“My dad would lay out the hose at work and smack us with his hose at home,” he told Barbara Walters in 2001. Boy, did I wish Babs had a better ear for a double entendre.
Despite being taught through high school by an academical y limited mother, Locke attended and graduated, with C’s, from Brother’s Baptist University before going on to St. Simon’s Seminary in Austin, TX.
Although headed for a life in the clergy, Locke apparently decided that God’s true plan for him led to show business: Locke dropped out of seminary with one year to go to take a job in Christian broadcasting. His Ask Father Jacob show became an instant hit, despite the fact that he was only a
“father” at that time to his first-born daughter.
From a People magazine article in 2002: “Jacob Locke is not your typical talk show host. Mixing folksy common sense advice with Biblical y inspired teachings, Locke’s humor, humanism, and down-home charm have even non-believers tuning in daily.”
Unhelpful y, the article didn’t specifical y address whether he takes it up the ass.
Locke’s need for attention (stil looking for Daddy’s hose, buddy?) wasn’t satisfied by the pulpit or the radio show. By 2004, he was the star of Father Jacob Speaks the Truth, a strange little show on the second-most popular conservative cable news channel. Here, he interviewed many world leaders and celebrities, lecturing each on how God would want them to behave.
Like al narcissists, however, Locke craved more and bigger mirrors. In 2008, he began building a political operation, and now, he was launching his first presidential campaign.
When asked why voters would support a presidential candidate with no previous elective experience, Locke replied, “Wel , when you buy a bar of soap, you don’t want one that’s covered with slime, do you? I’m here to clean up our country. The fact that I’m not part of the current mess makes me more qualified for the job, not less.”
Who knew that “folksy wisdom” was synonymous with “bat-shit crazy”? But the truth was, mil ions of people were buying his shtick. While no one considered his bid for the presidential nomination particularly serious, he was definitely up to something. Setting himself up for a more credible run in the future? Building up his donor database?
Who knew? He had some kind of plan.
My guess was it was for something bad.
I was stil on the computer when the sun rose. I hadn’t turned up anything scandalous or useful.
But I did have an idea.
According to Locke’s site, his campaign headquarters were in New York City, near the Times Square area. It seemed incongruous—shouldn’t a conservative candidate with his credentials be running his campaign from Arkansas or Mississippi or somewhere else they taught creationism in the public schools? His Web site addressed the issue:
“We’ve chosen to establish our beachhead in New York City for a reason—to show that good, God-fearing people who want this country to return to its core principles are everywhere. The beating heart of America’s financial and media empires mustn’t be left to the liberal elite. Father Jacob’s messages of faith, fidelity, and family values are for al Americans to hear. But we need your help! Click below to make a contribution of time or money to help us take back America.”
Below were links to “Contribute” or “Volunteer.”
I clicked on the latter. The linked page explained that perspective volunteers should feel free to come by the office any weekday, from nine to six, to fil out an application.
Sounded like a plan to me.
27
Ordinary Miracles
At seven, I headed out to the gym and punished myself through a heavy back and legs routine, fol owed by thirty minutes on the el iptical. I picked up a protein drink and drank it on the way home. On my corner, I stopped at the local deli to get some milk, bananas, and bread.
“Hey, Kevin,” I heard from behind me. I turned around and saw a face I never expected to see in my neighborhood grocery.
Or anywhere else, for that matter.
“Marc!” I said, giving him a big hug. “I can’t believe you’re here!”
Marc looked down sheepishly. “Ta-da.”
Marc Wilgus was a former client of mine.
Handsome, charming and supersmart, Marc was a computer genius. His specialty was hacking. But he was no crook. Marc could break into any computer system anywhere in the world. Companies and governments paid him hundreds of thousands of dol ars to identify the holes in their networks and develop the tools to patch them.
You’d never think anyone with his looks and money would need the services of a professional sex worker such as myself except for one smal problem—he was a total agoraphobic.
Marc lived his whole life in his spacious, high-tech apartment where his every need was either met online or delivered to his door. Like I used to be.
I real y liked Marc. So much so that, after Marc helped save my life a few months ago, I had to stop working for him. It was pretty obvious he was developing feelings for me, and likewise, me for him.
I was honest with him. I told him that what was growing between us was more than a business relationship, and that we had to figure out what we wanted to do about that. Marc admitted he was fal ing for me and that he thought it was best we stop seeing each other.
After one last fling in the sack, and a somewhat teary good-bye, I thought I’d never see him again.
“What are you doing”—I couldn’t think of a polite way to put it, so I just said—“out?”
Marc looked a little pale and wide-eyed. “Pretty amazing, huh?”
I couldn’t help but hug him again. “I’m so proud of you.”
Marc hugged me back. Tightly. I could feel his heart pounding. “You stil like that chai tea?”
“Live off the stuff.”
“How about I take you to that Starbucks down the street and tel you about it?” He blushed furiously.
“Unless you have somewhere else you need to be?
I’m not sure what the protocol here is.... It’s not like I run into a lot of people in my apartment.”
