Guilty Little Secret

by F M Land

  At Robbie’s, Dizzy got out of the car, pulled his bag from the trunk, shook hands with Ken, and hugged me. Then he remarked, “Now all you need is to find someone to drive you back to the city.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I told him.

  “I’ve no doubt! Hey, it was nice talking to you both!” He barked a short laugh. “Call if you want to go to the beach together, or something.” Dizzy winked and headed for Robbie’s house.

  We didn’t call Dizzy all weekend. We didn’t even leave our hotel suite, until it was time for Ken to return to the airport. In those two days, we attempted to make up for the week we’d been separated. The intensity of feelings between us was frightening. I was frightened. I barely slept when Ken did, afraid that I’d wake up and somehow find Ken gone. The second day we went nearly 24 hours without sleeping.

  At one point, Ken fingered the ring on my scrotum. “Do you belong to Terry?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Why do you still wear his rings?” His blue eyes gazed into mine.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think about it.”

  “Can we take them out? Let’s make a statement: it’s the end of Terry, the beginning of Ken.”

  I didn’t hesitate to let Ken unfasten the ring in my ear and the one in my scrotum. He did it gently, carefully, watching my eyes the whole time. We made love after that, sweet, tender, intense love. I don’t know what happened to the earrings. By morning they were nowhere in sight.

  We made plans to meet the following weekend in Chicago. That way we cut Ken’s flying time down a bit. The weekend after that, Ken was on call on Saturday, but I planned to fly home anyway for my mother’s birthday. All I had to do was survive five lonely nights by myself before seeing Ken again.

  Even so, I wept like crazy when Ken left. I couldn’t even start my car at the airport, I was sobbing so hard. The rest of the week I was morose when I wasn’t in the studio. Even in the studio, I was quiet and detached. My performance was competent enough, but I didn’t put all my energy into it.

  Dad called every night to see how I was faring. He never neglected to ask about Ken. It was Dad, actually, who planted the idea of marriage in my head. “When I was just about your age,” Dad told me, “I met your mother. And when I met Justine, I knew that I had to have her. And to keep her, I knew that I had to marry her. When you find the right person, Paulie, it doesn’t matter how old you are, you take steps to keep that bod around.”

  In Chicago, I broached the subject with Ken. I waited until we were in bed, until we lay exhausted from our lovemaking. I waited until I was holding Ken, a relaxed, placid Ken, before I talked about it.

  I kissed Ken’s ear. “Did you and Gerald get married?” I asked Ken, my heart thumping in my chest.

  Ken gave me a quizzical look, then shook his head. “No. Gerald went downhill pretty fast after I moved in with him. We never had enough time.”

  “Did you talk about it?”

  “In the beginning, before I moved in. But Gerald became almost totally mentally incompetent within two months of my moving in. It was frightening! I was left with a shell, a shell of a man whom I loved dearly. It was a fucking nightmare, really. I’d work all day at the hospital and come home to another round of playing doctor.”

  I gazed at my lover, filled with admiration. “What did you do during the day, when you were working? Could you leave him alone?”

  “No. No, I couldn’t. I hired an orderly to stay with him while I worked.” Tears sprang to Ken’s eyes as he recalled the last months of Gerald’s life.

  “Wow!” I breathed. “It must have been awful!”

  His eyes on mine, Ken nodded. “Some days, Gerald would be perfectly lucid, just like his old self, for a brief period of time. Those days were the most painful, to have to watch him get sucked back into that shell. It was awful! God!” Ken buried his wet face in the crook of my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I’m so, so sorry, Ken.” I tried to think of something to say that might make Ken feel better. “He was lucky to have you, Ken. You stuck with him ‘til the end.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t know. Towards the end, he didn’t recognize anyone. He asked me my name once and told me he was glad to meet me!”

  I felt sad then, too. Very sad. “But he knew, deep down, he knew you were there.”

  Ken shrugged, but didn’t reply.

  “‘In sickness and in health,’” I quipped. “What a great spouse you were, Ken!” I hesitated, sucking in my breath slowly. Then I said it, “The kind of spouse I want to have.” I gazed at Ken meaningfully.

