Frank Iero: P.A.

“You’re gay?!”

I can’t help shouting it out... I’m completely shocked!

Like a deer in headlights, Gerard releases the man he’s been kissing and stares at me with his eyes wider than I ever thought it was possible for a human to do. His mouth opens and closes, as if he’s trying to explain this clinch. Wait–

He’s cheating on his girlfriend! His pregnant girlfriend!

I feel my mouth gape open. What kind of man have I been working for?

The man he’s been kissing doesn’t seem at all phased by the interruption, unlike Gerard – who is visibly stunned by me catching him out. It takes a few moments, but Gerard regains his composure. Then he is storming toward me, a determined look on his face. He reaches me and grabs my arm, dragging me out of the room. Up until this point I’ve been rooted to the spot, so I’m of absolutely no help at all during this transportation process.

We stop in the corridor, out of eyesight and earshot of the foreign exhibit. Gerard lets go of my arm and paces back and forth before me. I don’t know why he’s so stressed out; I’m the one who just found out he’s gay – he’s had 23 years to come to terms with his sexuality!

“Okay – look,” he begins, finally stopping, “what you just saw in there, you don’t mention it to anyone – ever. You forget you even saw it happen.”

“Are you asking me that as my boss, my landlord, or my roommate?” I ask sarcastically. I can’t deal with this whole thing seriously and sensitively just yet.

He glares at me. “I’m not asking you anything – this is an order.”

I check my watch. “It’s after six-thirty, you’re not my boss now.”

He drags is hands down his face and locks his eyes with mine. I have to admit, I’m a little intimidated. “Frank, please,” his tone is desperate, “can you just keep this to yourself? I can’t deal with any more stress in my life right now, with Mikey the way he is, and Toby...” he looks back toward the room we just vacated, “I’m having a hard enough time convincing him to not go public with our relationship as it is – I don’t have the energy to keep an eye on you, too. Please, just help me out here.”

Those eyes of his won’t look away from me... he is really begging this of me. Little does he know, I had no intention of telling anyone anyway. Besides, who would believe me telling them that playboy artist Gerard Way is actually a gay man who likes to make out with his secret boyfriend in an art museum behind his pregnant girlfriend’s back? I barely believe it myself and I just witnessed it all.

“Okay,” I reply. “Your secret is safe with me.”

He breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Frank.” He squares his shoulders. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go explain some things to Toby.”

He walks away, just leaving me standing there in this rather empty corridor. Why don’t I get an explanation? Well, I kind of got one, but I bet this Toby gets a much better one than what I did.

I don’t really know what is expected of me right now, so I just remain where Gerard left me. I watch people come and go from the rooms, look at a bit of art that I can see from where I am. If he could hurry the fuck up I’d appreciate it, because seriously, I’m getting bored standing here like a statue. I swear, an old man just looked at me as if I were one of the pieces of art – and then muttered to his wife that I lacked realism!

Finally, Toby walks past me, his nose held high in the air with a smug look on his face. I don’t know what it is about him, but I really don’t like that guy. There’s just something about him that makes me want to push him down the stairs he is currently descending. About fifteen seconds later Gerard emerges. They must be doing that old trick of pretending they’re not together by coming out of a room separately. Crafty.

“Let’s go,” he commands.

I look after him, perplexed. “Uh, what about the exhibit you’re meant to be here for?”

Not stopping, he shrugs one shoulder. “It’s shit anyway.”

“Completely,” I agree, and chase after him.



Gerard and I didn’t speak at all during the drive home. When we got inside the mansion, we walked up the stairs together, silently, and departed into our separate rooms. When I say our separate rooms, I mean I went to my bedroom and he to his studio. Who knows what the hell he was going to be doing in there after the day he’s had, but I bet he wouldn’t tell anyone if they asked. It took me a while to get to sleep, and when I finally did, I had horrible dreams of Gerard and Toby kissing and doing other things while I was forced to watch. Dream Frank didn’t like this, just like Dream Frank didn’t like the similar dream that Gerard’s girlfriend stared in. Real Frank didn’t like it either.

So now I’m back to the daily grind, working in the office answering fan mail and taking phone calls. Gerard and I haven’t spoken about anything other than work this morning. Personally, I think he’s trying to pretend that the whole ordeal didn’t happen at all, because he’s asking more work related questions than usual. He won’t even walk through the office without mentioning something about work, just to make sure that I understand that everything we know about each other is on an entirely professional basis. Bullshit.

As Gerard begins to ask me another round of work based questions I feel my patience slowly fraying before it snaps entirely on his fourth question.

“God, Gerard! Stop talking about work!” I yell. Someone had to say it.

He looks at me as if I’ve just slapped him. Well, I guess I verbally did.

“We are at work, Frank.”

“I don’t care,” I snap at him, standing up from my desk to reinforce my defiance. “Stop acting like last night didn’t happen. It did. And I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. That doesn’t mean that we have to go back to how it was when I first started here.”

Gerard sighs and takes a seat over by the wall in one of the arm chairs reserved for visitors. Looking downward, with his raven hair covering his face, he starts talking.

“I’m not good at talking about emotions and personal things,” he says. He lifts his head. “That’s why I don’t do a lot of publicity – I think you’ve already worked that out.” There’s a softness to his features right now. “But for some reason, it’s not so hard for me to talk about the difficult stuff with you – and that’s what makes it all so scary... I trust you, Frank.” His eyes are boring into mine, and I can’t look away. “Why must you be so persistent?”

