Hello, I Lied

by M. E. Kerr

  “Not about being gay, Mom. About coming out. Sometimes I feel as though I’m living this lie. Other times I feel I should just keep my mouth shut.”

  “I’m glad you told me, but I don’t see why it has to be anybody else’s business…. And I still think it’s too soon for you to make up your mind about being gay.”

  “How old were you when you made up your mind you were straight?”

  She sighed and said, “All right. I don’t have time for one of your gay pride lectures, honey. I have to finish this chicken. Can you lend a hand?”

  While we were loading up the tray, I said, “What word would you use to describe yourself?”

  She came up with the same word I’d told Alex I’d answered. Content.

  “Mr. Nevada is paying me more than I ever got before, for doing something I love doing…and you’re included. That’s contentment,” she said. “And I’m happy. Is that the same thing as content?’

  “I’d say it’s synonymous.”

  “So be it,” she said. “All goes well.”

  I could look out the window and see the dandelions in the field, where Franklin had warned us there were sometimes snakes.

  At the end of that summer I often thought about that moment.

  The flower heads had turned into the white golf-ball-sized bunches of seeds that floated about in the wind like tiny parachutes. Gliding under them, unseen, were the long lengths slipping out in the sun for some warmth before they sneaked back into their crevices.

  Fluff flying above the mysteries beneath them.

  My mother and I, content, happy. What we couldn’t see was all around us, but it was hidden, waiting to surprise us if we moved in its direction.

  And we would.

  FOUR

  BEFORE ALEX I’D NEVER BEEN in a relationship, never worried about looking faggy, even though when I was a kid I was this dizzy sissy who played with dolls and screamed at spiders. I outgrew all that, butched up and worked out, so when the two of us got together, little things would remind me of what I used to be like. Alex loved stuff like Ice Blue Shampoo from The Body Shop, and smelly soaps from the Gap. I got to like them, too, but I thought they were too faggy to buy and bring home, so I wouldn’t.

  Alex would sometimes cry in movies, but I’d look away during sad parts and think of things to take my mind off what I was watching, because I didn’t want to seem faggy.

  Alex liked ballet and I hated going with him, even though I liked it too. I’d look around at all the guys there two by two and want to die.

  Alex liked to cook, and he grew purple globe basil and Italian parsley on his windowsill. I’d tease him, tell him anyone down in the street could look up and know a fag probably lived there.

  That was how we landed up at Adieu, Adieu in the East Sixties last April. We were celebrating Alex’s first speaking role on Broadway.

  We’d pooled our money to splurge on a good dinner.

  Alex said there were plenty of great gay restaurants we could go to, but I didn’t even want to be seen going into one of those places. So he let me choose.

  I read this write-up in The New York Times about this French place hidden away in a little brownstone.

  Alex’s dad was a chef. Not just a cook like Mom, but a gourmet, and he’d taught Alex about food. Thanks to Alex, I learned there was a whole world beyond steak and mashed, my favorite meal when I was a kid.

  We ordered escargots, which I tried to forget were snails, and we were going to follow that with wild boar stew.

  After the waiter took our orders, I told Alex that I’d finally come out to Mom.

  “Well, what did she say?”

  “She said she’d been waiting for me to show some real interest in girls, and when I didn’t she thought I might just be developing slowly.”

  “Like a photograph taken with an old Polaroid.” Alex chuckled.

  “Then I began bringing you home.”

  “That fairy actor.”

  “She likes you.”

  “But I blew your scene, right?”

  “No. She’d just never known me to be that attached to anyone. It wasn’t anything about you. It was the way I acted around you. She said it was worlds away from how I acted around Brittany.”

  “Was she upset?”

  “More philosophical than upset. She said it was a hard life.”

  “If you’re lucky,” Alex cracked.

  “She asked me when I first knew about myself.”

  “When did you?”

  “I saw some show on TV. Some father telling his son he was gay. I knew that night.”

