Psychology and Other Stories

by C. P. Boyko

  “Like the Jabberwock,” Fishpool concluded, “she burbled as she came.”

  There was no applause, no plaudits, not even any smiles. It was as if they had all been waiting impatiently for him to finish. Fishpool left the pages of his address on the podium and returned to his seat without a word. Without a word, the towels were unfurled and laid on the floor at the center of the circle, like the long petals of a flower. Then, without a word, the boys of the Literary Club unbuttoned their trousers.

  Archie followed suit. He draped his pants over the back of his chair; he sat on the edge of his towel, facing the others; he spread his legs and grabbed his cock—which he was alarmed, then relieved, to find fully erect.

  Afterwards, the boys put on their pants, rolled up their towels, and proceeded to mingle and chat as if nothing extraordinary had occurred. “I thought C.S.’s story this week rather good, didn’t you?” “Have you read the new Isherwood?” “When’s the bloody Lyre deadline anyway?”

  He was reminded of parties of his mother’s, when someone had puked in a vase, or broken the punch bowl, or begun weeping in the bathroom, or pawed at the wrong person, and so had to be politely shown the door. This fall into disgrace always marked the climax of the party, but the guests lingered awhile through the dénouement, chatting extra loudly, grinning extra brightly, mixing their drinks extra strong, as if to deny that anything disgraceful had happened at all.

  Archie, who wished for nothing more than to disappear, found himself consistently not alone. A steady file of boys came round to introduce themselves, shake his hand, welcome him to the Club. They asked him questions: “What’s your stance on rhyme, Archer?” “Archer, how do you feel about this Beat thing?” “Have you read the new Isherwood?” Gone now was the frosty atmosphere of the symposium; but, friendly as they were, he could not clear from his mind the image of what they had all just done.

  “Say, Archer, what’s your favorite poem? I know, I know—but if you had to pick one.”

  He struggled to think of the title, or indeed existence, of a single poem. He remembered Don Juan, but wasn’t sure that something so lengthy qualified as a poem. Could he get away with something like Shakespeare’s Sonnet 163?

  “Well, if I had to pick one, I guess it would have to be ‘The Windhover,’” he said, recalling the quantity of praise that Master Royd had heaped on a poem by that name in Advanced English last year.

  “Manley Hopkins, eh?” The boy lifted his brows, as if impressed by Archie’s audacity. “How about that. Old manly Manley Hopkins.”

  Ms. Hastings looked up from her knitting and smiled warmly. As one of the few women on staff at Parcliffe, and the only one under forty, it was perhaps strange that the librarian had so utterly failed to inflame the ardor of the student body. Though amicable and by no means deformed, she was nevertheless not only thoroughly unsexy but downright unsexual. It was simply not conceivable that she could be the owner of organs of procreation. (Though Archie had to admit that he could not muster much faith in the existence of, for instance, his cousin Patricia’s vagina, either.)

  Today, he keenly resented Ms. Hastings’s sexlessness. It seemed an ambiguity expressly designed to confuse and dismay him, like a bit of doggerel introduced into an otherwise intelligible play.

  “Title, author, or subject?”

  He was prepared for this. “Subject, please. I’m looking for information—whatever I can find—I don’t know if you’ll have anything—on honorary degrees.’

  But she was unwilling to deviate from the script: “Under what letter, please?”

  “H, please.”

  “H what?”

  “What?”

  “H what? H-A, H-E, H-O, what?”

  “Oh. H-O, please.”

  “H-O what?”

  “H-O, um, well, N, I guess. H-O-N.”

  “In that case our choices are two. We’ve got Homo to Hone or Hone to Hot.”

  His heart sank. His eyeballs started to tremble.

  “What are we looking for again?”

  “Honorary degrees.” His mouth was too fast for his brain.

  “That’s easy, then. We’ll be wanting Hone to Hot.”

  “Well yes and hominids too, if possible. It’s a sort of anthropological angle that I’m taking to … honorary degrees.”

  “Then we’ll be wanting Hoc to Homo. ‘Hominid’ is with an I, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes. However,” he went on, his speech slowing to a panic- stricken crawl, “it just occurred to me that it’s not hominids it’s likely to be under but, come to think of it, more likely, ah, homonyms.”

