Lay Your Sleeping Head

by Michael Nava

  “How do you know he’s gay?” I asked.

  “They picked him up outside of that fag bar in Cupertino.”

  I nodded. The bar was called The Office and its matchbooks were inscribed, “If anyone asks, tell them you were at The Office.” It drew a mixed crowd of gay guys, but was more preppy than anything else, not the kind of place where you’d expect to find someone high on a poor folks’ drug like PCP. Nor did Hugh Paris look like a typical PCP user; I’d have guessed white wine and maybe a little pot on the weekend.

  “Charged with being under the influence of PCP, possession of PCP, resisting arrest, and battery on an officer. Geez, did the arresting officer go through the penal code at random?”

  Novack shrugged. “If that’s what it says, that’s what he did.”

  “Any officers injured?”

  “By that cream puff?”

  “Doctor take a look at him to see if he was under the influence?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did he submit to a urine test?”

  “Refused.”

  “So all you’ve really got is possession.”

  “Well,” Novack said, “I guess that’s between you and the DA. Are you going to want to see the guy?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, “but first I’ll want to talk to these two,” and I read him the names of the burglars.

  My burglars were bored but cooperative. Repeat offenders were the easiest to deal with, treating their lawyers with something akin to professional courtesy. All these guys wanted was a deal, a short jail stint and, as one of them said, “to get back to work.” I knew he wasn’t talking about his dishwashing job. When I told people I was a criminal defense lawyer, I often got a variant of “But how can you help let criminals back on the street?” in response. To which, depending on my mood and level of intoxication, I might give a serious answer or blow them off with “Repeat offenders keep me in business.” I did enjoy yanking the chain of the respectable; respectability being, in my mind, vastly overrated.

  After I finished with them, I walked back to the booking office and poured myself a cup of Novack’s vile, but caffeinated, brew. I flipped him a quarter and asked to see Hugh Paris.

  The deputy brought him into my office in handcuffs and a pair of oversized jail blues that fell from his shoulders and covered the tops of his bare feet. My first thought was, five-eight. Not likely. He was five-six, maybe five-seven in shoes. His eyes were focused and his color had returned, but his hair still stuck out from the top and sides of his head. The deputy shoved him into the chair across from me and left the room.

  “Mr. Paris,” I said. “I’m Henry Rios, from the Public Defender’s office. How are you feeling this morning?”

  He frowned, as if how he felt should be obvious. He raised his cuffed hands.

  “Are these really necessary?” His voice was soft and slightly sibilant.

  “Security measure. The deputies insist.”

  “You’re bigger than me,” he pointed out. “I couldn’t hurt you if I wanted to. Which,” he added with a small smile, “I don’t. I just want to get out of here.”

  I summoned the deputy and told him to remove the handcuffs.

  “Better?” I asked, after the deputy left us.

  “Much,” he said.

  He rubbed his wrists and smoothed his hair, buttoned the top buttons of the jail jumpsuit, and pulled himself up in the chair. He smiled, revealing a set of expensively maintained teeth. The small gestures restored his dignity and turned him back into a person instead of a prisoner; a really attractive person.

  “What am I doing here?” he asked conversationally.

  “You were arrested last night at The Office,” I replied. I read him the charges.

  “Gee, I had some kind of night, didn’t I?” he said. “Too bad I don’t remember it. I can tell you though, Henry, I didn’t do any drugs.”

  I’d been called many things by the men who’d sat in Hugh’s chair, but never by my first name as if we were a couple of pals chatting over a drink. That showed a level of self-assurance I associated with the rich boys I’d gone to school with. That and his nice teeth made me wonder, who is this guy?

  “You sure about that?”

  He shrugged. “I split a joint in the parking lot with a friend. After that, it all gets kind of cloudy.”

  “What’s the last thing you do remember?”

  “I was at the bar having a drink,” he said. “I must have gone outside because I remember street lights. And then I woke up here. Where are my shoes, by the way?”

  “What about the sherms the cops found on you?”

  “The what?”

  “You don’t know what a sherm is?”

  He frowned. “If you’d told me there was going to be a quiz, I would’ve studied. No, I don’t know what a sherm is.”

  “Sherman’s is a brand of cigarettes that are dipped into PCP. That’s usually how it’s sold.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t smoke at all and I’ve never used PCP.”

  “You said you split a joint with someone before you went into the bar. Who was he?”

  He appraised me for a moment before he answered. “He was a trick, Henry. He said his name was Brad.”

  “Did you meet him at the Office?”

  He shook his head. “We hooked up at a bathhouse in the city last week and he called me out the blue and asked me to meet him at the bar. I had a good enough time with him to make the drive.”

  “Do you have a way of reaching this guy?”

  “I might have his number somewhere,” he said, then asked, lightly, “How much trouble am I in?”

  “You’re looking at misdemeanor use and possession. Not too serious unless you’ve got a record somewhere else. Do you?”