  “Now, Paul, don’t go talking about marriage yet. We’ve only known each other a few weeks.”

  Suddenly, my lips seemed to acquire a life all their own. They quivered convulsively, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.

  Ken, when he saw my lips quivering, swooped over and pressed his lips to mine. He giggled as he kissed me. “I love you,” he told me. “I daydream all the time about marrying you, Paul, and spending the rest of my life with you. But let’s not rush into anything, okay? We barely know each other. We’ve never spent more than 48 hours together.”

  But, after that, the rest of the weekend, I talked endlessly of marriage. Ken succumbed to my relentless wedding chatter, and he, too, began to speak about me meeting his parents and the type of house he wanted to buy. We parted on Sunday evening, promising to call each other every day, Ken in the morning, me at night. We had only five days’ separation to endure before we’d be together in New York.

  When I returned to Robbie’s place after the weekend in Chicago, Robbie was delighted to see me. “I was afraid you might go back to New York with Ken, seeing how close you were to New York.”

  I bear-hugged my cousin playfully. “Nope, I wanted to come home to you, sweetheart!”

  “Uh ---” Robbie hesitated. “Terry wants you to call him.”

  “Terry? Did he call while I was gone?”

  Robbie blushed and shook his head. “No, I called him. ‘Shaking with Fever’ needs some elaborate percussion back-up, I decided. And Terry is the best percussionist around.”

  I wondered what Robbie had in mind. I also wondered what Terry must be thinking, with Robbie calling out of the blue like that. “Did he ask for me?” I asked.

  “No, he knew you were in Chicago. He did ask if you knew what I had in mind. And I said that, no, you didn’t.”

  “And?”

  Robbie fixed his dramatic Fremont eyes on mine. “He wants you to call him, to see what you think.”

  My heart went into a tailspin. I hadn’t talked to Terry in two weeks, since that Sunday when Terry refused to speak to me. I’d been afraid to call Terry, afraid that Terry would humiliate me further by refusing to talk. And now Terry wanted me to call him? “Are you sure he wants me to call?” I asked my cousin.

  “He said, ‘Tell Paul to give me a call tonight.’”

  I glanced at the clock. It was eight o’clock. Eleven o’clock in New York. I reached for the phone and dialed Terry’s number. Then I waved Robbie away. I wanted to talk in private.

  Terry answered the phone on the first ring. “Hello?”

  The sound of Terry’s voice caused a funny echo in my chest. I was transported back to a time when only Terry’s voice could soothe a scraped knee or wounded feelings. I knew that no one loved me like Terry did, not even Ken. So unnerved was I by that realization that I stammered my response. “T-t-t-terry?”

  “Paul.” Not Paulie, but Paul. Paulie would never exist again for Terry, and we both knew it. Terry said it warmly enough, though: “Paul.”

  We chatted briefly about what Terry had been up to, and I, too, without ever mentioning Ken. Then we talked about “Shaking with Fever.” About what Robbie wanted to do with it. Then Terry asked me if I wanted him to fly out.

  “I’d love to see you,” I assured him. “It would be nice to have an ally in the studio!”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “One of
the singers in Robbie’s band has it in her head that I can be cured of homosexuality.”

  Terry laughed heartily. “A little pussy cure, huh?”

  I laughed, too. “Yeh.” Then I added, “Why don’t you come out this week? We could fly back together on Friday for Mom’s birthday.”

  I left the studio early afternoon the next day to meet Terry at LAX. Terry had refused to stay at Robbie’s, insisting that Robbie put him up in a primo suite at the Plaza. So the game plan was for me to drop Terry off at the hotel and then return to the studio. But the game didn’t proceed as planned.

  Perhaps the first sign of trouble was when Ken called that morning, and I didn’t mention to Ken that Terry was flying out that afternoon. Perhaps another bad sign was the anticipation that crept under my skin, and down under my jeans, as I waited for Terry’s jet to arrive. Perhaps it was the way I caught my breath when Terry walked through the gate. The way Terry looked, his bright red hair spiked fashionably. How incredibly gorgeous Terry looked.

