The Inner Circle

by T. C. Boyle

  “Yes, but—”

  “The one who—let me see if I’ve got this right—the one who masturbates infants in the cradle and rapes little boys and girls? That Mr. X?”

  “Oh, come on, Iris,” I said, “get off it, will you? He’s an extreme example, that’s all, the icing on the cake—and Prok is in heaven over it.”

  We’d been over some of this ground before. Mac had been transcribing Mr. X’s diaries for the files so that we could return the originals to him, and naturally, all of us were excited and had been discussing some of the revelations the diaries contained, and sure, I’m guilty of bringing home my work like so many other men, but my enthusiasm was genuine and it hurt to have Iris belittle it. Mr. X was a real find. A gem. The extreme case that gives the lie to the norm. He’d started his career when he was a child himself, having been initiated into heterosexual activity by his grandmother, and homosexual sex by his father, and, ultimately, he had sexual contact with seventeen members of his extended family. Over the course of his life—he was then sixty-three—he had had sexual relations with six hundred preadolescent males and two hundred pre-adolescent females, in addition to consummating innumerable sex acts with adults of both sexes and several species of animals. He was a prodigy, no doubt about it, and he had data—and experience—we could make use of. To me, that was all that mattered. Iris felt differently.

  “Yes,” she said, turning to me as I fumbled to take the dish from her hand and rinse it under the faucet, “but I teach those kids. Second graders, John. They’re seven years old. They’re like puppies, like lambs, as innocent and sweet as anything you’d ever want to see, you know that. And then you have the gall to stand there and tell me you’re excited because you get to talk to some monster who’s devoted his life to molesting them? I’m supposed to be happy for you? Tell me. Am I supposed to like that?”

  “I’m not condoning his behavior,” I said, “it’s just that I, well, I feel it’s important to document it, because, well, because it’s already happened, for one thing, and there’s really nothing I or anyone else can do about that—”

  “No? How about turning him over to the police? How about locking him up? Huh? That’s what you can do. And Prok can too.”

  “Listen,” I said, backing away from her now—just setting the wet plate down in the dish rack and backing away from her before I had a chance to let the resentment come up in me—“that’s not the point and you know it.”

  She’d swung round on me, arms folded over her breast, hands glistening with the beads of wet suds. “When are you leaving?” she asked, holding my eyes.

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “Is Purvis going?”

  I nodded.

  “How long? Not that it matters, because being deserted week in and week out is what I’ve come to expect, haven’t I? ‘Where’s your husband?’ everybody asks me. ‘Oh,’ they say, ‘another business trip, then? Don’t you miss him?’ Well, I do, John, I do miss you.”

  I dropped my chin, gave a shrug to minimize the idea of it, to show I was listening and empathizing and that it was just one of those things but I’d be back as soon as I could and that I missed her too. In reality, though, I was looking forward to leaving—not because of her, of course, because I loved her and would just as soon have been there with her—but because we were going west, way out west, and to that point in my life I’d never even crossed the Mississippi. “Well, it’ll, I’m afraid—because he lives out west, in Albuquerque. New Mexico, that is …” I trailed off. Shrugged again. “Two weeks,” I said.

  “Two weeks?”

  “Yes, well, we have to drive—and, I don’t know, it’s a long ways, something like fifteen hundred miles or more. Each way.”

  “And what am I supposed to do in the meanwhile? You want me to lie in there on the bed and, what do you call it, stimulate myself with my finger? You want me to count orgasms for you, John? Would that be helpful?”

  “No,” I said, “no, I don’t think so.”

  “What then? Violet and me? Should we stimulate each other? And then record it for our sex diaries?”

  “Iris,” I said.

  “What?” she said. “What?”

