YOU ASKED ME to be a witness in the trial.
I owed you my life and so I said yes.
What does one wear to a rape testimony? Your lawyer and I debated this endlessly. Nothing too tight, nothing too baggy, nothing too ratty, nothing too expensive, something sexless yet attractive, a suit jacket perhaps, but nothing flashy, a light navy was best, black was too morbid, too dark. I wanted to seem serious but not angry, definitely not vengeful; maybe glasses were a good idea, but the frames had to be simple, nothing flamboyant, nothing too gay, nothing that might trigger juror prejudice. Something to wear while the world decided if I had been raped.
Something that said: Believe me.
I dreaded our rehearsals for the witness stand. Your lawyer’s endless questions. What did the basement look like? How many men? What did they do to you? I never slept, barely ate. Walked through the world a husk, disconnected from my body. Pain was the only thing that cut the numbness. I picked the skin around my fingernails with my teeth, tasting the blood on my tongue, repeating the process until all my digits were crusted in scabs.
Finally, the day of the trial arrived.
When I saw Richard in the courtroom, I snapped. He was a nightmare brought to life, sitting stone-faced with his team of defense attorneys. I recognized the fury in his eyes — I’d seen it before, of course — and I felt his rage burn a hole in my back as I walked up to take the stand. The courtroom shifted its attention toward me, expecting me to tell the story I’d told only three people — you, your lawyer, and my mother. Expecting me to explain my private hell in a public forum.
“When did you first meet Richard Shriver?” your lawyer asked when I was settled.
It was the simplest question of all, one we’d rehearsed and rehearsed during our months of prep. But staring at Richard, I suddenly forgot my lines. I clenched my fists and closed my eyes, praying that when I opened them, this would all be over, and the trial would dissipate like the edges of a bad acid trip. When my eyelids at last fluttered wide, I saw your lawyer’s stricken face.
“Perhaps you didn’t hear the question,” he said, straining to keep an even tone. “I asked, when did you first meet Richard Shriver?”
My mouth refused to move.
“Jonah, do you need a minute?”
Nothing.
“Jonah, when did you first meet Richard Shriver?”
“In 2009,” I finally managed, my voice dry and timid. Relief softened his expression. We had returned to our script.
“And what was the nature of your relationship?”
“I . . . I guess he was my boyfriend.”
“But that relationship changed over time, did it not?”
Again, silence.
“Jonah?”
Panic lifted me out of my body. My consciousness floated by the ceiling fan. I clenched my fists tighter, clenched them until the scabs cracked and seeped blood. “I . . . don’t know.”
Your lawyer frowned. Richard’s features shifted as well, assembling into a strange expression of pleasure. A familiar postcoital grin.
“But it did change, didn’t it?”
“Richard . . .” I trailed off.
“Yes, Jonah?”
“Richard loved me,” I blurted out, surprising everyone, including myself. Whispers rippled through the courtroom. Your lawyer returned to your side for a hushed consultation.
“No further questions, Your Honor,” he said finally.
This is how I survive, I thought. By withholding my story.
How could anyone attempt to discredit a testimony that didn’t exist? How could the press exploit the absence of a story? At worst, I would
be cast as a malfunctioning witness, a minor character in the larger drama of the trial. A blip in Richard’s history. A Wikipedia footnote.
Richard was now smiling in my direction. It was the same smile he’d used when he told me he loved me, the smile that kept me by his side, the smile that had once promised me a world beyond my own. Richard’s attorney stood for cross-examination. His eyes shone with Christmas-morning joy. I was a gift ready to be torn open.
“You say you loved Richard?”
“Yes.”
“And he was your boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“And did he abuse you?”
“No.”
Even better than withholding my story: creating a new one. And I could, if I did enough Olympian-level mental gymnastics, believe it to be true. Here, with all these people as witnesses, I could say that Richard did not abuse me. And if a whole room of people believed it was true, then maybe the media would believe it as well, and if the media believed, then maybe the whole world would believe. And if the whole world believed that I had not been raped, then maybe that would be enough. Maybe that would make it true.
