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almost like the night we first slept together following his father s funeral.
I couldn t do it.
I looked at him, confused. You were impotent?
No. I couldn t bring myself to cheapen them like that, or myself, for that matter.
You let them pay you to cheapen them in other ways, though. The desperation
they felt& talk about cheap!
I know, he said, his voice remorseful. I sold myself, and them, into believing
otherwise. That I was giving them something more valuable, more respectful by not
going all the way with intercourse. That giving them the attention and pleasure they
wanted was the noble service.
I think there s more to it than that, I said after a beat, sounding rather cold
without meaning to be. He sat still and quiet for several minutes before leaving the room
and coming back with the Matisse journal I had given him so many years ago for
Christmas. I took in a breath when I saw it, flooded with memories.
Here, he said, opening the book to a page he was marking with his finger. Not
wanting to fetch my glasses, I took the diary and held it close to my face, reading his bold
handwriting, like that of a designer s or architect s:
My father used to constantly call me a fag. God, I hate that word. That word goes
first on the most hated words list . He also thought I wouldn t amount to anything.
I stopped and looked up at him, then started reading again.
On the night of my brother-in-law s bachelor party, when I was about nineteen,
someone had hired a stripper. When she came to me, I got up and left the room. I wasn t
into it because I thought it was disrespectful. Well, that did it. In front of everyone, my
father called me a fag yet again and made me sit down while the stripper did a lap dance
on me so he could check to see whether I got an erection. The rest of the guys were so
fucking drunk that they laughed and egged him on. It was the single most humiliating
experience of my life.
I stopped reading again and sat there, horrified.
Oh my God, David. I am so sorry. I had no idea. I mean, I d always suspected
that you were trying to prove something to your father. But how could you think being an
escort was the answer, especially when you found that experience so degrading?
Think about it, Andi it was the perfect answer. I proved to him that I could get
any woman I wanted. Not only that, but I could give them pleasure in ways that he
wouldn t ever dare do with his own wife. I out-dicked him. And better still, I d get paid
for it. I d get laid and rich at the same time. I d be something. And it at least stopped him
from calling me a fag, finally. I was twenty-eight when Christian and I started the
business. Can you believe that? I did it for almost ten years.
A silence passed between us before he continued.
I wasn t entirely honest with you back then, Andi. In the early years, I had slept
with my clients before the guilt got to be too much. That, and I was afraid of getting
caught, either by the cops or a disease. And sometimes it was just unavoidable. It would
just happen.
You wanted it to happen? I asked, trying not to feel betrayed after all, he and I
had never been together in those days. Still, he lied to me.
Sometimes. Sometimes not. Anyway, I didn t tell you back then because I guess
I was trying to protect you, just like your brothers used to.
You mean you were trying to protect yourself. Again, my words sounded colder
than I had intended.
A myriad of feelings washed over me: foolishness for having been duped by his
charm from the very beginning; anger and disgust for having been used along with all
those women as meaningless objects in a ploy to get back at his father; compassion for
the wounded child who just wanted his father s love and respect; empathy for knowing
all too well a father s rejection, especially when it came to sexuality (and growing up so
fucked up as a result); guilt for my present selfishness and for the past five months.
If I had known then what I just found out, I wouldn t have touched Devin the
Escort with a ten-foot pole. And yet, without Devin, I don t think I would have, could
have had the happy, sexually satisfying marriage I d had with Sam. Who was sitting next
to me at this moment? Devin? David? Which of them was with me in Rome? With which
did I want to be?
David responded, I convinced myself that as long as I didn t do it, then no one
would really get hurt. From a business point of view, it was a great selling point. We
cornered the market, so to speak. It forced us to be creative. And you know the rest the
women we serviced loved it.
But at what cost, I said more as a statement than a question.
Then you came along, he said, looking at me and smiling wistfully. When you
walked into that room, that was it for me I fell in love with you that instant.
I opened my mouth.
Are you saying you loved me from the beginning?
I tried so hard not to let it show.
Why? I asked, exasperated. Do you have any idea what you put me through?
How I fought to hide my attraction to you, when all along& Again I wanted to throttle
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