Chapter 18 - Just Going Along.

Everybody knows about the fight or flight response. That’s your primitive brain‘s way of reacting to a dangerous situation; you can either stand up and fight, or you can run away and save yourself. But did you know there’s a third option? 

Surrender.

Instead of fighting back or running away, you can just give in. Give up. Lay there in a little ball on the floor and accept whatever unrelenting attacks are being leveled at you. Which is exactly what your narcissistic abuser wants. He wants you to become so exhausted, so stressed out, so overwhelmed by the constant drama, that you give up.

It makes their job so much easier.

But it’s not like abuse victims really have any choice. Between the gaslighting and manipulation, the constant uncertainty, the emotional blackmail, the lying, and the isolation, abuse victims are living under so much constant stress that their brains are virtually flooded with cortisol, day in and day out. Cortisol, in turn, does some freaky weird shit to your brain. 

That cortisol causes the amygdala - the reptilian part of your brian responsible for that flight or fight thing - to be constantly triggered. Over time this constant stimulus actually causes the amygdala to swell and become super-sensitized. As a result, your overactive amygdala creates a permanent state of anxiety and fear . . . which causes more cortisol to be released, which causes your amygdala to react more, and on and on and on. Long term stress at that level can result in physiological changes including increased heart rate and changes to other organs. On the emotional side, this leads to increased phobias, panic attacks, and even Complex PTSD. 

At the same time, those super-high levels of cortisol emanating from your overreacting Amygdala cause the brain’s hippocampus to physically shrink. The hormones actually attack the organ’s neural pathways. And a shrunken hippocampus - the part of the brian that’s responsible for critical thinking and short-term memory - makes it harder for victims to think clearly. Harder for them to learn and make wise decisions.

In other words, this kind of abuse results in an abuse victim living in a near-constant state of fear, which in turn causes changes to their brain chemistry, all of which makes it harder for the victim to think for themselves.

In order to protect themselves, and reduce the unbearable stress, victims often use reality-bending defense mechanisms that make it easier to cope. Maybe we convince ourselves that the abuser really has some good characteristics and intentions, projecting our own trusting nature onto them. Maybe we compartmentalize the situation so we can set aside the abusive moments and forget about them. Maybe we deny, to others as well as to ourselves, that the abuse is really happening. Maybe we blame ourselves and internalize it all. 

Or, maybe, we just give up and lose ourselves completely, becoming some new, always scared, unthinking shell of a person that we don’t even recognize.

As soon as the contract between Ethan and Erato was signed, life started to get even busier for the Gold/Taylor household. 

The summer seemed to just fly by. I was enjoying the Drawing & Painting Composition Seminar I was taking that summer, but it was taking a lot to keep up, especially since my hand was still acting up. When I wasn’t in class, or struggling to complete a new painting or drawing according to my professor’s exacting requirements, I was working. Summer was the busiest season of all in the catering business, which meant that there were events scheduled almost every day - sometimes more than one a day - so I was able to pick up as many shifts as I wanted. The work wasn’t challenging, and it didn’t pay all that great, but it was steady and we needed all the income we could get.

Despite the promise of all the riches that would be pouring in as soon as he signed with Erato, Ethan still wasn’t contributing much to the household finances. He seemed to be busy all the time but for some reason that hadn’t yet equated to much in the way of earnings. He assured me that it would all come, sooner or later, and then we’d be rolling in dough. 

If only we could live on Ethan’s sky-high optimism.

For the time being, however, Ethan’s days were mostly taken up with studio work for a promised album, making appearances at other folks’ concerts in order to build up name recognition, and seemingly endless ‘meetings’ with his new manager, Glen. Unfortunately, because of all the time he was spending on those tasks, he was barely taking ANY paying gigs. Granted, the symphony season didn’t start till the fall, so he wouldn’t have been performing much in that capacity anyway, but he wasn’t working weddings or parties or busking much either. 

Which meant all the money worries were falling back on my shoulders; hence my working all those extra hours. 

Because my schedule was so insane, my mother and I hadn’t seen much of each other that summer either. I’d had to cancel lunch plans with her multiple times. Finally, near the end of June, she pinned me down and insisted I could at least join her for breakfast before I headed off to work. We agreed to meet at my favorite bakery, Ste. Honore, the following morning. 

As I was getting ready to leave for the bakery, Ethan surprised me by announcing, at the last moment, that he’d moved some of his other obligations around so he could join us. I didn’t know what to say; he seemed to just assume that he had been included in the breakfast invitation, and I didn’t want him to think I didn’t want him there, so I stayed mute. Mom seemed a little surprised by the additional mouth to feed when we showed up as a duo, but of course she was far too refined to say anything. 