  2

  As I try to place it now, I do believe it must have been the summer of 1944 when the three of us—Prok, Corcoran and I—set out on our trip west. It was hot, I remember that much, oppressively so, and it grew hotter as we swung south, toward Memphis and the network of highways and country roads that would take us west through Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle and on into the pale, bleached mountains of New Mexico. Prok had the windows down—he liked the feel of the air on his face, and any other arrangement would have been impossible in that steam bath of a climate, but the incessant rush of the wind made conversation difficult and brought us into intimate contact with a whole array of angry wasps, dazed moths and partially dismembered leafhoppers, katydids and the like. There were insects down my collar, in my hair, emerging from the creases of my short-sleeved shirt. “If only they were edible!” I shouted from the backseat to Prok, who was shouting over the roar to Corcoran, who was seated beside him and bobbing his head to some internal rhythm. Prok paused to glance over his shoulder and shout back, “They are!” then hit the accelerator.

  Fields cantered by, houses and barns and outbuildings in need of paint, billboards exhorting Christian fervor and advocating the consumption of snuff and chewing tobacco. The countryside smelled of silage, of rot and fresh-turned muck. There were mules everywhere, stage-struck cattle, chickens that never could seem to resist running out into the road. We stopped at small-town cafes and stared at plates of eggs and grits and fried sidemeat, barely able to muster the energy to lift the forks to our mouths. Sweetened iced tea—by the pitcherful—saved our lives.

  It was an adventure, for all that—the greatest adventure of my life to that point—and as Prok expatiated on the Kama Sutra, Swedish pornography, the erotic art of pre-Columbian America and a host of other subjects, and Corcoran and I swapped seats so that we could alternate stealing catnaps and providing an audience for him, I felt as if the whole world were opening up before me. I was heading west, with my colleagues, and every mile that rolled under our tires brought new sights and sensations—Oklahoma, I thought, I’m in Oklahoma—and though I wasn’t yet twenty-six, I felt like a man of the world, an exotic, a seasoned traveler and explorer nonpareil. Other men were off at war, experiencing the camaraderie of combat, but we were here, comrades in science, watching the plains and the washes and hoodoos roll away before us in the naked glare of the morning and the beholden mystery of the night.

  It took us eight days to get there, Prok forever snaking down this irresistible turning or that, collecting galls out of habit, bumping ten miles along a dirt path just to erect our tent by an unmoving brown band of water someone had once called a river. As I’ve said, I wasn’t much for camping—and Corcoran was even worse—but Prok more than made up for us. His energy was explosive. Even after sitting behind the wheel from early morning till late in the afternoon (he insisted on doing all the driving himself), he sprang out of the car to set up camp, collect armloads of scrub oak or mesquite and cook us flapjacks and eggs or even the odd fish he’d managed to pull out of a hidden puddle in the time it took the cookfire to die down to coals. He was indefatigable, as solicitous of our comfort and welfare as a scoutmaster—or better yet, a big brother—and as genial and full of high spirits as I’d ever seen him. He educated us in the fine points of woodcraft, entertained us round the campfire with stories of his gall wasp expeditions in the Sierra Madre, allowed us the solace of my flask and the bottle of brandy Corcoran had brought along against the chill of the night, though there was no chill and Prok himself had little interest in liquor except as an agent in loosening the tongues of his subjects.

  There was, as you might expect, nudity as well. Prok cooked in the nude, set up the tent in the nude, hiked and bird-watched and swam in the nude, and encouraged us to do the sam
e. My tan came back. My muscles hardened. And Corcoran, fair-skinned as he was, burned and burned again until he peeled like an egg and showed off the beginnings of his own tan.

  And, of course, there was sex. Prok expected it—you couldn’t very well hold back or risk being branded prudish or sex shy—and Corcoran and I complied, with varying levels of enthusiasm. I remember one night—we were in a motor court in Las Vegas, New Mexico, flush with the heady triumph of having arrived safe and sound and looking forward to our rendezvous with the exemplary Mr. X in the morning—when I walked in on Prok and Corcoran stretched naked across the bed. Prok glanced up, disengaged himself, and said, “Milk, come join us.”

  Did I want to? Honestly? No, not then. It was too complicated, what with the auras of Iris, Violet and Mac hovering over the scene and my own limited H-history, but Prok could be extraordinarily charming and persuasive and there were no hidebound moral strictures or antiquated notions of fidelity to hold us back, not here in a New Mexico motel, not anywhere, not in Bloomington or Indianapolis or New York, and so, in the end, I acquiesced. Why? I suppose because it was just easier that way. Certainly that was part of it, but to be honest, there was more to it than that: I loved him. I did. Not in the way I loved Iris, perhaps, or even Mac, but in a deeper way, in the way a patriot loves his country or a zealot his God, and if that love meant molding my needs to his, then so be it.

