The Work Is Innocent

by Rafael Yglesias

  The wait for his father to finish reading was ghastly. Not because the school issue depended on his opinion; Aaron had disapproved of most of his actions lately and Richard had been used to getting his greatest encouragement from him. The lack of it had upset him more than he knew.

  Richard and Betty waited in the kitchen and Richard continued to describe John’s work nervously while he heard his father approaching. He stopped in mid-sentence and looked at Aaron when he entered and sat down. When he had written papers for school, or been in its theater productions, his father would congratulate him noisily, with hugs and unbounded predictions for his future. It was pleasing but never allowed Richard to think that he had achieved a permanent, adult success. He had tried to force that recognition and failed, losing also paternal delight.

  “Well,” Aaron said as if the word had meaning. He looked at Richard, his eyes glittering with feeling. Richard was embarrassed by its intimacy. “You rotten kid.” He looked at Betty and she smiled.

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “What’s extraordinary is the narrative line. It’s so sophisticated. You’d think this was his eighth novel. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked playfully.

  “Yeah, I know.” Richard was insistent.

  Aaron laughed and grabbed his shoulder, shaking him with his pleasure. “I’m kidding. It’s great. I think you might have some trouble with the scene you’re working on.”

  “Oh no. I have that planned. I know what I’m doing.”

  Aaron laughed again and got up. “Come on. Let me give you a hug.” Richard did so reluctantly but almost burst into tears in his embrace. “Well, if you’ve written this you certainly don’t need any encouragement.”

  His parents had a long private conference and then announced to him that he would not have to finish high school. They wanted him to finish the book and send it to both publishers and universities.

  For a month he worked and was close to being done. It was peaceful, at first, to do nothing else. But soon the studied elegance of the apartment, of his life, added to the monkishness of his celibacy.

  He was sixteen, and no amount of talent or imagination could make a woman’s vagina real for him. He didn’t know what it looked like. He laughed at the idea but the truth was inescapable—he had not seen or felt one. And that neat business with the penis, though he had a dim sense of it, still seemed a most unlikely and ridiculous thing to do. Homosexuality was as real as the metal of his typewriter: just as grubby and unyielding. Oh sure, he had never fucked that way, but it was imaginable. And it was that truth that made him unable to shrug off this renewed fear of being homosexual as being typically adolescent.

  How could he pretend to the manliness of being published without fucking (one way or the other)? Without being cool and breezy with women: the pleasant nudging of his father’s charm or the uncomplicated exuberance with which his brother posed his body for women.

  He decided this isolation and passivity, however grand in intention, were perverse. So he called an old friend from Cabot. He traveled through time more than space, but there it was: to lose one’s virginity, one had to be an adolescent.

  “May I speak to Raul, please?”

  After a long silence an unrecognizable voice answered.

  “Raul? This is Richard.”

  “Richard? Uh. Who?”

  “Richard Goodman. From Cabot.”

  “Oh! How come you’re calling?”

  “I’ve been in Vermont for about a year and I just wanted to be in touch again.”

  “In touch again. I see you still have that stiffness.”

  “Well, I feel uncomfortable. I’ve cut myself off from all my friends. But no one can live that way, so you can’t blame me for trying.”

  “Yeah. Well, I left, you know, so I haven’t been seeing the old crowd either.”

  “No loss, I guess. So they finally threw you out?”

  “Not exactly, but more or less. Fuck it. Let’s not talk about Cabot. I’m in Performing Arts now. Are you going to school in Vermont?”

  “I’m not going to school at all.”

  “Huh? Are you living with your parents?”

  “Oh, I’m not crashing and on the run and dealing dope in the Village. I’m the affluent dropout.”

  “Shit, I thought I was the only one from Cabot who’d have that privilege.”

  “Naw. I was just quieter about it than you were.”

  “Hey! We’re on the phone for a minute and you’re insulting me?”

  Richard’s boyish face absorbed this with difficulty. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean that.”

