Guilty Little Secret

by F M Land

  Terry was in the kitchen, unpacking a shopping bag, when I returned to the flat.

  “Hey!” I called, relieved to see him. “I got us some groceries!”

  “Me, too.” Terry didn’t look up to answer me.

  I forced a laugh. Then I noticed Terry wasn’t laughing. Then I noticed that Terry was crying. “Terry,” I said quietly, “come here, babe. Come here.” And I took Terry in my arms and held him for a long time.

  Terry eventually pulled himself from my arms, turning back to put away groceries. “I feel like a foolish old goat,” he muttered. “All last week, when I was getting this place ready for you, I was thinking of this as ‘our place’.”

  “It is ‘our place’!”

  “No. I see now that you need your own place. You don’t need me interfering with your life.”

  “Fuck, Terry! I need you in my life! You’re not interfering with anything!”

  He put down the bottle of cream he was holding and turned to face me. His eyes were filled with tears.

  “Not even this morning?”

  “Forget this morning, okay?”

  “I can’t forget this morning,” Terry hissed. “Obviously you need something that I can’t give you.”

  I hurried to his side. “There is nothing you don’t give me, Ter.” Again I pulled Terry into my arms.

  “I can’t spend every night with you. I can’t be with you as much as either of us wants.” He began to sob then. “I have to leave him, Paul. Can’t you see? I am so in love with you. It isn’t fair to Drew. It isn’t fair to us!”

  “You can’t leave him, Ter.” I felt a shiver of panic shoot down my spine. The thought of confronting Drew with the truth terrified me. “You know you love him. Don’t be so dramatic!”

  Terry stiffened in protest. “I want to be with you, Paulie. All the time. I can’t keep jumping from his bed to yours. It’s the kindest thing I could do, for all of us.”

  “No. We won’t discuss it. I’m happy with the way things are now.”

  He clucked his tongue in irritation. “Why? So you can be free at night to bring home whomever you choose? Is that the way you like things?”

  Insulted, I glared at Terry. “You know better than to even say that, Ter!”

  “How can I expect you to be monogamous, when I can’t even offer you the same deal?”

  “It doesn’t bother me the way it bothers you. I’m glad you can make Drew happy.”

  “Well, it bothers me to find you naked with some old boy on the floor here.”

  “It won’t happen again,” I told him solemnly, before bending to kiss his cheek.

  Terry sniffed. “I’ve no right to ask anything of you.”

  “I promise you, it won’t happen again,” I repeated. “Just promise me that you won’t leave Drew.”

  “I want to.”

  “No, you don’t. Promise me!”

  “I promise.”

  “That you won’t leave Drew?”

  “Yes.”

  I kissed him then, planting my lips on Terry’s with such force that Terry’s jaws spread wide open. I liked to kiss him like that. “Let’s go lie on our bed for a while,” I suggested when our kiss ended.

  Drew and my parents came to my apartment for dinner that evening. Terry and I prepared a leek pie, beet salad, and flan. For Dad and Maman, the fare was vegetarian. For Drew, it was heavy on French cheese and cream.

  “Dad,” I began, almost as soon as we started to eat, “what do you think it would take to get Daniel to join my band?”

  Dad and Drew exchanged a long look.

  “Well, I suppose you’d have to go to bed with him first,” Dad answered. His eyes were dancing merrily.

  Giggling, I nodded. “Yeh. Well, I’ve already done that. What else?”

  The look on Dad’s face was indescribable. His eyes had a funny faraway stare, as if he were watching some scene from a long way off. He was almost smiling, almost frowning, almost anything. He didn’t reply.

  But Drew did. “I doubt he’d leave France. He’s a lot like Blaise in that respect. He has no love for the States.”

  I persisted. “But, if we came here, Jade and Jeff and Terry and me, we could record here.”

  Dad finally recovered himself. “It doesn’t make sense for you to come here to record. You’re all set up in New York.” He stopped for a moment, then smiled warmly into my eyes. “So, what did you think of Danny?”

  “He’s more Jade’s type than mine. Jade will be perfect for him. You know, they’re both pretty mellow fucks.”

  Laughing, Dad made a swatting gesture toward me. “I wasn’t talking about his sexual technique.”

  “Yeah, right,” Drew growled at him sarcastically.