I walk over to him and slump down in the chair next to him. His head turns toward me, but I make sure I don’t make eye contact; those hazel eyes are too intimidating.

“You’re so different from everyone else I’ve ever known... I guess I just really want to know why you’re the way you are.”

He shifts in the leather chair beside me. For a moment I think he’s getting up and running away like he always does when things get too personal, but suddenly I feel his hand on my shoulder. I, against my better judgement, turn to look up at him.

“I can tell you,” he says quietly, almost like a whisper, “if you really want to know, that is.”

I nod meekly, barely believing this is happening.

“I’m like this because when I was younger, the people that you’re meant to be able to depend on, let me down... constantly. Do you know what that’s like?” he asks me seriously. I nod, because it’s true; my parents and my friends let me down – that’s how I ended up living where I was before coming to work for Gerard. “Well, it’s okay when your parents let you down if there’s only you – you can just carry on and do what you need to do to survive – but it wasn’t only me; there was Mikey, too.” There’s a pause. “I had to step up and take care of my little brother because my parents wouldn’t. I had Ellie – she was great – but I still had to live with the knowledge that my family didn’t give a shit about us. That was bad enough, but then when I was an alcoholic, I had people deserting me left, right, and centre.” He faces me again. “So I learnt not to put my faith in people, not to tell them anything, not to let myself believe that anyone actually cared about what was going on with me. That’s it.”

As the information starts to sink in, one question still remains in my head. “Then why am I different?”

He shrugs, looking straight ahead, not at me. “Fucked if I know.”

“So... where do we go from here?” I ask.

He gets to his feet. “I’m going to my studio, you can go where you like.”

And just like that, Gerard Way disappears. I remain in this arm chair, thinking about everything he just divulged to me. You’d think I’d be satisfied, but now that I have time to reflect, I realise it’s caused more questions than it’s answered. Like, has he told Toby about all this stuff? That’s one question I’d really like to know the answer to.

While Gerard did say that I could go where I like, I know he really meant for me to stay here and keep working. Coincidently, I don’t really have a problem with that; if I don’t do something to occupy my mind, I know all I’ll be able to think about is what Gerard’s told me... and what I saw last night. I don’t know why it bothers me so much. It’s not that I care about the fact that his gay – well, bisexual... he has a girlfriend, too – I’m not homophobic. There’s nothing wrong with him kissing a guy... it’s just seeing him kissing a guy makes my stomach hurt. I don’t know why, but I don’t want to think about it anymore.

I continue answering the sack of fan mail I was on yesterday between phone calls to journalists and art galleries. The business tycoon that Gerard was meant to talk to yesterday called back multiple times, becoming more aggravated with each call that Gerard wouldn’t take. He even accused me of not telling Gerard that he was on the phone; I had, every time. I took hardly any time for lunch and barely spoke to Ellie, partly because looking at her made me curious to find out if she knew about Gerard’s dirty little secret and staying longer to chat would have eventually led me to ask her. Gerard didn’t resurface in the office until six-thirty, and I could tell he was surprised to see me still working.

“You seem to struggle with the concept of a day off,” he says casually, reverting to his usual Gerard method of masking his emotions.

“I wasn’t aware that I’d been given the day off,” I reply offhandedly as I start shutting down the computer for the evening.

I know he’s staring at me. “What do you interpret ‘you go where you like’ to mean?”

“When you say it, I take it to mean ‘stay here and do what you’re meant to’.”

He giggles. I almost forgot what that sounded like.

“Well, seeing as my instructions weren’t clear, allow me to repair the situation. How about I cook us up some dinner and then we can lounge around in front of the TV and have a movie night – your pick of films of course,” he offers.

My head shoots up; I need to see if he’s serious. He is.

I stand up and walk towards the door, trying to keep a straight face. “I like it when you fuck up.”

To that, he giggles again, following me out of the office. We’re on our way to the kitchen when the front door bursts open. I turn around, preparing myself to be shot or tied up so a looter can take all of Gerard’s stuff. But it’s not a looter – it’s even worse than that...

Toby.

“Hey, Gee-baby,” he says in what I can only imagine is his interpretation of a seductive tone. “Guess who’s got tickets to Broadway for tonight? I’ll give you a hint. He’s tall, sexy, athletic, and great in the sack.” He winks at Gerard.

“David Beckham?” I ask excitedly – obviously being sarcastic. Why would David Beckham want associate himself with this guy?

Toby gives me a seething look.

Focussing on Gerard, he says sweetly, “Me. Come on, baby, let’s go.”

Funny, Toby isn’t tall or athletic, and he sure as hell isn’t sexy. Also, I bet I’d be much better in the sack than what he could ever dream of being.

Gerard looks at me apologetically. “Sorry, Frank. We’ll do movie night some other time.”

I don’t even get a chance to respond before Toby is pulling Gerard out of the house. He’s all over him like a leech. Like the efficient P.A. I am, I bolt over to the nearest window and watch them leave. I’ve got to make sure my boss is safe, right? Toby stops Gerard when they are near the car, kissing him hard on the mouth and grabbing at his belt. Gerard kisses him back, but nowhere near as enthusiastically. They won’t even make it out of the driveway at this rate.

I step away from the window and slump down into the nearest chair. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

This sucks.