  “Don’t get maudlin. Listen. It’s a guess, but are you all alone in this wonderful city and you’d like to enter the wonderful world of society?”

  “It sounds pitiful but that’s it.” There was a silence. “I wish I could make it less puppyish.”

  “Aw, Richard, you are a puppy. You’re cute. You should play that up with chicks. They like that. Okay, it’s crazy, but there’s a party tomorrow night. Can you smoke dope?”

  “Yes,” Richard said without humor.

  “Terrific. So I’ll give you—no, we’ll go together and I’ll do the honors.” So at this price of humiliation Richard began his hunt.

  He left the orderliness of his room, he left the life of the mind and went out onto the busy, decadent streets of New York. He held his arms against his plump body and swung his torso from side to side in a rocking motion. He was terrified that one of the many mad people who were talking to themselves and waving their arms distractedly would address him; that he would be suspected of a thousand crimes and seized by one of those obese monstrosities with their wooden-handled heavy guns. He walked carelessly to defy these terrors but would betray himself by jumping at loud noises and by his many stops to check street numbers. Even they could conspire against him.

  He was to meet Raul at a coffee shop near the party about an hour before they were due to arrive. It seemed impossible that he found it easily and that Raul was waiting for him calmly. Raul’s hair was very long and he looked skinnier and paler than seemed healthy.

  “Do you believe it?” Raul said as a greeting. “I’m pleased by the sight of you. I’m beginning to think fondly of that goddamn school.”

  “I remind you of it. I can’t say that you do. You look very different.”

  “More degenerate. I know. I’ve started to get worried along with my mother.”

  They ordered dinner and reminisced. The last was difficult: neither knew of the fates of any of their friends, and since they hadn’t been close, there were few memories. Richard finally screwed up his courage and asked what kind of people would be at the party.

  “Performing Arts kids mostly. You know, they’re all artists. How are you about that? Or are you most interested in law?”

  Richard considered giving up his novel to the mercy of this hysterical, flip creature, and decided against it. “What can I say? With my father?”

  “Oh yeah. That must make you a little disgusted with it all.”

  “I haven’t been hit over the head with that Upper West Side crowd too much. When they have their parties I stay in the back room.”

  “I’d be right out there in the thick of it. How can you resist it? With all those innuendoes it’d be great training. I mean, unless you’re going to be the first dropout professional you’ll have to make your way there.”

  “You’re unwholesome, Raul,” Richard said with more heat than seemed normal. “If you really came in contact with it you wouldn’t like it.”

  Raul looked like a fox. “Sensitive subject with you, eh? Okay, maybe I am unwholesome, whatever that means. But that quiet, heartfelt tone of yours can’t be real.” Raul dragged on his cigarette and leaned back as if relaxing. “Let’s slow down a little bit. All I really want to know is how are you going to make money?”

  “Is that so important?”

  “Unhuh. Very important and you know it. How
are you going to eat dinner in ten years?”

  Richard trembled and looked at the cars racing down the avenue. It was the taxis that he watched. From childhood they retained a fascination for him: a New York child’s idea of nobility. Our carriage to the ball. “I don’t know,” he said, reaffirming his decision not to talk about his novel. “Right now I’m just floating. I don’t want to think about it.”

  Raul looked at him mildly, almost with sympathy. “I’m amazed your parents let you.”

  “They’re okay about that stuff. They figure I can always get back on my feet.”

  “So you’re on the lookout for a girl, right?” Raul sprang this on him as if he were a crack detective. The desired effect came about: Richard flushed and laughed nervously. “Okay,” Raul said. “Some of these girls are in their twenties and even the Performing Arts girls will go all the way. I know that.”

