Benediction

by Arnold, Jim

  It turned out to be both. He rented a nice cabin with a hot tub on some leafy canyon road just west of the town of Guerneville.

  The town had long lost its luster as a premier gay destination. One of the few honest American geographical casualties of AIDS, the sylvan retreat had peaked about 1983 or so, then absolutely crashed as the generation of gay men who’d made it popular began to disappear.

  * * *

  Before we arrived, someone had tacked up a notice that a convicted sex offender—one Randy Earl Scoggins—had just moved into the neighborhood, and in fact, the address suggested he was at a house a few doors up from the one we’d taken. Randy’s mug shot reminded me of nineteenth-century postmortem photographs of killers like Jesse James or John Wilkes Booth: Randy Earl was hot.

  I checked the locks, which seemed to be adequate. This was an area where most residents had drugs and guns, an interesting sociological counterpoint to the incredible beauty of the redwood canopy.

  * * *

  Jake fucked me in the hot tub the first afternoon we were there. Despite my dalliances in parks with Eric and my little sex-for-pay detour with “Ray,” I considered myself fairly conventional—at least for an urban gay man—in keeping most sexual behavior confined to my bed. When Jake suggested it, I couldn’t think of a good reason why not, and that’s how it happened I was bent over the rim of this swirling mass of hot bubbles with my face in a fern.

  It had recently rained—of course—so the earthy smell that filled my nose was entirely appropriate. The air was cool and I had goose bumps on my arms and shoulders, which would momentarily subside each time Jake would massage me there, which he was doing in a vaguely circular, soothing motion. I wondered about the integrity of his rubber in the chlorinated water and suddenly tightened up on him, causing him to fall out.

  “What’s wrong?” he whispered.

  “I don’t want the condom to fall off in this water.” I hoped I didn’t sound like a panicky bottom, though this was terrain we’d visited a number of times, sero-discordant as we were.

  He grabbed my shoulders, turned me around in one violent twist and, with no humor whatsoever, lectured me. “Do you think for one minute I’d let anything happen to you or possibly hurt you in any way? I’d know in a split second if it came off.”

  “I didn’t mean that you’d do anything; I was just—”

  “Jesus, Ben, you don’t trust me.” The romantic light that had filtered through the redwoods just minutes before was gone, and now the ravine beyond our gurgling circle of water was dark and forbidding. Jake’s face had turned gloomy and disappointed as well. I hadn’t meant to stop our sex and certainly hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings.

  He let go, pulled the rubber off his cock and held it up in front of my face for a second, then tossed it over my head, where it landed and stuck on the bark of a nearby fir tree. He stepped out of the tub, wrapped himself in a towel and walked back down the path into the darkness.

  “It’s too cold out here now,” he said, without looking at me.

  * * *

  Despite neither one of us being a stickler for tradition, it did happen that Christmas fell on one of the days we were at the Russian River. What probably would have been a dreamy, misty fantasy for others turned into an uneasy ordeal. Since the episode in the hot tub, we’d become wary of getting in each other’s way, as when you see someone coming one way in a room and you take the opposite route around a table, pretending you were headed that way all along. Sometimes we were overly accommodating and other times I felt the resentment welling up from such a deep place it concerned me.

  There could be—there would be—a post-Jake world where I’d be either dead or impotent and scarred. I watched him from behind when he couldn’t see me, like when he checked his e-mail on the laptop we’d brought, and I could focus on that soft and vulnerable place on the back of his neck, where the deep creases in the skin actually made a big, stretched-out X that I loved to trace with my tongue or my nose when we spooned.

  That was the beautiful fantasy Jake of gauzy, still pictures in my head, the sensual man of curiously fragrant incense and Yerba Buena good earth. The flesh-and-blood Jake of the real world had a strong will that opposed mine more than half the time.

  We’d picked up a little tree at the Safeway in town and had managed—or he had managed—to make it pretty enough to be displayed in a corner bay window high up in Pacific Heights.

