The devil inside, p.7
The Devil Inside, page 7
Micah was more than ten years older than me, and the rotten part of my brain knew he was a good-looking guy, but I refused to acknowledge it out loud.
I took her shoes to the closet and scanned her living room, ensuring she was all set. Her nurse would be by within the hour to check on her.
“Are you okay if I go? I have my group meeting tonight, and I’m going to be late if I don’t run.”
“Oh, but you must look at these first. Come see. Boy, I’d sure like to get married on the beach someday too. Wouldn’t you?”
“Um … Sure. I really—”
“Come.” She waved a hand, insistent.
Sighing, I knelt beside her recliner and let her show me the pictures. And they were indeed pictures of Micah’s wedding …
To another man.
I froze, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth when I saw the two men in tuxes, holding hands and kissing on a white-sand beach. How had I not known Micah was gay?
“Aren’t they such a handsome couple?” Geraldine grinned up at me. “Wally is such a dear. He’s a doctor, you know.”
“Wally.”
She talked on and on about the wedding and Micah’s new husband, and all I could do was stare dumbly at the few pictures that had come in the mail.
They defied everything I’d been taught and went against the endless preaching and rules that had been beaten into my brain over and over and over. Yet, I couldn’t ignore the tiny thread of jealousy that tugged at me when I looked at the happy couple, life and love shining in their eyes.
“There is nothing wrong with the way God made you.”
“What?” I croaked, ice water spilling down my spine. My eyes bulged, and I stumbled back a step.
“That’s what I told Micah when he said he wanted to date boys instead of girls. He was thirteen and afraid the school and church would give him a hard time. His own father told him it wasn’t natural, and I told Harold to suck an egg. We don’t make the rules, do we?”
“Um … No.”
“No, we don’t. God makes the rules.” She pointed at the ceiling. “If He wanted my son to date women, then He wouldn’t have made him so fond of penises, now would He?”
“I-I guess not.”
“I’m pretty fond of penises myself.”
My head reeled, and I was struck dumb.
“Oh dear. I’m missing my shows.” She peered across the room at the TV as though seeing it for the first time. “Oh, Arnold. Get rid of that lying skank.” She blinked and faced me, patting my hand. “Be a dear and make your grandma a tea.”
Geraldine didn’t have grandchildren, but it wasn’t the first time she’d called me that.
I reached across her to the side table and helped her pick up the mug I’d brought her earlier. She set the pictures aside and accepted it, sipping and getting lost in her soap opera, oblivious to my shaken foundation.
“I’ll see you later, Gerry. Maybe next week.”
“Be good to my boy, Wally. You treat him right, or I’ll kick you in the balls. Don’t think I won’t. I’ve done it before. Made Harold cry.”
I would have laughed, but I could barely get my legs to function. Her words had punched me in the chest.
In my truck, I lit a smoke and stared out the windshield, processing what had just happened. Geraldine’s son had married a man. He was gay. She wasn’t the least bit put off. Did my parents know?
I doubted it. They would never have suggested I help Geraldine out. It was too close to the taint that could infect me again. They would be horrified.
I didn’t know what to do with the information. It conflicted with everything I’d been taught and stirred up something inside I couldn’t name.
When the horrors of those eight months in the facility returned, I threw the truck in gear and drove to my meeting. Reliving any of that was enough to make me sick.
It was after eight when I arrived. I scanned the parking lot, looking for Oakland’s car. A whole week had passed, and I wasn’t any more settled about his sudden reappearance in my life. Last week, I’d been compelled to talk with him even though I knew I should have avoided him at all costs.
Oakland was at the root of everything that was wrong with me.
I spotted his Nissan Altima in the back corner, hiding in the shadows of the adjacent building. Squinting, I thought I made out a person sitting in the front seat, but the encroaching nightfall was playing tricks with my eyes, and I couldn’t be sure. I got out of my truck and pocketed my keys as I kept an eye on the Altima’s windshield.
Instead of heading inside, I strolled toward the car. Sure enough, once I was closer, I made out the form of a person in the driver’s seat behind the tinted glass. I closed the distance and stood in front of his car, arms crossed. Our gazes locked, and neither of us looked away. I didn’t know what the fuck he was doing—I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing—but I waited him out.
Relenting, seeing I wasn’t going anywhere, he shouldered the door open and got out. Hip-checking it closed, he leaned against his vehicle, copying my defensive stance.
“You’re late,” he said.
“Are you trying to tell me you’ve been sitting out here waiting for me to show up?”
His jaw moved side to side, and he cut his eyes away and back before shrugging. “No. Just an observation.”
“Then what are you doing? The meeting started already. Why aren’t you inside?”
He shrugged again and looked across the parking lot. I unnerved him. Good, because he did the same to me.
“I don’t know if I want to do this. That’s why I’m sitting out here. This group thing, sharing my shit with other people, it’s too … I don’t know.”
“Personal?”
“Yeah. And raw.”
I laughed, and he shot me a dirty look. “Raw? Fifteen fucking years and it’s only now raw? You been living under a rock or something? Did they knock your head enough times you lost your memory?”
