Thirteen Crucifixions 9

                                                    2001

Pierre was all handsome rippling muscles packaged in a tight canary yellow t-shirt. The lithe youth Glen had once known had since beefed-out into Mr. Universe proportions.  Now his sweet-natured boy- face appeared to have been fastened onto the wrong body.  Only a few gray hairs in his goatee suggested that he might be aging.  He now had a tattoo—a turquoise Celtic band around his left bicep.  His tight black jeans left nothing to the imagination.  He worked as a waiter in a gay bar.  “At least he no longer sells his body”, Michael said on their way over.  They sat in his impeccably clean livingroom drinking beer out of bottles.  Michael and Glen had each been to bed with Pierre. 

“Do you work tonight?” Glen asked Pierre.

“It’s my day off, so I’m staying here.”

“You never used to be a homebody.”

“I’m aging gracefully.”

“You haven’t aged”, Michael said.

“Look at the lines around my mouth.  Time doesn’t stand still for anyone.”

“You look marvelous.”

“I’m getting sick of it.”

“Of looking great?”

“It’s too much work. I’ve quit going to the gym.”

“You’re not going to let yourself go!” Michael said.

“Yes I am.  I’m sick of having muscles.  It’s not bad seeing them on other guys, though.  But, I tell you guys, I get treated like a piece of meat wherever I go.  And I get it equally from women and men.  Even from straight guys.  Others treat me like I’m a brainless bimbo, a human muscle machine, or whatever.  I’m sick of it.”
            Glen had just slept the last five nights on the couch he was sitting on.  It was oatmeal colour, like it belonged in an office.  There was a black coffee table with a glass top—immaculate.  A red, orange and green sarape on the wall provided the only colour in the room.  The entire apartment suggested neatness, order, hygiene—so unlike his shared arrangements with Stephen Bloom.  They really were very different.  But most people are.  Pierre had invited Glen to sleep with him but he really hadn't been in the mood for a very long time.                 

“So, are you staying with Michael?” Pierre asked.

“We’re both staying at my mom’s,” Michael said.

“You’re not with Matthew?  What happened?”

“He left.”

“Matthew?”

“He joined a religious community.”

“Are we talking about the same person?”

“Do people ever talk about the same person?” Michael said rhetorically.

“Oh”, Glen said, “You mean, given that our experience of the same person is going to be quite individual, yes, I know what you mean.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Funny, my mom just asked me that.”

“Well”, Pierre said when he saw they were getting ready to leave, “When do I get to see you guys again?”

“You actually still want to see me?” Michael said, his voice not quite ironical.

“I’ll never stop wanting to see you.”  Michael, upon realizing that Pierre was not being camp, just managed to suppress his smirk before he could catch it. 

“Hey Glen”, Pierre said, caressing the gray patch on his goatee, “I seriously want to buy one of your paintings for my bedroom.”

“When do you want to talk more?”

“I have Sunday off.”

“I’ll call you.”

            It had been for Michael a strange courtship, when he was seeing Pierre on a regular basis.  He hadn’t exactly planned it, since Pierre was pursuing him.  Now, Michael, a control freak by his own admission, would never give the time of day to anyone who was sufficiently needy to want to chase him.  Usually he did all the chasing.  He had even initiated things with Matthew, whose antique shop he visited daily until he could get him to date him.  But Pierre reminded him a lot of Stephen, who was now dead.  Pierre was healthy, and extremely good looking.  But he didn’t interest Michael, except for Stephen. 

At this time Michael was spending a lot of time in the West End, since that was the location of the office out of which was published the small weekly tabloid that he edited.  It wasn’t a specifically gay publication, though queer issues often dominated the pages of the Radical Faerie, whose format was focussed upon anarchy and alternative lifestyles.  Radical Gender Fuck became its nickname, with so much print being devoted to Queer Studies, Gender Studies and the transgender community.  Week after week, pretending that he was not the pampered fancy boy of a mature antique dealer in a luxury Shaughnessy townhouse, Michael would collate and bring together all the disparate articles, columns and contributions into a weekly format that would have more accurately reflected the locus of squat-dwelling transgendered anarchist punks set to raze the evil heterosexist system to the ground.  Pierre lived in the building next door.  The West End was like a small town within a not terribly large city that longed to be given “World Class” status.  They were encountering each other almost daily, since Pierre also waitered at the local pasta bar around the corner, where Michael usually took his lunch.

