Chapter Thirty-two

After that moment when they had parted at the police station, Phoenix knew that there was an unspoken quarrel between him and Henry; that something had happened to make the guy recoil from him as if he was the carrier of some loathsome disease. And then Henry had ceased all contact with him, and there were no more meetings or lunches. Henry withdrew totally.

But he was not in the least bothered by this, because he had his work to face. He spent very long hours going over the scripts that were heaped on him, reading through them over and over again so he could separate the wheat from the chaff. There were endless rehearsals and meetings with directors; the endless photo shoots he made for different organizations; the interviews and TV shows he was paid for, and the interviews.

Throughout 2003 he worked like a slave on all he did, a perfectionist who wanted only the best because he could not withstand whatever criticism that came from the critics. His friends all told him of how they wished his success on themselves, but he merely laughed, refraining from telling them that his work had robbed him of his humanity. By garnering success he had sold his privacy, the core part of him that was valued above all else, and it was as much a burden as it was a glory that he was recognized everywhere he went. His popularity, coupled with his cursed effeminacy which he could not grow out of like so many of the other effeminate guys he had met during his beginning years had done, was both his blessing and his curse, the sheer horror of his being T. O. Phoenix.

He received anonymous calls so frequently, of guys who told him in their broken English that they wanted to fuck him, and some that said nothing at all; some spoke very proper English. Once he answered the call and while trying to get the person on the other line to speak, he heard that low, deep moan that was a telltale indicator of some having sex. In sheer horror he’d hung up. He developed a morbid fear of answering his phone after that.

Lawrence was livid. ‘Don’t be stupid! It means that they all want you, and so what? You are easily the most beautiful guy around, and since they can’t see you, they might as well indulge their fantasies over the phone. Besides, many of these men do not identify as homo; they are curious and are too ashamed to say what they want.’

‘I don’t need their attention!’ Phoenix hissed, anger welling up within him, threatening to choke him up. ‘It is bad enough that God had created me to be a freak of nature－’

‘You are not a freak of nature,’ Lawrence said, and there was a look of pure shock on his face at the actor’s self-deprecation of himself. ‘Whatever made you to have that stupid idea of what you are?’

‘Do the birds fly?’ Phoenix asked rhetorically in a voice that lacked strength. ‘Does a man have a penis? Does a woman have breasts? Is a man supposed to look and act like a woman? We can go on with the list if you wish, but don’t insult my intelligence and tell me that I am not some freak to some people. Even my own brother hated me.’

‘So what if he had hated you! So what if a few twisted bastards think you’re some freak?’

Phoenix stared at his closest friend coldly, his lips compressed in a grim line. ‘Those few morons of yours hate me so much that I want to get a rope, loop the thing around my neck, and pull it tight. I get these contemptuous stares from people when I go out, and I really hate myself for the way I am, and it makes me to loathe myself and wish for the fact that perhaps death will be the better option for me.’

Lawrence’s features became twisted, the bones and the muscles of his face almost caving in on themselves. ‘That’s very sad, but you’ve got to understand the fact that there are those that still care for you. Henry is still there for you.’

‘No he’s not,’ Phoenix said bitterly. ‘The bastard chose to pull away from me. I remember the fact that one day, someone had told me that I was a very destructive force waiting to destroy everything that came my way; perhaps they’re right. And I will die first before I ever try to go to Henry again.’

Phoenix kept to his word. He never contacted his lover, though he sometimes felt the weight of the crushing loneliness getting to him and weighing him down. At those times, he knew that he felt tempted to pick up one of his cell phones and call the guy, but he always stilled his hand from such foolishness. He remembered how jealous Henry had been; how the guy had barred him from consorting Rosalie or else pay the prize with his life. He knew that the guy meant it; that Henry was the kind of guy that would be dealing with him mercilessly and yet shedding tears for what he had done. It was easy for him to compartmentalize the seemingly differing emotions Henry felt for him: the sheer, unadulterated love and the mindless, visceral hatred that would make him pick up his phone, call those Agberos and have them rape him to death.

He had lost both Rosalie and Henry, both mother and son, though he managed to remain well-informed about their lives, all thanks to the world of the Internet information super-highway. He was well aware that, like a stone rolling downhill, Henry was squashing anything that stood like an obstacle in his path. The guy seemed propelled by some invisible force, and he had so many achievements under his belt and a lot of crippled businesses scattered in the wake of his triumphant march to glory. He was a media favorite, was this Henry Johnson, with his irresistible good looks and the body that he’d sculpted to perfection with weights, and he was the epitome of masculinity.

Phoenix was furious with Henry for having it all. There was his lover, the guy with the Midas Touch in business, whose praises had been sung to the high heavens, and who had been one of the best in athletics during his undergraduate days in the university, with that perfect male body an underwear model would envy and over whom many women under the age of sixty must have masturbated over in the privacy of their bedrooms, and yet the young man was a homo. Nobody knew that yet, and the guy was sheltered from physical and mental abuse because of the fact that he succeeded in fitting in.

That was the most important thing; Henry fitted in. Henry would step out in public and women would swoon all over him. Gay men would lick their lips and in the privacy of their beds late at night, pull at their erect penises while thinking of running their fingers through his body. And no one on earth would even remotely suspect that he was gay. No one!

