Adam
ADAM
I suppose Mormonism did teach me one lesson I don’t want to forget.
The Church churned out so much language . There were four books of scripture, three hours of Sunday meetings, two annual conferences, and one prophet all spewing thousands of words at us nonstop, but distilled, the mantra was simple: Obey. Pay your tithing. Don’t stray. Their words were weapons meant to hem us in. And it worked. The leaders didn’t need to keep kompromat on the members to stop us from leaving; all they had to do was keep talking.
For a few months after my excommunication, after I transferred from BYU to Rutgers to finish college, I didn’t want to see any more of them—words, that is. The menu at the Edison diner was about as much reading as I was willing to do, and even that was a few pages too long. They really didn’t need a seafood section. I spent my nights watching shitty noise bands at basement shows, stumbling back to my apartment reeking of weed, where I would soothe myself to sleep to Ghost Hunters reruns. Apparently, none of those episodes prepared me for how strange ghosts really are. But they did rinse my brain, replacing all those words with grainy night-vision video.
That phase couldn’t last forever, though. I had been raised on the Word with a capital W . I was reading the King James Version of the Bible before I even knew who Dr. Seuss was. I realized, eventually, that I wasn’t done with words so much as I had come to fear their force. They had shaped my reality. They taught me to hate the most essential parts of myself, to silence a beating heart. But I wasn’t going to heal that damage by staying silent. I wasn’t going to help anyone else get out. So, I started speaking, and I started writing. Being in New Jersey positioned me perfectly to reach people: I was close enough to New York to do those cable news hits, but I had enough free time post-graduation to join the protests in Salt Lake.
I went all in. I wanted to live in a world where people like me didn’t have to hide anymore. And if I didn’t try to write it into being, I’d be neglecting the one gift I actually had. The Church taught me that words were weapons, but with my rights on the line, I couldn’t lay down my arms.
And I can’t do that now. Last night, I thought about stopping short of making something meaningful out of Roland’s book. But this memoir can save lives. I’ve been so caught up on my own artistic regrets with Sodomite that I haven’t realized how much of my speech to Roland that first day was actually true: Even if I can only squeeze the most 101-level gay memoir ever written out of him, the mere fact of its existence will move the needle. Mainlining the Crash movies has reminded me how broad of an audience we’ll be reaching. If a book as small as Sodomite could find its way into Roland Rogers’s hands, imagine how many people his will impact.
I’m a storyteller, like Roland said. And while my fight might be over, his isn’t. I need to put my own ego on the shelf and help him. I’ll use whatever words I can get.
“Truthfully, your book isn’t the only book I ever read,” Roland says, “but it is the last one.”
I can tell from his uncharacteristically sober tone that he’s in interview mode. But I’m just sitting down at the kitchen island for a late breakfast when he says it. Only light chitchat before noon has been our typical routine, and it’s one I like. The old synapses need some time to de-rust. But I suppose after our heavy late-night conversation, we’ve technically broken that rule already. I appreciated his apology, even if the echoes of his words have left a residual sting. Still, I said hurtful things, too—including the dig he’s referencing now.
“You decided it would be all downhill from Salt Lake City Sodomite , huh?” I joke. Some humor typically helps grease the wheels, but Roland’s not in the mood for it today.
“You’ll probably want to get out your notebook for this,” he says.
I’ve never heard him so serious. I slide the Moleskine toward me and open it to the scribbled-up page I was on yesterday: “Crag gave me things” is the last full sentence I jotted down before dropping it on the floor, followed by an underlined question: “ What? ”
“I’m ready when you are,” I tell him, fishing my pen out of the crease.
There’s a long pause, and then the blue light beneath the speaker begins to pulse.
“I read your book because I saw you on TV,” he tells me. “I told you that already, right?”
He saw the MSNBC interview—one of the first, and one of the most anxiety-inducing. I drank four bottles of Dasani in the greenroom and then had to pee the entire time Rachel Maddow was talking to me. But yes, he mentioned that.
“What about it?” I ask him.
“What I didn’t tell you is that your book made me want to come out.”
I knew it was a memorable read for him. I’m here, after all. But 2010 was so long ago—much earlier than I thought he had ever considered disclosing his sexuality. I wouldn’t have come out that year if I were in Roland’s shoes.
“Why mine?” I ask.
“It spoke to me, I guess. I was only two movies into Crash , with only one movie left in the original deal. I hadn’t signed the new contract Matt was cooking up with the studio yet. And I could sense the freedom in you. I mean, you were a sweaty mess in the interview, but you were fucking free .”
I remember well the exhilaration of those early years. In those clips of my cable news hits, I look almost wild-eyed. It helped that I was hopping mad about the gay marriage fight, but there was more than just righteous anger fueling me back then: a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. It’s disorienting to imagine him watching me, over a decade ago, and being so moved he almost uprooted his whole life. Culturally speaking, that would have been epoch-shifting.
“But you didn’t come out then,” I point out.
“No.”
“So, what happened?”
The blue light disappears, and I wonder where he’s gone, but when he speaks next, his voice comes from the speaker around my chest.
