Boys in Gilded Cages (19 page)

Father Redmond liked to test us, and at
times throughout the planning of this picket, I felt like my
loyalty, and probably my resolve too, was being tested.

My suspicion was strengthened by the fact
that at the time, we were being filmed by a college
documentarian.

We were obligated to many one-on-one
interviews with the filmmaker, who was obviously opposed to the
Church and very liberal. We were assigned an “interview buddy” who
would give an objective evaluation of our interview. By that I
mean, our interview buddy would tell Father Redmond if we spoke too
freely or gave too much credence to the interviewer’s talking
points. I was to never waver. When we were asked why our signs were
so brash in language and intentionally inflammatory with freely
using the word “fag” and other homophobic slurs, we were to quote
scripture or give our own incendiary interpretation of it. Every
word was to help cultivate the world’s perception of the Church.
Our goal was to get people to recognize us, then hate us, so a
hostile citizen might cross the line on the street, which would
lead to litigation. Strangely, the journalist never even raised the
question that Father Redmond might not believe what he claimed.

As with journalists and pastors and
charitable celebrities and the biggest corporations that come to
mind, profit was Father Redmond’s only goal, but it was the
illusion of conviction that was the product. Casual homophobia was
amped up to the extent that the mission of the church seemed to be
to destroy homosexuality because it touched everyone and
everything, and it was used to brainwash the children and the
dumb.

It should be obvious to everyone that the
“protests” against the American military had little to do with
homosexuality, and more to do with the inflammatory nature of
intermingling the imagery of the military with the imagery of the
gay lifestyle. We focused on male homosexuality, mostly—the eating
of feces was a favorite rant. It garners an extreme reaction from
your average military family, because you are soiling their fragile
take on masculinity and strong, silent patriotism with the idea of
the Army bunkers being nothing more than gay bath houses with a
massive arsenal, accepting of faggotry and as such, denying
traditional values.

Picketing with signs and screams, even at a
young veteran or celebrity’s funeral, does not give someone the
legal right to hit or spit on you. When they do, the Redmond
family, a clan of brilliant attorneys, get paid.

And so, an outrageous public image was
created--a bizarre brand that depended on wide spread reviling to
survive.

The film crew was there
when I simply walked away from The Family at my uncle’s funeral,
never to return, and it was the climax of their documentary. It was
sold to
Inside Edition
and put on the internet, and it started the coastal media’s
fixation on me.

A large portion of the American people
herald me as a hero or victim, when truth be known I still hold
many of the same beliefs that attracted me to the Church in the
first place. Not much has changed, except in how I express the
ideas I hold, or actually, how I do not express them. My adequate
vocabulary and relative youth makes me an appealing spokesperson
for these journalists and online media companies, and I oblige them
for the same reason the Redmond Family church exists.

I’m in a nice hotel, homeless but eating
well and drinking through interviews for free, as long as I keep
talking. And the Redmond Family Church is as marginalized as it
always was, the congregation probably only made up of actual blood
relatives by now.

I don’t know what will happen if I return to
Missouri. I’ve made no attempt to call my family, and they don’t
know how to reach me. I’ve considered going to the New York YMCA,
or working for the Cult Deprogramming Center (which I hear is owned
by the Church of Scientology).

We all pay for our convictions, and I’m
surely not done paying for mine. I’m tired of having them and ready
to just exist as an apolitical and agnostic human being. However,
I’m not exactly sure I can support myself that way. I’ve forgotten
how.



DARYL MCADAMS IS A SPECTACLE



The day that Daryl was
rushed to the emergency room he said something weird. He was always
such a fiery little boy, but on this day he came into the classroom
with a lack of energy that your average over-perceptive, moderately
maudlin teenager might reach for in tissue-thin hindsight and
lazily claim as simple depression, a red marker we all should have
recognized.

How could we be so stupid
as to overlook such strong foreshadowing?
Is the type of thing I hear a lot in the hall ways. Daryl
took a little death trip on that day, and disaffected teenage girls
lost an idol for a few minutes. Anonymous Daryl with the sexy body
and strong, borderline-scary eyes with pupils like UFO’s, they
almost lost him. Who gives a fuck.

So anyway what he said I’m not going to say,
and I know that may frustrate you as this Tweak Book is supposed to
illuminate, but there are things that must be left to context clues
because just saying “Open sesame” is both a boring old trick and a
dangerous one if you people ever found out that it actually works
if you say it to the right door.

What I’ll say is that the whole town gasped
when he uttered the words. From his hospital bed, lips chapped blue
but eyes still intent on seeing what no one was prepared to see, he
said those stupid fucking words. At that moment everyone hated him
and themselves.

But nothing really happened, I mean not
really. Kids still jumped off merry-go-rounds like trains to get
practice for when they’re older. Business casual paroled sex
offenders still piled into their call center jobs every morning.
Housewives still borrowed their little munchkins’ Adderall so they
could vacuum properly. I still felt the same about the town of
Hawthorn. I knew what I knew, and now Daryl revealed himself to
know what I know.

Basking in the light of both dawn and
twilight, and disappearing in the dark of 3a.m. Walking through
doors unannounced but invited, breaking antique mirrors on the way
in, and gluing them back together on his way out. Nothing changed.
But everything was a little more tense in town.

But he looked harder with those eyes of his;
he had to. He still served a purpose. If he hadn’t he would be
eliminated by my father, the Lucifer of Hawthorn. For there is no
such thing as the Antichrist. There is no liason between white
light and black light and there never was. There is only choice
and, obviously, consequence. Your best bet for survival is to stay
in the basement and hold your breath until your eyes swirl to
black.

