Season 19, Episode 8 “Your Rent Is Due!”
“Your Rent Is Due!”
I am, apparently, “a study in contradictions.” That was how my Victorian lit professor once described me as I raced off to football practice freshman year. Fifteen years later, my marriage had bound me to what many saw as the ultimate contradiction: “gay Republican.”
Barnes called these boys “the ornaments,” decoration for publicity shots around the office; the women he hired were the effective staff.
This carousel of clean-cut white boys was so interchangeable that I’d stopped saying “nice to meet you” and instead replied “nice to see you,” perfectly content for them to blend into a nameless fog of jawlines and Vineyard Vines ties.
But now on Jenny’s laptop, one stood out. I watched Elliot Markovich plowing my husband on his office desk, our framed wedding portrait face down in a parody of discretion. Elliot filmed with an iPhone, my husband splayed on his back like a Thanksgiving turkey.
“Say you want this dick, that I’m the only man who fucks you this good,” Elliot grunted, voice shoved low, a trait that no doubt originated while passing as straight on an Andover lacrosse field.
Admittedly I couldn’t remember the last time I’d topped Barnes. He hadn’t suggested it in years. Perhaps because he was experiencing such breathtaking versatility elsewhere.
Had I been so consumed with the kids and the house and the errands that I neglected to realize I’d somehow lost his attention? No, I told myself. We’d had sex regularly, and it was good. Familiar, but good. The look of satisfaction as he fucked me. He couldn’t fake that.
“Only you, only you fuck me this good,” Barnes whined before the inevitable climax, when stray fluids flew so far they hit the American flag in the corner—a detail no one on the internet missed. The video had already been christened “The Spunk-Spangled Banner.”
At my side, Jenny shook her head. “But why film it? I hate Barnes, but he’s not stupid.”
“Who knows? Clearly I’m no longer an expert in my husband’s kinks.”
She twisted a strand of her raven hair. “… You should get tested.”
“Jesus Christ, Jen,” I groaned, knowing she wasn’t wrong.
The kids were asleep, and Barnes had evacuated to the Willard Hotel before Jenny arrived.
Based on the news reports we watched in my bedroom, this specific affair with Elliot had begun in 2009.
We eventually landed on E! News, where we found Elliot sporting a tasteful cardigan and a much higher voice.
He’d suffered a crisis of conscience when an old pal (another former staffer, this one mercifully anonymous) relayed a similar account.
Both were propositioned by Barnes right after he secured them a better job, judiciously never making a move until no longer their employer.
“We realized we weren’t the only ones,” Elliot explained to the coiffed, eager anchor.
“I couldn’t keep protecting a hypocrite who’s dismantling the LGBT community…
and Senator Appleby’s husband deserved the truth. ”
“How selfless,” Jenny sneered behind her cabernet.
“Speaking of his husband, did Senator Appleby ever say what was missing at home?” the anchor lilted, convinced she’d morphed into Diane Sawyer.
“He said his husband didn’t want an open marriage—”
“Was that even discussed?” Jenny asked.
“No!” I growled through clenched teeth.
Elliot winced now. “Senator Appleby said he needed outside partners because his husband would only perform the… submissive role.”
The anchor’s poker face vanished, and an old shirtless photo of me from Endeavor materialized on-screen. “Looking at the senator’s husband, I doubt anyone expected—”
And that was when I ripped the mounted TV off the wall.
“Honestly, I think that was a healthy response,” Jenny sighed. “I’m not even kidding.”
As the tide of rage washed out and the wave of defeat crashed in, I face-planted on the mattress next to my sister. “Is this what it looks like when your life burns to the ground?”
She gripped my hand. “No, this is what it looks like when you’ve got the ammunition to start over without owing anybody a goddamn thing. Especially him.”
As Jenny slept beside me that night, I grieved the fractures I’d allowed to cut through our relationship ever since I’d first brought Barnes home in 2004.
As children, Jenny and I had been inseparable, as much by choice as necessity; until I met Imogen and Arjun, my sister was essentially the only friend I had.
Which is why her initial reaction to Barnes stung so much.
“You never said he was a Republican,” she hissed in the garage after that first family dinner, the August humidity only intensifying her mood.
Mitch was due to start a new round of chemo, so Barnes had insisted on accompanying me to Charlotte as soon as we wrapped Season 2 of Endeavor.
Given the bills since Mitch’s diagnosis earlier that year, I couldn’t help but resent Jenny for attacking my new boyfriend.
Did she not remember that my Endeavor winnings were not only keeping our family out of medical debt but also freeing me to nurse Mitch while she got to hide away in grad school?
“For your information, he considers himself pretty moderate, but since when do you care about that?” I asked. “Everyone in Charlotte’s a Republican.”
“First, Kerry will probably win our county this year, and second, you’re forgetting how often Mitch listened to Peter Gabriel in our childhood,” she retorted. “It’s not a big deal to you?”
“I mean, I appreciate fiscal conservatism—”
“Bullshit, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Otherwise you’d have thrown him in a taxi after his little paean to Karl Rove over dessert.”
“He could make a difference, Jen. A young gay Republican? There are so many bridges he could build, and he’d totally get lost in the shuffle if he ran as a Democrat.
Everything you hate about the Republican Party, he could change from the inside,” I recited, parroting Barnes’ talking points.
“He’s already famous from Lobby Boys and Endeavor.
In two years, when he runs in the midterms, he could become a superstar. ”
“Or he’ll be a joke. And drag you down with him.”
“Do you have to be so fucking cynical? Can’t you just be happy for me this once?”
“Luke, you started dating him two months ago on a reality show, and now he’s here pontificating at dinner? That doesn’t feel fast?”
“I’m going back inside.”
“Hey, stop.” Her voice softened as she grabbed my arm. “I just mean you don’t have to rush this, okay? I know it feels like the whole world is speeding into a wall right now, but… you deserve more than someone simply choosing you.”
“Not in my experience,” I replied coldly before marching inside.
The next week in Charlotte was polite at best, forced at worst, but still I waited for Mitch’s verdict on Barnes. Even though he was slipping badly, the cancer clearly winning, I knew he’d voice concerns if he had them.
“So you like him?” I finally asked while driving home from chemo.
Mitch cleared his ragged throat. “He’s a sharp kid, no question.”
My hands tightened on the wheel. “Jenny’s not a fan.”
“You’re old enough to have your own opinions.”
“Still, I want you to like him.”
“All I want from any man you date is that he love you,” he said, lips tight against his teeth.
His forearms had become so thin, veins and loose skin pooling atop the bones like fabric.
My eyes had snagged on them when the car behind us honked.
“You’ve got a green light, Luke,” my father sighed, his head against the window, eyes closed.