Page 86 of Love At First Fright
“In a way.” He paused. The words were in his head, but getting them to form on his lips was hard. Rosemary sat down on her beanbag chair.
“Take your time.” She gave him a soft, pensive look. “I’m not going anywhere.”
There is nothing like eternity to make you realise how precious time really is.
This was the woman he loved. And he was tired of holding back.
“I’m bi,” Ellis said. “I’m attracted to men and women and, well…every gender, really.”
The idea of coming out had felt insurmountable, but he’d just done it. As easy as breathing. And Rosemary wasn’t crying, wasn’t shouting, or running away. In fact, she was smiling and walking towards him.
“I didn’t guess. I normally have a pretty good radar for these things, but with you I had no idea.” She grinned. “Do you think we noticed the gay in each other then?”
“What?” Ellis’s brain short-circuited.
“I’m bi, too.”
“You are?”
“Mm-hmm.” Rosemary looped her arms around his neck and pulled Ellis flush with her. “Thank you for telling me, and trusting me. I’m guessing you’re notout,then?”
Ellis shook his head. “Early in my career, I was more ‘out’ than now. I dated some guys, a couple of non-binary people, but Brody got wind of it. I think one of them actually tried to sell the news to the press and that’s how Brody found out. Something about ‘new Hollywood star likes dominating cock’…tasteless bullshit. It was right around the time of my big break in the first Soldier of Justice movie, so I had to be the big macho masculine Hollywood star. I couldn’t be bi, it would have ruined my career before it even started.” Ellis became aware as he talked that he was rehashing the phrases Brody had said to him all those years ago, even if he wasn’t sure he believed them anymore. He became aware that Rosemary was turning red, her eyebrows scrunching into a deep frown.
“And so I let Brody keep the news out of the press and I went back in the closet. After that, I had to be careful. Publicly,I just dated women. A few hookups here and there over the years, but…that’s it.”
“Ellis.” Rosemary spoke very slowly. “I’m going to kill him. I mean it this time. Murder. Where does he live, give me his address, I have a crime to commit.”
He chuckled, but there was no heart in it.
“Why aren’t you more angry at him, Ellis? This asshole forcibly kept you in the closet for decades…and why? So he could keep making more of a commission?”
“I know that’s why he did it. But it’s not like I didn’t play my own part. I could have come out if I really wanted to, but I saw what it was like.
“You’ve no idea, love, how bad it was in those slimy Hollywood circles. When you’re still climbing up that fame ladder you can’t afford to just do your own thing and be above it all. No, you have to be at the parties. The premieres. The after-parties.”
He’d been so young and foolish, falling for the glamour of it all. All those late nights, the pumping music, forcing himself to fit a mould and drowning himself in drink when the ache became too much.
“I heard the way they all talked about those who had come out. They said fucking nasty shit. Even other actors, like Lance, who was so famous you’d think he was untouchable. When Lance and Arthur got together, the stuff they said would have made you feel sick. And then you’d start to notice it in the casting choices. Suddenly, the actress who came out as lesbian was only getting cast in a few roles, none of them as lead or romantic interest. Always a side character. And if it was a guy that came out? Then he was pigeonholed as either the gay best friend—that’s if he was short and petite enough—or…if you look like me, you get written off altogether. You can’t look like me andalso be queer, it doesn’t compute to them. Through every big action flick, every personal training session, they made me into this über-straight man that other straight men want to be like. I hated it.”
“Why did you stay?”
Why indeed? Had it all been worth it, those decades of loneliness, of hiding himself? All for what, the money, the fame? How had he let it go on this long?
“I loved the work. The acting—I still do. I wanted to get my parents out of their tiny flat and into a big house, and to pay for Annie to complete her PhD. Over time, the good outweighed the bad. And then, once I was famous enough, I didn’t have to do all the schmoozing, and aside from a fake dating scenario from Brody here and there, I could keep to myself. Before I knew it, fifteen years had gone past and I was still in the closet.”
For a time, neither of them spoke, taking it all in. Rosemary leant her head against his chest, listening as Ellis’s heartbeat slowed to a more regular rhythm. He didn’t realise how bound up he’d been about all of it, how long it had been since he’d told anyone all about it. He kissed the top of her head.
“Do you think you want to come out? More publicly, I mean?” Rosemary asked.
If Ellis had been asked that question only an hour ago, he’d have said a vehement “no.” But now, with Rosemary in his arms, the idea of the world knowing who he was felt a touch less daunting.
“Maybe. I think I could, with time.”
31
Rosemary inhaled the dusty, sweetscent of old books and worn leather and sipped her tea. She remembered reading somewhere that old books smell of vanilla, due to the lignin in them, which was apparently similar to vanillin, and wondered if that’s why everyone said they liked the smell of books.
She was sitting in the closed-off back room at The Reader’s Rest, one of London’s oldest bookshops, which happened to have a large section specialising in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, psyching herself up for the event. Though perhaps “large” wasn’t quite the right word to describe it; more like “labyrinthine.”
