You may as well know that it wasn’t incessant, tasteless goading from that ubiquitous, self-promoting blogger who shall remain unnamed that brought Doogie out of the transparent closet, but rather my fraternal patience and understanding. OK, that’s a lie. It was my slow-burning, firm, Lauren-Bacall-in-Written-in-the-Wind-esque sense of moral self-righteousness that finally slapped the double life off his face. As I’ve previously revealed, my interest in his well-being and psychological recovery is complicated and bloody — in fact, I sometimes bolt awake in the dead of 8 a.m. from horrific dreams in which William Finley is trying to separate us with a rusty meat cleaver.
But I was the lucky one, and I was pretty smug about it. I may have also been the stupid one and been reminded of it daily by the people claiming to be my parents, but that poor boy hadn’t a prayer to escape his predestiny. I’m not proud to say it, but I knew he’d be two tons of fucked-up in a one-ton capacity dump truck. So, even as I longed to reach out and touch him (via phone, I mean) and make up for all the years lost while I was learning the price of being only moderately talented on the piano in flyover country and while he was being given saline and bovine estrogen dialysis, I wasn’t ready to be a lap for him to cry on. Not when I had autofellatio jags to flex up to, slowly, inch by inch. So far as I was concerned, he could do what the rest of the intelligent, gay headcases do: live according to the “out of the closet, but still behind the screen door” policy. And occasionally lash out at otherwise cheese-platter occasions.
Imagine my surprise when he flew to Minneapolis to meet up with me. Well, actually he was here to visit the new Guthrie, giggle and nudge me inside the endless bridge and scale the scrolling LED tower, shouting to the few small-condo/large-dog owners walking below “Look at me, I’m Eric! I love riding the pole!” Fed up, I dug into my deck and laid down the ace card I’d been holding for years and years, too decent to actually put it into play. I told him I’d slept with Vinnie, pretending to be him. If I was knowingly popping my facade of moral superiority into a sacrifice fly, I knew it was going to bat his prancing, lithium-abusing self home. Maybe I’m just saying that because he practically bounced off the Metrodome with fury. For about ten minutes. But when he finally calmed down, he admitted that he’d brought it upon himself for remaining closeted when anyone with two balls could see he’d dive for them given half an opportunity. But, to make him feel better and to restore my Bacall quotient, I made like I was really shocked by the news. I made a big performance of it.
He bought it, even though he should’ve known I knew the whole time, what with the fact that I slept with his secret high school boyfriend by imitating him, which Vinnie would’ve never done were Doogie and he not already on familiar terms. In the bargain, I also came to realize that I wasn’t the stupid one. And I was relieved that those perverts in lab coats grabbed the wrong twin so many years back.
I’ve never felt closer to my evil doppelganger. In retrospect, I should’ve seen our commonalities a lot sooner. To wit:
But our inner black ladies aside, I’m glad that Doogie shared what is always the pinnacle of any gay man’s life with me, the very moment before everyone in his chosen social circle loses interest in him and starts lusting after straighter, younger, or at least reasonably more ambiguous other men who don’t claim they’re not like other gay men and then turn around and star in Assassins just like every other gay man. When that happens, I will finally offer him the crying lap I’ve so long denied him … and everyone else. It’s awfully gratifying. That together we offer yet more proof that nature, not nurture, is responsible for tortured, diseased sexuality — and that our example will hopefully provide scientists with the data they need to eradicate it before it destroys future generations — is just the gravy on the cake.