by Josh Thomas
It reminded him of Reagan, Gay men and AIDS: do nothing, let the bastards die. Jamie came out to himself at 12 in the face of it; then 20 Mule Team Borax-for-Brains finally mentioned the disease of the century six years after it was discovered. Ronald Reagan determined Jamie’s politics and his sex life; genocide has a way of doing that.
He was a Midwestern boy; so he took on the task of helping to secure Gay rights as a personal responsibility. His mother went right ahead and voted for Reagan anyway. She disapproved of Gay people. It took him over a decade to argue her to the point of tolerance—and argue he did. Why do I have to fight my own family?
Her illness raised so many feelings in him; love, of course, and fear; but also the confusion of trying to understand a mother who was both essential to his life and maddening. He utterly respected her as a professional; she used her brain to climb from poverty to affluence. He benefitted from extra opportunities because of her; every year he had new shoes. He completely admired her judgment and values, about everything but sex, and tried to conform his life to them. But she also exposed him and his brothers to a violent, criminal father. He’d never forgive her for that; or he would, if only she’d apologize, explain herself.
He loved his mother like the Best Little Boy in the World; she was a victim too, who couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge the wrongdoing, much less apologize.
But mostly he worried; Thelma looked like shit.
He took a sip of Jack-and-water. His head vibrated at the taste of poison. Gray cells thudded between his ears.
He reached for her half-used package of Light Menthol 100s, extracted a cigarette and frowned. I don’t smoke. It’s not me, it’s the antithesis of me. Then people around me get sick, die even, and all of a sudden smoking is me.
A half-full ashtray, orange plastic from 1975, was stained black at its molded ridges. What do ashtrays cost, Mom, a dollar? He yawned, stretched, decided not to switch up the sound on the sports segment. The NBA was headed into a lockout, and he was half-glad; he loved the college game. Baseball was only now recovering from its last strike; Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were staging a home run derby and the Yankees were on a tear. Maybe he’d take an interest in baseball again.
He took another pull on sour mash. Cold liquid drained into his belly. Where should he sleep?
He didn’t want the $150 sofabed where he’d slept the last few nights. All those pillows to remove, a three-inch mattress to sling out; no. He tried his drink again, stubbed out the smoke. Promised himself he wouldn’t start drugging because Thelma was sick.
Then reminded himself that was exactly what he’d done when Rick died.
Jamie would sleep in her bed. It was the only place with both a phone and a clock. If something happened…
He stripped off his shirt, caught a glance of his chest in the mirror. As long as his abs stayed cut, he’d be all right. He decided to buy a two-week gym membership here.
Body thoughts led idly to sexual ones. He wondered what was wrong with him Sunday night, when he found himself wanting to fuck a hole—a man’s, a woman’s, it didn’t matter; all he visualized was the hole. His cock wanted to follow its instinct and just fuck something.
That too was unlike him. He found out that he was as capable of tricking as anyone else. Maybe it was the twin pressures of Rick and his Mom. His ideals hadn’t changed; he wanted monogamy, intimacy, mutual love, a sexual relationship with a lifelong best friend. He didn’t base his life on a “heterosexual model”; he simply believed in commitment. He was proud that Rick was his only lover.
Now with Rick gone and Thelma sick, at a time Jamie most needed human contact, where would he find it, with whom, why? Because his cock wanted to fuck? Not good enough. Vaseline would satisfy his cock. It wouldn’t satisfy his heart.
He didn’t want a man who loved his looks. He wanted a man who knew and loved his heart. His brain, his work, his values; his heart.
Anything else was a cheap thrill. Rick’s face was pock-marked, his body went soft after he left the Marines, and then it started getting chopped up. But inside, Rick was as beautiful as ever. Then to share sexual ecstasy, short-lived though it was, was the deepest joy imaginable.
All Jamie could hope was to find it again one day, if he could meet a man who saw beyond his body.
He got undressed and pulled aside the yellow quilt, which was cheerier than Florence Henderson, sat on rumpled Sears sheets and swung his legs up. He sank his weight onto his mother’s bed and pulled Florence on top of him. Why not, she was a Hoosier too.
