The Price Of Dick (19 page)

Walsh cried, pleaded for my help. I watched the spectacle like it was a bad program on television I couldn
’t switch off. I nodded, placated with meaningless words I didn’t believe.

A half an hour later, I managed to talk him into abandoning his attempts to contact family members or the hospital for information. I assured him if anything untoward happened I
’d contact him myself. I promised to text him every day to let him know that nothing had changed. When Dick came round, I’d have him call him personally. That way his family wouldn’t grow suspicious, and their secret would remain safe. Even in a goddamned coma I was swept into his games.

As Walsh drove off, I remembered thinking, they don
’t even write Telenovelas this weird.

It was
Death In Venice
meets
Mad
magazine, this run-in with Mr. Walsh. Just enough humor stirred in with the horror to make it high camp. I never knew that it was possible to feel relieved and nauseous simultaneously. The usurper who’d stolen my Puerto Vallarta vacation was old enough to be my grandfather, practically Dick’s great-grandfather. How had he passed this man off to his colleagues? Yoda? Oh, the sight that must have been, the two of them on the tourist-trampled, Puerto Vallarta sand: the virile young stud and the cadaver next to him sizzling like old bacon in the hot Mexican sun. The vision made me shudder. What was worse is I had to stop my mind from venturing further into the nature of their relationship. No one’s imagination wanted to go there.

After the encounter I sat in my office chugging wine from a beer mug, trying to piece the puzzle together.
What had Dick done? It was difficult to leap past the disgust factor of it. I’d always wondered why he suddenly wanted me to fuck him. The request had come from nowhere. Was he preparing himself to seduce this old codger for his life savings; for the life savings of his friends? Was he willing to let the desiccated mummy crawl on top of him for a fuck; suck his liver-spotted lips, seeing only the dollar signs in his eyes? Did he really propose marriage to this guy? Get down on bended knee and slip a ring on that jaundiced finger? How the hell did he think he was going to get away with, or more importantly, get out of that little predicament? Fuck him into a heart attack? Or was he really planning on buying a house with this guy and play-acting the role out until he croaked? It’s one thing to take up with a DILF, another to be porking the walking dead.

I
’ll give him credit. He was an equal opportunist with both women and men. He was an ambitious man who’d do anything to succeed in his business and protect his reputation. This scenario took more than balls. It took a cast iron stomach. I won’t discredit him for it. Women have dominated the role of gold-digger forever in literature and court battles. Anna Nicole had made it entertaining in a perverse way. Dick made it unsettling in a stomach-turning way. He understood his own appeal, and knew how to use it to his advantage. He’d succeeded in what he set out to do, just as he had to make captain of the team with a little help from his coach in high school. Strangely, now that I had knowledge of what actually happened, I didn’t feel as badly about being left behind on the vacation. Dick, in his mind, was doing business. I didn’t have the money or contacts that Mr. Walsh had. There was nothing to be gained by dragging me along. There wasn’t much to gain by having me fuck him, so I came out ahead with a free fuck. If I thought of it that way, we were even Steven. In short, I’m not going to be anyone’s judge or jury.

I don
’t believe I was cavalier about this. I’ve known some young men who, in desperation, have done things they wouldn’t have done under normal circumstances. One young gay friend had fucked a mother of two for a hundred bucks and a bottle of Southern Comfort. Another turned a trick with a cop to get out of a pot bust. There isn’t a one of us who hasn’t done something we normally wouldn’t, simply because it helped our situation. No stones, no glass houses.

Dick
’s motivations weren’t that hard to understand, but it was his incredible, deceitful ability to pull them off that made it...mind-boggling. Walsh was madly in love with him, and hadn’t an inkling that he’d been used. At seventy years of age he was looking forward to getting married and moving into a new house with his love. He was convinced, as Dick’s future husband, he had a right to visit him in the hospital. He was absolutely right, too. It was what the fight for equality was all about. And if Dick had been an out homosexual, Walsh's argument would have had merit.

