by Dave Eggers
—No. But I will say that if you tell me everything, and if what you tell me seems credible, then I’ll be more likely to leave you alone than if you keep telling me about your ninety-one-year-old mother who raised a pederast.
—I’m not a pederast.
—You invited boys to sleep over and you’re not a pederast?
—I acted inappropriately, I know this. But there are degrees to everything.
—You’re so sick.
—Thomas. You’re a smart guy. And given you’ve chained me to a post, I know you understand moral choices that are a bit off the beaten path. So I hope you’ll understand what I mean when I say that there is a good deal of grey in the world. It’s not a popular belief, I know, but most of the world is grey. I know that if a man touches a boy’s ass once, he can be labeled a pedophile forever, but that’s not fair, either. We’ve lost all nuance.
—We’ve lost all nuance? We’ve lost all nuance? You want to talk about nuance now? What the fuck does this have to do with nuance?
—You’ve brought me here because you assume that because I invited boys to sleep over, that I raped them. But I did not do that.
—So why bring them to your house? That’s the part I don’t get.
—Thomas, tell me something. You’re a single man?
—Yes.
—Are you straight?
—Yes.
—Have you brought women back to your apartment?
—Yes.
—Did you have sex with each one?
—What? No.
—Then why bring them home?
—That’s a stupid analogy.
—Did anyone ever mistake your intentions?
—What do you mean?
—When you got them home, was there ever confusion about your intentions? Did anyone ever think you planned to force your will onto them?
—No.
—I assumed not.
—Fuck you.
—But you could have. That could have been your intention.
—No. It couldn’t have been.
—But maybe something goes wrong. Maybe you brought twenty women to your apartment, and let’s say each encounter was safe and consensual.
—Yes. They all were.
—But what if the twenty-first encounter wasn’t? What if, during that one encounter, you both were drunk and there was confusion about consensuality? And later she accused you of date rape. If you’re arrested, or tried, or even just accused, immediately there’s doubt about the other encounters, the other twenty, right? Who knows what your intentions were. Maybe you raped them all. Or maybe you tried to. To the outside world, and to all the women who had consensual relations with you, your intentions are suddenly unclear, even in hindsight. Suddenly, to everyone, you’re capable of terrible things.
—Not possible.
—But of course it is. An accusation alone puts your entire character in doubt. This is how it works. An accusation is ninety percent of it. Anyone can ruin anyone with an accusation. And people are only too happy to be able to write someone off, to throw them into the pile of the depraved and subhuman. One less person. There are too many people, the world is too crowded. We’re suffocating, right? And clearing some of them away lets us breathe. Each person we throw away fills our lungs with new air.
—You’re getting off topic.
—I don’t think so. You have to realize that you’re a victim of this thinking, too. You heard something about me, and you brought me here, fully expecting me to conform to your idea of a throwaway person. But I’m not a throwaway person, am I?
—I don’t know yet.
—But we put no value on each other, do we? There are too many people. There are too many people in any given city, any given country. Certainly there are too many people on this planet, so we’re so anxious to throw away as many of them as possible. Given any excuse at all, we can erase them.
—
—What if there were only ten of us on Earth? What if there were only ten people you had to choose from who had to help rebuild civilization after some apocalypse?
—Oh Jesus. What’s your point?
—My point is that if there were only ten people on Earth, there’s no way that you would think I was dispensable. If I had wrestled with Don and had kids over to my house, you would never think those crimes so unforgivable that you’d send me away. I would still be useful. You’d talk to me, you’d work it out. But with so many people, no one person is worth so much. We can clear away wide swaths of people like they were weeds. And usually we do it based on suspicion, innuendo, paranoia. Whole classes of people. Including anyone vaguely associated with pedophilia. They don’t get fair trials, they’re sent away, and when they try to come back, they can’t even live. They live under bridges, in tents, huddled together.
—I don’t know what this has to do with you and boys.
—I’m not a rapist. You’re presupposing that anyone I brought into my house I intended to rape. But that wasn’t the case. Just as it wasn’t the case that you intended to have sex with every woman who ever entered your home. Your argument is circumstantial.
—But why bring the kids to your house? Why not just meet them after school?
—Why don’t you meet every woman in, say, a public park?
—Because I might want some privacy.
—Am I, too, allowed privacy?
—Not with kids.
—Is any adult allowed to be alone with any child?
—Yes. Listen. You made whatever point you meant to make. And I don’t care. Now you have to tell me about the tailor game.
—The what game?
—See? Your face just tensed up. You didn’t think I’d remember. Do you remember the measuring tape?
—Yes. The tailor game was also inappropriate.
—Tell me what happened.
—I had a measuring tape and we measured each other’s arms and legs and shoulders.
—You don’t think that’s sick?
—It’s inappropriate.
