Читать книгу Can't Think Straight: - Kiri Blakeley - Страница 6

The second the clock hits 7 A.M., I jump up and call my friend Tyler. I know he wakes up early. Even though we’d never met in person, he’s the only one I can think to call.

We’d met in a screenwriters’ chat room five years ago and conversed (even flirted a bit) every day by message board and email. Yet it was only a few weeks ago that he’d told me he was gay and that his “wife” was actually a man. About his online misrepresentation, Tyler admitted that he’d enjoyed our harmless flirtatious banter and though we were both loyal in the extreme to our long-term partners, before he knew it, he was caught up in a lie he hadn’t quite intended.

He must have some idea what’s going on.

Tyler is skeptical. “I’ve never heard of a guy coming out this late,” he says. Aaron, too, was thirty-six. “I think he might just want to be single, travel with his band. He knows you are sympathetic to gay people and thinks this is a better way to get out of the relationship.”

Aaron always wanted to be a rock star. Not too many record labels were rushing to sign up near middle-aged men, but his latest self-produced CD had gotten some college radio play, and he booked a future gig in upstate New York. I’d planned to go until he made some noises that “the band” didn’t want girlfriends tagging along. He’d also been exchanging a lot of text messages with the new girl in the band, Amber. Some long-dormant jealousy had stirred, and we had a couple of mild arguments about it. But Aaron had said, firmly, “I am not attracted to Amber.” And I believed him.

In our ten years together, I had never once suspected Aaron of straying. He never even looked at other women. If someone had told me he was cheating on me, I would have held out both my arms and said, “If you can prove this is true, cut them off. That’s how much I know you are wrong.”

Could this whole gay thing be what Tyler posited? That Aaron didn’t have any sexual issues other than wanting to tour with his band, have groupies, and fuck Amber?

Could anyone be this diabolical?

I pad into the living room and wake Aaron up. I sit across from him in the same chair I’d been in last night when he’d told me, in the same position, as if there hadn’t been a break in the conversation.

“Tyler thinks you just want to be single,” I say.

“Well, that’s not true.” He hesitates. “I’ve been looking at gay porn. Does that convince you?”

I’m surprised about him looking at any kind of porn, let alone gay porn. Sex shops, toys, role-playing, porn. Over the years, I’d suggested all of it. “Sure,” Aaron would say, his disinterest obvious. None of it ever happened.

I return to the bedroom to cry some more. I can’t be near this complete stranger. I call the magazine I write for, Forbes, and leave a rambling message on my supervisor’s machine about being sick.

Aaron decides to go into work for a few hours. As soon as he leaves, I run to our computer. Although we shared the Mac, I had never been to his side of it. It had never occurred to me to snoop on him. I’d done a little spying in our first year together, as I was jealous of an ex-girlfriend and kept looking for evidence that he was still in love with her. But after months of finding nothing, I’d lost interest.

And now, bubbling up from the deep recesses of my memory, his password comes to me. He’d mentioned it offhandedly maybe eight years ago. It hadn’t entered my mind since. I didn’t even know if it was still the same.

The password works. I click into his personal folder. I see JPEGs. I open them. There are pictures of Aaron—of his beard (which he refused to shave off, no matter how much I complained), of his face (he pouts into the camera like Zoolander doing Blue Steel), of his erect cock. That one is labeled “Piece.”

I see videos with names like Big Balls. I do not open them; the names are quite enough, thank you. I see pictures of muscular policemen in leather, like something out of the Village People. I’m almost more shocked at the bad taste—how cliché!—than the homosexuality.

I go to the browser history and pull down the menu.

Over and over, Craigslist ads come up. I click into them: M4M. Oral sex party this Saturday! Man looking to hook up tonight! Want to suck your cock right now!

Worst of all, many of them order: No condoms!