Stories for Boys: A Memoir (11 page)

Read Stories for Boys: A Memoir Online

Authors: Gregory Martin

BOOK: Stories for Boys: A Memoir
6.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
The White Bear
 
PSYCHOLOGISTS ESTIMATE THAT TEN TO FIFTEEN PERCENT of the population are particularly adept at repressing unwanted thoughts. “Repressors score low on questionnaires that measure anxiety and defensiveness,” writes Benedict Carey in The New York Times. “Some psychologists believe they have learned to block distressing thoughts by distracting themselves with good memories. Over time – with practice, in effect – this may become habitual, blunting their access to potentially humiliating or threatening memories and secrets.”
I tried to imagine my father practicing his good memories the way I once practiced the piano, the way he once practiced the guitar. But I didn’t know what his good memories were. My own memories – images and associations and feelings – were roiling inside me, adapting to what I knew now.
 
Subject:
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2007
 
 
Hi Greg. 
 
Sorry to be so long in responding to your very interesting email. I read the New York Times article and find it provocative. There is no doubt that I did lead a double life for a long time. I’m not sure how much anxiety and stress I felt at the time due to the distance of time, but I do remember worrying about being discovered. I also remember being very careful and taking great precautions to keep the one life separated from the other. I never allowed anyone from the other life into my “real” life. I have always been very good at keeping secrets. I remember your Mom was amazed that I could wrap Christmas packages, even my own without looking/peeking to see what it was. On the other hand, I’ve never tried to be another person than I am. I’ve never pretended I was somebody other than who I am on the other side. As I’ve stated several times, I am still the person everyone has always known. The secret person never acted as someone else. I have, however, never given my real name if someone asked. I don’t think that is acting or pretending, it’s just prudent.
 
As to repression of thoughts, yes, that is something I have always been able to do. I don’t, however, think that is really very unusual in the real world. I’m quite sure that heterosexual people of both sexes are confronted frequently by someone of the opposite sex who exhibits qualities that incite thoughts of “Wow, what a hottie! I’ll bet that would be great in bed.” Pardon the poor phraseology, but you get what I mean. These thoughts are transient and never acted on but, never the less, do stir the emotions a bit.
 
As you know, this past week has been very difficult for me. I’m sure that is part of the reason for the delay in responding. I have been depressed by the finality of the divorce. I still wish we could have worked it out differently, but that was not meant to be. I’m not sure I can articulate my feelings just yet, they are still being ruminated deep in my brain, but I am beginning to feel less depressed and more open to moving on with a positive outlook. 
 
Will close for now. I love you. Please give my love to Christine, Oliver, and Evan.
 
Dad
 
I DID NOT doubt that my father was a talented repressor. Far more talented than me, that’s for sure. For days, I tried, without success, to put out of my mind two particular sentences my father had written in his email from August 25th:
 
“Wow, what a hottie. I’ll bet that would be great in bed.”
 
When I first read these words, I thought, “No. No, Dad, please.” But it was no use. The damage had been done. I could not shake these words loose. These phrases – this phraseology – kept coming back to me, at the grocery store, stuck in traffic, riding my bike to work, and even when I was all alone.
IN A STUDY by the psychologist Daniel Wegner, participants were asked to not think about a white bear, to put any thought of a white bear out of their mind. These participants could not stop thinking about a white bear. Wegner writes, “People who are prompted to try not to think about a white bear while they are thinking out loud will tend to mention it about once a minute.”
I called my father and told him about the white bear. He said, “I was always afraid that I was going to somehow mention it, blurt it out. That fear was always somewhere in the back of my mind.”
Late at night, when his family was asleep, my father drove to darkened city parks; he drove I-80 to the bathrooms of rest areas. Early the next morning, he often woke beside my mother in a cold sweat, terrified he had spoken in his sleep.
The day after he told me this on the phone, my father wrote in an email, “I can’t answer any more of those kinds of questions.”
 
Subject
Date: Sun, 7 Sept 2007
 
 
Hi Greg,
 
Haven’t heard from you lately, so I thought I bring you up to date on recent happenings. I am buying a condo. It is in Spokane in the lower South Hill area. It is constructed like a townhouse with 3 levels. It was the model home, so it has several upgrades the other units do not have, like granite counter tops in the kitchen, one step up cabinets, better faucets in the 2½ bathrooms and a really fancy above counter glass wash bowl in the downstairs bathroom. There are 3 bedrooms. I’m pretty excited about it. I got preapproved for the loan at the bank, and should be moving in around late September or early October. I feel good about this.
 
I went camping over Labor Day weekend. I went to a place in Long Beach, WA. The camp ground was just a block from the beach. It was a typical RV park, with electricity, water, and cable hookups. The difference was, the owners of this place hosted a cookout on Saturday night, a brunch on Sunday morning, and a potluck on Sunday night. This is most unusual for RV parks, but great fun. I didn’t feel alone at all after the cookout. I met lots of the other campers at each of the functions. I had great fun.
 
