Since the publication of 5A and 5B, I have received over forty emails about the stories - all very positive. I got only ONE very negative email that said that the story was sick and anti-gay. However, that email I disregard, considering its doubtful, intellectually malignant and conceited source. Many of the emails asked why I left out Dimi's suicide and how it affected me and asked that I write about that part of the story. Anyway, by leaving that out in part 5B, I was trying to convey to the readers what it was like to blot out a painful memory until the very last second when a person has to face what he fears the most.
Joe Xenakis, dimiandjoey@mail.com
Now I Know I Am Not Alone - Epilogue
The instant that Dimi threw the mojo bag, I was overwhelmed with a sense of terror, a terror that I had never felt before. Perhaps that terror was an omen, an unspoken whisper in my ear of what was to come. By the time I realized what had happened and ran to the apartment door he was gone. I stood here in the street, looking one way and then another. Did he run up one of the cross-streets? I had no way of knowing. I began walking aimlessly, crossing from street to street, hoping that I would find him. As I walked, my pace quickened as panic fed my terror. I had sworn to myself that I would never do anything that would push Dimi over the edge, but, in a moment of anger, I had broken my oath.
After hours of walking, I returned to the apartment. I called his parents and they said that they would go right out to look for him. My parents too joined in the search. Dimi's uncle Constantine alerted the police. I called his psychiatrist and told him what had happened. By then I was crying, as I recounted the battle that I had had with Dimi.
"Joey, " the doctor said calmly, "the last thing we need right now is guilt from you. You know the places that he hangs out. You know his friends. We have to find him as soon as possible so we can get him into a residential treatment facility"
"OK, I'll try . . . " I sobbed as I hung up the phone. I could not believe how calm the doctor was. At first I thought that he did not really care, but then I thought that he must deal with stuff like this everyday and he knows he has to remain calm.
That night I got no sleep. I sat around the apartment waiting for Dimi to return or to call. By one in the morning, I was out again looking for him. It is so easy to disappear. He had done it before. I hoped that he had more sense that to turn to someone like that guy who had "helped" him before. As I walked back to the apartment, a car approached and slowed. It was Dimi's parents.
"Joey," his mother said as she stuck her head out the window, "have you seen him?"
I shook my head and said, "Nope."
"We just returned from checking out Costas' house in Venice. We thought that he might hide there. The place was closed tight and there was no sign of him. We are getting more worried by the second."
"Me too." I replied matter of factly.
It's funny how things you say sound so dumb when you say them. Of course I was worried. I was terrified. I had never told anyone except the psychiatrist about the episode in Greece. Now, I was reliving that again. Every waking moment, I can hear Dimi locked in the bathroom, threatening to kill himself because he is evil, an animal that does not deserve to live.
At first, I was going to call in sick for work at Publix, but I went anyway. The day passed as if I were in some sort of trance. Everything seemed to be happening as if I were in a fog and moving in slow motion.
"What's wrong, Joey?" asked Anne, realizing as everyone else did that something was troubling me a lot.
"Nothin'," I mumbled, adding, "I just didn't get much sleep last night . .I'm kinda dead on my feet . . ."
'Dead!' The word stabbled me like a knife. I started crying and trembling as I tried to make more excuses for my behavior. Anne went to the manager and, since our shifts were over in ten minutes, she asked him if we could leave early because I was getting sick. She drove me to the apartment, and As she drove, she tried to find out what was the matter. But I could not tell her. Maybe I was ashamed to tell her that Dimi and I were gay. I just don't know. As we rode along, I found myself l ooking out the window for Dimi. When we got to the apartment, she came inside with me and I collapsed on the couch, sobbing.
"Joey! What the hell is wrong?" She begged. "I'm not leaving here until you tell me!"
"OK," I snapped back angrily between sobs. "I'm gay! You happy now? I had a real bad fight with Dimi last night. We are lovers but we consider ouselves married. I said terrible things to him things that I should never have said and now I'm afaid that he might kill himself."
Anne sat down on the couch next to me and put her arm around me and tried to comfort me, saying "Couples have fights all the time, gay or straight. That doesn't mean that somebody's gonna kill himself."
"You don't understand! You have no idea what Dimi has been through. "
I started to tell her the nightmare that Dimi had lived for eight months, the almost inhuman things that he was made to do. As I told her, I could see the shock in her face. As I continued the story, she looked up at the clock on the wall and said that she had to get home because her boys would be home from school in a half-an-hour, but that she wanted me to come over to her place because I should not be alone.
