Long Way Out, page 15
“Hmmm,” she murmured to herself, securing the strap of her valise on her shoulder and taking an intentional stride toward the elevator. She was about to pass the room from which Russell had just exited when its door abruptly reopened. Guy Gallo, still dripping from the shower, stepped out, gripping a bath towel that, due to his bulk, only partially draped his most private parts. For Mary Ann, who by now had picked up considerable forward momentum, the big man’s sudden appearance necessitated a spontaneous one-footed, sideways hop to circumvent this imposing, nearly naked, human road block.
“Excuse me,” she exclaimed. Guy, however, paid her as much attention as he would a fluttering moth — being, as he was, far more intent on surveying the entire length of the hallway, hoping to catch sight of last night’s now-vanished paramour. As the elevator door slid open, Mary Ann was having a private chortle over a fresh and quite delightful awareness: Russell Deacon — perfectly predictable, impossibly dull Russell Deacon — was evidently a lot more interesting and complex than she had previously assumed.
Meanwhile, the subject of Mary Ann’s private musing was entering Room 517 wearing nothing but his slightly damp swimming trunks and a dreamy grin born of post-sexual gratification. Upon seeing the blinking red message light on the bedside phone, his facial muscles automatically surrendered to gravity and his grin drooped into a grimace.
The previous evening, upon departing the room for the jacuzzi, Russell had made the conscious decision to leave his mobile phone behind — primarily to prevent the device from falling into the hot tub, but also to avoid having to answer an inconveniently timed call from home base. Although he’d traipsed down to the pool building still fixated on the idea of spending the night in bed with another man, he hadn’t any realistic expectation of this aspiration being immediately realized. That the bed in his ideal vision might be in the other party’s room hadn’t even occurred to him.
His Nokia 2110 was not the only thing Russell had expelled from his mind. Any thought about Tess and the boys had also been set aside. For 10 consecutive, blissful hours, an all-consuming, almost magical bonding with a cuddly insurance salesman from Illinois had temporarily shorted out all strands of connection to Russell’s real world in Tennessee. That flashing red light, however, was a signal that the real world hadn’t forgotten about him. He picked up his cell phone with a trembling hand, only to discover notifications for five voicemail messages left at various hours of the night, all from the 615 area code.
Every worst-case scenario Russell could imagine flashed through his head: Perhaps his father-in-law’s Parkinson’s had taken a negative turn; or, worse yet, the old man had suddenly succumbed to that degenerative malady; or, Tess’s mother had a stroke. Fuck! He shuttered at the specter of Rory having a bicycle accident or Hank getting pounded by school bullies. Whatever Tess was calling about, Russell was certain, must be serious. In the midst of these anxious speculations, his mind clicked into self-defense mode. Inventing a believable explanation for not answering the cell phone would be simple enough: dead battery, left it at a restaurant... any number of extemporaneous yarns would do the trick. Coming up with a credible reason why he hadn’t been in his room for the entire night would require a far more inventive song and dance, a routine he would have to compose and choreograph on the spot, with a sleep-deprived brain.
However, he didn’t have a single minute to collect his thoughts, let alone concoct an alibi. The bedside phone rang with such voluminous brashness that he nearly jumped out of his bathing suit... and his skin. Russell stood there, frozen in place. Finally, after three prolonged, ear-splitting rings, he reached down for the receiver. The hand set might as well have been a fifty-pound dumbbell as he hoisted it to his ear. On his first attempt at uttering a “Hello,” his voice failed. He fought the constriction in his chest to draw a deeper inhalation. “Hello,” he eked, “this is Russell Deacon.” Although he was relatively certain who was on the other end of the line, he thought answering in a business-like manner might throw her off.
“Russ?” he heard Tess exclaim. “Oh, my God, finally!”
“Hey,” Russell responded. His weak attempt at sounding affable and nonchalant was negated by gritted teeth. “Look, Babe, sorry...”
