by Mark Merlis
I want to tell him he doesn’t need to hide from me. But I can’t think of any way to bring the subject up that isn’t the equivalent of bursting through his door. Sorry I broke in on you the other day. Translation: I have been thinking of nothing else for three days. Say, we haven’t played pinochle lately. Translation: Guess you’ve had your hands full …
So we hardly talk at all. I am reading every conversation so closely, looking for my opening. And, as if he knew, his conversation has become hermetic, no openings anywhere.
My house has turned into America. This is how people talk when they know they’re bugged.
I suppose I shouldn’t be gratified that Mickey was as impenetrable to Jonathan as he was to me. But I can’t help what pleases me.
Mickey was open and luminous until he was eight or so; then he began to have secrets; then he was a secret. I know it wasn’t just Mickey, somehow it happens between parents and children. Mickey began to have a private life, he kept things to himself. Perhaps you don’t really have a self to call your own until you have things to keep close to it. I understood, even as it was happening I understood that it wasn’t just Mickey, that this was how people grew. A child is like a present that leaps back into the gift box and wraps itself up again; you don’t get to open it a second time. Of course, understanding that some hurt is commonplace doesn’t make it hurt less. On the contrary.
There are hours when Mickey was a baby that I can remember more clearly than whole years in his teens. I mean this: hours when Jonathan was out and Mickey and I were alone, playing, or I telling a story in a tongue he didn’t understand, but to which he listened with astounded gravity. Or just lying together on the bed, looking wonderingly into each other’s eyes. Maybe there are lovers who know times like those, maybe Tristan and Isolde had one hour of communion as deep as passes between a mother and a baby on an ordinary rainy afternoon.
Mickey stopped being a baby. What I remember of his teens is one long absence. Mickey at school, or out with friends, or sequestered in his room or, even at the dinner table: absent. Jonathan could make him talk, goad him until he spoke, but the moment he closed his mouth again he was gone, a million miles from us. Sometimes, still, Mickey and I were together. Doing the dishes maybe, I washing, Mickey drying, a rhythm, while Jonathan was busy intellecting in the next room. Then I might feel together with Mickey again. Except I would look up from the sink and see him holding a plate and staring into space, not there at all.
He wasn’t furtive or sneaky, he didn’t tell lies. He was merely silent about whole stretches of his life, about everything outside the apartment, at last about everything inside. He didn’t fib even if I directly accused him of something—stealing a cookie, not finishing his homework. He wouldn’t protest his innocence, he’d just stick out his lower lip and look at me with amused curiosity. As if to say: how interesting, that you should care so much about a cookie. By the time he hit puberty he was as bland and ingenuous as a boy in a comic strip or a commercial.
I was the furtive, sneaky one. Listening through a cracked door when he spoke on the phone. Digging through his dresser drawers while he was at school, spelunking into the forbidden cavern of his closet. Finding nothing much, one time a couple of Playboys, which made me so sad that I almost learned the elementary lesson: digging through other people’s things will always, always make you sorry.
Perhaps I should have been relieved to find some evidence that Jonathan’s proclivities were not necessarily hereditary. Yet I don’t think I had even wondered, until I saw those magazines, whether Mickey was “normal” or not. It’s hard to imagine now, but I don’t recall ever worrying about his sexuality. The thought that he had a sexuality probably made me queasy enough without adding a prefix to it.
I wasn’t relieved; I was disappointed that my Mickey might have been aroused by those haunted women, soft and defenseless as cattle. But they were what the world offered him, there was no magazine featuring naked female physicists. There was no magazine featuring me; I suppose the real disappointment was that he had moved on from me.
I did not learn the elementary lesson. There was still something I longed to know, when I plunged my arm under the bed, trawling for truth amid the dust bunnies. Something that made me desperate enough to pick the lock on his little leatherette diary—discovering that the single scrawled entry, dated April 8, 1960, reported that it was his eighth birthday and that he had got books, a baseball mitt, a diary. So another of Jonathan’s proclivities, journalizing, was not passed on.
I always imagined that Jonathan knew more, shared more with him. Whatever it was fathers shared with sons. They had never done much in the way of male bonding, if anyone had even thought of the term back then. Jonathan didn’t take Mickey fishing, though Mickey might occasionally tag along when Jonathan went to Second Avenue for whitefish. They didn’t play catch together—I was the one who insisted on the baseball mitt to go along with the too-hard books and the diary Jonathan thought were splendid eighth birthday gifts. They didn’t ever talk about sports, not even during that weird period when Jonathan followed ERAs and RBIs so assiduously.
But I had always assumed they shared something. Yes, it is a sort of ugly relief to know that Mickey was as closed to Jonathan as he was to me. Except for this: he must never have shared his hopes with Jonathan, any more than with me. So when he died, there was no one who even knew what dreams had been exploded.
September 7, 1966
Last night after dinner I went to the Poplar. I don’t think I’d been since just before I started JD--two years ago, about. That summer when I was so lonesome I hung around with the likes of Edgar Villard and Dennis O’Grady. I don’t miss seeing Villard, of course, but I do miss O’Grady in a funny way. Maybe because I never did quite figure out what sore spot in me O’Grady poked his way into.