On another note, I have been continuing to read “Survivors.” In fact I was just reading Chap. 14 and was amazed how well it described my childhood. I was very isolated as a child and have continued to be so into my adulthood. No matter how close I was to people, especially your Mother, I never felt connected in a certain sense. I said many times, “I never understand how you love me” to your Mom. I have always been afraid to get really close to anyone as a friend for fear they would be able to figure out my secret and not want to be my friend anymore. I still have that fear.
 
Anyway, in this chapter, the author describes his respect and admiration for survivors like me. Despite all the pent up fears and feelings of inadequacy, I did survive had a somewhat normal existence with a loving family, and finally, more recently a career that was both challenging and satisfying and paid better than any other job I had ever had except as a salesman without the side effect of having to travel. It struck me as an amazing similarity with my own admiration of my Mother’s survivorship from an abusive marriage and then being able to raise three children by herself, with absolutely no positive input from my father (not capitalized on purpose). Her survival instincts were, in my judgment, were nothing short of phenomenal in the 40’s and 50’s when divorced women were not generally respected in the community. Mr. Lew says the same thing about survivors like me. He says the fact that I, and others like me, survived to be minimally functional or better is something to be to be admired and praised. I had never thought of my survival in that way. I know this concept is not internalized yet, I but I intend to work on it as a positive way to move on.
 
I know school is back in session now, so I’m guessing I won’t hear from you as much. I hope everything is going well for everyone. Please give my love, hugs, and kisses to Christine, Oliver, and Evan. I love you all very much.
 
Dad
 
A Typical RV Park
 
SO MY FATHER WAS MOVING OUT OF HIS CHEAP APARTMENT. Great. But why was he moving into a three-level “model home” condo, with three bedrooms, two-and-a-half bathrooms and granite countertops? Wasn’t he living alone? Wasn’t this overkill?
But I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t lament his cheap apartment and deride his lavish condo at the same time. Besides, I was sort-of-happy for him. Maybe the fancy condo meant that he thought himself worthy of living in a nice place. He was. Good for him.
I was sort-of-happy, also, that my father was reading the book I sent him and that he was being so candid and thoughtful in his emails. I was sort-of-happy that he might soon be venturing out into “that community” comprised of “male couples.” I didn’t call my father on his euphemisms, either.
Sometimes, when I felt sort-of-happy for my father, I thought about my mother, about how alone she was and how much she had been duped, and this tempered my sort-of-happiness, making this feel less like qualified happiness and more like – What? “Happiness” didn’t seem like the right word for anything I felt. I was not “happy.” I was not, truthfully, even “glad” for my father. I approved. I wanted him to be happy, and I approved of these steps he was taking towards his own happiness, even if they did not make me “happy” or “glad,” which is not to say they made me feel worse. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that my father’s steps towards happiness – (1) condo-buying and (2) attempting, for the first time in his life, friendships with other gay men – made me complexly aware of my feelings, which were all over an emotional map for which words make lousy coordinates.
Was my father choosing a nice place to live in the hopes that he might someday share this place with others? With friends, with a lover, with a partner? Were those his hopes? I hoped so. I hoped so as long as I didn’t at the same time think of my mother.
But there was something fishy about that campground on the Washington coast – the campground in Long Beach – a
typical RV park
with electricity, water, and cable hook-ups. Hosted cookouts, evening potlucks, Sunday morning brunches? Great fun? No loneliness at all? Not that I knew anything about RV parks, but I doubted that your typical RV park would have such a high level of camaraderie. Could it be possible that my father might be keeping something from me? My father? I called him on the phone.
“Hey, Dad, I’m glad you had such a good time on your Labor Day trip.”
“I had a really great time,” he said. “Fabulous.”
I said, “Sounds like you met a lot of nice people.”
“Yes.”
“A typical RV park,” I said.
My father started itemizing: electricity, water, cable hook –
“Dad.”
“What?”
“A typical RV park.”
My father took a moment before he said, “I think I know where you’re going with this.”
“Dad, it’s a gay campground, isn’t it?”
“Gay and lesbian friendly,” my father said.
“You’re
out
,” I said.
My father took this in. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. But I guess so. I guess I am. Sort of.”
 
Google search: “campground” and “gay friendly” and “Long Beach, WA”
He told me that there were whole extended families at the campground. There were one and two bedroom cabins. There were little kids. A playground with a sandbox and swings and slides. There were the adult children of gay and lesbian couples who had been coming to this campground for years. It was unlike any place my father had ever been.

Other books

The Last Reporter by Michael Winerip
The Innocent by Ian McEwan
The Keep: The Watchers by Veronica Wolff
Witches by Stern, Phil
Enduringly Yours by Stocum, Olivia
Braking for Bodies by Duffy Brown
A Medal for Leroy by Michael Morpurgo
The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander Mccall Smith