She interrupted. “You can apologize, or explain, or whatever later. I have some not-so-pleasant news.” In her frantic exhaustion, Tess’s voice sounded as froggy as Russell’s. “And, I thought you’d want to know.”
Russell sat down heavily on the edge of his still-made bed, dreading what he was about to hear. “Of course,” he replied, “what’s happening?”
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” she began, quite obviously starting to cry.
“Is it your dad?”
“No, Dad is good. Well, he’s not really good. But, you know what I mean. He’s the same. Which is not good. Anyway, nothing’s changed.” For a second, Russell breathed a little easier. Ever since his father-in-law’s diagnosis, he’d been fretting the inevitability of having to be the stouthearted, unflappable rock for a wife grieving the passing of her beloved, doting, but pompous and overbearing father. “David called,” Tess sputtered.
Russell’s heart re-accelerated. “David?” he queried. “Atlanta David?”
“Yes,” she said. Crying had now segued into sobbing. “Your friend and mine. David.” Ever since their ill-fated lunch, Russell had worried that David might out him to Tess. Like the iconoclastic Harvey Milk, David was an uncompromisingly proud and strident gay man, and not one to suffer fence sitters. The idea that any man would remain married to a woman while acting out in secret with anonymous partners was intolerable to him. That the unwary spouse in this particular dance of deception happened to be both friend and protégé made such duplicity even more objectionable. Add that posture to those years of needless guilt David had suffered, due to young Russell’s denial of his sexuality, and only one conclusion remained: Tess is distraught because David let the queer cat out of the bag.
Up until this moment, Russell had managed to postpone thinking seriously about coming out. When and if he should ever decide to leave the closet behind, he reasoned, it would be far enough into the future to give him more than adequate time to plan what he might say to control the narrative and ease the blow. Now, assuming he was reading the present situation correctly, he was left with two choices: either face the music and choke down a very jagged pill or make a last ditch attempt at tap dancing his way around it. “Look, Babe, I...” Russell stammered, “... can we talk about this later? David can be...”
“He has AIDS, Russ,” Tess blurted through her tears. “David is dying!”
The relief Russell felt upon hearing about an old friend’s fatal disease was natural and, at the same time, heartless. “Oh, God!” he exclaimed, faking concern, while singing a silent hallelujah. “That’s... fucking horrible!”
“He’s in the hospital; intensive care,” she elaborated. “I want to... I need to go see him.”
“Do you want me to come home early?” he offered. “I can see if I can change my reservation. It might cost a pretty penny, but...”
“How can you think about money at a time like this?” she sputtered. Serendipity had already stepped up, allowing Russell to have the exact experience he had come to Austin for. Now, his wife was handing him a perfect excuse to make an early exit. Not only would it free him from the tedium of a second convention day, catching a Saturday flight home might also serve to avoid a potentially awkward day-after encounter with the Chicago bear. But hearing the pain in his wife’s voice smothered those self-serving, self-interested thoughts under a wet blanket of self-recrimination. He had, after all, spent the previous night indulging in fleeting, sensual pleasure, in defiance of his marriage vows. Meanwhile, his life partner of 14 years, the mother of his two sons, had been pacing the floor, fretting over this dreadful news, unable to reach the one person in the world she believed was capable of sharing her distress. “It’s only a four-hour drive,” Tess reasoned aloud. “I can take the boys. Or, they could stay with friends. We’ll work it out.”
“Are you sure, Babe?” he responded, “because...”
“No. There’s no need for you to disrupt your trip. I mean, you must have been completely beat last night. You didn’t even hear the phone!”
“Well, yeah.” Russell felt like a fish that had been snagged, netted, and gasping for oxygen, only to be tossed back into the lake. Was she actually letting him off the hook without his having to scramble for a plausible explanation? “I guess I must’ve been dead to the world.” There was a lengthy pause, during which Russell experienced a myriad of conflicting emotions, none of which were particularly self-assuring. He had entered his room five minutes earlier buzzing with warm, bubbly elation. He’d only just discovered (or perhaps reaffirmed) a part of himself that, for all of 10 hours, felt real and right. With the ring of a phone, reality had barged onto the stage and slapped him across his dopey face, as Cher did to Nicolas Cage in the movie Moonstruck. Snap out of it, you fool, reality demanded. You thought your life was complicated and unwieldy before? I seriously doubt you’re at all ready for the rollercoaster ride you just bought a ticket for.