  At any rate, the following morning we took the cold shower Prok always insisted upon when we were traveling, winter or summer, outdoors or in-, toweled ourselves vigorously, sat down to an anticipatory breakfast at the local diner, and went back to the room to await Mr. X’s arrival. Sitting there in the unmodulated glare of the morning, our fingers tapping idly at the scuffed furniture while we belched softly over our scrambled eggs and waffles, pencils sharpened and ready, we couldn’t help speculating about the man. He was sixty-three, yes, but a sexual giant for all that, and we pictured an individual of imposing build, broad-shouldered, with big, work-hardened hands and catapulting arms, a man with the strength and tenacity to put all our other high raters into another category altogether, a kind of Paul Bunyan of sex, towering over the field. But of course expectations are meant to be defeated and looks can be deceiving.

  Mr. X was five feet five inches tall, one hundred twenty-two pounds. He walked with a limp, hunched his shoulders forward and appeared, if anything, older than his years. Anyone over forty seemed ancient to me in those days—aside from Prok, of course—but this man, Mr. X, might have told us he was eighty and I wouldn’t have been surprised. The flesh beneath his chin hung in folds, and his hands were maculated with liver spots. He was almost entirely bald (a sign of virility, Prok maintained, if you excepted the three of us present and the legend of Samson and Delilah), and his face was cross-hatched with infinitely fine lines and the deeper gouges of age and experience. When he first came to the door I thought there must be some mistake, but Prok never missed a beat. “Welcome,” he said, holding the door open for him, “we’ve been expecting you.”

  Our subject stood there expressionless in the doorway, a cordovan suitcase at his feet, his eyes glittering like flecks of glass in a dry riverbed. He looked round the room a moment, took note of Corcoran and me, then lifted his upper lip in the simulacrum of a grin. Something shrewd came into his eyes. “Dr. Kinsey, I presume?” he said with a mock bow, and let out a low, hoarse laugh.

  “Yes,” Prok returned, taking his hand, “Alfred C. Kinsey. It’s a great pleasure. And these are my colleagues, Purvis Corcoran and John Milk. But can I get you anything? Coffee? Juice? Perhaps a rum cocktail, if it’s not too early?”

  In the suitcase were the remaining volumes of his sex diaries, which included detailed descriptions of all the omnifarious encounters he’d ever had, as well as measurements of the various penises and clitorises with which he’d personally come into contact over the course of his long career; photographs he’d taken of sex acts with a whole variety of individuals, in many of which he himself appeared, first as a young man, then middle-aged and finally elderly; a selection of sex aids and lubricants; and, puzzlingly, a single carpenter’s drill fitted with a half-inch bit. After shaking hands with Corcoran and me, Mr. X unceremoniously flung the suitcase on the bed, flipped the twin latches, and began passing the artifacts round the room as if they were holy relics.

  The photographs—there were a hundred or more—had the most immediate effect. I remember one in particular, which showed only the hand of an adult, with its outsized fingers, manipulating the genitalia of an infant—a boy, with a tiny, twig-like erection—and the look on the infant’s face, its eyes unfocused, mouth open, hands groping at nothing, and the sensation it gave me. I felt myself go cold all over, as if I were still in the bathtub, standing rigid beneath the icy shower. I glanced at Corcoran, whose face showed nothing, and then at Prok, who studied the photograph a moment and pronounced it “Very interesting, very interesting indeed.” He leaned in close to me to point out the detail, and said, “You see, Milk, here is definitive proof of infantile sexuality, and whether it’s an anomaly or not, of course, is yet to be demonstrated statistically—”

  Still bent over the open suitcase, shuffling through his trove, our subject let out a soft whistle. “Believe me,” he said, “it’s no anomaly.”

  We let that hang in the air a moment, and then Prok said, “But the drill—what’s the significance of that?”

