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Not for the first time in my life, the bruises on my throat gather into the unmistakable shape of human fingers.
When it comes to lying, there’s a golden rule: tell as much truth as you can. The truth is, after all, the easiest to remember. It’s the most consistent with inarguable fact.
It’s a room full of trauma surgeons. All a particular breed of distilled narcissist. Of the general US population, sociopathy occurs at an estimated frequency of 1 percent. Among incarcerated males? Twenty-five. And in this particular room at this particular time? You don’t want to know.
Nathan holds my hand under the table. His touch is both tight and ice-cold. My instinct is to snatch myself away. We’re in public. I’ve never been comfortable with PDA no matter the kind. We’re different that way. Nathan’s from New York. As in, the City. He’s never experienced life as a gay man in rural Indiana. Affection driven underground. Taboo. An invitation for contempt and violence.
I’m amused by what this might look like to an outsider, someone expecting a relationship between two men to be saturated in sex. Straight men saying gays have it good because it’s all sex all the time. Whenever they want it. However they want it. Just males and their wanton biology.
The detective claims a chair in front of my desk. I make for the beverage cart against the far wall. A sleek antique that adds a slice of civilization to an otherwise sprawling, brutalist hospital. “Coffee or tea?” “Tea would be lovely. Something fruity if you’ve got it.” “I do.” I couch my reply in pleasantness, but I’m bothered by her word choice. It feels both deliberate and degrading.
This was never going to be easy, I figured that from the start, but my duplicity and lying have made it damn near impossible. What a stupid thought! What a stupid fucking thought. My duplicity and lying are why this happened at all.
In every way, I need Nathan. I need him to keep me from drugs. I need him for shelter, for food. Most important, I need him for life. Nathan is the reason I breathe. It’s not perfect, but it’s a need. Not a want, not a desire, but a must-have.
Mostly the roughnecks with Browning-branded hats and Dixie Outfitters belt buckles—which I always found so stupid. Indiana’s never been part of the Old South, but white cis-het male entitlement gets to pick and choose through history like a lost and found. Taking whatever it wants and turning a blind eye to the rest.
I chose a few hours of high, chose myself, chose fucking Hector! All over the jaundiced, bleeding, moaning woman departing life as torturously as she lived it. I stole my dying mother’s pain medication. I chose myself over the woman who only ever chose me.
Despite the fact it makes no fucking sense, she’s quite pleased with her vigilance. How would I know to ring her doorbell to steal someone else’s dog? Mere seconds have passed, and Barbara already looks at me as Kathy Klein does: disdainfully. I’m a tragedy, which is out of my control, but how cruel of me to make needless victims of others by simply existing in their lives.
running away doesn’t make a fucking difference because I follow me wherever I go.
Sometimes the price tag on betrayal is deceptively small.
Funny what you take pride in at the barrel’s bottom.
A one-night stand lingers too long, and a hookup becomes the scaffolding of a relationship. MeetLockr profiles come down. Only to be reborn from the ashes of anonymous sex once the scaffolding collapses amid infidelity or undisclosed addictions or fetishes or wives or bad taste.
