by Drew Hunt
He was soon dragged away. “Uh, that wasn’t a very smart move,” the guy said, with menace in his voice.
“Fuck you!”
He was rewarded by both players using him as an impromptu punching bag. Mason fought back as best he could, but soon realized he was out numbered and out muscled.
Mason was only vaguely aware of subsequent events.
He could later recall being dragged out of the van into a grassed clearing, trees surrounding them on all sides. He looked round to see if Parker was present, though couldn’t decide if he was happy or sad that he wasn’t there.
The increased space afforded the four athletes greater freedom of movement. They were able to use their feet as well as their fists to whale on him. Mason, now in a fog of constant pain, felt a couple of his ribs breaking, the sharp pain making breathing very difficult.
All the time he was being worked over, he could hear, though it sounded as though it were from a great distance, a series of comments about how they were “giving him what he deserved,” and “fags needed to be taught a lesson.”
Mason had no idea how long his torture lasted. He slowly became aware that the blows and kicks had ceased. Then he got the feeling of being carried. He didn’t care much where, he was hoping the fuzzy blanket of unconsciousness would go ahead and cover him.
He heard the van’s engine starting up before they slowly began to move off. The unevenness of the terrain resulted in him bouncing about on the floor, hitting his already injured head.
Passing in and out of consciousness, Mason heard the two guys in back arguing.
“You went too fucking far, man…He’s not moving…What we gonna do with him, did you think of that, asshole? Oh, fuck, we’re in deep shit.”
Mason had no sense of time. He felt himself being lifted, but wasn’t the van still moving? Cold air…increased road noise…brief sensation of flying…dull pain of impact…numbness.
Chapter 6
Pill Hill—Portland, OR, July 2005
“You guys okay down there?” the maintenance man shouted from the top of the elevator shaft.
“How long are we gonna be stuck in here?” Parker bent his head back and asked loudly.
He and Mason had been trapped in the elevator car for over twenty minutes, while the guy from maintenance tried to diagnose the problem.
“Uh, I can’t find out what’s wrong. I called the elevator engineers.”
“And?”
“They’re not sure, either.”
“Jesus Christ,” Parker muttered.
“They said they’d send someone out.”
“How long’s that gonna take?”
“Uh, well, could be a couple hours.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Parker slammed his fist into the metal wall of the elevator car.
“No, Parker! No!” Mason screamed. In that instant he was transported back thirteen years. Unwelcome images of Parker slamming his fist into his locker and shouting those self-same words echoed round Mason’s head. He began to tremble violently, as mental flashbacks of his beating at the hands of the football team crowded his mind.
Parker spun to face Mason. “What? How come you know my…”
Even through his terror, Mason was able to see the dawning light of recognition appear on Parker’s face. “Mason? Is…are you…?” He moved toward the wheelchair.
“No!” Mason brought up his arms defensively.
“Mase, I…” Parker shook his head and moved closer.
“Help!” Mason screamed.
Parker halted. The car fell silent, save for Mason’s heavy breathing.
“What’s going on down there?” the maintenance man asked.
Mason couldn’t answer, his mind was locked.
“You guys okay?”
“We’re okay,” Parker shouted up. “Don’t worry, nobody’s hurt.”
Parker stared at Mason, his eyes raking along his body. “I, uh…It’s really you. Oh, man.” Parker slid down the wall of the elevator car and sat down. Mason felt a little easier.
“Why did you disappear?” Parker eventually asked, breaking the silence that had fallen between them.
“I…” Mason didn’t know what to say.
“I know I really screwed up when I said what I did that morning.”
Mason laughed, but it wasn’t through amusement.
“I guess you still hate me. Can’t say I blame you.” Parker’s face fell.
The two sat, just looking at one another. Mason believed he’d dealt with the whole Parker episode. He thought he’d forgiven him, but seeing him now, he wasn’t so sure. Part of him still loved the man, while another part hated him for all he’d done to hurt him and ruin his life.
