Brad's Diary
Discounting the dysfunctional and questionable ones, conditions in one's own home were necessarily a shade more civilized than those one might encounter outside. Jeff, the boy I loved, of late missing due to loss of memory, had been restored to safety in our home. Indeed, considering his experiences in the past 2 months (the word 'abuse' should spring to mind), the safety of a stable home environment had become a vital requirement to stymie any negative outcomes gaining hold on his emotions.
It was Keith who first spotted him, awakened from his 2-hour nap, on the landing. I hadn't intuited to him. No one had. We'd been engrossed in our own thoughts while Tristan had been supplying us his evaluation of Jeff's physical and psychological conditions. I couldn't make legitimate guesses for the others in my company, Keith, Tristan and Stephen, but my own thought had been one of devising a stratagem for the protection and fortification of Jeff's refuge in the house.
Keith, a lawyer who co-ran his partner and lover Steve's investigation agency, had developed a language of behavior sometimes incomprehensible to others. But it was an asset in his line of work. He had only to move a few facial muscles and I knew he was prompting me to Jeff's presence. We all knew.
"Your pride's going to catch cold," he added.
I found Jeff huddled on the second floor landing, his cuteness resembling a roly-poly against the wall. But a figure in superior isolation, something I must soon change, he was bare-naked under my mother's quilt comforter that was thrown carelessly over his shoulders.
"I can't find my clothes," he whispered to me. I was squatting in front of him, my sweet-faced lover of one year, and close friend of more, and then I extended my hand to him. He took it without hesitation.
"I'm sorry. I've put them in the wash," I told him, raising him up with me. "Come on."
He followed me, his hand still gripped in mine. It felt clammy. And under heavy medication, he was walking in a doddery way, like a decrepit ancient thing, a 19-year-old boy with an old man's gait. I would gather him in and wrap him in my warmth if not for the fact that it would spook him and I might lose him still.
And I wasn't deaf to the silent moaning of his despondent landscape. He ached to be well. I ached for him to be well. I ached for the Jeff I loved so completely to be normal: for his laughter ringing in the moonlight while he swam nude under it; for his diabolical maneuverings at Twister, often throwing his challengers' limbs into confusion; for his willingness to participate in my eccentric fantasies, to get into an innocent role and, as exact as biorhythm, obtain salacious mileage from its wholesome angle.
But first things first.
Inside our room, I removed the quilt, an heirloom from the distaff side of my family, and cloaked him in one of my own terry cloth robes. I led him to where our wardrobe was hidden behind a fiberglass screen.
"How does one find enough days to wear all these?" he asked, gasping at the rows of suits.
"Oh, half of these belong to me, too, sweetie," I explained. I opened a drawer and obtained from the stack of our shared underwear pieces a pair of cotton boxers. He detested boxer shorts but for the time being, they would provide him comfort. Then I selected from the hanging rod a loose pair of chinos and from the shelves a taupe-colored T-shirt.
"Tell you what," I suggested, "before you put these on. I'd like for you to take a bath. It's almost time for supper."
He was pictured in finite reticence as he followed me to the bathroom, and in infinite innocence watching intently while I ran the bath. Even the immense size of the tub had been able to produce a picture of childlike wonder.
I introduced a rubber mat to the base of the tub. "It can be slippery," I explained. "This warm enough for you?"
He dipped his slender fingers in the water and nodded.
"Some of this with the gel and you'll have a great bath water," I mentioned, spooning bath salts into the water. He watched me full of the intrigue of new encounters. I put the jar of salt crystals under his nose and he took a whiff of them. "Good?"
He nodded.
Of course, that had been a test – what I did. The salts had been his raison d'etre for making a hastily planned trip to the Middle East not too long ago. He'd read about their miraculous powers to heal all forms of skin maladies. He'd wanted to test them on the problem of his own persistent skin rash. Sadly, however, that story didn't have a happy ending, so the salts became a means to indulge purely in the toilet pursuit of imported culture.
