At the end of lunch, Lisette told me that Annie had started a restaurant and that it was doing well. Cheryl had gotten sick, but it wasn’t anything serious. Mama had pneumonia, and she would definitely make it through, but Lisette warned me to contact her soon. She gave me Annie’s information and my mother’s. Annie wasn’t mad, Lisette told me, just real upset and confused about what happened. When Lisette hugged me good-bye in the parking lot, I promised her I would get in touch with them again. I especially wanted to contact my mother, who they said had taken my death very hard. I asked about my father’s health and Lisette paused and said it hadn’t improved. However, nothing had changed about their addresses and phone numbers. That relieved me, because so much else had changed in their lives.
Even though I thought about getting in touch with Annie and my mother and people I had known, I couldn’t muster up the courage. Rehearsals ended too late, or it wasn’t the right time, or I would feel too exhausted to go through with it. I also needed to keep them from hearing anything about August Valentine and his homosexual lifestyle, especially my mother. That might make her get worse. I had done enough damage.
Every couple of days I would get a message from Lisette on my answering machine, urging me to contact my family, but I would delete it as soon as I heard her voice. Once or twice I picked up the phone when she called, and I promised her that I would call or write everybody, but I really wanted the whole problem to go away. At the time I wasn’t much happier as August Valentine, but I had gotten used to it. My personality had gotten stuck between August and Gary. The new Concerned Relatives show would go up soon, and I couldn’t drop out of that even if my family wanted me to come back and be Gary Gray again. Also, I couldn’t face them without mentioning my struggle with homosexuality. Especially not my father, who would probably disown me. That would mean I’d have to go back to being August Valentine anyway. I didn’t think it was worth the risk.
I had plenty of change happening in my own life, though. Miquel finally demanded that I move out-I think he’d started seeing someone-but there was little I could afford on a temp’s salary and uneven work schedule. Fortunately, around the same time, Rex decided that some of the Concerned Relatives should move into a live-work situation. He had rented a run-down Victorian house in Cabbagetown for that purpose. We fixed it up, sort of, and rehearsed in the large living room. Erica, Isla, Helene, and I would move in when we finished renovating. Spitz lived with her boyfriend not far away, in Decatur. Rex also convinced a friend, Kenny, to take one of the rooms and handle some technical issues for the company.
Miquel’s home had been so delightful to live in that I felt banished from Eden. I wished he would take me back just to live there with him, but he didn’t even wait for us to finish renovating before he kicked me out. I had to find a stopgap fast. Instead of the Patriot Inn, I checked in down the street at Colony Suites until the house in Cabbagetown was ready. Colony Suites cost a couple of dollars more, but there I could avoid the feeling of failure that covered the Patriot-particularly Marilyn. Or so I thought-Marilyn moonlighted at the Colony Suites, and she greeted me by slapping her rings against the Formica countertop and shouting a hearty “Welcome back!”
One night, a couple of weeks after I moved in with the group, I went alone to a gay bar within walking distance of Miquel’s house. I hung around, pretending not to hope that somebody would be interested in a sexual encounter, and pretending even harder that I didn’t want the possibility of love after that. Underneath it all, I also hoped that Miquel would show up. Soon the attractive guys paired up and went home together, and last call was announced.
A stocky man with no shirt walked over to the bar in a zigzag fashion and leaned against it next to me. He was covered in hair, except on his head, and had a confused expression. He peered at me.
“You look exactly like this dude I used to know—Kareem,” he said. “Is your name Kareem?” I told him Kareem was a nice name, but not mine. The man ordered six shots of Jagermeister and demanded that I drink three with him.
“Doing shots alone is pathetic, and I ain’t pathetic,” he said ill a friendly way, smacking me on the back.
I told him I didn’t drink alcohol much, but he became angry so I said, “Just this once,” and drank three tiny glasses of the burning licorice. I enjoyed that he was expressing an interest in me and imagined he might ask me to go home or to the park. The bar started to play the final song of the evening, which was always “Desperado” because the bar had a Western theme.