Parker reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. Unfolding it he looked at the contents. “Hey, I never made the connection before. I’ve got an appointment to see a Dr. M. Simon Grant. Fuck, that’s you, isn’t it?”
Mason nodded. Why would Parker be coming to see him professionally? Mason was an infectious disease specialist. Although his field was quite varied, the majority of his patients in the Portland area were gay men who had contracted HIV. Mason’s eyes widened. Not his Parker, his beautiful Parker, it couldn’t be. Mason shook his head, Parker had long ceased to be his.
“Guess you’ve figured it out.” Parker said, scrutinizing his shoes. “I got the bad news a couple months back.”
“I’m sorry,” Mason said, before his cell phone started ringing. “Excuse me,” he said to Parker before flipping the phone open. “Maggie?”
“Dr. Grant, your first appointment was fifteen minutes ago, but…”
“Yes, sorry. I meant to call you earlier. The elevator has broken down with me trapped in it.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Would you reschedule my appointments? Mr. Parker Collins is in the car with me.”
After explaining he could be trapped for some time, Mason ended the call.
The car fell silent. Mason, feeling he had to say something, anything, asked, “What’s been happening to you these past thirteen years?” He was alarmed to realize he could have added, And three months, eleven days.
Parker sighed, “Jeez, where do I start?”
Mason was now in full doctor mode. He just waited for Parker to tell his story in his own words, and at his own pace.
“It probably won’t surprise you that much of my adult life I’ve been too fucking chicken to admit what or who I am.”
Still with the pity party. Some things never change, Mason thought, but maintained a well-practiced neutral expression.
“I got a football scholarship and went to college, but then you might know that because your dad was one of my professors. Hey, why didn’t he ever tell me anything, apart from that you’d gone to college out of state?”
Mason wasn’t ready to answer any of Parker’s questions, so he asked some of his own. “What happened after college? Did you practice law like you wanted to?”
“I met this girl, her dad was a senior partner in a law firm, and, well, uh…We got married.”
Mason stayed passive. He wasn’t altogether surprised. Saddened, but not surprised. “Go on,” he said calmly.
“Well, uh, I got a job in her daddy’s firm, passed the bar exam and was starting to climb the ladder. But…”
Mason could imagine what the but was, though he was determined not to interrupt.
“We had a couple of kids, boy and a girl, but…”
Again Mason stayed quiet.
“Being married wasn’t easy.”
There’s a surprise, Mason thought.
“Well, uh, I started using the Internet. I visited different chat rooms where I could chat with other men who were like me.”
Mason nodded.
“That helped a lot, but just talking to people who understood only went so far, you know? Shit, I’m not proud of this,” Parker mumbled. “But, well, I’d visit adult bookstores, even public restrooms and… Well you know.”
/> The venom in Mason’s voice surprised even him. “You could never stick to just one partner when I knew you, so it’s no surprise that nothing has changed.” Mason didn’t care that his mode of questioning wouldn’t be approved of by the state medical board.
“You’re right. I’ve had a crappy life. I’m a fucking worthless piece of shit. When Sue found out, I lost everything. The job, the house, my marriage, access to my kids. Then when I found out I’d gotten the plague, I…”
“It’s always been about you! Please feel sorry for me, I’ve had such a crappy life. Well, fuck you, here’s a newsflash. Your life has been a hell of a lot easier than mine.” Mason banged his fist on the arm of his wheelchair. “Whatever went wrong in your life was your own doing. I can’t fucking say the same about mine.”
“Sorry,” Parker said in a small voice.
“Ha, that’s rich!” Mason spat. “Tell me, Parker, which parts are you most sorry for? Outing me to the whole fucking school, or setting your football buds on me, beating me to within an inch of my life, then tossing me out of a delivery van, breaking my spine?”
