“What’s there to explain?” He clasped his hands and put both thumbs under his chin, his elbows on the table. “In Mrs. Bensemana’s case, I wanted to like throw those guys off my scent, and get some acclaim for it. I don’t think I calculated it as precisely, not the acclaim part. But the rest: definitely.”
“And with Gaugin?”
He unclasped his hands, put them on his thighs, and made a couple of ironing movements. “It was a fantasy. He wasn’t into guys. In class, his eyes turned molten when the girls flirted with him. Bégin — he loved guys. Brown meat. Muscle. Beefcake. Those Hispanics used to tease the hell out of Said — we mentioned him last night — a Pakistani chap” —
“South Asian?”
“South Asian chap, a body-builder. Bégin loved to clap him on the shoulder, his pedophile eyes flaming blue, his cheeks pink. And you should see Said: stiff with embarrassment.”
“And if you’d thought Gaugin was into guys?”
“Moot point. He wasn’t.”
“So you sublimated your lust for Gaugin into love for his subject?”
“He never hurt my eyes; that’s for sure. But that’s not why I did well in history. He cared enough to push me to do my work, and I appreciated it. Take Mrs. Loubier. She looked like a light bulb on stilts. Her looks didn’t affect my performance.”
I recalled his references to homosexuality: “Call the exterminators, Ma; there’s vermin in the house”; his numerous speculative crude and cruel remarks made in connection with Jonathan.
“Jay, you remember how I hung around with that gay-bashing group ADDA? Looking back now, I can say those guys like frighten me. You remember when Mrs. Mehta told Ma to send me back to St. Vincent and I said no? Well, the real reason was that I knew men turned me on, and St. Vincent was the last place I wanted to be . . . because of what had happened to Jack and Brady. Seriously, Jay, how could you not have suspected? Remember that exchange we had about condoms?”
“We were trading insults, Paul.”
“Oh. I thought you’d finally understood. Bill urged me to tell you. And it was one of the things I wanted to tell you the night before I left home. But you were such an asshole. Best favour you ever did me: taking me to Bill’s place. That humungous cock in ebony. A dead giveaway.”
We both laughed. Paul coughed.
“The things he said in those discussions you-all had impressed me: justice for the poor, trying to see things from another person’s perspective, resisting materialism, penetrating to the core of our being, defining ourselves, being truthful to ourselves and others. Not sure about that one. Honestly, I was surprised that he was gay and decent.”
“Be serious!”
“You didn’t go to high school here. You won’t know. The stuff those Black and Latino guys said about gays — in English, in French, in Spanish, in Creole. If it was just name calling alone: chi-chi man, battybwoy, faggot, bullerman, ma sissy, ma comère, fiffy, tapette, folle, pédé, maricón, woman-man, fruit, antipympym, hueco, güicoy — it wouldn’t be half as bad. They’d speculate about what they’d do if a gay guy were to approach them. They were certain gays want to sleep with every man they lay eyes on. They all claimed to have had an uncle or a cousin who’d beaten up — in some cases killed — a gay pedophile. And there was the way they treated Milford and his boyfriend John, these two Black out-gay guys in school.”
“Gina mentioned them last night.”
“Correct. They called John la Gallina and Milford Millicent. Every day — every day, until Milford fought back — those two had to run the gauntlet. On good days they blew them kisses and pinched their buns. On bad days they slammed them into lockers, always with a mocking, ‘Watch where you going, man’; or tripped them when they walked by, followed by: ‘Jeez, man, wha’ you doing down there? You after my cock or what?’ Or they’d get a lecture from one of the Jamaicans: ‘Millicent, where you pick up yo’ nastiness? How come you ‘low yourself for catch honky disease? Is cause o’ all the honky blood in you, or what? If you been live in Jamaica, man, them would o’ beat it out o ‘ your backside or else kill you — long time, man! You think is joke I joking? I serious. Kill yo’ ass long time.’ Sometimes they’d sing ‘Burn Chi-Chi Man-Them’ and ‘Boom! Bye-Bye! Inna Batty Bwoy Head,’ shape their hands into a pistol and shout: ‘Pow! Battybwoy fi dead. Me say, shoot the batty bwoy-them. Kill them. Them no fi live none ‘t all.’ Jay, I felt like sputum.”
