Chapter 9

Logan

 

Back at my apartment, I’m wondering to myself what just prompted me to try and kiss Andrew. I know that I’m developing an attraction to him, but it’s hard to admit it because it goes against everything my rational mind is telling me.

And as if I didn’t need any further proof that I shouldn’t have done it, I sure as hell got it when he abruptly pushed me away. It was yet another confirmation of his identity crisis and that he’s someone I need to forget about having a relationship with.

All the red flags are there, staring me in the face…. everything in the logical part of my brain tells me to stay away, yet there’s this undeniably strong attraction… on both of our parts. It’s fucked up and confusing and I need to forget about him.

This is like a therapist’s wet dream.

I can hear the therapist’s condemnation already… the tired clichés. ‘And how is that working out for you Andrew?’ ‘How does all this confusion make you feel Andrew?’ ‘It’s time to take a deep breath and start taking care of Andrew.’

But I don’t need a therapist or any book to tell me what I already know. I need to chalk up my advances toward him to a silly impulse that I didn’t think through. I’m not thinking with my head.

Because, as usual, I’m thinking with my heart. And for the life of me I can’t figure out if it’s a bad thing or good thing.

Fuck it!

It’s time to put this shit out of my mind. I have work to do and why should I try to solve something that basically has no answer? For now, I’ll try my best to keep it as nothing more than a friendship… a weird friendship, but strictly platonic.

As I’m sitting down on one of my dining chairs, taking off my running shoes, I hear a knock at my door. Who could be coming over at this time of day?

I don’t see why Brooke or anyone else would be here and I’m certainly not expecting anyone. But when I get to my front door, much to my surprise, I find it’s Andrew.

Great...

That whole putting it out of my mind part lasted all of about twenty seconds.

“I followed you here,” Andrew begins, looking disturbed again, off kilter… just like he did in court and in the park.  His face is consumed with worry and torment and he looks like a lost child searching for his mother.

“Yes, I can see that,” I tell him.

I realize it would be downright rude of me to slam the door on him or leave him standing there in the condition he’s obviously in. Poor guy must be going through some serious trauma to be acting the way he is, and my heart wants to reach out and just hug him.

Now my phantom therapist is back in my mind and he/she’s sitting smugly in their chair, arms crossed, shaking his/her head and chastising me, ‘you’re a lost cause Andrew.’ 

“Do you want to come in?” I finally say.

I admit that I am a sucker for lost causes… maybe that makes me one too.

“Sit down. Can I get you something?” I offer, but he shakes his head and continues to stand in the same spot.

I think through in my head why he could be here and the best way I should approach this, but before I can open my mouth, he begins talking.

“Logan,” he says.

I can tell his mind is racing back and forth and now he’s almost in a panic when his trembling and shaky voice says, “I feel like I’m living a lie.”

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where this is going.

But I decide it’s best if I let him do the talking… at least for now. Coming out is a slow process for some, while for others, well, they’re singing show tunes at age five.

I’m probably right when I say that this is most likely the first time in Andrew’s life that he’s going to finally confront these feelings he’s having.  He may not have even recognized he was having them before, or more likely, he suppressed them.

“I’m just really messed up, Logan,” Andrew says with resignation.

He’s definitely taking his time even now and it’s as if he’s afraid to say the word out loud. 

So, I’ll do what I do best and listen and try to be as non-judgmental as possible. But, before he says anything further, I assure him that I’m discreet and that anything he tells me is just between the two of us.

He looks at me like a lost puppy… one who isn’t sure whether or not to trust a stranger he sees, or run away in fear of being harmed. He looks down, resting his head in thought before finally getting to the heart of the matter.

“I’m up for partner soon at my firm, Logan. I have a wife who’s very controlling and a boss who’s very homophobic. I’d never be able to advance in my career if anything happened. If I acted in any way on these feelings I’m having.”

He pauses, then with a sudden movement he throws his arms up in the air. “Hell, I don’t even know if I’m gay or not.”

Wow, he actually said the word. I’m a bit surprised.

Then, he places his hands on his hips and starts pacing back and forth before saying, “Nothing like this has ever happened before. I’ve never had to think or deal with the kind of thoughts that I’m having.”

He shakes his head in confusion. “Something has definitely changed over the last few months of my life and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m just… lost. All I want to do is run. Run away from everything in my life, but I’m too chicken shit to make anything happen.”