  Richard could say nothing and Raul suggested they go. Raul’s comment had scared him even more, and each step closer to the party added to his agony. Raul walked confidently and, when they reached the door, rang the bell so quickly and unexpectedly that Richard nearly cried out. He assumed a mother would come out, but a painted blonde flew into Raul’s arms and then Raul’s voice tumbled out an aria to the chorus of welcome from inside. Quickly they were in: it was all smoke and painted women and lanky men, everyone more knowing and powerful than he. “Can you relate to booze?” Raul was saying to his face. “Yes, liquor, I’m not kidding. We’re not that new-fashioned.”

  A solemn girl with a long nose who took their coats said, “Turning phrases already?” She turned to Richard and addressed him more kindly than she had Raul. “We have things to drink if you’re into that.” Richard looked at her blankly so she smiled and said, “I’m Joan.”

  “He’s Richard Goodman, son of playwright Aaron,” Raul said. “He’ll get eaten alive by all the actors here.”

  “Really?” the blonde said, excited. “Let me introduce myself.”

  A strikingly handsome young man yelled loudly, “Let’s create a receiving line.” Raul laughed and slapped his hand. He got them to lower the music. Announcing who Richard was, Raul took him by the arm and went around the room introducing all persons and their professional hopes. With the ensuing silence and calm, Richard was able to observe coolly. The men became more boyish and dumb, the women less affected, and he was free of his shock. The blonde, Ann, turned out to be quite plain and a little terrified of him, or rather of his father’s reputation, and the handsome boy, to Richard’s surprise, made no objection to Richard’s being fat and Jewish. Indeed, he made an impression with his quiet seriousness and the stiff drink he downed effortlessly. Raul was drinking heavily and he held on too long to the joints that were being passed. He entertained the group with stories of Cabot, and his domination of the talk allowed Richard to become woozy from his second drink and the grass. When Raul went from being brilliant to incoherence and the party returned to listening to music, Richard had no difficulty responding to Joan when she asked if Raul and he were good friends.

  “No. As a matter of fact, we never got along in Cabot. Raul was a winner even in failure, and I think he just had contempt for me.”

  A sandy-haired young man who had been introduced as a playwright sat down next to Richard. He had thin shoulder- length hair and with his metal-rimmed glasses looked like a poster of youth culture. “Did you feel the same way about him?”

  Richard was surprised. “Contempt? No, I liked him. We just didn’t get along.”

  “So, you haven’t seen him in a while?” Joan asked.

  “About eight or nine months.”

  “Is he different?”

  Sandy-hair passed Richard a joint, and after taking a drag Richard felt encircled by silence, protected from the harsh music. “Do you love him?” he asked as if he were offering potato chips.

  Neither of them was surprised by the question. “I don’t know,” Joan said. “We were a couple for a while.”

  “I hope you don’t mind the question.”

  “You worry too much,” she said quickly. She got up to leave.

  Richard barely heard her say those words. He knew what she had said but the sounds bounced off the glass bubble that was forming around him. He looked at Raul: he was waving his arms about and obviously talking loudly. His hysteria was ugly and irritating to Richard. Not caring if they heard, he said, “You’re a lot like him. Very quick to judge. You’re both so fuckin’ clever.” He got up and roughly pushed Joan aside, stepping over the people seated on the floor. The music was sex and corruption. He only wanted to be away from it. He went down a hallway, quiet and carpeted, disturbed a couple, and, confused by that, he walked quickly into a bedroom and shut the door.

  Its silence was an institutions’, but at least he was alone.

  The grass had thrown him into a panic—he knew it, and the knowledge was redoubling his fear. He could feel himself going into the bad LSD trip of a few months ago. He was enclosed in the same antiseptic bubble. Of course, he knew it all came from his self-consciousness and alienation, but that hadn’t stopped the onrush of panic that the trip would never end, that his true self was out.

  “I’m a paranoid homosexual,” he said, hoping to make a joke of it. But the walls, the carpet, the night were not amused. “It’s very serious, isn’t it?” He held his hands out and they looked long, powerful, and very real. “I don’t care,” he said to live up to the humanity of his hands. And at that moment it seemed as if he could beat it.

  Joan came in meekly, frightening Richard. Had she heard? “I came to say I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am. I’m sensitive about Raul. He hurt me.”