  “Oh, this?” the little man murmured, extracting the thing from the suitcase with a bemused grin, and all I could think of was some extreme form of sadomasochism, disfigurement, torture. I felt my stomach sink. Despite myself, I’d begun to feel distinctly uncomfortable, and I glanced at Prok for reassurance, but Prok was fixated on the instrument in the man’s hand, utterly absorbed.

  Mr. X took his time. He shrugged. Looked at each of us in succession, then dropped his eyes, and you could see he was a man who enjoyed an audience. “It’s for drilling.”

  Prok gave him a look. He was being his most patient self, smiling along with the little man, encouraging and respectful, without the least hint of condescension. He’d revealed to me the night before that he’d felt a real sense of urgency in coming here to collect Mr. X’s history because the man was in ill health and could die at any moment and be lost forever to science, and he’d made no bones about it: this was our most significant interview to date. “Yes?” he said. “And to what purpose?”

  “Well, of course, you know my work—aside from sex, I mean?”

  We did. The man worked for a government agency, which necessitated a great deal of travel and overnight accommodations in various cities around the country.

  “I observe,” he said.

  Prok wasn’t following him. “Observe?”

  “That’s right,” he said in his soft, guttural tones, and he moved to the far wall to demonstrate. He put his ear to the paneling for a moment, and then, satisfied that the room was unoccupied—or that the occupants were either asleep or out of the room—he went down on one knee and with a quick noiseless rotation of his right hand and shoulder made a neat peephole just above the baseboard. “Here,” he said, “here, have a look”—and we did, each in turn—“because you’d be surprised what you might see, and how much.” He paused to collect his breath. “Because people—well, you know, when they’re in a hotel room, safe from observation and the routine of their lives, they tend to do things they might not do otherwise. Oh, yeah. I’ve seen it all. Whores, monkeys, midgets. Everything. You’d be surprised.”

  What came next was even more startling—we’d been voyeurs ourselves, after all, and the notion of observing a private act unseen was within the realm of our experience—but this man, this dynamo, had much more to offer us. Somehow the conversation turned to masturbation and masturbatory technique, even before we’d formally begun the interview. “You know, Dr. Kinsey,” the little man was saying, comfortable now in the armchair by the window, a cigarette in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other, “I am the
most highly sexed individual you will ever come across. Number one. Numero uno. There’s nobody like me. Nobody.”

  Prok, accommodating but empirically skeptical: “Is that so?”

  “Oh, yes. As for masturbation, even now, at my age, I probably—what term do you like to use? Beat off?—beat off three or four times a day. And I can go from nothing to orgasm in ten seconds flat, and tell me if that isn’t a record?”

  Corcoran, seated on the bed, one leg crossed at the knee, and his pencil poised over the position sheet—we would be simultaneously recording this interview—said casually, “That’s very impressive. But shouldn’t we begin now? To get all this for the record, I mean?”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course we believe you,” Prok put in.

  “Just watch.” And before anyone could demur, Mr. X had his trousers down. “Anyone have a second hand on their watch? You?” he said, pointing to me. “What was your name?”

  “Milk,” I said. “John Milk.”

  “Well, do you?” His pubic hair was white and his penis lay shriveled in the nest of it. He was an old man, shrunken and old, and I wanted to look away, but I didn’t.

  “Yes,” I said. “Well, yes. I think so.”

  “Okay,” he said, “you tell me when,” and I looked to Prok and Prok nodded and I said, “When,” and this dried-up little homunculus of a man actually did it—went from flaccid to hard to orgasm in just ten seconds. It was amazing. Simply amazing. None of us had ever seen anything like it. There was a moment of suspension and release, and I almost thought Corcoran was going to burst into applause.

  A few years later, famously, we would film some one thousand men in the process of masturbating in order to reach a determination as to whether the majority spurted or dribbled (seventy-three percent dribbled, incidentally, myself included), but to this point we’d never observed—or requested—a demonstration. It took us a moment to recover ourselves as Mr. X mopped up and wriggled back into his trousers, and then Corcoran lit a cigarette despite a sharp glance from Prok, and we sat down to record the history—all three of us, simultaneously, barely taking time to break for the bathroom, or for food and drink, for that matter.