A Place I've Never Been

by David Leavitt

  Laurent had been to America only once, when he was fourteen. His parents had sent him to New York, where he was to meet an aunt who lived in Washington, but the aunt’s son was in a car accident and she couldn’t come. For a week he had stayed alone at the Waldorf-Astoria, a little French boy who didn’t speak English, instructed by his mother to avoid at all costs the subways, the streets, the world. These days, when the meanderings of my life take me to the giant, glittering lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria, I sometimes think I see him, in his French schoolboy’s suit, hiding behind a giant ficus, or cautiously fingering magazines in the gift shop. I imagine him running down the halls, or pacing the confines of his four-walled room, or sitting on the big bed, entranced by the babbling cartoon creatures inhabiting his television.

  Craig is by nature a suburbanite. He grew up in Westport, Connecticut, where his father is a prominent dermatologist and the first Jew ever admitted to the country club. One evening in college he embarrassed me by getting into a long argument with a girl from Mount Kisco on the ridiculous subject of which was a better suburb—Mount Kisco or Westport. On the way back to our dorm, I berated him. “Jesus, Craig,” I said, “I can’t believe you’d stoop so low as to argue about a subject as ridiculous as who grew up in a better suburb.” But he didn’t care. “She’s crazy,” he insisted. “Mount Kisco doesn’t compare to Westport. I’m not arguing about it because I have a stake in it, only because it’s true. Westport is much nicer—the houses are much farther apart, and the people, they’re just classier, better-looking and with higher-up positions. Mount Kisco’s where you go on the way to Westport.”

  Suburbs mattered to Craig. He apparently saw no implicit contradiction in their mattering to him at the same moment that he was, say, being given a blowjob by a law student in one of the infamous library men’s rooms, or offering me a list of call numbers that would point to the library’s hidden stashes of pornography. But Craig has never been given much to introspection. He is blessed by a remarkable clarity of vision, which allows him to see through the levels, the aboves and belows, that plague the rest of us. There are no contradictions in his world; nothing is profane, but then again, nothing is sacred.

  He was in Europe, that same summer as me, on his parents’ money, on a last big bash before law school. In Paris I’d get postcards from Ibiza, from Barcelona, where he’d had his passport stolen, from Florence (this one showing a close-up of the David’s genitalia), and he would talk about Nils, Rutger, and especially Nino, whom he’d met in the men’s room at the train station. I enjoyed his postcards. They provided a much-needed connection with my old life, my pre-Paris self. Things were not going well with Laurent, who, it had taken me only a few days to learn, lived in a state of continuous and deep depression. He would arrive afternoons in my apartment, silent, and land in the armchair, where for hours, his eyes lowered, he would read the Tintin books I kept around to improve my French, and sometimes watch Les Quatres Fantastiques on television. The candy-colored cartoon adventures of Tintin, androgynous boy reporter, kept him busy until it was nearly time for him to go to work, at which point I would nudge my way into his lap and say, “Qu’est-ce que c’est? I want to help you.” But all he would tell me was that he was depressed because he was losing his car. His aunt, who owned it, was taking it back, and now he would have to ride the train in to work every day, and take a cab back late at night. I suggested he might stay with me, and he shook his head. “La petite Marianne,” he reminded me. Of course. La petite Marianne.

  I think now that in continually begging Laurent to tell me what was worrying him, it was I who pushed him away. My assumption that “talking about it” or “opening up” was the only way for him to feel better was very American, and probably misguided. And of course, my motives were not, as I imagined, entirely unselfish, for at the heart of all that badgering was a deep fear that he did not love me, and that that was why he held back from me, refused to tell me what was wrong. Now I look back on Laurent’s life in those days, and I see he probably wasn’t hiding things from me. He probably really was depressed because he was losing his car, though that was only the tip of the iceberg. His fragile mother depended on him totally, his father was nowhere to be seen, his future, as a literature student at a second-rate university, was not rosy. It is quite possible, I see now, that in his sadness it was comforting for him simply to be in my presence, my warm apartment on a late afternoon, reading Tintin books, drinking tea. But I wasn’t content to offer him just that. I wanted him to notice me. I wanted to be his cure. I wish I’d known that then; I might not have driven him off.

  In any case, I was very happy when Craig finally came to visit, that summer, because it meant I would have something to occupy my time other than my worrisome thoughts about Laurent. It was late July by then, and the prospect of August, when Paris empties itself of its native population and becomes a desiccated land of closed shops, wandered by aimless foreigners, was almost sufficiently unappealing to send me back to business school. In ten days Laurent would quit his job and take off to the seaside with his mother. There was no mention of my possibly going with him, though I would have gladly done so, and could imagine with relish staying by myself in a little pension near the big, elegant hotel where Laurent and his mother went every year, going for tea and sitting near them on the outdoor promenade, watching them, waiting for Laurent’s wink. There would be secret rendezvous, long walks on beaches—but it was all a dream. Laurent would have been furious if I’d shown up.

