An honest man of your stripe would never have allowed himself to be so friendly with normal people. You came to stay at my home, Desmond, with my parents. You compromised every one of us in doing so. You would have done better to settle down and find a wife or live a less sociable life. Become a priest! I feel personally affronted by the – what shall I call it? – the platonic intimacies we shared as young men.
I’m still young, Porter. So are you.
I know men like you want to believe in eternal youth. This is part of your perversion, isn’t it, this cult of adolescence.
Perversion! Sixty-four-dollar word. What perversion? What I do in private with other men, adult men, Porter, man has done for millennia and sometimes far less privately.
The trumpet across the room howled away at my nerves and I wished I could make it stop. Porter flipped open the folder in front of us.
You call this private?
The first items in the folder were a series of photographs: you and me on the pool deck of your house, both of us in swimming trunks, you straddling my waist, our mouths pressed together. Under other circumstances I would have been touched by the tenderness of the images but in that moment I felt my temperature drop. The pictures must have been taken only in the previous week because you were in a pair of stunning new trunks you had just purchased. We had never been so brazen before, but recently convinced ourselves that the fences and shrubbery surrounding your back garden were adequate protection. I picked up one of the photographs. The angle was poor but anyone could see it was your profile. There was a picture of me from that very morning, naked and emerging from the pool. When I saw it I caught my breath. This photo, all these photos, must have been what the man Hank was offering, what he was giving me the chance to buy before handing them over to Porter. How differently that day might have played out if I had taken the chance, if I had talked Hank down from ten thousand dollars to some figure I could have managed to procure before the banks closed.
Beneath Porter’s disgust I could see that he was almost pleased.
I won’t ask you to explain it, Desmond. I don’t think there’s any explanation for this behavior. It’s one thing if you keep it private, even if it still disgusts me, but another thing entirely if the truth gets out. The man who took these pictures may work for us but he’s been threatening to find someone to pay him more than we’re offering. This very moment Hedda Hopper is sitting on a story about your nightly sleepovers and these photos are all she needs to go ahead with it. You know what we’ve had to pay to keep this out of the papers? Your shenanigans are risking too much. I’ve already spoken to Myles, and he assures me nothing like this will ever happen again.
I did not know if he was bluffing, but I refused to believe it was true. If you had made such a claim it must have been only to make Porter leave you alone, or perhaps to protect me, but it explained why you had been so cold when I passed you earlier, and I wondered whether you blamed me for all of this. In a way, you would not have been unjustified in doing so. Was I not the one who was always testing your affection, even as I claim to have been anxious to protect you? Was I not the one who approached you on set, who convinced you earlier that week, when the photos must have been taken, that we could expose our kissing to the sky because no one could possibly be looking?
I shouldn’t have to remind you, Porter continued, that both you and Myles have morals clauses in your contracts. Legally speaking, we have enough evidence to fire both of you and see to it that neither of you works in the motion picture industry ever again. We could even turn you over to the police, although that is not in our interests. Myles makes this studio too much money, and frankly so do you, in your way. But there are too many homosexuals in this studio and it is my aim either to get them cured or get them out. I feel personally betrayed by you, Desmond. I feel betrayed by the way you seduced me into friendship when we were young men. I feel betrayed by the ways you’ve continued to trade on our friendship. I feel particularly betrayed by the way you corrupted one of our brightest young stars, someone who should be like a son to you.
Oh, Jesus, only if I had been a child bride, Porter.
Don’t make such filthy jokes.
Let me assure you, Myles is old enough to know who he is, and believe me, he has always been a very willing partner.
Everyone knows the only way you people can survive is by recruiting the innocent. What’s a homosexual but a sexual offender? It makes me wonder if you might have been the leader of that little cell at Cornell, if you were the one who recruited Noah, if in fact I should have feared you more than anyone else.
A cell? You think I’m a Verkhovensky or Nechayev? You’re out of your mind, Porter. Homosexuals are not revolutionaries or terrorists, at least not the way you mean.
You’ve done a good job so far in recruiting Myles but it’s not too late to rescue him. At least in Helen he has a wife who will support him.
I had to cough to cover my laughter. If Porter had no idea about Helen and Barbara I did not want to betray them.
Can’t you see that Myles is what he is as I am what I am? And you are what you are!
Save your insults for your own kind. There’s no equivalence of any sort. As soon as shooting is finished on this picture, Myles is going to take some time away in a clinic with a highly respected analyst who specializes in cases of coerced perversion. We’ve spoken about it over lunch and he is entirely in agreement.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear it from Myles.
I don’t want you anywhere near him, Porter said, but that may be a moot point because I have other, graver concerns about you. Matters involving morals can be fixed and managed when the individuals involved are willing to submit to treatment. Matters involving national security demand a higher threshold of investigation and cure.
National security? So I’m a pervert and a spy?
Your word, Desmond, not mine. But now that you’ve said it, I have to ask you, are you a Soviet spy?