I could now sit in the same room with Dick
’s mother and bask in the unspoken knowledge that despite everything for which she despised me, her son had one-upped anything he had done with me. All on his own. I could just imagine what the effect would be on her. Of course, with Dick’s condition, it didn’t matter anymore. It was all just another part of his less than savory history.

Thanksgiving came and went. The only way any of us acknowledged it was by the changing of
the pie in the hospital cafeteria. Pumpkin was my favorite, so I’d have a piece of it with my coffee for breakfast and for lunch. My visits to the hospital were adding weight to me. My workouts had fallen by the wayside. I was feeling sluggish and down most of the time. Spending extended periods of time in hospitals would do that to you.

As
Dick's prospects for recovery began to dim, his mother gave consent to his friends and family members to come and pay their respects. Each of them could sit in his room for ten minutes. It resembled a wake where the central character was still alive. If he was remotely conscious, he’d have been amazed at the outpouring of affection. Every one of them made sure to shake my hand, or kiss me on the cheek or hug me. It was their means of accepting the closeness of our relationship even though they misinterpreted its nature. His parents looked away when this happened, but there was no more anger in their faces. They had nothing left to protect. They had nothing more to hope for. I would be out of their lives when Dick was gone.

The resignation brought a despair that clutched us all, knowing that soon we
’d have to let him go. Two weeks before Christmas the priest had been summoned from their parish to perform the Last Rites. I’m not Catholic, but I knew the finality of that gesture. I'd lose my muse. I'd certainly miss him. Quirks and all. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around the enormity of the tragedy. He was so young.

As the priest introduced himself to me I felt Dick
’s world had come full circle. It was Father James, the same Father James who’d hired Dick to mow the rectory lawn and had paid a few dollars more to watch him shower as a teenager. Comedy couldn’t bite more blackly.

They closed the doors to his unit, drew the curtains for the private ceremony. I sat in the chair opposite the drawn curtains staring into the face of my own sorrow and loss, thinking of my own age, how lucky I
’d been to have lived so long free of traumatic incident or illness. Pure luck. Getting old was all right after all.

His brothers came from the unit shortly thereafter
looking pale, grim, red-eyed. They took their places in chairs next to me to stare at the same curtain which Dick’s parents remained behind with the priest. We could see or hear nothing. We were a pathetic sight: three grown men struggling not to cry.

One of Dick's
brothers stood up as if the chair had stung him. He paced a few steps, rubbed the length of his face and sighed every ounce of breath out of himself before he squatted in front of me. He was a tall guy so his face met mine almost on the same level. I could see his crimson rimmed, watery eyes; the broken blood vessels in his nose. There was a smell of some strong mixture of alcohols on his breath. There probably was a similar odor on mine from the night before.

“
J.J.” I believe it was the first time I ever heard him address me by my name. "I’ve got to say this to you because I know my folks won’t. Now is as good a time as ever because after...” He paused, thought about what he was going to say and changed direction. "Because it needs to be said. We’ve all known about Dick ever since he was a teenager. I mean about him being...queer.”

I wanted to correct his terminology but held my tongue. His
admission was stand-alone large.

He went on.
“Brothers always know. It was a lot of little things. He always tried to cover it up. He’s a natural con thanks to Mom. But we knew. And we always let him play his games. He was our brother and we loved him. No matter what Mom thought, or what our religion taught, he was our little brother.”

The
other brother piped in, “We always joked that Dick was an ass. We just wasn’t sure if he was a bottom.”

That brought a
brief smile to each one of our faces.

The
first one continued, “We’ve known about you guys from the very beginning. I mean, I suspected it from the minute you two started talking at the gym. So it wasn’t a surprise when he moved in with you. Made Mom crazy as shit, but I think that’s what he wanted. She’s always been hardest on him. He was the baby of the family. He learned all his bad habits from us. I think he wanted to show her she didn’t have control over him like she had on us.”

