Episode 1.8, when Scotty Steele dies.
April 21, 2019. Easter Sunday.
Light. Intense, golden light, surrounding him. Not bright, like sunlight, just warm, comfortable, loving -- how can light be loving? -- like sitting on your mother's lap when you are a kid. Scotty wonders if he is a kid. Maybe he has gone back to the womb?
No, there are others around him, some that he once knew, and loved or hated, some who are strangers. Except they aren't strangers now -- he sees the most important moments of their lives, and they, in turn, see Scotty's. At random, not in chronological or thematic order:
1. Going out to dinner at the Shem Creek Restaurant in Mount Pleasant -- pizza and beer -- and Scotty calls Gideon "Little Lord Fauntleroy." They smile and joke, and hold hands under the table, and the song on the radio, or in his mind, is "You Knock Me Out.” :
The way you talk when you say what you see
Your smile breaking my words – you knock me out.
The way you shake it, baby, the way you get when you get down -- you knock me out
The memory of the song, of his smile, fills Scotty with so much joy that he he feels like he will burst. He looks around -- or the equivalent when you don't have a body -- and feels the others sharing his joy.
2. The Old Man, Jesse Gemstone, takes them all out on his yacht, and in the glittering of the waves, while the kids sit in the wading pool -- a pool on a yacht? -- Jesse offers to become his Daddy, and they hug.
He eases into the hug, actually considering the crazy idea for a moment. They could just walk away from the scheme to steal the Easter offering from the Salvation Center, $3,000,000, and settle into lives as a good Christian Gemstone and his boyfriend.
Then he laughs to himself. No way will the Old Man ever admit Scotty to the family, knowing that his cock has been down his son's throat or up his ass...
sorry, Mom....the fact that Scotty has been intimate with his son every night. Evangelicals hate gay sex even more than they hate thinking for yourself. The Easter Offering plan is the only way they can walk side by side into the future.
3. Driving from California to South Carolina so they can blackmail his father, the world-famous Jesse Gemstone, with a video of his sex-and-drugs party, get even for a childhood of neglect and abuse, and fund their happily-ever-after life in Thailand. They spend the night in a Motel 6 somewhere in New Mexico. Lucy is snoring. Scotty opens his eyes and sees Gideon, propped up in the other bed, playing on his cell phone, his face illuminated, as if he is already in the plane of endless light. He must be an angel -- nothing in this shithole world --
sorry, Mom -- could be so beautiful.
He knows that he's going to do it, he's known since the moment they met, but still, Scotty is terrified as he climbs out of his own bed and slides in next to Gideon. He doesn't look surprised -- maybe he has always known, too. He puts his cell phone away and scoots down so Scotty can hold him in his arms and kiss him.
Suddenly the world changes. Scotty has never been kissed before, not like this. Minutes pass, hours, months, a lifetime. He doesn't even think about doing something more intimate -- is there anything more intimate? -- but eventually Gideon takes the lead rolls him over onto his back, and moves down....he moves down...
To give him the blow job of his life. Well, until later that night. And the next. With Gideon, his orgasms are so intense that his yells wake half the county, and he has to lie there, panting, exhaused, not sure where he is or who he is, knowing only that they are together.
Cause you and me were meant to be. One heart, one soul, one mind, two of a kind.
Whoever said that love is blind? We're partners in crime.
Scotty retreats into himself, embarrassed, but the others draw him back. There's nothing to be embarrassed about now. They've seen the moments of his life, and he's seen theirs.
One of the others has taken on form -- not really a corporeal form, more like a recognizable presence: a young woman with 1980s helmet hair and circular glasses, a little girl in pigtails standing on a country road, a middle-aged woman holding baby Gideon on her lap. She is singing, or music is playing:
We've come so very far, just look at where we are -- What once was a dream is now a sweet memory.
I'll see you again with the valley's warm wind, I'll see you some way, but it's toodles today
Scotty knows who she is -- Aimee-Leigh Gemstone, the Gospel singer that his mom liked so much. Eli Gemstone's wife, Jesse's mother, Gideon's grandmother!
More memories emerge, and with them the joy turns to pain. Scotty never hit Gideon, except for two fights where he got worse than he gave, and the sex was always consensual -- he was forced, by his cousin, by his tenth grade teacher, by a crazy chick in a dive bar. so he always made sure that the cocksucker -- sorry, gay guy -- was into it. But he wasn't always loving. He belittled Gideon, called him names, yelled, even threatened. He thought that the only way to keep someone with him was by making them feel small and scared.
Creeper got mad and angry eyes – one look from him can paralyze.
Upon his lips the taste of pain, venom kiss of love insane
He got a rod beneath his coat – he gonna ram it right down your throat.
Make you grovel on the floor, spit up and scream and beg for more
Scotty retreats into himself, hating himself for hurting so many people, fearful that Gideon's grandmother has come to judge him. But all he feels from Aimee-Leigh is love. She nods -- or its equivalent -- and the memory continues.
On Easter morning, Gideon comes down the elevator alone and says "It's over." He chose the ritzy Gemstone world over the dream of Thailand, the Old Man over the love of his life. The smiles, holding hands under the table, the kissing, the orgasms that burst across the universe -- all ignored. But Gideon isn't the one who ignored it -- Scotty could have said "It's ok, I don't want the money, all I need is to be by your side." He didn't.
After that Scotty sees nothing but red rage. He retrieves his van, beats up Granddad Eli, forces Gideon and Jesse to open the vault, ties them up. He yells "You made your choice, and you broke my heart!" Then he zooms away from the estate, not sure where he is going, nowhere, anywhere, into the abyss. He doesn't care; his life is over already.
Aimee-Leigh waits patiently for his despair to wash through the others. Then she asks "Are you ready to go, darlin? We've got work to do."
Calling him "darlin'," as if she is really his grandmother! Wait -- of course she is. There are no lies in the endless light. "But how? He must hate me. There's no coming back from what I've done to him."
"He's already forgiven you. But you need to forgive him."
More after the break
