I notice my reviews are tapering off. I would just like to announce that the fewer reviews I get the meaner I will become to Niles and Daphne. How's that for an ultimatum?
Heh heh.
Of course, there exists the possibility that no one is reading this and that it therefore will not matter how mean I get. But never mind that. Review, damn it, review.
Chapter 4
But driving soon ceased to help him. It had a numbing effect at first, as it had had when he'd been driving to Mel's apartment; but he'd been more in shock then, his feelings more easily suppressed. They were creeping in now around the edges, and he began driving more recklessly, squealing around corners, screeching to a stop at red lights or simply running them altogether. The third time he did this an oncoming car had to brake sharply, blatted his horn, and Niles was surprised to find himself leaning on his own horn in response. He accelerated briefly out of the situation, and realized what a mess he was rapidly becoming. He swiped a few tears out of his eyes angrily and tried to think. The only logical thing to do would be to go home, but he couldn't face Daphne. Not at all. If he had – if he –
No. No thinking about that. At least not until he'd had the test done.
But he didn't seem to be able to stop thinking about it. A scattershot barrage of memories assailed him, laid down irregularly like machine gun fire. A quick montage of happy moments with Daphne flickered by – impossibly happy, shot through a gauze lens and fuzzy around the edges – and eventually, as he flinched away from one mental snapshot after another, he recognized how dangerous his driving was becoming and pulled to the side of the road, in the middle of an unpretentious residential neighborhood. When he was still, a sense of her flooded him briefly, and he laid his head against the steering wheel, unable to face what he had done to her. What he might have done to her. He still had no concrete proof that Mel was correct. Even if she was infected, how could she possibly know he was the one who'd done the infecting? He didn't exactly live a high-risk life –
It all jerked to a stop there. Of course.
If you're going to be honest with yourself you know –
No! It was one time! It didn't matter! It doesn't matter!
Say what you will, the fact is that –
No! Stop it!
But it wouldn't stop, the thought wouldn't stop this time, and he was going to have to face it sooner or later. Either I drive into the bay and put an end to this or I start facing up to it, he thought, in a fleeting moment of emotional lucidity.
So he sat back in the seat and let his mind go where it would.
He'd split with Maris long since – it had been over a year since he'd found Schenkman in her bed, and their divorce had been finalized three months ago. Finalized by Donny Douglas, who would naturally have therefore been one of Niles' favorite people of all time, had he not concluded his lap of triumph by sweeping Daphne into his arms and carrying her away from Niles' helpless outstretched arms. He couldn't possibly blame Maris for what had happened. He could, however, blame Donny.
Or perhaps he could blame Dr. Carroll, the psychiatrist he'd begun to see after Daphne had gotten engaged. That one despondent night in the local bar after Niles had split with Kit and Frasier had split with Faye and Martin had split with Bonnie, he and Frasier had discussed going into therapy to resolve their issues with women. Martin had dismissed the idea as ridiculous, and Frasier had seemed to fall in with that line of thinking quickly, so Niles had kept his thoughts to himself. But the idea had persisted, the idea that the depression that had been plaguing him ever since Daphne and Donny got involved wasn't healthy - the idea that his first impulse upon watching them get engaged, that of retrieving a paring knife from the kitchen and quietly slitting his wrists in Frasier's bathroom, was indicative of greater distress than he ought to be feeling. So he had gone into therapy. He'd kept it quiet from everyone, but he'd kept going for a good while, until he was well into his relationship with Mel. And what had happened had been, in a sense, Dr. Carroll's fault.
For Dr. Carroll had taken a novel approach to Niles' despair upon Daphne's engagement, one Niles would never have allowed himself to take on his own. Rather than trying to ascertain why Niles felt so strongly for Daphne, rather than trying to find ways to avert his despair, Dr. Carroll quite simply called into question the validity of those emotions. Do you really love her? he'd asked, early on. Of course I do, Niles had answered sharply. Dr. Carroll had folded his hands in front of him.
Explain.
Niles had tried to explain, tried to tell how the scent of her hair made his knees weaken, how the sound of her laughter made him forget that there was anyone or anything else in the world. Dr. Carroll drummed his fingers together.
Cliches, all, he said tersely.
Niles was stunned into silence. Dr. Carroll watched him carefully.
I don't understand, Niles had said finally. What do you want me to say?
Dr. Carroll leaned forward suddenly. I want you to examine this from a fresh perspective, he'd said. I want you to stop enumerating this Daphne's goddess-like qualities and start examining the world around her. Why would you have fallen in love with her so deeply? Take away the scent of her hair and the sound of her laugh and she sounds like a fairly ordinary woman.