“Hi, Mom,” I greeted her with a hug as soon as we arrived. “Sorry we’re a little late.”

I didn’t mention that the reason we were late was because Ethan had melted down just before we were about to head out, upset that the dry cleaner hadn’t managed to get the red wine stain out of the shirt he wanted to wear. I’d had to wait while he changed. The bitching had continued all the way to the front door of the restaurant, leaving me very uneasy that we were about to have a repeat of the Red Robin Debacle. All I could do, though, was just mentally cross my fingers and hope things would blow over.

“It’s no problem, Honey. It gave me time to have my first cup of coffee and read the paper,” Mom assured me with a smile as she set aside her newspaper.

“Hello, Mrs. Taylor,” Ethan spoke up, giving my mother his most charming smile. “Thank you so much for inviting us to breakfast. I love this place.”

“Well, I’m just glad Justin could finally fit me into his schedule,” she replied with an indulgent smile aimed in my direction. “If I hadn’t heard back from him soon, I was going to track him down and kidnap him.”

“I already said I was sorry for cancelling last time, Mom.”

“And the time before that. And the time before that. And . . .” she teased me. 

Luckily my mother’s nagging was cut off by Ethan suggesting we go order at the counter to speed things along. My growling stomach thought that was a brilliant idea. I rushed up, beating the other two to the front of the line, and ordered myself a bacon and egg croissant sandwich AND a grille aux pommes, along with a bowl-sized cup of whipped-cream-topped hot chocolate. By the time my breakfast companions had brought their own food back to the table, I was already halfway through my croissant. It was delicious and I didn’t care how rude it was to scarf down my food the way I was. I only slowed down in my consumption when the croissant sandwich was done and I could move on to my other pastry.

When I finally tuned back into the conversation, Ethan was regaling my mother with all the developments related to his new recording contract. “There have been some really exciting developments. In fact, I haven't even told Justin this yet, but I just heard from Glen last night and it seems that Yosef Treblek, the lead violinist with the Harrisburg Symphony, went in for a triple-bypass yesterday and won’t be able to play for at least three months.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” my mother was quick to jump in and offer condolences.

“No, that’s actually great news. For me at least,” Ethan corrected her with a smug smile. “See, the Harrisburg Symphony is scheduled to play this big Concert in the Park thing at ZooAmerica next month and, since Yosef is out of commission, they want me, the Silver Medalist in this year’s Heifetz Competition, to sub in for him as a Special Guest Performer. I’ll even have a major solo.”

“Wow! That’s fantastic, Ethan,” I leaned over to give him a kiss on his cheek in congratulations. 

My mother echoed my sentiments, praising Ethan’s good luck, and asking a few pertinent questions. I went back to my breakfast, zoning out the detailed discussion, which I was sure I’d hear about ad nauseum later. Frankly, I really hadn’t ever been interested in the technical details of Ethan’s music, and it all sorta bored me. Not that I’d ever tell him that, of course. But, when I’d finished my food and was sipping at my cooling chocolate, and they were still talking music, I found myself yawning out of tedium.

The second or third yawn apparently got my mother’s attention. “Are you okay, Honey? You seem so tired this morning.”

“Sorry. Yeah, I’m pretty bushed, I guess,” I admitted. “I haven’t been sleeping all that well lately and, between stressing out over this big project that my professor wants me to redo and all the hours I’ve been working, I’m a little drained.”

My mother did the requisite fussing over my little admission of insomnia but I waved off all her concerns. Then she asked me about the project that I was revising and I spent a few more minutes bitching about my professor and how he was being such a stickler. That led into a discussion about how my hand had been acting up; Mom tried to convince me to go back to physical therapy for a while, but I put her off, citing the fact that I didn’t have the time or the money for that shit. The inevitable response from my mother was, of course, that she would help Ethan and I out if money was an issue.

The second she brought up the money thing, I mentally flinched, and looked sideways at Ethan. From his closed-off expression I could tell he wasn’t happy with the direction the conversation was heading. Not only had his recitation about all the benefits of his new music contract gotten derailed by my yawning, but now my mother was focused on our money woes. I felt my shoulders tensing up in anticipation of the expected backlash even as my mother pressed for more info. 