“That was their objective.”
“And then one day the unexpected happened. ‘Millicent, is true unno kaka hole does get slack and unno does have for plug it with cotton wool like them does do dead people?’ This from Alfred.
“‘Didn’t I see a roll of paper towels in your locker?’ Milford countered. ‘Know why? Guys like you are straight in the day and get fisted at night.’
“Silence. We could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights.
“Alfred lurched at him and swung at his head. Milford dodged the blow, kneed him in the groin, and delivered a quick punch. Alfred doubled over. Milford kicked him several times. ‘You fucking dunce, fucking pile o’ shit! What the fuck you know about me? Fucking twit! I ain’t no fucking Rueben James.’ His hazel eyes flamed. His whitish skin was flushed red. His broad nose flared . . . Shithead Illich was on recess duty about ten metres down the corridor from us. He took them both to Bégin’s office.
“You remember the day I threatened to bring home a Uzi and blow off your heads?”
I nodded.
“Well, that was a week after that fight, the day Alfred and Milford returned after their suspension. Alfred brought a shotgun to school to kill Milford. He showed us the shotgun in class and said he would off Milford at lunch. Richard Hazan went to get Bégin. Bégin came to the class and sent everyone out except Alfred. The police arrived even before we cleared the stairs.
“Milford and John.” He took a deep breath. “Those guys were brave or just plain stupid. John, la Gallina: skinny, with a waist that couldn’t have been more than 25; loose-jointed, with a hip-swishing walk, dark-skinned like me. He was in geek classes, doing advanced everything. That only made it worse. Milford was in advanced English and French. John and Milford changed schools the following September, and Alfred ended up in jail a few months later. Too old for Batshaw. He was already 18 and one of Nine Lives’ gorillas — enforcers.”
Paul grew silent, looked around the dinette, seemed a trifle shaken, was probably thinking he barely avoided going to Batshaw.
“So, you see, Jay, I did everything to cover up, even fooled around with girls. I’m into men, period. One girl told her friends: ‘Him not cock, me dear, him is capon.’ Whenever they wanted to diss me they’d say: ‘Meatman, is true you’re a capon?’” He swallowed loud, lowered his head, and stared mutely at the table for close to a minute.
“Thanks, man, thanks for taking me to Bill’s lectures. He saved my life.” He nodded slowly — several times. “I found his number in the phone book and called him. He told me to come to his Concordia office. I told him how I was back in St. Vincent, how abusive I was to you and Ma and how trapped I felt; how I hated myself, my body, my sexual desires, my pot dependence; how angry I was because of my asthma and sexuality; how unjust and unfair it all was; the depression I’d just come out of; that it was all too much for me. I put my head on his desk and howled.
“When I quieted, he said: ‘Paul, it’s not easy. Classmates, television, advertisers. First, they try to humiliate you by pushing false ideals. Then they try to con you into believing they can transform you. They use hypnotic ads to make you swallow the lies they peddle and want you addicted to. There’s no valid reason, Paul — no valid reason at all — for people to hate their bodies or themselves. But advertisers want us feel we’re Cinderella’s sisters and tell us their products can turn us into Cinderella. Paul, if a body were so valuable, we wouldn’t get rid of corpses . . . The body is a container for
consciousness — nothing more. And consciousness, awareness, is what we should cultivate. Our intellects, our compassion for others — that’s what we should cultivate. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we shouldn’t take care of our bodies, eating well and exercising to make them function properly. You don’t want the container to leak or get brittle. But we don’t have to think of bodies in terms of ugly and beautiful. Beauty and ugliness are in the acts we commit. First commandment: Love yourself. Second: Define yourself; that is to say, resist all those who come ready to stuff you into their moulds.’
“Jay, next, he made me look him in the eye, and he asked me: ‘What is it about same-sex desire that bothers you?’
“‘It’s freaky. It’s not natural.’