“Fuck you, Jameson.”
“Pretty sure that’s how this shit all started. I think I’ll pass.”
He studied me a minute more before shaking his head and wrenching his door open. “Not worth it. Fifteen years has turned you into a real prick. See ya later.”
I marched forward and grabbed his arm, jerking him away from the door and kicking it closed with my foot. Digging my fingers in so he couldn’t tear free, I glared.
“What are you doing? Let go of me.”
“Just relax. This place”—I jerked my head at the doors to the community center—“it gets under everyone’s skin. No one wants to air their dirty laundry. Believe me. Me least of all.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Why are you here, Oak, if all you’re doing is sitting in your car?”
His annoyance showed, and he tried to wrench himself free. “Let go of my arm.”
I didn’t. His molasses-colored eyes swirled with anger, unbalancing me, distracting me like they had when we were teens. “Just don’t run off. Come to my truck. I brought a little something to repay the favor from last week.”
I let go of his arm and backed up a few steps, holding his gaze, unsure if he’d follow.
He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and rocked on his feet. “Aren’t you going in?”
I waved a hand at the building, dismissing it. “Fuck that shit.”
“Fine. Lead the way.”
At my truck, I lowered the tailgate and dug through the toolbox on the back, seeking the bottle of Bombay Sapphire I’d purchased earlier while out with Geraldine.
We sat on the end of my truck as I cracked the lid and chugged a few mouthfuls. The burn was exactly what I needed. Warmth coated my belly, and I sighed.
When I offered it to him, Oakland wrinkled his nose at the label.
“Gin? Seriously? Gross.”
“I don’t have to share.”
He tore the bottle from my hand, scowling, and indulged in a few generous hits. His face soured as he swallowed. Blowing out a harsh breath, he handed back the bottle. “Rank.”
We sat for a few minutes in silence, staring off into the dark. I drank more.
“Does it help?” Oakland’s voice cut into my thoughts.
“Does what help?” I set the bottle aside and pulled out a smoke, lighting up.
“Coming here. Talking. Sharing. Laying out your life to complete strangers.”
“I don’t know. I don’t share much.”
“It’s just …” He pulled a crushed pack of cigarettes from his pocket and turned it around and around in his hand. “Everything has happened kinda fast for me the last couple of weeks. I don’t know if I buy it. I’ve spent fifteen years convinced that what we went through didn’t work for me. That they’d let me go too early or something because those … thoughts we aren’t supposed to have … they still linger in the back of my mind. I worked hard to erase them, bury them, to prove I was strong enough to fight against them, but I sank deeper and deeper into depression. I was spiraling. Still am.
“I only came clean with my doctor a couple of weeks ago. I’ve never told anyone about that place. Not even my wife.”
My head shot around, and I stared at him. His wife? He was married? An unexpected vise clamped around my heart.
Oakland was oblivious to my shock as he focused on something in the distance. “My doctor said that what happened to us wasn’t therapy. It was abuse and brainwashing. He said everything they beat into our heads about how we couldn’t have been born like this and how something happened in our past to create this sinful need in us was wrong.”
He plucked a smoke from his pack, and his hands trembled as he lit up. After he blew a cloud into the night air, he spoke again. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. Everything is so conflicting. My mind screams one thing, and my body screams another, and I’m so fucking tired of fighting both every goddamn day.”
Oakland grew silent. His cigarette remained balanced between his fingers, but he didn’t smoke it. The ash fell, and his face remained slack as he stared into nothingness. After a minute of stillness, he jarred out of his thoughts and sucked hard on his smoke before continuing.
“Doc thinks coming here and being surrounded by other people who’ve been through the same thing will help me come to terms with my sexuality.” Oakland laughed humorlessly and shook his head. “Can you believe that? My sexuality. What the actual fuck, right? It’s just … I don’t see myself that way, but is it because of what they did? I don’t have a clue, and thinking about it hurts my head. What do you think?”
The devil stirred in the dark cavern of my chest. Every reflexive part of me wanted to lurch and defend and yell that his doctor was a fucking quack just like mine. I’d been listening to the same bullshit for years, actively denying those beliefs with everything I had. Every ounce of my soul clung to the idea that someday this taint would go away, that God would cure me and take away the shameful needs that surfaced all the time.
Being gay was unnatural. I had been driven to sin in my youth. I had given in to temptation. My job was to fight against it and break free. If I held strong to my faith, I would get through it.
I did a piss-poor job most days, but I wouldn’t give up.
Then, Geraldine’s voice echoed in the back of my mind. “There is nothing wrong with the way God made you.”
“Jameson?”
“What?” I rattled those thoughts away. They weren’t helping.
“I said, what about you? What do you think of all this?”
“Are you seriously married?”
He dropped his chin and flicked his spent cigarette across the pavement. “Yeah. Her name’s Amanda. Been married eight years.”
Eight fucking years?! My heart clenched. I had tried hard to be with women, more for my mother’s sake than mine, but I couldn’t make it work no matter what. It was impossible. I couldn’t connect with them sexually, and all it did was compound my guilt. It proved just how deep the poison in me ran.
Oakland had succeeded where I had failed.