  Dad swatted playfully at Drew, too. “I meant, his keyboard technique. You liked the way he played, huh?”

  Around midnight, Drew began to make noises about wanting to go home. He looked pointedly at Terry.

  Terry shrugged. “I’m going to stay here tonight,” he told Drew. “To help Paul break in his new home. I’ll stay and help him clean up.”

  Drew studied Terry’s face for a long moment, then hugged him and kissed him on the lips. “You’ve got to let the boy live his own life, dear,” Drew responded, quietly but earnestly. “You can’t be playing like a guard dog all the time. Marshalls and Dannys will get to him once in a while. You can’t always be there to protect him, Ter.”

  “Yeh,” Dad piped up, “RB had bodyguards on Justine, and I was able to get through to her. You won’t be able to keep the right guy away.”

  Sighing, Terry turned from them to gaze out the window. “Yes,” he muttered, “but I can keep the wrong ones away, eh?”

  Later, when we were alone, I made the mistake of asking, “Terry, why are you staying here tonight?”

  “Shit, do I have to explain it even to you?”

  “Are you really worried that Daniel is going to show up tonight?”

  “Jesus Christ, no! Do you want him to?”

  I shook my head solemnly, my eyes on Terry’s. “Ter, I want only you.” I repeated, “Only you. Anyway,” I added, brightening, “I told you, he’ll be perfect for Jade.”

  And I was right. Jeff and Jade arrived in Paris the day after Thanksgiving. I immediately got them together with Daniel. We met at the club where I first played music with Daniel. Danny rushed over to our table as soon as he spotted us.

  “Paul,” he gushed, “your friends are here!” His eyes darted from Jeff to Jade to Jeff again. “Your friend, Jade --” His eyes studied Jeff first, because he liked big men, but quickly moved to Jade. “Jade, are you Jade?” He asked the blonde wispy-haired man as he ran his fingers through Jade’s hair.

  The way Danny pronounced “Jade”, it sounded like “Jed.”

  “Yeh,” Jeff responded, “this is ‘Jed.’ And I’m Jeff.”

  Danny was lost in Jade’s hair at that point. “Your hair,” he half-whispered to Jade. “I love your hair.” He didn’t sit. He didn’t move, except to crush handfuls of Jade’s hair in his hand. And he didn’t acknowledge Jeff’s introduction.

  I winked at Terry, and then at Jeff. “I told you so,” I said to Terry.

  “Hey, Jed,” Terry asked, smiling mischievously, “what do you think? You finally get to meet Daniel Vitreille!”

  But Jade gave no indication that he’d heard Terry’s question. He seemed unable to take his eyes off Daniel’s face.

  “So, what did I tell you?” I asked Terry triumphantly. “Huh?”

  Justine (1988-1989)

  On April 29, 1988, our fourth anniversary, Terry presented me with a pair of gold earrings, two flattened loops, each engraved on the inside with “TLW + PMK 84” in very tiny letters. I studied the earrings for a long time, my heart thumping excitedly in my chest, before looking up at Terry.

  “Two earrings?” I asked, not sure what Terry had in mind with two earrings. I had agreed to have one ear pierced. But not two.

  Terry smiled secretively
as he pulled a handful of ice cubes from the freezer. “Come here,” he ordered. Gently.

  I sat down on the chair that Terry held out for me. Immediately Terry began to apply ice to my ear. Both of the earrings and syringe needle were soaking in alcohol. After a few minutes, holding an ice cube wrapped in a washcloth behind my ear, Terry stabbed the hypodermic needle through my earlobe. He twisted the needle round and round, without speaking. Then he withdrew the needle and poked the wire of the earring through the hole. The wire seemed to get hung up somewhere because Terry had to jiggle it around a bit before it was all the way through my ear. Anxiously, I watched Terry’s eyes as he worked. Finally, Terry’s eyes lit up, and he smiled. The job was done.

  Terry stepped back to take a look at me. “Oooh, Paulie! You look very sexy with your new earring! Here, look!” He held out a hand mirror.

  I grabbed the mirror and stared at my reflection. I studied my ear with the new earring. I liked the effect. I turned my head from side to side, watching my earring appear and disappear. The gold went well with my sallow complexion and dark eyes. I smiled at Terry.

