“Naturally, the transsexuals are another story in New York,” Kittredge continued. “They strike me as loners—a lot of them are hookers, maybe. There’s one who hangs out on Seventh Avenue—I’m pretty sure she’s a hooker. She is really tall! I hear there’s a club they all go to—I don’t know where. Nowhere you want to go by yourself, I’ll bet. I think if I were going to try it, I would try it in Paris. But you, Nymph—you’ve already done it! How was it?” he asked me—seemingly with the utmost sincerity, but I knew enough to be careful. With Kittredge, you were never sure where the conversation was headed.
“It was absolutely wonderful,” I told him. “I don’t imagine I’ll ever have a sexual experience exactly like it again.”
“Really,” Kittredge said flatly. We’d stopped in front of the door to the faculty apartment I shared with my mom and Richard Abbott, but Kittredge didn’t look the least tired from carrying me, and he gave me no indication that he ever intended to put me down. “I suppose she had a penis,” Kittredge said then, “and you saw it, touched it, and did all those things one does with a penis—right, Nymph?”
Something in his voice had changed, and I was afraid of it. “To be honest with you, I was so caught up in the moment that I kind of lose track of the details,” I told him.
“Do you?” Kittredge softly asked, but he didn’t seem to care. It was as if the details of any sexual adventure were already known to him, and he was bored by them. For a moment, Kittredge looked surprised that he was holding me—or perhaps repulsed. He suddenly put me down. “You know, Nymph, they’re going to make you talk to Harlow—you know that, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I was wondering what I should say to him.”
“I’m glad you asked me,” Kittredge said. “Here’s how to handle Harlow,” Kittredge began. There was something oddly soothing and (at the same time) indifferent in his voice; in the way Kittredge coached me, I felt that our roles had been reversed. I’d been the Goethe and Rilke expert, tutoring him through the tricky parts. Now here was Kittredge, tutoring me.
At Favorite River Academy, when you were caught committing an act of carnal folly, you were interrogated by Dr. Harlow; Kittredge, who (I presumed) had a wealth of experience with carnal acts, was an expert at dealing with Dr. Harlow.
I listened intently to Kittredge’s advice; I hung (as they say) on his every word. It was painful to hear, at times, because Kittredge insisted on spelling out for me the details of his sexual misadventure with Elaine. “Forgive the specific example, Nymph, but just so you know how Harlow operates,” Kittredge would say, before launching into his short-term hearing loss—the result of how loud Elaine Hadley’s orgasms were.
“What Harlow wants to hear from you is how sorry you are, Nymph. He’s expecting you to repent. What you give him, instead, is nonstop titillation. Harlow will try to make you feel guilty,” Kittredge told me. “Don’t buy into that shit, Nymph—just pretend you’re reciting a pornographic novel.”
“I see,” I said. “No remorse, right?”
“No remorse, Nymph—that’s exactly right. Mind you,” Kittredge said, in that eerily changed voice—the one I was afraid of. “Mind you, Nymph—I think what you’ve done is disgusting. But I applaud you for having the courage to do it, and you absolutely have a right to do it!”
Then, as suddenly as he’d swept me into his arms on the dormitory stairs, he was gone—he was disappearing down the third-floor hall, with those admiring boys in the doorways all watching him run. It had been classic Kittredge. You could be careful, but you could never be careful enough with him; only Kittredge knew where the conversation would end. I often had the feeling with him that he knew the end of our conversation before he started.
It was then that the door to our faculty apartment opened; both Richard Abbott and my mother were standing there, as if they’d been standing on the other side of the door for quite a while.
“We heard voices, Bill,” Richard said.
“I heard Kittredge’s voice—I would know his voice anywhere,” my mother said.
I looked all around me in the suddenly deserted hall.
“Then you must be hearing things,” I told my mom.
“I heard Kittredge’s voice, too, Bill—he sounded rather passionate,” Richard said.
“You should both get your ears checked—have your hearing tested or something,” I told them. I walked past them into the living room of our apartment.
“I know you’re seeing Dr. Harlow tomorrow, Bill,” Richard said. “Perhaps we should talk about that.”
