“How could I not know? All the gay people I work with. How could this have happened? How could I fall in love with you? How could I be so stupid?” she screamed as tears started to roll down her face. I reached to wipe away her tears and Nicole put out her hand, stopping my motion.
“Don’t, Raymond. Don’t touch me,” Nicole instructed.
“Nicole, I didn’t mean to fall in love with you either. And when I did, I was going to tell you. I do love you.”
“But when were you going to tell me? Why not before I gave myself to you?” she screamed at a higher pitch. Her voice was trembling and a horrified stare covered her face. I noticed people around us stopping to glance at the two of us.
“I can change, Nicole. I love you that much.”
Anger replaced the horrified look on Nicole’s face. Her body wilted like an undernourished flower. “Change? Are you serious?” Her voice dropped lower.
“Yes. Nicole, please give me and our relationship a chance. I love you.”
“I don’t doubt that you love me, Raymond. Of that I am sure. I mean, I have to believe that you love me. But do you love me enough?” she asked calmly.
“Enough?” The question felt brutal.
“Yes, enough, Raymond.”
“I think so.”
“Well, right now that’s not good enough. I can’t base my future on an ‘I think so.’ ”
“Let’s not make any rash decisions now. Come home with me and let’s talk,” I suggested as I walked closer to her.
“Talk. Right now I don’t have time to talk,” Nicole snapped. “Right now my best friend is down that hallway, fighting for her life. Probably because of loving someone like you,” she said as she moved from my reach.
“What are you saying?”
“Raymond, Candance has AIDS.”
I stood motionless as Nicole’s words confirmed my fears. My body went cold. My eyes darted around the hospital and back to Nicole. I was afraid to see the pain in her face. Her beautiful eyes looked weighted down with sadness. Again they filled with tears. She raised her hand and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, the doctors are sure,” Nicole said in a quavering voice.
“I’m sorry, Nicole.”
“Sorry for what? Sorry for Candance, or for me for falling in love with you?”
Nicole turned and started to run down the long hospital corridor. When I yelled out her name, she seemed to move faster, running away from me. I stood in the same spot for minutes, still as a stone statue, trying to decide if I should give chase or give her some time. My stomach churned with such acute anxiety that I suddenly felt my breakfast coming up. A nurse and an orderly came up and asked if I was all right. The nurse took my hand and led me to a nearby chair and the orderly started to clean up my mess. I sat in a daze and slowly drank a fizzing solution that the nurse had given me. Still in a daze, I walked through the elevator door without even thanking the nurse. Somehow I managed to catch a taxi uptown. I got out on Ninety-fifth, went to my neighborhood liquor store and purchased a liter of one-hundred-proof Stoli. As I walked out of the store, I ignored the Chinese clerk whom I usually conversed with. I stopped at the Love Stores on the corner and purchased a bottle of Sominex. For the first time in my life I wanted to die. I walked quickly up Broadway and to my apartment. Once inside, I quickly broke the seal and drank the vodka straight from the bottle. A few minutes later I poured myself another drink, this time with ice and a small amount of grapefruit juice. I looked out of my window and saw night cover the busy city streets. Just weeks ago I was on top of the world. With a single admission of truth I wanted to find a rock to crawl under. The steady flow of vodka was causing my body to grow numb, but it eased the pain that I was feeling inside. I popped two of the sleeping pills and took another naked drink of the vodka. It had me laughing one minute and crying uncontrollably the next. I had never felt the way I felt now.
About an hour later I was drunk. I heard a knock on my door, and when I opened it, Quinn walked in. I grabbed him and hugged him so hard that my fingers were digging through his shirt. He could tell from my bloodshot eyes that I had been crying. “What’s the matter, buddy?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
“You’re drunk, Ray. What happened with Nicole? I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Help me, Quinn,” I cried.
“I will,” he assured me.
