Mississippi Sissy (30 page)

One of his letters informed me he was making a return trip to Mississippi for some fundraising in Jackson. In it, he asked if I thought that my grandmother would let me come visit him for the night. His letters and postcards had been interspersed with regular phone calls, making sure I passed the receiver over to Mom so the two of them could carry on a bit of conversation. She was growing close to him also and was delighted that he had taken such an interest in me. She could see how happy it was making me, how I had no longer seemed so lost or felt so unloved. A few weeks later, after giving her consent and convincing a reluctant Pop of the idea, she and I were both happy to see Dr. Gallman turn into our gravel drive in his Mercedes sedan. I had packed an overnight bag and climbed in the car with him. Though I was newly thirteen and not exactly sure what I would be doing in Jackson with a man of Dr. Gallman's age, I was still excited about the trip. I loved being a reborn Christian, but, if I were being honest with myself, I did not want to spend all night reading Bible verses from Proverbs or listening to him talk to me as if he were delivering a sermon. When we got onto the Interstate, he pulled his Mercedes over on the side of the road and asked if I might want to get behind the wheel for the forty miles it took to get to Jackson. I had ridden before in my cousin Jim's Mercedes, but not even Jim had been nice enough to me to let me drive it. I climbed behind the wheel as Dr. Gallman slid over to the passenger's side of the front seat. I started back out onto the Interstate as he, yes, coached me through it, patting my leg for reassurance much like “Chunkin' ” Charlie had done when he broke the news about my mother's death,
like Uncle Benny did right before he'd show me how the horse bit the apple. But it was different, too. Gentler? No. Stronger? Slightly. What it was was soothing, but strangely so. I wanted him to stop touching my leg but I didn't want to tell him to.

Dr. Gallman had no plans lined up after we arrived at the Downtowner Hotel in the middle of Capital Street in Jackson. His only plan, in fact, seemed to be to hang out with me and see what transpired. As he had already checked into his room a day earlier, we went on up. His Bible was opened on the bedside table and I put my bag onto the one queen-size bed that was there beside it. He opened up the newspaper to check to see what movies were playing at the Paramount Theater a few blocks down on Capital Street, or at the Lamar on another downtown street close by us.
Five Easy Pieces
was at the Paramount and
Women in Love
at the Lamar. “Don't think that Jack Nicholson movie is quite right for a boy your age, by what I've read about it,” he said. “And I'm certain nothing based on anything by D. H. Lawrence would be suitable.” He put the paper down and stared at me for a long moment where I sat on the edge of the bed. It didn't seem like he wanted to leave the room but thought he had to entertain me in some way. “Why don't we just take a walk?” he finally asked. I shrugged and followed him out. We meandered around the deserted downtown streets and talked about God and Jesus and how forgiving They both were. We walked by the old Capitol building and the big white governor's mansion where then-governor John Bell Williams resided. Mom had been a big supporter of his because, though a Democrat congressman from the state, he had raised money for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and been stripped of his seniority in the House of Representatives for such an act. He came home to Mississippi a hero and was quickly elected governor. He had been a strict segregationist since he was twenty-seven and first elected to congress in 1946, the youngest man ever to serve in the House of Reprsentatives from Mississippi. After the Supreme Court handed down its
Brown v. Board of Education
decision, doing away with the concept of separate-but-equal, he took to the House floor and denounced the day of the decision as “Black Monday.” Dr. Gallman listened intently as I told him all of this. “How do you know so much about Governor Williams?” he asked after it all came nervously rushing out of me as we stood staring at the mansion. I told him that Mom and I discussed politics as much as we discussed Jesus Christ and though we agreed about the latter, we increasingly disagreed about the former. “Mom's love of Jesus just makes her more conservative and mine makes me more liberal. How's that possible?” I asked him, trying to get him to talk to me instead of just staring my way.

“Everything, son, is possible in Christ,” was his answer as he rubbed my back a bit between my shoulder blades. “Christ is all-encompassing,” he continued. “He's brought us together, has He not? And look at us—an ugly old man like me and a beautiful boy like you. There is no age, though, where believers are concerned. We are all the same age in Christ. You getting hungry? I saw a Krystal hamburger place back there on Capital. How many Krystals can you eat at one time?” he asked.