The upper hook landed before I could block or parry and it stung more than the sexual accusations because it was so untrue. A laugh exploded from my throat but there was nothing funny about what was happening.
Round 2
Porter sat up straighter and pinched his lips together. I began to wonder what had happened since our undergraduate days to change him. As a student his thinking was nuanced, supple, so that I often felt as if I learned as much from him as from our professors. But now there was a bluntness and inflexibility that bewildered me.
First and last, a motion picture studio is a community, Desmond. And like any town or city or state or country, the citizens of that community have a responsibility to abide by and uphold its laws, to support its democratic processes, and to ferret out those who would seek to overthrow what has been democratically implemented by the community at large.
Come on, Porter, a movie studio is a business, nothing more or less, I snorted. It makes products that it sells to make money and so make more product, all to produce capital that makes a tiny minority of men at the top richer than all the rest of us combined.
Porter took the file to the long rosewood conference table under the black and white canvas. His hands trembled as he turned the photos of you and me face down on the folder before beginning to lay out clippings from newspapers, typed notes, and photostatic copies of a number of letters in a regular grid that covered the table’s entire surface. When the jazz record came to an end he stumbled across the room, flipped it to the other side, replaced the needle with a scratch that tore through the speakers and was followed by the trumpet sobbing against a background of muted saxophones, the percussionist keeping furious time with brushes on the snare.
Friend at Capitol sent me this. Crazy stuff. Calms me down, though, just like that subversive painting. And boy, do I need calming today.
I glanced at the documents spread across the table. It was all so predictable.
This is your flimsy case against me, Porter?
I th
ought you should have a chance to defend yourself.
Is there an appellate body if I lose in this chamber?
Porter reddened and sweat flowed from his hairline. It was a perfect impression of those cartoon characters who pop with fury. All he lacked was steam shooting from his ears.
Why won’t you take this seriously?
The problem is, Officer Cherry, I drawled, putting on a wheedling tough-guy voice, I don’t see as there’s nuttin’ t’explain…
What about this? Porter fingered a copy of a letter. Blunt fingers, stubby ends. I imagined what those fingers might do. Greetings from Desmond Frank to the Moscow Art Theatre. Wishing you all the best for a long future of fine theatrical productions. Ever been to the Moscow Art Theatre, Desmond?
No, but does it matter?
Item two. Profile of Mr. Desmond Frank in the Daily Worker from March 1944, describing you as ‘Movieland’s Young Bane of Oppression’. Isn’t the Daily Worker a Communistic publication?
I’d have said it was Socialist myself but you’re the one casting about for labels, so call it whatever you want. I don’t see that it makes much difference what I think. Not to you at least.
Porter frowned. Item three. An Open Letter from the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. Your name is on their letterhead, right there. The letter itself, if letter you can call this hysterical screed, demands an end to the U.S. Department of Justice’s deportation of alien nationals. Isn’t it the belief of that organization that they must protect all foreigners on American soil as part of their revolutionary activities and in support of Soviet agents who have infiltrated the country?
As far as I know it has nothing to do with spies or infiltration or anything else you might want to call it. It’s a matter of common sense and humanity, Porter.
I saw myself lean back on the ropes, protecting my head and taking the blows, watching through a fine audible haze of brass and percussion as my old friend picked up one item after another, evidencing my purported involvement with or support of organizations as diverse as the Civil Rights Congress, the Progressive Citizens of America, the Committee for the First Amendment, the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, League of American Writers, the Stop Censorship Committee, the Council on African Affairs, the Artists’ Front to Win the War, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, the Spanish Refugee Appeal, and the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, among others. The U.S. Government’s Loyalty Review Board had condemned most of these organizations as Communist fronts, as you may remember.
With each piece of evidence, my smile set stronger roots. It was all too incredible to be taken seriously. Porter’s jabs went soft and wide.
I put it to you, Desmond, that every one of these organizations is subversive, Communistic, or anti-pathetic to American values. Whenever you put your name to shit like this – Porter held up an open letter published in the New York Times from the Committee for the First Amendment – you betray this nation to the Soviets. Whenever you open your checkbook or host a party or march in a goddamned May Day parade you contribute to the forces of darkness and evil! Don’t you understand that May Day parades are tools of the Communist International?
The Comintern was disbanded in forty-three, Porter. Now it’s the Cominform. At least get the name right.
You are a traitor, Desmond. A true-blooded American loyal to his country wouldn’t even know such Soviet lingo!
Stop gnawing and finish me off. I won’t do what you want, so let’s call it quits. I’m down. The ref is counting.
Porter raised the index finger of his right hand, twitching it so close to my face that eventually it made contact. Then, to my astonishment, he pushed his fingertip into the place where the softer tissue of my nose connected with the cartilage. For ten seconds that felt like ten hours, as the trumpet warbled, neither of us moved.