“Okay, well...” Tess’s voice sounded slightly less upset. “I just thought you should know about David.”
“That really sucks.” Russell felt like a dolt for stating the obvious. But his head had turned into a junk drawer. Better, more comforting words were tangled up in the clutter. “About David, I mean.” Just then, a semi-optimistic thought sparked in his head. “But, we shouldn’t lose all hope. They’ve got those pharmaceutical cocktails. They say Magic Johnson is doing really...”
“That’s how he lasted this long,” Tess interrupted, once again losing grip of her emotions. “David’s been taking AZT. For several years. But, once the cell count falls low enough...” She was unable to complete her sentence.
“I’m sorry, Babe,” he said, wishing he were there to take her in his arms and assure her that everything would be alright. “I didn’t know.”
“Well,” she snapped, “now you do.” These four words, so economically chosen, seemed intentionally targeted to strike Russell in the heart. Years of practice had honed Tess’s aim and made the timing of her ambush exact. This left Russell staggered by her arrow. But she didn’t stop there. She knew precisely when to twist the shaft. “And, that’s why I’ve been trying all fucking night long to reach you.” By now, Russell was feeling lower than a sunbathing snake. “I mean,” Tess continued, “the news may be horrible. But it’s even worse being left in the dark.” She paused ever so briefly before launching her final sortie. “You may not see it that way. But that’s how I’d feel about it if I were you.”
“Definitely.” That’s what Russell said. And, he was sincere when he said it. Tess, however, had no idea what that single word of agreement actually meant to the husband she had long trusted without a shred of doubt. He, after all, had been leaving her in the dark for some time, and doing so guided by a totally antithetical axiom: What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.
Russell was just beginning to wrestle with an internal predicament he couldn’t have anticipated. Until recently, closeting this private part of himself only served to enhance the anticipation and thrill of each impulsive quest for pleasure. He loved how his attraction to persons of the same sex felt so deliciously naughty. Getting away with being a bad boy provided nearly as much of a charge as the sensual enjoyment itself. Russell seldom found his private yearnings shameful. But, when he did, his shame was no more than a minor irritation, something he could shoo away with less effort than it would take to wave off a pesky fly. Refusing to be constrained by heteronormality, he preferred to think, made him special, exceptional, even superior, far more evolved than your straight average Joe. Too, Russell’s queer curiosity was the only piece of his life he could call his and his alone. It was the single aspect of his day-to-day existence that didn’t ask him to put his family, his job, or the Little League team first. Being selfish in the shadows was a gift he gave himself. If those forays into taboo territory constituted a crime, he rationalized, it was a victimless one. If he had been guilty of anything, it was the offence of dishonesty. But what human hasn’t resorted to fabrication under certain circumstances? And, when someone does engage in deception, it’s often to protect someone else from having to deal with an unsettling reality. In Russell’s mind, what he’d been dishonest about came with far greater benefits — not just for him, but for anyone who might be affected — than any damage his habitual prevarication could possibly cause.
Last night, however, had unveiled a new wrinkle. Being naked with Guy Gallo hadn’t felt the least bit naughty or bad or wrong. On the contrary, it felt completely right. So, what Russell had justified for so long as a harmless side interest, a pressure valve to let off steam, had now morphed into something that could no longer be so easily placed under the playful heading, “guilty pleasure.” It was beginning to dawn on Russell that the secret he’d kept so neatly tucked out of sight had always been loaded with different, far greater risks than he’d ever allowed himself to imagine. So, while common parlance blithely demands that a secret can and must be kept, the real truth was becoming clear: Russell’s secret had actually been keeping him. This cover up had never been about what he’d so frequently been driven to do. It was about the real reason he’d been driven to do those things. It was rooted in who he really was: a queer man who had yet to fully inhabit all of himself. This realization was both overwhelming and terrifying.