“You seem to be working all the time, Justin. Every time I call you’re either at work or on your way to work, and you’ve cancelled our lunch dates how many times? I don’t understand why you two are having so much trouble on the money front,” Mom pried. “In fact, Debbie and I were just talking about you the other day, and she was complaining about the same thing. She says she’s left you half a dozen messages that you haven’t returned. If you’re so busy you can’t even return a call or two, you shouldn’t be so broke that you can’t pay for necessary healthcare expenses like physical therapy . . .”

To shut her up, I quickly promised that I would call and make an appointment with my old PT, but even so the tenor of the dialog after that seemed a little stilted. I could tell that Ethan had had enough mom time for one morning and was ready to go. I hurried to finish my hot chocolate as Ethan stood up and started to say his goodbyes. 

Before we could escape, though, my mother got in a few more motherly directives. “Please don’t be working yourself into the ground, Justin,” she admonished with a peck to my cheek. “You need to concentrate on school and not working so much you make yourself sick. Okay?”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Good. And stop ignoring Debbie’s voice mail messages,” she added with a chuckle. “Whenever you don’t call her back, she calls me to complain.”

“I think Deb’s exaggerating, Mom. I haven’t gotten any messages from her in quite a while,” I assured her. “She might have called while I was working and just didn’t leave a message - I don’t usually check those calls - but I at least try to return calls to anybody that goes to the trouble of leaving a message.”

“Well, either way, you should call her and just check in every so often. Please. She worries about you almost as much as I do, you know.”

“I know and I promise I’ll call.”

“Good boy.” I held Mom’s chair for her while she got up. “And DON’T forget to call about the physical therapy, either.”

I promised about that too and then we made plans to do breakfast again the following week. Ethan said a polite goodbye as well. Mom hugged us both and then headed off to a client’s open house. Ethan and I walked the opposite direction towards home.

We were halfway there before I succumbed to the brooding tension emanating from my companion and asked him what was wrong. 

“I’m a little annoyed at your mother, if you want to know the truth,” Ethan stated, his frown deepening. 

I was lost. I’d thought it had been a perfectly nice meal; my mother and my boyfriend had seemed to be getting along just fine and there hadn’t been any serious drama at all. I’d counted that a win, myself. So I was totally confused by Ethan’s complaint. 

“I can’t believe your mother is trying to push you back into that abusive and unhealthy life again,” Ethan continued on. 

“What are you talking about, Ethan?” I was still not following what my boyfriend was complaining about this time.

“I’m talking about your mother telling you to call that Debbie woman back.” I could hear the budding anger in Ethan’s voice and it immediately raised my blood pressure. “Isn’t she part of that whole Kinney sphere of influence? Why the hell would your mother, of all people, want you to maintain contact with any of those people?”

“Ethan . . .” I sighed. He was so myopic when it came to ANYTHING to do with Brian and it was so tiresome. 

“Don’t say ‘Ethan’ in that tone!” he bristled, raising his voice. “I’m only telling you the truth and you know it! Those people and that life weren’t good for you, Justin. I don’t care if she is your mother; I’m not gonna sit there, say nothing, and watch as you get pulled back into the same trap that I saved you from once already. Your mother should know better.”

As exasperating as Ethan’s criticisms were, I told myself that he was only saying all that because he cared about me. Still, it felt kinda like he was asking me to choose between him and my own mother. If I didn’t say something, I’d be disloyal to my mom. If I tried to correct his misperceptions, though, Ethan was sure to take it the wrong way. 

“She’s a good mother,” I offered lamely, trying to straddle the fence of my conflicting sympathies. “She’s always tried to do her best for me.”

“How good of a mother could she be if she’s pushing you back towards Kinney again!” Ethan complained, stopping in his tracks and turning to face me head on. “Not to mention all the other shit she’s done in the past. You’re the one who told me how she basically sat there and let your dad kick you out of the house at seventeen. Then she handed you over to Kinney after you got out of the hospital, even knowing what a horrible influence he’d been on you. She might just as well have pimped you out herself. And now that you’ve finally escaped that life, your so-called ‘good mother’ is trying to drag you right back there?” Ethan held his hands out in a beseeching gesture. “Please, Babe. Just try and take a step back and look at it from a different perspective. How is ANY of that good parenting?”

Okay, so, yeah, when you put it that way, my mom certainly had made some mistakes. The thing about letting my dad make me leave all those years ago still rankled. Not so much the stuff about her letting me go live with Brian after the bashing, though - I’d actually thought that was one of Mom’s better decisions - of course I wouldn’t bother trying to argue that point with an already irate Ethan. But I suppose I could see where Ethan was coming from. Maybe. 