“I know everything I’m going to say to Dr. Harlow, Richard—in fact, the details are pretty fresh,” I told him.
“You should be careful what you say to Dr. Harlow, Billy!” my mother exclaimed.
“What do I have to be careful about?” I asked her. “I don’t have anything to hide—not anymore.”
“Just take it easy, Bill—” Richard started to say, but I wouldn’t let him finish.
“They didn’t kick out Kittredge for having sex, did they?” I asked Richard. “Are you afraid they’re going to kick me out for not having sex?” I asked my mother.
“Don’t be silly—” my mom started to say.
“Then what are you afraid of?” I asked her. “One day I’m going to have all the sex I want—the way I want it. Are you afraid of that?”
She didn’t answer me, but I could see that she was afraid of my having all the sex I wanted, the way I wanted it. This time, Richard didn’t jump into the conversation; he didn’t try to help her out. As I went to my bedroom and closed the door, I was thinking that Richard Abbott probably knew something I didn’t know.
I lay down on my bed and tried to imagine everything that I might not know. It must have been something my mother had kept from me, I thought, and maybe Richard had disapproved of her not telling me. That would explain why Richard hadn’t rushed in to help my mom out of whatever mess she’d made for herself. (Richard hadn’t even managed to say his usual “Take it easy, Bill” bullshit!)
Later, as I was trying to fall asleep, I was thinking that, if I ever had children, I would tell them everything. But the everything word only led me to remember the details of my sexual experience with Miss Frost. Those details, which I would impart—in as titillating (even in as pornographic) a fashion as I could manage—to Dr. Harlow in the morning, led me next to imagine the sex that I hadn’t had with Miss Frost. Naturally, with all there was to imagine, I was awake rather late into the night.
KITTREDGE HAD PREPARED ME SO well for my meeting with Dr. Harlow that the meeting itself was anticlimactic. I simply told the truth; I left no detail out. I even included the part about my not knowing, at first, if I’d had what most people call sex with Miss Frost—if there’d been any penetration. The penetration word seized Dr. Harlow’s attention to such a degree that he stopped writing on his pad of lined paper; he flat out asked me.
“Well, was there any penetration?” the doctor said impatiently.
“In due time,” I told him. “You can’t rush that part of the story.”
“I want to know exactly what happened, Bill!” Dr. Harlow exclaimed.
“Oh, you will!” I cried excitedly. “The not-knowing is part of the story.”
“I don’t care about the not-knowing part!” Dr. Harlow declared, pointing his pencil at me. But I was not about to be rushed. The longer I talked, the more the bald-headed owl-fucker had to listen.
At Favorite River Academy, we called the faculty and staff we intensely disliked “bald-headed owl-fuckers.” The origin of this is obscure. If the Favorite River yearbook was called The Owl, I’m guessing that this hinted at an owl’s presumed wisdom—as expressed in the questionable claim “wise as an owl,” or the equally unprovable “wise old owl.” (Our stupid sports teams were called the Bald Eagles, which was additionally confusing—eagles were not owls.)
“The ‘bald-headed’ reference may indicate the physical appearance of a circumcised
penis,” Mr. Hadley had said once—when all the Hadleys were having dinner with Richard and my mom and me.
“What on earth makes you think so?” Mrs. Hadley asked her husband. I remember that Elaine and I were riveted by this conversation—my mother’s obvious discomfort with the penis word being part of our enthrallment.
“You see, Martha, the ‘owl-fucker’ part is indicative of the homo-hating culture of an all-boys’ school,” Mr. Hadley continued, in his history-teacher way. “The boys call those of us they most detest ‘bald-headed owl-fuckers’ because they are presuming that the very worst of us are homosexual men who diddle—or dream of diddling—young boys.”
Elaine and I howled; we thought this was so funny. We’d never imagined that the expression “bald-headed owl-fucker” actually meant anything!
But my mother suddenly spoke up. “It’s just one of those vulgar things the boys say, because they’re always saying vulgar things—it’s how they think,” my mom said, bitterly.
“But it originally meant something, Mary,” Mr. Hadley had insisted. “It surely originated for a reason,” the history teacher had intoned.