Perhaps it was just the feeling that a fairy with a Semper Fi tattoo was hacking his own path to a new way of living. Not one I approve of, necessarily. But I find, in the couple of years that have passed, that I am less elementally offended by fairies than I used to be. More and more I think--as I thought this summer, during the riots, when the Negroes were burning down their own neighborhoods: at least they’re burning something. At least the fairies are burning something.
In the Poplar was the usual mix of painters and far-off-Broadway actors and a handful of poets, none of them Dennis O’Grady. About 8O percent queer, I’d guess, and not one guy that I’d sleep with on a bet. Now I recalled why I’d stopped coming to the Poplar, and I was on my way out when I saw that Willis was at the bar, sitting stock upright and looking straight ahead, as if reading the names on all the bottles. I crept up on him and squeezed his thigh. He turned around crossly, ready to rebuke whatever ancient roué had taken this liberty. When he saw it was me he said, “Jesus.”
“No, just old Jonathan.”
“Well, I’m about as likely to run into Jesus, now that you’re famous and all.”
This was pretty pointed for Willis. I thought of many crushing responses, but settled for, “Yeah, it’s pretty time-consuming, being famous.”
“I’ll bet.”
“But not as time-consuming as wishing you were. That took a clean half-century. Where’s your friend?”
“What friend?”
“You know, the dancer, what was his name?”
“Eddie? We’re not, uh, we’re not an item anymore.”
“No?” This meant that Eddie and I could be an item, if I could find some way of getting in touch with Eddie. One that would not involve standing with a bouquet outside the stage door while he did the dance of the sugar plum fairy. “What happened?”
“He left me for some rich guy.”
“Huh. What a bastard.”
“No, he … he probably won’t be able to dance much longer. And this guy is getting him into design.”
“Oh, so it was just practical. Designing what?”
Willis snorted. “Store windows.”
“I’m surp
rised he can even fit in store windows. Seeing anybody else?”
“Nah. You know, I’m trying to finish my dissertation while I’m still funded. So I’m not a lot of fun to be with just now. How about you, you still screwing around?”
“Much as I can get.”
“Even with your wife back in town?”
“We sort of have an understanding.”
“Ah,” Willis said. “Eddie and I tried to have an understanding. You know, we could do this but we couldn’t do that, and … well, if we’d written it down, the ink wouldn’t have dried on it before he broke it.”
“That’s not an understanding, that’s a treaty. What we have is: Martha understands I’m catting around and wishes I’d started years ago.” Even as I said it, I knew I had no idea what Martha wishes. She must sometimes wish she had married a man who could love her unfalteringly for a lifetime. As I sometimes wish I could have been such a man.
“So why are you together, just the kid?”
Just the kid! Just inertia is more like it. But I really haven’t ever thought about what would happen to the kid if Martha and I split up. God knows, she wouldn’t have any trouble proving adultery; she could fill a courtroom with corespondents. So she’d get Mickey and, probably, drag him off to Baltimore. Rename him Axelrod, stick him in some country day school where he’d wear a blazer … Yes, absolutely I will stay with her for Mickey’s sake. If I had to go down on her twice a day, I’d do it to save my Mickey.
I said, “He’s started jerking off.”
“Mickey? Quelle horreur! How do you know, checking his laundry?”
“I just happened to walk into his room and caught him at it.”
“What did you do?”
“Walked right out again. What was I going to do, scold him for something I practiced every night of the Coolidge administration and halfway through Hoover?”
“Better you catching him than Martha. My mother figured out when I started doing it, I’m not sure how, and she asked me about it. ‘Willis, are you--?’ So of course I said no. Starting a whole lifetime where I tell lies and she pretends to believe me.”
“I don’t want to start a lifetime like that with Mickey. I’d like it if he never had to lie to me.”
“Ah.” He looked around the room for a second. “Kind of a one-way street, though, huh?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re not going to start telling him what you do in the tearooms.”
“Touché. But I wish we were in a world where I could do that.”
“No, you don’t,” Willis said.
TEN
September 13, 1966
Martha’s mother is having an operation. If I were the consultant I’d recommend a laryngectomy, but it’s just her gall bladder. So Martha’s down looking after her father, which I suspect pretty much consists of making sure the ice cube trays are filled, and Mickey and I are in the paradise of bachelors. Which would be a tad more blissful if I didn’t have to stay home with him every night. The kid’s fourteen years old, I’m sure he gets into plenty of trouble outside the apartment. Why should I have to babysit him? But I do, so my only opportunity for fooling around is in the daytime, when he’s off at school.
Yesterday I called Robert, Villard’s guy. We haven’t been together in a while because he doesn’t usually bring tricks to Villa Villard, and of course I can’t bring them to the Ascher abode when the census of Aschers is greater than one.
“I can’t,” Robert said. “We’re just on our way to London. As soon as Edgar finishes with his hatboxes and steamer trunks.”