  Ms. Hastings put her hands on where her hips would be if she’d had hips. “With an O?”

  “With an O, yes.”

  “H-O-M-O, homo. As in homo-nyms.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s not Hoc to Homo that you’re wanting at all, but Homo to Hone.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  After an epic search in which something more esoteric than mere alphabetization must have been involved, she lugged the two drawers over to the counter and dumped them with a grunt. Then she waited.

  He attacked Hone to Hot first. There was nothing for “honorary degrees.” The nearest heading was “honorary titles,” but that said “See: Titles of honor and nobility”—and he was not about to ask to see the Tit to Todg (or whatever) drawer. Instead he turned to “honorifics” and jotted down call numbers with one of the stubby, never-to-be-sharpened pencils provided. He lingered a little longer, riffling forward and backward through the cards with a scholar’s conscientiousness, so that Ms. Hastings’s effort might not seem so inordinate. He gave her a quick smile, like a man who takes such easy-going pleasure in his innocent task that he positively welcomes observers; then he turned to Homo to Hone.

  He pulled forward half the cards and found himself staring at “homosexuality—mythology.” Panicking, he jumped to the back of the drawer and loitered for a while amid “Honduras” and “Hondschoote, Battle of, 1793.” Making a thoughtful face, as of a yokel contemplating a manual transmission, he pushed back all but one inch of the cards and was rewarded with “homo erectus.” He felt himself blushing, and flipped quickly forward through “homocysteine—pathophysiology,” “homogenization (differential equations),” “homografts (moral and ethical aspects),” and “homologous organs (see also Anatomy, comparative),” before pausing, without quite remembering why, at “homonyms.” Had Ms. Hastings gone back to her knitting? He didn’t dare look up. He pretended to write down a call number, then realized that it would be just as easy to copy out a real one. This done, he leapt forward, landing on “homosexuality and literature—France—20th century.” Time was slipping away. He flipped madly through “homosexuality, female (see also Lesbians),” “homosexuality, female—fiction (see also Lesbians—fiction),” “homosexuality—folklore,” “homosexuality—in animals,” and “homosexuality—religious aspects” before it occurred to him that he was moving further away from the generic category. What must Ms. Hastings be thinking? He could imagine the censorious scowl coming over her normally affable features, the look of disgust as she began to wonder what malicious, plagiaristic, or pornographic use he was putting her poor card catalogue to. He jumped back—too far: “homophile movement,” “homophobia—history,” “homoptera,” “homoscedacity.” She must know, from his place in the drawer, what he was up to. He jumped forward—too far: “homosexuality—law and legislation,” “homosexuality—miscellanea,” “homosexuality—mythology.” Back where he started! Enough!

  “All done?” she asked dazedly, as if she had just been wakened from a lovely dream.

  One evening on his way back to his House from the Wood, he saw someone coming towards him across the quad.

  It was Clayton Fishpool. He did not want to talk to Clayton Fishpool.

  So he changed his direction, but subtly: he did not want to be seen, but he did not want to be seen wanting not to be seen, either.

&nbs
p; Had Fishpool spotted him? It was dusk; perhaps he had not. But he was getting closer. And each of Archie’s own steps only brought him nearer. He did not dare swerve off to one side or (what he most wanted to do) turn and go back the way he had come. He had to content himself with slight, imperceptible deflections. Gradually he veered away from the encounter.

  But still Fishpool came his way! He had altered his course to compensate for Archie’s drift. Or had he? Maybe Fishpool had been walking in this direction all along, and it was Archie who had inadvertently put himself in his path. Or maybe he had changed his course, but for some other, innocent reason; maybe he’d remembered someplace else he was supposed to be.

  No, it was impossible! Even as Archie turned more and more sharply, till he must have looked like a tilting drunkard, Fishpool continued to stroll directly toward him. Archie walked a little faster. If Fishpool saw him speed up, then all pretences would have to be dropped—the chase would be on. Fishpool was not fooled. Fishpool was keeping pace. Worse than that, he was gaining. Archie could feel him getting closer, though he dared not turn his head. He could feel the boy’s proximity, like the heat from a fire, on the side of his face and the back of his neck. And the heat was increasing.

  It was unbearable. He broke into a run.