Parker’s face went white. He opened and closed his mouth, but no sound came out.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’m sorry for. I’m sorry I stuck with you for the six months we were together. No, scrub that. I’m sorry I kept taking you back after you kept shitting on me.”
“I’m sorry, Mase.” Parker buried his head in his hands.
“I fucking bet you are! I’m also sorry I went to all the trouble of building a dream life for us. You remember that trip to the cabin I’d planned for our six month anniversary? The one you couldn’t go on because you had to be with your latest beard?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Is that all you can fucking say? Well, you’re not fucking half as sorry as I am.” Mason paused in his vitriolic outpouring to draw breath. “Because if you hadn’t outted me and got your buddies to try and kill me you’d have gone to the cabin and been given that special surprise I’d been planning, a full ride scholarship I’d talked dad into arranging for you.”
“But, how…”
Mason put up a hand to stop Parker interrupting. “It didn’t even end there. Because I was fucking stupid enough to love you and wanted to make our life as good as I could, I’d gone out and contacted several realtors. They’d given me a list of off-campus apartments that we could go look at. I’d persuaded mom and dad to pay for a four year lease for whichever place we liked the most.”
“No! Stop it! I can’t hear any more!” Parker clenched his fists and beat them on his skull.
“Yeah. I’m so fucking sorry that I was dumb enough to love you enough to do all that for you. For us.”
For several minutes the only noise in the elevator was Parker’s heavy breathing.
“You said something about being beaten up by some guys on the team?” Parker asked once he’d gotten a hold of himself.
“Yeah,” Mason too had had a chance to calm down.
“I swear, Mason I don’t know a thing about that. I promise on my kids’ lives that I don’t.”
Looking at the sincere and pleading expression on Parker’s face, Mason was beginning to believe him.
“What happened?” Parker asked softly.
Mason closed his eyes. “After school I was ambushed by four members of the football team. They hustled me into a small delivery van, took me to some woods somewhere and kicked the crap out of me.”
“Oh, God.”
“My memories of what happened are sketchy. The EMTs told me they found me on a road in the middle of nowhere. The injuries I sustained were consistent with landing on my back after being thrown from a moving vehicle.”
“Oh, Christ, Mase, no!”
Mason had told the story so many times, he was able to continue in a dispassionate flat monotone. “It seems my injuries were too severe for the local hospital in Crawford to deal with. So I was air-lifted to Seattle.
“My spine suffered trauma at L4 and L5.” He pointed to his side to indicate the height of the injury. “Though I’ve got some feeling below this, it’s, uh… Well, I won’t bore you with all the medical crap.” People tended not to want the gritty details about his condition.
“My right leg was broken in three places, my left femur suffered a single fracture. Then there were the broken ribs, the trauma to my left cheekbone as well as innumerable contusions which covered most of my body.”
“Oh, my God. Mase. I had no idea about any of this. I swear to you I didn’t.”
Parker made to rise to offer comfort, but Mason fended him away. Parker began to pace the confines of the metal box.
“For months I had no memory of what happened. The cops kept visiting me, but I couldn’t tell them anything. When I started to get flashbacks, I remembered there had been four of them and only one of me. I figured they’d have had plenty of time to create alibis for each other. I knew it’d be my word against theirs. So I never told the cops anything.
“Who did it, Mase?” Parker asked. He sounded calm, but Mason knew better.
“It’s not important now. It happened a long time ago.”
“Fuck!” Parker punched the side of the elevator car. This time Mason didn’t react. “I bet it was Henry Livingstone, he was always such a fucking asshole.”
“I thought Henry was your best friend on the team, and no, Henry wasn’t involved.”
“Who did it, Mase? I wanna rip their fucking heads off.”
If anything, Parker’s desire for vengeance helped Mason to think more kindly about his former lover. He reached out and took hold of Parker’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Parker squeezed back before disengaging and head-butting the metal wall.