  The rain never stopped, so our other planned activities of hiking Sonoma County hills and glens, the hot tub, walking Main Street, and basically anything outside ended and we were left in this sexless existence with a fire and the damn Christmas tree for consolation.

  After two days I got cabin fever and demanded we go somewhere, anywhere.

  * * *

  Jake drove west down Highway 16, and we pulled in at the Empire Forest Resort, one of the huge gay places that had barely survived the plague years and was still popular, except that nobody “normal” came to the river in winter. Holiday bells attached to the doorknob brought the snoozy bear of a clerk out from the back as we walked in.

  “Afternoon, gentlemen; looking for a cabin?”

  “Well, no, actually.” Jake said. “We’re staying over in the town and wondered if we could look around the place.”

  His face fell, but not like he was truly surprised. Perhaps this expression was relief. There’d be no credit card authorization to check, and he could go back to his nap. In my mind I saw a warm, hastily crocheted afghan in 1980s teal and brown, mugs of chocolate with real sugar and gingerbread cookies baked fresh.

  “Of course.” He pulled a hand-drawn map out from under the counter and thrust it at Jake. “Just watch the river—it’s rising from all this rain.”

  * * *

  We walked a loop around mostly deserted campsites. There were two tents set up on the grass and several trailers parked, with blue tarp awnings stretched over picnic areas. In one of the camper windows a small pink plastic tree with white flashing lights assaulted us. We weren’t the only clueless tourists—someone else had decided to spend the holidays in the cold and rainy woods—quite literally.

  The path dipped down to the river. Bear had been right: It rushed past us, the water winter gray as opposed to summer brown, high on its banks. The tethered rowboat stenciled “Empire Forest,” which probably usually lay on a thin, dirty sand beach, floated instead in an eddy near the shore.

  Jake took my hand and squeezed it, and we walked on silently back toward the main group of resort buildings. He didn’t say anything, so we didn’t have to argue about whatever it was that had sent the extra chill into our trip. I knew him well enough to know this little gesture meant his feelings weren’t gone.

  We passed the camp shower house. A light glowed inside, so I assumed it was unlocked, pressed into use for the resort’s few guests.

  “I have to take a leak. Wait for me?” I said, finally letting go of his hand.

  “Meet you back in that River Rat bar or whatever they’re calling it now,” he said, referring to part of the “entertainment complex” that fronted the road.

  Inside the showers it was dingy, and I walked right into a spider web that hung over a urinal. A white deodorizing lozenge recently had been placed in the drain. Its spicy fragrance overpowered me, the defining smell of camp, remembered from a boyhood spent in equally spider-ridden summer outhouses in the Wisconsin north woods.

  A breeze came up off the river, rustling the leaves on a live oak above me, whistling through the old wooden eaves. I unzipped and had begun to pee when I heard a hardly perceptible “yeah, man” from somewhere close by. A dark form, momentarily shapeless, leaned against the lower part of the far wall. A man squatted there.

  He scared me shitless.

  I jumped, lost my aim and pissed on the wall—not that anybody would notice.

  “Jesus Christ!” I gasped.

  “No, but a good guess. Why don’t you come over here?” he mumbled, loud enough for m
e to hear clearly.

  I couldn’t make out his features, but he didn’t move an inch.

  “You…OK?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I zipped up and made my way to the door and to the light, dim as it was.

  “Come on over here!” he said, more insistent this time.

  “Don’t think so, dude.” I was almost to the door, my boyfriend was waiting for me at the River Rat…

  “It’s not what you think. I’m not some tweaked-out winter camper, though it may appear that way to you,” he said. “It’s Bernard.”

  I bumped into the doorframe, which let loose some puddled water from the roof, which landed on my arm, soaking the new A&F flannel. I shivered.

  “What?”

  I was afraid to turn back and look.