Before the song ended, the man stumbled off without saying goodbye. Miquel told me once that whenever he went home alone from a bar, he comforted himself by saying that at least he wouldn’t get an STD from anybody that night, but remembering that didn’t help my mood at all.
I stood around in the parking lot with a loose group of other lonely men exchanging glances with each other. I wasn’t good at going to gay bars. I imagined that they could be fun with friends, but I didn’t have gay friends-Concerned Relatives was me, four women, some straight guys during tech, and Rex-and I hadn’t gone out much when I was dating Miquel. I couldn’t get anybody to look my way, so I walked off toward Piedmont Park, where a lot of unlucky men went to improve their luck. Miquel’s apartment was on the way, so I stopped and stood across the street under the shadow of trees where he couldn’t see me. His windows were dark. Sometimes I waited in the area and ran into him accidentally on purpose. He never said much, or let on that he knew it wasn’t a coincidence.
I arrived in the section of the park where men touched each other, and pretty soon a short, confident man came over to me. He brushed his knuckles against my forearm to show his interest. I didn’t take his hand away; that meant I liked him, too. Then again, I hardly ever pushed anybody’s hand away unless they were real filthy or smelled too much like alcohol.
Once we had gotten friendly, I was relieved to hear him say that he lived nearby and we should go to his place. Maybe I would get to sleep in his house and get to know his life a little bit. Sometimes going home with men could be a game to see how much I could find out about their lives. If a man let me sleep over and then made coffee or breakfast the next morning it was like winning a contest, and I could pretend that I was having a relationship with him. That always pleased me, a lot of times even more than the sex.
The short man took my hand and led me out of the park. In a situation like this one, a guy didn’t normally hold your hand. My self-esteem started to rise from the depths, but it had a long way to go.
We reached the exit and walked east for a few blocks. The man had rectangular glasses, a large nose, and shiny black hair. His name was Armando but he said I should call him Manny. He had a stiff, bowlegged way of walking. After talking for a bit, he asked me what I liked. I understood by then what people meant by that question.
“I like whatever you like,” I said.
“Good,” he mumbled, with a naughty smile. “Because I like obedience.”
Right then I noticed that there was a car driving very slowly up the street behind us. I assumed it was somebody under the influence, trying to make his way home after a long night out.
When we reached the intersection of Tenth and Monroe, we had to pause to wait for a walk signal. I turned to see the car pulling diagonally into a bus stop behind us. It was a beat-up Celica, the same color as the one I had driven when I lived in Florida.
The man held my hand tightly even though the space between our palms had grown slippery with sweat. Behind us I heard the car door slam. A second later I heard a woman’s voice shout, “Gary! Gary!”
I turned to see my wife. I couldn’t see too well in the shadows, but it sure was her.
“Annie—” No words came to me. I couldn’t even panic. I had been dropped into the eye of a storm. The moment felt like something happening in somebody else’s life. My eyes danced around her and couldn’t land. No excuses were possible.
“Gary!” Annie shouted, her eyes glued to the hand-holding.
I tu
gged my fingers away from Manny’s and wiped them on my pant leg, maybe to make it look like I was disgusted by his touch.
“You told me your name was August,” Manny said.
“It’s a nickname,” I stammered.
Annie wept and pushed tears from her eyes with both hands. I went to her and tried to keep her calm but I couldn’t. She pushed me backward. “Gary! I thought you were dead! Everyone thought you were dead! Argh, I wish you were dead! I should kill you!”
“You know this lady,” Manny observed. I moved toward Annie again, like somebody about to throw a blanket over a stovetop fire.
“Annie,” I breathed in a soothing voice. “Please don’t be upset with me. I have a problem. A big problem. I went away so that I could fix it.”
I moved closer, and light from the streetlamp fell on me. She beat me hard with her fists. I tried to hug her to keep her from hitting, but she struggled too much. New streaks of prematurely gray hair fell down her shoulders, and her eyes had wrinkles around them and puffy bags underneath. I hoped my disappearing hadn’t caused all that. When hugging didn’t work, I took her wrists in my hands. She kept struggling, and I had a hard time holding her back.