“‘Not natural. I see. You were made in a lab, or was it a factory?’
“‘I don’t understand.’
“‘You mean you gestated in a womb like every other human being? Who the hell are we to say that any part of what nature gives birth to isn’t natural? The gall! You’ve fallen into the trap set by our persecutors. They hide behind religious tomes and laws they and their ancestors create to justify their dirty work. They are the perverts, not us. Ignore them, Paul, and look to your own happiness.’
“Jay, over the next two months, he and I talked about all sorts of things: about his first boyfriend; about having to tell his mother — his father died when he was 12 — he would stop coming home if she didn’t stop pestering him about grandchildren; about a gay uncle who’d committed suicide because his father had forced him to get married and he couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife she wasn’t what he wanted; about hate mail his students or colleagues — he didn’t know which — sent him in the early years of his university career. ‘We have to cultivate an inner strength to fight all this and make sure it doesn’t poison our psyche.’ He told me to phone him if I ever needed to talk.” Paul quieted, relaxed, grew contemplative. “Jay, older gay men should do more of this for younger men who’re struggling with their sexuality.”
Paul stayed silent for a few seconds. “And it wasn’t just being gay. I’d failed Grama. Not the sex thing. I’d have shared that with her. Easily. More easily than with you. Grama was an intelligent woman with a brain twice Ma’s, and centuries more enlightened. She gave Brady’s mother quite a lecture about a month after he and Jack fled Havre. I can still see his mother, in a blue-and-red plaid head-wrap and loose calico dress, talking to Grama. ‘Thank God he run way to Trinidad. Me hope he stay there till he dead, and don’t come back here to disgrace me further. Not even for my funeral. Ma Kirton, is two weeks I did not put my head outside my door. Ma Kirton, shame almost kill me. That boy disgrace me. My only child, Ma Kirton: the only one. I did everything to raise that boy to fear the Lord. What more I could o’ do?’
“‘Don’t stop loving and supporting him. Is not his fault. Educated people say that is how they born. You can’t change how nature made you. These things are beyond our understanding and our control.’
“‘But Ma Kirton the bible condemn it.’
“‘Plenty things the bible condemn. You buy salted pigtail from me all the time. The bible condemns that. That dress you wearing, it’s made from polyester and cotton. The bible says you should be killed for wearing that. Love your son, you hear me, love your son, and give him all the support you can.’”
Paul stopped talking. He looked around the room, got up, stretched, and then sat back down. “All that stuff’s been already archived. That load is on the ground now, and I won’t be hoisting it again.” He stared at me intensely. “Why aren’t you and Jonathan together?”
I looked away and began recalling what I’d told Jonathan, and decided to skip all but the bit about wanting a wife and children.
“Sounds like a cop-out.”
“You don’t see my dilemma?”
“What dilemma?”
“Bisexuality. Sleeping with a man, desiring a woman. Sleeping with a woman, desiring a man.”
“So, do both. People do combined sex all the time. In threesomes and foursomes even. I’ve heard stories of married men who take gays home to screw them and their wives. Get a dose of the real world. See sex as recreation, like a tennis match. One of Carlos’ friends wanted us to take part in an orgy. I was tempted, but in the end I chickened out.”
“Settle for pickups, right? Pleasure tools — and discard them like paper plates and cups. Right, Paul?”
“Wrong analogy. It’s more like recycling. You and Jonathan are like two Victorian biddies without hats and lorgnettes. A good reason you should hitch.”
“Your reasoning makes all Victorian biddies lesbians.” I chuckled. “Paul, I’m not sexually attracted to him.”
“Come on! He’s not that bad. He’s not bad-looking at all. Just kind o’ intense. Wound up, that’s all. Nothing there a few orgasms won’t uncoil. He’s tall, well proportioned. A trifle effeminate, but when his blue eyes light up and he smiles — oh boy. And his buns are cute. Seriously, Jay, there’s more than enough there to turn you on. And he has a mind. Think about that. Loyal partners with good minds are hard to find. Most people are one or the other, not both.”
“Sounds like you’re attracted to him . . . Jonathan’s a brother, Paul.”