I had wondered if the smell might help him recall that trip. It didn't, but I observed that I wasn't terribly bothered.
"I was awful earlier," he said suddenly. He had disrobed himself naked and slid into the water.
I caught the discreet grimaces altering his features when the water made contact with his old wounds. I was right to have omitted soap.
"How do you mean?" I asked him.
"I was mean to Tristan," he said. "I'm sorry. He must hate me now."
"Tristan doesn't hate you. He loves you," I assured him.
"Will you tell him I'm sorry?"
"You can tell him, you know. Here, let me get that."
He turned so that I could scrub his back. There were questions I wanted to ask him. But that couldn't be rushed, so I took my time, waiting for signs of relaxed muscles and calm. As I did, my imagination was expediently caught by the idea of giving him a massage. I laid aside the brush and began, working my fingers first on his shoulders, then up his neck, and finishing symbolically at the crown of his head. His hair seemed plastered now to his head. He looked adorable and I told him so. And the massage had produced the effects of the calm I'd been waiting for.
I eased him up slightly, taking a wash cloth to his anus. "Tristan said your anus was tender. There's some damage to the blood vessels. Do you want to tell me about that?" I asked, approaching with caution.
As I'd anticipated it, my poser plunged him into a deadly silence.
"Coutts," I pursued, "I mean, the man you call 'Pa'. He had _s_e_x_ with you."
"No!" he exclaimed.
(Yes!) Success, and so soon. I'd employed the time-honored but foolproof lawyer's trick of shocking him into confession.
Gently now, I turned him around to face me. "Do you know how you got sore?"
Silence. (Oh, how I dread this. What now?)
"Tristan and I want to help you," I said. "But you have to start to trust us."
Silence. (_d_a_m_n_!) But I waited. I would wait as long as Jeff needed. I proceeded to sponge his pits and groin.
And then, quite unexpectedly, I heard him begin: "He put a hose inside me." His voice was quiet and quivering.
"He shot water into your anus?" I asked.
"Yes. Just before I ran away. He was making a movie."
I resumed sponging his groin. "Did you shave off your pubic hair?"
"No, he and Stoner did it."
"For the movie?"
"Yes. But Pa also wanted me to look like a boy when he spanked me. He said I was 16 years old. 16 year-old boys shouldn't be allowed to keep so much pubic hair."
I was on a roll now. A momentum of trust and give and take had been found.
"Did Stoner spank you as well?"
"Yes."
"I know about the piercing of your sac," I ventured, working the chamois on his neck and ears. "They did that, too."
He nodded.
"Tristan also said that your penis has lacerations."
Silence. (No, no, baby, don't recede now.)
I probed carefully. "Pa and Stoner used to spank you for your transgressions. Sometimes they whipped or caned you."
Nod. (Phew.)
"Where did they spank or cane you .... usually?"
"You know. You saw the welts. I showed you."
"Okay. Was it always just on your bottom?"
"Sometimes also my thighs."
"Where else?"
A shrug. But still a response. (Good.)
"Your genitals, perhaps? Is this why there are laceration marks on your penis? He took the cane to your penis?"
"No."
"So how did they happen, Jeff?"
There was once again some wait while he gathered the courage to speak. He did, but only after he appeared to have found some level of safety in placing himself in my confidence. I was left in a fury after he finished. I guess I had overestimated my own threshold for the ugly and awful in life.
I rose, planted a short kiss on his head, loving him but loathing what he'd been made to endure, and told him to finish up on his own and dress for supper downstairs. I turned towards the door just as the first tears rushed to my eyes.
I raced to the patio. Tristan had followed me.