In my deliberate and detailed recounting to Dr. Harlow of my sexual experience with Miss Frost, I very much enjoyed remembering Mr. Hadley’s historical speculations concerning what a bald-headed owl-fucker actually was. Dr. Harlow clearly was one, and—as I prolonged my discovery that Miss Frost and I had had an intercrural sexual experience—I admit that I borrowed a few of James Baldwin’s well-chosen words. “There was no penetration,” I told Dr. Harlow, in due time, “therefore no ‘stink of love,’ but I so wanted there to be!”
“Stink of love!” Dr. Harlow repeated; I could see he was writing this down, and that he suddenly didn’t look well.
“I may never have a better orgasm,” I told Dr. Harlow, “but I still want to do everything—all those things Miss Frost was protecting me from, I mean. She made me want to do all those things—in fact, I can’t wait to do them!”
“Those homosexual things, Bill?” Dr. Harlow asked me. Through his thinning, lusterless hair, I could see him sweating.
“Yes, of course ‘homosexual things’—but also other things, to both men and women!” I said eagerly.
“Both, Bill?” Dr. Harlow asked.
“Why not?” I said to the bald-headed owl-fucker. “I was attracted to Miss Frost when I believed she was a woman. When I realized she was a man, I was no less attracted to her.”
“And are there other people, of both sexes—at this school, and in this town—who also attract you, Bill?” Dr. Harlow asked.
“Sure. Why not?” I said again. Dr. Harlow had stopped writing; perhaps the task of the opus ahead of him seemed unending.
“Students, Bill?” the bald-headed owl-fucker asked.
“Sure,” I said. I closed my eyes for dramatic effect, but this had more of an effect on me than I’d anticipated. I suddenly saw myself in Kittredge’s powerful embrace; he had me in the arm-bar, but of course there was more to it than that.
“Faculty wives?” Dr. Harlow suggested, less than spontaneously.
I needed only to think of Mrs. Hadley’s homely face, superimposed again and again on those training-bra models in my mother’s mail-order catalogs.
“Why not?” I asked, a third time. “One faculty wife, anyway,” I added.
“Just one?” Dr. Harlow asked, but I could tell that the bald-headed owl-fucker wanted to ask me which one.
At that instant, it occurred to me how Kittredge would have answered Dr. Harlow’s insinuating question. First of all, I looked bored—as if I had much more to say, but just couldn’t be bothered.
My acting career was almost over. (I didn’t know this at the time, when I was the center of attention in Dr. Harlow’s office, but I had only one, extremely minor, role remaining.) Yet I was able to summon my best imitation of Kittredge’s shrug and Grandpa Harry’s evasions.
“Ah, well . . .” I started to say; then I stopped talking. Instead of speaking, I mastered that insouciant shrug—the one Kittredge had inherited from his mother, the one Elaine had learned from Mrs. Kittredge.
“I see, Bill,” Dr. Harlow said.
“I doubt that you do,” I told him. I saw the old homo-hater stiffen.
“You doubt that I do!” the doctor cried indignantly. Dr. Harlow was furiously writing down what I’d told him.
“Trust me on this one, Dr. Harlow,” I said, remembering every word that Miss Frost had spoken to me. “Once you start repeating what people say to you, it’s a hard habit to break.”
That was my meeting with Dr. Harlow, who sent a curt note to my mother and Richard Abbott, describing me as “a poor prospect for rehabilitation”; Dr. Harlow didn’t elaborate on his evaluation, except to say that, in his professional estimation, my sexual problems were “more a matter of attitude than action.”
All I said to my mother was that, in my professional estimation, the talk with Dr. Harlow had been a great success.
Poor, well-meaning Richard Abbott attempted to have a friendly tête-à-tête with me about the meeting. “What do you think Dr. Harlow meant by your attitude, Bill?” dear Richard asked me.
“Ah, well . . .” I said to Richard, pausing only long enough to meaningfully shrug. “I suppose a visible lack of remorse lies at the heart of it.”
“A visible lack of remorse,” Richard repeated.
“Trust me on this one, Richard,” I began, confident that I had Miss Frost’s domineering intonation exactly right. “Once you start repeating what people say to you, it’s a hard habit to break.”