But behind closed doors, the perfect Henry Johnson was more homo than homo itself. He had been nothing but putty in Phoenix’s hands. He had even cried with the sheer pleasure of the mind-blowing sex at the hands of Phoenix.

‘You’re the very best thing that has ever happened to me,’ he had told Phoenix once. ‘I promise you that if the circumstances had been different, in a different place and a different time, I would have made you mine forever.’

But Phoenix had laughed at the joke. And he had been right, because he had believed that he was nothing other than a temporal diversion in the life of his rich lover, and he was right. He focused on his work, and that was what kept his mind off of the troubles that seemed to be trying to render him crazy with the passing months.

By the end of 2003 he had appeared in over 27 movies, over a hundred TV commercials and more talk shows than he could remember. Then there was the Best Actor award which came up in Abuja, an occasion he graced and snagged the golden trophy with a stunning leggy model in his arms, a girl he had met in Lawrence’s salon.

By February 2004 he had bought a beautiful one-storey building at the Alpha Beach Estate, a few kilometers away from where he had stayed with Lawrence for over five years. There was a grand Persian carpet on the downstairs parlor, and there were golden draperies to match, heavy chairs with gilts on them; there were abstract watercolor paintings decorating his walls and stuccos too, with more solid oil paintings paying tribute to his walls.  Because he loved the color blue, he had blue tiles on the spiral staircase that led to the upstairs rooms, and potted artificial plants with faux blue blossoms oozing out of them. He decorated the house with very beautiful items, all themed into blue and brown, the blue for solitude and quiet, the brown for some contrast.

Then when he was done with the decorations, he invited Lawrence over, and they went there to have their first lunch in the house.

‘Now, you and I are going to move in here anytime we’re ready to do so,’ Phoenix told the older man.

But Lawrence merely laughed. ‘No, I can’t move in here with you. You need your space, and you have to have it. I will be nothing more than a sore on your feet, and I know you wouldn’t want that. Besides, I love my flat.’

Phoenix cajoled the man, and he even threatened him, but the guy would not budge; he had to stay on his own, and Phoenix had to have his freedom. That was final.

‘You are young, and I am old, one of the older generations,’ Lawrence told him seriously. ‘I am practically ancient－ thirty-nine makes you feel old. That’s not supposed to be a big deal, I know, but still, the answer is no thank you for the offer.’

That night, as Phoenix stood leaning on the balustrade outside his new grand bedroom, his mind drifted off. He was a lone wanderer, one without anything to lean on because he felt that there had to be something more than being a very pretty face in the society, with the money and the admirers who all wanted something from him. He felt listless and sad, and he wondered if this was how those politicians who stole all the money in the country and made the laws which they themselves were not privy to felt when they were at the twilight stage of their hypocritical lives and each breath was more precious than all the gold and the money they must have packed into the numerous bank accounts they had in different countries were now of no use to them.

He wondered what his life would have been like had he been normal, like the other people he often saw, the guys that had no one to roll eyes at them when they walked past. He would have wanted to blend in with others rather than stand out like a freak; it would have been better for him even if he had been born gay. Being gay would have been better than being a freak who was basically friendless.

He must have stood there for ten minutes or thirty when the phone beside him rang. It was Lawrence.

‘Dan is in trouble, dear. I know that you’re thinking that you’d seen him at the salon today but believe me when I tell you that it’s not important. He had told me that he had a meeting with a guy, and I’ve gotten a call from someone telling me that Dan is in the hospital. I think the guy was caught in the act.’

‘Caught in the act of doing what?’ Phoenix snapped as he began to pace up and down in great agitation.

‘I think he was caught when he was having sex with the date he’d gone out with this evening. All I know is that the person who had called me told me that they had been caught, and his partner had fled the scene and Dan had been too slow. Then some men there had gotten him beaten up mercilessly. Those at the hospital don’t know that yet; they just think that the guy was set upon by some crooks at the Apapa wharf area, and I intend to keep it that way. It’s too painful to think of.’

Phoenix could feel his vision blur and he sank to his knees in horror as the pain of what had transpired hit him with full force, like a physical blow to the guts. ‘Where are you now?’ he demanded as he flew to his feet with the rush of adrenalin that had swept through his system and raced into the room. His eyes were already scanning the still-unfamiliar surroundings for his car keys.

‘You must remain where you are, Phoenix,’ Lawrence said, and his voice sounded extremely calm and detached, as if he knew exactly what he wanted. ‘Right now the hospital’s alive with curious assholes who are wishing to get the entire juicy details. I have already called Dr. Awah, and he’s going to have Dan transferred to his private clinic first thing tomorrow morning.’

Phoenix knew Dr. Awah, a very skilled doctor who had studied in London and was gay too, though the whole world thought he was straight as an arrow. The kindly doctor had come to the White Phoenix often to have a drink and it was there that he hooked up too with his lover, a student of Architecture from UNILAG.

He paused in his frantic search for the idiot keys, and his mind was working. Dan would be in safe hands by tomorrow, of that much he was sure.