"What kind of evil conjures up such ideas?" I said through my annoying flush of tears. "He was so frightened and nauseated after that, he admitted wetting his bed that night. He's 19 and he wet the _d_a_m_n_ed bed. God, how messed up he must have been for that to happen. So he'd bitten his knuckles to hurt himself. They strung his penis toward the ceiling, Tristan, with a wire hooked to his prepuce – all because he hadn't been able to maintain his erection for the length of the film shoot. That cut into his skin. They stuffed a water hose in his anus, simulating an enema, for their film. While he was quadrumanous and enduring the enema, they displayed him to other men. After that he fled.
"I was thinking all the time he was telling me about it – it must be so terrifying for him – to be all alone. Going through all that alone, and without the benefit of a memory that functioned. God, Tristan, he's just a kid.... Somebody's going to have to pay."
Tristan crooked an arm around mine. "You can't afford to fall apart," he chided me, slapping my wrist. "Jeff needs you. He's completely helpless and doesn't know whom to turn to. You must be strong and show him he can turn to you. You have to get your act together fast. For crying out loud, Brad, you can't control everything that happens to him. You can't keep this world Jeff-safe or pain-proof.
"For God's sake, and Jeff's, you have to put all this behind you. He's alive and he's here, but he's ill and this is your primary concern – to nourish him back to health. It's intensive caretaking he's going to need and not just for a short time. No one can say for sure when he'll get his memory back. He's the one feeling more frightened now than you or I could ever know what that means, and you have to show him he can feel safe with you. You're not going to be able to help one bit holding out for revenge and retribution.
"Leave the man, Coutts, and the quack doctor, Stoner, to Steve and Keith, all right? Leave justice and vengeance to the District Attorney. Jeff needs taking care of. That's going to be more than enough to keep your hands full."
I knew he was right. I nodded.
A voice behind us said: "Jeff's looking for you."
We went back into the house. We found Jeff on the first floor landing, his ash blond hair in tangles and wet. He had shaved his face. My Jeff – still somewhat apprehensive of but putting his trust in us. He was such a pretty sight.
I went up and brought him down. "I hope Chinese food is all right with you. We called delivery," I told him.
"I love Chinese," he said.
(Still able to stun me.)
"You remember?" I asked.
"Yes."
"That's great. You're continuing to make progress," Tristan commented.
The food was delivered in little cardboard cartons. We attacked them, but six failed attempts at picking up the dim sims later, I gave the chopsticks up to the ghost and said to Jeff: "I'll take you on a tour of the house. The buildup's pretty large, you could get quite lost...."
"I have to go soon," he said, interrupting me in mid-suggestion. "Pa will get angry."
"You still call him your father?" Steve said. "Baby, he's a madman."
"I know he's a fraud," Jeff replied. "But he's dangerous and he'll be looking for me here."
"Sweetheart," I pleaded, "you've only lost your memory. Not your mind. You're not well. If you go back to him, you'll never get better. He'll harm you in ways I'd just as soon not know."
"I didn't mean I was going back to him," he explained. "But I can't stay here."
"I guess you still don't believe who we say you are," I said. "I don't blame you. But this is the only place you're going to be safe from Coutts. And you don't have to be afraid of him. I'll look after you."
I appeared to have erred. He looked insulted and sprang to his feet. He started in the direction of the vestibule. Spurred by fear of losing him once more, I bolted after him.
"I'm sorry," I said, holding his arm. "I just meant that, here, you'll be with friends."
"It isn't that," he said sorrowfully.
"What's the matter?" I asked tenderly.
"I think," he whispered, "I'm afraid, maybe you're mistaken about me. Maybe I'm not the Jeff O'Keefe you knew. Maybe he's still out there, waiting for you."
I clasped his neck and eyeballed him squarely. "Am I hearing you right?" I replied. "You're saying there may be another guy that looks just like you, lost out there and looking for me. There are 2 Jeff O'Keefes, 2 guys with the same name, look identical and have amnesia?"
"I don't know. I don't know. Why does Pa say my name's Alex O'Keefe?"