  And so I was happily looking forward to Craig, to the stories I knew he’d tell, the sexual exploits he’d so willingly narrate, and in such great detail. I met his train at the Gare de Lyon. There he was, on schedule, in alpine shorts and Harvard T-shirt, the big ubiquitous backpack stooping him over. We embraced, and took the métro back to my apartment. He looked tired, thin. He had lost his traveler’s checks in Milan, he explained, had had his wallet stolen in Venice. He had also wasted a lot of money renting double rooms at exorbitant prices just for himself, and was worried that his parents wouldn’t agree to wire him more. I tried to sympathize, but it seemed somehow fitting that he should now be suffering the consequences of his irresponsibility. Stingy with anyone else, he was rapacious in spending his parents’ money on himself—a trait I have observed often in firstborn sons of Jewish families. (I myself was the second-born son, and live frugally to this day.)

  We went out, that night, for dinner, to a Vietnamese restaurant I liked and ate in often, and Craig started to tell me about his trip—the beaches at Ibiza, the bars in Amsterdam. “It’s been fun,” he concluded. “Everything’s been pretty good, except this one bad thing happened.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Well, I was raped in Madrid.”

  Delicately he wrapped a spring roll in a sprig of mint and popped it in his mouth.

  “What?” I said.

  “Just what I told you. I was raped in Madrid.”

  I put down my fork. “Craig,” I said. “Come on. What do you mean, ‘raped’?”

  “Forcibly taken. Fucked against my will. What better definition do you want?”

  He took a swig of water.

  I sat back in my chair. As often happens to me when I’m struck speechless, a lewd, involuntary smile pulled apart my lips. I tried to suppress it.

  “How did it happen?” I asked, as casually as I could.

  “The usual way,” he said, and laughed. “I was walking down the street, cruising a little bit, and this guy said ‘Hola’ to me. He was cute, young. I said ‘Hola’ back. Well, to make a long story short, we ended up back at his apartment. He spoke a little English, and he explained to me that he was in a big hurry. Then there was a knock on the door and this other guy walked in. They talked very quickly in Spanish, and he told me to get undressed. I didn’t much want to do it anymore, but I took off my clothes—”

  “Why?” I interrupted.

  He shrugged. “Once you’ve gone that far it’s hard not to,” he sa
id. “Anyway, as far as I could gather, he and his friend were arguing over whether the friend would have sex with us or just watch. After a while I stopped trying to understand and just sat down on the bed. It didn’t take me too long to figure out the guy was married and that was why he was in such a hurry. I could tell from all the woman’s things around the apartment.

  “Anyway, they finally decided the friend would just watch. The first guy—the one who said ‘Hola’—saw I was naked and he took off his clothes and then—Well, I tried to explain I only did certain things, ‘safe sex’ and all, but he didn’t listen to me. He just jumped me. He was very strong, and the worst thing was, he really smelled. He hadn’t washed for a long time, he was really disgusting.” Craig leaned closer to me. “You know,” he said, “that I don’t get fucked. I don’t like it and I won’t do it. And I kept trying to tell him this, but he just wouldn’t listen to me. I don’t think he meant to force me. I think he just thought I was playing games and that I was really enjoying it. I mean, he didn’t hit me or anything, though he held my wrists behind my back for a while. But then he stopped.”

  He ate another spring roll, and called the waiter over to ask for chopsticks. There were no tears in his eyes; no change was visible in his face. A deep horror welled in me, stronger than anything I’d ever felt with Craig, so strong I just wanted to laugh, the same way I’d laughed that afternoon in Central Park when he showed me the secret places where men meet other men.

  “Are you O.K.?” I asked instead, mustering a sudden, surprising self-control. “Do you need to see a doctor?”

  He shrugged. “I’m just mad because he came in my ass even though I asked him not to. Who knows what he might have been carrying? Also, it hurt. But I didn’t bleed or anything. I didn’t come, of course, and he couldn’t have cared less, which really pissed me off. He finished, told me to get dressed fast. I guess he was worried his wife would come home.”

  I looked at the table, and Craig served himself more food.

  “I think if that happened to me I’d have to kill myself,” I said quietly.

  “I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal out of it,” Craig said. “I mean, it didn’t hurt that much or anything. Anyway, it was just once.”

  I pushed back my chair, stretched out my legs. I had no idea what to say next. “Aren’t you going to eat any more?” Craig asked, and I nodded no, I had lost my appetite.

  “Well, I’m going to finish these noodles,” he said, and scooped some onto his plate. I watched him eat. I wanted to know if he was really feeling nothing, as he claimed. But his face was impassive, unreadable. Clearly he was not going to let me know.

  Afterwards, we walked along the mossy sidewalks of the Seine—“good cruising,” the Spartacus Guide had advised us, but “very AYOR”—and Craig told me about Nils, Rutger, Nino, etc. I, in turn, told him about Laurent. He was mostly interested in the matter of his foreskin. When I started discussing our problems—Laurent’s depression, my fear that he was pulling away from me—Craig grew distant, hardly seemed to be listening to me. “Uh-huh,” he’d say, in response to every phrase I’d offer, and look away, or over his shoulder, until finally I gave up.

