by Rick R. Reed
“I can talk to you, can’t I?” I’d asked her, playing dumb.
She patted my thigh. “Yes, always. But maybe it’s time to, as Ann Landers so often put it, ‘seek professional help.’”
“But we can’t afford that.”
Violet had looked at me like I was crazy. And maybe I was. Maybe I am.
A flicker of pain crossed her features—I could see it in her eyes, the way she held her lips. She pushed back some of her hair from her forehead and shook her head, eyeing me with disdain. “We can’t afford for you not to go. You should have already been going.” She looked down at the floor. “I don’t want to find you dead in some hotel room. I don’t want to have to explain something like that to Henry. He deserves better. You deserve better.”
And what about you, my dear?
Yet I knew Violet was right. I’d known since before I’d tried to kill myself (just stating those words caused a pain more horrible in my gut than anything physical could cause).
Marshall Hissom had an ad in the back of the Windy City Times newspaper. He specialized in treating gay men. Bingo.
I’d seen him once a week throughout the winter. He was a kind, older man, with round gold-rimmed glasses, unruly gray hair contrasted with a very neat, closely trimmed beard. He favored corduroy, flannel, and fleece. His office, all warm cherrywood and leather, seemed like a sanctuary to me from the very first visit. The soft lighting and utter stillness made Marshall’s office like a place I wanted to curl up and go to sleep.
I don’t want to go into all the things we talked about, much of it, I suppose, your standard self-loathing gay man fare—how my father never loved me, my mother was too overbearing, even if she was well meaning, how I was bullied by other boys growing up—but the core of what we got to in our sessions was one simple fact.
I was okay.
I was a good man.
That may seem like nothing if you’re reading this and never thought of yourself as different, an outsider. If you grew up feeling like you were normal, just one of the gang. Popular. Loved for who you were—and secure in that knowledge.
Knowing I was okay was a revelation. Not just okay, but capable of being loved and accepted. See, before I wore my mask so fulltime that I felt like it was welded onto my face. I thought if anyone knew what was under there, they’d hate me, shirk me, want me as far away from them as possible.
The worst part of that feeling was that I agreed with it. I understood it.
In the contest of who hated me most, I came up a clear winner.
For so long, I didn’t want to be me. That sounds absurd, but it was true.
Marshall showed me that I was a good person. Hating myself was only destroying me.
“Do you believe in God, Randy?” he asked during one of our sessions.
I had to think about it. I’d been brought up Catholic, baptized and confirmed. In my darkest moments, I felt that a lot of the shame and guilt I felt about who I was came from the Church. Their hypocrisy was what drove me away—even though to this day, I treasure the rituals and simple beauty of Mass.
But I don’t think Marshall was trying to get at my religious upbringing here. I had a sense he had an overarching point he wanted to make.
“Yeah, sure. As an old man in the sky, casting judgment down? No. But I do believe there’s something out there that unites us all, that makes us all one.”
Marshall nodded, his hand on his chin. “So this something. Do you think it’s perfect?”
“It’s God.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Well, yeah. As the energy that manifests the universe, I would say that yes, he or she or it must be perfect. A divine ideal we can strive for.”
“If God is perfect, then it must also follow that he—or she or it—doesn’t make mistakes, no?”
I nodded, although I was getting a headache trying to sort out which mistakes I’d seen throughout my life were man-made or God-made.
He caught my eye. “You’re not a mistake.” He let out a little sigh. “So, stop telling yourself you are. You don’t need to be anything other than the very best version of you that you can.”
It was good that those words ended that particular session because it gave me a lot to think about.
Marshall also showed me I needed to leave my marriage, to get out and experience the life I paradoxically dreamed of and dreaded. And he thought I should make the break sooner rather than later.
This latter notion we were still exploring, the logistics, how it would affect all of us. I wasn’t ready to move in that direction…not yet, not quite.
He brought me to the point where I found myself this unseasonably warm evening in late April.
