He dealt the cards, and I looked from face to face, exaggerating flaws and reminding myself that these boys did not like me. The hope was that I might crush any surviving atom of attraction, but as has been the case for my entire life, the more someone dislikes me the more attractive he becomes.
I was obsessed with Philip, who managed a college library somewhere in the Midwest. "He's a lot like you," my mother would say. "A big reader. Loves books." I was not a big reader but had managed to convince her otherwise. When asked what I'd been up to all afternoon, I never said, "Oh, masturbating," or, "Imagining what my room might look like painted scarlet." I'd say that I'd been reading, and she fell for it every time. Never asked the name of the book, never asked where I'd gotten it, just, "Oh, that's nice."
"Listen," I said, "we maybe don't live in wartime London, but in terms of the occasional bomb scare, Paris is a pretty close second. We both love bacon and country music, what more could you possibly want?"
What more could he want? It was an incredibly stupid question and when he failed to answer, I was reminded of just how lucky I truly am. Movie characters might chase each other through the fog or race down the stairs of burning buildings, but that's for beginners. Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.
It wasn't the gentle flow of tears you might release when recalling an isolated action or event, but the violent explosion that comes when you realize that all such events are connected, forming an endless chain of guilt and suffering.
"I don't care if it's my son, my congressman, what have you. I just don't approve of that lifestyle." The speaker was a woman named Audrey who'd called the local talk-radio station to offer her opinion. The Catholic Church scandal had been front-page news for over a week, and when the priest angle had been exhausted, the discussion filtered down to pedophilia in general and then, homosexual pedophilia, which was commonly agreed to be the worst kind. It was, for talk radio, one of those easy topics, like tax hikes or mass murder. "What do you think of full-grown men practicing sodomy on children?"
"Well, I'm against it!" This was always said as if it was somehow startling, a minority position no one had yet dared lay claim to.
I'd been traveling around the country for the past ten days, and everywhere I went I heard the same thing. The host would congratulate the caller on his or her moral fortitude, and wanting to feel that approval again, the person would rephrase the original statement, freshening it up with an adverb or qualifier. "Call me old-fashioned, but I just hugely think it's wrong." Then, little by little, they'd begin interchanging the words homosexual and pedophile, speaking as if they were one and the same. "Now they've even got them on TV," Audrey said. "And in the schools! Talk about the proverbial chicken in the henhouse."
"Fox," the host said.
"Oh, they're the worst," Audrey said. "The Simpsons and such -- I never watch that station."
"I meant in the henhouse," the host said. "I believe the saying is ‘the fox in the henhouse,' not ‘the chicken in the henhouse.' "
Audrey regrouped. "Did I say chicken? Well, you get my point. These homosexuals can't reproduce themselves, and so they go into the schools and try to recruit our young people."
It was nothing I hadn't heard before, but I was crankier than usual and found myself in the middle of the room, one sock on and one sock off, shouting at the clock radio. "Nobody recruited me, Audrey. And I begged for it."
...I am a person who feels guilty for crimes I have not committed, or have not committed in years. The police search the train station for a serial rapist and I cover my face with a newspaper, wondering if maybe I did it in my sleep. The last thing I stole was an eight-track tape, but to this day I'm unable to enter a store without feeling like a shoplifter.
The dinner conversation staggered on, but the evening was already shot. Anyone could see that. In another few minutes the guests would look at their watches and say something about their babysitter. Coats would be retrieved and we'd stand in the hallway saying good-bye again and again as the guests made their way down the stairs. I would clear the table and Hugh would do the dishes, neither of us speaking and both of us wondering if this just might be the one to do it. "I hear you guys broke up over a plastic hand," people would say, and my rage would renew itself. The argument would continue until one of us died, and even then it would manage to wage on. If I went first, my tombstone would read IT WAS RUBBER. He'd likely take the adjacent plot and buy a larger tombstone reading NO, IT WAS PLASTIC.
Dead or alive, I'd have no peace, and so I let it go, the way you have to when you're totally dependent on somebody.