Can't Buy Me Love

by Chris Kenry

  We nodded.

  “Good,” he said. “Good, good, good, then he’s got a lot of homework to do. We’re way ahead of him, but we have to work fast. Look,” he said, pausing in his pacing and regarding Ray and me gravely. “I can help you. I will help you. But you’ve got to work with me.”

  We looked at each other and shrugged. He was preaching to the converted. In our discussion at home Ray and I had come to the conclusion that working with MacNamara was really the only possibility if we hoped to have any control whatsoever over our story.

  “What do you want us to do?” Ray asked. MacNamara rubbed his freckled hands together and resumed pacing, more rapidly this time.

  “First,” he said, raising his index finger, “I want an exclusive. I don’t want you talking to anybody but me, and of course your attorney, about any of this. Let me be your mouthpiece.”

  We nodded, but I wanted to kick myself for not having considered going to an attorney.

  “Second, I need complete honesty. You have to tell me the truth. All of it. The more I know the more I can help you, and we can anticipate any unpleasant surprises that might arise.”

  We agreed and talked on into the afternoon, relating stories and hammering out agreements—what we’d agree to say and agree to leave out—and in the end we had resolved several contentious issues. We agreed that Johnny’s name would not appear and we would do our legal best to erase any record of him. Also, Ray’s role would be minimized as much as possible, and we would all work together to keep him out of trouble. My parents were a thornier issue. I did not want them to be mentioned at all, but MacNamara pointed out the folly of such an omission, since Bernstein had already discovered the connection and would be sure to use it.

  “We’ve got to beat him to the punch,” he said. “That way we can put a positive spin on it. Get some better pictures, better quotes. Do you think they’ll talk to me?” he asked. I laughed for a good five minutes at that one, and then excused myself. I laughed all the way down the hall and into the bathroom, where I locked myself in a stall, buried my face in my hands, and wept. There was no way that my role in the story could be minimized or sanitized. I was the story. I realized then that I was going to be completely exposed, realized that everyone I’d ever known or even been acquainted with in Denver—my friends, my family, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, the neighbors across the street, my elementary school teachers, my dentist, my mechanic—were all going to read the sordid details. I wanted to run away, wanted to flush myself down the toilet, wanted to do something, anything, to stuff all the scandal back into Pandora’s box.

  I had to talk to my parents before someone else did—that much was transparently clear—although what I would say, let alone how I would say it, I didn’t know. I would cancel my afternoon meeting with Bernstein, I thought, give him some excuse and reschedule, then, as soon as my parents’ plane hit the ground (in a fiery crash, perhaps), I would go directly and speak to them.

  With this rough outline in mind, I left the stall, washed my face, and went back down the hall to MacNamara’s office. I stood in the doorway unnoticed by MacNamara and Ray. They were talking animatedly about their scuffle the night before, and both laughed out loud when they got to the part where the section of fence collapsed. One more thing I have to explain, I thought. Ray seemed much more at ease, and I was glad about that, but while he seemed to think the worst was over, I felt certain it was just beginning.

  When we parted from MacNamara, agreeing to meet again the next day, after I’d spoken to my parents, Ray and I immediately set to work doing damage control. First we told Josh what was happening, and had him call all of the subcontractors and summon them to a mandatory meeting later that afternoon. While he did that, I copied all of the client information onto a single floppy disk and erased each and every client file from the hard drive, figuring it would be best to destroy as much of that information as I could. Ray got busy boxing up all of the written records from the file cabinet, which he then loaded into the hearse and disposed of in several different Dumpsters around town. While he was gone, Josh and I phoned as many of the regular clients as we could and warned them of the trouble that was about to come, assured them that we’d taken precautions to conceal their identities, and asked them not to speak to anyone.