“Did he rape you?”
“No,” I said, avoiding your gaze.
“Did he abuse anyone else during the course of your relationship?”
“No,” I said, watching my answer register on the faces in the crowd.
“So you never witnessed Richard Shriver or anyone else rape, sexually assault, or abuse anyone.”
“No,” I said. Adrenaline stung my spine.
“Why, then, would your friend here accuse Richard of these horrific crimes?”
“For the money.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because he told me himself.”
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
That was it. I was left alone on the stand. Free to go. With my new truth. My new identity. No longer a victim. No longer a tragedy. I was Jonah, reborn.
Then I snuck a glance in your direction, saw you sobbing in your lawyer’s arms. Suddenly, the entire lie collapsed as quickly as I had built it. I knew that what I’d done was irreversible, that justice had not been served, that I had ruined your life and my own. I hesitated, unable to pry my cracked fingertips from my chair. I wanted to rush toward you, explain everything. Beg for forgiveness.
But all I could do was stand and exit the courtroom.
2009
1
MAY 16, 2009. The day had been marked in my calendar for weeks. RICHARD was all it said, his name scrawled across the white box devoted to the sixteenth, the anxious loop of my D enclosing the date like a promise. Beneath his name, a time: 8:00 p.m. It was 7:15, and I was already late. Richard had no idea I was coming. He didn’t even know who I was.
I couldn’t find my tie. I scanned the cramped quarters of my apartment, my claustrophobia mounting. There were only two rooms — a kitchen and a bedroom — and it seemed impossible that I could lose anything in such a small space. The bathroom was down the hall, shared by other residents in a building that had been advertised on Craigslist as a “hip artist loft in the heart of Bushwick,” although “gutter-trash shithole in the ass-crack of hell” seemed a more apt description. The apartment was a sublet, normally home to the lead singer of Ghost Dick, a minor indie band, but leased to me for the length of the group’s seven-month dive-bar tour. The ad called the place “furnished,” a rather generous word for a queen-size mattress occupying the majority of the splintered bedroom floor, a giant sound system crammed into the remaining square footage, and a single Ghost Dick poster featuring a crude rendering of a floating, phantom penis ejaculating over a crowded graveyard.
The rent was eleven hundred dollars a month, a sum I could barely afford and one that was currently sixteen days past due. Daily e-mails from Mr. Ghost Dick piled up in my in-box unanswered, their demands increasingly capitalized. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY, the subject line of today’s missive shouted. IF I LOSE THIS APARTMENT, I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU, read yesterday’s. I ignored them all. My anxiety grew exponentially. The truth was, I had spent my money for the month. Spent it on my plan for tonight.
Tonight. I ripped the mattress from the floor, desperate to locate my tie, losing valuable time. I’d been in the apartment for four months but still felt like an intruder in someone else’s space, like a burglar who’d decided to spend the night. The only evidence of my existence was the bag I’d been living out of since moving to New York. Every day, I plucked my wardrobe from that massive duffel I’d carted all the way from grad school in Ohio; I couldn’t use the bedroom’s tiny closet because it was still stuffed with my sub-landlord’s clothes. His kitchen was similarly unwelcoming. The photos he’d magneted to the fridge mocked me daily with scenes from an active social life — the rowdy keg party, the packed concerts, the kiss from a girlfriend or groupie or both — scenes that stood in stark contrast to my friendless existence as a recent transplant to the city. I’d developed an irrational attachment to my single piece of luggage — subtract it from the apartment, and I was erased.
I dumped the contents of my battered duffel onto the floor in the continued hunt for my tie. Everything I owned tumbled out and landed in a heavy pile. As I picked through the mess, my phone began to vibrate. I knew who it was — so few people had my number — and I debated whether to answer it. I was already late, and tonight was too important to miss. Still, this was one call I had to take.
I picked up the phone and braced myself for a familiar threat.