  We crossed the Île de la Cité, and Craig asked about going to a bar, but I told him I was too tired, and he admitted he probably was as well. He hadn’t gotten a couchette on the train up here, and the passport-control people had woken him up six or seven times during the night.

  Back at my apartment, we undressed together. (Since Laurent, I had lost my modesty.) I watched as Craig, like any good first son, carefully folded his shirt and balled his socks before climbing into the makeshift bed I had created for him on my floor. These old habits, taught long ago by his mother, were second nature to him, which I found touching. I looked at him in the bed. He had lost weight, and a spray of fine red pimples covered his back.

  Raped, I can hardly say that word. Besides Craig, the only person I know who was raped was a friend in my dorm in college named Sandra. After it happened, I avoided her for weeks. I imagined, stupidly, that simply because I was male, I’d remind her of what she’d gone through, make her break down, melt, weep. But finally she cornered me one afternoon in the library. “Stop avoiding me,” she said. “Just because I was raped doesn’t mean I’m made out of glass.” And it was true. It was always Sandra who brought up the fact of the rape—often in front of strangers. “I was raped,” she’d say, as if to get the facts out of the way, as if saying it like that—casually, without preparation—helped to alleviate the terror, gave her strength. Craig had told me with a similar studied casualness. And yet I suspect his motive was not so much to console himself as to do some sort of penance; I suspect he genuinely believed that he had been asking for it, and that he deserved it, deserved whatever he got.

  Perhaps I am wrong to use the word “underside” when I describe the world Craig led me through that first summer in New York, perhaps wrong in assuming that for Craig, it has been a matter of surfaces and depths, hells and heavens. For me, yes. But for him, I think, there really wasn’t much of a distance to travel between the Westport of his childhood and the dark places he seemed to end up in, guide or no guide, in whatever city he visited. Wallets, traveler’s checks, your life: these were just the risks you took. I lived in two worlds; I went in and out of the underside as I pleased, with Craig to protect me. I could not say it was my fault that he was raped. But I realized, that night, that on some level I had been encouraging him to live in the world’s danger zones, its ayor zones, for years now, to satisfy my own curiosity, my own lust. And I wondered: How much had I contributed to Craig’s apparent downfall? To what extent had I, in living through him, made him, molded him into some person I secretly, fearfully longed to be?

  He lay on my floor, gently snoring. He always slept gently. But I had no desire to embrace him or to try to save him. He seemed, somehow, ruined to me, beyond hope. He had lost all allure. It is cruel to record now, but the truth was, I hoped he’d be gone by morning.

  The next afternoon, we had lunch with Laurent. Because Craig spoke no French and Laurent spoke no English, there was not much conversation. I translated, remedially, between them. Craig did not seem very impressed by Laurent, which disappointed me, and Laurent did not seem very impressed by Craig, which pleased me.

  Afterwards, Laurent and I drove Craig to the Gare du Nord, where he was catching a train to Munich. He had relatives there who he hoped would give him money to spend at least a few weeks in Germany. For a couple of minutes, through me, he and Laurent discussed whether or not he should go to see Dachau. Laurent had found it very moving, he said. But Craig’s only response was, “Uh-huh.”

  Then we were saying goodbye, and then he was gone, lost in the depths of the gare.

  On the way back to my apartment I told Laurent about Craig’s rape. His eyes bulged in surprise. “Ton ami,” he said, when I had finished the story, “sa vie est tragique.” I was glad, somehow, that the rape meant something to Laurent, and for a moment, in spite of all our problems, I wanted to embrace him, to celebrate the fact of all we had escaped, all we hadn’t suffered. But my French wasn’t good enough to convey what I wanted to convey. And Laurent was depressed.

  He dropped me off at my apartment, continued on to work. I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting alone indoors, so I took a walk over to the Rue St. Denis and Les Halles. The shops had just reopened for the afternoon, and the streets were full of people—giggly Americans and Germans, trios of teenaged boys.

  I sat down in a café and tried to stare at the men in the streets. I wondered what it must have been like, that “Hola,” whispered on a busy Madrid sidewalk, that face turning toward him. Was the face clear, vivid in its intent? I think not. I think it was probably as vague and convex as the face of the Genie of the Crystal in Gatlinburg. Then, too, it was the surprise of recognition, the surprise of being noticed; it will do it every time. The Genie of the Crystal, she, too, had wanted Craig, and even then I had urged him
on, thinking myself safe in his shadow.

  I drank a cup of coffee, then another. I stared unceasingly at men in the street, men in the café, sometimes getting cracked smiles in response. But in truth, as Craig has endlessly told me, I simply do not have the patience for cruising. Finally I paid my bill, and then I heard the church bells of Notre Dame strike seven. Only five days left in July. Soon it would be time to head up to Montmartre, to the drugstore, where Laurent, like it or not, was going to get my company.