She's not! She's –
Yes, you've told me what she is. And she's also engaged.
Why are you doing this? Niles managed to ask at last. Where do you think you're going with this?
I'm sorry, Dr. Carroll said, not sounding at all sorry. Perhaps I've been speaking too harshly.
Yes.
I'm merely wondering whether your passionate fantasies regarding this woman might not be so much centered around her as –
Yes? --Damn it, don't stop there, he was thinking.
Perhaps it's more a reaction to something else. Something you've hidden from yourself, all these years, with the smokescreen of your so-called love for Daphne.
There was a long, trembling moment of silence.
I don't have to listen to this, Niles said finally.
It's not an accusation.
I don't care. I don't want to hear it.
Dr. Carroll leaned even farther forward; for a moment Niles was afraid he was going to topple, before he saw him balance himself on the desktop with his elbows. Why not? Dr. Carroll asked.
More silence.
I don't know, Niles said finally. I don't even know what you mean. You think I imagined I was in love with Daphne because I was trying to hide something from myself?
It's a theory. Rather an unfinished one.
I should say so. What on earth could I possibly hide from myself that way, even if I wanted to?
Oh, many things. An imaginative attachment that strong can cloud a great many emotions. True love will do it as well. In drawing the focus away from the rest of your emotions you render yourself less capable of addressing them. Thus, whenever you start to feel yourself approaching an idea or thought process you don't wish you deal with, your attention shifts abruptly back to the object of the obsession. Elementary diversion, really, but it does the job.
And an elementary theory, if you'll pardon my saying so.
Do you think its simplicity invalidates it?
I wouldn't know. It's your theory.
I don't think hostility is productive in this environment.
Niles laughed aloud, remembering how many times he'd said similar things to patients who annoyed him.
What is it?
Nothing. I just realized how annoying therapy is, from this end.
Dr. Carroll smiled a little. Probably an instructive experience.
Yes. You must have a breakdown and experience it for yourself.
Dr. Carroll's smile thinned and then faded out entirely. Yes, well, he said.
Their session ended there so they didn't push any further that day, which was probably just as well. However, they continued in that line in following sessions, and though Niles remained bewildered for quite some time as to what, precisely, Dr. Carroll was getting at, there came a day when Dr. Carroll was just a little too frank and it all came clear. Niles could see, then, the point of all the circumlocution. He wanted to punch the man in the mouth.
You think I'm *gay?* he cried, nearly spitting in his fury.
Dr. Carroll instinctively wheeled his chair back a few inches. Please calm down. I didn't say that.
You insinuated it! It's what you've been insinuating all along!
What did I say that was so –
You know what you said. The idea that I fixated on Daphne in order to give myself – I don't even remember what the phrase was, a single overriding passion to distract myself from my true attractions – you think I invented an obsession with Daphne to hide that I really wanted men? That makes no sense – you are an absolute sham, Dr. Carroll, and a monumentally poor psychiatrist.
Dr. Carroll's lips curved up slightly. Methinks the gentleman doth – he began mildly.
Niles cut him off. I don't give a damn! For God's sake, do you think you're the first person to come up with that theory? Did you believe your genius stretched so far that you were the first one to have spotted it? All my life I've been fending off comments, trying to convince people I'm straight –
And why have you done that?
Because I am straight! Niles nearly howled.
Dr. Carroll leaned back in his chair, and they could both hear his unspoken words. Suit yourself, they said.
On the heels of that: Yeah, right.
Eventually Niles got up. Your reputation led me to believe that you were capable of looking beyond the obvious, he said. Apparently, your reputation was misleading. He walked out.
Niles spent the rest of that afternoon finding himself a new therapist. However, what Dr. Carroll had said stayed with him. And even as he sat through much more congenial therapy sessions with his new therapist, who addressed the issue of his love for Daphne as if it were what it seemed to be and who never came close to mentioning the word homosexuality, the thought stayed with him. It began to recur more and more frequently, showing up several in his dreams, and the disturbing part about it was that he wasn't sure how he felt about it. The dreams were exciting, raw and dirty; he'd wake up sweating and breathing hard, throbbing with an unnamed agitation. His waking thoughts were more confused – but in their very confusion there was a thrill, a surge of adrenaline as he contemplated that side of desire he'd never known. He'd spent so many years adamantly declaring his heterosexuality, and it had almost never occurred to him to question it. However, the key word there was almost. Was there an element of repression in his staunch denials? Might he be – certainly not gay, but might he be bisexual?