In bed, before sleep, his sadness and fear took center stage. God, if that phone rings, you are not a god at all. Just like when Rick got sick and you didn’t care.
He crossed himself anyway, let the mattress support his back, and slept. ***
When he woke three hours later, he hadn’t moved an inch.
The clock read 6:04 a.m. It was getting light outside. He rubbed his eyes and forehead. Sleep or get up? He couldn’t decide. Peggy got off her 12-hour shift in ICU at 4 a.m. The relief nurse hadn’t felt a need to call him. He fought off the impulse to make sure. What’s more banal than a family member needing absolution?
He snoozed till 6:16. Too early to get up and too late to switch off his thoughts.
He remembered a deep-breathing technique his therapist had taught him years ago in New York, in a session which revealed that every emotion he’d ever repressed was stored in his body. All his fears in all the years of Thelma and Ronald; all the lonely pain of being called faggot and queer in grade school, because he minded the teachers and didn’t pick fights—all the men and women who wanted him, whom he didn’t want—came flooding back as he lay on an apartment floor on Central Park West, a dictionary on his abs, exhaling.
But abdominal breathing, using all his lung capacity and expelling the “dirty air” completely, had taught him how to sleep when he couldn’t. He set the alarm for 10 a.m. He’d be up in plenty of time for the start of ICU visiting hours at noon, if the hospital didn’t call.
He was a total wreck and he knew it; but he breathed.
6
Agate
Jamie gathered newspapers under his arm and drove his own car to the hospital. He made his way to the entrance, passing under shirtless hard-hats in September heat. A young brunet working on the roof was hunky, but the others were lip-curlers.
Outside the doors a knot of smokers gathered. “So I says to Alice, I says to her, Listen, if you’d gotten him looked at before this, you would-n’t be in this fix.” She was a thin-lipped White woman, prematurely aging in faded jeans, a NASCAR shirt and Marlboro Lights. Jamie strode past her trying not to feel superior.
Then feeling superior, what the hell.
He moved past the volunteer shop with its guilt-free, wilt-now flowers, to the elevators. He followed signage to double doors, behind which his mother lay incarcerated. He stopped at the nurses’ station, gave his mother’s name and his own. “How is she?”
“It’s been a tough night,” a nurse named Terry said. “We’re trying to stabilize her blood pressure. But she’s a fighter.”
They’re all fighters till they’re dead. He entered Room 10. There was Thelma, beautiful and wasted, with tubes in places he didn’t want to look. She was asleep.
A nurse named Sandra, hair tied up in a Mennonite bun, punched up numbers on Thelma’s monitor. Satisfied with her readings, she moved past Jamie without so much as a nod. He could have been a used catheter.
He found Thelma’s inert right hand, the one with the red light taped to it. He stroked her hand, knowing it wouldn’t do any good or any harm. She still looked devastated, but maybe her color was a bit better; or maybe that was merely what he told himself.
Today there was a big visitor’s chair for him, and after a minute he sat down and picked up the local paper. Besides Yugoslavia, the front page focused on the prospects for this year’s corn harvest; the weather was cooperating so far. The local section had a big spread about a gazebo
in Columbian Park, and he devoured every smalltown word.
Then he spotted something in the agate.
Body Recovered in Slough
MOROCCO—A conservation officer discovered the partially-clad body of an unidentified white male in woods near a lake in the Willow Slough Fish and Game Area yesterday afternoon, state police said.
The victim, wearing only white socks and athletic shoes, appeared to have been strangled, police said, but final cause of death is pending until an autopsy can be performed. No identification was found at the scene. Police estimated that the victim had been dead up to two weeks.
The victim was between 25 and 35 years old, according to State Police Sgt. Kent Kessler of the West Lafayette post, the detective in charge of the investigation. No other details were available.
Chills started at the crown of his head, ran down to his toes and didn’t let go for ten full seconds.
He made a fist, looked away. A man’s murdered and he’s only worth the fine print?
