I'm Your Man

by Timothy James Beck

I haven’t changed my policy. I still don’t discuss my private life. I’ll talk about my role as Angus, my public appearances, or anything about my career. I appreciate my fans, and I hope they appreciate my work. But my private life is just that.

  Wouldn’t a bit of candor help generate more positive attitudes about gay people?

  I would hope so, if you mean being candid about my orientation. Like I said, I’ve never denied it. I have no trouble saying that I’m gay. If I were straight, I’d still be a private person when it comes to my personal life.

  What other roles did you have before you became Angus?

  (Laughs) That’s a short list. I had small parts on NYPD Blue, ER, and Chicago Hope. My characters usually died really early. I’ve done a few commercials. No theater. A lot of extra work here and there. But Angus was my big break, and I love the show and the character. We’ve got a great cast and crew at Secret Splendor.

  You began your career as a performer fairly recently then.

  No. I’ve been performing professionally since I was eighteen. I began as a female impersonator, and after a few years, I developed a character based on the Princess of Wales called 2Di4. She was my longest run, but I stopped performing as 2Di4 when Diana was killed, as a gesture of respect. I was never as big as RuPaul. Then again, she’s seven inches taller than I am, and her heels are higher.

  What’s the reaction of your fellow actors on the set after all this publicity?

  Nothing’s changed, since it was never a secret that I’m gay. Although one of the younger actors on the set did ask me if I thought I could get Elton John’s autograph.

  Can you?

  I doubt it. If you’re reading this, Elton, call me.

  If it hadn’t been for Sheila, I’d have had no inkling of the ordeal Daniel was going through at work. The network was unhappy with his decision to come out, and several of his fellow cast members had begun to distance themselves from him, as if they hadn’t always known he was gay. For the time being, his job appeared to be safe, but the writers had been ordered to make Angus more masculine. This included sex scenes with Angus’s heretofore wife-in-name-only, Cressida Porterhouse. According to Sheila, they’d reached an impasse, because Jane-Therese threw a tantrum and refused to do love scenes with Daniel. It was anybody’s guess if they were going to come up with another plausible love interest for Angus or kill him off again—Angus apparently had more lives than Bonnie and Lillith combined—and buy out Daniel’s contract.

  “Gay or straight, that is one sexy man.” The nurse voiced my thoughts as she looked over my shoulder at Daniel’s picture. “Dr. Griffith can see you now.”

  Gretchen smirked when she saw me drop the magazine like it was burning my hand, but at least she didn’t say anything when we followed the nurse to the examining room. I waited outside until I was told I could go in. Gretchen had changed into a gown and the ultrasound tech was getting the machine ready.

  “Good morning,” Dr. Griffith said as he joined us. He shifted Gretchen’s file so he could shake my hand, then he rested his hand on her shoulder. As usual, I appreciated his calm, friendly manner. Even though it had surprised me when Gretchen chose a male OB/GYN, her instincts had been good. I always felt reassured and comfortable after our appointments. “I think I explained last time, this is just a routine ultrasound. Did you have any cramping after the amnio?”

  “Not at all,” Gretchen said.

  “Good. The results are in. Absolutely normal.” He opened the file and rattled off some tests and figures that made little sense to me, but it didn’t matter. All I needed to hear was that things were okay. “You two still don’t want to know your baby’s gender?”

  “No,” Gretchen and I answered in unison.

  “Let’s take a look, then.”

  The tech squirted gel on Gretchen’s belly. This was our third ultrasound, and Gretchen had told me the gel was warm and, except for having to endure a full bladder, she found the entire procedure calming. I, on the other hand, always felt charged up when I saw Civil Liberty on the monitor, and watched with fascination as Dr. Griffith pointed out things I’d never have been able to see on my own. The baby was just a mysterious gray blob to me.

  Later, while we listened to the heartbeat, I felt anxious when I saw Dr. Griffith frown as he skimmed through the file. But he’d already told us everything was normal. He scribbled some notes on Gretchen’s chart and said, “I’m seeing a trend with your blood pressure, Gretchen. It’s getting a little higher each visit. Nothing to be alarmed about, but just to be on the safe side, I want to put you on a low-sodium diet. We’ve got some material to help you with that.”

