The Smiley Face Killer

by Leroy Clark

  They looked around. It was fun Slate thought to see all these people, hearing bits of conversations Two guys who obviously had AIDS were just sitting silently. Slate could see they were holding hands.

  At the next intermission, they went to the rest room and then came back to their seats and talked about the play.

  “That Roy Cohn is something, isn’t he?” Slate noted. “A real son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Yeah, “George replied. “I didn’t know all that stuff about him. I mean—that he was responsible for getting the Rosenberg’s executed.”

  “I didn’t either, or that stuff about the Reagan era.”

  “What did you think about his scene with the doctor?” George asked.

  “Pretty ruthless. Telling the doc he had cancer instead of AIDS and vowing to destroy him if he ever revealed it.”

  “Did you think he was right about homosexuals having no power?”

  “I think he was right for that time period, but not today.”

  “What do think of the Mormon guy?”

  “Well, I can identify with him. Married, in the closet, terrified of taking the first step.” Slate replied.

  George grinned. “Better late than never. Oh, lights are starting to dim. Here we go again.”

  When the play was over, the people in front of him stood up, applauding. Soon the whole audience was standing. Slate felt exhilarated. Somehow he felt like he had just received a new education. He had forgotten that Louis was really Aaron Biggs. Tears had welled up in his eyes at Louis’ agony. He had forgotten that Prior was Joe Moss. When Prior had stood naked while the nurse examined his lesions, Slate had felt great sympathy for this poor man with this awful disease.

  George leaned over, whispering in his ear, “Fantastic wasn’t it? Slate nodded. George talked about how amazing the set was with the turntables seeming to move by magic. They waited until the crowd had thinned out before moving.

  When they walked outside, the air was cool and the moon, almost full, was shining like a beacon.

  “Where are you parked?” George asked.

  Slate pointed to the lot across the street. “I’m over there.”

  “I’m way the hell down that way.” George pointed in the opposite direction toward the street that ran past the Koch Student Center.

  “Come with me and I’ll drive you down.” Slate offered.

  They joined the others heading for the parking lot and walked to his car slowly, enjoying the night air, the quiet, both filled with images from the play. Slate was surprised at how comfortable he felt not talking. The silence wasn’t awkward. He looked at George and smiled. George smiled back.

  He pulled out his keys and punched the car lock. The horn beeped its usual signal.

  “Nice car.”

  Slate had purchased the red Ford Taurus second hand shortly after his divorce. It was a year old but still in mint condition with only thirty-five thousand miles on it. He had purchased it for only five thousand dollars from his sister’s husband who worked for the Ford Company.

  They got in. George reached over and took his hand and squeezed it. “You wanna come over?”

  Slate grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Later as they lay in each other’s arms, Slate ran his fingers slowly around George’s muscular body. “I like being with you,” he said.

  “Me too,” George replied. His eyes were alert and bright as always, their blue looking at Slate as if he could read his thoughts.

  “My daughter’s going off to college in the fall,” Slate noted. “That is going to make a big change in my life.”

  “Does she know?”

  “No. Hell, I didn’t know myself.”

  “You mean I was your first? You certainly didn’t act like it.” George sat up.

  Slate laughed. “I was married for a long time.”

  “Yeah, but—“George paused a moment, trying to understand. “but you didn’t do what we did with your wife.”

  Slate explained about his uncle and the guilt and confusion he had felt as a teenager. George was sympathetic and told Slate his story.

  “Oh, I was always athletic, played a lot of baseball and basketball. I liked seeing guys naked in the locker room, but I just looked, never did anything. My cousin was the one who introduced me to the gay world. He and I lived just a few blocks from each other. I’d stay over at his house or he at mine. One night we got talking about sex. He showed me a magazine he’d found in somebody’s garbage. All these guys with big hard dicks. That was it. We started experimenting, and I knew right then.”

  “At least you had someone to talk to about it,” Slate acknowledged. “That’s the main difference. My generation grew up with no information, no models. No one was open.”

  “What do you mean, your generation?” George said. “You’re not that much older than me.”

  “Ten years,” Slate admitted.

  “Ten years is nothing,” George grinned. “Age is immaterial.”

  “I agree,” Slate said, “in terms of a relationship, but people your age have grown up in a different environment. Today there are gays on television and in movies. It’s not as hidden as it used to be. It’s not viewed in the same way. It’s not a dirty, dark secret.”

  George gave him a hug and kissed him. “I forget that,” he said.

  Slate finally started to get up. George urged him to stay the night, but Slate didn’t want Jeanne to worry about him. He got dressed and kissed George goodbye. As George walked him to the door, he picked up a key from the dresser and put it in Slate’s hand. “I want you to have this,” he said. “Now you can come anytime. You don’t need a special invitation.” Slate kissed him again, and drove home feeling warm and contented. He slept well and even though the time was short, he felt great when he woke up. “How wonderful to have romance in your life,” he thought to himself.

  CHAPTER 23

  SLATE ADMITS HE’S GAY

  At eight the next morning Slate unloaded to Dr. Channing for fifteen minutes about all the things bugging him. After being addressed formally about a half dozen times, the doctor finally interrupted Slate.