“Where’s the money going, Jonah?”
“Hi, Mom.” I sighed.
“Well?”
“New York is expensive.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” she snapped.
“What — am I supposed to have, like, an itemized statement for you?”
“Don’t you make money waiting tables? Why do I get this same e-mail from you every two weeks asking me for five hundred bucks, sometimes a thousand? You don’t even call me anymore, you just shoot off an e-mail.”
“Mom, I have
bills, I have rent, I have . . . groceries —”
“Groceries?” she spat. “How about grad school, Jonah? That’s the bill I’m still stuck with on top of everything else. Why did I ever agree to let you go there? So you could become — what, a waiter?”
“Come on, Mom. Things take time. I’ve only been in New York for four months.”
My mother knew exactly which punches would land. My very expensive master’s degree in playwriting had paved the way for an illustrious career as a New York waiter. The job had been a blow to my delusional pride, but it paid at least a portion of my bills. My dream was to become a playwright, but I lacked the one thing most aspiring playwrights possess: rich parents.
“Jonah, just come home,” she pleaded, her voice softening. “This New York lifestyle isn’t healthy. You can live with me in Illinois, start going to church again —”
“Oh, because we all know how well church turned out for everyone the first time around,” I sneered.
“If only your father —” She stopped midsentence, startled by the word we had tacitly banished from our conversations. The subject of our family’s absent patriarch unearthed far too much hurt. Money was a much simpler fight.
“Please.” I sighed. “Can you help me out a little?”
“Do you know how much you’ve cost me?” she snapped. “Fifty thousand dollars. Spent on you. You think you’re in debt? What about me, Jonah? Where am I going to get fifty thousand dollars?”
Silence hung on the line. This was a new one. Never before had my mother calculated the cost of my existence and placed the blame squarely on my shoulders. Like I was a bad investment. Like I amounted to nothing more than the balance due on her credit card statement.
“Well, I’m sorry that I’ve come with such a hefty price tag. You sure you don’t want to trade me in at Walmart for a cheaper model?”
“And you have the nerve to keep asking for money.”
“Stop it, Mom. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t have a relationship with you if this is going to be the conversation every time.”
“Jonah — wait. I —”
“No, Mom. I’m done. Don’t call me again.”
“Jonah!”
I hung up and threw my phone onto the mattress, then reached for my laptop, shaking. Praying. I opened the browser and went to my bank’s website. My mother had access to my account, which allowed for the urgent, last-minute bailouts I needed far too frequently.
I exhaled in relief. The money had been deposited, as it always was, and would be available on Monday morning. The reward for fighting with my mother. Her apology, until our next argument. But this fight felt different, final in a way our others had not. I feared
I’d never talk to my mother again simply because there was nothing left to say. I choked back tears as sudden panic seized my body; I felt like a skydiver with a faulty parachute looking over his shoulder to watch the thing that was supposed to save him flap uselessly in the wind, leaving nothing but the lonely hurtle toward death.
The ache in my heart turned into rage, strengthening my resolve. If I hurried, if the trains were on time, I could still make it. I grabbed my phone and shoved it in the pocket of my suit jacket. As I did, I felt something brush my knuckles.
My tie.
I lassoed the fabric around my neck as I made my way to the door. I would not be late, not now.
Richard was waiting.
* * *
I was lucky — the L train was on time. I sat down, surprised by the emptiness of the well-lit car. But then it hit me: the smell. An unholy cloud of sweat and trash and shit invaded my nostrils as the doors closed, sentencing me to ride in the stench. My watering gaze searched the car for the source and quickly landed on the only possible culprit.
He was homeless, of course — that was expected. But his age shocked me. I struggled to make out his sleeping face, veiled by a curtain of long, oiled hair. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen, his cheeks still swollen by youthful fat, his forehead a blank slate not yet creased by worry. The duffel bags piled at his feet seemed new, their load ambitious. I wondered how long he’d been on the streets, what tragedy had banished him from the world of the sheltered. Wondered what it would be like to let the city forget you, to disappear in plain sight. Wondered — heart quickening in my chest — where was his mother?