Quinn helped me to the sofa. I saw him walk into my kitchen and heard him rambling around my cabinets. Minutes later he emerged with a piping-hot cup of coffee that he forced me to drink. I was mumbling incoherently, but somehow I managed to tell him what had happened with Nicole and Candance. He told me how sorry he was and then he began to slowly undress me. He then put my arms around his ample shoulders and led me into the bathroom and a steaming shower. I didn’t remember much after the shower, but some time later I awoke in my bed with Quinn at my side. Fully clothed. My head was lying against his ribs and his hands were stroking my hair. I could feel his warm fingers glide down my nose to my dry lips.
The numbers on the clock were the only illumination. The darkness was intoxicating, the silence soothing. I could smell the subtle fragrance of Quinn’s Perry Ellis cologne.
“How do you feel?” Quinn asked.
“What time is it?” I moaned softly.
“Two-thirty.”
“Don’t you need to get home?”
“Yeah, I’ve called. I can stay here if you need me,” Quinn answered with sympathetic assurance.
“No, Quinn, I’ll be all right. You better get home.”
As Quinn rose from the bed and slipped on his shoes, I felt an eerie chill. My bedroom became frighteningly still. It was as though loneliness and despair were settling in for the night. Quinn walked into the bathroom and I heard water running. Moments later he walked into the bedroom and pulled the burgundy bedspread over me. As he prepared to leave, he bent over me, softly kissing my forehead. He slipped a small piece of paper into my hand. “Take care, buddy. Here’s my home phone number. Call me if you need me. I love you.”
“Me too,” I said as tears welled in my eyes.
I watched Quinn closely as he walked slowly out of the bedroom. In the floating darkness his white cotton shirt appeared to be moving alone. When I heard the door close, I wanted to call Quinn back, but deep down I knew only Nicole could ease my pain. I leaped from the bed and went to the kitchen to find my vodka and sleeping pills. They would help me sleep. When I slept, I would no longer feel this powerful pain.
After one stiff drink I was hopelessly depressed again. I crawled from the kitchen into my bathroom and noticed the empty Sominex bottle on the sink. So much for suicide. Disgusted, I stood up and slowly walked to my bedroom.
Before getting into bed, I had a sudden desire to talk with my mother. She picked up the phone after the first ring.
“Mama.”
“Raymond. What’s the matter, baby?”
“Nothing, Ma.”
“Come on now. You were on my mind earlier this evening. I know something is wrong.”
I stuttered through the day’s events, telling her what had happened with Nicole and about Candance and Kelvin. In the middle of my dialogue, my mother started to pray. She prayed for me, Nicole and Candance. She asked God to watch over all of us in the big unfriendly city we called home. When she finished, my mama with light sobs in her voice said, “No matter who or what you are, Raymond junior, you’re my baby and I love you no matter what.”
“I know that, Ma … but sometimes you need someone besides your ma to love you.” Without even saying good night or good-bye to my mama, I hung up the phone and jerked it from the wall.
Nineteen
Stop the world, I want to get off! The days that ensued became one huge blur. It was as though a dark cloud had descended upon my apartment. I spoke with Nicole, who said she had not decided what to do. Her time and thoughts were with Candance. When I asked how C
andance was doing, she replied, “As well as one could be doing in her situation.” She also informed me that before we had any discussions about our future, I was to have an AIDS test by her doctor. I told her that I would comply. It wouldn’t be the first time I had taken the test. I thought back to the night we made love and how I had gone ahead without a condom because I didn’t want to explain why we should use one while we were in the throes of passion. With men, it wasn’t a question: you used a condom or you didn’t have sex. Quinn and I had had conversations about our sexual past when we decided to proceed with our relationship. I wondered again if most heterosexual women were concerned only with getting pregnant. When I talked with Nicole, I tried to be supportive and not pressure her. I tried to understand the intense pressure she was under. She did tell me that they had found Kelvin back home in Philadelphia and that he was expected in New York any day. I had not been to work in days. I called my secretary and told her I was ill. I didn’t answer my phone or my door buzzer. If I could not be with Nicole, then I wanted to be alone. I had never felt the emptiness that I was now feeling. It was a pain that the doctors could not cure. I had never been really physically ill, but I could not imagine a pain greater than the one I was currently experiencing.