I’m poised and ready to head out the front door…
Yet my thoughts are not anticipatory. They’re about what I’m leaving, not just tonight, but most likely, eventually, for good. I feel like the pushmi-pullyu creature from Dr. Doolittle.
I was finishing up getting ready in the bathroom when Violet knocked on the door. “Can I come in?” she called from the hallway.
“Sure.” I’d just finished brushing and flossing and was now getting ready to shave. I stood before the medicine cabinet mirror in my underwear—a pair of white Fruit-of-the-Loom briefs. I wore a beard of shaving cream and had the basin filled with steaming water. I knew that one day, maybe in the not too distant future, I’d miss this easy familiarity.
Violet slipped in and sat on the closed toilet seat. She had a glass in her hand.
“What’s that?” I gestured toward the glass with my shaver.
“Vodka and tonic.”
“No lime?”
She shook her head. “We don’t have any. I put an extra shot in to make up for the loss of the lime.”
I noticed that Violet had been drinking more lately, and I wished it wasn’t so, longing to rest comfortably in the knowledge that her alcohol consumption was not because of me. I just hoped she had a handle on things.
“I just got Henry down for the night and thought I’d have this.” She raised her glass, shaking it so the ice rattled. “To help me unwind.”
I nodded and began shaving my neck with upward strokes. Throughout the winter, I’d had a full beard. I’d only recently shaved it off. I had Henry stand on the toilet seat, watching his daddy’s transformation so it wouldn’t come as a shock to him.
I left the mustache.
Marshall said that my shaving off the beard was symbolic—a way of letting my true “face” emerge. I don’t know about that.
Sometimes a shave is just a shave.
“Where are you off to tonight?” Violet asked. She was bracing herself for a reply even if she already knew the answer. Marshall was right. I did need to get out of our shared apartment. I couldn’t help but feel guilty about leaving her and Henry alone even if she did encourage me. “You should be out there meeting people like yourself. Making some friends. Really, everything will fall into place. But that can’t happen if you’re at home with Henry and me, watching Cheers.”
The problem was I didn’t know if any “people like myself” existed.
I told her, “I thought I’d head back down to Halsted. There’s a bar called North End down there, a few blocks from Wrigley Field. I hear it’s kind of low-key.”
“What does that even mean?”
I pondered how to phrase my answer. “Well, to me, it means it’s not a pickup spot.”
“Not cruisy?”
I laughed. “Where did you pick up the word cruisy?” In my role as a straight man, I’d never heard anything, even a singles bar, described as cruisy.
“I read.” She sipped her drink. “Why does it always have to be a bar?”
I rinsed my face and then drained the sink. “What do you mean?”
“Why do you always have to go out to gay bars? You’ve never been a big drinker. And, if I wanted to meet a man, I wouldn’t necessarily go to a bar. Most of ’em are meat markets, Randy.”
&n
bsp; I didn’t tell her I’d recently heard of a gay bar that actually had meat market in its name. I didn’t even want to think about what went on in such a place. It both terrified and tantalized me.
I toweled off my face and examined it in the mirror. The person looking back at me was someone I felt was new, someone I was just beginning to know. I smiled and then turned away, feeling foolish.
“I know, but number one—I’m not going out to meet men. I’m just hoping to find maybe a kindred spirit out there: someone who at least understands, on a personal level, what I’m going through. Maybe someone who can help me better see how this all works. It’s a whole new world.” I was fudging on the truth, I know, a little. There was a part of me that did want to meet men, or a man, but admitting that to Violet was impossible at this stage.
I could barely admit it to myself. My baser desires had yet to break free of my dreams, or at least my fantasies when my guard was most down.