“It was part of the Lord’s plan for me,” I explained.
“But you didn’t fix the problem! Are you going to fix the problem? Your daughter prays for a daddy every night. But you don’t care about that. You gave her up for the flesh! You’re going to burn for this!” Annie’s anger reached a new peak. She kicked at me and bit my hand. I let go of her wrists and she let me have it again, punching and slapping. I didn’t want to fight back, because I deserved everything. I thought about when my father used to hit me and I tried to disappear, but I couldn’t.
Manny, who had stepped aside to watch until she started hitting me, rushed around behind Annie, grabbed her arms, and yanked them down by her sides. For a person of small stature, he was strong, and he held her in position as she thrashed. The two of them were the same height. I noticed that she wore makeup now, and looked prettier and more feminine. What had caused the change? Maybe she had met and fallen in love with somebody else while she thought I was dead. It would make things easier for me if she had. Jealousy entered my mind all backward, like an ingrown toenail. I got jealous, but not the way a husband gets when he wants to keep his wife to himself. I was jealous of the guy she had fallen for, because he was probably a real man.
“Ma’am,” Manny breathed into her ear. “I understand that you’re upset. But either you two can have a conversation about this or you can get in the car and go back where you came from. What you’re doing to this man is assault. Believe me, I know. I am an officer of the law.”
Annie cackled bitterly. “You’re a cop?”
“I am an off-duty police officer, yes.”
“What are you doing in the park, Mr. Policeman?” she spat, looking him up and down in disbelief. “Do you know what this man did? Aren’t you going to arrest him? Do you know that I’m his wife?” She said “wife” like the sound could make him disappear.
“No, ma’am, he didn’t inform me of his past histories. It sounds like he actually gave me a false name. But I did figure out that you were involved at some point by your statement that you have a daughter together.”
“He and I just met tonight,” I blurted out, I guess because I hoped it would make Annie feel better to know that the connection was superficial. But I had begun to admire Armando for getting involved and helping me. I sucked at the bite mark on my hand.
“Now, ma’am, if you want to talk these issues out, you and your husband ought to do so when emotions are not running as high.” He pulled her toward the car. She didn’t resist as much.
The drama of the scene caught up with me, and I teared up. “Annie,” I said. “I always meant to come home. I just couldn’t do it until...” Annie glared at me from head to toe. I had never seen so much scorn in her expression before.
“... and I kept waiting, and it didn’t happen.”
She moved her head to indicate Manny. “Is this what you call waiting?”
“That was a cheap shot, ma’am,” Manny said. “Now please get into the car.” She struggled, but he held her with one hand and opened the driver’s side of the car with the other. She got in, and he closed the door. She rolled the window down. The anger in her somehow disappeared with the finalsounding thud of the car door. Manny stood guard in case she got upset again and leapt out of the vehicle.
“Gary, we’re going to get you some help, okay?” she said, calmer now.
“Okay,” I said. I would have told her anything just to end the unbearable, humiliating scene. “Do you know how to find me?”
“I’ve been following you for the last three days. I didn’t believe that you had fallen into this lifestyle until I saw you and him-” She shook her head. “I’m in touch with some people who can help.” Annie started to weep again, but the tears were no longer frustrated. She twisted the key in the ignition and put the car in gear. I cataloged the events of the last three days, trying to remember what she might have seen. “We’re coming to your house tomorrow morning,” she said. “We’re going to get you some help, okay?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Can I drive you home?” she asked, with a nervous glance at Manny, who retreated to the curbside a few yards closer to the intersection, just out of earshot.
“I can walk from here. Let’s take the time to calm down.”
“You’ll be okay?”
‘TIl be okay.”
Annie stroked my forearm gently and shook her head, gazing hopefully into my eyes. “Okay.” She rolled up the window and drove off, wiping her eyes.
