With his help, maybe I can pull myself out of this mess.
Chapter 5.
“Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of our hearts. Secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.”
— James Joyce
~~~
The Captain of the Airbus, announcing our imminent arrival in Las Vegas, pulls me out of my memories. Rehab and Alcoholics Anonymous, along with ongoing counseling, has worked. I’ve been stone cold sober for over three months. I know my weakness. I’ll never drink a drop of alcohol again.
My plane lands and the pretty, blonde stewardess meets my eyes.
“Thank you, for everything,” she says, and her lips curve up in a smile, as she nods her good bye. I’m shocked when she extends her hand.
I take it. It’s small, soft and dry. My palm heats with electric pleasure from the kindness of a woman’s touch. There’s an emptiness inside, I can’t escape—yet with her willing handshake, for that one moment, my whole world brightens.
Wow. I want to grin, but I only give her a half smile back—one that doesn’t pull on my scars and make me look even more frightening.
I’m surprised by an intense bubble of joy that floods through me. A moment of true connection with another human being.
So rare. So vital.
I sigh with satisfaction as I depart the aircraft. Warm feelings of happiness stay with me during the entire taxi ride to my hotel.
I check in without incident. The reception staff are professional and accommodating, their faces composed. The usual shock, horror and pity registers in their eyes, but at least they’re able to meet my gaze.
I long for just one person to treat me like a regular guy.
I’m beginning to think this is an unreasonable expectation.
At least when I’m with my counselor, I’m able to forget about my scars. They don’t bother him in the least.
~~~
The next day, André Chevalier picks me up from my hotel in his cherry-red Ferrari 275 GTB. It’s a classic, built in 1966. What a sweet ride.
He offers to let me drive, but I’m not up to handling a high-performance car. My nerves are shot. Just now, I can't take that kind of responsibility—if I did, I think my head might explode.
André phoned me last night and told me to take a sleeping pill and to eat a hearty breakfast.
I can read between the lines. My counselor’s admonishment to, “Eat and sleep very well,” can be translated to “We’re going to have a difficult session tomorrow, so prepare yourself.”
We drive around a scenic area of Red Rock Canyon National Park and Lake Mead. In my opinion, spring is the best time of the year to visit Vegas. In April, you can expect warm days and mild, clear nights.
Today’s an exception. The morning news stated it would be uncommonly hot today, possibly reaching 90 degrees.
The cloudless blue sky is a pretty contrast to the red and brown cliffs. I’m sweating but the car windows are open, so the rush of air dries any moisture from my button-down cotton shirt and khaki shorts. With good roads and fantastic scenery, the drive alone is worth the price of admission. Except for unseasonal heat, the weather’s perfect.
André’s trying to chill me out before our session.
It isn’t going to work.
We stop to hike off the beaten path in the Rainbow Mountain Wilderness. It’s marked as an easy walk. We get out of the car, and André slips on the backpack. Too distracted to offer to carry it, I let him.
I don’t know if they have boy scouts in France, but if they do, André was one. I’m sure everything from water to first aid kits and probably even a satellite phone is tucked away in there.
It’s a dry heat, but I feel a cooling sheen of sweat on my skin as we begin our stroll in companionable silence. Juniper and pine trees are dotted along the well-used path. It’s a trail which can be done in a loop so we get to see different scenery all the way.
Eventually, we stop to drink water. We sit in the shade on a log where there’s a nice view of Lovell Canyon. The desert has a dry beauty, with towering red sandstone cliffs. Surrounded by cactus trees, sage bush and the occasional chattering squirrel, we could be the only people in the world.
It’s certainly private.
A good place to share secrets, I fear.
André has the car keys. I suspect he’s not driving me out of here until I spit out the bones of some skeletons. I force myself to appear composed on the outside.
Inside I’m squirming.
“My friend,” he says, slanting me a look. “You have come to visit me on many, oh-so many occasions. We have discussed much, oui?”
“Sure”
“And so, do you not think it is time that you speak to me of what you really wish to discuss?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
I sigh heavily. “It’s difficult.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Oui, eh bien.” He throws his hands into the air. “You embrace this secret so tightly. As if it is the greatest of lovers, you keep it close. You protect it.”
“No.”
His gaze on mine, he bends toward me. “Oui, oui, it is true! You think you hold this secret, but je suis désolé, I am most sorry. This secret, it is a tyranny of the soul, for it holds you, n'est-ce pas?”
I run my hand through my hair. The tips of my fingers catch on the thickened skin of my facial scars. I know that I’d planned to talk about my concerns eventually, but how the hell do I start?
“My friend,” he asks in a low, quiet voice. “Have you murdered someone who should not have been killed?”
Shit.
I school my face to remain composed, but my heart skips a few beats and then jumps into overdrive.
Murderer.
My mind’s in a whirl. Shit! Shit! Shit! How did he figure this out? He has no idea how on target his question is. Except this isn’t what I want to discuss with him. This is another secret I’m hiding.
One I plan to take to my grave.
Arms crossed, eyes narrowed, he studies me with his penetrating gaze. Suddenly, he uncrosses his arms and bursts into unexpected laughter.