  “I saw that show. But I knew already.”

  “I sat in front of the TV shaking.”

  “Poor baby. Afraid?”

  “Afraid and relieved. I was just a kid: seven, eight? Before that I knew something was wrong with me. It didn’t even have to do with sex.”

  Alex grinned. “I know. I was always upstairs in my room dancing around to Hello, Dolly! or Gypsy. The other guys were all off to the ballpark.”

  When the waiter brought us our whiskey sours, minus the whiskey, we clinked our glasses together.

  “Here’s looking at us!” Alex said.

  “To us!”

  Alex told me about the first time he’d ever had wild boar. His father had introduced it to him when the family took a trip to France. He said that trip, when he was fifteen, was the last happy family experience he’d had. While he was showering in the hotel room, his twin brother, Peter, read an unfinished letter he’d left on the desk. It was to another boy, telling him how he missed him, saying all he did was wish they could be in Paris together because Paris was filled with lovers. And Alex’s twin had always been envious of him because even as a kid Alex had worked on stage and made some commercials.

  He told their mother, so when they got back to the States, she took Alex to see a psychiatrist. His father blamed himself for bringing home so many “nellie chefs”—a lot of his father’s colleagues were closet gays.

  “They kept blaming themselves, blaming each other, then blaming my shrink, who said I didn’t seem to have as big a problem with it as they did.”

  “And now?” I said.

  “You met them. They’re resigned to it, but not delighted. Peter hates it. He’s afraid people will think he’s one of us.”

  “Your father never gets my name right. He calls me Lynn.”

  We hadn’t been paying much attention to anything going on around us. We were new to each other. We had a lot of catching up to do.

  You notice Alex, though. Everywhere we went, people took a second look at him. He’s even taller than I am, and he’s got this great face. He has the kind of looks a Brad Pitt has, or a Jason Priestly.

  I finally saw a woman at a center-row table watching us. Not watching us: staring at us. She was with this heavyset loudmouth I figured she was embarrassed by, because you could tell he’d been drinking. He was doing all the talking, and she kept looking our way…at Alex, I thought. And I thought: Eat your heart out! Because I liked having people admire him, liked knowing he was really something…and he was with me.

  Maybe the fellow with her was watching us in the mirror. The restaurant walls were all mirrored. Maybe she said something to him.

  He was paying the bill, and when the waiter took the money, the guy got up, glanced at us, and snarled something I couldn’t hear.

  Alex was a blusher. I saw his face get bright red.

  I saw other people turn to look at us.

  “What’d he say?” I asked Alex.

  “Never mind. Let’s not spoil the evening.”

  “But what’d he say, Alex?”

  He was lumbering toward the door by then. The waiter was bowing and thanking him, and the maitre d’ was smiling at him, telling him it was good to see him again.

  Alex said, “He said, ‘Your kind doesn’t belong in a place like this.’”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe it. “What’d we do?”

  Alex
kept his voice low. “We’re the only two guys together here. Saturday night. We were laughing, clinking glasses. How the hell do I know?”

  “He’s gone,” I said. “You’re right. Let’s not let anything spoil this.”

  “We’re ready for the check, anyway,” said Alex.

  We tried to get past it. I was in shock. We talked about why Alex loved doing Shakespeare, and what was wrong with me that I didn’t really appreciate the plays.

  “Ignorance is what’s wrong with me,” I said.

  Alex said, “You just don’t give it a chance. You’d love it if you got into it, Lang. I know you would.”

  “Nothing seems to grab me that way,” I said. “I keep thinking I’d like to be a writer, but I hardly read at all.”

  “You love films.”

  “I love movies,” I said. “Why do you say ‘films’?”

  “Why not?” He shrugged.

  “It sounds a little affected,” I said.

  He said, “That guy got to you, didn’t he?”

  “Are you kidding?” I said, but he was right. He knew he was too.