  “Look, call me Wally. I think we can be a little more informal, particularly if I’m calling you Slate.”

  “Okay—Wally.” Slate agreed with broad smile.

  “Let’s get some fresh coffee.” The coffee maker was on top of a small refrigerator next to his desk. Wally refilled his cup and moved out of the way so that Slate could refill his. “Well, okay. Between work, your relationship with the Chief, your mom’s disease and your dad’s strokes and everything else, jeez, it seems things have just gone to hell in a hand basket.” Wally ventured, standing behind him. “Maybe that’s the point. Maybe you should be careful about what you decide to take on your shoulders.”

  Slate knew he was in for a lecture, and he knew he deserved it. He just hoped to hell that it brought him some clarity. “I just wanted to get it all out.” He said as he poured the coffee into his cup, smelling the vanilla aroma.

  The doctor walked back to his chair and sat. “Still, I suggest that you take a moment next time you’re meeting with the Chief or your mom and step back from it all mentally, and ask yourself why these people feel so comfortable being miserable? Why are they working so hard to hold onto the lives they have, the reality that they’ve created when they all seem so unhappy with it.”

  Slate looked directly at him as he moved back to his chair. “They want it to be different,” he answered. “The Chief wants to appease the people he works for. He’s afraid if we don’t find this killer, he’s gonna get a black mark or get fired.”

  Slate sat down as Wally took a sip of his coffee.

  “So why do you get upset. It’s his problem.” Wally responded. “You said you were doing your best. The case is moving along.”

  “It just made me feel bad. It made me feel I wasn’t doing enough. I know the pressure he’s under.”

  “I truly believe that there is enjoyment to be had in
everything we experience,” Wally smiled and opened his arms, “but in order to enjoy it you have to stop judging it as good or bad and you have to release yourself from how you yourself perceive enjoyment.”

  “So I need to figure out what I enjoy about my job or why I enjoy it?” Slate wasn’t sure he understood.

  Wally pushed his glasses up and looked at him very directly. “Let’s face it, we are all ruled by fear. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of losing our job. Fear of not having enough money. Hey, it’s just paper, okay? And it has power because we’ve all agreed to give it power. Yet, it controls us because we are all so afraid of not having it. Stop being afraid; it’s just paper.”

  “In others words stop focusing on the negative. If I’m doing the best I can, why should I get up tight just because the Chief is?”

  “Exactly. You don’t have to take on his negativity. He is making his own choices. You can choose to worry and fret and beat yourself up or you can choose to let it go. You could choose instead to enjoy whatever task is at hand.”

  Slate wasn’t convinced he could choose his own agenda. “Sounds easy, but it’s not.” He said as he lifted the cup to his lips.

  “Ever think maybe we’ve worked our lives focused on the wrong idea?” Wally stood up and went to one of the watercolors hanging on the wall. He pointed to it. “That collecting things is a ruse? They’re just things. The only things really important are your experiences, and how you choose to perceive them. What’s more important? The experiences you’ve had with Jeanne and Beth or the stuff in your house.”

  “Jeanne and Beth.”

  “Of course.” Wally looked pleased that Slate was getting the message.

  “Now do you really think you’re doing a good job at work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You like the people you work with?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s more important? This case? Or your day in day out work with your partner and the others?”

  “Working with them.”

  “Good, good.” Wally took another sip of his coffee. “Now the ultimate fear is of growing older, being sick and dying. Yup. We don’t know what death is. We imagine illness to be the precursor though. So we fight tooth and nail and fill ourselves up with a bunch of science and drugs in an attempt to feel ‘normal’ again, to avoid feeling ill, and, thus, death. And what do we do with that hard-earned extra time of normality? Simply repeat the same patterns we repeated a zillion times before we got ill. We clean the garage. No offense to your mom intended, just offering a different point of view. And I’m not saying I wouldn’t have done the same thing.”

  Wally paused to take several gulps of his coffee. Slate nodded and enjoyed another sip of his own.

  “Ask yourself what it is you, I, your boss, your mother, and everyone else is so damned afraid of.” Wally went on. “Ask yourself why we so adamantly work so hard to hold onto patterns and perceptions that don’t seem to bring us much happiness in the first place. And then choose to look at it all differently. And yes, it is a choice, though no one seems to want to hear that, because that means taking responsibility for it all.”

  Slate was enjoying this. It was somehow exciting to get away from the everyday life and look at it from a new perspective. “Okay, so, there’s a killer out there and I’m having trouble finding him. Fine. I should enjoy it,” he chuckled at himself. “The chase is everything. It’s my job. It’s an experience, and I should make the most out of it.”

  “Otherwise, don’t bother. Quit. Go on unemployment. Eat peanut butter and jelly for the next four months and start selling off everything you own and spend your time at the beach. You made this reality, Slate; you can do with it whatever the hell you want. But you can’t keep some of it and do away with the parts of it you don’t like. It’s all connected. So, either find a way to make those things that you, right now, perceive as negative into something you enjoy, or accept that misery and hardship as part of the pattern that you find comforting and enjoy it for the comfort it creates for you.”

  “I don’t enjoy my mother’s illness.”