I tell Andrew to take a seat while I go into the kitchen and put on a pot of tea. A lot is running through my head now. I can relate to the feeling of having to come out, although I never had to struggle with it for that long.

I place the teabags in the boiling water and collect my thoughts.

I came out when I was young and lived only a short while in the closet, whereas Andrew is thirty seven. He’s lived his entire life thinking one way about himself and now could be coming to the realization that he’s a different person than who he thought he was. 

The best, and only thing I can try to do for Andrew now is give him positive encouragement. 

I begin to wonder if I’m the reason why Andrew is having the thoughts he’s having? Was he always gay and just kept it hidden, or did he repress it so well that the thought never even occurred to him?

I come back to where Andrew is sitting with a tray on which two small cups and a hot pot of tea sit.

“Here, drink some of this,” I tell him while pouring. “It’s chamomile and should help with your nerves.”

I take a seat next to him. Then I begin to rub his back to help with his nerves. I’m not trying to arouse Andrew in a sexual way or anything like that, but just trying to be a good friend and help him sort through his feelings. Touching someone can be great therapy and be healing.

As I’m rubbing him, I once again begin to think about my own coming out experience and what was going through my mind at the time. It happened a year before my parent’s divorce and I was glad I was able to tell them when they were still together.

 I remember that the thought that my mother or father might love me less tortured me. I’d read horror stories of young men and women in the Bible belt who were disowned or left to fend for themselves at a young age.

I already felt like a disappointment to my dad because I never showed the same interest in things like sports or fixing cars as he did. Other than my passion for running, which to me was more therapy than sport, I’d never had an interest in either hobby, and I knew he had always wished I could share them with him. I wasn’t as concerned when it came to my mother, but I still couldn’t be sure whether she’d accept it.

In an almost breathless voice I tell Andrew. “You know, I was terrified to come out to my father… I agonized over it for days, weeks, even months. I was still in high school, but I knew that the longer that I waited, the more difficult it would become to get the courage.”

Andrew’s face is finally becoming more serene. I can feel the muscles on his back already become less stiff than when I first began. I continue.

“I remember how nervous I was the day I came out to my parents. I had begun rehearsing the moment I woke up that day, how and what I was going to say. I had a speech prepared that I recited to myself over and over during my classes.”

I pause to take a sip of my tea. “Finally, when nightfall came, it was time. I waited until after dinner and asked them to join me in the living room and just when I was about to begin, my mind went blank. My parents looked at each other, then looked back at me and I just blurted it out… ‘Mom, Dad, I’m gay.’”

For the first time since he arrived, Andrew seems closer to his normal, happy self. I can see his facial muscles softening and know that he’s hanging on to my every word.

“What happened?” he asks.

I put my cup down on the coffee table, then continue rubbing Andrew’s back. “The first thing my mom said was, ‘I was pretty sure I already knew, Logan.’

My father said, ‘Son, if that’s who you are, I’m not going to love you any less for it. You’re still our son and always will be.”

I always begin to tear up whenever I relive this moment and now is no exception. I notice that Andrew’s eyes are also wet as I tell him, “The older I get, the more I realize that you cannot make everyone happy. There will be people who won’t accept it no matter what. But, sometimes there will be people whom you’d think would be the least accepting, who surprise you and applaud your courage.”

I continue. “And the ones that don’t, well, who really cares? It’s your life and the only thing you need is to be true to yourself.”

Andrew nods. “Thank you for sharing that. You’re lucky you have parents like that and I envy you. I know my parents wouldn’t be accepting if I ever told them I was with a man.” His face drops and a sadness envelops him again.

I decide to ask, sounding as sincere as I can, “How do you know that?”

I figure that now is as good a time as any to get to know who the real Andrew Patterson is, or I’m never going to find out, otherwise. His guard is down a little and even though his emotions are clearly still all over the place, I think the tea has had a calming effect on him.

“My parents were both strong disciplinarians, and never discussed feelings or anything important… that was considered a sign of weakness. If you did not follow their rules, there was a price to pay.” He stops and looks down at his lap and is picking at his fingernails.

I ask, “What kind of price?”

That’s when he looks up like he’s just had a realization. Something at that moment goes off like a light bulb in Andrew’s head. “You know, I haven’t thought of this in years,” he says to me in a daydream-like trance.

