This is gay erotic fiction. If you are offended by graphic descriptions of homosexual acts, go somewhere else.
Neither this story nor any parts of it may be distributed electronically or in any other manner without the express, written consent of the author. All rights are reserved by the author who may be reached at cepes@mail.com.
This is a work of fiction, any resemblance of the characters to anyone living or dead is pure coincidence and not intended. They are all products of the author's overactive imagination.
One thought: Several of the people who have written to me have commented on the title and on the disappearance of Alex from the story. I want to say that the title doesn't refer just to him: all three main characters have taken on the role of the interviewee at some point. I personally see John as the primary interviewee: answering questions from Alex, Chris, Charlie, Jane the librarian, and himself, most importantly. But, it took Alex's interview and all that followed to get John into that introspective frame of mind.
The Interviewee Part 10
I stood, motionless, in the swarming sea of bodies. The noise of people talking or finalizing purchases was muted. The acrid smells of moldering refuse laying in bins in alleyways I could not smell nor could I really concentrate on the copious, beautiful produce I knew to be arrayed around me on the farmers' stands. The most I could do was keep the tears from streaming down my face. Luckily, I had not yet made any purchases; my arms were free and dabbing at my eyes as though I had specks of dust unpleasantly lodged there.
I knew my having stopped here was backing up the flow of the hundreds of other perusing these stands. Haltingly, my body began moving again. Toward Third Street, which was an enormous pedestrian mall, where I might be able to find someplace to sit, someplace where my tears would not turn me into a spectacle visible to this crush of people.
Each step through the mass found my insides becoming increasingly numb; the sounds and sights around me became increasingly indistinct. When my legs gave out, I found I had somehow positioned myself over a bench, which prevented my mass from crashing onto the concrete. My body, collapsed onto the wooden slats, had gone completely numb. My mind was processing material as if the world had suddenly speed up, leaving me to process every fourth or twelfth moment.
Everything seemed to grind to a halt; the people probably still moved, but I couldn't intuit that fact. Emptiness and blackness reigned.
Five minutes or perhaps thirty minutes later, my mind began to feel more in sync with the world around it. The noises began to come back in; the sights became more distinct. The smells returned.
I looked down the street, my back to the blocked-off road playing host to the farmers and their wares. I saw the mish mash of shops; the carts where people hawk sunglasses or t-shirts; the people sitting on the benches, some talking to themselves, some saying nothing, others preaching to all the non-listeners scurrying past them. I saw the street people for the first time in a long time. Of course, I looked at them every time I went to Santa Monica or downtown Los Angeles, but this was the first time in a long time I actually saw or understood what I was looking at.
I saw myself, or rather what I could easily become without a safety net. My existence was so fragile: propped up by a reasonably well-paying job; a boyfriend who seemed to love me; health and mental health protections; and lots of other things I took for granted. How quickly could I find myself on this bench talking to annoyed, even frightened passersby? In Boston, D.C., Seattle, everywhere I could think of, I could see people who had had a catastrophic series of accidents hit them. Lose a job, have health problems, find themselves addicted to drugs--all that could happen quickly, six months or less.
No, for me, it could happen in less than six months. If Chris ever left, I don't know what I'd do. He kept me sane; these mood swings and whatever else had been in abeyance since Chris came in and became such a large part of my life. If he left, it could all crumble even faster. The mood swings would come back; work performance would nosedive; the pride would kick in and offers of assistance would be refused; the mood swings would be back, who knows maybe even ranting about conspiracy theories at 11.30 on a Wednesday morning in Santa Monica.
Why? Why was that true? I really didn't have a safety net. My fear of being hurt--ingrained in me from a very early age--stopped me from forming friendships easily. Thinking back on it, everyone who I considered a friend had pursued me. I hadn't initiated any of the relationships; in fact, I had put up the standard walls and barriers. This handful of people had persisted and battered them down. I was a hard person to like. That fact was part of the reason I was sitting here realizing how close I was to being outside society. Only two or three little accidents in life separated me from the people I saw in front of me.