“You’re rationalizing. He wants you for a lover.”
“Well, I didn’t know that at the beginning. Gays talk about David and Jonathan being lovers . . .”
“Yeah, I read Stephen Schecter’s poem after I heard a review of it on CBC. I was tempted to pass it on to you, but I was afraid you’d out me to Ma.”
“Jonathan used to tell me about his sexual frustrations and the kind o’ guys that turned him on: dark guys, foncé. Mediterranean, Latin-American types, I thought. For a while he dated a Portuguese guy.”
“Probably an ebonophile. Useless baggage, Jay. Drop it. Just jump into the sack with him. If you have to, take a couple of drinks before to loosen up or smoke a joint. Your hormones will do the rest. God, you’re so earnest!”
For a while neither of us spoke.
“Constraints,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Constraints.”
“You know, this is like so tiresome. Get real. Gay men meet and have sex in dark places without even seeing each other’s faces, without telling each other their names. You’re squirming. I’ll skip the rest.”
Another long silence. Paul broke it. “A little bed-hopping hurts no one. You’ll lose Jonathan. You know how hard it is to find meaningful love in the gay world? Harder still after you’ve passed your prime.”
“When’s that?”
“Thirty. Look at the websites where gay guys post their profiles, you’ll see. I saw one the other day by this overweight, midget of a guy, 61 years old and looking every day of 80. You know what it said? ‘If you’re over 30, fat, ugly, and effeminate, please don’t contact me.’ Jay, you have two and a half years — two and a half!” He grinned. “Afterwards it’s a fire sale.”
28
WITH THE MONEY I inherited from Anna’s insurance and pension fund — I didn’t need to spend the $46, 000 I’d got directly from Grama — I bought the condo I’m moving into today. The week before Anna took sick, she and I had gone over the details of the type of condo she should buy. She’d wanted one with three bedrooms, so there’d always be a room for Paul. It was then that I became aware of the wealth my grandmother had left. Petroleum, Coca Cola, and other shares Granddad had bought in the 1940s netted over US$300,000, and there were the shares Grama had bought in IBM, Cable and Wireless, British Telecom and other companies. They were worth almost as much. I gave Paul his share and begged him not to spend the capital. “We trivialize what we haven’t worked for. I plan to repay what I’ve taken to buy the condo, and to give the earnings from Grama’s money to charity. Just remember that you want to be a writer. Earnings from that money might well make the differe
nce between eating and starving.”
“As long as there’s food in your house, Jay, I’ll never starve.”
“Don’t assume that I’ll always be around.”
He didn’t answer.
Two weeks earlier, Paul said he hoped cultural differences wouldn’t “come between the three of us.”
“Three of us?”
“Well, you know, when Carlos comes and we’re living together . . . ”
“Living together!” . . . “Oh no. I need my own space.”
He stared at me stone-faced, shoulders slumped.
“Paul, my second bedroom will be my study. I’m not saying that . . .” — I stopped — you couldn’t stay with me in a pinch, if you needed to. It was unwise to give Paul such an opening.
“What are you not saying?”
“Paul, let’s get this straight . . .” I took three loud breaths before continuing. “Paul, I came to Canada, glad that finally, finally, I could be close with my mother. While she was in St. Vincent I couldn’t. She was too afraid of Daddy. It’s like she didn’t know if she had the right to show me affection. Whenever he was around she was afraid any affectionate gesture from her to me would anger him. One time he shouted at her: ‘Stop hugging him up? You want him to grow up like a gal?’ Then Ma went away and left us with Grama. Grama was good and kind to me, but I think she saw me as something already warped by my father. Maybe it was I who rejected her. Maybe I felt that if I got close to her I would be disloyal to Ma. Who knows?
“And then I came here . . . And you and Ma made me grow up faster than I wanted . . . I had to comfort Ma when you abused her; when your abuse got to be too much and she wanted to put you out, I had to defend you. You want to know why I’m not involved with anyone? I’ll tell you. I’m weary. Exhausted. My own space — peace, rest — it’s what I long for.
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