He pauses and turns his head to the side to face me. “When I was young, very young— I remember it was Christmas time— After we were done opening all of our presents, my sister began playing with her toys and I with mine. I couldn’t have been more than about six or seven years old at the time. My sister called me over. She had some sort of doll house, I think it might have been Barbie or something like that, and she wanted help putting it together.”

Andrew stops to drink the rest of his tea before leaning back into the sofa. He continues.

“So, I was putting this dollhouse together and after I was done, she asked if I would stay and play with her. I told her I would, so we began arranging all the little trinkets in the house and we then pretended with the dolls that we lived there. This play-acting type thing went on for quite a while.

Then my father walks into the room. He sees what I’m doing and orders me into my room. Once I’m in my room he starts beating me and telling me things like, ‘You’re not going to grow up to be a sissy.’ I was screaming in pain, yet he continued, saying, ‘If I ever catch you doing something like that again, I will send you away to a private school and you’ll never see us again.’”

He’s staring at me and begins to tear up again, before telling me, “You know, I’ve never told this to anyone before.”

I take his hand and tell him softly, “It’s okay,” and I squeeze it.

He continues. “He said, ‘No son of mine is going to be a fag; I will kill you before that happens. Of course, at the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But that didn’t matter because he never really stopped saying fag this and fag that. By the time I was older, I knew what it meant.”

“And it must have put the fear of God into me because from that day forward, I did everything I was told. I had bruises on me for weeks, but my mom didn’t care because she was also under his dominance. My father came from a military background.”

By this time, I’m nearly in tears myself, imagining poor little Andrew. I can’t even fathom that kind of abuse, mostly because I’ve never seen it firsthand. I have my own problems from my parent’s divorce, but they’ve always treated me with respect.

  I don’t have to think too hard to put two and two together to realize how this early trauma affected Andrew. I tell him, “I’m sorry this happened to you Andrew.” He looks to me with the most loving eyes and thanks me.

But Andrew doesn’t stop talking. He’s in full on confessional mode and I think about how it must be a relief for him to be getting all of this off his chest.

“It’s no surprise I married who I did. And to have a boss who’s a homophobe. It’s all beginning to make sense to me now. I don’t think I ever stopped to work out all of this in my head like I’m doing now. I was always too busy doing the right thing. Putting my career ahead of everything and making it the most important thing in life. Marrying the girl because it was expected of me. Going along with the homophobic boss because that’s what ‘real men’ do.”

I squeeze Andrew’s hand tighter and change my position in my seat to directly face him. “I feel honored that you’re telling me all of this.”

I’m not lying to him, because it’s rare to witness firsthand someone come to the realizations he has. And even though I’m happy for Andrew’s realizations, I think he’s going to have a tough road ahead of him.

Coming to terms with this alone isn’t going to make his choices any easier. He’ll still have to deal with the tough decisions of choosing a career and giving everything he’s ever known up, in order to be truly happy. 

Andrew is silent for several minutes. He’s now leaning his head on my shoulder and as much as I hate to admit it, he feels good sitting next to me.

Finally, Andrew speaks. “Do you think I’m gay?”

He asks in such a way that suggests that he’s asking himself that question, as well as asking me. He must know that there’s no way I can answer that. And I honestly can’t.

So instead of saying anything, I shrug my shoulders. Andrew scratches his head and says to me, “What will that mean if I am?”

 From my perspective, Andrew is doing a sort of bargaining in his mind. Creating scenarios of ‘what if I do this’ and ‘what if I don’t do this’ and the potential outcome of these choices. 

I’d hate to think where he’d be if he hadn’t come here today. I think he’s been losing it big time and I’d worry he was going off the deep end.

Andrew’s confession has completely changed how I now view him. You never know what’s beneath the surface of a person. That cool, calm and collected exterior he always showed in court has finally crumbled.

Whether it was me or something else that somehow triggered his newfound revelation doesn’t matter in my eyes. The point is that it happened. It probably would have happened sooner or later in his life anyway. But, I have to think it’s better that he didn’t have to wait until he was an old man before making these discoveries.

It’s nice to finally get to know the man underneath that glossy exterior. Who he really is, instead of the image that he projects to the world. I would like to stay in Andrew’s life, but dating him is another story unless he’d be willing and able to make drastic life changes. I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on him. I’ll continue to be his friend, a good friend, but nothing further.

Finally, Andrew gazes at me in an endearing yet somewhat serious manner and asks, “No matter what happens, will you always be my friend?”

As I say, “Of course,” I’m thinking that he must have read my mind.