  When all of the subcontractors were assembled in the main office, I thanked them all for coming on such short notice and told them, as briefly and concisely as I could, that the gig was up. There wasn’t any trouble yet, but there was going to be, so we were pulling in our shingle and closing down the shop. Most everyone took the news calmly. Such group meetings were rare, and they had all known something was up. Johnny was the most worried, as he still had a year to go before he got his degree, but I assured him as best I could that we’d do our best to keep him out of it all. Most of the college students were nervous about their parents finding out, but I was touched to see that those concerns took a backseat to their fears for Ray and Johnny and me. Only poor Marvin, looking terribly sad and confused, wept quietly in the corner. I knew his fear wasn’t arrest or exposure; it was what that he was, yet again, unemployed. What would he do now? I wondered. He caught me looking at him and quickly reapplied his masculinity. He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes and uncrossed his legs. I smiled at him and tossed him a box of tissues—which he very nearly caught.

  The following day, the day before my big graduation, of which my parents still knew nothing, I sat down with them in the living room of their house, the same room in which everything had exploded two days before. Standing by the mantel, my gaze locked on the fireplace, I revealed to them what had happened and what was going to happen. I was getting quite good at recounting the details of my naughty life and troubles, but there was no easy way to say it then. Feelings of shame at what I’d done and pride in my accomplishments swirled in my head like oil and water, and I found myself suppressing them both and recounting my tale in the flat voice of a lobotomy patient.

  My mother’s reaction was predictable: horror, disbelief, shocked tears, feelings of guilt and embarrassment, all of which I knew she’d overcome or forget about in time, but my father’s reaction was quite different than I’d expected; he sat, listening carefully in his wing-backed chair, showing no reaction or emotion, as if he’d been hypnotized by the monotonous sound of my voice.

  I finished the tale and waited to hear what they had to say. I waited for what seemed like a light-year. My mother wept into the monogrammed hankie she had pulled from her sleeve, but my father just sat there stoically, like a visiting diplomat to the U.N., patiently waiting for the translation to come through his headset. When he did finally look up, his expression was frighteningly vacant. His head wobbled for a few moments, à la Katherine Hepburn, but then fell forward and stayed there.

  “Please leave,” I heard him say, with an icy calmness and finality. I hesitated only a moment, wanting to apologize, wanting to offer a rational explanation, but the former would have sounded trite and the latter was impossible, so I said nothing, and walked, as steadily and quietly as I could, out of the living room and out the front door.

  To this day, almost two years later, those two words remain the last I’ve heard from my father. I suppose I should feel penitent—either that or resentful—but I feel neither—and both, if that makes any sense. I feel bad that I did something to cause my parents pain, but I feel no remorse about what I did. I did not cheat old people out of their savings, I did not exploit child labor, I did not rape the land or poison the environment. I conducted personal business transactions between two people. Two consenting adults. I harmed no one. Like Hole said, I may have catered to man’s baser desires, but “man bought”! No one was coerced into it, no one was seduced. Men desired what I had and searched for it—actively sought me out. If I didn’t provide the service, someone else would have. If somehow no one provided it, the demand would not, as some people actually believe, disappear. If somehow Mayor Giuliani were to achieve his goal of
completely ridding New York City of all the whores and porn stores and naughty cinemas, the demand for those things would not magically evaporate. If you destroy providers like me, you will not destroy the problem. The desire will still be there, and new people will always spring up to cater to that desire. It’s simple supply and demand. Basic economics. Maybe that is what I should have told my father. The message was the same, but at least it would have been conveyed in a language that he understood.

  “Give him time,” my mother said on her last visit, as I sat on a bench in the Tuileries, watching her paint with watercolors (her newest campaign). “He’ll come around.”

  I nodded halfheartedly. I wanted to believe her, but I didn’t. I was remembering the time, during my freshman year of college, when I first told my parents I was gay. The news severely taxed my father’s understanding and tolerance. Oh, he did “come around” eventually, and was always polite and friendly to anyone I brought home for him to meet, but it was a long journey for him to reach that point. I have never asked him about it, but I suspect it was so difficult for him to accept because he, like so many people when they first discover someone they know is gay, immediately pictured me naked in bed having sex with someone of the same gender. A mental cinema verité started rolling in my father’s head, and when that happened (usually when I was talking about someone new I was dating), I could actually see the revulsion and perplexity on his face as he struggled to banish the images from his mind. For that reason, I know his thinking about my “line of work” must raise the curtain on a lurid triple feature, and that must be nearly overwhelming.