He searched the local section of the Indianapolis paper, but the Sun didn’t have a report. He watched his mother’s monitor for a second, then gazed out the window at nothing. A quick phone call, when Mom no longer needs anything, might be all it takes.
“Whatcha doing over there?” his mother croaked.
Jamie jumped up, put on his game face and strode over to lean across the bedrail. “Just wondering how much beauty sleep you need today, lady,” he grinned.
She coughed, blinked, tried to clear her throat. “A lot,” she murmured. But her eyes worked at smiling too.
He stayed with her for an hour, during which she fell asleep twice and asked him to mow the lawn three times. At 1 p.m. he drove back to West Lafayette, opened the garage door and pulled out the mower. It was heavy, and he had to figure out how to reattach the grass-catcher, which was full from the last time Arnie mowed.
Shapes had always puzzled Jamie; he was wired for words, not objects. He finally got the grass-catcher to hang behind the mower. He was starting to work up a sweat and he hadn’t even got the mower out of the garage yet.
He went into the house, pulled off his shirt and changed into gym trunks. There was no helping his white cross-trainers; they were the only shoes he’d brought besides boots and dress shoes, and they’d just have to get grass-stained.
He had a leftover tan from Amsterdam, where he covered and played in the Gay Games with thousands of athletes, exactly his idea of a good time. He carried the banner for Team Columbus in the opening ceremonies, then spent two weeks stripped down to serious, sexy trunks, showing off his buff body for all it was worth. He’d never forget the spirit of the Games, an atmosphere of support and respect and celebration. He had a blast in Amsterdam, his first fun since Rick died.
He found sunblock. But mowing was a bear. The grass catcher filled up every five minutes, the mower weighed a ton, and the drainage ditch in the front yard was impossible. The job took him two hours, and Thelma had a little yard. By the time he was done he knew he would drive to the Slough.
***
The local TV news barely mentioned the murder and had no additional details. After Dan Rather, Jamie headed back to the hospital. His Mom was awake when he walked in; that was a first. “How’s the grass?” Thelma asked.
“Chopped to smithereens,” he said with mock exasperation. “Manicured within an inch of its life. Worthy of Augusta National, though you’d never let the public tramp through your estate. Yet they may look through the palace fence with the other commoners, once or twice a year, noblesse oblige.” She smiled, waited for him to finish. “As for me, I’ve got a sunburned nose. How are you?”
“I’ve got burns too,” she replied, touching her belly where the grapefruit had grown.
“It took me two hours. That mower’s heavy.”
“That’s twice as long as it takes Arnie. The mower’s self-propelled, you just hold down the lever.”
“How was I to know? Do you think you might have mentioned it?”
She said meekly, “Sorry.”
Oh,how cute she was when she was guilty.“Lord,she sends a Gay guy out to wrestle a machine and fails to give him the most basic instruction. Mom, the gene that makes me Gay prevents me from being mechanical, it’s some kind of on-off switch in the brain!”
She laughed, “Thank you for getting it done.”
He held her hand, kissed her forehead; it felt like sandpaper. Something in the drugs she was on had completely dried out the skin on her face. If he couldn’t do anything for the pain in her abdomen, at least he could help her moisturize. In a cupboard he found a bottle of cream. “Time for your facial, dear,” he chirped, squeezing white, cool liquid onto his palm, warming it, then using two fingers to apply the lotion to her forehead in gentle, circular strokes.
She closed her eyes. “Ooh,” she breathed. “That feels good.”
Jamie saw a picture of Lettie, Rick’s mom, after her last surgery. She rallied, got off the ventilator, tasted water. Even sick, her eyes twinkled at the boys. “Water. That’s the best stuff!”
Jamie still had that plastic tumbler with her name and room number taped to it. His mind’s eye could see it on his bookshelves in Columbus. He and Rick buried her a few days later, with most of the responsibility on Jamie. Rick never could think during a crisis. Usually Rick was rock solid; in an emergency he turned into a jumble of nerves.