This time the tears started and I couldn't hold them back. Everything I had ever known, all the secrecy, all the defenses, all the neatness I had constructed could now be the very things that brought me down. I had fought building up the network of friends that everyone else had. I had only my Chris--and who even knew what he was up to.
Upon awakening this morning, my arm had snaked to the other side of the bed for a fleshly fillip. All my fingers found were cool cloth sheets and an unoccupied pillow. I turned my body and saw the bed was really only half full. I turned back and looked at the clock: 6.15. Where was Chris? After getting up and searching the apartment, I knew he wasn't here. The clothes strewn on the floor from last night told me I hadn't imagined him last night, as did the recently wetted bathroom floor.
His being gone, and my being deprived of answers to all the questions churning around in my mind, caused my mood to drop a few more notches. I was definitely outside of the perfect zone--mild but not severe depression--I had found myself in yesterday. The fragile balance of being at 4 Celsius, the point at which water is densest, yet not completely motionless, was next-to-impossible to maintain; a perfect moment so often is. As the water moved toward the freezing point, it becomes imperfect, expanding slightly and then turning completely immobile. The perfect temperature, so evanescent, was gone from my mental state; my body had lurched into a depression several notches lower than it was before.
Work that morning had been impossible. My mind was elsewhere; the glassy perfection of my concentrating on only the tasks before me had been shattered. All of the horrors of the last few days revisited me: mentally, at best, or in person.
Charlie had been the first of my visitors. His face was tense, a not-attractive state for his mug. I couldn't tell how he felt by looking at his face. I didn't particularly care to listen to him speak, either.
"I'm sorry."
"What?" I wasn't cutting him any slack.
"For yesterday. For what I said. I'm sorry."
"Hmm." I was definitely in a foul mood.
"John, I mean it. I never should have said those things. I mean I knew about your friend and all. I should have kept my feelings under wraps." His face took on an even more ashen color. If it had been me, my face would be flaring red by now with embarrassment. Our bodies each handle the outward display of emotions differently, I suppose.
"Not true. You should have told me. But, you didn't need to hit on me. Right?"
"I'm sorry."
"I heard you the first time. I'm still thinking about forgiving you. Ask me again tomorrow." I gave him an insincere demi-smile.
He read the look, against the tone and intent of the words I had spoken, as forgiveness. The tension lessened and the unattractive volcanic color to his face went away. I was still genuinely angry with Charlie: how he had kept hinting around, being coy, trying to get me to fall for his little song and dance. I decided I was being almost irrationally hard on him; I would not disabuse him of his received forgiveness, even if it had not been given.
He decided to be chatty. Once I finally tuned into the topic of the one-sided conversation, I wished I hadn't cracked a partial smile in Charlie's direction.
"...my old friend Mark in Pharma over at McKinsey."
"Hmm?"
"He was let go. Reduction-in-force. Requiescat in pace is more like it, though. He's pretty down right now."
"McKinsey's doing layoffs?" That was troubling news; they had really resisted letting anyone go.
"Yeah and BCG. And, if the rumor mill is right, so are we."
"Really? When?" My first impulse was to try and remember how much the door to the head of staffing's office had been closed in the last week. Preparations like that take time and secrecy.
"No one's sure. It's still just rumor." The old saw about a grain of truth in every rumor hit me.
"Right." My second thought was to seeing Julie standing in the head of staffing's office. Talking about me? If she were trying to get me laid off, wouldn't she have had the common sense to shut the door before starting her rant? Knowing her, probably not. Not comforting.
Charlie had decided I was interested in the rumor mill and starting feeding me its grist, some well worn, some almost new. Who was having affairs with whom; who got slighted with less-than-plum assignments. Not what I cared about; I was oozing disinterest. He was, apparently, incapable of reading body language. So smart but so interpersonally inept; he was a bad case, but so many of the people in this office had similar blind spots. How could I ever have thought kindly of Charlie; he was a bore; but, I guess, on a relative scale, he wasn't far off the median.