  “Don’t let things like that stick with you, Lang,” he said. “It’s always going to happen somewhere, at some point, usually when you least expect.it.”

  “Okay.”

  He was only three years older than I was, but sometimes I felt as though he was a decade older. I knew he was more sophisticated, better educated. He’d gone to prep school; he’d traveled a lot more than I had…. And he had his own apartment, never mind that it was a rat hole. He wasn’t still trying to figure out what to do with his life.

  I wondered if the loudmouth had said something to the waiter and the maitre d’. I noticed we weren’t thanked or smiled at as we left the restaurant.

  “Did you feel a chill back there?” I asked Alex as we headed toward the parking lot next door.

  “It was a little cool, for sure,” he said.

  It was the last Saturday night we’d have together. Alex would be working the following week.

  The stars were out. The air had that balmy early-spring feeling. We were going to go back to Alex’s place and watch an old Marlon Brando picture: On the Waterfront.

  It would be the last time Alex had his mother’s neat little Volkswagen convertible, too. She’d decided owning a car in the city was too much trouble.

  As we walked toward the Volks, I said, “Hey, it’s warm enough to put the top down.”

  “You think so?” Alex said.

  I remember the grin on his face as he looked down at me. I remember him giving me a wink.

  Then suddenly we saw the loudmouth pull up in a black Chrysler. He had the window rolled down, and he called out, “Faggots!”

  Alex laughed and called back, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!”

  It was something people chanted in gay marches.

  That was all it took to make the fellow brake, get out, and ask Alex if he wanted to repeat it.

  “Keep going,” I said to Alex, and we did.

  He was following us, and Alex said, “There are two of us, so get ready, Lang, he might—”

  And then he did.

  Whatever he had in his hand—a tire iron, or one of those iron bars that lock car steering wheels—came down on Alex’s head hard.

  Alex stumbled, and then the guy swung the thing a second time, so Alex fell.

  It happened so fast that by the time I knelt down beside Alex, the fellow had run back to his car. The door slammed. The Chrysler took off just as another couple came into the lot to get their car.

  “I saw the whole thing,” a woman said. “I’ll go back and call the police.”

  Her date said, “We’ll get some help! He’s bleeding.”

  The police wanted to know what it was all about.

  “He didn’t like the looks of us,” Alex said.

  I thought they’d say, “What do you mean, the looks of you?” but they seemed to know what he meant without asking.

  The manager of Adieu, Adieu claimed that customer had never been in his restaurant before, had paid in cash, had no reservation. He said he didn’t know him or the woman with him.

  “In a pig’s eye!” Alex muttered as we drove down First Avenue. We were headed for the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

  He’d barely managed to get himself behind the wheel of the Volks. He was bleeding and bruised.

  “I wasn’t much help,” I said.

  “At least you had the sense to keep your mouth shut. I was the one who waved the red flag at the bull.”

  “But I wish he’d swung at me. I don’t have to be onstage in a week.”

  Alex said, “Enter Fortinbras…limping.”

  FIVE

  “LANG? IT’S BRITTANY.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Sag Harbor. Nick and I are visiting Allie Perez. We’re going on a picnic over in East Hampton at Main Beach—Allie, me, and Nick. Want to come along?”

  “I’d like to see Nick.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “I just don’t want to start up again, Brittany.”

  “Who does? That’s past history.”

  Back before I met Alex, we’d dated for a while. She used to joke and say we were “lover,” because only one of us was ever involved.

  I said, “What’ll I bring?”

  “Just yourself. Allie made enough ribs and potato salad for an army. We’ll pick you up at noon. Just give me directions.”

  I told her the number on Ocean Road and said I’d be out front.

  Nick was a buddy, way before I ever went out with his sister. We grew up in the same neighborhood, and though he was ahead of me in school, we hung out together. I’d given him my phone number when he told me Allie’s folks had a summer place in the Hamptons, but I’d never expected he’d call.