  “Opiate possession in New York,” he said. “Oh, and a couple of solicitation arrests but no convictions. Don’t look so shocked, Henry. I can’t be your first junkie whore.”

  “They’re not usually white and male,” I said.

  “What can I say, darling,” he replied with hard haughtiness. “I’m an overachiever.”

  He looked like a trust fund baby and sounded like a street queen; Hugh Paris had me flummoxed.

  “I’m not a current user, Henry,” he said, reverting to his soft tone. “I’ve been clean for nine months. That’s why I told you no drugs. Well, pot, but that doesn’t really count, does it?” He gave me a dazzling smile. “I mean, I bet even upstanding lawyers smoke a joint now and then.”

  And now he was flirting with me. I pushed his booking photo across the table. “You were high on more than pot last night.”

  He studied the photo. “God, I look terrible.” He raised his head, his blue eyes wide and sincere. “Honestly, Henry, I didn’t touch anything last night but grass and a glass of bad chardonnay.”

  “The joint could have been dipped in PCP without you knowing,” I said.

  “Why would Brad do that?” he said. “He didn’t have to drug me to get laid, I was ready to give it up.” He jerked back in the chair and said, “Oh, fuck.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said, but it was clear something disturbing had occurred to him.

  “You remember something about last night. What is it?”

  “I think I was set up.”

  “Are you saying this guy, Brad, drugged you intentionally and planted the PCP on you? I thought he was just a guy you’d tricked with.”

  He looked scared, then angry, but said nothing.

  “Hugh? What’s going on?”

  “I need to make a call,” he said.

  “When we’re done,” I said. “Are you going to tell me what happened last night?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said, regretfully.

  “If you don’t talk to me, you’ll sit in jail until they arraign you this afternoon. Since you refused to give a local address, you’ll probably be remanded and rot here until they remember to give you a trial. Is that what you want?”

&nb
sp; “Don’t worry about me, darling,” he said, lightly. “I’ve been in worse scrapes. I just need to make that call to fix it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Have it your way. I guess we’re done here.”

  “Wait,” he said. His eyes locked into mine, searching, it seemed, and then having found what he was looking for, he said, “You’re gay.”

  “That’s not relevant,” I replied.

  “I suspected you might be when I started talking about bathhouses and tricks and you didn’t look like you wanted to retch, like a straight guy would, but then you don’t sound or act like one of us. Except when you look at me.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” I said, abashed.

  He laughed. “Uncomfortable? You didn’t notice I’m looking back? If we were anywhere else I would’ve jumped you ten minutes ago.”

  I grinned. “Good thing the camera in this room doesn’t record sound, too.”

  “I’ve never met a gay lawyer before,” he said. “Are you in the closet at work?”

  I could have ended the interview but his tone suggested more than mere curiosity. I recognized that tone; it was a signal from one lonely traveler to another. We moved through a world so inescapably and aggressively straight that coming across another gay man in an unexpected circumstance was like stumbling into a refuge where, for a moment, it was possible to lower our shields and breathe.

  “I’m out to my employers,” I said, “but not my clients.”

  “Why not tell them?”

  “It’s not necessary for me to do my job and some of them might have a problem with it. I need for them to trust me.”

  “By lying about who you are?”

  “I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you how complicated being gay can be.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. Are there a lot of gay lawyers?”

  “Hard to say. I assume most of us are still in the closet, but there’s a small group up in the city that started a gay and lesbian bar association. I’ve been to a couple of their meetings, but I’m not much of a joiner.”

  “Do you have anyone, Henry?” he asked after a moment.

  “You mean, like a boyfriend? No.”

  He grinned. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “My job keeps me busy,” I said. It was my automatic response.

  “And alone,” he said quietly.

  The words seemed to echo in the little, gray-walled room. It was just talk, I told myself. He hadn’t meant anything much by it, certainly he couldn’t have known how deeply those words cut at the moment.

  “Do you have anyone, Hugh?”

  He shook his head. “God, no. Who’d have me?”

  “You’re from New York?”

  “From here originally,” he said. “I came back to take care of some things. Family things.”

  “I see,” I said. “I wish you luck.”

  We caught each other’s eyes again and then he said, “You think when you come out, your life will be less lonely, but it isn’t. You can find guys for sex. That’s easy. Sex is how gay guys shake hands. Don’t get me wrong, Henry, I’m not knocking sex. But it costs so much to come out, you’d think there’d be something more at the end of it than another guy’s dick. My problem is, I never figured out what that something more is.”

  “To be loved?” I suggested.

  Hugh said, “I’m not sure anyone could love me. I’ve been such a fuck-up. I’m trying to put my life back together. I got off junk. That’s a start.”

  “Until last night,” I said.

  “I told you, Henry, that wasn’t intentional. I was set up.”

  “I’d like to get you out of here if I can. Tell me what happened and let me help you.”

  “I appreciate that,” he said. “I really do. But last night was part of a long, long story. You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  He shook his head. “I wish we hadn’t met like this.”

  I took my business card out of my pocket, turned it over, wrote my home phone. “Here. Call me anytime.”