—I can’t have anyone crouch near me without thinking of you holding that measuring tape against my leg. When people kneel down to tie their shoes anywhere close to me I think of you.
—That couldn’t be my fault.
—Of course it’s your fault! You think I had a problem with all that before you and your fucking tailor game?
—Okay, I’m sorry.
—That’s it? You’re sorry?
—I’m sorry, but tell me this: Did I touch you?
—I have no idea. I assume you did.
—But there you go again. Your mind is filling in what didn’t happen. You’re filling in with what you assume were my intentions. But I never touched any of you kids.
—But you wanted us to touch you.
—That’s not true either.
—You had us measure your inseam, too, you fucker. Why would you have us measure your inseam if you didn’t want us to touch your dick?
—Do you remember touching me there?
—No, but I assume we all did. I remember looking up at you and you were looking at the ceiling, like you could barely contain yourself. You were about to jizz.
—Thomas, I admit it was a little thrill when you would measure my inseam, but I didn’t actually have any of you touch me. I did not touch you and you didn’t touch me. It was all highly inappropriate, yes, no doubt about it. But I was acutely aware of the law, and I did not break any laws. It wasn’t rape. It wasn’t assault. I acted inappropriately, and that’s why they asked me to resign, which I did. And that was the correct punishment. I didn’t belong in a school, and it was decided I should leave, and I did.
—So you went on to do it elsewhere.
—No, I did not. You have to stop making these leaps. I’m not part of some larger narrative. I’m me. I am one person, and my story is absolutely unique. I don’t conform to any established modus operandi. I’m not a priest who was shuffled around from church to church or whatever narrative has been established in y
our mind. I was asked to resign, and I did, and I was relieved.
—You were relieved?
—I was. Being around all of you was too much of a temptation. But once I left, the temptations were removed.
—That is really hard to believe.
—But you must believe it. I’m chained to a post, and I’m telling you the truth.
—But it defies belief. It defies all known pathology. A pederast who just reforms himself? It’s not possible.
—Thomas, do you know anything about addiction psychology?
—No.
—Well, this conversation is reminiscent of my time in AA. For a while, probably while dealing with my own proclivities, I was occasionally drinking too much. And my AA friends were convinced I was an alcoholic. They brought me to meetings, and they insisted that I quit drinking for good. But I was not an alcoholic. They couldn’t accept that even though I used alcohol to cope sometimes, it didn’t mean I was out of control or that alcohol was hampering or altering my path through life.
—I don’t know what this has to do with you and your tendencies toward boys.
—The point is that it’s similarly polarized. The thinking is similarly flawed, and it makes people crazy. Tell me, do you have any friends who are alcoholics?
—Yes.
—Are they all the same?
—No.
—Do they all go on three-day benders and kill people in drunk-driving car accidents?
—No.
—Do they all lose their jobs and families because they can’t quit drinking? Because they’re drinking twenty-four hours a day?
—No.
—So are you sure they all have the same disease?
—I don’t know.
—If I walked into an AA meeting and suggested that I had a “problem” with alcohol but was not an alcoholic, they would run me out of the building. And yet maybe I do have a small problem. Maybe, twice a year, I have one more drink than I should, and I say something I regret. Maybe once or twice a year I pass out, alone, at home, after drinking too many Manhattans. Once a year I drive home when I should take a cab. Am I an alcoholic? Many would say yes. Many would say you either are or are not. They use that old chestnut, You can’t be a little pregnant. You know that one?
—Yes.
—It’s trotted out in situations where nuance is unwelcome.
—Like yours.
—Right. I’m not an alcoholic, and I’m not a rapist. I’m a flawed person who has wandered into territory that could be very dangerous, but then I wandered back to a less problematic path. You can call me a sick man. I am. You can say I did a number of things I should not have done. But I am not a rapist and not a pederast. And I have never touched any naked part of a child, nor have I asked them to touch any naked part of me.
—But you twisted the minds of many people.
—Did I?
—Of course you did.
—Can I give you a corollary?
—Can you give me a corollary?
—Yes.
—Sure. Give me a corollary, you sick fuck.
—When I was growing up there was a house on my street that was overrun with foliage. You could hardly see the house through all the trees and ivy. But this house was known by us kids as the place where you could go and get candy. You could just knock on the door and this older woman would invite you inside and you could choose candy from a bowl. Now this, today, would seem wildly inappropriate, right?
—Yes.
—And telling that story to anyone, which I’ve done over the years, has always provoked disgust. People assume that any child walking inside that place was a victim and that the woman had some ulterior motive. That there were cameras somewhere, that there was some sick purpose to her inviting us in. It all fits some narrative that’s now so well established that it’s crowded out all other possibilities. There was the green-shrouded house, the gingerbread look of it. You assume dark and terrible things are happening inside. But they weren’t.
—How do you know?
