Hanging with Brad (Part 3)
Read Part 2 here

[I've searched the internet for pictures of Brad Pitt that most remind me of 'my' Brad. I bought a digital camera this weekend so I can start taking my own pics of him!]



Brad's getting blood tests and an x-ray today to check his liver functioning.

"How long do you think you'll be?" I ask. I'm being a little manipulative in my question - I hope to hang out with Brad all day but don't want to simply ask him if he wants to. It's important to not appear too eager.

"It shouldn't take more than 30 minutes," he says.

"I'll wait for you then," I say.

I let Brad off at the front door and tell him I'll meet him in the atrium after I find a parking space.

I've always loved the efficiency and sterility of hospital atriums. I haven't been in them often, but when I find myself in one I enjoy the focused purpose, the organized busyness, the muffled voices inside its cavernous spaces. Hospitals are a world within the world: they remind me of science fiction utopias where its citizens maintain carefully controlled emotions. I find a seat across from the coffee shop so I can watch the handsome doctor on coffee break.

Half an hour later I see Brad walking through the main avenue of the atrium. He looks out of place with his ball cap, skater shorts and t-shirt, and quick shuffling movements. When he sees me he appears more animated.

"Oh man, the urine test has to be taken exactly at 10:30, so they won't see me until then. Maybe they can take the x-ray first. Do you mind waiting?"

Not at all. Brad asks me to come with him to the waiting room.

"Are you sure? I can just stay here and do some work. I've got my laptop with me," I say.

Brad looks disappointed. "Oh, you want to work? Nah, come with me." He grabs my hand to help me stand, and heads toward the admitting desk.
The nurse directs us to another floor, so we take the elevator. Inside, he says to me, "I get claustrophobic inside elevators. I never used to be, but it's from using crack so long. It's part of the paranoia."

I feel more like the paranoid one between us. I'm self-conscious of being older and gay, and I wonder what people think when they see us together. It's probably all in my head - I haven't seen anyone give any indication that they find us an unusual couple. And Brad hasn't shown the slightest concern about it himself.

I'm also unsure of how to act. I'm not used to being friends with a straight guy, especially one who's younger and attractive. I've been keeping a distance, trying not to show too much interest, in order to make Brad feel comfortable with me. I don't want him to think I'm just trying to get into his pants. Because I'm not [I think].

Younger guys have different kinds of friendships than older men do with each other. It's more common for guys in their late teens and early twenties to get together and call one another on a daily basis. To lean on one another more, and share more personal experiences and feelings. The unwritten rules of friendship are quite different within my age group.

Brad gets to see the nurse much sooner than the other dozen people in the waiting room. I notice how the nurses flirt with him: When one nurse calls his name, she walks right into the room and looks around expectantly for him with a huge smile on her face. She shares knowing smirks with two other nurses next to her.

Brad returns shortly with a band-aid on his arm, holding a large plastic container with measurement lines on its side. "I'm supposed to piss in this over the next 24 hours," he explains, "and keep it refrigerated until I bring it back for tests."



In the car, I ask, carefully, "I don't know if you have plans for today, but you're welcome to hang out with me at my sister's house. She lives just outside of Lethbridge. You can watch some tv or use one of their computers."

"Yeah, that would be great," Brad says. "I'll take any opportunity to get out of town and do something different."

On the highway I remember a quaint country restaurant that serves home-grown, organic vegetables from their greenhouses and a healthy menu. It looks like a farmhouse, and is surrounded by acres of farmland. "I'll buy you lunch, if you're interested," I say to Brad.

Over a Cajun Chicken Caesar Salad and a whole wheat BLT wrap with organic tomato soup served on the outdoor veranda, Brad tells me about the last time he had eight months of sobriety.

"I was really getting my shit together. I even was an extra for that movie…what's its name? It was filmed in Fort MacLeod."

"Brokeback Mountain?"

"Yeah, did you see it?"

"Yes, it was quite good," I said.

"I think I was even in the movie. I was in the scene where one of the characters was at a fair, and gets into a fight with two other cowboys." Brad says. "I haven't seen it myself though."

"The one where Heath Ledger is at a fair with his wife and kids, and two cowboys sitting behind them are using foul language, so he tells them to watch their language?" I don't remember the scene very vividly, but this is what I recall.

"Yeah, you should be able to see me walking past them in a cowboy hat, just before the fight scene. I had to redo that scene several times, and the director handpicked me to be the guy who walks past them before the fight breaks out."

"Cool." I'm now beginning to have Brokeback fantasies starring Brad in a cowboy hat. "We'll have to rent the movie to see if you make the cut," I suggest.