The sound of the car faded, and soon the street filled with deserted calm. Manny and I didn’t speak for a couple of minutes. We watched the traffic lights change from red to green, even though no cars were waiting. Then he stepped out of the gutter and walked over to me.
“I only caught some of that,” he said. “What’s the story, August? Gary?” As I told him I wept openly, which I had never done in front of anybody I’d picked up. It made me feel close to him.
When I got to the end, he patted my shoulder in an older-brother way and breathed, “It’s okay, buddy.” A truck rumbled by, and when it had gone, the street felt especially silent. We said nothing for a long time.
“It’s okay if you want to go,” he said.
I felt lowed him a favor. “Do you still...?”
“The mood is definitely spoiled,” he said, leading me back to the walk signal. He took off his glasses and polished them with his the hem of his T-shirt, smiling that dirty smile again. “But give me a minute.” He filled his lungs with night air and stretched his wiry, muscled arms. No cars were coming, so he swaggered across the street like a bantam rooster. I followed obediently. As I crossed the double yellow line, DON’T WALK changed to WALK.
The next day started out hot and got hotter. By mid-morning, the heat under the duvet in Manny’s king-size sleigh bed was so bad that my own sweating woke me up, even with the AC on. I tossed back the covers. Manny had a lot of fluffy covers, so for a moment I had trouble finding him. When I did locate him, he was still asleep, his nose softly buzzing.
In the lemon-cake sunlight, Manny looked older. At night his hair had seemed black, and it disappointed me a little to find that it was mousebrown with a whole bunch of silver streaks. Also, I could see crew’s feet around his eyes and loose skin under his chin. But who was I to judge? I was fat. I reckoned that if he could like my fatness, I could learn to like his oldness if! got the chance. We could be like Jack Sprat and his wife. Or something. I peeled the covers off my body and looked around groggily.
The apartment was very clean and well decorated, like a showroom or a picture in a Sunday magazine. The bed matched the chairs and the couch. Everything was made of heavy, dark wood with cream-colored upholstery. For a delicious moment, I pretended that I was a rich white lady in a furniture commercial. Stretching my arms
out and groaning, I struck a fanciful pose. Usually I didn’t have fantasies like that, or I would scold myself if they happened, but that morning I gave myself a break. It was that pretty a day. Manny heard me groan and turned over, fully awake.
“You want some coffee? Breakfast?”
Manny made us omelets with ham and cheese, toasted a pair of croissants, and brewed some very strong Latin American coffee that he mixed with hot milk. We sat in his breakfast nook, looking out over a grove of pine trees, and I apologized for the scene in the street the night before. Without prying too much, he asked interested questions about Annie and my two lives. I found him real sympathetic to my problems and a good listener. After breakfast I told him that I needed to get myself home. Rex had scheduled a Concerned Relatives rehearsal at 1 p.m., but I didn’t mention that. Manny offered to give me a ride home, and at first I said no because people had a bad impression of Cabbagetown, but by that time it was 12:20 and I wouldn’t get there on time if! took public transportation, so I accepted his offer. Before we left, he wrote his number down on a piece of stationery and handed it to me.
“It doesn’t have to be for a date, it could be just if you need to talk,” he told me. I thanked him, folding the paper up and sticking it in my back pocket. I tried to imagine having a relationship with Manny, but it seemed impossible because of the way I had met him. I thought how strange it was that you could meet really nice people in shameful situations like public-park sex. Also, after Miquel, I didn’t want to have another man-man relationship. The Lord hadn’t turned me straight, but I still held out hope that I could be normal. I was like Pinocchio, a wooden marionette always begging to become a real boy.
We left the apartment and the heat nearly choked us. You could see wavy lines coming up from the pavement. Manny turned the radio to nightclub music and blasted the air conditioning in the car. We drove across town and he dropped me off without commenting on the abandoned houses, stray dogs, and vacant lots covered with graffiti all over my neighborhood. I thanked him again and told him I would call, although I didn’t know how much I meant it.
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