must have been happy to see us go—our conversation had raised more than one eyebrow. I paid the exorbitant bill with the Diners Club card. The host hailed a taxi—just about the only motorized vehicles on the island. We went straight to the hotel.
On the way to our rooms, Maury asked, “Are you going out again?”
“How’d you guess?”
“You’ve got that same look Joseph used to get before going on the prowl.”
“You make me feel like a predator.”
“Don’t forget that we’re in a foreign country,” Maury cautioned.
“I’ll be discreet,” I promised.
Maury and I had passed a casino during our walk earlier in the evening. The place had seen better days, but still possessed a chintzy glamour. I went inside to check it out. Two shifty characters lurked near the booths where people redeemed their chips. I sat down at a nearby slot machine. After ten dollars in coins had disappeared down its hungry throat, someone whispered in my direction.
“Want blow, mon?”
I turned on the stool to face a tall man with a long goatee.
“Co-can, mon,” the guy said. The Caribbean accent made his sales pitch difficult to understand. “Eighty dollars, Americaine money, mon.”
Intoxicated from the dinner drinks, to which I had already added a cuba libre, I decided to take another step in my fall from grace. I followed him out a rear exit to an alley pav
ed with gravel and illuminated by ambient light from the casino windows.
I took a hundred-dollar bill from my wallet, handed it over, and grabbed the packet from the man’s hand. His smile revealed front teeth capped in gold. Without giving me the twenty in change, he ran toward the main street and disappeared.
With the drugs in my shirt pocket, I left the casino and rushed back to the hotel, not only locking the door, but placing a chair against it. I remembered Maury’s warning about being in a foreign country and wanted time to flush the stash if anyone knocked on the door. Did the authorities keep a close eye on visitors? Was that man with the goatee an undercover cop?
I poured the powder on the dresser and, following what I had seen people do in movies, rolled up a dollar bill and inhaled through one nostril. Nothing. Just a runny nose. Two inhalations later, I gave up and flushed the remainder down the toilet. I felt like a teenager fooled into buying an ounce of oregano thinking it was pot.
The Bahamas trip proved unfruitful. The banking laws were less friendly to foreign deposits since the last time Maury had done business there. Maury suggested that we try working out something in the Cayman Islands, perhaps the Netherlands Antilles. I telephoned Mitsui about it, but he said to return to New York. That day, the grand jury had handed down indictments against Mitsui and Reverend Moon, including several counts of perjury and obstruction of justice against Mitsui individually.
We’d expected it, but the charges still came as a shock. America was indicting the Lord of the Second Advent! For a moment, I remembered when I had first denied being a member while at a sports bar after Father’s Little Rock speech. I had internalized the church’s doctrines far more than I wanted to admit. Father was possibly going to jail, and it was my fault! Yet again, the Messiah must suffer for our sins.
CHAPTER 35
As the trial began in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the lawyers hired by Bozeman argued an arcane defense based on tax laws. They seemed to be helping the prosecution’s case more than Reverend Moon’s. Listening to the defense, one would never know “Sun Myung Moon” was the head of a religious organization, much less the group’s founder and source of its theology. Of course, everyone on the jury had prior knowledge of the church, amply demonstrated during voir dire.