Flavor of the Week: Double Exposure

  I had been fired again.This time, it was from a job selling Wee Donuts from a truck parked on Wall Street. A scared 21year-old newbie to New York with an increasing dependence on Dewar’s, I wondered how I was going to pay the next month’s rent.  

That’s when Ted found me spending my last dollar in a bar and took me home as one would a lost puppy. Ted, twice my age and sporting a junior comb over, seemed a kind and generous man. After giving me $50 for sleeping with him—I wouldn’t have done it otherwise—he offered me a job in the photography studio he owned with his lover, Matthew. It was the fall of 1979, and they needed a full-time developer for yearbook picture season. I was grateful for the gig, especially considering my inexperience.That made it all the more unseemly that I should pay Ted back by having sex with his boyfriend.

Matthew, a few years my senior, had a beguiling smile and a muscular, compact body.

Resisting the attraction I felt towards him was hard enough, but what made it impossible was the unreserved interest he showed in me. Whenever he got within a few feet, the sexual tension threatened to expose my feigned disinterest. Fearful of losing my new job, I held him at bay, but soon tired of playing hard-to-get; one evening while working late together, I gave in. Matthew walked into the darkroom, closed the door and kissed me hard.We groped each other like teenagers in the back seat of a car. The fear of being caught only served as an aphrodisiac.

One Friday morning, while I was hanging film on the clothesline, a call came into the front office, asking for me. It was Matthew disguising his voice. He was on Long Island shooting class photos at a local high school.

“I want you,” he said. “Me, too,” I replied. “Can’t wait until you get back.”

“Why wait?” he said. “Get on a train.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said coyly, as I felt a tightening in my pants. “I’m working—in your studio!” “Make up some excuse to leave,” he pressed. “I’ll pick you up at the Southampton train station.”

I told Ted that my father had suffered a stroke, ran home to pack an overnight bag and caught the L.I.R.R. The drama of it all made me more excited than I had felt in months. Matthew’s mischievous grin waiting for me as I got off the train was all I needed to alleviate my lurking guilt.

As we wrestled in the motel bed that night, Matthew begged me to fuck him and I obliged. But with every thrust, he let out a fart. I was determined to ignore it, but when he started giggling uncontrollably, the moment— and my romantic evening—was gone.

The next day we walked around town, had brunch at a lovely little seafood restaurant and even took some snapshots of our own. The reality of sleeping with someone else’s man troubled me, and knowing that Matthew had no intention of leaving Ted was less than encouraging, but I resigned myself to enjoy that weekend when he was all mine, convincing myself that it was enough. As we drove home from our dirty little tryst, I dreaded going back to work and facing my other boss.

When I first walked into the studio,Ted asked me about my dad.

“My dad? Oh, yeah, he’s much better.

Thank you for asking.”

I quickly grabbed rolls of film and locked myself in the darkroom. After treating them with the first two processes, I turned the light on for their final development. While I hung the strips outside of my room, Ted came over to check out the final product.

“Looks like these shots came out nicely,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied, relieved that he had had moved on to another subject. “Looks like Matthew did a good job.”

“How was Southampton, by the way?” “What? What are you talking about? I wasn’t…” Just then Ted pulled off one of the strips, containing a negative of me and Matthew hugging and smiling in front of the Southampton High School sign.

I didn’t know what to say, but that didn’t stop me.

“Oh, yeah, but, well, see…” “I can’t believe you did this,” he said.

“Um, me neither.” “You know you’re fired, right?” “Yeah, I guess so.” As I grabbed my stuff, Ted said that he’d send my last check to my house. His professionalism just added to my shame.

I continued to sleep with Matthew when it was convenient for him. But things got worse as I started making demands on his time, and I imagine that, along with my out-of-control drinking, made me all the more unappealing. After another month of self-destruction with both of my lovers—Matthew and scotch— failing miserably to satisfy, I broke down and went to a 12step meeting. As quickly as my obsession with alcohol lifted, so too did my fascination with Matthew. I was sober, gainfully employed and back at the gym the next time he laid eyes on me, and despite his best efforts to rekindle our affair, I had learned that I deserved a man who was entirely my own. C

Dean Wrzeszcz has written for The New York Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chelsea Now and Gay City News, among others. He´s currently working on a book of autobiographical essays.