  Wally cut him off. “Of course not, but you don’t have to feel bad because she is. You can be sympathetic, but she’s the only one who can change her life.”

  “I worry about her.”

  Wally leaned forward. “Look, as for your mom and dad or the Chief, there’s nothing you can do that will fix or change anything for them. They perceive what they want to perceive and make choices based on that. You can offer your thoughts, but in the end it is their experience and you can’t alter that for them. You can only offer it for yourself. And it sounds to me like you owe yourself a little work on your own perception of it all. Take a good look. Everything that scares the hell out of you, confront.

  Do it. And enjoy what doing it offers instead of what it doesn’t offer. Stop clinging so firmly to a perception, a reality, a life you have created that is ruled by things, by fear, by a constant wish for more money or time or whatever.

  “I’m trying to do that.”

  “Figure out a way to enjoy what life offers you. All the things you mentioned, all the things that are filling you with stress, are perceptions. I know that sounds trite and like I have no sympathy, but that is not how I mean it at all. I understand where you are and what you’re feeling more than I like to admit. Believe me.”

  Wally got up and walked to the coffee maker. He poured himself a bit more coffee and held up the pot. “You want more?”

  “Sure.” He started to get up, but the doctor waved him back and brought the pot over. He poured the remains into Slate’s cup and returned the pot to its place, shutting off the appliance.

  Returning to his chair, he said, “But, at the risk of sounding really inappropriate, I’m going to use your mom, or what you mentioned about your mom, as an example. Here is someone who has been pretty much blind. She had surgery to remove the cataracts and improve her sight, and once she reclaimed it, she used it to clean the garage. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with wanting your sight back, or with cleaning the garage. I’m not saying that’s it’s not what most of us would do. I’m saying we choose the thing we feel most comfortable with, which is most often being miserable, not having ‘enough’ or doing the same thing we did yesterday and the day before.”

  Slate was silent, trying to absorb what the man was saying. He finished his coffee and sat back in the chair, watching, as the doctor became introspective himself.

  “And I don’t even slightly mean to suggest I live any differently than anyone else does.” Wally looked up and smiled at him. “I’m simply trying to suggest there is a different way to see it all. No one really wants to hear it and no one really wants to try it, but it does exist. And certainly changing the way you look at it all isn’t going to happen for any of us overnight. But, for what it’s worth, that’s my take on it all. It’s all our own doing, we brought all of these things into our lives and we have chosen what they mean or don’t mean, whether they are good or bad, happy or sad. I just know that the only person who has the ability to change them, to change how you perceive them and what you choose to do with them, is you.”

  “I understand that.”

  “You do.”

  “Yeah, I mean I know what you’re saying. I make my own choices. I can choose to be happy or whatever.”

  “Last week you said that you really weren’t like the image you’d created. You said you’d pretended to be rough and tough, but inside you really weren’t. What was that all about?”

  “I think it’s about being conscious of myself, more aware of what I’m really thinking and feeling. Growing up I felt like I had to be a certain kind of person because of my dad. And I did. I became the image I wanted.”

  “You made that choice.”

  “Right. Now I’m realizing it wasn’t necessarily a good choice.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because it was phony. You asked me last week what I was afraid of?” />
  “Yes.”

  “I was afraid of admitting the truth. I couldn’t say it.” Slate paused. “I’m gay.”

  “Good. Now you’ve said it.”

  “When I was fourteen, I was sexually molested by an uncle. I had gone with him and my two cousins, Bonnie and Doris, both about my age to a county fair. We stayed overnight, sleeping in a barn. My uncle was very generous, giving me one bottle of beer after another, which knocked me out. I was vaguely away in the middle of the night of my uncle fondling my dick and sucking it, but I was so drunk I wasn’t sure in the morning if it had been real or a dream. A week later he picked me up to spend the night at his house—supposedly because of my cousins. We were all going to high school together. I found out that night it wasn’t a dream. This went on for two years or so.

  “Sex with your uncle.”

  “Yeah. I had no one to talk to. I certainly couldn’t tell my mother or father. I even liked it—the sexual pleasure. That made me feel even more guilty. I just prayed that no one would ever find out.”

  “No one ever suspected?”

  “I think my cousins knew. I think my aunt knew too. They just chose to pretend it wasn’t happening.”

  “Why do you think they knew?”

  “Because of the excuses he made to get me to his house. Often he’d pick me up and drive to a deserted road and we’d do it in the car.”

  “You reciprocated?”

  “After a while, yeah, but I was really torn, feeling so guilty, ashamed. But when I saw the movie Rocky, I decided to work on my body so that I’d be strong enough to beat the shit out of anyone who touched me. That’s when I also got the scholarship to go to that private academy in Massachusetts. Away from my uncle.”

  “And you never told anyone?”

  “No. In high school, I never went on a date. I was afraid of girls. Afraid they’d learn my secret. That’s what my nightmares were about—all that shit with my uncle. I used to think about suicide a lot. My uncle committed suicide when I was in college.”

  “And that’s when you met Jodie—your wife.”

  “Right. I used to wonder if I had these feelings because of my uncle. Now I think he just recognized it. He somehow knew.”