Like a little kid, I just answered "OK" between sobs. It's funny how nobody want to be alone when they are hurting and I was no exception. Part of me wanted to stay at the apartment in case Dimi called, but that other part of me needed to be with someone. That afternoon, I met Anne's sons, Alan and Matthew, for the first time. They were nice kids, but I could not help wondering what pain life had in store for them as they grew up. Maybe I was just subconsciously remembering a time when Dimi and I were just kids, innocent kids with our whole lives ahead of us.
Later Anne brought me back to our apartment. She told me that everything would be OK, but I could not shake that feeling of doom. Later that night, Dimi's parents came to the apartment. The moment I opened the door I knew that there was something wrong. Their faces said everything. I only remember what they said as we stood in the doorway:
"Joey, Dimi is dead."
I opened my eyes. Everything appeared blurred but very bright. As my eyes focused I realized that I was in a hospital. I felt drained, weak, exhausted. I thought I had had a bad dream, but when I saw Dimi's mother sitting there, I knew that it had not been a dream. Anne was sitting next to her with my mother. They appeared very worried.
"What happened?" I said, still in a stupor.
"You collapsed . . ."
"No! No! I mean what happened to Dimi?"
"Papa found him on the Eleuthera II. Nobody thought to look there. If only we had . . ."
"Did he die of a drug overdose?" I asked.
"No, Joey," His mother answered falteringly as she began to cry and Anne put her arm around her. "He shot himself in the mouth with the shark rifle."
I began to cry, and as I cried I got angry, knocking the phone and other stuff off the table next to the bed. I screamed that I had killed Dimi. I tried to pull the IV tube from my arm, but at that moment a nurse appeared and injected something into it and I slipped quickly into nothingness.When I awoke again, the room was empty and dark. I tried to move but could not. They had put some kind of restraints on me. I started screaming and a shadowy figure entered the room. I cold see the outline of a hypodermic needle in the shadow's hand. In an instant, I again slipped quickly back into nothingness.
The next day, I met Dr. Christiansen, a psychiatrist.
It was really a comical scene. I was laced up tight in my bed and he attempted to talk to me about my troubles and guilt.
"Joey," he began, "you have to understand that you did not kill Dimi. I have read the case file on him and it is a miracle that he survived at all after what he went through."
"You don't understand!!!!" I sobbed. We were married; we agreed to stick together no matter what. When he needed me the most, I abandoned him. I turned on him and blamed him for everything."
On and on it went for days, weeks, and months, first in the hospital and then in Dr. Christiansen's office. "It was not my fault." That was the message that he drummed into my head as I re-lived the good times and bad times with Dimi. Eventually, I realized that I would never escape re-living everything unless I started to agree with him.
"At last, we are getting somewhere." He said, almost cackling with delight.
Eventually, I was allowed to return to the outside world. I had accomplished what I had set out to do - convince Dr. Christiansen that I had accepted Dimi's death as a tragedy but also as a tragedy for which I was not responsible.
I knew what I had to do - I planned to follow my love to the grave so that we could be together again. How I was going to do it, I did not know, but I knew that I was going to do it.
Everything seemed to be falling into place. I had to see Dr. Christiansen only once a month. I had been assigned to work in the pharmacy in Publix, helping the pharmacist fill prescriptions. He would tell me what medicines to bring to him and I would fetch them. On one of my fetches, I slipped a bottle of Demerol into my pocket and hoped that he would not notice. There were only ten tablets in the bottle, but I knew that would be enough. I went to the bathroom and downed them in an instant.
As I stood at the end of an isle, working on an end-cap display with Anne, all I remember was suddenly seeing only grayness and feeling like I was turning and falling to the right. I remember hearing Anne screaming "Oh my God, no! Call the paramedics."
As my brain came to life again, all I could see was brightness. I at first thought that I had succeeded. I saw a shadowy face. I thought it was Dimi and we were together again. Quickly though, as I heard voices and my vision cleared, I realized that I had failed. I knew that I would be back with Dr. Christiansen, for sure. But I was wrong about that. My parents had contacted the doctor that had treated Dimi and he agreed to take my case.
From the moment I met him, I felt at ease. Here was someone who knew the pain that Dimi had gone through and understood the deep love we had for each other. As the months progressed, I began to see how everything fit together. As my therapy continued, more and more I began to realize what gia-gia always used to say was so true: "Nothing ever happens by accident. When God closes a door, he opens a window."
Eventually, I moved in with Anne. For some reason, she was able to sense what I was feeling. She was my soul-mate, like Dimi had been. Eventually, we slept together and I was delighted when she announced that she was pregnant. We agreed to marry and later when the ultrasound revealed that the child was a boy, she suggested that we name him Demetrios; yes, Dimi had come back to me. Gia-gia was right: "Nothing ever happens by accident."