“And number two,” I began, moving from the bathroom to the bedroom. I motioned her to follow me and she did. “Number two—” I continued, searching through my closet for a nice shirt to pair with my jeans. “—I don’t know any other way to meet gay people.” That statement, too, was not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I’d seen advertisements in the gay papers for all sorts of clubs, groups, and sports teams. But a bar was just easier. I could hide in a bar if I wanted to. If I went, for example, to the gay euchre club that met every Tuesday night at a bar (again, with the bars!) on Sheridan, I’d be forced to talk, to be “out” in a way I didn’t know if I was comfortable with yet.
“Really?” Violet nudged me aside and pulled a brown-and-yellow flannel shirt from my closet and handed it to me. “Wear this. It brings out the brown in your eyes.” She smiled, but it was tight-lipped and didn’t reach her own eyes.
“Thanks.” I took the shirt from her and wondered if I’d have the courage to admit to anyone I might meet later tonight that my wife had picked out the shirt I wore.
After I was dressed, Violet looked at me with sadness in her blue eyes. “You have fun tonight,” she said quickly and, even more quickly, turned and left the room. I heard her pouring another drink for herself. And then I heard the theme music from Cheers.
It seemed ironic. A place where everybody would know my name…
And now I find myself on the L platform at Jarvis, just a block away from our little two-bedroom apartment on Fargo Avenue.
It’s unseasonably warm for April, and I wonder if the flannel was a mistake. I could always just take the shirt off and go bare-chested. I’m sure there were bars where I wouldn’t be out of place…
I’ll be fine.
The train squeals into the station and I board. I sit near the front and am glad the car’s half empty—or half full depending on whether I’m being optimistic. I settle in and stare out the window, watching the backs of brick apartment buildings go by, trying to catch a glimpse into the lives revealed by their lighted windows. There’s a guy in his kitchen, standing at a stove, wearing nothing but pink bikini briefs. A couple sits on a couch, their faces barely lit by the flickering blue illumination of a TV. A dog appears to be barking on the back porch landing of one of the buildings as we go by.
When we get to the station at Wilson, a young guy gets on. He has frizzy dark hair, a stubbly face, and odd, too-pale blue eyes. There’s something crazy about those eyes, which he immediately focuses on me.
I stare back out the window, trying to ignore him, but I can feel the laser intensity of his gaze. It actually makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.
I glance back at him, and he’s got a sort of half grin on his face. He looks dirty and disheveled, but there’s something about him that’s also weirdly sexy—in a dangerous way. Like, you know, in the way Ted Bundy was sexy. Like me, he’s wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, but his jeans are faded to almost white and ripped in several places. His shirt, a plaid pattern of cream, blue, and black, is wrinkled and looks like it should have been thrown in the wash a long time ago—or maybe even the rag bag. There’s a dark brown stain near the unraveling edge at the bottom of the shirt. I force myself to think this is not a blood stain.
Once he knows I’m looking, he intensifies his stare. I feel as though our gazes are locked. Even if I want to, I can’t look away. I think of the old Dracula movies I watched as a kid.
Why’s he looking at me, anyway? I’m just one of many commuters on the train.
And then I know. He licks his lips and lets a hand whisper across his crotch.
Oh my God, he’s cruising me. I know it intuitively. And no, kids, this is not me flattering myself. I didn’t ask for his attention, nor do I want it.
How does he even know I’m gay?
Or is he just playing the odds? It shouldn’t bother me. The guy is yet another weirdo stranger on the CTA, which hardly makes him unique, but I’m bothered that he sees something in me that must make him think his flirting, if you can call it that—it seems a lot more sinister—is welcome.
I get up and move to the rear of the train and then pass through the doors connecting the cars, which I know I’m not supposed to do.
Thankfully, he doesn’t follow. I stand, as he did, in the next car, waiting for the stop at Addison to come up.
It bugs me that maybe I’m not as hidden as I thought—that maybe I’m not as “straight acting and appearing” as they say in the ads at the back of the gay rags. Does the whole world know, from just a look, that I’m a big old ’mo? Am I simply deluding myself thinking it’s not as plain as the nose on my face—or the bulge in the crotch of my jeans?