—Because they never did. I’ve talked to a dozen others who knew the house and went inside and nothing ever happened to any of them. The lady just wanted it to be Halloween every day. She was lonely. But we could never accept that now. We categorize everything with such speed and finality that there’s never any room for nuance. Let me posit that the mind-twisting you speak of comes from outside, not within. That is, those who want to name things, to sweep them into categories and label them, have swept your experience into the same category as those children who were actually raped, those who were lured into showers and thrown against the wall and had a grown man’s penis inserted into their rectum repeatedly.
—See, just your ability to talk that way …
—Thomas, this is important. Is playing tailor fully dressed the same as having a penis thrust into your twelve-year-old rectum?
—See, you are sick. Only a sick fuck could have said that.
—I’m trying to make clear the difference between what I did and what an actual rapist does. I couldn’t even undress you boys. Doesn’t that make clear that I’m not the same kind of monster?
—Maybe you’re a different kind of monster. But you’re still a monster.
—I won’t accept that. You came over to my house. Don came over to my house. We watched movies. We played tailor. Then you fell asleep on my bed. You woke up and went home. That is the work of a monster?
—Absolutely. We trusted you and you had other intentions toward us. You used us.
—And what would you call what you’re doing to me?
—I’m asking you questions. You harmed me, and this is the least amount of payback imaginable.
—How about the astronaut? You kidnapped him to ask him questions. But he did nothing to you.
—Don’t worry about the astronaut. I haven’t harmed the astronaut. You’re the only one I would even think of harming.
—You would be harming someone who harmed no one.
—That is fucking insane.
—I did nothing but imagine them.
—So you admit that you got sexual excitement from children.
—Of course I did. Don’t you ever see a woman on the street and later masturbate thinking about them?
—
—Well, I do the same thing. My fantasies might be sick, but I can’t make it work any other way. The machinery of my mind is what it is. And mine is warped; it is societally unacceptable. But I know that touching a child, that acting on these desires, is wrong, and I have done nothing illegal.
—You don’t buy child porn.
—I don’t anymore.
—You don’t anymore?
—When I was younger I did. But I realized how it impacted actual children, so I stopped. The last time I saw an image of a naked child was 1983.
—So since then you just see a boy on the street and then imagine him naked?
—Not exactly.
—Then what exactly?
—This level of detail isn’t useful, is it?
—This level of detail is exactly why you’re here.
—Okay. I think of a boy measuring my inseam.
—Oh god. Like how old is this boy?
—The same age you were. Eleven, twelve. That’s why we played the game.
—So you could store up those images for later masturbation.
—Yes.
—And all these years since, you’re still thinking of Don Banh measuring your inseam?
—Not so much him. Listen, I know it’s sick. I wish my brain worked in a different way. I know it’s wrong, that it’s considered sick. But none of this extends beyond the confines of my head, Thomas. I swear to you.
—So that’s it? For twenty years, you just think of boys measuring your inseam? No action taken?
—That’s right. Listen. I am sorry that you came to my house. And that Don came to my house, and anyone else. I can never rectify the fact that I acted inappropriately and that I scarred you
kids in some way. But again, there are limits to the blame I can assume for whatever else happened in your lives after that.
—But why Don?
—Don was from a certain kind of home. You must know that those who seek to be close to boys seek out those whose parents are missing or inattentive, or who have certain blind spots.
—So Don’s mom thought this was some great honor, that you’d invite him over to your house.
—Yes. She trusted me, and she valued my mentorship.
—Your mentorship. Holy shit.
—Again, you’ll find it unacceptably complex, but I spent many hundreds of hours with Don and his brother, and most of that time was in the role of a parent. I cooked for them, I helped them with their homework, I took care of them. I was a male figure in their lives where there was no other.
—A male figure who masturbated thinking of them measuring your inseam.
—Yes.
—You’re right. It’s unacceptably complex. And so wait—was I one of these kids, too? With the parents who were absent and had blind spots?
—I don’t know.
—But you do. Don’t worry about offending my mom.
—I don’t remember your mom, but I assume that at the time, I had a sense that your home was not as strong as others.
—So I was a target. Did you make a list or something?
—A list?
—Of targets. Kids you had identified as potential sleepover participants.
—Yes.
—Yes? You said yes?
—Because this was so long ago, and because I want to be completely candid with you, and because this was part of a life I abandoned and for which I have only shame, I will continue to be honest with you. I had a list every year of the new sixth graders who I designated as potential guests at my house.
—Based on just the parental situation?
—That, and height, hair, looks.
—What kind of looks?
—Any boys who were too tall or developed weren’t part of the list. I liked long hair. There were parameters physically, and then I cross-referenced that with the parental factors.
—And this ended up being a list of how many every year?
—Maybe eight, ten kids.
—And these you would invite over.
—Yes.
—And of them how many would come over?