“Most I've ever eaten is four,” I told him, Krystals being the Southern equivalent of White Castles, little, square, onion-topped burgers that melted in your mouth. “I've got an Aunt Drucy who calls ‘em Kryschal's,” I said, coming up with more conversation, but he didn't know what to make of that.

“I think I'd like something more substantial,” he said. “Why don't we just eat at the restaurant in the Downtowner?”

“That's okay,” I told him, and we walked back to the hotel.

For most of the dinner we sat in silence until he asked me if I read many books. I told him about my sixth-grade book report on
Valley of the Dolls.
“Well then, maybe D. H. Lawrence isn't out of your league after all,” he said, that devilish grin of his parting, more perceptibly this time, the somber set of his lips. “Have you read any Faulkner
yet?” his asked. “Or that local woman everybody goes on about down here, the one that wrote about why somebody lives somewhere.”

“Eudora Welty,” I told him. “Yeah, I've just started reading her. You're talking about ‘Why I Live at the P.O.' That's a good story. I've read that one. Faulkner's too hard. I don't know if I'm old enough for him.”

“I'm not sure any of us are old enough for Faulkner,” Dr. Gallman said, and took a bite of his steak. As he chewed, he contemplated that last remark. “But I must say that if you're old enough for Jacqueline Susann then I think you might be able to handle William Faulkner. I don't read much anymore myself except for financial reports and the Bible and the morning newspaper,” he said. “In seminary I read a lot of John Wesley, of course.”

When we arrived back at the room Dr. Gallman immediately stripped down to his boxer shorts. His body looked a lot like Pop's and I was glad he didn't wear tight white briefs pulled up on his old stomach like my grandfather did. Boxer shorts made more sense for men of their age. I went into the bathroom and put on the gym shorts I slept in and took off my shirt. I checked my hair in the mirror, shaking my shag into place. When I came back into the room Dr. Gallman was leafing through his Bible. Without looking up from the text, he asked me if I had a girlfriend. I told him I did not. He nodded, seemingly pleased by the news, and ran his finger along a few verses he was focused on. “I think we should turn in early. Never much on television, and the trip to pick you up on top of all my other recent travels wore me out today. Ready for bed?” he asked.

“Should I sleep on the couch?” I wanted to know.

“I think there's enough room for both of us here,” he said, patting the bed beside him. “Do you say a prayer before you turn in at night like I suggested in one of my letters?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. You're right, too. It helps me sleep better sometimes.”

“Not all the time?”

“No, sir.”

“I'll make sure you sleep tonight. I have a few tricks. Let's pray first, though,” he said and knelt before me. “I spend too many nights alone kneeling by hotel beds,” he confessed, motioning for me to join him by his side. I hesitated—I always said my bedtime prayers silently, with my head already on the pillow—but since I was his guest I went along with his routine. I thought it the polite thing to do and Mom had warned me about my manners before he had come to pick me up that day. I knelt beside him and we both bowed our heads. His voice took on that sonorous tone, though a quieter version of it, the one it could take on when he was behind a pulpit. I flinched—rudely so? would Mom be mad at such a flinch?—when he reached out during his prayer and again rubbed my back between my shoulder blades. “Amen,” he said and tousled my shag, touching my bangs where they fell down into my eyes and pushing them back a bit. “Amen,” I said, too.

Before we climbed into bed he took some papers out of his briefcase to read by the lamp on his side of the bed. I picked up his Bible and read the passages he had chosen to highlight, flattered that he trusted me enough to let me do it. I remember being perplexed, as I held his personal Bible and perused it, at how something so sacred could also feel almost illicit. After a while, he put his papers down and took the Bible from me and, reaching across my body, placed it, still open, on the bedside table there beside me. “You seemed tense between your shoulders when I was touching your back. Maybe it was all that driving you did today,” he said, and I felt flattered by the reason he had come up with for my tension. It made me sound like I was a real teenager and not someone who had just left twelve behind. “Here. Let's try something,” he said and stood. He told me to get out of bed and lean back against his body as he wrapped his arms around me from behind and succeeded in cracking my back several times. “Did you hear your spine give way? You needed that.
You're more tense than I thought. Has no one ever cracked your back before?”

