The Best Little Boy in the World (6 page)

I wonder what made him think I was naïve? I hadn't stopped to
tell
him I didn't know what a blow job was. He must have read it from my behavior. Maybe he figured that anyone who would bolt from anything so pleasurable
had
to be naïve. And of course he had to say something; it must have been an uncomfortable minute for him also.

I was in knots. The experience was so unpleasant, with so many implications and ramifications for me, I couldn't even analyze it clearly, as I had learned to analyze most things. And the worst part was, I
didn't know
what a blow job was. Sure, I had heard the expression, but I never thought I would have to know what it
meant. Anointeth?
Surely no teacher would ever put it on a quiz (though in my more paranoid moments I would imagine such quizzes—perhaps given by that guidance counselor). Nor would any classmate ever
ask
me what it meant. In the first place, they all
knew
already. And if there were, conceivably, anyone left in the world who did
not
know, he would be just as mortified at the thought of asking as I was.

Needless to say, when I got home, I locked myself in the bathroom with the dictionary, careful not to leave telltale folds or smudges on that page, and read all forty-three definitions and connotations of "blow." And equally needless to say, you can't buy mental health for the price of a dictionary.

Of course, I regained my senses quickly, thankful that no one would ever find out what had happened. In fact, I quickly turned the incident to my advantage—psychological judo: The next summer in camp I told the story, more or less as it had happened. I related my genuine disgust. I heaped all the worst invectives I could on that perverted
thing
, to establish my own normality—and I even managed to deduce from the subsequent conversation what the hell a blow job
was.

My counselor at that time was Jack Simmons from the University of Pennsylvania basketball team. He would frequently joke about my muscular calves, with what I thought just might be more than casual interest. Jack told me I had overreacted to that situation in the Museum of Natural History. He told me he let females
or
males suck his dick because it felt good. ("So that's what it is!") Hadn't I ever been blown by a girl? he wanted to know. Sure, I let chicks suck my dick, I told him, but I would never let a
guy
get near it, you could count on that!

Another time, the same year, sixteen, our English class had to go downtown to see the off-Broadway production of
Moby Dick.
We could go when we wanted, with whomever we wanted, so long as we saw it in time for the exam. I somehow contrived to go with Brian Salter, surely the dumbest boy in the class and surely the most attractive. Oh, how I wanted to be cowboys with Brian! He was, of course, the star of the football team (not big and heavy: coordinated), the basketball team, and, yes, the baseball team.

I had managed to become friends with him, despite my good grades and good standing with all the teachers, by drinking. By this time I was able to convince my parents to let me stay alone in the city some weekends ("I could get more work done that way"), and I would either borrow some liquor from our cabinet or drink the liquor Brian's parents had given him (his parents had read a different edition of Dr. Spock) or else go with him to buy some on the street. We couldn't usually pass for eighteen, but we could persuade passers by the liquor store to get it for us. And we would walk up and down Madison Avenue drinking from a paper-bagged pint of some
awful-
tasting scotch, which I detested and loved at the same time.

Anyway, Brian and I went to
Moby Dick
together. I spent most of the performance fantasizing how he and I would become blood brothers and go off to Wyoming—soaking up the cosmic tragedy of its impossibility—and occasionally having to change seats in the theater. It seemed that wherever we sat, someone else would come over to join us and be, well, obnoxious: looking all the time, crossing his legs like a pair of scissors instead of like a doughnut. When we left the theater, two of these effeminate types, immaculately dressed, carrying umbrellas in the midst of a water shortage, followed closely behind us. Brian didn't seem to be particularly bothered by all this.
He
had nothing to hide. I pointed out the menace, and we quickened our pace. They managed to keep up. Dis
-gusting!
I mean, sure, I wanted to be cowboys with Brian in Wyoming, but there was no
telling
what those
queers
wanted.

Adrenalin flowing, I decided to build up some normality points, just in case Brian had ever wondered. I stopped short, turned around, and in the middle of the after-theater throng—in the middle of an intersection, as a matter of fact—I shouted that if those two queers didn't stop following us, we would bust their little asses! They flushed, brandished their umbrellas, and fled.

So I was not exactly taking all this lying down. I was working very hard to maintain my cover.
This
double agent was going to keep his lines straight and die a natural death. Perhaps I would instruct the Chase Manhattan Bank to open a sealed letter upon my death and send it to the publishers of the New York
Times—
a letter that would stun the world. What had been planned as a half-column obituary for this upper-level public servant would suddenly become front-page news. Every playwright in the land would strain, and fail, to capture the true agony and magnificence of the burdens I had borne, the brilliance of the ruses I had constructed to throw everyone off the trail....

But until that time, mum's the word.

I somehow managed to keep from getting a hard-on in the showers. And I somehow managed to avoid attacking Brian. Well, only the way cowboys would attack each other on TV, you know—maybe a hard, but basically comradely, fight, which would end up with us both exhausted and even better friends, arms around each other's shoulders for support—he could win if he wanted to; maybe I wanted him to.

I went out for wrestling, but not for the reasons that you might expect. Not consciously, anyway; I swear it. I had been a swimmer during the winter season, but all those miles before classes and miles after classes must have built my stamina to the point where I lost all concept of speed. Year after year, as my stamina improved, my time got worse. When I showed up at the pool after soccer season was over one year, the swimming coach suggested I try wrestling, and I did.