“What?” I say, irritated. I sure as hell can’t see what’s funny.
André shrugs his shoulders, in that uniquely French way of his. “Mon ami, when I have a client who is unwilling to speak to me of his or her transgressions, I use what I have christened, “The Murder Technique.” It is when I ask them if they have killed someone.”
“OK.”
“And always, when I ask this, my client will reply, “But no! I only stole from them!” Or they will speak of some lesser crime, like destroying another’s valuable possessions for revenge, or sleeping with another man’s wife, comprenez-vous?”
Despite the excruciatingly awkward circumstance, I feel an amused smirk begin to twitch my lips.
Grinning, André nods. “Just so. For the first time, I ask this question and you have murdered someone. But… it is during war, in the service of your country, I think?”
My jaw tightens. It wasn’t during war, but I say nothing. I’ll never tell.
“Do you wish to speak of this?”
“No.”
“Bon.” He nods once more. “Very well then, for this is not to our purpose. For months, you have chosen to remain silent.” He throws one elegant hand up in the air. “It is enough! Let there be truth between us now. This shame has held you for far too long.”
Our eyes meet and I say nothing.
I’m not sure I can.
“Courage, my friend. You have always intended to tell me of this great secret of yours.” André stands up and turns in a circle. “Here—” he gestures to the wide-open country before us—“here and now is the perfect moment to do it.”
I shift restlessly as the log I’m sitting on is suddenly uncomfortable. Even in the shade, the sun is searing and relentless—yet this heat I’m feel
ing comes from inside. I suppress the impulse to get up.
To move.
To run.
I stare off into the sky. A bird of prey, a lone hawk or perhaps an eagle is circling overhead. I wish I could fly away with him.
After licking dry lips, I finally draw in a deep breath and tell André what’s bothering me.
“I think I may be gay.”
“Oh?” He sits down beside me once more and asks with mild interest. “And why should you think this?”
I inhale a deep breath and open my mouth to speak, but something stops me. It’s as if a gate has fallen down, trapping my tongue. Like some sort of physical and mental roadblock, I can’t get around it.
André seems aware of my problem. He tranquilly asks, “Do you wish to have sex with a man?”
“No!”
He raises one eyebrow in query. “And the thought of two men pleasuring each other?”
I hesitate for a fraction of a second but say, “A turn off.”
He tilts his head and studies me—observant bastard that he is.
The idea of having sex with a man is easy—that’s a vehement no. But an unwanted urge to see naked men? Not so much.
I shake my head. “I wouldn’t go looking for it, but if I saw it while flicking through channels on late night TV, you know, something with one man nailing another… I’d probably watch.”
And I’d get a hard-on, dammit, but I can’t tell him that.
“Bon,” he replies briefly. My answer doesn’t faze him. “Tell me now; when you were a child of perhaps nine or ten, name a movie you particularly recall enjoying.”
The change of topic is confusing, but I’ve learned to trust André’s unexpected subject deviations. No matter what it seems like, or how casual, irreverent, cheerful or lighthearted he appears, André’s always going somewhere when he talks to me.
I frown. “What, like Titanic?”
His approving smile relieves me. I feel like I’ve just gotten a gold star from my favorite teacher. My younger, yet more emotionally experienced teacher.
“Oui, oui, very good,” he says enthusiastically, gesturing with his hands. “Now tell me, which actor or actress held your attention? Was it the most attractive hero or the very beautiful heroine?”
“Oh, the heroine for sure. Kate Winslet was seriously hot in that movie.”
André shoots me a quick smile—the kind of smile one man gives another when they both are thinking of a beautiful woman and hot sex.
“Très bon, I most heartily agree. Mon ami, I do not believe you prefer men. There is a reason, I think. Tell me, if you please, why do you have this concern?”
“I… I was close to my buddies overseas.” I bite my lip, stare at my hiking boots and get lost in the problem. I don’t know how much time goes by. It’s just so difficult to discuss this shameful, relentless defect of mine.
A subtle clearing of André’s throat brings me back to the issue.
Our eyes meet. “It’s hard to explain,” I say. “I found myself looking at my buddy’s dicks whenever we took a piss.” Embarrassed, I avert my gaze. “Dammit, I wanted to—but I didn’t want to—but I had to—but I couldn’t, I shouldn’t—on and on! It’s like the movie Groundhog Day. My mind and body do the same thing over and over. I’m caught in a never-ending loop of indecision. I can’t stop it.”
I turn toward him, to see how he’s taking this socially unacceptable problem of mine. André nods his understanding, and his expression is still one of polite interest. He hears me, he gets it—but he doesn’t think I’m a freak.
To André, I’ve never been a monster.
I wish I felt the same.
“You know,” I say, forcing myself to meet his eyes, “in the Army, men piss in the desert or in a urinal with other men every day and my gut roiled every damn time. The uh… closeness of those circumstances made me nuts. There’s something seriously wrong with me.”
“Ah,” André says. “I understand. Grant, pardon, for I must disagree. Me? I do not think there is anything wrong with you. Mais no! It is my opinion there is oh, so much that is right with you.”