Perhaps coming out won’t be as arduous a process as I feared. Maybe I’m, really, the last to know?
Why does it bug me, anyway? I’ve come to the point where I know I am gay, so why should it matter if someone can tell from looking at me? Is that so horrible?
Don’t answer that.
HOURS LATER, I find myself hugging the same bit of wall I started out with at the beginning of the night here at North End. I’ve had a couple of beers and watched people come and go. Why does everyone seem so comfortable? Why does it feel like I’m the only one who’s out of place? And, maybe most importantly, will I never shake this feeling of being an outsider, the one loner who doesn’t belong?
I glance around the bar once again. It’s a fairly good-sized joint, and all I see are smiling, laughing faces. Guys drinking. Guys playing pool. Guys flirting. They all seem as though they’re born to this lifestyle.
Strike that. In my head, Marshall reminds me, you do not have a lifestyle. You have a life. And what you make of that life is up to you.
What I feel like making of my life right now is to run and hide again in the security and safety of my home. I thought my wife and even my child were the only things that were holding me back.
But maybe they’re my sanctuary, my burrow that I scurry into.
Maybe, I’m finally catching on, the only thing holding me back is me. No one’s really stopping me from living the life I want, I need…hell…I was born to live. Not even a female wife.
“You should smile.” A voice reaches me, coming from my side.
I turn to look and there’s no one there…well, at least, until I direct my gaze downward a bit.
A guy in a wheelchair has rolled up next to me. He’s a good bit older, with a bald pate and salt-and-pepper, close-cropped hair around his temples. Unlike most of the guys in the bar, who favor the jeans and T-shirt uniforms, he’s wearing a pressed Oxford button-down shirt, khakis, and tassel loafers. He looks like he just stepped out of an LL Bean catalog.
Before I saw he was handicapped, I was about to snap something back at him along the lines of telling him to mind his own business, which was wrong, handicapped or not. But the fact that he’s different from everyone else in the bar makes me temper my grouchiness. And maybe that’s a good lesson to learn across the board.
“Why’s that?” I ask and give him a smile.
/> “Aw, see there.” He points to my face. “That’s why. You’ve got a beautiful smile! It lights up your face. Why hide it?” His voice is gravelly. “I’ve been watching you and, honestly, buddy, you look scared out of your wits.”
“I do?”
“Come on.” He rolls his eyes and then takes a sip from the short glass he holds in his left hand. Bourbon or Scotch swirl around in the glass, catching the light, going dark. “You don’t look dumb, although that’s no guarantee you’re not. I say that not to flatter you, but because I think you’re self-aware enough to know your frown telescopes your fear and discomfort at being here—in a bar filled with queers.” He giggles, which doesn’t match the sandpapery quality of his speaking voice.
“Queers?” I’m shocked.
“It’s what we are, right? All the cool kids have appropriated the term, rendering it, ostensibly, harmless. I don’t know about that, but I’m on board with the intention.”
I laugh and shake my head. “You’re funny.”
“But then looks aren’t everything, right?” He finishes his drink.
“No! No. That’s not what I meant at all.”
“Oh, don’t be oversensitive. You’ll have to work harder to offend me. And believe me, I’ve had my share of jokers who think they can insult me, but I’ve learned to just let it roll off my back and onto the motor of this contraption to which I’ve been unfortunately confined.” He shakes his empty glass at me. “Buy me a drink?”
I take his empty glass. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Stephen.” He then adds, “Hawking,” and cracks himself up.
“Am I going to regret this?” I hold up his empty glass. I already know I’ll buy him that drink, because this guy has succeeded in doing the impossible—he’s made me forget myself for a few minutes, and more importantly, he’s made me laugh. I didn’t think laughter was a possibility tonight.
“Probably. But while you have many so-called, able-bodied gents from which to choose this fine spring evening, none of them have my wit, charm, or intelligence.”