“Wow. That’s … good for you. I guess. How’d you meet?”
“Dating app.”
“No shit.”
I felt cold inside. This information stung. I grabbed the bottle of gin, drinking more, then offering it to Oakland. He drank too. We passed the bottle back and forth a few times before he spoke again.
“I haven’t told her.”
“About the facility?”
“Yeah. Because if my doctor is right …”
When he didn’t go on, I urged, “If your doctor’s right …?”
“Nah, never mind. It’s nothing.”
“Then you gotta tell your wife your queer?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you?”
He shook his head, then shrugged, shoulders slumping. “I don’t know anymore. I believed them when they told me I was sick, but now … I feel like my whole life’s been turned upside down. I can’t wrap my head around the idea that there’s nothing to cure because I was just born gay, and there’s no fixing that, you know? I don’t want to hurt Amanda. I started going to therapy a few years ago because I wanted to be a better husband. I was a mess. Still am. Maybe I’m worse. Every day it’s like I’m drifting farther and farther away from her. I feel disconnected. I can’t really explain it. It’s like there’s something missing between us, and I can’t figure out how to fix it. Now I keep wondering if my doctor’s right. What about you?”
“I’m not queer. I don’t believe any of that shit about being born that way.”
“Then why are you here? Why do you come to this meeting?”
“Because it’s part of my therapy.”
What I didn’t tell him was about the failed suicide attempts, and the cutting, and the multiple other forms of self-abuse that had dinged on my parents’ radar a few years back when I’d landed in the hospital over and over again.
After about the fifth time I’d wound up rushed to the emergency room in an ambulance, my mother convinced me to talk to someone. She paid for my therapy. She had no idea that the root cause of my self-destruction stemmed from the abuse I’d undergone at the facility where she’d sent me as a teen.
But I’d disappointed my parents enough for one lifetime. I wouldn’t do it again. If they ever discovered what was at the root of my self-destructive behavior—my unstoppable urges for men—it would disgrace my family. They would disown me, and I couldn’t bear the thought.
As many times as I’d questioned my religion and fought to uphold the façade of a settled and happy man, I knew in my core, something was very wrong with me.
But I wasn’t queer. I refused to allow that to be the answer.
A commotion at the door of the community center drew our attention. It was break time, and the smokers were gathering outside for a puff. We watched them, neither of us saying a thing. Ten minutes later, they filed back inside.
I elbowed Oakland, grabbing his attention. “Wanna take off?
“Are you serious?”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not going in now. We’ve missed half the show, and I’m not feeling it tonight.”
“Me neither. Where do you wanna go?”
I considered our options. “My apartment’s about twenty minutes from here. You’re welcome to join me. I can fix us a proper drink if you’d like. I might even have some whiskey stashed away since that’s more your taste.”
“Can I park there overnight and take a cab home? I’m already feeling buzzed, and if I get fucked up and drive, Amanda will kill me.”
“Yeah. I’ll set you up with an Uber later.”
“I’ll follow.”
He jumped down off the tailgate and wandered toward his car without looking back. What the fuck was I thinking, inviting him back to my place? There had never been a time in the past when I’d felt compelled to have people over. I wasn’t like that. My apartment was my sanctuary. It was where I was free to hang up my masks and be whoever I needed to be.
But Oakland was different. I didn’t know who I was when I was near him—or maybe he made things a little too clear—and that unsettled me.
Unwittingly, my gaze slipped over his body. My heart thumped faster, bruising my ribs. His jeans were snug, and they hugged his ass—the same perky ass that had caught my attention as a teenager. My nerve endings sparked, sending a wave of heat through my blood, centering in my groin.
Jerking my focus off his body, I turned and slammed my fist good and hard against the side of my truck, hard enough a stab of pain shot up my arm, leaching those treacherous thoughts from my mind. When I uncurled my fingers, my knuckles throbbed and bled in two places.
I ground my teeth.
Wanna look at his ass again, motherfucker?
I waited, deciding if my brain and cock had listened or if they wanted to continue to defy me. Blood pulsed in my ears, washing out all other sounds.
I punched my truck one more time to be certain. The pain lancing through my hand was satisfying, and I closed my eyes, milking the feeling for all it was worth, knowing I deserved it, knowing I needed to be punished for my unclean thoughts.
SEVEN
Oakland
Amanda’s phone rang four times before she picked up. “Hello?” Her voice was groggy and thick.
“Were you sleeping?” I checked the time on the dash. It wasn’t even nine.
She yawned. “I must have crashed during my shows. I thought you were at your therapy thing. Why are you calling?”
“Yeah, it let out early tonight. I’m gonna grab a drink with a few guys here, so I’ll be home late, okay?”
“Oh.” Disappointment came through in her tone. “What time?”
“Not sure. Couple hours. Ten thirty, maybe eleven. You don’t have to wait up. I’ll crawl in beside you, okay?”
“Okay. Did you fill that prescription?”
I cringed and eyed the cup holder where the script still sat, unfilled.
“Yeah. I told you I would.”
“Can you wake me up when you get home? Maybe we can try it and see if they work?”