His words make me feel better, but I only give him a faint smile. What was once deliberate is almost an unconscious action. I keep any smiles to a minimum so my expression doesn’t twist and make me look even more grotesque.
But I do feel like smiling. In fact, a broad, happy grin might be in order.
I’ve told him my highly combustible, socially unacceptable and perverse compulsion to look at dicks. I confessed my deepest fear that I might be gay. And what was his response?
It was a bit like throwing a grenade that fails to detonate. No explosion. No huge reaction. No fireworks. Talk about anti-climactic. My secret’s a dud. That wasn’t so bad after all. What was I afraid of?
André smiles at my smile. What he says next is completely unexpected.
“Mon ami,” he says quietly. “When you were a child, you were sexually abused by a man, no?”
Fuck.
Chapter 6.
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’
— C.S. Lewis
~~~
I now know what it means when people talk about pulling the rug out from under you. If I wasn’t sitting down, I doubt my legs would hold me.
Dammit.
My face is burning, yet I feel both hot and cold. It’s as if I’m sick and I have a fever. André asks me that question so casually, as if inquiring what I’d like to eat for lunch.
A fear I’ve known since I was a child slams into me, choking me into silence. Despite an outside temperature in the 90’s, my body beads in an icy, anxious sweat.
Shit, shit, shit, shit!
My stomach twists. I feel ill. Desperately, I try to comfort myself with the thought that it was going to come out anyway. I’d planned to tell him everything eventually, so what the hell.
Unluckily for me, I’d rather eat a plate full of barbed wire than talk about this hideously painful subject.
André waits patiently for me to speak.
I try to deal with all of the images and emotions that well up from deep inside, covering me over like a fast rising tide. I feel as if I’m drowning in childhood memories—a profoundly shameful past I’ve tried to conceal and forget.
At least he guessed. I didn’t have to go through the agony of telling him. I don’t know how I would've ever broached this conversation otherwise. I mean, how the hell would anyone come out with such a filthy secret?
“How did you know?” I eventually manage to say, in an unsteady whisper.
He shrugs and his expression is matter of fact. “You feel perhaps you are the only one who has experienced this. I am sorry to inform you, this problem is most common, n'est-ce pas? You were shown a man’s penis as a child—you were made to look oh, many, many times. These early memories are still very much with you, I think.”
“Yes.”
Moments from my past clamor for attention. So often, complete strangers would tell me, “Your father is a great man.”
What could I say to them? No, he’s not?
I wanted him to be, but every time someone praised my father, I had to subdue a tsunami wave of shame and guilt. I loved him and I hated him. He was very good to me. He was very bad to me.
It’s no wonder I’m all mixed up to hell and gone.
We sit together—me tense and rigid, while André’s perfectly relaxed. How can he bring up a subject like this and then sit there with such equanimity?
Calm and supportive, André waits patiently for me to explain. It’s strange, but somehow, once I start telling him a little, it’s easier to talk about it.
I go into detail about how much I idolized my father, how he taught me to shoot and celebrated my skill and achievements. I explain my dad’s easy manner of winning friends, his natural charisma and good looks—and how people looked up to him and admired him.
I was my
father’s favorite child. Everyone in our family knew it. Now, when I look back to the “special” place I held, I feel sick.
When I came into my teens and began to understand that my dad had been abusing me, my world fell apart. I couldn’t deal with it. I made excuses for him and blamed myself. I loved my dad and I wanted to believe the myth of his perfection.
André shakes his head. “If your father was physically grotesque, an ugly man, who beat you, sexually abused you and was at all times cruel—you would have had an easier childhood, I think.”
“What? Why?”
“On pardonne tant que l’on aime,” he tells me. “It means, ‘we pardon to the extent that we love.’ François de La Rochefoucauld, a very wise man, said it centuries ago.”
I consider the quote and swallow with a very dry throat. Throughout my childhood, I wanted to please my dad and I hated his disapproval. As a child, it’s natural to assume it’s you that screwed up. He was always so perfect. What he did couldn't be wrong. It just couldn't. It’s so much easier to blame yourself.
I loved my father, and I loved my father.
Monster! Pervert!
The man I adored more than anyone else in the whole world, deceived and betrayed me. It’s impossible to reconcile what happened with how I felt. Now I can’t trust my emotions because one thing is certain—I have no idea what love is.
Perceptive as always, André sees my confusion.
Arching one dark eyebrow, his gaze is filled with understanding. “A father who is always cruel, he is much easier to deal with, no? The child’s conclusions and resolutions are obvious: ‘He is a bad person,’ or, ‘I will not be like him,’ and, ‘I will escape him.’
When I frown doubtfully, André adds, “Mais oui! Perhaps this child witnesses his father hurting his mother. Right then, while still in his diapers, the infant decides, ‘When I am old enough, I will kill him.’”
The picture of a baby plotting his father’s death surprises a burst of laughter out of me. Not from humor—because it isn’t funny. Probably more from shock.
“No! Really?” I ask. “That young? Do children still in diapers think like that?”
“Oui, oui! But of course! Such resolutions come oh, very early in life. A person does not always act on such a thought, yet sides have been chosen. From then on, in the child’s eyes, everything the father says or does is wrong.