Ethan grabbed my hand in his and started walking again. “All I’m saying, Babe, is that it wouldn’t hurt to put a little distance between you and your mother for a while. You need a bit of healthy perspective. And you definitely need to think twice before you follow any more of her advice.” He made scare quotes around the word ‘advice’ just to emphasize his point. 

I didn’t completely agree with what Ethan was saying, but it did make me think. Ethan always seemed so sure of his opinions. Was I too close to the situation to see it clearly? Not that I really thought my mother’s intentions were bad, but maybe her advice really wasn’t all that well thought out sometimes. Her past screwups had hurt me before; Ethan wasn’t wrong about that. Plus, when you factored in the unpleasantness that would befall me if I took my mother’s side over Ethan’s, it just seemed easier to listen to my boyfriend on this particular topic. Maybe a little distance from Mom wasn’t a bad thing.

So, when my mother called the following week to schedule another breakfast, I made up an excuse to get out of it. Ethan, who’d been sitting next to me on the couch while I was talking to my mom, smiled at me approvingly. There was no drama and no argument; instead I got instant approval. 

See, wasn’t that easier than arguing with him about it?

“Hey, Babe,” Ethan waylaid me right as I was heading out on my way to class about a week later. “I’m gonna need the apartment for a few hours this afternoon.”

“Okay . . .” I didn’t exactly know what that meant.

“I just wanted to warn you so you don’t come barging in.”

“Barging in on what?” I asked, feeling a little niggle of worry starting up in my gut. “You’re not asking me to get lost while you have an afternoon quickie, are you?” I tried to make it sound like a joke but I really wasn't sure.

Ethan laughed. “Hell no. At least not with Alexa Scott.” I must have looked a little confused so he continued, “she’s the entertainment editor for the Pittsburgh Gazette. She’s interviewing me about the ZooAmerica concert. Glen set it up. It’s all part of the publicity tour they’re pushing to get my name out there.”

“Wow! That’s great!” I raved, coming back over to where Ethan was sitting at our little table and offering him a congratulatory kiss. “My boyfriend is going to be famous!”

“I know, right? Things are really starting to happen,” Ethan was beamingly happy. “She’s meeting me here about one. Glen thought it would be good for my image to do the interview in our ‘quaint’ little artist’s loft. More romantic and all that shit.”

I chuckled at that. Yeah, romantic wasn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe the dump we lived in. More like ‘tenement’. But I supposed, if you squinted, it might qualify as ‘quaint’. 

“We should be done by 2:00 - 2:30. You can come back after that,” Ethan advised, again confusing me.

“Why can’t I come back earlier?” I asked. “If this reporter wants to know all about your quaint life, wouldn’t that include your artistic partner?”

“Definitely not!” Ethan replied adamantly. “You CAN’T be here, Justin. Glen would throw a fucking fit.”

“What? I don’t understand . . .”

Ethan looked a little embarrassed for just a second - an expression that was not at all common for the supremely confident musician - but then he took a deep breath and explained. “For all intents and purposes, as far as my career is concerned, I have to pretend to be straight.”

“Straight? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I can't be out. Nobody can know I’m gay. That was one of the conditions of my contract. Glen said I couldn't be seen with you in public, or acknowledge you in any way.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But Ethan merely shrugged without retracting anything. “What . . . That's totally fucked, Ethan! Your sexual orientation is none of his business. What does that even have to do with playing the violin?”

“Absolutely nothing. It’s all about the album cover; the label wants some hot young stud with tousled hair, shirt unbuttoned down to here, stroking his violin,” Ethan mimed the actions as he spoke, rocking his hips as he pretended to stoke an imaginary violin, a sexy smirk gracing his lips through it all. 

“But you're a serious artist. It shouldn’t matter what you look like or who you sleep with,” I insisted.

“Yeah, well, if that's all he cared about, he'd be talking to Cho Li,” Ethan shook his head as if resigned. “You know as well as I do that all Glen and the record company care about is purse power. All those young women who spend billions a year on music downloads, who probably think Paganini is a brand of frozen pizza, and who might not buy Ethan Gold's latest CD if they knew he was a fag.” I must have still looked horrified because Ethan got up from his seat and came over to offer what he must have assumed was a reassuring hug. “It’s no biggie, Babe. I just have to play the game, you know? At least until I make it big enough that nobody will care anymore. It won’t be that bad. Besides, it was either this or no contract at all, and there's nothing noble about being poor, right?” 

