Toby's Lie

by Daniel Vilmure

  John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of utilitarianism provides a philosophical context by which we may justify the exclusion of homosexuals from military service. Because surveys like the Kinsey Report estimate that homosexuals constitute a mere 10 percent of the male population (and a lesser percentage of females), current military policy should reflect heterosexual predispositions; and so, if the majority of servicemen and -women feel uncomfortable showering, bunking, or receiving emergency blood transfusions from potentially homosexual comrades, Mills theory would suggest that because a minority of gay soldiers will detrimentally affect the productivity of the straight majority, homosexuals must be excluded from military service.

  To conclude with a personal experience, Dr. Zipser, I would just like to say that the first time I took my best friends penis in my mouth occurred during a harmless and particularly heated wrestling match on the terrazzo floor of my best friend’s mothers kitchen. Our bodies were naked except for Wesson oil, which we had distributed rather liberally on our persons to provide an essentially Lawrencian frisson, inspired as we were by recent close readings of Women in Love in AP English class. Though my best friend is markedly stronger than I am, and though we undertook the match with no sexual intention, I would have been defeated had I not, in a clinch, lowered my mouth onto my opponents genitalia. This maneuver was accompanied by an instantaneous diminishment in my best friend’s ability to engage in combat and, not surprisingly, considering the tactic, an inverse expansion in the length of his penis. This experience has led me to conclude that if homosexuals were permitted in the military, entire battalions might find themselves preoccupied in acts of mutual oral gratification to the extent of the extinction of the war drive altogether. The ability to engage in combat would cease—an obvious advantage in the elimination of all war if one might only persuade the enemy to join in. But as enemies are even less likely to recognize gestures of affection than are the closest of friends, such practices could only weaken our ability to destroy those to and

  from whom we might give and receive pleasure.

  So, for all these reasons, I contend that homosexuals should be excluded from military service.

  My essay hadn’t been on Zipser’s desk five seconds when, lily-livered, I requested it back.

  “Forget to put your name on each page?”

  “That’s it!”

  I snatched the blue booklet, returned to my seat, and wielding a thick black indelible marker, obliterated entirely the penultimate paragraph, and inserted beside it, in the narrow, winding margin:

  Having had no experience of homosexuality, I can only repeat what I have learned in school: that homosexuals are congenitally promiscuous; that homosexuals are responsible for the spread of AIDS: and that homosexuals are inclined to child molestation.

  After the exam a busload of girls from the Holy Dames Academy arrived bearing pizza. They swarmed the cafeteria in a buzz of chatty energy, guys hovering around them on a hungry male periphery. They were beautiful girls despite their uniforms—madonna-blue potato sacks the nuns forced them to wear to hide their perky breasts in baggy clumps of sexless fabric. Most guys were in lust with them and absolutely helpless: the girls traveled in packs and talked with such rapidity that any approach by a male would have been unthinkable. Even girls who later on would make love to their boyfriends in the backseats of rental limos were impossibly aloof, as if they knew then (as most of them did) that the better part of desire is a disciplined denial. That was what I tended to admire about women: the premeditation, the calculation of their love. Everything for them was foreplay, the prelude to the kiss. For guys it was hello-there-and-welcome-to-my-orgasm.

  In the middle of the swarm of cosmetics and chitchat stood Courtney Ciccone, Ian’s escort for the evening. I had to admit she was a knockout of a girl. I couldn’t be jealous: her beauty made me dizzy. She had frizzy raven’s hair like a Vidal Sassoon Medusa, her tits were taut and ample under straining polyester, she walked with her nose a little lofty, like a princess, and she was always hugging everyone and calling them her darling. You could make out Courtney’s voice above the general commotion, tinkling like a silver tine against a toasting glass, and wherever she moved, packs of boys staggered after—as if she were a lemming of unrequited love.

  When she saw me she gave a shrill squeal—“Toby Sligh!” — and glided through the crowd to air-kiss my blushing cheek.