  Nick and Allie had one of these on again/off again relationships that was mostly off. Allie liked to date other guys, and Nick was so crazy about her, he’d explode when she went out with someone else. Then they wouldn’t speak for weeks. Then they would. I never really thought of them as a couple. I’d complain to Nick about their fighting in front of me, tell him what a bore that was.

  Mom said, “Did you tell him not to drive up to the gate?”

  “I’ll be down there at ten to twelve,” I said.

  It had been two days since my encounter with Nevada. I hadn’t even told Nick who Mom was working for. She didn’t think it was right to give out his address.

  “If you tell them Mr. Nevada lives here, be sure to warn them that it’s private information,” Mom said.

  “I will. They’re cool.”

  I changed my clothes, grabbed some paperbacks from my stash, and tucked them into my knapsack with a towel and some suntan lotion.

  Then I headed down to the gate, fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, just to be sure.

  I was standing there about five minutes when Franklin appeared in the Range Rover.

  The rottweilers were up on their hind legs snarling and barking, so Franklin had to shout to be heard.

  “What’re you doing, Lang?”

  He didn’t need the dogs to alert him. The security cameras at Roundelay were always on.

  I explained that I was waiting for a ride, and he began shaking his head even before I’d finished.

  “Mr. Nevada doesn’t want anyone loafing around here, Lang.”

  “I didn’t think I was in camera range.”

  “Everything is. Wait down the road a piece.”

  “How far down?”

  “See that line of oak trees?”

  “Way down there?”

  “Way down there,” he said. “Mr. Nevada is getting ready to leave too. Don’t let him catch you this close.”

  Nick was late.

  I stood there in the hot sun, waiting.

  About five minutes after twelve an old Ford roadster paused by the gate on its way from Roundelay.

  It looked like something out of the th
irties. White-wall tires with wire wheels. Black with a white canvas top. Pinstriping going the length of the car back to the rumble seat. Running boards and a spare tire attached to the rear.

  I knew Nevada was behind the wheel. I saw he was wearing a black cap. I turned my back on him so he wouldn’t think I was watching him.

  He just sat there in the thing.

  Another five minutes and Nick appeared in a dark-green Saturn, going slow. I got out in the middle of the road and waved my hands, and he came up to me and stopped.

  One of the side doors opened, and Brittany said, “Hi! Hop in.”

  As we headed away, I looked through the rear window and saw Nevada following us.

  “Did you see that car?” Nick said. “It’s a thirty-four Ford! It’s a classic!”

  “It’s no secret who lives there,” Allie said as we stretched out on Main Beach. “Out here we know where all the celebrities live. Nobody bothers them.”

  “What’s he like, Lang?” Nick asked me.

  I told him about the one time I’d run into him by accident.

  “He bought that place for Cali Coss” Brittany said.

  “‘Pained over it,’” Allie said. “Wasn’t that what she always said?”

  “I thought it was ‘Pain’s over,’” Nick said.

  We didn’t talk about them long.

  They asked me about Sob Story. It was popular with kids because weekend nights after the kitchen closed, they featured hot new groups like The Failures. They were already booked. Brittany said she’d kill for tickets to see Cog Wheeler, Failures’ top dog. (“Hint hint,” she said, nudging me.)

  Nick and Allie began slathering each other with suntan lotion, giggling and cooing to one another, and Brittany turned over on her stomach with her face down in her arms.

  I took out a copy of Understanding Shakespeare and tried to concentrate on it.

  Then Nick and Allie went off to be alone together, and I switched to lighter reading, a Michael Nava mystery featuring his gay lawyer, Henry Rios.

  When Brittany came awake, she flipped over to her back and asked me if I knew the words to any of Nevada’s songs. She said he was a real poet.

  I said I only knew the ones to “Flame.”

  “I’m a fire. Oh, yes.”

  “I probably know others, but never knew he wrote them. I’ve heard a lot about ‘Heart in My Mouth.’”