“Those fucking bastards are gonna pay for what they’ve done to you. When I…” Parker began pacing again, thumping his fist into his palm.
“What’s the point? You’d only end up going to prison and…” Shaking his head, Mason continued, “A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then.”
“Honestly, Mase, I swear I didn’t know anything about any of this.”
“I believe you. For a long time I cast you as the devil, the sole cause for all that was wrong in my life. Why didn’t you come see me? Why’d you stay away?
“What? But I tried to. I all but camped out on your driveway, but your folks wouldn’t ever tell me anything apart from that you’d left town and weren’t coming back.”
“Shit! God. That was my fault. I told mom and dad not to tell you where I was or what had happened to me.”
“Why not? Mase, I was fucking going out of my mind. All I knew was that I’d outted you and you disappeared,” Parker snapped his fingers, “just vanished into thin air.”
It was Mason’s turn to say, “I’m sorry.” He began to think about the consequences of his actions. If he hadn’t frozen Parker out, he would have learned years earlier that Parker hadn’t been responsible for his attack.
“I guess we both made bad calls. You for outing me, and me for pulling away and not wanting to see you.”
“Not a day has gone by that I haven’t beaten myself up over what I did. As soon as I’d calmed down I realized the full implications. I didn’t think you’d want to see me, so I skipped classes.”
“I wondered where you’d gone. I thought it was you not wanting to see me.”
“Oh, fuck. No, Mase, never. Fuck, it’s all my fault.” Parker slumped to the floor, pulled in his knees and lowered his head.
Mason moved his chair in front of Parker and put a hand on his shoulder.
“We both screwed up. We were young, inexperienced, and…”
“You always had it together, though,” Parker sniffed. He took hold of Mason’s hands. Looking directly into Mason’s eyes, Parker said, “Mase, there’s one thing I regret more than anything else about those days. I never told you that I loved you.”
Mason closed his eyes.
“I was too scared, too stupid to…”
“
I won’t pretend that it didn’t hurt when you couldn’t love me the same way I loved you.”
“I did love you. Please, you have to believe me.” Tilting his head upward, Parker raised his voice and said, “Hey, bud, you still there?”
A couple of seconds passed before the maintenance man confirmed his presence.
“Fourteen years ago I had the great honor of being the boyfriend of Mason Grant. Up until today I never told him that I loved him. I need you to hear me say it.” Looking down at Mason, but still speaking loudly, Parker said, “I know this is way overdue, but I promise with hand on heart,” Parker moved his right palm over his heart, “that I loved you from the first day I kissed you in your parents’ hot tub.”
Mason stared up at Parker. He was astonished he’d said what he had.
“Did you hear what I said, bud?
“Uh, yeah. Congratulations, I guess.”
“Wow,” Mason eventually said. Never did he imagine that Parker, paranoid, scared-to-be-labeled-as-gay, Parker would ever make such a declaration, and in such a public way, too.
“I know it doesn’t…can’t mean anything now, but…I’d promised myself that if ever I met you again I’d do what I just did.”
“Thank you.” Mason didn’t know what else to say.
The two went quiet, Mason in his chair, Parker looking down at him.
“So, uh,” Mason said to break the silence. “You said you lost your job. I assume you found another, what with the nice suit.”
“This,” Parker said, brushing at his pants, “was one of the things I managed to salvage from the house before Sue sent everything to Goodwill.” He sighed. “Her kicking me out of the house and me losing my job was just the start. I soon realized the word had gone out and no law firm in the Pacific north-west would hire me. It’s true what they say about hell having no fury like a woman scorned. Sue and her bitch of a mother have taken that to a whole new level.”
“I’m sorry.” Mason really was, he wasn’t just saying it.
“Thanks. So I had to settle for a post at the Public Defender’s office here in Portland. They’re so desperate for trained lawyers, they’ll take anyone.”
“Please, Parker, don’t put yourself down. I’m sure you were…are good at what you do.”