Russell’s dilemma comprised other complexities as well. Lines in the sand he’d deliberately drawn for his own protection — and for the safety and well-being of his wife — had now been obliterated. Feasting on sweet, succulent, forbidden fruit that, for years, Russell had purposefully placed beyond his reach, meant that he was no longer the master of his cravings. This clumsy puppy of a secret he’d always managed to keep crated, or at least on a short leash, was growing too big and muscular to be confined or restrained. Now, he had a snarling, feral creature on his hands, a beast he feared was becoming too powerful and too ferocious to control.
“I’ll let you know when I get to Atlanta,” Tess said.
“I hope so.” Russell’s utterance passed his lips in little more than a whisper.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“Never doubt it.” This, he said, more to bolster his own confidence than to reassure hers. “Hug the boys for me.”
“Sure, Babe. Will do.”
EIGHTEEN
As Russell squeezed himself down the aisle of the Douglas MD-11, every step seemed heavier than the one before. He was looking forward to retreating back into the familiar ecosphere of hearth and home. By contrast, the notion of reporting in to the office painted a less rosy picture. First, he would be called upon to address the staff in summary of his convention experience. That he’d avoided participation in 90% of the programmed agenda would make delivering such an account equivalent to writing a comprehensive book report based entirely on a hastily scanned CliffsNotes distillation of a tome he’d never opened. He was dreading another inevitability as well: suggestive winks, heavy-handed back slaps, and relentless cajoling from Ed and Mike. He pictured the Neanderthal duo conspiring a tag-team assault to badger “Rusty Boy” into revealing any and all juicy scuttlebutt from the Austin shebang.
After stowing his carry-on in the overhead compartment, Russell settled into his assigned window seat and proceeded to inflate his travel neck pillow. He was attempting to get the air pressure just right when a plus-sized woman wedged herself into the middle seat. It was uncomfortable enough to have her sweaty left arm and shoulder pushing against his right arm and shoulder. When she kicked off her shoes, Russell found himself struggling to breathe and beginning to feel queasy.
“Ma’am, do you mind if we trade seats?” The rotund woman with the stinky feet looked up to see Mary Ann hovering above. “I have an aisle seat over there,” Mary Ann informed her. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to sit next to my friend.” As his erstwhile seatmate gathered her things, Russell felt somewhat conflicted. Not being forced to sit beside this over-sized, exceedingly aromatic person for the duration of the flight was a definite positive. However, he wasn’t so sure that sitting next to Mary Ann would be worth the tradeoff. He’d been planning to catch some shuteye on the flight. Too, hearing Mary Ann referring to him as her friend triggered immediate suspicion.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Mary Ann said, clicking her seatbelt.
“Are you kidding?” Russell whispered. “I definitely owe you for that.”
“No, I mean, about the ‘friend’ thing,” she clarified.
“Well...” Russell was wondering where this conversation was going. “That was kinda strange, I guess.”
“How so?”
“Look...” Russell spoke haltingly. “How do I put this? You’re... kind of a tough nut to crack.”
Mary Ann wasn’t one to take offense or pussy foot. She got right down to brass tacks: “Right. But would you like to be friends? Or, at least, be more friendly?”
What is a person supposed to say in such a circumstance? While Russell wasn’t certain that Mary Ann was trustworthy, he couldn’t help but feel flattered. After years of being intimidated by this woman, she seemed to be suggesting a closer, less guarded relationship. He’d always found her fascinating; but only from a safe distance. Too, he hadn’t decided whether he actually liked her, let alone that he wanted her as a friend. Then again, Russell didn’t have many close friends. And, someone caring about him — other than his wife and his sons — couldn’t possibly be a bad thing. Or, could it? “That’s an interesting proposition.” Russell intended this answer to be diplomatic, not flirtatious.