Late Thursday evening my buzzer rang constantly. Minutes later there was a knock at my door. When I did not respond, the knocks got louder, as though the person were trying to beat the door down with pure physical strength. About a half hour later the knocking stopped and I got back in bed. I figured it was Quinn. I knew he was concerned, but right now I needed to be alone. After lying in bed for about an hour, I got up to fix another drink. I knew that I was drinking too much, but it helped me sleep or, rather, pass out. My sleep was restless and full of nightmares, but I didn’t feel the pain I did when I was awake. While I was in the kitchen, the knocking at my door started again. I stopped my movement so that whoever it was wouldn’t hear me. Then I heard one knock, a key turning, and I panicked. I suddenly heard voices when the safety latch prevented entry. I recognized one of the voices immediately. It was my pops.
“Ray!” he called out. “Are you in there?”
“Mr. Tyler … this is Mr. Macklin, the building super. Are you all right? If you don’t respond, we’re going to call the fire department.”
I walked slowly from the kitchen to the living room and saw my door half open, with the safety latch holding on for dear life. I walked up and removed it and my pops and Mr. Macklin walked in.
“I’ll take it from here,” my pops said to the super.
As I stood there wearing only my underwear, my father and I looked at each other in stunned silence. I had not washed my face for days, and my breath must have had a foul odor.
“Pops … what are you doing here?” I asked, my body trembling from his unexpected presence.
“Your mother was worried about you. She’s been trying to reach you for days,” he said.
“I’m okay. I’ve just run into a few problems.”
“You don’t look okay. This is a nice apartment. I bet it’s more than the mortgage on the house and my office,” my pops said while he glanced around my living room.
“Is that why you’re here, Pops? To see how I live?” I demanded, raising my voice for the first time at my pops.
“No, son,” he stammered, his head down. “I was worried about you too. I know I don’t say it … but you must know I love you.”
A chill surged through my body. Part shock … part anger …
“You love me, Pops? You don’t even know me, Pops. Do you know who or what you’re loving, Pops? Do you know me?” I shouted as I beat my chest with a balled fist.
“You’re my son and I love you. I may not approve of your life … but you’re still my son. You’re my firstborn.”
“Approve … approve of who I sleep with, Pops? That’s none of your damn business … I don’t ask you who you sleep with.” For a moment we stared at each other and then my father’s domineering manner seemed to dissolve. The harsh lines faded from his face, his expression tumbled into despair.
“What did I do wrong, Raymond Jr.? How could this happen?” my pops pleaded. When I looked at him, I saw something in my pops’s face that was unfamiliar. Something I had never seen before, a tenderness, a sorrow. A measured coolness existed in the room.
“Pops, it’s nothing you or Mama did. It just happened. Do you think I chose this life, Pops? Do you think I’m this way because you didn’t hug me enough or you didn’t say you loved me enough? Do you think that you worked too hard and spent too much time away from the house? Do you realize that today is the first time I’ve ever heard you say you love me?”
I talked in painstaking sentences, trying to lower my voice, to take out the rage.
My pops continued to voice his fears. “Your mother and I have worked all our lives to give you and Kirby the best. We want the best for you. I find myself constantly worried about you now. When you were a child, I never worried about you. I knew that you were my brave little man. I want you to be the man I dreamed you’d grow up to be. I want the best for you, son.”
“Maybe this is the best I can expect for myself, Pops,” I said in an apologetic tone. “Pops, no matter what you think of me, I’m no sissy. I am the man you raised me to be. My gayness is such a small part of who I’ve become. Look around you, Pops. I’ve accomplished a lot in my life. I am making a contribution I’ve earned your respect, Pops. Would you be so adamant about coming into my bedroom if I was completely straight?”