Tears misted his perfectly symmetrical and longish almond-shaped eyes.
I folded him into my chest, holding him in my iron grip. I was not about to let him walk out the door. I'd been racked by the awareness that the grand design had been so close to unraveling. From now on what I said or did must be on tenterhooks with him. My boy was too fragile and if anything, it was his low self-esteem that was going to cause me to lose him again.
"He's not your Pa," I whispered into his ear. "He was probably the first person that found you the night you disappeared. Tristan believes you sustained some kind of brain injury. He found an old gash scar in your head when he was examining you this afternoon; I think it's here somewhere. There, right here. Put your finger on this. Can you feel it? That's what's causing the loss of memory – the injury, I mean – and why you hadn't been able to find your way home.
"As far as Coutts' calling you Alex, you always used to carry your student ID in your wallet. He probably found you along with your belongings intact. He probably read your name on your ID card. Your name, Alexander Jefferson O'Keefe, is on the card. He shortened it to Alex. This itself is evidence that he doesn't know you at all, not then and not now. Baby, you were always known to friends by your second name. Your parents shortened it to Jeff. Your father preferred to call you Jefferson in honor of Thomas Jefferson.
"I don't want to go too much into the history of your family. That's going to be something you will have to find out. As Tristan's told you, you must have your own memory and that's why we won't tell you everything about yourself. That would be the easier way but it won't be your own memory. But I assure you: you are Jeff O'Keefe, my Jeff O'Keefe. There is no other."
"How can I be sure?" he asked.
"Come with me," I persuaded, leading the way to the Study. I realized I should have done this from the beginning.
There, I opened a safety vault and drew out some scrolls. I scattered them on the lectern, found what I wanted and unrolled a yellowed certificate. It was his birth certificate. Then I separated out from the other documents his social security identification, passport and school certificates and their pedigrees of ownership.
"I'd asked Pa for my certificates," he told me. "He said they were burned along with the house I set fire to. But if you had them all the time, why didn't you produce them that last day at the hospital? Why didn't you claim me then?"
"I wanted to," I replied. "But Steve, who's had experience in domestic kidnapping when he was a practicing lawyer, reminded me that I didn't want to do anything that could be construed as abducting you. And these papers have had to be proven authentic and representing you. That's why I couldn't come and get you sooner. I'd been to see the Commissioner and judge this past week to have these documents verified. Remember how I had told you that it was dangerous for you to come to me? They could've said I had kidnapped you. But now that these documents are verified and seen to be in my possession, there's no chance in the world anyone can say I kidnapped you."
I allowed him some time to examine his documents. Also to see if they could prompt something in him. For the thousandth time, I wondered: what could be blocking his boutons – those nodes in the brain that formed associations? What could be done to penetrate the layers of his deepest and most secret memory to level the obstacles blocking it?
Alas, the papers had evoked no recollection in him.
"There's something else," I told him, drawing out a photo album. I produced my final evidence: a photograph of him in his pre-med year.
"Look at this," I told him. "I don't know of 2 persons with the name Jeff O'Keefe that have exactly the same scar. Not even with identical twins can that be possible."
I pointed to the small scar on his forehead, which was captured clearly in the vignette. "You got that on the ice in a skating mishap first year I knew you. Happened in Sweden. Bloody mishap."
He caught my pun and smiled.
"Are you convinced now?" I asked him finally.
He smiled: "Yes."
Hours later, Tristan poked his head around the door. He'd come for Jeff's enema and physical. The miracle glycerine suppository languished in his rectum, mastered his constipation problem and irrigated his colon. Later, following the enema, Tristan occupied him with the rest of his medication. I counted 14 varieties of pills and capsules.
He was in a pensive mood when we put him to bed. He was restless while, from the confines of the wing chair, I watched him twist the sheets to death.
It was a long time before he relaxed and maneuvered his body into the fetal position.
© 1998, 2001, JRK & BWK.