“ The movie I did before Crash 3 was an indie drama that filmed in Dublin,” he says. “You probably didn’t even hear about it: limited release, bad reviews. An awards season misfire. And to think I was hoping it would be my Oscar.”
The tangent doesn’t annoy me; I’m moved by the tenderness of him relocating to be closer to my heart. And for once, he gets back on track without my prompting.
“Anyway, it was a short shoot. Most of the cast had brought their partners along to sightsee, but I was on my own. So I started hanging out with this gaffer. Jamie. Local guy. Hair like a fire truck. He took me to this dingy pub far away from the set and we’d watch soccer. ‘Football,’ I guess.”
“Roland Rogers, man of the people,” I say, momentarily stopping my scribbling.
“I mean, that’s what I liked about hanging out with Jamie,” he continues. “He was a real salt-of-the-earth kind of guy. Didn’t care a lick that I was famous. And when we got drunk together, he’d get real handsy with me, putting his arm around me for the soccer chants and everything. One night, he hugged me goodbye outside my hotel and held on longer than anyone could possibly interpret as friendly. And for the first time in my career, I thought, ‘Why not?’ I was planning to come out anyway.”
Did Roland Rogers have a tryst? An on-set romance? This certainly would be a crucial detail for the book. Roland swore up and down that he never did anything beyond sending headless pictures to other men under a pseudonym. The most I got out of him was his Grindr username, and sure enough, that torso looked like Roland’s. He said he was too paranoid about being outed to meet anyone from the app—or anyone at all, for that matter. But he had to have been with someone . People of all genders would have been throwing themselves at him.
“With Jamie,” Roland is saying, “I felt like the circumstances were right. He could be discreet, mostly because he treated me like another one of the boys. And he was cute. About your age. Knew where to put the lights for a shot and not much else.”
“Roland, did you have a secret love affair?” I ask him, teasing a little.
There’s no reason he should have been reticent to tell me this. Maybe Jamie broke his heart, and Roland could never do indie movies again because they made him think of his erstwhile Irish lover. Readers will gobble that up. A first tragic gay love? It’s a trope for good reason.
But when Roland responds, there’s a gravity to the single word “no.”
And only then do I realize this story is headed in a very different direction.
“Oh,” the word falls off my lips. “Oh, Roland, I’m sorry.”
But he’s already plowing ahead, and now I understand the urgency, and his insistence that he speak with me before I could even have a glass of orange juice. This is painful for him. This is what he’s been avoiding for three weeks. And now, he wants to get it out.
“After the second to last day of filming, Jamie and I hit the pub again, and at the end of the night, I asked him if he wanted to come up to my suite in the Shelbourne,” Roland recalls. “He said yes. I poured us both nightcaps, and we sat down on the sofa. I put my arm around him this time and leaned closer. I had never done something like that before, so everything was awkward. But he stopped me anyway. And he said, ‘Whatcha doin’, pal?’ Just like that. So casual: ‘Whatcha doin’, pal?’ And his face was so angry. I’ll never forget how intense his expression was. He looked like he wanted to kill me.”
I know what’s coming next, and now I feel bad for digging as hard as I did all this time. “Roland, you don’t have to tell me this now if it’s too hard. I didn’t mean to joke—”
“He beat the shit out of me, Adam. In my own hotel room. Just absolutely pummeled me. On some level, he must have known I could get him fired or blacklist him from the industry, but that didn’t stop him. That was the flip side of him not caring about how famous I was, I guess. He felt like he could leave me crumpled up on the floor and walk out. To him, I wasn’t Roland Rogers; I was just a guy who made a pass at him—and he wasn’t a poofter, he kept saying.”
“Roland, I am so sorry,” I say, and at this point it would feel insulting to keep writing. If he wants to include this in his memoir, we can go over any details later.
“I was sorry, too,” Roland says. “Sorry that I ever thought I could let my guard down.”
“He must have gotten kicked off the movie,” I say, still searching for better words and coming up short.
“He didn’t. Because I didn’t say anything. I didn’t show up to set on the last day. They only needed me for insert shots, anyway. I guess they found somebody with hands that looked like mine. I told everyone I couldn’t be at the wrap party because I had to get back to LA but really, I just put on sunglasses and a ball cap and quietly checked into a hotel across town—the Conrad, by the concert hall.”
He specifies where he stayed like I’ve been to Dublin, but despite my ancestry, I’ve never visited the motherland. “Why didn’t you fly back home?”
“I needed to heal first,” he says matter-of-factly. “When I say he beat the shit out of me, I don’t mean he punched me a couple times; I mean I could barely move. But I couldn’t recover at the Shelbourne. I was afraid Jamie would find me if I stayed where I was. That he’d come back and … finish the job.”
I place a hand over the speaker, knowing Roland can’t feel it, but I need to feel like I’m touching him right now. I caress the warm plastic, pulling him closer to my chest.
“I’m glad he didn’t find you,” I stammer, emotion welling in my throat. “I mean, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say, Roland. I didn’t have any idea. I didn’t know.”
“You couldn’t have,” he says.
By my back-of-the-envelope math Roland Rogers waited thirty-seven years to make a pass at another man, only to be rebuffed in the most horrific way possible—to be hit by the same hands he was hoping would caress him. My soul can’t bear it.