“No,” I said, remembering I had nothing on my calendar until a nooner with a podiatrist on Sixth Avenue. “I’m total y free. Let’s go grab a cup.”
At the coffee shop, I got a better look at him. Marc was stil as good-looking as ever, tal and thin, with a prominent nose and strong cheekbones. But there was tension in his body language that I wasn’t used to. He was nervous.
“So,” Marc said after a little smal talk, as we sat across from each other in a smal booth. “After you and I had our talk, you know, ‘the’ talk . . .”
I nodded.
“I realized it was time I ran a few diagnostics on myself. Turns out, not leaving your apartment for five years isn’t normal.” He gave a little sideways grin that made me want to kiss him. I sipped my too-hot tea to burn off the impulse.
“Who knew?” I offered.
“I had . . . issues, Kevin. Fears. There are reasons why I am the way I am, but they’re not important.
“What was important is that when you walked out that door the last time, I wanted to run after you. I real y did.
“I made it as far as the lobby of my building before col apsing to the floor. A ful -blown anxiety attack. I’d never had one before. I thought I was going to die.
“The doorman found me hyperventilating in a fetal position and cal ed an ambulance. By the time it arrived, I was already back in my apartment, trying to catch my breath by breathing into a paper bag.”
“Marc,” I said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I would have been there.”
“It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t so bad. I didn’t have to go to the hospital or anything. I explained to the paramedics what happened, they took my readings, gave me a Valium, and suggested I get some help.
“So I did. It took five weeks before I was able to find a psychiatrist who was wil ing to see me in my apartment. But that’s what I needed. Baby steps.
Then,
bigger steps. Then the first steps out the door.
Now, I take two or three walks a day, always different paths, each one a little longer than the day before.”
Marc was drinking black coffee. He twirled the cup restlessly. “God, when I tel you this, it al sounds so crazy. You must think I’m real y fucked up.”
“Can I be honest with you, Marc? I don’t know if it’s because of my line of work, or because of my family, but I think most people are real y fucked up.” I reached across the table and took his non-coffee-twirling hand in mine. “Thing is, you’re actual y doing something about it. Do you know how few people ever admit to their demons, let alone face them down?
“I think you’re pretty amazing.”
Marc squeezed my hand. “Wow. I can’t believe how much I’m feeling right now. That’s one of the things about my . . . condition. I pretty much control ed everything. Nothing arrived in my world unless I sent out for it. I didn’t have to worry about feeling surprised, or scared, or hurt.
“I didn’t have to feel anything, real y.
“Out here”—he looked around the Starbucks as if it was an alien world he’d just discovered—“it’s so much more frightening. So many possibilities. When I write code, I create a world. I control the world. Here
. . . anything can happen. For so long, that seemed like a risk I couldn’t afford, you know?”
He chewed his lower lip in another move that made me want to kiss him.
“But right now, running into you like this,” he continued, “I realize . . . OK, let me tel it to you like this: One day, when I was trying to describe to my therapist al the things I was afraid could happen to me in the ‘real world,’ he asked, ‘Did it ever occur to you that something good could happen, too?’
“It hadn’t. It real y never occurred to me that something good could happen out here. But, look.
Today, I ran into a friend in the street. A friend I real y missed.
“Something happened that I didn’t program or order and it was great. It made me happy.”
Marc blushed again. “OK, I know you’re not real y my friend, I get that, we had a business relationship, but I think of you as a friend, Kevin, I do, and I’m happy.” A tear rol ed down his cheek.
That was it. I stood up, leaned across the table, and kissed him on the lips. At first, he straightened as if to pul away. I didn’t know if it was because he was shocked, or afraid to kiss another man in a public place, or what, but I was relentless.
After a few moments, he started kissing back, and it was so sweet and good that it made me remember why I had to stop seeing him.
I sat back down.
“Wow,” he said. “This leaving-the-house stuff real y pays off, doesn’t it?”
“Listen,” I said to him. “I know this is al kind of Strange New World for you, and I don’t want to lay too much truth on you at once, but let’s get one thing straight—I am your friend, OK? If I wasn’t, if I didn’t have genuine feelings for you, I’d be happy to stil make five hundred bucks off your ass every two weeks or so, right?”
Marc blushed and laughed again. He ran a nervous hand through his thick curly hair. “I guess.”
Marc was such an incredible catch. I used to think, If he’d only go out, I’d be going out with him.
Now, my head was so ful of Tony, I knew there was no room for Marc in there.
Seeing how vulnerable and raw Marc was, I knew the worst thing I could do would be to start something with him that I couldn’t finish.
But I was real y, real y tempted. Because if he thought that kiss was a good reward, my apartment was less than a half block from here, and I could bring him home and show him just how pleasant running into an old friend really could be. I could take him to my bed and . . . no!
Focus, Kevin, focus.
“So,” Marc said, trying his best to sound casual.
“Are you stil seeing that cop?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re kind of serious.”
Marc nodded and tried not to look disappointed.
“That’s great. And are you stil . . . hustling?”