His eyes snapped open and caught mine in a hostile glare. I jerked my head forward, focusing on the rushing tunnel outside the window, suddenly eager to leave the car. Guilt kept me fixed to my seat. I didn’t want to join the countless others who’d already exited this train car in horror, looks of disgust aimed back at his hunched figure. I wanted to be kind, even if it meant holding my breath until the next stop. The train shrieked against the track as we barreled through darkness. I did my best to turn my thoughts to the task ahead.
I was on my way to Queer Film Voices, a cinema series in which famous LGBTQ artists hosted screenings of historically important queer films. Two months prior, I’d come across an advertisement for the event online and simply thought it might make for a nice break from the nightly monotony of nursing microwaved burritos by myself. I had no real friends during those early days, and I possessed a fresh-off-the-bus desperation for any opportunities to ease the constant loneliness that plagued my new life in the city. My calendar became spotted with a pox of cultural happenings: free readings at the New York Public Library, free gallery openings in Chelsea, free concerts
in McCarren Park — anything free, really. Free was all I could afford. Somewhere, maybe in the trampled grass as I suffered through a mediocre rock band’s pro bono performance, I hoped to discover my “tribe,” that group of fantasy friends who’d been waiting in the wings, ready to rush toward me with open arms and giddy laughter. It never happened; these events always had the opposite of the intended effect. I would feel my isolation harden into bitterness as I watched groups of people from afar, gawking as they clung to one another with baffling ease, jealous of the joy on their faces. I carried a flask whenever I went out — insurance against my dread — and it was inevitably drained by the end of each evening. At that point, I usually made my way to a nearby gay bar, where I knew that at least my body could be exploited for companionship, muscled arms and chiseled stomach exchanged for an hour in someone else’s presence — a whole night if I was lucky. Rarely did my sexual encounters last much longer than that; my lovers always flinched at the subtle desperation that crept into my tone when I asked if we could “hang again soon.” My loneliness was a disease no one wanted to catch.
And so it was without much hope that I first considered the prospect of attending the Queer Film Voices cinema series. I sat on my mattress distractedly perusing their website, wondering if the event was worth the trip into Manhattan. Many notable figures had passed through the series — the site featured photos of Gus Van Sant, John Waters, and Pedro Almodóvar — but the host for the upcoming evening was Richard Shriver, successful screenwriter, author, and playwright. I Googled Richard, my motives still unformed, and pored over the search results.
That’s when I saw it. There, among the articles detailing his accolades and achievements, a photo caught my eye. I clicked to enlarge the image. It was Richard at a charity dinner or awards show or high-profile wedding, lightly sweating in a tux, his blissful expression tilted toward the young man sitting in his lap. Richard’s age stood in stark contrast to that of his companion. Richard was a well-preserved fifty-five with a salt-and-pepper crew cut and a perfectly tailored jacket that almost hid his slight middle-aged paunch, while the man in his lap was probably my age — twenty-five — and possessed a cherubic smirk, dark eyes, and biceps that swelled beneath his suit jacket. I compared the boy’s appearance to my own and felt a sudden, irrational jealousy. He had nothing on me, I told myself, taking solace in the caption that accompanied the photo: Richard Shriver and guest. As if the boy didn’t even have a name.
Who this “guest” was didn’t concern me much. What did light my interest was the sudden realization that I could, perhaps, become his replacement. In the photo, Richard’s soft, yearning eyes betrayed a weakness, one I could harness for my own needs. His eyes were the portal to another world, the answer to my loneliness, and the minute they fell on me, I would make sure they stayed there. I would attend this event, walk up to Richard, and stare him down with the defiant confidence of someone
with nothing left to lose.
“Fuck you, man,” the homeless boy shouted suddenly, bringing my focus back to the subway car. I jumped in surprise but kept my nervous gaze trained forward. “I know you can fucking hear me, you little bitch,” he snarled.