“I’m sorry I called you that, son. I don’t understand how this happened. Your mom and I are now worried about Kirby. And what about this AIDS shit?”
“Pops, I’ve been careful. I just wish I could explain it to you, Pops. It’s not you. This is the deck that I’ve been dealt. I’m just gonna have to play the hand I’ve got. I can’t throw away my life because of the cards I hold.”
“We can get help, son.”
“It’s not that simple. Don’t you know if there was some cure out there, I would have already tried it. I’m never going to do anything to embarrass you or Mama. More importantly, I’m not going to embarrass myself.”
“You never showed any signs of this when you were a little boy. What about all the girls that called you and what about Sela? Was it New York that changed you? Isn’t it tough enough being a black man?”
“Pops, it was just something I discovered about myself later in life. Something that brought pleasure to my body. I’m very much a man. I have never had a desire to be anything else. You have succeeded in what you set out to do. I am a proud black man who loves women, but I have loved men too, Pops.”
“You didn’t let them sc—” My father stopped in mid-sentence and quietly stared at me, his face creased by a question that he was struggling to articulate.
“Screw me, Pops? Is that what you want to know? Would that make me more of a man in your eyes, if I’m the doer?” I felt my rage returning. Why did my father’s question cause my anger to return? Should I tell him I didn’t let men enter me? Would his knowing this make my sexuality easier to digest?
“I’m sorry, Ray, I have no right.”
“You’re right, Pops, you don’t. It’s not a dick-and-ass thing. It’s how I feel. I wish you could cut me open and see how I feel. Then I think you’d understand. If you could really see me the way God made me, you’d be surprised how much I’m like you.”
“I don’t want to lose my son to some disease. I want to be a part of your life like when you were growing up. I want to share your successes and your disappointments.”
“A part or all of it, Pops? My gayness isn’t something you can touch or see, Pops. Had I not told Mom, you wouldn’t be here right now. You can touch me, Pops. This is me … it’s who I am.”
My pops didn’t respond. He just turned and walked toward me. When we were eye-to-eye, I saw water in my pops’s eyes. I had seen him cry only once, when Pa-Paw died. He took his powerful arms and embraced me as t
hough I were that little boy of so many years before. I went into his arms so easily, as though it were the only place in the world. I felt as though all the anger were being squeezed out of me. I felt tears flow down my dirty face. The tears turned to loud sobs. All of the pain I had felt for years, all the guilt I’d felt about my life came out with those poignant tears. My pops didn’t release me until the sobs turned to whimpers. He took his hands and palmed my head. He looked at me and smiled. It was the smile that I saw the first time I called him Pops, the same smile when I scored my first touchdown, the same smile when I finished law school. I imagined it was the same smile he smiled the first time he laid eyes on me. I closed my eyes for a moment and felt a sense of calm come over me. A silence covered the room.
That night my father and I talked and learned more about each other than we had in all the previous years. I shared with him my love for Nicole and how important Quinn had become. He squirmed when I mentioned Quinn, and although his face expressed apprehension, he was tolerant. I think for the first time we understood the pain that my bisexuality had caused both of us. We realized that things and feelings were not going to be changed in one night, but we started to break down the barriers. I tried to put into words why I thought I was bisexual. I thought I had been born bisexual, but that I had managed to suppress it during my adolescent years because of what I had been taught. I shared the theories of some doctors that it was caused during some type of trauma during pregnancy, or that being gay was genetically linked. In either case, I didn’t want to blame my parents. When Pops said that all he wanted was for me to be happy, I explained that one day I would be but it would take time. My father encouraged me to be supportive and understanding of Nicole and to give her time. He told me that if she was half the lady I said she was, she would give me a chance to prove my love. When our conversation ventured to law, he congratulated me on my big win and offered me a full partnership with his firm. When I hesitated, he asked me just to think it over. He convinced me to come home for a little time to rest and regroup. On this humid spring evening in New York City, I got my pops back. I was going back South.
Invisible Life Page 20