I think I’m a little too old to be blaming them for my problems.”
“Was there alcoholism in your family?”
I smiled at him. “I can’t compliment you on your acuity because that’s almost a truism, isn’t it; alcoholic son, alcoholic father.”
“Your father was alcoholic.”
“Touché,” I replied. “Yes, my father was a violent drunk.”
“Violent toward you?” he pressed.
“Yes,” I replied, aware of the impatience that had entered my voice as we talked about my father.
“Were you violent when you drank?”
“Of course not.”
He grinned like a lawyer who’s cornered a witness on cross-examination. “Why ‘of course’?”
“I’m not at all like my father,” I said.
“In what ways are you different?”
“Well, I’m homosexual, for one, and I’m educated, and I’m not a violent man.”
“Interesting,” he mused after a moment. “The first distinction is one you have no control over, and the second is one that I imagine you worked very hard for.”
“Are you saying they’re connected?”
“I think very frequently gay boys compensate for their homosexuality by excelling at some talent they have.”
“Compensate,” I repeated. “That suggests a deficiency.”
“Very few boys regard their homosexuality in any other light,” he said. “Did you?”
“No,” I said. “No, I didn’t want to be queer, either.”
“Did you ever come out to your father?”
I shook my head. “I had to wait until he was dead before I came out, or I wouldn’t be sitting here now, paying you to talk about him.”
“The third distinction you made between you and your father is that you’re not a violent man. What about the violence you directed against yourself?”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You said that at some point during your drinking, you died. Who killed you?”
I leaned back into the uncomfortable couch, and said, appreciatively, “You’d have made a good lawyer.”
Reynolds’s question stayed with me through the day, as I dashed across town, from Santa Monica to Pasadena, and then to the Criminal Courts Building arguing a motion in one court, conducting a preliminary hearing in another, and working out a plea bargain in the third. A typical Monday, in other words. I whizzed through the warm, hazy day, catching fragments of the city; a glittering, deserted beach, a shopping center whose signs were all written in Korean, the spooky Belle Epoque grandeur of Pasadena’s domed city hall. Who killed Henry Rios? reverberated like the title of a pulp mystery in the corner of my head that wasn’t occupied by a hundred other matters. Of course, I was the guilty party, so the next question was, what would be my defense?
That night I went to an AA meeting and overheard someone say he knew he was recovering when his thoughts turned from suicide to homicide. Reynolds was right, there was a streak of violence in me, and I had become my own unintended victim. The man I really wanted to kill was the father whom I had had so much trouble talking to him about. As he had done in so many other ways, my father had cheated me by dying before I could dispatch him. On that comforting thought, I fell asleep.
The next day, I got caught up in a hearing and arrived twenty minutes late to the church on Fairfax where Cullen McArthur’s memorial service was being held. I went up the worn stairs to the auditorium and found it full of men sitting on folding chairs that creaked noisily as the mourners fidgeted in the musty heat of the dim room. Panels of stained glass cast shards of color across the dirty wooden floor. The room smelled, not of sanctity, but of Eternity, Obsession and a dozen other cloying male scents. A long table at the back held bowls of fruit, platters of bagels and cream cheese, and two mammoth coffee urns gurgling softly. I couldn’t find Josh in the crowd so I took the first empty chair.
Cullen was known as Mary Louise to his closest friends. He had sold us our
“Was there alcoholism in your family?”
I smiled at him. “I can’t compliment you on your acuity because that’s almost a truism, isn’t it; alcoholic son, alcoholic father.”
“Your father was alcoholic.”
“Touché,” I replied. “Yes, my father was a violent drunk.”
“Violent toward you?” he pressed.
“Yes,” I replied, aware of the impatience that had entered my voice as we talked about my father.
“Were you violent when you drank?”
“Of course not.”
He grinned like a lawyer who’s cornered a witness on cross-examination. “Why ‘of course’?”
“I’m not at all like my father,” I said.
“In what ways are you different?”
“Well, I’m homosexual, for one, and I’m educated, and I’m not a violent man.”
“Interesting,” he mused after a moment. “The first distinction is one you have no control over, and the second is one that I imagine you worked very hard for.”
“Are you saying they’re connected?”
“I think very frequently gay boys compensate for their homosexuality by excelling at some talent they have.”
“Compensate,” I repeated. “That suggests a deficiency.”
“Very few boys regard their homosexuality in any other light,” he said. “Did you?”
“No,” I said. “No, I didn’t want to be queer, either.”
“Did you ever come out to your father?”
I shook my head. “I had to wait until he was dead before I came out, or I wouldn’t be sitting here now, paying you to talk about him.”
“The third distinction you made between you and your father is that you’re not a violent man. What about the violence you directed against yourself?”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You said that at some point during your drinking, you died. Who killed you?”
I leaned back into the uncomfortable couch, and said, appreciatively, “You’d have made a good lawyer.”
Reynolds’s question stayed with me through the day, as I dashed across town, from Santa Monica to Pasadena, and then to the Criminal Courts Building arguing a motion in one court, conducting a preliminary hearing in another, and working out a plea bargain in the third. A typical Monday, in other words. I whizzed through the warm, hazy day, catching fragments of the city; a glittering, deserted beach, a shopping center whose signs were all written in Korean, the spooky Belle Epoque grandeur of Pasadena’s domed city hall. Who killed Henry Rios? reverberated like the title of a pulp mystery in the corner of my head that wasn’t occupied by a hundred other matters. Of course, I was the guilty party, so the next question was, what would be my defense?
That night I went to an AA meeting and overheard someone say he knew he was recovering when his thoughts turned from suicide to homicide. Reynolds was right, there was a streak of violence in me, and I had become my own unintended victim. The man I really wanted to kill was the father whom I had had so much trouble talking to him about. As he had done in so many other ways, my father had cheated me by dying before I could dispatch him. On that comforting thought, I fell asleep.
The next day, I got caught up in a hearing and arrived twenty minutes late to the church on Fairfax where Cullen McArthur’s memorial service was being held. I went up the worn stairs to the auditorium and found it full of men sitting on folding chairs that creaked noisily as the mourners fidgeted in the musty heat of the dim room. Panels of stained glass cast shards of color across the dirty wooden floor. The room smelled, not of sanctity, but of Eternity, Obsession and a dozen other cloying male scents. A long table at the back held bowls of fruit, platters of bagels and cream cheese, and two mammoth coffee urns gurgling softly. I couldn’t find Josh in the crowd so I took the first empty chair.
Cullen was known as Mary Louise to his closest friends. He had sold us our
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