I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t believe that Ethan would sell out like that. That he would deny his sexuality. Deny me. But he had already returned to his seat at the table where he was leafing through some catalog full of musician paraphernalia, completely unconcerned. Pretending to be straight didn’t seem to bother him at all. 

And I didn’t know what to think or say, so I just left for class. 

Like the obedient, dick-whipped, idiot that I was, I followed orders and stayed away from the apartment until after 2:30. I couldn’t wait much longer than that because I had to get changed and head off to work. I still hadn’t figured out what to say to Ethan, or even how I really felt about all this, but that would all have to wait because I never had time to think about anything between all my various obligations.

I knew the second I opened the door that I’d fucked up. 

“So how do you feel about your first concert appearance? Scared, confident, excited?” a woman’s voice was speaking.

Ethan replied with a seductive chuckle, “definitely all of the above.”  

It seemed that the interview was running a lot later than Ethan had anticipated.

The reporter laughed along with Ethan’s little joke and added, “you know, it's quite a remarkable achievement for someone so young, and obviously so gifted, to have such sudden success. I understand that, until recently, you were performing on street corners?” 

“Well, you gotta pay the rent.” 

I hesitated, knowing that I should really just turn around and go, but then I looked at my phone and noticed the time. If I didn’t grab my work clothes and get out of there in the next ten minutes I was going to be late. And that thing Ethan had said about paying the rent . . . Well, since I was the one paying all our bills at the moment, if I lost my job because I was late, the rent wouldn’t be getting paid. So, even though I knew Ethan might blow his top, I pushed the door all the way open.

“Hey! Sorry to interrupt. Don’t mind me. I just stopped by to pick up my stuff,” I announced, trying to be as vague as possible.

Ethan looked gobsmacked but quickly covered it up and turned to the journalist. “This is Justin . . . my cousin . . . He sometimes stays over if him and his girlfriend have had a fight,” he lied glibly. “Justin, this is Alexa Scott. She's interviewing me for the paper.” 

“Right. Sorry again,” I demurred and quickly grabbed my work pants and shoes out of the closet. “Just forgot my work clothes.”

“No problem. See you later, Justin,” Ethan replied, sounding all matter of fact, like he wasn’t just blowing off his lover for some skanky reporter who was sitting so close to him that their knees were touching. 

The reporter woman had already mentally dismissed me. Before I was even out of the door, she’d moved on with her interview. “Just a couple more questions. Do you have a girlfriend?” 

As I was closing the door behind me I heard my boyfriend answer, “I’d prefer not to talk about that, Alexa.”

“Oh . . . That usually means yes,” she tittered.

I quickly closed the door, pulling it harder than was necessary, so that it slammed against the jamb. "Girlfriend?" I muttered as I pounded down the stairs. “What the fuck was that, Ethan?” 

All the way to work I was stewing. His agent didn't want anyone to know he was gay; he thought it would hurt his career. Fine. Whatever. But to fucking flirt with that bitch right in front of me? And to imply that I was his straight cousin? Seriously? Was anyone really dumb enough to believe that? And why the fuck did I agree to go along with this again? I almost died when I first came out of the closet and now my boyfriend was trying to stuff me back in there again? That was seriously fucked. What the hell was I doing? Why would Ethan even consider going this route?

I was so worked up that I actually missed my stop on the bus, meaning I was probably going to be late after all. Great. So there I was, rushing off to work to support my now-closeted boyfriend, while he was home flirting with some bimbo, and I was probably gonna get fired because of it. Remind me again why I thought being with Ethan would be so much better? I gave up my cushy life with Brian for this? I mean, Brian might not have been everything I wanted in a boyfriend, but at least he never asked me to lie about my sexuality. Even if Ethan wanted to do this, because he thought it was the only way to launch his career, it was just so fucking unfair to make ME pretend along with him. 

But, after running the five blocks back to work, begging forgiveness from Luke for being late, and then working a five hour shift serving rubber chicken at some bigwig corporate retreat, I finally ran out of energy to be angry anymore. 

Yes, it was totally fucking unfair. No, I wasn’t happy with Ethan. I thought about calling Daphne, or maybe even my mom, and asking their advice, but since I was currently on the outs with both of them, that option wasn’t all that appealing. Besides, what exactly was I going to do? Did I care enough about this issue to defy Ethan? Was I willing to put my foot down and in the process tank Ethan’s career? If I did, Ethan would likely just tell me to get the fuck out and I didn’t have anywhere else to go. So, either way you looked at it, I was fucked.

It seemed like I didn’t really have any alternative other than to just go along with Ethan’s stupid scheme, so I took the path of least resistence and said nothing at all.