“Yeah, gotta pay the rent.”
“How does that work? I mean, you do what you do, which is kind of il egal, right? But he’s a cop, pretty straight-laced from what you told me, so how do you make that work?”
Wow. Marc was kind of perceptive. “It’s not easy,”
I said. “We don’t talk about it. But it’s there, and it’s a problem.”
“Doesn’t he bug you to quit?”
“We’ve fought about it, but I’m not about to be forced out of doing something I love and make good money at just because Tony doesn’t like it.”
“You know,” Marc said, “when I’m coding a program, I can write a mil ion lines and everything’s going great when, al of a sudden, the whole thing comes crashing down. So, I have to go back, over every line, every value, until I find that one wrong phrase or bit of bad code that brings the entire system to its knees.”
“OK,” I said. I wasn’t sure what we talking about anymore. I wondered how much medication it took to get Marc out of the house.
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Something about computers?”
“Something about you, Kevin. Listen, if things had gone differently between us, if I had been a little bit less crazy a little sooner, maybe we could have had something, right?”
“I know,” I said. “I kind of wish things had gone differently, too. But the chips fel where they did and .
. .”
Marc held out his hand “Stop. That’s not where I was going with this. Just listen, OK.”
I took another sip of tea.
“If I had been saner faster, maybe it’d be me dating you, Kevin, not him. But that’s not what happened and I don’t want you to walk away thinking,
‘Oh, that was about poor pathetic Marc trying to get back with me,’ because it’s not. No, what I want to tel you is this: If I were your boyfriend, there’s no fucking way I’d let you stay out there and have sex with other men, let alone hustle.”
“It’s barely sex,” I said. “Sometimes I don’t even take my clothes off. My last client just wanted to give me pretend laughing gas while he takes advantage of me in my stupor.”
“See,” Marc said. “That’s what I’m talking about.
He says he’s giving you something perfectly safe, and you stil wind up in a stupor. Who knows what you’re breathing in?”
“I’m not actual y breathing in anything. Wel , other than air. He just puts a teacup over my nose.” Marc looked at me as if I were speaking Esperanto. “OK, it sounds strange, but to each his own, right? The point is, I’m not real y at any risk. It’s easy money. I have another customer who, once a month, just like to watch me take a shower and smel my wet hair.
Then there’s Mr. Tickle who, wel , you can probably figure out that one on your own.”
“Jesus,” Marc said, “we just used to make out and screw. Maybe I was missing out on something.” He arched his eyebrows suggestively.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Maybe if you’re real good, I’l let you put a teacup on my nose one day, too.” Marc laughed. “No, but seriously, these guys have harmless kinks. I real y feel like I’m helping them.
What’s the big deal?”
“I stil wouldn’t let you do it, Kevin. I’m sorry. I just couldn’t take the idea of you being out there, putting yourself at risk. And, I have to admit, it would probably drive me crazy with jealousy.”
“Listen, wait til you get to know me better. My being a sex worker is one of my least annoying qualities, believe me.”
Marc grinned. “I doubt that. But it’s not the point.
I’m a liberal-bordering-on-treasonous computer hacker and I couldn’t date you if you continued to hustle.
Your
boyfriend
Tony’s
a
hard-ass
conservative New York Cop. Why isn�
��t he insisting you stop?”
Holy shit. Had I spent so much time working on my List of Things Tony Wasn’t Wil ing to Give Up to Be with Me that I forgot to take a look at what I wasn’t wil ing to give up for him?
I waited for Marc to ask me the obvious question:
“If you real y love Tony, why don’t you stop doing the thing you know he can’t accept?”
Which is why I was surprised when he said, “If he’s wil ing to put up with you hustling, I wonder what secrets he’s keeping.”
“Saywhanow?”
“I figure it’s a trade-off. He doesn’t push you on your job, because there’s something he doesn’t want you to push him on. Right?”
There are things I can’t talk about with you.
“No,” I said. “That’s not it. He just doesn’t want to force me to quit something I want to do.”
“Because he’s so easygoing?”
“I wouldn’t exactly describe him as ‘easygoing.’ ”
“So, why do you think he doesn’t make you quit?”
Truth to tel , since it worked out conveniently for me, it wasn’t a question I’d ever asked. “I don’t know.
Because he loves me?”
Marc reached over and mussed my hair. “I’m sure he does, Kevin. And it’s none of my business. Look at me: A few months of therapy and I’m giving relationship advice.” He chuckled. “Sorry about that.”
I smiled, hoping it didn’t look as shaky as it felt.
“No probs.”
“It’s the hacker in me. Always looking for the flaws in the system. Sorry to get al Dr. Phil on you. What else are you up to?”
To get us both off the topic of Tony, I told Marc about Randy’s accident, the other deaths, and what led me to suspect Jacob Locke.
“I thought that maybe if I volunteered at his campaign office,” I wrapped up, “I might be able to get close to him. Maybe I’d get a vibe from him, or stumble across something.”
Marc narrowed his eyes and frowned. “It sounds dangerous.”
Second You Sin Page 20