“No, sir. That was a first,” I said.

“Lie down. Go on. Do as I say,” he commanded, summoning once more his sonorous voice, yet the tone this time was slightly different, breathier perhaps, a little anxious. “Let me give you a massage.” I lay on my stomach atop the bed. He began to touch me. His fingers, pressing firmly against my flesh, couldn't stop trembling. Was it his encroaching old age? Was it the result of the room's air conditioning? Was he suddenly as oddly nervous as I was feeling? “We used to do this to each other in seminary,” he said. “Seminary can be quite stressful. Really hard subjects. Maybe you'll find out one day,” he said as he continued to kneed my back muscles, daring to let his fingers find the ones right there above my buttocks. “Have you ever thought about attending seminary, Kevin? You'd make a fine preacher. You are certainly charismatic. But you really are tense. I think you might need a pill to sleep.” He abruptly stopped the massage and went into the bathroom. He came out with a glass of water and a pill in his outstretched hand. I wondered if it were like one of those dolls Neely liked to down. “Take this,” he said. “You'll sleep like a baby. Better than a prayer, I have to admit.” I took the glass of water from him and stared at the pill now in my own hand. I hesitated. “Swallow it,” he told me. “Do as I say.” I did and fell fast asleep.

Late the next morning I was awakened by one of the hotel's maids trying to get into the room in order to clean it, but the chain latch still attached to the door stopped her from entering. “God! We'll be out in a minute,” Dr. Gallman said with an angry groan where he lay close behind me, his breath rancid and hot against my ear. He had his hand down my gym shorts and was masturbating me. The inside of his fist, tightening about my erection, felt oddly smooth for a man. I had not noticed such smoothness the night before when he massaged my back. I thought I might be dreaming. But as he continued to grab
my cock I realized it was not a dream, not at all. I focused on the smoothness of his palm as he pulled on my foreskin, a palm much smoother than Matty's callused one that could calm me so when I rubbed those calluses over and over as I fell asleep with my head in her lap. It was as smooth, the inside of his fist, as Mom's enfeebled one after it had been dipped in paraffin and she let me run my fingers along it before I peeled it off for her after she had done her rehabilitative exercises the physical therapist had taught me how to talk her through. It was the smoothness of his touch as much as the masturbation itself which I found so alarming. It sickened me. I felt as if I were going to throw up right there in the bed. What else had this smooth-palmed old man done to me during the night? Should I stall until he removed his hand before I got up? He had to know I was awakened by the maid at the door and his response to her, the smell of his rapid breath increasingly repellent on the back of my neck. I said a silent prayer for him to stop. But he would not. He would not stop even when he heard me trying not to cry as I stared at the upside-down verses from Proverbs in his opened Bible on the bedside table where he had placed it the night before, after reaching across me and brushing my stomach with his hairy arm. I could not help it—tears were now coming—and I thought of that night I tried not to cry in the kitchen when Mom held me after Billy Graham's crusade and told me I had to find a way to let myself be loved.

I ejaculated.

Fear. Anger. Utter sadness. They all surfaced to mix forever with my emerging sexuality, the same sexuality that Dr. Gallman had no doubt spotted that first time he saw me in my pew at Harperville Methodist church, the same fear, the same anger, the same utter sadness I felt that night when I begged my toga-clad mother not to tell my daddy about my naked exploits with my tomboy neighbor in that baseball dugout back in Pelahatchie. I felt as confused and oddly powerful lying there in that hotel bed with Dr. Gallman's hand
down my gym shorts that morning as I did that night so many years before, when my father finally got home and everything erupted around me before I, safe in the knowledge that I was the repository of family secrets, could tell my mother the one I shared with my father, the one I never even told her—though “Dare I?” I thought, “Dare I?”—on her death bed. I lay there in Dr. Gallman's grip and blocked out any thoughts of what the old man was doing to me with only those of my father and what he told me never to tell another soul. All through my childhood I could put myself in a comforting trance—as I had done the day of my mother's funeral when I sat on the chenille bedspread—if I made myself concentrate on those few secret moments my father and I alone shared. Dr. Gallman continued to squeeze at the head of my cock for any last drops of sperm he could coax to the surface. I closed my eyes. I became completely still. The trance commenced.