They were friendly enough with each other, and Michael, generous by nature, and prone particularly to rewarding people for having stunning good looks, never thought twice about tipping Pierre well and above the customary fifteen per cent.  Pierre was a seasoned rent boy.  One thing led to another, and soon Michael was encountering him everywhere.  He would have minded Pierre a bit less had it not been for that simpering, excessively moist smile he couldn’t keep off his excruciatingly handsome face.  And that thin Latin Gigolo moustache he had grown!  He gave Michael his phone number. He didn’t rise to the bait.  In the various bars where they frequently encountered each other, Pierre would remind Michael pointedly that he should give him a call sometime.  Then one night, when they were both just a little bit drunk, Michael went home with Pierre, to his small West End apartment, where after another drink or two, he was led into his small bedroom, and into his sumptuous bed where in each other’s arms they both closed their eyes together and thought of Stephen.

For a while, they became an “item”.

On the whole, things weren’t bad between them.  No real ecstasy or heights of passion.  But Pierre soon became for Michael a warm and comfortable body to hold onto.  As a pair they quickly became cause for local envy—particularly Michael, since nearly every gay man in the West End was wanting to undo Pierre’s trousers for him.  He didn’t see what the big deal was.  He would have on any day preferred Stephen, whom because of death and old mortality was no longer available.  He never once asked Pierre about his sex life with Stephen.  Tempted as he was at times, Michael would not stoop to such appalling bad manners.  With Pierre the connection was primarily physical, and perhaps marginally emotional.  Michael expected that it wouldn’t take long for things to run their course, like a bad flu, between them.  Pierre did not want to give up.  Two years later, they were still… Michael could not use the word “together” to describe their relationship, if indeed this was even a relationship.  Two or three times a week they were together, usually in Pierre’s apartment.  They rarely had sex any more, though they still slept in the same bed, so vivid and present remained between them the Ghost of Stephen Bloom.  If he didn’t quite love Pierre, he couldn’t say that he disliked him either.  Apart from his snoring and his preoccupation with his obvious physical beauty, there was really nothing in Pierre for one to dislike.  He was always pleasant, cheerful.  Michael had never seen him out of countenance.  Like he was always on duty.  His manners were impeccable.  If not a brilliant conversationalist, he was still, to Michael, one of the best and most attentive listeners he had ever encountered.  And Pierre, always in need of a guru, seemed to worship the water he walked on.  He was in love with Michael’s intellect, even more than his body. 

They sometimes shared men together, though usually to their mutual dissatisfaction.  What they shared between them was primarily and peculiarly theirs.  Michael, always a stickler for physical, hard evidence, found at times quite frustrating, the ephemeral nature of this—relationship?  “It’s really quite simple”, Pierre had often said, “You like my body, I like your mind.  Your body is also quite nice, by the way, and I hope you’re not too bored with my mind.”  But for Michael, it wasn’t the sex either.  He couldn’t name it.  They didn’t exactly drift apart.  Other people and other interests began to dominate.  Pierre became a fitness fanatic, practically living in the gym.  Michael felt repelled by his steadily expanding muscles, who preferred the gleaming smooth limbs of a Gannymede over the exaggerated musculature of Heracles.  They were surprised to be seeing each other as often as once a month.  The passion was gone, but the connection remained.

Michael’s father already had full-blown AIDS.  He said nothing to Pierre, outside of his father being seriously ill.  Michael said very little to Pierre about his family, and almost nothing about Matthew.  They had created between them a kind of fantasy reality,  forbidding entry to any of the exacting vicissitudes that either of them was normally subject to.  They discussed Stephen constantly, and Glen, who remained between them a steady presence.  Michael liked Glen, but never felt inclined to reach out to him in friendship.  He supposed that he admired him for his spirituality, which also made him one of the most beautiful persons he had ever encountered.

Michael went straight to Pierre’s from his father’s funeral.  “Did you say, ‘Frank Watson?’” he said.  This man, Michael’s father, it turned out, had been Pierre’s regular sugar daddy for two years, while he was still a teenager.  Michael watched him, and listened attentively as he described how they had met, the car his dad was driving, where he would take him, the apartment he had arranged specifically for their trysts, and then he couldn’t take any more.  “That was my father”, was all he could say to a silent Pierre.  Three times Michael said it.  “That was my father.  That was my father.  That was my father.”  He left, allowing whatever had lived between him and Pierre to breathe its last.  After this they only saw each other in the pasta bar where Pierre waitered.  After six months of not speaking, he gave Michael a perfect dark red rose.  They met later, for drinks.  At last they were friends.