  “How are you, darling!” she gushed. “Where is Ian? If Lamb Chop doesn’t show up I’ll just have to go with you! Oh, Toby, you’re so scrumptious! Did anybody ever tell you? But you ought to get your hair cut like, ugh, what’s his name? That guy on 210, not Luke! Shoot, Dolores!” She appealed to her girlfriend, a wiry anorexic who was eating cheese pizza with the tips of her fingers, mozzarella tangled in her Lee press-on nails.

  “Like, why are you going with Angelina Fishback?” Dolores, the anorexic, said and rolled her eyes. “She’s such a toad, Toby!”

  “Dolores!”

  “Like, I’m sorry, but—”

  “Dolores,” Courtney whispered, “has a crush on you, Toby.”

  “Like, ohmyGod, Courtie! I can’t believe you said that!”

  They disappeared in a crisis of crocodile tears, and I felt two fleshy hands flutter down across my eyelids. The palms were moist and yeasty. They smelled like pepperoni. They smelled like stale anchovies. They smelled like pizza dough.

  “Guess who, Toby?”

  “It’s the Domino’s driver. And I’m not paying for all that fucking pizza!”

  I turned around and smiled at Angelina Fishback. She was standing by a little girl who looked just like a dormouse.

  “This is Grace Cage,” Angelina informed me.

  “I’m Toby.”

  “Hello, Toby,” Grace squeaked, and walked away.

  “Great personality, don’tcha think, huh? She’s looking for my brother. And have you seen Sir Bubba?”

  I pointed across the room to a cluster of jocks: Bubba sat among them, demolishing pizzas.

  “He won’t have any appetite for sushi tonight! But we will, Tobias! No Domino’s for us! Where’s Ian?”

  “Dunno.”

  “I saw you with Courtie. Don’t worry, I’m not jealous; I know she’s just a cunt. Where’s Juice?”

  I looked around; I didn’t know where Juice was.

  “Look”—Angelina pointed—“over by the window.”

  Most of the girls from the Holy Dames Academy, and some of the guys, and all of the teachers had gathered by the windows that extended the length of the parking lot bordering the school cafeteria. Angelina, always a bloodhound for scandal, broke away and barreled elbow-first through the crowd. When I caught up to her, her nose was smooshed against the glass, and her eyes were glazed over like a gourmand of gossip.

  “Juice has been arrested,” she said, sotto voce.

  I elbowed her aside to have a look for myself.

  At the back of the lot, four police officers were surrounding Juice Compton, obscuring his Porsche. One of the cops broke away from the pack to search Baby’s frontseat, and backseat, and trunk. The car alarm was shrieking like a wounded pterodactyl: even through the glass the noise of it assailed our ears.

  “It’s finally caught up with him,” Angelina stated.

  “What has?” I asked her.

  “His dealing … Juice’s dealing.”

  “He’s a dealer?” I asked, trying hard to look retarded.

  “Toby Sligh?” She stared at me. “Like, where have you been?”

  When Kickliter and Fr. McDuffy arrived and the cops cleared away, we got a look at what had happened: the windshield of Baby was a web of smashed glass, as if someone had lobbed a cinder block through it; the paint had been scratched with a pocketful of nails; the tires were slashed; and the antenna had been snapped.

  “K ee-rist” said Angelina, whistling like a sailor.

  Courtney and Dolores were looking on in tears.

  The officers pumped Juice’s hand an
d drove away. They had filed their report.

  And Juice hadn’t been arrested.

  When I went to offer my condolences to Juice he reached into his pocket and produced a Polaroid of a stranger standing by the Porsche with a nightstick. It was Det. Thomas. The Porsche was intact. He was smiling in the photo. Juice tore it in two.

  “See you at the Fishback crib at seven,” Juice said. “You better open up your eyes before the truth eats you alive.”

  I was crashed out on the sofa where my father always slept when Lucinda telephoned from St. Osyth’s. She said that Fr. Scarcross was out of his coma but that there was a chance he wouldn’t make it through the evening. She said that she knew that I had the prom tonight, and that I had completed my community service hours, but if I wanted to, and if I thought I could handle it, she’d like me to be at Eli’s bedside when he died.

  “You’re friends,” Lucinda said. “He considers you a friend. You’re just about the only friend that Fr. Ja’s got.”