With more lotion, Jamie traced figure-eights on Thelma’s cheekbones. Her breath seemed to come a little deeper. He smoothed and rubbed from cheekbones to jawbones and back again. Even her earlobes had dried out, but the rest of the ear seemed all right. Then back to the cheeks, first one and then the other. Her chin needed some special attention, then gently down the neck. The dry area seemed to end under her shoulder blades, at the top of her chest, a good stopping place.
When he was done she opened her eyes again. She didn’t say anything, she just looked at her son. Jamie acted as if it was all in a day’s work. But inside, he smiled.
On his way home he paused in the twilight, remembered the construction worker from that afternoon. Neither of his Straight brothers would have thought to notice Thelma’s skin.
First thing the next morning he phoned the state police and made an appointment with Sgt. Kent Kessler.
7
Hyoid
The state police post was on River Road, next to the interstate. “Hello, my name is Jamie Foster,” he smiled at the young woman behind the Plexiglass shield. “I have an appointment with Sergeant Kessler.”
“Just a moment. Please have a seat,” Trooper J. Campbell said. She was pretty and, like all women cops, very authoritative.
Jamie thanked God for his mother, a clinical pharmacist who had also entered a “man’s profession” and helped make it everyone’s. Though he seldom sat in waiting rooms, he sat down immediately at police stations so cops could keep an eye on him.
A door on the left opened, a tall officer leaned through and said, “Mr. Foster?”
“Yes,” Jamie said, getting to his feet right away.
“I’m Sergeant Kessler,” the officer said, stepping into the waiting room and extending a greeting. They crushed each other’s hands. “Please come in. Down this hallway to conference room 1, second door on your right.” Jamie entered interrogation room 1. “I’ll get my file.”
The room was equipped with a round oak table, four vinyl-padded chairs. In the corner a video camera was hung from the ceiling; on end tables sat soft-lit lamps, houseplants, a small audio recorder. A wall held an observation mirror. Cement block walls, painted light blue, were decorated with safety posters and a scene of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Fish swam in an aquarium. For an interrogation room it was cozy; the browbeating probably took place in interrogation room 2. Jamie sat.
Kessler walked in, all business in his uniform of navy blue shirt, light blue tie, gray trousers with side stripes, black shoes, Glock 9 millimeter on his left hip. Twin brass pins on his collar denoted a se
rgeant’s stripes. There was nothing subtle about the uniform; the tie conveyed professionalism and the rest was naked power. “This is about the John Doe in Newton County,” Jamie began. He looked up and it hit him like a neutron bomb.
His sweat popped out.
“Right. Now who is it you work for again?”
Sergeant Kent Kessler was stunningly handsome.
Jamie’s abs flexed, he felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. It was painful, disorienting. He hadn’t quite looked at the man before, just the uniform.
But he was trained to keep control in a stressful situation; to perform. This was no way to begin an interview. So he breathed deeply to relax, then said firmly, “The Ohio Gay Times. Chief correspondent.” He wanted to see the cop react to the word Gay.
The cop looked neutral. “Does that make you Gay too?”
“They tried to hire George Will, but his wife didn’t want to move to Columbus.”
Kessler smiled, asked smoothly, “So what brings you to our neck of the woods?” His black hair was wavy and well-cut.
“I work in Ohio, but we circulate in Indiana and I’m originally from West Lafayette. My mother’s in the hospital and I’m here to help out. Meanwhile this John Doe in Willow Slough sounds like it could be a Gay-related murder. Is it?”
“Could be, maybe not. I’m trying to get an ID first. I asked him about his sexual practices, but he just couldn’t say.”
“Stiffs aren’t too good with answers. Questions, those they’re good at.”
“Tell me. What makes you think it’s Gay-related?”
“The nudity.”
Kessler frowned. “It’s possible.”
“Four years ago I broke a story about a serial killer dumping bodies of young men from Indianapolis in Ohio and Indiana. A dozen of them. This sounds similar, if the Union-Gazette reported it accurately. Why do you have the case? It’s Rensselaer’s territory.”