summers I escorted debutantes to balls as he wanted me to; and I wore the clothes he chose.
I couldn’t, of course, be the athletic or heterosexual man he wanted. He knew I was homosexual, although we never discussed it. I’d told him in a letter in order to get the money I needed to see the shrink, Dr. O’Reilly.
The next summer I spent with Dad at his Michigan cottage. My stepmother and sister and the maid weren’t allowed to join us until the end of the season. Until then I was alone with my father. He put me on a strict regime ofyardwork, mainly raking the pine needles that formed a thick carpet from top to bottom of the slope on which the house was built. When I asked him what possible reason there could be for removing the needles, he turned red, his already thin lips grew thinner, and he said, “Goddamn it, you’ll do what the hell I goddam well tell you to do.”
When my stepmother finally arrived, she revealed that my father thought he would drive the queerness out of me through manual labor. For weeks we had circled each other wordlessly, my father up on a ladder, me with my eternal rake and wheelbarrow, his anger between us, mysterious as the stone the Muslims worship. Since he knew how to cook nothing but steaks, every night we’d sit wordlessly over plates overflowing with fat and blood. He’d read the newspaper. I couldn’t guess why he hated me so much. In the past I’d always welcomed his indifference, since that was what I felt for him, though I took care to hide it, but his program of hatred frightened me. My stepmother told me my mother had accused my father over the phone of having brought about my “sickness” through his absence; my father was countering the charge by administering to me his grim discipline. Although I’d finally done something to grab his attention, that same thing repelled him. My stepmother said, “Your poor dad, this thing is killing him, he stays awake all night worrying; he was so angry at first I was afraid he’d kill you.”
At college I was finally free. I’d smoldered against other people’s rules for so long that now I felt freedom as a form of loneliness, a disturbing withdrawal of love. Certainly I was lonely and I wanted friends. I wanted to be popular, not just with indulgent bohemian grown-ups, but even with attractive people my own age, for here, being intelligent was, if not quite a social asset, at least not a liability.
English class was taught by Winthrop Shelley, a pale-skinnedblack man whose blue eyes seemed to be a constant source of pain, as though their blueness were a form of encroaching blindness. He was always taking off his wire-rimmed glasses, which were so pliable that they had to be handled gingerly, and massaging his closed eyes and particularly the delicate bridge of his nose, the place where he located his objections to a student’s remarks. What Mr. Shelley said was always precise, quizzical. His queer air of listening to himself, the way he had of responding to his own idea in a complex sequence of feelings by a wavering, then pinched smile and a line of doubt drawn on his forehead—such scrupulosity vaguely irritated me. Didn’t Mr. Shelley see that most of the class couldn’t parse the syntax of so much refinement? And what kind of Negro was he, anyway, with his tweed jacket and the gold pocket watch he ceremoniously placed on his desk to indicate class was beginning? With his Oxbridge accent, his soundless chuckle, and his dumbshow of glee (titter behind an exquisitely manicured hand) when someone said something stupid?
Not that he was taken in by stylish but empty chatter. He’d run his lacquered, dusky pink index finger over his tweezed mustache and say, “Mr. Larkin, I’m not sure I follow your point. Are you suggesting we should turn against a friend who’s an enemy of the state? Or do you agree with Cicero that loyalty to a friend must outweigh up to a certain point even patriotism?”
Like any agile debater, I
I couldn’t, of course, be the athletic or heterosexual man he wanted. He knew I was homosexual, although we never discussed it. I’d told him in a letter in order to get the money I needed to see the shrink, Dr. O’Reilly.
The next summer I spent with Dad at his Michigan cottage. My stepmother and sister and the maid weren’t allowed to join us until the end of the season. Until then I was alone with my father. He put me on a strict regime ofyardwork, mainly raking the pine needles that formed a thick carpet from top to bottom of the slope on which the house was built. When I asked him what possible reason there could be for removing the needles, he turned red, his already thin lips grew thinner, and he said, “Goddamn it, you’ll do what the hell I goddam well tell you to do.”
When my stepmother finally arrived, she revealed that my father thought he would drive the queerness out of me through manual labor. For weeks we had circled each other wordlessly, my father up on a ladder, me with my eternal rake and wheelbarrow, his anger between us, mysterious as the stone the Muslims worship. Since he knew how to cook nothing but steaks, every night we’d sit wordlessly over plates overflowing with fat and blood. He’d read the newspaper. I couldn’t guess why he hated me so much. In the past I’d always welcomed his indifference, since that was what I felt for him, though I took care to hide it, but his program of hatred frightened me. My stepmother told me my mother had accused my father over the phone of having brought about my “sickness” through his absence; my father was countering the charge by administering to me his grim discipline. Although I’d finally done something to grab his attention, that same thing repelled him. My stepmother said, “Your poor dad, this thing is killing him, he stays awake all night worrying; he was so angry at first I was afraid he’d kill you.”
At college I was finally free. I’d smoldered against other people’s rules for so long that now I felt freedom as a form of loneliness, a disturbing withdrawal of love. Certainly I was lonely and I wanted friends. I wanted to be popular, not just with indulgent bohemian grown-ups, but even with attractive people my own age, for here, being intelligent was, if not quite a social asset, at least not a liability.
English class was taught by Winthrop Shelley, a pale-skinnedblack man whose blue eyes seemed to be a constant source of pain, as though their blueness were a form of encroaching blindness. He was always taking off his wire-rimmed glasses, which were so pliable that they had to be handled gingerly, and massaging his closed eyes and particularly the delicate bridge of his nose, the place where he located his objections to a student’s remarks. What Mr. Shelley said was always precise, quizzical. His queer air of listening to himself, the way he had of responding to his own idea in a complex sequence of feelings by a wavering, then pinched smile and a line of doubt drawn on his forehead—such scrupulosity vaguely irritated me. Didn’t Mr. Shelley see that most of the class couldn’t parse the syntax of so much refinement? And what kind of Negro was he, anyway, with his tweed jacket and the gold pocket watch he ceremoniously placed on his desk to indicate class was beginning? With his Oxbridge accent, his soundless chuckle, and his dumbshow of glee (titter behind an exquisitely manicured hand) when someone said something stupid?
Not that he was taken in by stylish but empty chatter. He’d run his lacquered, dusky pink index finger over his tweezed mustache and say, “Mr. Larkin, I’m not sure I follow your point. Are you suggesting we should turn against a friend who’s an enemy of the state? Or do you agree with Cicero that loyalty to a friend must outweigh up to a certain point even patriotism?”
Like any agile debater, I
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