The
second brother added his two cents. “He probably took ten years off her life when he moved in with you.”

“
We think you’re an okay guy, you made Dick happy, and he seemed to really grow up around you. We just wanted you to know we’re happy you were his boyfriend, and that you were here for him.”

I started to protest the title they attributed to me
, “I’m not his...”

The first
brother’s voice rode over mine, “We know he’d never want us to know this, but we wanted you to know. It’s been important to have you here for him. We appreciate it.”

That brought me to the tears I
’d dammed for the entire night. They made me feel sick and relieved and empty. I finished crying them in the restroom where no one could see me, because they didn't want to stop. It hurt knowing I’d lose him. He’d filled that empty spot in my life; gave me a million smiles and curses. Just like people are supposed to when they’re an important part of your world.

What intrigued me was how many people had told me they had
known
about Dick, but never let on to him. How they helped protect him. Kept his secret. All because of one woman. It was oddly inspiring and sad. A man who had lived a fictional life in a delusional religious family pretending to have the American dream. What was more messed up than that? God bless America.

*
  *  *

There was a nightmarish quality
to how the situation deteriorated into something so dire in so a short a time. The feeling of helplessness was frustrating. Even the doctors appeared to suffer from the anguish of not being able to offer anything of substance. No one would speak the words or address the inevitable. The decision was in the hands of his parents as to how this would proceed. He could be maintained on life support indefinitely until his body wasted to nothing and just gave out. Or...the unspoken solution. I couldn’t think of either option as being the
right
one. It was too much for a delicate conscience.

I must confess, thanks to my
overly-religious parents, I’m non-religious. That doesn’t mean I’m not as superstitious as the next guy. I still read horoscopes, believe what they say about my sign of Scorpio and trust fortune cookies when they say what I want. I don’t pray. I gave up on that when I was a child and God never heard me; never stopped the beatings or abuse perpetrated in his name by my folks. I more or less hold onto the Star Wars notion that we all have a ‘force’ within us that guides us, gives us strength and resilience. And it was this inner power that I asked for strength to make it through this ordeal. Somewhere inside the wish factory of my head I wanted a genie wish.

It was a wrenching
waiting game. I didn’t want to be present for any decisions his parents made. I arrived every evening after work and every morning on the weekend as had been my habit. A sleepless Friday night had me there early one Saturday morning. I sat in his room and talked to him in my head about the week and work, the good-looking guys I saw when I went to the store. It made for a sappy guilt trip. I’d look at him and wonder who he might have been in different circumstances, with different parents, some other upbringing. What he could have been if he had been allowed to be himself.

When I had nothing more to tell him, I
’d fallen into my usual routine of counting out breaths the respirator made for him each minute. The door slid open, his mother walked in with her paper cup of coffee and diary. She sat on the opposite side of his bed, touched his ankle, pulled the sheet down over it protectively. She looked years older; had neglected her dye job. Gray hairs leaked all over her scalp. Dead ends frayed around her face. She half-assed her makeup. Grief had taken its toll on her as well.

“
I talked with a young doctor this morning. An Indian man, very smart. His field is oncology. Cancer.”

I looked up and found her looking
at and talking to me. That was unusual. She’d never made a fuss about my being there, but most of the time she didn't acknowledge me. I looked around to see if someone else had entered the room. We were alone.

“
They don’t think it's any kind of cancer but they have developed medicines to deal with rare forms of pneumonia that are the result of AIDS.”

“
It’s not...”

She shook her head.
“No. It’s not AIDS. It’s a strain of pneumonia that seems to have them stumped. But that’s why this doctor talked to me. He thought that since every other treatment has failed that we might try this new chemotherapy and see if it could do anything to help.” She sighed, took a sip of coffee. “It’s very radical and very strong. He says it could possibly do more harm than good. That it might speed up...” She let the rest of the sentence wander away.

I looked at Dick then back at her. I wondered why she was talking to me.
“What do the others say?” I asked.