  Terry gathered me into his arms and held me close. Actually, he stepped between my knees, as I was sitting on the edge of the table, and threw his arms around my neck. I nuzzled Terry’s neck, then moved my mouth to Terry’s. We kissed for a long time.

  “Four years,” I breathed.

  “Can you believe it?”

  I shook my head, watching Terry’s eyes dance. “Hey, I have a present for you, too. I figured, since you were getting me an earring, I’d get one for you, too.” I hesitated, dropping my eyes to gaze at the second earring floating in the alcohol. “Unless you were planning to wear that one.”

  “No, no! This one is for you, too!”

  I pulled a small box out of my pants’ pocket and held it out to Terry, who quickly opened it.

  “God, Paul!” Terry exclaimed when he saw the diamond. “God, this is beautiful!” He examined the earring closely.

  “It’s nearly flawless, as close to perfect as a diamond can get. A carat of perfection.” I took the box from Terry to look at it myself. I raised my eyes to Terry’s. “Will you wear it?”

  Nodding, Terry took out the earring already in his ear. Then he put on the diamond earring. He picked up the hand mirror and studied his own reflection. “Rich!” he told me. “Jesus, this is decadent!”

  “Yeh,” I replied, kissing his ear.

  “Will you do something for me?” Terry asked.

  I kissed his ear again. “Anything, Ter, anything you want.”

  “Will you take down your pants?”

  Smiling broadly, I deftly unzipped my jeans. “Need you ask?”

  Terry stepped back to help me pull my jeans down past my knees. “Good! Now turn around and lean over the table.”

  I flashed Terry a happy grin. “Ooh, I like the sound of this!” I told Terry as I placed my elbows on the table.

  Reaching between my legs, Terry grasped the skin of my scrotum. “Let me tell you what I want to do with that second earring,” he said in low tones, his mouth close to my ear. “See here?” His fingers pinched a section of scrotum close to my ass. “I want you to wear it here. Will you do that for me?”

  My zizi stiffened immediately at Terry’s suggestion. Taking Terry’s free hand, I cupped it over my swollen zizi. “Here’s your answer,” I replied.

  Immediately, Terry went to work. It took him less time to get the second earring fastened in place.

  “How does it look?” I wanted to know.

  “God!’ was all Terry could say. “God, Paul, I love you so much!”

  My response was even briefer. “Yes!”

  “Can I?”

  “Yes!”

  “I want to. Oh, I want to!” And Terry made love to me then, pressing my chest against the tabletop. The pleasure became so intense that it made me scream. I raised my hips a bit to give Terry a better ride. We both howled with pleasure after that.

  “Boys, boys!” Daniel called to us from the doorway, where he and Jade stood watching us. “Have some consideration for your roommates, eh?”

  We stopped our yelling then. I didn’t feel the least bit self-conscious, though. We’d had scenes like that many times during the past three years, ever since Daniel moved in with Jade and me. Sometimes it was Daniel and Jade who were caught in the act. But usually it was Terry and I who got out of hand.

  “Four years,” I told them, a bit breathlessly. “We’re celebrating our fourth anniversary.” I kissed Terry as I pulled up my jeans.

  Daniel shook his head. “Four years? You two ought to hook up, get straight with Drew.”

  “I want to,” Terry told him. “Talk to Paul.”

  It was my turn to shake my head. “No! We are happy like this. Let’s not ruin it!”

  “How would being out as a couple ruin it?” Jade asked.

  “You know, hurting Drew. I don’t ever want Drew to get hurt.”

  Daniel whistled. “I can’t believe he doesn’t know by now,” he murmured. “Or Davy. Now, Davy’s a sharp guy. I can’t believe they haven’t figured it out. You two are so obvious!”

  “I know,” I replied grimly. “That’s it. They trust us so much. We are above suspicion in their minds. And I’m too much of a coward to tell them the truth.”

  End of conversation. I did not want to talk about being upfront with Drew about my relationship with Terry. For four years we had carried on without getting caught. And, as far as I was concerned, we could go on for another forty-four years, just like that.

  My band had been together for three years at that point. Jeff and Jade on guitar, me on bass, Terry on drums, Daniel on keyboards. We spent about half the year in New York and the rest of the time in France, which pleased Daniel, but which wasn’t great for getting anything recorded.