Now Michael felt doubly betrayed by his father.  First Matthew, now Pierre.  There was no one to whom he could tell how horrified he was.  Michael, for the first time since his turbulent adolescence, was depressed.  He had become distant towards Matthew, and otherwise withdrawn.  He honestly hated him now, only not troubling to avoid him if he wanted a fight.  He continued to visit the pasta bar, where he responded in monosyllables to all of Pierre’s attempts at conversation.  He wanted only to glower at him.  He was sufficiently intelligent to realize that he was experiencing incest trauma.  Never had any such thing occurred between him and his father.  But that he should gravitate towards Matthew, in whose bed his dad had spent many hours of pleasure, and then to Pierre, for two years his favourite catamite—how had Michael possibly managed to find his way into their arms, two men who had lain with his own father!  It was worse than disgusting.  What had led him there?

At the time, he was covering the protests against APEC.  Where he was pepper sprayed and rounded up with the other protesters.  In detention, the Nordically handsome Officer Crawley took him aside, brought him into a small windowless room, closed and locked the door. “Take off all your clothes”, he commanded, and stood watching as Michael reluctantly removed his jacket, then his shirt.  While Officer Crawley watched.  He took off his shoes, then slid down his jeans, removing them one leg at a time.  While Officer Crawley watched. He removed his left sock, then his right sock.  ”Your shorts”, said Officer Crawley.  “Take off your shorts.  No, don’t just slide them down.  Take them off.”  When he noticed Michael’s erection, he said, “You’re enjoying this.”  Michael shook his head, vigorously.  “Don’t you lie to me”, Officer Crawley snarled, grabbing him by the hair.  “On your knees, faggot!” he commanded while unzipping himself.  When they continued to meet every week in Officer Crawley's’apartment, it was always sex, a pure, raw rage of passion and animal rutting—no warmth, no tenderness.  Certainly nothing that resembled love.  The ritual never changed.  Michael would wait on a designated corner.  He would get into the car, where he would consent to being blindfolded.  On Officer Crawley’s command he would lie down in the back seat.  Even though he tried he could never learn to memorize the route by its stops and turns.  Officer Crawley always took a different route.  In an underground garage, Michael could take off his blindfold, and Officer Crawley would lead him by elevator into a spacious one bedroom apartment, in a fairly new building.  He lived in suite 1104.  It was always night, and the curtains were always drawn.  Michael knew better than to even think to ask for permission to look out the window.  The place was clean, well-ordered, spartan.  Ikea furnished.  When they were finished, Officer Crawley would return Michael, blindfolded, to a different corner.  Always to a different corner, from where he would have to find his own way home.  For six months this went on.  Michael told no one, not even Matthew.  He was too ashamed, too terrified to speak to anyone.

One night, he realized, that he’d memorized the license number of Officer Crawley’s car.  Having friends in the Motor Vehicle Branch, Michael, on the pretext of his credentials as a journalist, did some research, tracking Officer Crawley’s address to a building in Metrotown.  Having informed him in a letter that he was a journalist with credentials well-respected in the Press Council, Michael threatened to make a public scandal out of their liaison, unless certain conditions were met.  Being publicly and openly gay himself, Michael knew that he had nothing to worry about.  Officer Crawley yielded to his demands.  The public investigations into police mistreatment of protesters were no longer being obstructed, and Michael was finally a free man.  He still harboured a personal desire to kill Officer Crawley, even if thanks to marginally legitimate blackmail, Officer Crawley had made him twenty-five thousand dollars wealthier.

Bill was seated at the kitchen table with Sheila.  Michael thought that he seemed almost well.  His clothes were clean, his hair well combed and freshly washed.  Only his slow and deliberate manner suggested that all was not entirely normal for him.  It wasn’t as though Michael had forgotten his former stepfather—there had been scant time or opportunity for anything other than a vague mutual distrust and unease to develop between them.  They disliked each other.    Bill had made it clear that he found distasteful his stepson’s sexual proclivity, though he had usually vented this by trying to argue with Michael about politics.  Michael pitied his mother on her rotten luck with men.  It didn’t make sense to him.  She wasn’t a bad looking woman—as much as he could judge the looks of any woman, particular his own mother—and she was nice.  Competent.  Intelligent.  Caring.  Her droll irony and dead-pan delivery simply masked a tender heart that was always too easily broken and betrayed. Michael knew his mother.  Mother.  Bill, and Michael’s father? Had wanted a mother.  But isn’t that why most men get married?  Why wouldn’t a wounded male be drawn to this mender of broken wings, though Michael would much rather have fed such birds to the cat.  Bill was a very good-looking man, though Michael had always found him repellant, almost for the same reason that his feelings toward Pierre had always remained mixed, ambivalent and uncertain.  There was something a little too professional about their good looks.  Mentally ill and medicated, he could only find Bill pathetic.  An object of pity, who summoned in Michael simultaneously compassion and loathing.