By mid-July, 2010, Tony Gattuso would, like clockwork, send a text to my phone every morning -- a sweet means to let me know he was awake. Sometimes it’d merely be an emoticon or similar simple greeting, and sometimes he’d pick up from where we left off in a previous conversation. Essentially we were drifting off to dreamland together and arising together every single day. I have insomnia, so it wasn’t uncommon for my hot cop to drop me a line in the middle of the night, too, if he roused from his slumber.
On July 22, 2010, during one of these textathons, I told him I thought he was yearning for something -- not a longing for anything in particular, just that he seemed to be discontent with his life as it stood thus wistfully searching for something more. Somehow that led to a debate of the definition of “yearn.” I won on both counts.
After our dictionary-al discourse I made mention to him that another officer had contacted me wanting to see me on the upcoming Monday and was mad that I couldn’t, given I already had plans with my State Policeman on that date. To me it was nothing more than a passing comment. I never expected it would lead me to learn that inside Tony a green-eyed monster resided.
If you think about it, it was rather ridiculous for Tony, a man with a long-term live-in girlfriend, to be jealous of my relationships with other males. I was, after all, the single one here, and hadn’t promised him fidelity in any way.
Since I figured the topic probably might require more than the 160 or so characters text messaging would allow, I switched to Gmail to discuss it with him.
The I HeArTE JADE entry Tony had alluded to was one I’d published weeks earlier.
The post in question had actually been a coded communication to a City of Charlottesville policeman -- often referred to as “Boomslang,” or “my CPD guy” -- that I needed to meet with him. Looking for blog fodder, I’d retrieved some JADE Task Force items from Boomslang that he’d been keeping safe for me at his place; I’d taken them to an Albemarle County officer’s dwelling to go through. Because Boomslang had been on-duty, and not at home, when I was done I had to let him know through my site that I was ready to return the stuff to him. Complicated maybe, yet efficient nonetheless.
Everybody was conscious I had members of Law Enforcement as sources. Though I was willing to speak about them with Tony, I would steadfastly conceal who they were from him. Likewise, I protected Tony’s identity from them. Until the Virginia State Police outed Special Agent Anthony Gattuso Jr. as a contact of mine, anyway.