After a few more minutes of me not clucking or nodding at the appropriate places, Charlie finally saw the mountain of evidence and decided it was time to move on, perhaps back to productive, revenue generating work. His skin was potentially on the line as well.
For many minutes after he left, I sat listlessly trying to plow through research material for a proposal I was helping out with. It was completely uninteresting; I bit the bullet and started writing my sections. Drivel, but I liberally sprinkled the facts and other learnings into the document. It would look like I had put effort into this; perception was all that mattered in this case.
After I finished what I had to do, poorly and without my usual ability to concentrate, I sent it off for review. I rose up, thinking I might take a break and get some coffee, a small reward for a job poorly done. As I walked to the elevator, I saw the door to the head of staffing's office closed, then cracked, then wide open. A perfectly coifed Julie walked out; she saw me and flashed me a wide smile. Given her surroundings, it looked sinister, even malicious.
I tossed out my plans for coffee. I needed to leave the office. Thoughts were beginning to swirl: what Charlie said (and what he'd done the day before), where Julie had been, where Chris hadn't been. Eating a hole in my mind, the self-doubt and loathing welling up in me would not be slain by mere coffee. A break, a long one, was required. Wednesday, as Chris had taught me, meant the farmer's market in Santa Monica. It was just barely 10.20. Time was not a problem. And so I found myself there, thoughts and demons attendant, after the twenty minute drive almost in tears and rapidly loosing touch with reality. Upon waking, I could see all these steps now, how one lead to another, how the snowball formed and where it went from there.
I fished around in my pocket. I discovered I had brought my cell today. I dialed in a rarely used number and heard the voice mail pick up.
"Hi Marcia. This is John in Consumer Products. I've come down with a touch of something. I'm taking the rest of the day off. If this doesn't get better, I'll see the doctor tomorrow. Thanks." Marcia was a pushover. As my direct staffing liaison, she rarely asked tough professional questions. She herself liked to take a few sick days on beautiful summer afternoons. But, she would always nag me to see the doctor. Go figure.
My new home, the sofa, served my purposes well. Sleep, mental oblivion, active worrying, waiting, television watching. All this went down easier on a comfortable sofa. I needed to talk to Chris; I needed to get out of this downward spiral.
I heard the key in the lock; the clock said 11.45. I had been waiting, even stewing, for twelve hours since I came home from the farmer's market empty handed and virtually lethargic.
The lights were blazing when Chris walked in the door. He was filthy. He was wearing a dirty shirt and his pants were disgusting. The dress code at his office was relaxed, compared to Wall Street, but this getup wouldn't fit in at all.
"Where have you been?" Not whiny, not annoyed, just concerned. I had spent more than 3 hours thinking about what tone to use.
"Working." Flat, tired.
"Where?"
"At a restaurant in Malibu."
"I don't understand." I was more confused than any words could have expressed; this revelation added to the bulk of all my insular, conspiratorial thinking earlier in the day made for a Cubist painting in my mind gone far awry.
"Let me change and shower. I stink." I could tell that from where I was laying.
"Just come back and talk to me. No more putting me off." I started to sound whiny. Damn.
"Hmm." He walked off, shedding clothing as he went. The tiredness in his voice and on his face explained his lack of neatness last night, leaving clothing everywhere; Chris was even more fastidious than I was. At least he had carried me from the sofa to the bed and stripped my clothes from my body before depositing me.
Ten, twelve minutes later, Chris returned. Clean, healthy looking once more. In fact, beautiful in his robe.
"Jay, I didn't want to say anything until I was sure."
"Sure? What are you doing?" The fear, uncertainty, doubt he raised with his prologue ricocheted off my mind to hit high intensity instantaneously.
"Sure about what I wanted to do. Jay, I want to cook." Not the words I expected to hear.