  I wanted to make it, I told her; I did. But I’d be in a limousine for most of the evening and couldn’t get away even if I wanted to. Lucinda said she’d fetch me wherever I was so long as I promised to say goodbye to Scarcross. And she said, if I wanted, she’d lend me a beeper so I’d know the very second Fr. Scarcross needed me. “I don’t give a shit where you are, Toby Sligh. I’ll find you! Eli wants to say goodbye to you so badly.”

  “But—”

  “Fuck the buts, you Jesuitical shithead! Eli is dying, don’t you understand? You don’t abandon somebody just because they’re dying! Death is a part of the package tour, too! So get your penguin ass on over to St. Osyth’s and I’ll lend you a beeper. Is ’at a deal, Weeble-penis?”

  I told her it was and she sighed and said, “Good. I knew, in the end, you would do the right thing.”

  Then, when I hung up, the phone rang again. This time it was Ian. He said, “I got the tuxes. You come by my house as soon as you can and we’ll help each other dress and get our ‘dates’ for the prom.”

  “Your parents are there?”

  “They’re here. But they’re loaded. Are you ready to waltz, Toby Sligh?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you ready to waltz with your boy at the prom ?”

  My mom had gone AWOL, Dad was missing (despite sightings), my best friend was in trouble on both sides of the law, I’d promised to waltz with a girl I would abandon, and to witness the death of a Jesuit priest… . I just wanted to dance—that was all I ever wanted—with the guy that I loved, with the guy who loved me. I didn’t want drugs. I didn’t want diseases. I didn’t want death. I just wanted to waltz.

  “Are you ready?” Ian said. “Are you ready, Toby Sligh?”

  “I’m ready,” I told him.

  And I really was, too.

  “Ian has gone out to get a dozen eggs,” Mrs. Lamb informed me when she opened the door. She was standing in the foyer holding gladiolas that were sprinkling drops of water on an Oriental rug. Behind her, in a living room as big as a warehouse, Lyle Lamb sat facing an enormous TV. I could only make out the back of his head, which was bald and polka-dotted with erupting corpuscles. Mrs. Lamb hauled me in and said, “Don’t mind him. He’s just a piece of furniture.” The door closed behind us.

  Edith Lamb was pretty and superlatively tanned and held a slender glass filled with a cool pink concoction. She guzzled it in gulps, ice tinkling on her teeth, and let the gladiolas scatter nimbly at her feet as she dragged me through the kitchen, away from her husband.

  “You must be Ian’s friend! I’ve heard so much about you!” she said, springing suddenly and charmingly to life. “Ian, you know, tells me all about his friends! Are you the one going to Princeton in the fall or are you the one headed for the Naval Academy?”

  When I told her I’d been accepted to a less prestigious college, her smile only broadened, and she lifted her glass.

  “Oh, well! Just as long as you’ve been accepted somewhere! It’s nice to be accepted! To college, I mean! Oh, excuse me,” she said, and extended her hand, which was covered with psoriasis, and liverspots, and diamonds. “We haven’t been introduced— not formally, at least. I’m Edith, Edith Lamb … and you are?”

  “Toby Sligh.”

  “Gosh,” Ian’s mom said, withdrawing her hand. “He never mentioned you.”

  And she gave a short snort.

  Mrs. Lamb lunged forward and steered me by the elbow down several steps into a sunken sewing room. We were surrounded by endless folds of slick imported silk that fluttered around us like stationary clouds. Mrs. Lamb laughed and pulled me through the purling folds, then settled on a settee that was slippery with the fabric.

  “We worried Ian wouldn’t be, well, ya know, accepted. He was so very popular back in New Orl’uns. Of course, we’re not originally from the Crescent City. That is, I am. But we’ve moved around a bit.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Why’s what?”

  “Why’ve you moved around a bit?”

  “Just business!” Edith answered.

  The conversation halted. Far away, in the living room, we could hear her husband snoring.

  “Ian was the most popular boy in his class. But when he lost his eye last Christmas, we moved.”

  “Because he lost his eye?”

  Mrs. Lamb smiled at me.

  “Business! Just business! … Would you like a Coca-Cola?”