I was not a terrific wrestler. It takes practice, and while I was strong and had stamina, so did the other, veteran wrestlers. Still, I won my JV matches and then made the varsity when the boy ahead of me got his neck broken. It was a tough weight class. Everyone I was scheduled to wrestle turned out to be the team captain or an AAU champ. The coach would huddle with me before I went in there, massage my neck muscles a little (he was married with kids, too, so it was okay), and tell me, "Just try to stay off your back." Sometimes I did manage to keep from being pinned, which meant the other team got only three points, not five, for winning my weight class.

Once, though, I came up against an even match. I was even winning, riding my opponent as I had been taught to in practice, accumulating riding time on the clock, which in the event of an otherwise-tied score would determine the winner of our match, and basically, for the first time, really in control. It was a good feeling, for a change. Perhaps too good. About three-fourths of the way through the match a hot shiver went through my body, and I went limp—my weight still on him. He was too exhausted to take much advantage of the fact that I had, well, lost my wind— and the match was over. I won, but I try not to think about it.

Somehow, as I say, I managed to cope with high school. I had serious doubts about my ability to cope with college. You
have to
date in college. You
have to
know what's coming off. Goliath had already had about eleven passionate affairs in college, which, without any embarrassing details, were top-priority dinner table conversation back home—and the Supreme Court was beginning to send interrogatives my way. They wanted to subpoena one of my girlfriends.

In high school it had been enough to learn to check out attractive girls on the street—look them up and down, leer a little, nudge my companion (naturally I only bothered with this nonsense when there was someone else around), maybe sigh or pant a little, or mutter something dirty—and then go back to noticing the boys.

Noticing attractive girls was not as easy to learn as it sounds. There was no department in my subconscious responsible for spotting pretty girls out of the corners of my eyes, as there was in the subconsciouses of my friends. I had to remind myself consciously to look or else suffer the embarrassment of being reminded by a friend's poke to
catch those legs—ooooWEEEEE!
But I ran a significant risk in leering and nudging: As I was attracted by boys, not girls, I had to use the most mechanical techniques in deciding which girls were "attractive." While others would have a simple groin reaction, I would nervously rush through a little checklist. I knew girls in laced shoes or combat boots were out. I knew legs were important and had heard someone talk scornfully about a girl with "piano legs," so I tried to avoid those. I would ignore any girls whose heads did not at least come up even with the parking meters as they walked by, as well as those whose heads brushed the bus stop signs. Frizzy redheads, for some reason, were out. Girls who looked like boys except with ponytails were out. The hardest part, especially under winter coats, was to determine whether a girl was "built" or just fat. There was nothing whatever to be gained by leering and chortling over a dog. One slip like that and my cover would be blown:
You're not really attracted to girls!
YOU'RE FAKING IT!

My back-up defense in such situations was myopia. I purposely kept my glasses off—they weren't very strong anyway—so that any omitted or mistaken leers and nudges could be blamed on my ophthalmologist.

In college you had to do more than just leer and chortle. You had to date. Maybe you didn't have to if you were ugly, and maybe you didn't have to if you weren't worried about your normality. But if you were me, you had to date.

Not counting high school parties and camp dances, where everyone had to go by the busload—more like holding class in the evening, or a special dancing lesson than a date—I can remember having had three dates prior to entering Yale.

The first was when I was seven. It was with Holly Frye, who would cry at the slightest provocation. She was unbelievable. She would cry if the teacher squeaked chalk against the blackboard. She would cry if cookie crumbs got on her dress. She would cry when she heard someone else crying. I certainly didn't like her, but for some reason I found her one afternoon with my mother and her mother in our car, picked up from school, on the way to MY ROOM, of all places.

It was a disaster. We started playing with my chemistry set, the litmus paper bit, and she used an entire piece of my litmus paper to test—I don't know what it was, probably some lemon juice or something of equal scientific significance. Well, any fool knows you are only supposed to use just a tiny corner of the litmus paper! The whole piece! My God, she used the whole piece! I didn't hit her. I just said something nasty and then ignored her. Which was hard to do, as she immediately began to wail and cry and scream and howl and was finally taken home, much to my relief.

Dumb girl.Ukh.

My second date, I think I was fourteen or fifteen. I can't remember this girl's name, but I remember that she was a regular at the dances I would force myself to go to. She had a four-inch chin, but was otherwise attractive for a fourteen-year-old girl, as best I could tell. Maybe she would grow into that chin, or have a chin job. Meantime, when she walked through doors, she had to turn her head sideways so her hand would reach the door knob before her chin hit the door. I didn't care. She was points, and points were what I wanted. I was infatuated at the time by a genuine preppie, who flew into the city only for vacations and who suggested we double. My eagerness to be cowboys with this preppie knowing no bounds, I got a date.

We doubled to a double feature, my first movie date. Movie people are forever making movies of kids going to movies early in their sexual careers to experiment with arms around their dates, around a little farther, hand cupped around what will someday be a breast, another hand moving toward the popcorn in her lap—and the movies the four of us went to may well have been movies like that. I can't recall. I just spent the four hours watching what the preppie did and doing as much of it to my date as I could bring myself to do. That is, I put my arm around the back of her chair. And once, by mistake (I had long since lost all feeling in and control over that arm), I think I brushed her shoulder. Maybe it was the back of her chair. Maybe it was her chin.