  Bernard was one of my best buddies ever, a beautiful man who’d appeared to be irritatingly happy-go-lucky till the day two years earlier when he blew his brains out. I’d cried for a long, long time before my grief turned to anger. Eventually, that left, too, and I just assumed living with HIV for twenty years finally got to him.

  “You don’t believe me, but I got a secret,” he said, almost singing.

  “You’re right I don’t believe you, I don’t believe any of this fucking shit!” A truck rumbled by on the highway just beyond a stand of fir trees.

  “You saw Connie. Think that was an accident?” He started laughing.

  I still hadn’t told anyone about seeing my dead dog in two cities a continent apart. I wanted to run, grab Jake and drive as fast as I could all the way back to San Francisco and hide in my room.

  “It wasn’t an accident, Ben.” The dark shadow calling itself Bernard moved from side to side and then rose up along the privy wall.

  “How’d you know I saw Connie?” I clenched my fists and turned around to face whatever this was. From where I stood, this shadow could very well have been Bernard—several inches taller than me, blond, crooked smile, a Dennis-the-menace-meets-surfer-boy vibe even though he was well past forty.

  “We know you’re worried about this operation business.” He moved toward me, soundlessly, like he was floating, and when he passed under a shaft of light where some roof shingles had been blown away I saw that it was…Bernard.

  He’d interrupted my urination before, and now I peed in my pants.

  “Shit!” I crossed my legs and pressed my hand flat on my cock, stopping the flow, but I was already wet enough for any passerby to smirk.

  “I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to worry about it.” He looked down at my crotch and smiled. “You have other pants in your room, the brown ones.”

  “Yeah, well, I have to get from here to there. And what do you mean, ‘we know you’re worried’—who’s we?”

  Bernard floated to the right. He was still smiling as he disappeared through the outhouse wall. “Why, Connie, of course.”

  * * *

  Jake was surprisingly neutral about going back to the City a day earlier than planned. That last day, I wouldn’t let him out of my sight for more that a couple of minutes, chilly though it was between us. I followed him from room to room, trying not to make it too obvious. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. I’d said nothing about what I saw in the showers and had discreetly changed my pants. Bernard hadn’t made another appearance, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  9

  The operation was scheduled for Friday, January 11, which conveniently fell right at the end of the Consumer Electronics Show. This meant I’d be leaving Jason in charge, with Kelly helping out, and my trade show manager Amy Battaglia positioned to fend off any salvos coming from Paul Sutcliffe and his primary minion, Kristin.

  Paul had been rather quiet since the December trip to New York. In meetings he’d bring up a point here and there but didn’t seem to have the aggressive agenda my radar usually detected well before it would start. He’d acknowledge me with a cursory nod, never looking at me directly.

  This strategy of mutual avoidance worked great through the holidays but had to end as the show approached. Paul had the potential to become a cornered rat, and I knew how unpleasant that might be—after all, he couldn’t be so easily dispatched with the butt of a nearly empty mayonnaise jar.

  Our departments were charged with working together to promote Safe Harbor software lines to the grabby drunken hordes at the convention.

  My emphasis was to oversee that Safe Harbor corporate guidelines were adhered to, or at the very least ensure we were perceived as a classy operation. Paul’s emphasis was on selling as many software units as possible and on making as many side deals as he could to extend the “brand.”

  Predictably, he wanted more of his salespeople to come to the show and staff our booth than was really necessary. I took this as a simple ploy about strength in numbers. When we overstaffed shows, Safe Harbor’s software geniuses would invariably form tight little circles and chat among themselves, ignoring all but the most attractive young females, who inevitably were not potential customers but seemed to be casual employees of the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Bureau.

  Jason and Kelly and Amy knew about the cancer and the operation. I sensed genuine concern but also saw excitement, at least in Jason, when I told him he’d be in charge of the department during my month-long recovery.

  I was no stranger to young men and their desire to rule the world.

  I hoped loyalty would trump ambition.

  We all sat in one of Safe Harbor’s uncomfortably small and depressing gray conference rooms. There was that respectful silence one notices when one has informed others of an illness.