  “Can’t high blood pressure be caused by stress?” I asked.

  “Sure. But stress is a fact of life. It’s easier to control our diets than the world around us.”

  “Blaine’s just looking for a reason to lecture me,” Gretchen said. “I’m not the one who’s stressed. He is. Put him on a low-sodium diet, too.”

  “I’m not stressed,” I argued.

  Dr. Griffith closed the file and said, “The only thing Blaine needs to do is ease up on the Gravitron machine at bodyWorks.” He winked at Gretchen and left the room.

  “How did he know—”

  “You can be so dense sometimes,” Gretchen said. “You never realized he was family?”

  “Why am I always the last to know these things?”

  “Total lack of gaydar, as usual,” Gretchen said. “Go away. I want to get dressed and get out of here.”

  Once we were standing on the sidewalk, I asked Gretchen if she wanted to share a cab. I was going back to the office and figured we could split the cost. She hemmed and hawed and finally said, “That’s okay. I’m going downtown.”

  “To your office?” I asked. A look of annoyance washed over her and her eyes darted skyward. “Didn’t you hear what the doctor said, Gretchen? No stress. You should go home and start thinking about a leave of absence.”

  “I’m fine,” she said firmly. “The doctor said to watch my sodium intake. He said nothing about taking off work.”

  “Don’t get upset,” I cautioned.

  “I’m not upset!” she yelled. Several pedestrians jumped away from her or eyed her cautiously as they walked by.

  “Okay. I’m sorry,” I said. My cell phone rang, and Gretchen started frantically looking around for a cab. I looked at the Caller ID. “Lillith?”

  “We need you back at the office immediately. When you get here, meet me in Conference Room A,” Lillith said. She sounded like a secret agent setting up a rendezvous. I almost expected her to demand that I wear a white carnation in my lapel and bring a billion dollars in small denominations along with the stolen microfiche. “The short notice can’t be helped, Blaine. This is very important.”

  “It’s okay,” I said as I watched Gretchen step into a cab, wave at me, then speed off downtown. “I was on my way there anyway.”

  When I got to Lillith Allure’s headquarters, I found Violet, but she had no information about Lillith’s urgent meeting.

  “Sorry, Blaine,” she said with a shrug. “I got the same summons as you. I did my best to find out what’s going on, but nobody seems to have any answers. We’d better get moving.”

  Since Violet was rarely out of the loop, I felt nervous. Was Lillith purposely keeping us in the dark? What was I about to walk into? I composed myself while we walked down the hallway to the conference room. Although I knew I looked calm and collected on the outside, inside I felt like the pain and discomfort sufferer in a Tums commercial.

  We found Lillith seated at the table next to our attorney, Ryan. Standing behind her was a woman dressed all in white, who was waving her hands through the air above Lillith’s head. A second woman sat on the other side of Lillith and was looking through a long computer printout, while occasionally entering information into a laptop. Adam Wilson sat across the table from them, his mouth slightly open while he stared at the woman stirring the air above Lillith’s head.
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  “Oh, good,” Lillith said when she noticed our entrance. “Please, sit down. The others will arrive shortly. That’ll do, Hibiscus. My aura feels much clearer now, thank you.”

  Hibiscus stopped waving her hands around and left the room. Violet and I sat next to Adam, who leaned over to me and whispered, “Just when I think it can’t get any nuttier here, it does.”

  “What? Oh, Hibiscus,” I said. “I guess I’m getting used to it. How scary is that? What are you doing here?”

  Before he could answer, the phone rang, and Lillith answered it. “Thank you. Yes. Send them in,” she said, and replaced the receiver. “The rest of the attendees are finally here.”

  The door opened, and Bonnie Seaforth-Wilkes, Daniel, Ethan—who I assumed was with them as Bonnie’s spiritual advisor—and three stony-faced men in suits filed into the room. When Daniel met my eyes, his gaze seemed to convey that he was as mystified by this meeting as I was. I relaxed, grateful that he didn’t look angry, upset, or like a woman.

