crazy people. I guess Lester must have been waiting for Tex to close shop.
When I desired someone, especially a stranger, I poured myself into him (“Don’t stare,” my mother would tell me). Not that I found Lester so handsome; it was just that he was a chance, some sort of chance.
My face burned and my hands were cold. I was terrified the other people, the normal people, in the bookstore would detect my desire, that it was steaming off me like a bad smell. Worse, Tex stole up behind me and rested his hand on my shoulder. I blushed. We were two men touching! Real men (athletes, soldiers, workers) could touch each other with impunity. They even flaunted those pats on the ass and playful punches. But the rest of us must keep our voicessubdued, hands soldered to our sides lest a gleam of desire or a shriek or lisp or limp wrist betray us. That staring of mine, the complete absorption in another man, would incriminate me yet, I felt certain.
Finally Tex closed the store at midnight, and he and Lester and I walked down windy Rush Street. When we came to the corner of Rush and Clark, Lester said to me, offhandedly, “Do you want to come up to my room for a moment? I’m staying here in the Ambassador East.”
“No, thank you,” I said. We shook hands and he and Tex made plans to have lunch the next day. Then he was gone.
“What got into you, chile?” Tex asked gently. “Lose your nerve?”
“Oh, Tex,” I said, “I don’t know him. He doesn’t really want me. He likes girls. Can’t I go home with you, Tex?”
“Hon, I’m bushed,” he said, but he smiled with weary kindness at me.
“Just for a few minutes,” I said.
We went up to his modest hotel room, devoid of personal touches aside from a half-empty bottle of bourbon and, pinned to the lampshade, a photo of the cop, a beefy guy with ears that stuck out.
Tex’s body, pale and hairless, looked much younger than his face, which was large and endowed with too much humor and mobility to go with such a featureless torso. I worried about what he was going to spring on me, but he kissed me and massaged my shoulders and back with surprisingly strong hands, then he explained step-by-step what we were about to do. Always the good student, I responded competently, never guessing I was meant to feel any pleasure.
The minute I came, a wave of sickening guilt rushed over me. The hotel room looked depressing. I noticed the stain on Tex’s underpants and the hole in his stocking. Down the hall someone was coughing. Tex’s obsession with thepoliceman had reduced him to this. Compared to my father’s solid if cheerless fortune, Tex’s poverty was too great an expense of spirit,
I pecked him on the cheek, barely able to conceal my shame and disapproval. He yawned. I hurried down the cold street, my mouth sour from Tex’s cigarettes, my cock and ass glowing, my heart sinking, sunk. I swore to myself I’d never, never sleep with another man. Defiance against my mother, no doubt, had propelled me into Tex’s bed. It was her fault that I was “acting out” on my homosexual impulses (my psychiatrist, Dr. O’Reilly, had explained it all to me).
As the elevated train clattered back to Evanston and rewound the film I’d seen coming down, glimpses into slum apartments, these pitiful cuttings from the domestic life I’d been taught to admire but could never like, flickered past, educational and tragic.
THREE
Soon after I entered the University of Michigan, I joined my father’s fraternity, Alpha Tau, simply to please him. Friends of mine who complained about the “lack of communication” with their fathers always amazed me, since it never occurred to me to hope for or even want from mine an exchange of confidences. He lectured me about the impersonal things that interested him—stocks and bonds, insurance policies, politics, civil engineering principles—and I provided him with a simulacrum of the son he wanted: I joined his club; in the
When I desired someone, especially a stranger, I poured myself into him (“Don’t stare,” my mother would tell me). Not that I found Lester so handsome; it was just that he was a chance, some sort of chance.
My face burned and my hands were cold. I was terrified the other people, the normal people, in the bookstore would detect my desire, that it was steaming off me like a bad smell. Worse, Tex stole up behind me and rested his hand on my shoulder. I blushed. We were two men touching! Real men (athletes, soldiers, workers) could touch each other with impunity. They even flaunted those pats on the ass and playful punches. But the rest of us must keep our voicessubdued, hands soldered to our sides lest a gleam of desire or a shriek or lisp or limp wrist betray us. That staring of mine, the complete absorption in another man, would incriminate me yet, I felt certain.
Finally Tex closed the store at midnight, and he and Lester and I walked down windy Rush Street. When we came to the corner of Rush and Clark, Lester said to me, offhandedly, “Do you want to come up to my room for a moment? I’m staying here in the Ambassador East.”
“No, thank you,” I said. We shook hands and he and Tex made plans to have lunch the next day. Then he was gone.
“What got into you, chile?” Tex asked gently. “Lose your nerve?”
“Oh, Tex,” I said, “I don’t know him. He doesn’t really want me. He likes girls. Can’t I go home with you, Tex?”
“Hon, I’m bushed,” he said, but he smiled with weary kindness at me.
“Just for a few minutes,” I said.
We went up to his modest hotel room, devoid of personal touches aside from a half-empty bottle of bourbon and, pinned to the lampshade, a photo of the cop, a beefy guy with ears that stuck out.
Tex’s body, pale and hairless, looked much younger than his face, which was large and endowed with too much humor and mobility to go with such a featureless torso. I worried about what he was going to spring on me, but he kissed me and massaged my shoulders and back with surprisingly strong hands, then he explained step-by-step what we were about to do. Always the good student, I responded competently, never guessing I was meant to feel any pleasure.
The minute I came, a wave of sickening guilt rushed over me. The hotel room looked depressing. I noticed the stain on Tex’s underpants and the hole in his stocking. Down the hall someone was coughing. Tex’s obsession with thepoliceman had reduced him to this. Compared to my father’s solid if cheerless fortune, Tex’s poverty was too great an expense of spirit,
I pecked him on the cheek, barely able to conceal my shame and disapproval. He yawned. I hurried down the cold street, my mouth sour from Tex’s cigarettes, my cock and ass glowing, my heart sinking, sunk. I swore to myself I’d never, never sleep with another man. Defiance against my mother, no doubt, had propelled me into Tex’s bed. It was her fault that I was “acting out” on my homosexual impulses (my psychiatrist, Dr. O’Reilly, had explained it all to me).
As the elevated train clattered back to Evanston and rewound the film I’d seen coming down, glimpses into slum apartments, these pitiful cuttings from the domestic life I’d been taught to admire but could never like, flickered past, educational and tragic.
THREE
Soon after I entered the University of Michigan, I joined my father’s fraternity, Alpha Tau, simply to please him. Friends of mine who complained about the “lack of communication” with their fathers always amazed me, since it never occurred to me to hope for or even want from mine an exchange of confidences. He lectured me about the impersonal things that interested him—stocks and bonds, insurance policies, politics, civil engineering principles—and I provided him with a simulacrum of the son he wanted: I joined his club; in the
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