I sat, sweating now, pretending that his earsplitting accusation had somehow failed to cross the six-foot distance between us. As if my insistence that he didn’t exist could overpower his desire to be seen. As if I could make him vanish. Surprisingly, it worked, and silence returned to the car, thicker this time.
I’d studied Richard’s plays when I was in grad school, though that curriculum failed to cover the personal topics I spent much of my free time researching in the months leading up to this evening. Things like the details of his privileged yet stifled upbringing as the son of a wealthy pharmaceutical executive, described in a 1994 New York Times profile. Things like his favorite restaurants, listed in the Broadway-themed issue of Bon Appétit from the previous December. Things like his affinity for Alice Munro, documented in the New Yorker essay he penned in 2004. Things like his difficult relationship with his mother and the screaming match they’d had outside a cancer benefit, as reported by Page Six on July 12, 2007. I’d sit on my mattress for hours picking at the vegetal debris of a four-dollar frozen dinner and scouring the internet for details of Richard’s history, his tastes, his disposition. How should a person be? This was the question that plagued me in those early, isolated months. My research offered the answer: he should be like Richard Shriver.
I couldn’t leave anything to chance. I cataloged all my discoveries in a document titled “Notes for Future Conversations,” each entry a meticulous script for an eventual seduction. I imagined the lilt of my voice as I innocently suggested we dine at Odeon, a favorite downtown classic he’d mentioned in the pages of Bon Appétit. Pictured the moment I would drop a casual reference to “Runaway,” his favorite Munro story. Dreamed of the day I would slyly offer up the details of my strained relationship with my mother in hopes it would inspire a similar confession from Richard. Of course, none of these planned encounters would ever come to fruition if I bungled the first impression. That was why tonight was so important. It was the way to Richard, the man who would save me from myself.
The subway car came to a sudden stop. The lights cut out. My heart pounded as the homeless boy let out a strange, forced laugh. “Aha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa,” he roared, stomping both his feet in the dark.
“Sorry for the delay, folks, there’s a slight problem on the tracks ahead. We hope
to be moving shortly,” the conductor announced over the speakers.
“Bet you can’t see me now ’cause it’s dark, right? But you can still hear me, can’t you, fucker,” the boy yelled.
His silhouette charged toward me in the dark. I leaped from my seat and ran to the doors connecting our car to the next. Before I could escape, his hand gripped my arm. He yanked me back toward him. “You can hear me now, you little shit. You can hear me now that I have you by your fucking arm,” he screamed in my face, shaking me violently.
“Yes,” I yelled back, tears in my eyes. “Yes, I can fucking hear you.”
Just like that, he let go. He lumbered back to his seat, humming tunelessly. The lights flickered on, and the train lurched into motion. Like nothing had ever happened. I glanced up at the clock — I’d still be on time.
Here, finally, was my plan: to make Richard Shriver love me.
* * *
I surfaced in the East Village and charged down First Avenue. The air that night was unusually cold for May, but my body still produced rivers of sweat, my shirt dampening more with each new tributary.
When I finally reached the brick exterior of the Anthology Film Archives, anxiety shortened my breath. For the first time since devising my plan, I allowed the possibility of failure to enter my mind. There was the embarrassing likelihood that I would leave the event without so much as a wink from the object of my obsession, crushed by yet another thwarted fantasy of companionship, and go back to the derelict confines of my sublet, the cold greeting of someone else’s space.
I approached the box office, my Ferragamo loafers scraping the linoleum of the lobby. The shoes had cost me a week’s worth of tips — five hundred and fifty dollars — a sum that also happened to be half the rent on Ghost Dick’s crumbling lair, rent that was currently sixteen days late because of my decision to purchase the loafers. They had been an investment acquired specifically for this evening, as was the thousand-dollar blazer that swelled at my biceps, the two-hundred-dollar button-down that that gripped my muscled chest, ...
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