  “First of all,” Lillith said, “I’d like to apologize for the air of mystery surrounding today’s meeting. Noreen, my astrologer”—she gestured to the woman with the laptop and computer printout, who looked up briefly and gave a small wave—“assured me that surprise is the best plan of attack in business proceedings today.”

  “Enough with the drama, Lillith,” Bonnie commanded. “Would you get on with it? Why am I here? Have you finally come to your senses and realized that amulet is mine? Did you want witnesses around us this time, in case things get ugly?”

  “This has nothing to do with the amulet,” Lillith said. “Besides, you know perfectly well I don’t have it. You probably have it and are saying these things to drive me mad again. I’m sure that’s why you were born thirty years before me—”

  “Thirty?” Bonnie gasped.

  “—to get your hands on it before I could,” Lillith spoke over her. “You’d like to see them put me in an asylum, like they did three lifetimes ago. Do you know what they did to me?”

  “Hmmm, yes,” Bonnie said. “Aren’t they making a movie about it? Called Quills?”

  “I was not the Marquis de Sade,” Lillith snapped.

  “Ladies, please,” Ryan said, holding up a hand. “Arguing about past lives isn’t going to help us.”

  “Actually, that’s not true,” Ethan said. “Oftentimes, it helps us grow when we—”

  “Be that as it may, we are off track,” Lillith interrupted. “Maybe I should turn the floor over to Adam. I invited him because he has interesting information regarding our respective Web sites.”

  “For those who don’t know,” Adam said, nodding at Ryan and the men with Bonnie, “I’m Adam Wilson. I maintain the Web sites for Lillith Allure Cosmetics and Seaforth Chemicals. Lillith asked me to monitor the e-mail from both sites and keep a tally of reactions after the photos of Daniel and Blaine ran in the Manhattan Star-Gazette. Of course there have been negative responses, but not in the numbers you’d think. Around eighty percent of the e-mails have been positive reactions to Daniel and Blaine.”

  “Why would there be any e-mails about me?” I asked. I’d been sitting quietly, wondering where the meeting was headed and trying not to squirm about being in the same room with Daniel and Ethan. Now that my name had come up, however, I found it difficult to keep my mouth shut.

  Noreen typed on her laptop, hit “Enter,” and said, “Friction between Taurus’s heart and head are affected by Mars. Don’t let your career path be affected by your personal path.”

  Lillith sagely nodded her head in agreement with Noreen and said, “Let Adam finish, please.”

  “On Bonnie’s site, Blaine’s name hasn’t come up at all,” Adam said.

  “Why would it? I haven’t told anyone who he is,” Daniel said.

  “Sixty-five percent of Seaforth’s e-mails regarding the pictures completely support Daniel. Fifteen percent completely support Angus Remington. Ten percent favor Angus’s new relationship with the mystery man in the photos over his marriage to Cressida Porterhouse. And ten percent of the people who e-mailed think Daniel is going to hell. However, they’d be willing to keep watching Secret Splendor if he’d repent.”

  “Not on your life,” Daniel muttered.

  “Virgo men reel amid chaos,” Noreen said, again consulting her laptop. “Saturn will turn chaos back into order during the next crescent moon.”

  Bonnie looked at Noreen with annoyance. Then she turned to Adam and said, “Ten percent isn’t bad.”

  “The same goes for Lillith Allure’s e-mails,” Adam said.

  “Why would Lillith Allure get e-mails about Daniel?” Violet asked.

  “Lots of reasons,” Adam said. “Mainly because of Sheila’s friendship with Daniel. If they’re fans of Sheila’s, they’re fans of Zodiac. So they go to the Lillith Allure site and learn everything they can. Which leads us to your question, Blaine. The creative team behind Zodiac is detailed on the Lillith Allure site, where there’s a whole page—with a photograph—on you.”

  “So it stands to reason that people are beginning to realize that it was Blaine with Daniel in the Star-Gazette,” Violet said, catching on. “I get it now.”

  “Aries will fail to maintain a charade,” Noreen said to Violet, who looked momentarily stunned. Daniel snorted derisively.