“How long were you there?”
“A month,” he says. “The recovery was almost worse than the attack. I stayed locked in that suite, eating room service that I told the staff to leave outside the door. The bruises turned every color of the rainbow before they went away. Even showers hurt. I cried sometimes, not from the pain, but because I was certain I would never know what it felt like to connect with someone. After all that waiting, I tried to reach out and touch somebody, and I got my ass beaten. The freedom I saw in you? I could never have that. I gave up on coming out. Eventually, I flew home. I went to the Sundance premiere for that movie, apologized to everyone for missing the wrap party, and that was that.”
“That’s why you get so gung ho about Crash Street ,” I say, connecting the dots.
“A role that required me to do strength training four times a week and eat like a caveman? That’s all I wanted to do after Jamie,” Roland says. “I told myself I would never feel that same fear again. Crag was protection. Crag was armor. With a lot of help from Lucas, those movies made me as close to invincible as I’ve ever felt. Hence all the skiing trips, I guess.”
I slide my notebook away from me now, perhaps a bit too performatively, but I want to show Roland that I care more about him than I do about turning this into a chapter.
“I told Matt I’d sign on for as many more Crash movies as they wanted me to do,” he continues. “He was thrilled, naturally.”
Everything I’ve wondered about, all the double- and triple-underlined questions in my notebook—they’re all getting answered now. I thought I was the one whose life has been frozen for the last thirteen years, but really it was Roland who was stuck in place, not by riches, not by fans, but by the simplest thing of all: hate. A single horrifying act of violence. I think about the timing, trying to put all the pieces in place, fighting the urge to reach for my notebook and check the dates on the rough chronology I’ve sketched out on the first page.
“I can see those gears turning, Adam,” Roland says. “Even from down here.”
“It’s just …”
“Zoya.” He makes the leap for me. “She was armor, too. When my publicist arranged a lunch with her a few years later, I thought she’d be another one-off date. We’d go to Catch and be done. But even though this may seem strange to anyone else who knows her, she made me feel … safe.”
I’m aware of Zoya’s public persona. In the social media age, she’s only been marginally less avoidable than Roland despite having never done anything of note: a TV show here or there, an ad campaign, a music video. Somehow it all combined together to produce a staggering level of fame without any actual anchor point. I do know that she was a fitness instructor once, in another life when she still had a last name. As far as I can tell, what people love about Zoya is her projection of untouchability: a sort of icy cool coupled with the usual aspirational trappings of influencer fame. Though I would never want Richie to hear me say any of that aloud. He’d chide me, telling me that “her feature on the Ice Spice track would kill a Victorian child,” or some other gay nonsense.
Roland has only shed slightly more light on her, always telling me she’s “really something,” sometimes said with affection, other times with a kind of terrified awe.
“So you told her? About the attack?”
“She was the only person I ever told,” Roland confirms. “She helped me. I needed someone I could talk about it with.”
The admission opens a dozen more questions, but Roland has been brave enough for one day. I never thought I’d be the one to cut an interview short, but he needs a break even if he doesn’t know it yet.
“If you tell me Jamie’s last name, I’ll hunt him down for you, Roland,” I tell him, puffing my chest out against the speaker in a posture of faux bravado. “I may not be as strong as you, but I’ll fuck him up.”
If I can’t find the perfect words, maybe he’ll appreciate a touch of levity. Roland’s laughter reassures me I didn’t horribly miscalculate.
“I’d like to see that,” he says. “But I doubt it would make me feel better.”
“Not even a little?”
“No. Because you know what? I was right. I thought I’d never connect with someone—and I never did. The rest of my life was as lonely as that month in the Conrad.”
Now I feel bad for ever complaining to him about my own travails as the ex-Mormon ugly duckling. And now I know why he intimated he was jealous of me coming out so early. I don’t want him to hurt. I hope he doesn’t hurt anymore. I wish I could subtract that experience from his life and add it to mine—just throw it in there with the mission and the excommunication and all the rest of it. I can take it.
“Do you feel lonely now?” I ask him.
“I’m dead now, Adam.”
“ It’s just … I wish I could make up for everything Jamie did,” I say, not even trying to hold back the tears. “I wish I could be with you, not just eat for you. Hell, I’m even half-Irish. I should atone for the sins of my people.”
It took our argument to make me realize it, but at some point in the last day, I must have stopped feeling like Roland’s ghostwriter with benefits and started feeling like something more. What he said wouldn’t have cut as deep as it did if I weren’t more invested than I knew I was. But there’s no denying I’ve crossed the threshold now. I’ve laid my feelings bare for him to see.
“We have what we have, Adam,” Roland says, striking a wistful note. “But these last few weeks with you, as strange as they’ve been, are the least alone I’ve ever felt.”
I’ve been with flesh-and-blood men—Sam, Richie, and the rest of them. I know what it’s like to fall asleep in someone’s arms, to feel a body pressed against mine. But right now, I’d take another ten years holed up in Malibu with Roland over any lover I’ve ever had.
“Would you believe I feel the same way?” I ask him.