“London,” I said.
“Yeah, Edgar goes to buy shoes.”
“Oh, of course, where else?”
“He’s very particular about his shoes.” He chuckled. “Anyway, wish you’d called sooner. You’re a good lay.”
This meant more to me than anything the Saturday Review could have said about me. “Maybe we’ll figure out some time when you get back.”
“Yeah, Edgar keeps me on a pretty tight leash when we’re over there. I’ll be pretty horny when I get back. Unless I find a little something on the Queen Mary.”
“You’re sailing? I would have thought Edgar could afford the jet.”
“We’re just sailing on the way back. Edgar says the Queen Mary’s for sale and it might be our last chance for--what did he say? A grand crossing. Like I ain’t spent enough time on ships. So anyway, you got a rain check.”
Which I will certainly cash. But it wasn’t going to get me laid yesterday. I called Louis, an adequate fuck whose cardinal virtue is that he is almost always available. “Hey, Louis, Jonathan,” I said. He said, “Hey,” and then, softly drawling: “What you up to?” Something in his inflection made those the four nastiest words in the English language. I panted, “Just wondered if you wanted to come over.” “Half an hour,” he said--always says, no matter what time of day it is. “Half an hour.”
I asked him once what he did for a living that left him free to drop his pants day or night on thirty minutes’ notice. All he would say was, “I got me some deals going.” This gave me a momentary thrill, as if he were tied somehow to the underworld. But then so is the guy who picks up our garbage, and the guy who runs the Dubois. In this town the underworld is about as humdrum as … Louis’s lovemaking.
As usual, he arrived on time and came early. But this once, instead of dressing in ten seconds flat and, mercifully, taking his leave, he fell asleep. I thought what the hell, put an arm around him, and felt myself dozing. When I opened my eyes I glanced at the clock and, sweet fuck, it was 3:15 in the afternoon. I shook Louis awake and told him to get dressed quick, Mickey might be coming home from school.
Louis hadn’t been gone two minutes when Mickey came in. Long enough that they probably didn’t pass on the stairs. But I bet Mickey saw him coming out of the building. Me, I was standing in the living room in my underwear and socks, in the middle of the afternoon. Mickey eyed me, face perfectly blank. Did he put one and one together? Does he even know one and one do this sort of thing? I have no idea. It is easier to decipher the emotions of a goldfish than to read Mickey when he does not wish to be read.
To explain my dishabille, I said, “I was feeling sick, some kind of bug, so I went back to bed.”
“Oh. Um … can I fix you something?” This said so solemnly that I had to swallow hard to keep from bawling right in front of him.
“Why don’t you--listen, how about you run down to Beppi’s and get us each a slice? Let me get my wallet. Get three slices, you have two, whatever you want. I want pepperoni.”
When he was gone I did cry. Such a close call, seconds away from breaking his heart. Imagine! That my very being could break his heart, as if I were something foul.
This is what Willis was talking about. And of course all of a piece with our joint inability to acknowledge that Mickey has a dick and plays with it. We can’t talk about that, we can’t talk about my dick and what I like to do with it, Ham can’t see his father naked or vice versa.
And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
Sometimes just typing out a text, feeling it under your fingers, helps you to understand it. It’s the only way to read Rilke, for example. But it sure doesn’t help with Genesis. What the hell is this Ham story about?
September 14, 1966
I was heading for the SLS library to read up on Ham and Noah, but as I turned the corner at 9th Street a cop stopped me. “Mister, this is off
limits right now.”
“How come?”
“There was a call about a sniper. Probably crap, but just in case …”
This was about that crazy guy in Texas a few weeks ago. The guy who went up in the tower at the university in Austin and shot a bunch of people.
We all looked at that story and it just seemed so very Texan, of a piece with Oswald and the Impeach Earl Warren people and H. L. Hunt. But I guess we’re all in Texas now. Probably the call was crap. Still, I don’t doubt that there are, in Manhattan as much as anywhere else, guys with automatic rifles and an ember of nihilism in their bellies waiting to be fanned into massacre.
I remember: the Texas shooter was named Whitman--I am large, I contain multitudes, then I gun ‘em down--and he was a marine. Like Dennis O’Grady. Whatever they do to those gyrenes, somehow they come out mass murderers or poets, if there’s a difference. But of course Dennis O’Grady served in peacetime; he wasn’t off slaughtering uppity Asians. I expect the current generation of marines will come back a little less inclined to write free verse.
Anyway, I headed up to Bryant Park, figuring I could do my research at the main library and also, long as the kid’s in school, do a little extra credit research in the men’s lounge of one of the theaters on 42nd Street. When I emerged from the movie palace, I was blinking--not at the light, so much, rather at the way the crowd went about its diverse purposes, when I had just been in a room where everyone had the same purpose, a place as communal and full of ritual as a shul. I found myself looking up, like a gawking tourist, at all the towers on Sixth Avenue. Seeing how many windows were open, figuring possible lines of fire. A surpassingly dense and complex spiderweb, death aimed at me from so many matrices.