  We hugged briefly and went directly to the car. Terry’s luggage would be delivered later, so we didn’t have to mess with that. We spoke little as we drove to the hotel. We didn’t touch. But we seemed to have the same idea.

  At the hotel, a valet approached my car. “Shall I park this for you?”

  I looked at Terry, who met my eye briefly before turning to look out the window. “Yes,” I replied. “Thanks!” I tucked a twenty into the man’s gloved hand and stepped out of the car.

  Robbie’s manager had given me the keys to Terry’s suite right before I left for the airport. I showed the key and room number to the valet, then I held them out to Terry. Our fingers touched. I imagined that I saw sparks fly between our fingertips.

  Once behind the locked door of Terry’s suite, we moved to each other, me nearly crushing Terry in my furious passion. The wheels that always spun when I was with Terry began to turn, faster and faster, until I was gasping and screaming and thrusting against Terry’s body. There was no peace after that, only the unrelenting cry in my heart to merge with Terry again and again.

  Around midnight we began to talk about love. About our love. It was undeniable. It was indestructible. We agreed that we should come out about it. If Robbie knew, then Drew had to be told. I finally understood that we were being unfair to everyone, including ourselves, by hiding it.

  I never thought about Ken once until we were in the studio the next morning. The studio always made me think about Ken, but that morning I was in too good a mood to be depressed by the attitudes of the people in the studio. It was Robbie who brought up Ken’s name.

  “Ken called this morning,” Robbie told me when we were out of Terry’s earshot. “He wanted to speak with you.”

  “What did you tell him?” Suddenly my heart began to knock against my ribcage.

  “I didn’t talk to him. Elena did. She told him that you disappeared after you went to pick up Terry at the airport yesterday.”

  I felt like slugging Robbie. “Fuck, Robbie! That’s just great!”

  “I’m sorry, man, really. I gave Elena a talking to. She feels terrible, too.”

  “I bet,” I sniffed. I turned to find Terry gazing at me across the room. Smiling weakly, I crossed the room to him.

  Terry knew immediately what was wrong. “Ken called?”

  “Yeh, Miss Hot Pants, over there,” I nodded toward Elena, “told him I was with you.”

  Terry’s eyes studied my face intently. “He knows about us?”

  I nodded. “He guessed. The earrings, you know? And your hostility.”

  “Jealousy,” Terry murmured. “My jealousy, and now his jealousy. How can you deal with it?”

  “I can’t. And I won’t. I plan to marry Ken. But I intend to keep on loving you, just like we did last night. Shit, if other people can do it, why can’t we?”

  Chuckling, Terry squeezed my shoulder. “Somehow I don’t think Ken is secure enough for that sort of arrangement.”

  “And Drew?”

  “Drew will accept it, I’m sure of that. But Ken will never go along with it, I’ll bet you anything. Name your price!”

  It was great to have Terry in the studio with me again. Terry’s congas and bongos added the zip that Robbie was looking for. That first day, we finished recording the tune. Robbie was delighted. He began to consider other tunes where he could use Terry’s help with the percussion.

  Even better was our time together in the evening. One night we drove to Mexico to look for a birthday present for Maman, but usually we stayed in at night, enjoying each other, the way we used to, before Drew had his first heart attack. For the first time in months, Terry was able to relax and not fret about Drew. He called Drew every evening at Valhalla, where Drew was staying with Dad and Maman until Terry returned. And, when Terry hung up, he melted into my arms, stripped of his worries about Drew. I, on the other hand, talked to Ken but once that whole week. I phoned on Tuesday night, when I returned to Terry’s suite after a long day in the studio. I was exhausted, and I probably should have waited until I’d eaten. But I wanted to talk to Ken, to set things right with him.

  But, Ken was in no mood to talk, especially when he learned that Terry was in the room with me. He was not interested in my explanations. To my irritation, he wouldn’t even make plans for the upcoming weekend or tell me that he loved me. His voice was cold, his manner almost menacing.

  “Listen,” I told him, with exaggerated patience, “you’ll have to get used to sharing me. If you love me and want to be with me, that’s just the way it has to be.”

  “Bullshit!” was Ken’s response.

