When D suggested meeting at Rafferty’s for lunch, I imagined an afternoon of reminiscing about glory days. After all, the last time I’d seen D was twenty-three years earlier, when we graduated high school, even though we’d been chatting via text messages and Facebook for the past three years. We’d even scheduled three similar meetings, but life always seemed to get in the way of our reunions.
Our meeting didn’t go so well. D spent the majority of our time at the restaurant on his iphone, negotiating deals with real estate agents and contractors. He bragged about his elaborate vacations to exotic locations and the former classmates (cheerleaders and socialites who wouldn’t give D the time of day in high school) that were now his friends. He also managed to inform me of how much money he was alloted each month as an expense account, his checkbook balance, the resale value of his home and how much his company relied on him in order to stay in business. In fact, he only paused long enough to inquire two simple questions concerning my life and job, but even those responses were interrupted by a text message and then a phone call. After informing the waitress that the food and her service were both inadequate, D made a huge production over using his company card to pay for the meal, and then he invited me to tour his home. I accepted, thinking that my friend might actually loosen up and talk once we were in private.
D’s house is gorgeous. During the tour, he talked about how a photographer had been commissioned to take the photos on the wall and a professional artist had painted the murals in his kid’s bedrooms. He explained, in pain-staking detail, the elimination process for choosing the color and theme for each room. He pointed out the jacuzzi, the vaulted ceilings, the personalized molding, the pool and the fireplace in the master bedroom. Actually, the only things D didn’t point out were toys, keepsakes, pictures of grandparents and indications that this was, in fact, a place where people lived and not a replica for tours just like this one.
It shouldn’t surprise me that D places so much value on material possessions. He came from a very poor family, and his mother was (in his own words) “a psychotic Jehovah’s Witness who thought it was a sin to celebrate birthdays and Christmas.” He even confided once that, after graduation, his family expected him to work and to pay all the bills while they sat at home and did nothing. My first memory of D is as the eighth grader who had to remain seated while the rest of us said the Pledge of Allegiance. Our teacher later explained that D’s religion (his mother’s religion actually) forbade him to pledge allegiance to anyone or anything other than to God. D alternated wearing the same two or three outfits throughout four years of high school.
When I finally announced that it was time for me to leave, D became visibly agitated. He explained that my text messages suggested that we were going to do more than just talk, and that he’d paid for lunch on the assumption that he was going to “get something in return.” I tried my best to be stern in clearing up any misconceptions that I might have caused. D wouldn’t have it though, and as I walked toward the door, he began to grope me and to unfasten my belt. I pushed D away and reprimanded him again, and then his eyes welled up with tears. He apologized by saying that he’d never been with a man before, and that he didn’t want his first time to be with a stranger, who might take advantage of him. I felt sympathy for D at that moment. I’d faced the same coming out process twenty years earlier and can only imagine how much more difficult the challenges would be at his age.
The sex that I had with D was aggressive and awkward. He not only violated every stipulation I made, but he critiqued and criticized my performance as we went along, as if it were his mission to shame me. And when my body didn’t respond to this onslaught, he criticised my manhood as well. I actually got up to leave a number of times, at which point D would beg me to give him another chance. When it was all finally over, D instantly became cold and aloof, and he promptly escorted me out of the house before I could even put my shirt back on or wash up in the bathroom. I received several text messages on the way home. One message to warn against disclosing what had just happened; another inquiring if I was “alright,” as though D might have actually experienced a moment of regret. I didn’t respond to either of the messages.
I hope D finds peace and happiness one day. I really do. As a gay man, I understand the need for acceptance, and how important the confrontation with demons can be to one’s personal development. But honestly, it never occurred to me that I had been stumbling head first into an exorcism.
