A Simple Man - Patrick's Story

The Beginning

The evening after the wedding....

Patrick sat with Agustin in Dom's temporary pop-up restaurant, watching his friend trying to sober up. While his own was no picnic, Agustin's life seemed to be falling apart at a frightening rate. As of tonight he was jobless, single, and apparently homeless. Agustin said he didn't want to talk about it, and god knew Patrick was itching to talk about what was going on with his own drama, but this was too important to let him stay silent on.

'Are you going to tell me what happened with Frank?' Patrick nudged him gently. Agustin sighed, staying silent for a few moments, crumbling some bread between his fingers. Eventually he looked at Patrick and shrugged.

'It's probably as you expected. He wasn't too happy when he found out I paid CJ to have sex with him'

'Was it the fact that you were paying him with money you didn't have?' Patrick pressed a little further.

'No, I don't think he really cared about that bit. I guess just that I kept it secret from him. Like leading a double life.' Agustin replied philosophically. He seemed to have made peace with it, though it was so recent. Or was he just still too drugged to realize the implications?

'Why DID you keep it secret from him?' Patrick wanted to know. Could this have been avoided if Agustin had been honest from the start? Though would Frank ever had agreed to the whole idea if he had known CJ wasn't willingly giving his time to the art project? That was doubtful.

'I don't know.' Agustin admitted. 'It was something that I wanted to do but I knew he wouldn't understand. I just felt I needed to express myself creatively.' Patrick stayed silent. It was hard to understand how photographing a prostitute having sex with your boyfriend could be turned into art. But he knew better than try and challenge Agustin about his work. He didn't need Agustin on the attack tonight. He wanted his advice, his opinion, but not his anger. 'And look I feel shitty enough about it. Our relationship is over, everything's done, so can we not talk about it? There's really not much more to say. He's done and he threw me out.' Agustin stated with a finality that made it clear the subject was now closed. 'What about you? You said you had a tale of woe to tell. Let me guess. Richie didn't go over well with Ms. Dana Murray?'

Patrick laughed bitterly.

'Oh god. Richie never even came.' He admitted.

'What? What do you mean? I thought he was going to be your date?' It was hard to shock Agustin but Patrick had managed to.

'Yeah well, halfway over the bridge he decided that he'd had enough of my freakout so he left and walked back to the city.' Patrick admitted sheepishly.

'You were on the bridge... and he got out of the car?' Agustin was obviously having a hard time processing all this.

'He was already out of the car. He'd got out to offer me some weed.' Patrick continued.

'Back up Paddy. What the fuck are you talking about?'

Patrick took a deep breath as he readied himself to tell the whole story.

'Look, I was getting a little freaked out, he was trying to tie my bow tie while I was driving...'

'You don't know how to tie a bow tie?' Agustin interrupted.

'No, I don't know how to tie a bow tie. When was the last time we ever needed to tie a bow tie?' Patrick was momentarily distracted.

'Everybody knows how to tie a bow tie.'

Patrick stared at Agustin intently to try to get a sense of how chemically altered he still was. Focusing on the tie was a little strange. In that moment, their dinner arrived and they both busied themselves gushing and oohing over the delicious food that Dom's kitchen had prepared. But it didn't take them long to get back to the important business of the wedding post-mortem. Patrick explained about retrieving the phone from the hotel, being late, driving on the bridge...then he paused, not sure how to explain the next part without sounding like a total prick.