I SAW MISS FROST only two more times; on both occasions, I was completely unprepared—I’d not been expecting to see her.
The sequence of events that led to my graduation from Favorite River Academy, and my departure from First Sister, Vermont, unfolded fairly quickly.
King Lear was performed by the Drama Club before our Thanksgiving vacation. For a period of time, not longer than a week or two, Richard Abbott joined my mother in giving me the “silent treatment”; I’d clearly hurt Richard’s feelings by not seeing the fall Shakespeare play. I’m sure I would have enjoyed Grandpa Harry’s performance in the Goneril role—more than I would have liked seeing Kittredge in the dual roles of Edgar and Poor Tom.
The other “poor Tom”—namely, Atkins—told me that Kittredge had pulled off both parts with a noble-seeming indifference, and that Grandpa Harry had luxuriously indulged in the sheer awfulness of Lear’s eldest daughter.
“How was Delacorte?” I asked Atkins.
“Delacorte gives me the creeps,” Atkins answered.
“I meant, how was he as Lear’s Fool, Tom.”
“Delacorte wasn’t bad, Bill,” Atkins admitted. “I just don’t know why he always looks like he needs to spit!”
“Because Delacorte does need to spit, Tom,” I told Atkins.
It was after Thanksgiving—hence the winter-sports teams had commenced their first practices—when I ran into Delacorte, who was on his way to wrestling practice. He had an oozing mat burn on one cheek and a deeply split lower lip; he was carrying the oft-seen paper cup. (I noted that Delacorte had just one cup, which I hoped was not a multipurpose cup—that is, for both rinsing and spitting.)
“How come you didn’t see the play?” Delacorte asked me. “Kittredge said you didn’t see it.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” I told him. “I’ve had a lot of other stuff going on.”
“Yeah, I know,” Delacorte said. “Kittredge told me about it.” Delacorte took a sip of water from the paper cup; he rinsed his mouth, then spit the water into a dirty snowbank alongside the footpath.
“I heard you were a very good Lear’s Fool,” I told him.
“Really?” Delacorte asked; he sounded surprised. “Who told you that?”
“Everybody said so,” I lied.
“I tried to do all my scenes with the awareness that I was dying,” Delacorte said seriously. “I see each scene that Lear’s
Fool is in as a kind of death-in-progress,” he added.
“That’s very interesting. I’m sorry I missed it,” I told him again.
“Oh, that’s all right—you probably would have done it better,” Delacorte told me; he took another sip of water, then spit the water in the snow. Before he hurried on his way to wrestling practice, Delacorte suddenly asked me: “Was she pretty? I mean the transsexual librarian.”
“Yes, very pretty,” I answered.
“I have a hard time imagining it,” Delacorte admitted worriedly; then he ran on.
Years later, when I knew that Delacorte was dying, I often thought of him playing Lear’s Fool as a death-in-progress. I really am sorry I missed it. Oh, Delacorte, how I misjudged you—you were more of a death-in-progress than I ever imagined!
It was Tom Atkins who told me, that December of 1960, how Kittredge was telling everyone I was “a sexual hero.”
“Kittredge said that to you, Tom?” I asked.
“He says it to everyone,” Atkins told me.
“Who knows what Kittredge really thinks?” I said to Atkins. (I was still suffering from the way Kittredge had delivered the disgusting word when I’d least expected it.)
That December, the wrestling team had no home matches—their earliest matches were away, at other schools—but Atkins had expressed his interest in seeing the home wrestling matches with me. I’d earlier resolved to see no more wrestling matches—in part because Elaine wasn’t around to see the matches with me, but also because I was bullshitting myself about trying to boycott Kittredge. Yet Atkins was interested in watching the wrestling, and his interest had rekindled mine.
Then, that Christmas of 1960, Elaine came home; the Favorite River dormitories had emptied for the Christmas break, and Elaine and I had the deserted campus largely to ourselves. I told Elaine absolutely everything about Miss Frost; my session with Dr. Harlow had provided me with sufficient storytelling practice, and I was eager to make up for those years when I’d been less than candid with my dear friend Elaine. She was a good listener, and not once did she try to make me feel guilty for not telling her about my various sexual infatuations sooner.
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