  After telling my parents that day, I left their house and sought solace from Andre. I should have known better.

  “Come in, whore,” he said, whipping open the door. “You’re just in time. I was just watching the tail end of Klute.” He pirouetted and pranced over to the sofa, waving the remote control from side to side like a wand.

  “I must say I’m fonda Jane’s outfits in this movie,” he said, pointing to the screen. “I mean, look at her with that ol’ shag haircut and that maxiskirt and go-go boots. We could probably look outside and see ten girls dressed just like her walking down the street right now. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, that’s my motto.”

  He pushed the pause button and looked up at me expectantly from where he was perched on the edge of the sofa.

  “I guess you want to hear the details,” I said, looking away from the TV and toward the kitchen, wondering what alcohol I could drink to get my tongue loosened.

  “Yesterday’s news, girl, yesterday’s news. Just got off the phone with Sister Carey and my ear is hot, hot, hot! What I want to know is what you’re going to do, sweetie. When are you going to tell Steen and Barbara?”

  “I just did it.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “It wasn’t a Hallmark moment.” I plopped down on the sofa and told him as much of the story as I could while he gasped and applauded and had mock fainting fits, taking immense pleasure as I relayed all the drama.

  “Look,” I said when I’d finished my tale, “this is all going to erupt really fast. Ray and I need a place to hide out for a day or two. Any chance we can crash here?”

  “Hmmm,” Andre mused, raising his index finger to his lips and looking up at the ceiling. “Ray and I? Ray? Ray who? Baby, we’ve been the best of friends since we were little girls, right?”

  I nodded.

  “The kind of dear, close friends who don’t keep any secrets from each other.”

  Again I nodded, but I knew he was leading up to something, and I was pretty sure, from his sarcastic tone, that it wasn’t going to be nice.

  “But sugar,” he said. “Sweetie. I don’t ever, ever, remember hearing you mention anyone named Ray. Is he the pimp?”

  I groaned and rubbed my temples. He wasn’t going to let me off easily. I had avoided him for months, and I suppose he was entitled to give me some grief. I got up and went over to the refrigerator.

  “I’m all out of Thunderbird and Boone’s Farm,” Andre yelled from the couch. “Isn’t that what you working girls like? But wrap that bottle of chardonnay in a brown paper bag and you can pretend.”

  “Oh, quit it!” I yelled. “Spare me! My parents were bad enough, and unfortunately they were just the beginning. I don’t need another busload of crap from my friends. I don’t have much time. Can we stay here or not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know ...” he said, wringing his hands together. “All the publicity and everything. I’d probably be interviewed and photographed extensively, wouldn’t I? People all over the country, maybe even all over the world, would see little well-dressed me, and probably the inside of my tastefully, some might say impeccably, decorated pied-à-terre . . . Can you stay? Of course, girl. Of course.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you think E! will send someone?”

  From Andre’s I went home to Ray’s. There, in the upstairs bedroom, I closed all the blinds, stripped down to my boxers, and got under the covers of the big, white bed, ready and willing to indulge in a gloomy afternoon of dismal self-pity. The weather, however, was not cooperating and the sun shone obstinately down on me through the skylights, which had no blinds I could close. In frustration, I pulled the comforter over my head, wishing I could just push some button and block out the annoying orb—a magical remote control that I could use to bring everything into alignment with my moods. I could push one button to change the weather, another to change my outfit, a third to cue up the appropriate music. I could push yet another and give my father a better sense of humor and thus change his reaction to my revelation. Heck, while I was at it I might as well push one and erase the entire situation so he’d have nothing to react to. I’d just push a button and erase my history from the past year and a half. Sort of reach back through time and undo everything I’d done. I could go back to being the person I’d been before all of this lunacy had started. Back to the Jack unsullied by all of my deeds. Back to the young, beautiful, clean, and innocent Jack, whom Paul and my parents had so adored....