  But his legs were blocks of wood. In no time at all Fishpool was upon him; he drew his sword. Archie reached for his own dagger, but it would not come free of its scabbard. Fishpool stabbed him in the back. Archie screamed and fell to his knees. Fishpool ran him through from behind, again and again, until at last a red geyser of blood shot out the top of his head.

  “No,” he told the doctor, “no dreams. None that I can remember.”

  According to Freud, or anyway according to Archie’s reading of Freud, the typical homosexual felt too much love for his (too-loving) mother; but instead of giving in to that Oedipal urge, he denied it, clamping down on it so hard that he ended up convinced that he hated not only his own mother but all of womankind.

  This story, however, did not exhaust the possibilities. The homosexual might alternatively devote himself so wholeheartedly to his loving mother that he found it necessary to shun all her (female) competitors. If the mother refused to conform to the pattern, giving too little instead of too much love to her son, the son simply developed a compensatory attachment to his father, and (through him) all fathers. If there was no father around to form an attachment to, the son could take one of two routes to homosexuality: he could, in the absence of a male role model, become effeminate and feminized; or he could develop a compensatory attachment to other father-figures—other men.

  Each of these stories sounded plausible enough in isolation. The question was, how did anyone ever arrive at heterosexuality? Some boys must emerge, unscathed as it were, from the same conditions of family life that produced homosexuals. Growing up without a father (as Archie had) or being fond of your mother (as Archie supposed he was) were perhaps necessary causes, but not sufficient ones, surely.

  Adler did not have much to say about the origin of homosexuality, but confined himself to describing “the most salient traits of the homo-sexual.” These were “inordinate ambition” and “extraordinarily pronounced caution” (or “fear of life”): “The attitude of the homosexual toward life will always be a hesitating one.”

  Archie felt a sinking in his guts. He was nothing if not hesitating. Or was he? Perhaps he was only cautious. Was his caution really “extraordinarily pronounced”? He did not think so. Or did he?

  It didn’t matter: “Inordinate ambition” was even more incriminating. Did he not, after all, believe himself to be earmarked for greatness? Had he not often drifted into daydreams of what it would be like to be recognized, famous, admired? Had he not already determined the library call number that his Freykynd would receive? And homosexuals, according to Adler, utilized their “different experiences” to “give strength to the belief that they are different from other children. This difference appears to them in the nature of a distinction—a view-point that their ambition of course willingly encourages.” Archie thought this way every day! Deep down, he treated the fact that he was not like all the other stupid and stuck-up boys as cause for pride, not shame. If he was lousy at sports (forgetting for the moment tennis and swimming), it was because he was an intellectual. If he had no friends (forgetting for the moment Lyle and Clayton Fishpool), it was because his soul moved on a more elevated plane. If he had never had any luck with girls (and taking the awkward kiss with his cousin Patricia fully into account), it was because he was a gentleman, or because he was too choosy, or because … because …?

  “Hey Archer, you’re literary aren’t you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “How do you spell ‘persuasion’?”

  Archie told him. “What are you writing?”

  “An essay for Rhetoric.” Rodney gathered up the pages, tapped them into order on the desktop, and cleared his throat. “It’s called: ‘The Art of Persuasion.’”

  Hollingsward, jackknifed over his bed in a posture of debilitating boredom, lifted his head and cried, “That’s the topic, and you don’t even know how to spell it? We’re going to be here all night.”

  “I’m just putting the finishing touches on it. Hey Archer, how do you spell ‘subtle’?”

  “Let me see that.”

  The Art of Persuasion

  by Rodney de van der Mullens (III)

  The art of persuasion tries to change the heart and mind and therefore is a powerful tool that can altar views. The art of persuasion can be a suttle or direct tool but either ways it plays on the emotions and the change of view resulting from the persuasion is usually long lasting. Persuasion is an art because it is every where in our environment and it effects the decisions that we make every day in our life. My trip to New York last summer also resulted out of persuasion. I was hesitant to go but persuasion occurred and through revealing the opportunity is now, guilting me to obligations, and highlighting all the benefits I was persuaded to go.

  It was worse than he would have thought possible. To conceal his dismay, he let out a long dismayed whistle. “You’d better give me your pen.”

  As he began circling the solecisms and underlining the misspellings that appeared in the first sentence, