6. DOUGLAS

 

To whom it may concern,

 

I don’t suppose it matters now but I’ve done a lot of good in my life. At the age of 18, I started up a delivery company that specialised in the transport of delicate goods. You’ve probably heard of us, Safety First Delivery. We’re the company with those cheesy adverts where a big sweaty guy in a vest is juggling four pieces of china while smiling at the camera. I never really understood that advert, to be honest. I wouldn’t want anyone juggling my valuables.

Anyway, I saw there was a gap in the market because prestige organisations like antique houses or jewellery stores tend to overcharge for delivery because they know they have you by the balls once you’ve made that initial big outlay. That’s where I step in.

By the time I was 25, the company was making about 2 million a year and I had 50 employees. I paid over the odds because I wanted a happy workforce. A lot of businessmen might see that as being naïve but I figured that those people were my representatives and when they did their job, when they met new customers, they were a reflection on me and my company. You can force employees to be polite and courteous, but you can’t force them to be happy. It doesn’t matter how big you get, if your service is supposed to be boutique, your staff need to reflect that fact.

Now I’m in my late forties, I’ve made enough money that I can be a bit more hands off when it comes to the business. Angie, my second in command and the woman that effectively runs Safety First day to day, understands the ethos of the firm and the reasons behind its success. She was one of my first employees back in the early days and I’ve seen her grow both as a businesswoman and as a human being, with a fine husband and two young girls, and one boy on the way. She’ll make an excellent number 1 when I’m gone, which may well be sooner than later.

The reason for this note, addressed to no-one in particular, is because my life is about to change. I was contacted by Francis Johnson, a freelance journalist, a couple of months ago. He said he wanted to write a story about me and the business. I have to admit, I was flattered. I met him in a bar, we talked for about two hours and he taped the whole thing, and I subsequently invited him back to my house for a further two interviews. He seemed like a decent guy, friendly, open, a bit of a joker. Every so often he would make some inappropriate sexual comment, but I just let it go.

I’m a bit of a junkie for management manuals, even though I disagree with a lot of their contents, and I liked the idea of putting forward my vision on how to lead a successful company. Normally it’s just Wall Street guys that get the chance to do that, not a man running a medium sized business out of Auburn Hills. I think Michigan’s had a bad rap over the last twenty years, but there’s some real success stories in the area if you look closely enough. I was born in Miami but I grew up around here, so I consider myself a native. These are my people.

Anyway, I didn’t hear from the guy for a couple of weeks after the last interview, so I called him a few times and he was evasive or didn’t pick up. Eventually, I gave up and just assumed that was the last I’d hear from him.

Last Monday, I got a call from the Detroit Free Press saying that the paper intended to run a story on me in the next few weeks accusing me of abusing three young boys. They wanted to know whether I wanted to make any comment before publication. I didn’t say a word, put the phone down and called my lawyer, Sammy Hirschowitz. I guess I knew from that point on my life was over, but I didn’t see any point panicking until I had all the facts in front of me. I’ve always been a patient, logical man. That’s part of the reason I’ve been so successful in business.

Sammy pulled in all his local contacts to find out what was happening and yes, Francis had sold the story to the Freep and there were three kids who were all willing to testify that I had molested them in their early teens. I think the plan is to co-ordinate the report to the police and my arrest with the breaking of the story. Sammy couldn’t get me the names of the kids, but I guessed that Sam and Brad were probably on the list because things hadn’t ended well with them. I did think about contacting them through mutual friends, but I figured that if things had got this far already, there was probably a lot of money involved and I would simply be pouring fuel on the fire.

I remembered a call I’d received from Brad five months ago, a sweet late night call out of nowhere where we’d talked for a few hours about how things were going for us, what our plans were for the future, who we were dating. In retrospect, I wonder if he was taping the conversation with a view to playing it back to me in a court room somewhere. I’m glad that I’ll never find out if that’s the case. Some memories are so important that it’s worth deluding yourself to keep them intact.

I’ve been sitting here in the house for the last few days nursing a bottle of gin and a bottle of vodka and thinking about what to do next, but really, there is nothing to do next other than wait. I think of all the clichéd film scenes I’ve seen where the Man of Great Importance sits in a darkened office and then shoots himself in the head. It’s odd to think that a process has begun and at the end of it I’ll be the most hated person in Michigan. Me! Douglas Kendrick! It’s like watching your death in slow motion. I can imagine the crowds with their placards outside my house. I can imagine the death threats. There’s no way I can continue living here. And where could I move where no-one would bother me? Do I want to move?

Am I evil? I don’t feel evil. I’ve never had sex with a boy younger than the age of eleven and I don’t believe I’ve ever had sex with a virgin. I don’t think parents understand how quickly children grow up nowadays. Some of the things Brad and Sam would say or do would shock me and make me aware of how old and stuck in my ways I really was. The idea that the time I spent with them was some kind of torture for them… the idea they were misused in some way… I mean, I talked with them, laughed with them, went on day trips, went to concerts. They were mutually enriching relationships that lasted over a 4 year period. The words that people use to describe such things, those ugly, violent words that say more about the people that sling them, seem ridiculous when applied to the strong bonds I formed with those kids. Did we fuck? Yes, of course we fucked. That’s what people in relationships do.

I know they’re going to suggest rape, I just know it, and just thinking about the word makes me want to blow my brains out a la the guy in the darkened office. I’ve seen a rape before, outside of a bar ten years ago, and I remember picking up the girl from the floor and driving her to the hospital while the life seeped out of her. I know how wretched and dirty and ugly rape is and the idea that I’m going to be painted as some evil mastermind plucking vulnerable kids off the street, it’s too much for me to bear. Brad and Sam… I have pictures in my living room with my arms around these boys, or sitting out on the beach together enjoying the sun, or just smiling and messing around. When people come around for drinks and they see the pictures, I tell people they’re my nephews but I feel happy that they see how content and inspired I look in those photos. Sam often joked that he wished he’d had an uncle as generous as me when he was growing up. It’s the nearest I’ve ever felt to love.

Do you know it’s torture to think that someone has gone to the effort of trampling my memories into shit just for a cheap newspaper scandal. Does anyone even read newspapers anymore? They want to swap love for hatred in every damn place they find it.

I feel like somehow I have to explain my sexual history now, whoever might be reading this, even though I know it won’t make a blind bit of difference when this story comes out. I’m readying for a witch-hunt. I don’t expect anyone to see reason. I looked up a couple of previous cases on the internet and it reminded me of those vintage horror films where the villagers storm the manor house with pitchforks and shovels. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to deal with something like that.

I’ve had numerous relationships with younger men and older men. Auburn Hills is a conservative area, so I tend to date in North Michigan, where I know the chance of bumping into someone I know is next to zero. I’m not ashamed of being gay, but I like the excitement of the bar scene and meeting someone new and I realise that kind of thing doesn’t go down well if you’re visible in the community. Angie knows I’m gay and jokes with me about it, threatening to set me up with guys she knows, but the truth is she doesn’t understand the riskier end of the scene. It suits me that she sees me as a lonely bachelor sitting on my own at night listening to Mozart and sipping on cocktails.

I lost my virginity at the age of eleven to a gorgeous guy in his mid-twenties. He worked at my school as a labourer and I came up to him after everyone had gone home and just kind of hung around while he was working. He left the door open for me in the boiler room, I went in and we kissed a bit and then he sucked me off. I tried to do the same for him but I was useless at it, all teeth, and he laughed at me. I started pulling at him instead and eventually he came and that was the start of our romance! He didn’t give me a bunch of flowers afterwards. He taught me how to suck him off and he let me fuck him a couple of times, but he never fucked me. It was a strange kind of relationship. I think probably he was scared that I’d tell someone about it, even though I swore on my mother’s life I wouldn’t. It was fun.

The thing is – I can’t really deny it, I do like boys. I love talking with them about their dreams, touching their skin, holding them, making them smile, making them pout, everything about them really. I remember vividly being a kid and how free that felt. You can taste it on their lips. I touched kids when I was a young child myself and I can remember my parents telling me off for it. It’s their beauty that hits me first, long before anything sexual kicks in. I can’t help myself. I stop in the middle of the street and forget to breathe. Time skips a beat.

Since the call from the newspaper, I’ve been searching my soul as hard as I can as to why I am the way I am, because I think I’ve never really questioned. At some level I know how I act is wrong, just as I knew it was wrong all those years ago at the school, but I don’t really understand why. Sometimes I think it would be easier for me if I was a different person, but I’m not. When you have that kind of physical response to beauty, it’s almost hopeless to question your motives. And am I hurting these kids in some way? Am I changing the course of their lives? I don’t think I am, or at least not for the worse. I honestly don’t think I am. Most of them are kids already coming off the rails, already confused. If anything, I brought a bit of focus and culture into their lives. Sam, I know, is just about to graduate in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts.

I’m no angel. I’ll admit that I’ve watched a lot of pornography in my fifty or so years on this planet, including some that would probably be classified as child porn. I don’t go looking for it, but sometimes I’m in the mood for Latino men, sometimes Chinese and, yes, sometimes I’m in the mood for younger kids. I think it’s natural to watch a lot of porn if you’re not in a long term relationship. It keeps you in touch with your sexuality. My tastes aren’t that weird. I can honestly say I’ve never gone looking for the more abusive clips, but I do stumble across it occasionally. It just looks like torture to me and often it’s set up to look like torture and I can’t watch it for more than a couple of minutes until I get sick to my stomach. Sometimes I do worry that if I watch any kind of kiddy flick, I’m somehow funding the nastier stuff, but there’s not much I can do about it. If I thought I could report it to the police without implicating myself, I would do it, but that’s not realistic. The makers of that stuff rely on the fact that you’ve already sold them a bit of your soul and they could burn you if they wanted to.

I’ve heard that some of the sites blackmail their clients when they get them hooked, but I’ve never had that happen to me before. I don’t know of anyone who’s been blackmailed, but then I don’t know a lot of people with the same kind of tastes as me. It pays to keep away from those kind of people. This idea that there’s solidarity between perverts, I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t want to meet anyone who enjoys the same things I do. I disgust myself sometimes. The few boys that I’ve dated, I’ve dated in different parts of the State, a long way away from where I live.

. I don’t know… parents play this cat and mouse game with their children, clinging to the idea that sex is some grand, immense moment in someone’s life, but secretly America loves fucking. It loves fucking, sucking, fingering, fisting, tonguing and sticking a finger up the asshole. Deep down, we all secretly want to do all kinds of things and there shouldn’t be an age limit on happiness. There’s quite a few countries where the legal age of consent is 13 or 14 and if that were the case, I would be happy to obey the law. I think a kid can make an informed choice by that age, although I doubt they’d want an old dried up guy like me unless I pay for it.

I can’t help feeling that some of the hatred aimed towards so – called paedophiles is just veiled gay bashing. If I go up to a young man and try chatting him up, that’s predatory, that’s grooming, but if a man does the same to young woman, borderline legal, we call it an honest mistake. I don’t believe the internet is seething with these hardcore paedophiles trying to seduce eight and nine year olds. To me, that’s not even about sex. I can see the argument for long term prison sentences in those cases, or chemical castration.

I wonder if after the arrest, they’ll allow me to talk and put forward my point of view. If I agree to some kind of treatment, they’ll probably cut me some slack. I realise I don’t have the right to ask for anything, but there are people who depend on me and I don’t want the whole thing to fall apart. Maybe it would be better if I was dead. I’m glad my parents are gone. They were good people, Christians, devoted to charity. They wouldn’t understand the kind of things I enjoy. I can at least give all my money to charity. I can follow them in that way. I’ve drawn up a will and Sammy knows who to contact.

If they say to me, if they write in the paper, this man has hurt me, then I’ll take my punishment. If they say I hurt them, then I don’t want to go on living. If they don’t, I could hide and run the company from abroad. Or I could take out a million pounds from the business account, put on a baseball cap and jeans and move away to Australia and tell Angie that the company is hers to do as she wants. There’s no clear answer. I know that it’s not going to be pretty.

 

Love,

 

Douglas