You don’t get off that easy, Desmond. I want to give you the chance to recant and apologize and make good with the Feds. We’re willing to help you do it, in fact we’re going to make you do it, to atone for what you’ve done. Through your political activities you are taking bread not just from our mouths but from the mouths of our children. Take enough bread and we’ll have nothing left, we’ll be forced to turn ourselves into cannibals and infanticides, we’ll have no choice but eating the children we bring into this world if people like you and your Communist spies have your way. Well I say it stops here, at this goddamned studio. Given what we know about your so-called private life and the ways you’ve betrayed this company and your colleagues, we want you to make an example of yourself. You’ll be our reformed little Red, true blue by the time we’re through with you. Thank God it’s not too late.
All at once, as Porter was speaking, the editor of memory in my mind undid his work. The cuts were reversed, the original footage restored to a complete reel that ran through the Steenbeck, the subjectivity of time stripped away to reveal the uncut negative of that night when a fraternity house at the top of a gorge burned to the ground and killed a young man. What did you say, Porter?
I said Thank God it’s not too late.
Round 3
I considered the possibility that Porter was not, in fact, entirely himself. Who knew what pressures the Head of Production at one of the world’s largest movie studios might suffer? Such stress could produce any number of anomalous psychological effects, but that afternoon Porter was so unlike the person I thought I knew that it felt as though he was already absent, dead, and some diabolical force was animating his body.
You’ve lost your mind, Porter.
I am perfectly sane!
I took the uncut footage (the hard intimacy that had sprung up between us, the invocation of Noah Roy, the memories of the fire and its aftermath, the walks in the gorges with Porter, the tennis matches and love matches and freedom with Noah at Lake George, the present accusations, fragments of remembered conversation, rumors about Porter’s wife, Yvette), chopped it up, rearranged it, and ran it all together in a montage (a + b = c, thesis + antithesis = synthesis) until the events of that night formed a narrative I could read, and in interpreting what I discovered, following the logic of one image juxtaposed against another in ways I had not previously considered, at last I understood, fourteen years after the event, that Noah’s death was no accident, and in making sense of my first love’s death (of what from then on I have always considered Noah’s murder), the picture I had assembled and hastily taped together began to make sense of Porter as well.
How’s your marriage, Porter?
That’s none of your concern.
Then why should my relationship with Myles be any of yours?
Porter flamed back into focus. You’re trying to trade in equivalents where there aren’t any. You’re breaking the law, you’re breaking your contract, and you’re perverting the vulnerable.
Oh nonsense. Myles is not vulnerable, at least not in the ugly way you mean. He’s not a child, not by anyone’s measure. But come on, Porter, answer me, how’s your wife?
I won’t discuss my wife with someone like you.
Yvette left you, didn’t she? She’s moved back to New York.
It’s a trial separation.
You know the rumor I’ve heard, but which I’ve chosen neither to believe nor to spread? People say she left you for non-consummation of the marriage.
Porter stumbled away from the table and let out a long, horrified sigh. That is nothing but mendacious…
A rush of air blew from the vents near the ceiling and it was so cold I began to shiver. If anyone should make an example of himself, Porter, it’s you.
I know you’re trained for this, how to turn an interrogation to your advantage.
You betrayed yourself earlier.
The only person who’s betrayed himself today is you, Desmond.
I’ve been thinking about it since you said it.
Once more, I played back the re-edited footage, reviewing the night in th
e fraternity house, the smell of smoke, the way I woke Porter in the neighboring room, how we then woke all the other brothers and began evacuating. Noah’s room was on the top floor, in the converted attic, and I had turned to Porter and said, I have to wake Noah. Porter had paused, his eyes flashed in the smoke, and he said, Noah’s already out, I saw him go. Later, standing on the lawn in the dark, taking a count of the brothers, we discovered Noah was missing. I turned, running back toward the house as flame broke through the windows, wrapping tendrils around the high gable. Before I reached the front steps I found myself face down in the grass, tackled by Porter, who was whispering into my ear, It’s too late, thank God, it’s too late. When the firemen carried out Noah’s body, Porter said he must have been mistaken. It was night, there was smoke, all the brothers looked the same in the dark.
You told me we were both going to be honest, so be honest, Porter. You knew Noah was asleep upstairs, didn’t you? You thought, Sure, what the hell, let the faggot burn. Serves him right. That about the size of the crime? I remember what you said that night. It’s too late, thank God. Why thank God?
Porter leaned against a couch and covered his eyes with one hand.
You don’t know anything about it.
What did he do to you, Porter, that made you hate him?
I did not—
That sounds like a confession.
If I wanted a priest I’d convert.
You started the fire, didn’t you, knowing what might happen. You were awake when I knocked on your door. You were dressed even though it was the middle of the night.
Porter’s hands were shaking. I had won the round, and without considering the magnitude of what I was about to do, sat down behind Porter’s desk and began opening drawers until I found one that was locked.
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