  “No, listen, Ken, I’m not going to stop loving Terry, ever. I was stupid to think that I could. But, I love you, too, Ken, in a different ---”

  Click, boom, dial tone. Ken hung up on me. And he slammed down the receiver whenever I telephoned him that week. I tried not to let it bother me. Terry did his best to take my mind off Ken’s refusal to communicate. In my naïve way, I was convinced that Ken loved me as much as I loved him and that he would change his mind about everything once we were together again.

  Our last night in Los Angeles was unquestionably hot. In a private ceremony, just Terry and me, meant to bond us together for life, we placed identical earrings, Mexican onyx studs from a matched pair, into each other’s ears. Terry placed my new earring in the empty hole in my left earlobe where Terry’s original engraved loop used to be. Under Terry’s direction, I pierced Terry’s left ear about a half inch above the diamond stud that I had given him a year earlier. Then I slipped the onyx earring into that new hole. I kissed the diamond, then the onyx, then whispered into Terry’s left ear that I loved him. It was all fireworks after that.

  Drew, alone, met us at the airport. Dad and Maman were home in Valhalla, busy preparing for Justine’s birthday fête. Of course, the first thing Drew noticed was Terry’s new earring. He fingered it gingerly, careful not to hurt the swollen ear. He raised his eyes to Terry’s. “What does this mean?” He turned to look meaningfully at the earring in my left ear.

  Full of pride, I answered, “It’s a reaffirmation.”

  “Reaffirmation?” Drew looked back at Terry, confusion reigning in his eyes.

  I answered again. “A reaffirmation of our love. We decided to come out of the closet about it.” I practically crowed, I was that happy to have our secret out.

  Drew blanched. He reached blindly for the handle of the car door. “Let’s talk about it in private,” he suggested quietly. “You drive.” He handed the car keys to Terry. A strained look passed between them.

  Terry let me do most of the talking. We’d rehearsed it pretty well, what we were going to say, and how. I started from the beginning, about the trip to New Orleans, about how I seduced Terry. We wanted to tell Drew everything. He deserved to know. Terry assured Drew that he’d wanted to tell him from the beginning. I backed him up, saying that I was afraid to tell anyone, afraid of what Drew might think, or what my father might think.


  “Who knows?” Drew asked. “Does anyone know?” He sounded shaken.

  I caught Terry’s eye in the rear view mirror. Things were not going as we planned. Drew did not appear to be taking it well. I answered, “Not many people, actually. The guys in the band.”

  “What band?”

  “Mine. You know, Jade, Jeff, and Daniel.”

  “God,” Drew intoned.

  “Robbie.”

  Terry nodded and smiled at me in the mirror.

  I continued, “And Ken.”

  “And Justine,” Terry added. He reached out and squeezed Drew’s hand.

  Drew seemed to choke. With a jerk of his head, he turned to gaze out his window. “What about Davy?” His voice was muffled.

  “No,” Terry answered. “Dizzy neither.”

  “Let’s not bring this up at dinner tonight, please.”

  Silence. No one spoke for a long time after that. I watched the highway signs.

  “Here!” I called to Terry. “Take this exit! Take the George Washington Bridge. I want to stop at Ken’s on the way to Valhalla, maybe bring him with us.”

  “Call him at home,” Terry replied.

  “No, I want to see him in person. He’ll hang up on me if I call.”

  Drew snickered but didn’t say a word. With a sigh, Terry turned off onto 95. It was early evening, and I figured that Ken would be home. Following another tenant through the security door, I entered Ken’s building without buzzing up to his apartment.

  I hesitated at Ken’s door, gathering all the courage I could muster, before ringing the bell. The doorbell brought Ken quickly to the door. He nearly slammed the door in my face when he saw me, but I overpowered him and forced my way inside.

  “Get out!” Ken hissed. His face was almost unrecognizable in his rage.

  Then I saw him, the dark-skinned man in the navy blue suit, sitting on Ken’s sofa, a wine glass in his hand. Horrified, I looked from the stranger in Ken’s living room to Ken. My face must have belied my alarm, for Ken reached out to touch my arm. I looked down at the hand on my arm and then up at the hand’s owner, into his magnificent blue eyes. “You’re busy,” I observed. “Sorry to bother you.”