  “I’m a Capricorn,” Violet said.

  Noreen looked baffled as she consulted her laptop and said, “No, you’re not. You’re an Aries.”

  “Blaine, everyone knows you’re the tour de force behind Zodiac’s ads,” Lillith said. “You’ve been on Entertainment Tonight, there have been magazine articles and advertising industry awards, all with your name and face attached.” She pointed from Daniel to me as she said, “The press already knows. It’s only a matter of time before someone prints it.”

  “This story was supposed to die, not get bigger,” Bonnie complained with a frown.

  “You said there’d be no repercussions if I came out,” Daniel said.

  “Disharmony is at its peak when—”

  “Noreen, please,” Lillith spoke sternly.

  “Well, no,” Bonnie said awkwardly to Daniel. She glanced at two of the men she’d brought with her, introducing them as a network representative and a lawyer. They took their cue and began a tag-team discourse.

  “Secret Splendor’s numbers haven’t dropped. In fact, they’ve gone up,” the network rep admitted. “That’s not surprising. Our research has always indicated that the show has a large gay viewership. Seaforth Chemicals has advertised heavily to that market. But the shows that precede and follow Secret Splendor have different demographics, and their ratings are falling.”

  “Advertising costs are tied to the numbers,” the attorney said. “Those shows’ sponsors have the legal right to demand lower rates or pull their ads. We can’t let one rotten banana spoil the bunch.”

  “I believe it’s apple,” Violet said.

  “Either way, it’s fruit,” the attorney said. This remark was met with dead silence, as Ethan, Adam, Daniel, and I all stared at him with irritation.

  “We can’t afford a loss in advertising revenue. It would be cheaper for us to buy out Daniel’s contract,” the network rep said.

  “Fine,” Daniel said. “Buy me out. I’m not lying or hiding the truth about myself.”

  They were now speaking my language, and I suppressed a smile, remembering Gavin’s prediction about backlash. I leaned forward and said, “It would be cheaper in the short run. You’d get rid of your immediate problem. Your other shows would be safe. It would probably be the end of Secret Splendor, though.”

  “One character doesn’t carry the show,” the network rep disagreed.

  “No, your ‘large gay viewership’ carries the show. You’ll see the effect first among the Manhattan viewers, since Daniel is a highly regarded performer here. Then it’ll spread outward, possibly becoming a national boycott. You’re familiar with that word, right? Florida orange juice? Coors
beer?” I turned to Bonnie. “Your sales will be the next to suffer if you continue to sponsor the show after they dump Daniel.”

  Bonnie blanched, and Lillith emitted a peal of laughter, then said, “The solution is obvious, Bonnie. Keep Daniel. Seaforth Chemicals should buy the commercial time any other companies drop.”

  “Our advertising budget is determined months in advance,” Bonnie said. “You have far more autonomy with your little company. Why don’t you buy the commercial time?”

  “Why would I advertise on shows with falling ratings?” Lillith asked.

  “Scorpio is wise to practice thrift in business matters,” Noreen said, and Lillith looked smug.

  Before Bonnie and Lillith could continue sparring, Adam said, “Blaine’s right, but I can take his thinking a step further. If the responses I’m seeing on the Seaforth and Lillith Allure Web sites are accurate, the network must be getting similar reactions. Rather than worry about alienating that small segment of negative viewers, why not try to pick up Secret Splendor’s gay and gay-friendly viewers for your other shows?”

  “How do you propose that we do that?” the network rep asked in a condescending tone.

  “Use the gay media,” Ethan said. “It’s good for the gay community to have an out, gay actor who’s on everyone’s television set. Now that Daniel’s come out, the gay media will want statements and interviews with him, the show, and the network that carries it. The entertainment media will pick up the story; you’ll get plenty of publicity.”

  “Negative publicity. Backlash works both ways,” the attorney said. “When the general public feels someone’s advancing a gay agenda, they retaliate. You’re familiar with that word, right? Ellen Degeneres?”

  “Maybe we should drop Secret Splendor altogether. Soap ratings are falling on all the networks,” the network rep said. “It’s a dying form of entertainment.”