Would sleeping with a man enable him to forget Daphne?
The thought tormented him for weeks, and eventually he said to hell with it, downed two Scotches and went out to find a gay bar. The problem was that he had no idea where he might find one. Driving a little too fast on the rain-slickened roads lest he change his mind, he cruised the streets aimlessly for the better part of an hour before giving up and pulling over. Noticing he'd pulled up outside a Barnes and Noble, he went in – it beat sitting in the car – and, naturally, found himself in the gay/lesbian section before long. He was flipping through books aimlessly (Out for Good, now there was a nice firm title; One in 10, now, honestly, had no one yet recognized the invalidity of the Kinsey studies?; Assuming the Position – The True Story of a Male Prostitute in New York City, ugh!) when he came across, unexpectedly, the Damron Gay Travel Guide, Men's Edition. Seattle. Thumbing through it, he quickly found names and addresses for dozens of gay bars in the area. Well, this was it. Taking a pen from his pocket, he tore the blank frontispiece from the book and wrote down the address of the closest one – he was not going to be seen buying this, and it wasn't as if he'd damaged the book severely, they could still sell it. Tucking the piece of paper in his pocket, he went back out to his car.
And went to the bar. And sat stiff, tense, ready to flee the second things got weird. No one took any notice of him at first, as he bought drink after drink, trying to loosen up and convince himself this was the right thing to do. He was about to give up and go home – there was simply no way he could ever even begin flirting with a man, not with no practice whatsoever – when one of them approached him. A man somewhat bigger than Niles, goodlooking in an odd way, with a five o'clock shadow Niles had always assumed was incongruous with homosexuality and strange green-gray eyes the color of seawater. They got to talking. Niles was surprised at how easily he slipped into the conversation. Perhaps it was because he'd had no less than seven drinks. He couldn't remember what they'd talked about the next morning; all he knew was that the man's name was Aaron and that his father had, years ago, offered to hire him the best (female) whore in the city if it would turn him straight. It hadn't worked, obviously, Aaron said with a laugh, and waited expectantly for Niles' coming out story. Perhaps this is how one makes conversation in a gay bar, Niles thought, as he fumbled his way through a made-up story, too ashamed to admit he'd never actually been with a man. He wasn't too drunk to be amused by the inversion, that here in this place he was embarrassed to admit he was straight.
He went through a few more drinks and they went back to Aaron's place and there was nothing more to be said or thought about that.
He'd felt strange for days, even weeks afterward - long after he'd woken up the next morning and realized what he'd done, with a hangover slamming through his skull and his mouth tasting of incipient gingivitis and something much fouler. He'd crept out that morning without waking the man who slept beside him, had walked all the way back to his car – some two miles – rather than wake Aaron and ask for a ride. He'd told no one, ever. He couldn't. Even if he could have somehow gotten the words out that would have conveyed that he had slept with a man, he couldn't possibly have managed to force out the obligatory lie, that it was a complete mistake and he now knew he was completely straight. Still less could he have admitted that he'd enjoyed it, that one time - that he now found himself in some strange shadowy ambivalent region between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Remembering a book in Barnes and Noble entitled Bisexual Spaces, he almost went back and bought it, but stopped himself in the end, knowing he could never bring himself to face the cashier. The sad part was knowing that he'd have bought it without a qualm if it had been research for a case, a purchase for a patient. He couldn't escape the feeling that the cashier's eyes would see through him and brand him with a rainbow flag.
So he told no one, and eventually he made himself forget it. The man's face was becoming difficult to remember, the seawater eyes the only distinguishing mark that stood out clearly in his mind. The experience itself was even hazier, alcohol-muddied. It had all been just one night, one forgettable night. And now he had AIDS.
It was the first time he'd thought the words. Now I have AIDS, he thought again, probing. Trying them on for size.
It didn't seem to mean anything just at present. Doubtless it would, eventually.
Well, he still had to have a blood test done. He'd do that tomorrow. First thing in the morning, he'd go to the hospital and have that done.
And he was going to have to tell Daphne. But – no. His mind shrank away from that one.
He could possibly deal with having been stupid and careless enough to contract AIDS himself. He could possibly live and die with that knowledge.
He could not live with the knowledge of having infected Daphne.
I don't have to, he said to himself, speaking firmly in his mind. I don't know for sure yet. I will have the test done. Until then there is no point in telling her anything.
How am I going to tell Daphne?
There's no need to tell her anything.
How am I going to tell Daphne?
Shut up.