  Richard didn’t know what to make of her about-face in attitude. He was relieved to have company and he said that the grass had made him jumpy. He regretted having snapped at her.

  She sat down on the floor. “How adult we’re being.”

  Richard smiled, feeling this was a compliment to his gravity of demeanor—something he prided himself on. “Raul,” he said, “is an incredibly competitive person. You probably don’t see it that way, but it comes out in his dealings with men. Particularly at Cabot.”

  “I don’t think he’s that crass.”

  “Crass?”

  “You know, I gotta win. Low-level American mentality.”

  “Oh, he’s clever and neurotic. At Cabot, once he started winning he lost interest in the game.”

  Joan nodded but said nothing.

  Richard leaned back and smiled. “I’m putting him down and that’s bothering you.”

  “Not exactly. There are good reasons why I should be putting him down. But I wouldn’t like myself if I did. So I’d rather just not talk about him since he’s an unpleasant subject.”

  “I’m sorry,” Richard said. “Talking about him seems to be a good way of getting to know you.”

  “It’s the worst way. He was a weird episode. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

  “I think I’ll need a cigarette for that,” he said, worried. He reached into his jacket pocket.

  Joan said, “You’re sweating. Why don’t you take your jacket off?”

  This second intimacy from her was disturbing. It was too naked a movement to remove the jacket and be left with only his blue Brooks Brothers shirt. He did it quickly without grace. “There’s, uh, not much to say about my life. I left Cabot at the end of the ninth grade, spent the summer in Vermont, and went to school there until just about a month ago, and came here to New York.”

  “You didn’t have a life before that?”

  “Oh that,” Richard said without irony. “I played a lot of slug. That’s a kind of handball—”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s see. What else? I burned my room down when I was eight. That’s pretty spectacular, isn’t it?”

  “It’s heavy. Why did you burn it down?”

  “Why?” The question floored him. He thought no detail of his life had been left unexplored but thi
s seemed to be. The event was so dramatic that it needed no reason to exist. “You know, I was a child playing with matches. I had been burning paper behind radiators for a while. My parents caught me at it and warned me that I shouldn’t do it again. We were also studying it at school.”

  Joan laughed. “It was a learning experience?”

  Richard smiled with her. “It sure was. I had no idea of its potency.” He laughed and pretended embarrassment. “Pardon me.”

  “Maybe that’s what it was about,” she suggested.

  Now he was embarrassed. “I don’t think so. Anyway I got some kitchen matches, went into my room, lit one, and not quite sure but at least telling myself that it was out, I dropped it into a wicker wastepaper basket. And left the room, shutting the door behind me. When I came back the room was completely in flames. I mean it was incredible. I don’t see how it could have spread so quickly. I don’t know why people always talk about the natural elements as being awesomely real. They’re awesomely unreal. That’s why we make up gods to explain them. Or chemical symbols. They’re never explained in human terms.” She looked at him, puzzled, and he felt a great urge to make her understand. “You relate to what I’m saying?”

  “Well. I don’t know. The natural elements exist outside of, uh, us. They shouldn’t be explained in our terms.”

  “Listen. Since we’re human, it’s childish of us to explain things unless we explain them in terms of our perceptions. A flood is a great deal of water that drowns us, sweeps our homes away, tears up the land we’ve grown used to. Snow is white and it’s very cold. It’s soft for a while and then it hardens and becomes very dirty, like we do when we grow older.”

  “Life’s better than that.”

  “I was exaggerating for effect.”

  “The way you talk about it, nothing changes. The way somebody first felt about rain is the only reasonable way for anyone to ever think about rain. That’s too much to expect of people to never invent anything else. It’s too boring.”

  Richard saw that it was futile explaining to her, that it was silly even to have made an attempt. “I guess so,” he said with what he hoped was an ironic smile. How distinguished of him, he thought, to bow out so maturely rather than to argue stubbornly. He was learning about life.