  In three years, we really hadn’t done much as a band. Played around a bit. Got interviewed in Rolling Stone once and the Village Voice twice. Actually, we could have had more interviews, but Dad turned down most requests for interviews. We got a big break in ’86 when a bright, young (gay) filmmaker, Winston Cortland, asked to use two of my tunes in his latest film, “Fortune Seekers.” Both songs were hot, but “Mental Maniac” really made it big.

  MGM released an album-length recording of the soundtrack from “Fortune Seekers,” which rocketed to the top of the charts. Dad and Maman re-recorded and remixed both of my songs and released them as singles. There was a 3-minute version for radio play, and a 7-minute remix version for dance floors. The radio version of “Mental Maniac” was #1 on the Billboard singles chart for over two months. Forty weeks on the charts. That’s what landed me the interview in Rolling Stone. Paris Match begged for an interview, too, but Dad held them off. Not until I had an album ready, was Dad’s explanation.

  “Gotta get that album recorded, son!” Dad started up one Sunday at the dinner table while “Mental Maniac” still topped the charts. “You’re hot now. They’d snap up your album in an instant, if we had one to put out there! Can’t you speed things up a bit?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t have the tunes. I don’t want to release something that will humiliate me for years.”

  “Paul, your music is great! You don’t have one bum tune in your whole repertoire!” Dad looked from me to Terry to Drew. He frowned at Drew. “Let’s go through your notebook.”

  I dismissed the notebook with a wave of my hand. “It’s all so much adolescent bullshit!” I complained. Actually, it was my third music diary. Dad had placed the other two spiral notebooks in a safe deposit box in the bank in Valhalla.

  Dad disagreed. “It’s all great stuff, Paul. I don’t understand what your problem is.”

  “It’s all shit, and I don’t want to record any of it!” I shrieked, reeling on the verge of hysteria. I calmed down almost immediately, when I stopped to listen to myself. I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “Listen,” I said, in a more diplomatic tone, “I know what I’m looking for. I nee
d to write some hot dance tunes. I want to build an album around those, not “Mental Maniac.”

  My father sighed and looked at Maman, who shrugged in response. “The worst thing,” he remarked to no one in particular, “is that, in the studio, Paul is a perfectionist, just like his Uncle Rob.” This made Drew laugh. “No kidding!” Dad continued, “I’ll be dead before his first album ever gets released. No kidding!”

  Having a #1 hit didn’t affect me much. Except maybe that I didn’t play at Ziggy’s for free anymore. Even on jam nights, when my band and I sat in, Dad made Ziggy pay us top dollar. We usually spent all day in the studio and, at night, weren’t much interested in playing music. Ziggy worked out a schedule where we played there once or twice a month on weekend nights, and he advertised those nights that we were under contract to perform. We always played to a packed house at Ziggy’s after that.

  Even if I had the tunes together to record, we probably couldn’t have gotten it together. Jeff and Jade were in constant demand to sit in with other bands that were recording in New York. Terry, Daniel, and I usually resisted such offers, but Jeff and Jade enjoyed hanging out in the studio with other musicians. Then I went to LA for almost two months in early ’88 to help Robbie record his first album, which was a modest commercial success, although not as successful as my single was the year before.

  The summer of ’88 rolled by without us recording anything worth releasing. We went to the studio on the top floor of Dizzy’s brownstone nearly every day and worked, with Dad and Maman at the sound boards, but I wasn’t satisfied with anything that we recorded. I was sure it was the music. The tunes weren’t hot enough. Well, maybe a couple were okay, but I had bigger plans for my first album.

  It wasn’t until we were in France, right after Thanksgiving in ’88, that I began to compose some songs that I was really excited about. Actually, I wrote them with Terry. The two of us holed ourselves up in the basement in Anjoie one day, while I played the same phrase over and over again on the piano. By evening, “Fighting Fire” had taken shape. I was so turned on that I couldn’t keep my hands and mouth off Terry’s body.

  At two or so in the morning, when the house was deadly quiet, I broke all rules and made love to Terry on the floor of the basement. Never had we dared to mess around with the family in the house before, but I was in a mood to celebrate. And, besides, I loved Terry, really loved him. And I wore Terry’s ring on my scrotum to prove it.