  Then I started laughing.

  “Self-delusion is self-pollution!” I said in a voice mimicking Sister Melanie’s, and threw the comforter off. Try as I might, I could not fool myself. I knew then, as I had always known, that I had not been clean or innocent before all of this lunacy. I had been a manipulative, spoiled, lazy, money-grubbing, underachieving parasite, and I looked back at that person with no feelings of nostalgia. On the contrary, I was truly ashamed of the former Jack, and I knew that given the chance I would not resurrect him. Not for the approval of my father, not for the security of Paul, not for anything.

  I have something now, I thought to myself, remembering the gallery, and Ray, and the feelings of self-confidence I’d worked so hard to obtain. But more important, I am someone! Someone I can face when I look in the mirror. Someone who can stand alone on his own two feet.

  I thought of the future as I lay there, and of all the attention I knew would be coming my way. I knew it was going to greatly embarrass my family, and I did feel bad about that, but I knew that if I were to be ashamed about it myself, it would only make matters worse, because that shame would imply to the outside world that what I’d done was wrong, that my actions deserved to be judged, and I didn’t believe that. I realized as I lay there that I had two choices: I could either play the penitent pansy, and rapidly wither under the harsh light of the public’s disapproval and scorn, or I could rise up and defend myself by not taking the situation as seriously as everyone else seemed to be taking it.

  Of course I chose the latter, figuring that by trivializing the scandal I could knock the wind out of the judgmental sails. Yes, admittedly I’d been naughty. Yes, my past was sordid, but so what. I didn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed. Not really anyway. I suppose I did feel a bit overwhelmed and naked, but that was not my doing. I was a simple businessman just doing what I had to do to keep m
y head above water. It was the government and the news media that wanted to interfere and publicize the hell out of it. Well, fine. If that was the case I might as well harness the attention and try to profit from the ride. I’d be stupid not to.

  That afternoon, I recited my story one more time, this time to my brother Jay, whom I visited in his dingy law office on Colorado Boulevard. I wanted to hire him to represent me in the legal troubles I knew were bound to confront me and hoped he could help me anticipate some of them and plan some strategy beforehand. Although he too was shocked by many of the details, he wasn’t so shocked that he couldn’t see a brass ring when one presented itself. He had been dying for a case like mine. One that would give him some publicity and exposure, and here it was right in his own family. It wouldn’t score him any points with the old man, but we both reasoned that surely Dad would forgive him when things settled down a bit.

  Uh, that part remains to be seen.

  Before I left him, I told Jay all about Burl, and how I thought he could probably be helpful with the case, considering his prosecutorial past. He agreed, so I wrote down his number and told Jay to call him as soon as possible. I also gave him MacNamara’s number, since Jay said he’d need to confer with him on the contents of the impending Tally-Ho article (which he had vowed to publish surreptitiously, even though it would cost him his job). Then I left and went shopping and bought a new tie to go with the suit I planned to wear to my graduation.

  Unfortunately, no one at the ceremony got to see it.

  The graduation two days later was chaotic, to say the least. Rob’s story—all eleven pages of it, complete with photos and movie stills—had come out in Tally-Ho the night before. The Denver Business Daily’s comparatively tame story had come out that morning—next to the reprint of the profile of my father and Thompson Communications. So by eight A.M. the lobby of the building that housed the microbusiness program was swarming with reporters, cameramen, and police, even though the ceremony wasn’t scheduled to start until ten. Or so I heard from Andre and Carey, who both arrived early, anticipating the difficulty of finding a good seat. On the advice of Jay and Burl, I did not attend, since earlier that morning the offices of Harden Up Inc. had been raided by the police. There were arrest warrants out for both Ray and me, so we had installed ourselves, as planned, in Andre’s apartment, and had been instructed to stay there until Jay and Burl and MacNamara could arrange our peaceful surrender.