"I took a week unpaid. I had my Dad pull some strings. I've been the grunt in a restaurant in Malibu; we've been there. The place with the daiquiris and the ocean view."
"What a dive." Chris laughed.
"Yeah. But I wanted some place to test me. Did I really want to do this? I needed to know."
"Are you leaving your job?" It was the first question that popped into my head--and straight out my mouth.
"Well, I wanted to talk to you about that. I'd like to cook; I'd like to do the culinary training thing. I want you to want me to." He looked at me expectantly, nervously.
"Chris, you are so good. At cooking. And I want you to be happy. But, could you have told me some of this before? I woke up this morning and freaked. Where had you gone; I didn't know. I've been a basket case all day. And my job is tenuous; my mentor is fiddling around; there are rumors of job cuts." I started crying. The tears weren't stopping.
Chris sat down next to me and held me. I cried harder. After I finished with this emotional release, he kissed the tears from my face.
"I love you." He squeezed me again.
"You know I love you." A few quiet moments set in; we both regrouped.
"I want to leave my job. You know I haven't been happy; it's not what I want to do. It took me a long time to realize that what I wanted to do was my favorite hobby, but professionally." He stroked my hair. At the time, I didn't even think to crack a joke about my being his favorite hobby, but later that evening the idea came to me.
"But I want us to be okay. My Dad, well, I know your parents couldn't help us out. So, I asked my Dad. He decided to give me some of my inheritance early. So I wouldn't bump him off, he said." My tired looking Chris seemed re-energized when he started laughing.
"I need to get some experience; work in restaurants for six or nine months. I'm going to do that. Dad'll help me find someplace better to learn in. Then I want to apply to culinary school; there is a good one in New York, upstate. They have classes that start every two months or so." He looked at me again.
"I want you to come with me. Quit this shit. Me my kept man for a year or two. Do something wacky. Let's just get out of this shit. Together, though, we've got to do it together." I started crying again. This time the tears were of happiness.
We had a long talk that night and the next morning before work. I heard all the stories, all the reasoning, all the reasons Chris didn't want to tell me until he was sure. I fell even more strongly in love with him. The black vapors wrapping themselves around me seemed to recede, as well. There was much to iron out, but I knew what Chris wanted. I knew I wanted to be a part of it, watching him get the practical training that would turn him into a chef. The two years would be interesting; Cornell was nearby, maybe I could take some classes, start a degree, do something there. Or become a haus frau and start a garden. Who knew.
At work, I was a different person from the John of the day before. I started my day at Jane's desk. She was our magnificent librarian and had been secreting the materials I would need to review in order to understand the engagement I'd be starting next week. She gave me a broad smile and chit chat. I told her about Chris' preliminary plans, at least as far as becoming a chef. I didn't want her to think I would be leaving soon. Rumors like that fly quickly here; I didn't want to muddy the waters for my career here, at least not yet.
Jane finally decided it was time for me to do some work. She reached into one of her shelf units and pulled out an unbelievably thick stack of papers and motioned them to me.
"There's a list on top of resources on the intranet. I didn't want to kill all the trees to print everything out."
She smiled. I loved her, but sometimes her efficiency could short all my fuses.
It would be a painful day--nowhere near what yesterday had brought, thankfully--but it could be rewarding. My attitude was looking up; even plowing through material could be exciting. Come to think of it, even the prospect of being in Cincinnati the following week didn't faze me as much. And that was saying something.
To be continued.
Author's Note: I would thank everyone for their generous comments about my story. I appreciate hearing your comments on this story or anything else. You can send me a message at cepes@mail.com. I enjoy responding to all the messages I receive.
One last thing: Though I will be continuing to post on Nifty, I have been invited by Nick Archer to post The Interviewee on his site, Archerland. It's a great spot for lovers of interesting fiction--including work by Papyrophile, John Francis, jfinn, Keith Mystery, Katherine, Alex Nelson, and, of course, Nick himself. I'm honored that they've asked me to join them; please check it out. I'm sure you won't be disappointed. http://archerland.net