  “You’ll be OK once they take it out, right?” Kelly asked, finally.

  I detected a sideways, pleading look from Amy to Kelly. “Good question,” I said. “That’s the general theory—let’s hope it’s right.”

  Jason leaned in, his hands clasped tight. “We finished here, Ben? I got so much formatting and packing left before we leave—”

  “Christ, Jason,” Amy said. “Did you hear what he just said?”

  “No, Jason’s right. There’s enough of this; let’s get back to—”

  I pulled the vibrating phone out of my pocket—it was Eric. The staff left the room. My heart was in my throat, and for a moment I was Jason’s age, nothing but a limitless horizon in front of me with the knowledge I’d live forever. Then the buzzing stopped and the number disappeared from the tiny screen.

  * * *

  Karen called me and announced, “I want to screen Hell for the Holidays for all those wonderful friends of yours who donated their time and their talent to help you realize your dream.”

  We rented a screening room with a dark little Parisian-brothel foyer for an after-party downtown on Sansome Street near the Transamerica Pyramid. The only time we could schedule this was for right after New Year’s, and it was irritating but unavoidable that Christmas decorations were still up. Hell for the Holidays’ fictional story took place on Thanksgiving and I didn’t want to confuse the audience.

  Also irritating was Karen’s overriding concern in gauging the outcome of her catering. I was sure she was more interested in that than she was in the attendees’ honest opinions of our movie. I had to admit, her food—laid out on a red tablecloth under an enormous white wreath with shiny red balls glued to it—did look great. She was an outstanding cook, but I wanted us to present at least an adequate impression of independent film gravitas.

  She and husband Dennis set it all up. It really was magnificent, skewers with some kind of grilled fish steak and stuffed mushrooms, tiny Caesar salads and next to that tiny little exquisite pastries, and at the end of the table something chocolate covered next to a dripping candelabra.

  This group had come together only to make Hell for the Holidays and then had gone their separate ways. I hadn’t seen Glenda since the edit lock a few weeks prior, and most of the actors were virtual strangers now; odd, considering I was intimately familiar with each of their faces—every tiny line
, every tic and blemish, every impossible beauty or defect only a lover would know.

  My body was there and my brain tried to home in on the task at hand, but with mixed results. Karen, thank goodness, was going to talk. Also, the dark red room was spooky as well as whorish, and I was still a bit hesitant in strange places, ever since my outhouse experience with the dead Bernard.

  Both Ron Frankhauser, straight actor playing gay star, and Greg Graham, gay actor playing second fiddle, were there. Ron brought his wife down from San Rafael and several of his suburban Escalade-driving friends. He was truly and thoroughly jazzed about being in the movie, and this honest enthusiasm never failed to surprise or delight me.

  “Who are all these people?” I asked no one in particular, though Karen was nearby, rearranging her food presentation.

  “Your fans. They’re your fans; be happy they’re here,” she said.

  “They all look straight to me. I hope Ron told them this is a love story with a little twist,” I said.

  Karen wore a low-cut pink top that showed more of her cleavage than I’d ever seen before. “Aren’t you cold in that?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be working the crowd?”

  The guests loaded up on Karen’s disposable party service and mingled as much as they could in the small space. The crowd became an odd mixture of the anarchic Bohemian San Fran film crowd whom we got to help us with the project, sympathetic nerdy friends from Safe Harbor, Karen’s coworkers at the library, and several acquaintances of mine from the Castro.

  Greg Graham, who played Warren in Hell for the Holidays, the guy who gets left at his in-laws’ house on Thanksgiving stuck with a hot turkey, circled Jake. This distracted me. I hoped Jake would see what was so apparent, that Greg was all about Greg and the actor’s ego would be too much even for a slight dalliance. I didn’t usually worry about Jake and his extracurriculars since I was in no position to criticize. Still, dark, curly-haired Greg was as sexy as shit in a new-century, Michael Ontkean kind of way.