The biggest trick Daddy Redmond pulled on
Hawthorn was to convince them that a medium was necessary in the
human world, because humans are weak, and stupid. The reality is
that the answers and symbols are right in front of your face if
you’d just break the spell and see it. And Daddy Redmond is the
weakest human of all, the dumb fuck.

So anyway Daryl McAdams said what he said
and the only one that swirled into a K-hole was him. His rates
dropped substantially and his looks faded considerably as I think
Daddy Redmond was feeding him more dope. But still he was useful
because he was the only one in town who recognized a good business
opportunity when he saw one, and the only one brave enough to risk
death to get the gain. His plan was to eject at 18. He accomplished
his goal when he got on that bus, but who the fuck knows where he
is now—I imagine either living off a trust fund supplied by his
rich-ass dad (which I’m sure took a lot of convincing as Toby was
tight as hell and did not “believe in handouts” as most Southern
men say), or finding a new dad to fund his lifestyle. If anyone is
a survivor in this stupid world, It’s Daryl.




FISH OUT OF WATER
The humidity was felt everywhere;
there was no escape from it. Not inside the room, even naked. Not
in a cold shower, or the pool. Brandon lay in his hotel bed,
staring at the air conditioning unit. Ignoring what felt like tiny
scalpels digging up from under his skin, he focused his energy on
the air conditioner, glaring at it, fantasizing that the dial went
higher.

He didn’t know the town
well enough to score on his own, but he thought about calling his
cousin, who was local and had no idea Brandon was in town.
What a pleasant surprise it’d be for
him
, he rationalized. Ricky would knock on
the door and hug Brandon’s sweaty body, and in the embrace he’d
feel the twitching from under the skin.
Good God, Son, you are ill!,
he’d
say
,
And off
they’d go. Brandon could go completely underground for a few days,
then maybe grab his guitar and play a show with some bar’s shitty
house band. With name recognition, he’d make a couple-hundred
bucks, or a grand, and live in the Hilton. Maybe he could make it
last for the rest of his life with no one noticing.

Lou is no doubt blowing up
Brandon’s silent cell at this very moment, two missed calls away
from dialing
Inside
Edition
.

Being an agent is probably
the worst job in the world, and only dickheads like Lou are
qualified. Brandon has not made Lou any money in some months, since
agreeing to do the commercial for a discontinued Japanese energy
drink called
Wa
Pow![tm]
, a name which was neither
Japanese or English, but sounded vaguely like it could be both. The
room at the Memphis Hilton in which Brandon is now staying is being
paid for with the check from the
Wa
Pow!
commercial
.

If you did not know for sure, you would say
that the room was trashed on purpose. There were burger wrappers
and makeshift ashtrays and a malicious smell. Vomit was on the
walls and prescription bottles littered the nightstand and the
floor beneath, sad and empty, arranged like bowling pins. The room
was in disarray roughly 10 minutes after Brandon checked in. Anyone
who caught a glimpse of it would think it used up and abandoned –
the ghetto of the Memphis Hilton.

You would think a public
figure would be getting calls to the room. No one he knew had any
clue where he was, but celebrities – including Brandon, in his
heyday – often get borderline harassing calls from the front
desk.
Do you need anything? Towels? A
refilled refrigerator? Would you sign a DVD for my niece?
He was never annoyed by the calls, and extremely
depressed at the silence.

Of course, he had silenced his own phone, at
which he could not bear to look. At least a hundred calls from Lou,
a few from a publicist handpicked by Lou and whose name always
escaped Brandon (he was entered in the phone simply as “pub”), and
the nightly calls from various L.A. scene kids he gave his number
to while he was stoned.

The silence swirled. It hovered around the
oscillating fan Brandon grabbed from a convenience store.

He had never watched the
celebrity infotainment shows when he was a legitimate celebrity.
They do not report on celebrities’ personal lives, they report on
celebrities’ personas. Brandon had no problem with this. There is
no such thing as the celebrity invasion of privacy – every
interview a famous person gives, every “candid” with a paparazzo,
every scandal was crafted by either a rival publicist, or the
celebrity themselves. Extramarital affairs exist, but with the
consent of the “jilted” spouse. Living this dream theater was
amusing to Brandon, until
The National
Enquirer
started printing very true things
about Brandon’s personal life.

Brandon Bennett the actor has a drug problem
and so does Brandon Bennett the man.

Persona-less and mortal Brandon Bennett,
snapped in rehab looking bloated and decidedly unattractive. Sold
out by a real person.

And so the television was on for about five
minutes, enough time to catch an update on one of those
infotainment shows about Brandon Bennett the actor escaping rehab,
scaling the wall in a dramatic fashion, mimicking one of his dead
grunge heroes. He could have simply signed himself out, But Brandon
the Actor wasn’t done playing with them yet. When it was time to
say goodbye to Brandon the Actor, there would be no more media
trickery. He would be dead or working in a factory or bar--dead to
the West Coast and alive to real people. Everything about both
Brandons was pathologically narcissistic in that way, exaggerating
their importance or notoriety. L.A. incubates this mental illness.
It’s what has kept the city from falling in on itself, like the
worst kind of alcoholic sorority slut.

He was not surprised to find his socialite
“girlfriend” speaking to the nondescript blonde
reporter-slash-underwear model and former beauty queen.

The Socialite was pleading for Brandon The
Actor’s safe return, that where ever you may be, Brandon, please
don’t use and tell us where you are. Like totally. I just want to
know that you are safe.

As soon as the Socialite finished speaking
on television, there was a dainty knock on Brandon’s door.

“
No more towels, thank
you.”

“
It’s me, you fucking
idiot.” The Socialite.

“…
The fuck is ‘me’?” He
knew.

“
Shut up.”

Brandon checked his greasy hair, took off
his shirt and flexed, then went to the door.