***
An hour later we're sitting in my sister's kitchen, drinking coffee. Brad is sitting next to my sister's "prayer board" - a dry erase marker board where her family lists people to pray for each evening after dinner. Brad is telling me more details about his last slip, when he went on a 3 month crack binge in Calgary.



"I ended up spending a couple of weeks with a couple of gay guys who were really into S&M," he says. "I sold [drugs] to a lot of guys in the areas around the gay clubs. I got along with them because they were friendly to me and non-dangerous.

I never did tricks like a lot of crack addicts out there do. Well, okay, maybe about four times I let a guy suck my dick when I was really broke and desperate. But I've never been fucked. It's just not my thing.

I met a gay couple named [Mark] and [Dave]. Mark has a big condo in one of the high-rises downtown. He's some kind of stockbroker. His partner Dave is an up-and-coming musical theatre actor. Both are good looking guys, but Dave is a lot younger."

I'm speechless from Brad's confession. So I just nod, listening, trying not to look shocked.

"These guys had been doing Crystal Meth for about three months straight, and were totally insane. They'd basically lost hold of reality, and were inviting strangers they met on the internet up to their apartment for group sex and orgies, and getting really into S&M shit. He had turned his apartment into a dungeon - his livingroom had a sling and harness hanging from the fucking ceiling! They both were HIV+ and had unprotected sex with other guys, and were really proud of their fisting skills." Brad pauses to check out my reaction to this information.

"Yeah, I know about that kind of thing," I say. "I've run into guys who are into that stuff, although it's not something I've ever participated in."

"Me neither. I used to hide in another room while these guys had orgies going on. I was afraid to fall asleep in case I awoke and found myself tied up in the sling. It was my greatest fear while I was staying with them," says Brad. "I was afraid they'd get on the internet and sell tickets for a thousand dollars a pop at my virgin ass."

I'm both shocked and upset that Brad put himself in such a potentially dangerous situation, while also trying to push aside images of him tied up in a sling with his white ass spread ready to be entered. "Oh, I doubt they would've gone that far, would they?" I say.

"You never know. Remember, they were hallucinating after using Meth for months, and not getting any sleep. Once we were on an internet chat and they made plans to get together with a guy who wants to be dominated by the two of them. So we all get dressed up: they were wearing full leather gear and Dave had on a mask that covered his entire head. They put me in some leather pants, and I had a chain around my neck, and we piled in the car to go over to his house. Except we were so high that we got lost for three hours."

Brad both laughs and acts horrified as he explains the rest of the story: "Here we are, stoned out of our minds driving around Calgary. I'm freaking out that we're going to get stopped by the cops, and they'll think we're some kind of psycho killers. We finally find the address somewhere in the suburbs of Calgary, three hours late, and we get out of the car in full leather gear and walk up to a house and ring the door bell.

It turns out that we were at the wrong house! We were at his next door neighbour's house. Fuck! I was afraid he was going to call 911 after seeing us."

I'm still trying to get my head around Brad's revelation. I feel disoriented from the amount of information he's confided, and I'm trying to imagine him being in these scenarios. "Uh, you went with them, and you were in leather and chains as well?" I ask him.

"Yeah, I mean, I wasn't going to join them in sex," says Brad, backtracking. "I was just along for the experience. Anyway, the guy had changed his mind once we showed up."

I can't put my finger on it, but his story and his role in the situation doesn't quite mesh for me. Intuitively, I feel like he's leaving some details out, but that he's being honest about it, overall. I don't want to interrogate him so that he feels uncomfortable, so I let it go. Instead, I move sideways with the conversation.

"Wow. That's pretty crazy," I say, "In graduate school I had to study sadomasochism because it related to an area of study I did for my thesis. So I know about it from a theoretical perspective. As well, I knew some artists who dealt with it specifically in their work."

"Yeah, one of my ex-girlfriends, the one from New York who was a topless dancer and whore, loved to have me dominate her, verbally. Basically humiliate her…" Brad adds.

I pause, trying to think of how to respond. "How did you feel about being put in that role?" I ask, neutrally.

"At first I was uncomfortable, but she really got off on it," Brad says. "She loved me to talk dirty to her: 'Yo, bitch, get on your knees and lick my boots,' kind of thing. I guess I got off on dominating her after a while.

I laugh, nervously. Mostly from uncertainty of how to react. "Really? I couldn't do that. I'm too vanilla for that kind of thing." I say.

I'm beginning to realize that blond, blue-eyed Brad is less Vanilla and a little more Ice.

[To be continued…in Part 4 Brad comes with me for dinner at my parents house.]