  When Mrs. Lamb left, I spied a Sacred Heart yearbook underneath some magazines on the coffee table. It dated from Ian’s freshman year in New Orleans. Flipping to the index, I located Ian’s entry: IAN LAMB: Christian Youth Community, Debating Club, Dramatic Arts, Latin Honor Society, Junior Varsity Swimming; 12, 33, 47, 49, 56, 78, 90, 103, 147, 168, 169, 172, 177, 195, 220. The numbers at the end were the numbers of the pages on which Ian Lamb’s photograph appeared. No other freshman had half as many photos. Even as a freshman, Ian had excelled.

  “You looked so thirsty, I had to bring you two!” Mrs. Lamb said, handing me two frosty bottles. She’d also replenished her cool pink concoction and was sipping it idly when she sat up in her seat.

  “There’s Ian!” she exclaimed.

  We could hear the Benz parking.

  “Now you wait right here and I’ll bring my jewel to you!”

  Mrs. Lamb returned to the Silken Cloud Chamber with Ian in one hand and an egg crate in the other. She seated her son on the settee beside me and collapsed in a pile of silk on the floor.

  “Edith, could you get me a beer?” a voice shouted from the booming echo chamber of the neighboring room. Edith put her finger to her lips and hitched her eyebrows: “If we ignore the monster, it will go away.” In a matter of seconds, Lyle’s snoring reached crescendo. Mrs. Lamb chuckled. Ian’s Adam’s apple bobbed.

  “You must tell me every single detail of the prom!” Mrs. Lamb began, and opened up the crate of eggs. She tapped one briskly on the hard terrazzo floor, opened it, and drank the slimy contents of it raw. “I remember mine like it was yesterday, Tony!”

  “It’s Toby, Mom.”

  “What?” She waved away an unseen insect. “I went with your father. No! Not your father! Your father-to-be! We had just met then! The theme was The Fugitive, the television series. They made us dance in legchains, shackled together! It may sound odd, but I found it romantic. And on the level of metaphor, talk about prophetic! Do you believe in prophecy, Tony?” she asked me.

  She opened two more eggs and guzzled them whole.

  “Mom’s on a diet.”

  Edith Lamb licked her lips.

  “Doctors say cholesterols bad for the arteries!” Mrs. Lamb continued, talking over her son. “But I did thirty minutes with Jane Londa this morning and my clunky old heart was purring like a Maserati!”

  “I’ll go get the tuxes,” Ian said and stood to go. His mother caught him neatly by the shins as he went by.

  “Aren’t you going to tell your friend Tony what I’m making?’’

  Ian
looked at his mother, and then he looked away.

  “Guess what I’m making! Go ahead, Tony!”

  Ian wouldn’t look at me; his arms were at his sides.

  “Draperies?”

  Mrs. Lamb shook her head no.

  “A wedding dress?”

  Mrs. Lamb shook her head again.

  “A tent for a harem of men?”

  “Bravo!” Mrs. Lamb clapped; then she shook her head briskly. “Should I tell him, Ian? Should I tell your friend my secret?” She sat up with her hand curled around Ian’s thigh.

  “My mother,” Ian said, “is making a parachute.”

  “That’s right, Tony! That’s exactly what I’m making!”

  Ian left the room to go get the tuxedos and Edith grabbed her egg crate and settled down beside me.

  “I am making a parachute, Tony—”

  “It’s Toby—”

  “Because, more than anything, what I really want to do is to get into an airplane and hurl myself out of it and drift, just drift, with the whole world underneath me! Ian and Lyle, they don’t have the courage! But I do, Tony! It’s quite wonderful to fall!”

  “When will it be finished?”

  She drank another egg.

  “Oh, any time now. It’s coming right along! I started last Christmas—when Ian had his mishap. I never thought of jumping from a plane until then.”

  From the living room someone shouted, “Bring me a beer!,” then Ian entered holding two elegant tuxes.

  “Oh, they’re gorgeous!” Mrs. Lamb gushed. “Really, really gorgeous! And where did you get them?”

  “From a catalogue.”

  She frowned.

  “May I ask with what money?”

  Ian spoke down to her curtly and swiftly.

  “You know very well that I have my own money.”