  He took the card, looked at it. “For legal advice?”

  “For whatever you need,” I replied.

  After that, there was nothing left to say but neither of us moved or looked away. His lips were slightly parted. A blue vein beat in his pale neck. The hard overhead light picked out the darker strands of gold in his pale hair. Something about this soft-voiced, mysterious, pretty little man slipped past my defenses and reminded me that desire was the uncomplicated moment when two people look into each other’s eyes and each one thinks, “Yes, you.” I saw the assent in his eyes and I knew he saw it in mine, but we were sitting in a gray room in a jail on opposite sides of a table that separated lawyer from inmate. He had refused the only help I could offer and now he was on his own. Still, I could not restrain myself from reaching across the table and taking his hand. He was startled, but then he threaded his delicate fingers into mine and we sat there for a moment holding hands.

  “You’re sweet,” he said, tightening his grip.

  “Not usually,” I replied.

  Then I remembered the camera in the corner, and Novack sitting in the booking office, and let go of him.

  “Last chance,” I said. “Let me help you, Hugh.”

  “You have,” he replied.

  I shrugged and called the guard in to take him back to his cell and went off to see about getting him his phone call.

  Outside it was a bright, balmy morning. A fresh, warm wind lifted the tops of the palm trees that lined the streets and sunlight glittered on the pavement. I put on my sunglasses and headed toward California Avenue to meet my friend, Aaron Gold, for our standing breakfast date. A couple of kids cycled by with day packs strapped to their shoulders. The Southern Pacific commuter, bound for San Francisco, rumbled by. I felt a flash of restlessness as it passed and thought, Hugh Paris. That’s all, just his name, but those three syllables packed some unexpected regret. I was thirty-three years old, had been out since I was a freshman in college, and I had never had a boyfriend. Just the occasional one-night stand when I needed to scratch the itch. Those times were farther and farther apart; the itch was still there, but tussling with yet another stranger for a couple of minutes of release no longer appealed to me. Being gay had become more a principle than a practice, a political stand like being a socialist or in favor of legalizing pot. In my day to day life, it hardly figured at all. But that moment in the jail with Hugh had brought back the naked longing I remembered from when I had first come out as a seventeen year old, intoxicated and terrified by the beauty and possibilities of other men. I told myself, you need to get laid, but that was a lie. Hugh had stirred up more in me than the ache of sexual loneliness. I tossed the feeling on the pile of feelings that had accumulated inside me like a tower of unread books that would someday come crashing down and bury me.

  “Hey, Henry!” Gold bustled toward me, his intelligent, simian face balled into a squint against the sunlight. He was my height, a hair below six feet, almost as dark as me—“we’re Sephardic, not Ashkenazi,” he had explained to me when we were law school roommates, comparing skin color—and getting a little thick around the waist.

  “Morning, Aaron.”

  He tilted his chin at the window of the pet store when my ruminations had stopped me. “Thinking about getting a dog?”

  “No, just waiting for you to buy me breakfast.”

  “You always stick me with the check,” he complained.

  “On your salary, you can afford it,” I replied. In his tailored suit, Gold looked sleek and prosperous from his polished shoes and manicured nails to the fifty-dollar haircut that subdued his curly, black hair.

  “At least you’re a cheap date,” he said. “Eggs over easy, bacon, and whole wheat toast.” He took me by the elbow and led me across the street into the restaurant where all the waitresses knew him by name. We found a table at the back, ordered breakfast, and drank our fir
st cups of coffee in silence.

  I met Gold my first day of law school in a seminar called Western Theories of Justice. The professor, an affable man given to bow ties, began the class with the etymology of the word justice. “It comes from the Latin,” he said, “jus meaning right or law. That ambiguity is the subject of this course. Is justice simply the creation of man-made laws and, therefore subject to change as laws evolve or is it a universal right that transcends human law, an ideal toward which human law struggles? Let me give you an example, capital punishment. For centuries, western law has held that certain crimes are so abhorrent justice requires taking the life of the criminal. However, another strain of western thought is that all killing, except in the most limited circumstances of self-defense, is immoral, whether committed by the individual or the state, and therefore capital punishment is inherently unjust. One view is what we might call utilitarian or pragmatic, the other idealistic. Where do you stand?”

  Gold raised his hand and launched into a spirited defense of the death penalty. I raised my hand and challenged his defense, point by point. We continued to argue in the hallway after class was over, then over beers at a student hangout, and we had been arguing ever since. Gold presented himself as the hard-headed pragmatist and considered me an ivory tower idealist. That may have been true in law school, but our years in practice as actual lawyers had softened his edges and hardened mine. We were each other’s sounding boards and best friends, even though he’d never completely reconciled himself to my being gay. There was something in his Jewish upbringing, a touch of Leviticus maybe, that made him recoil at the thought of two men together.

  “But you’re a mensch,” he told me, “How can you be . . . like that?”

  “You’ll have to work that one out for yourself, Gold,” I told him. He was still trying to.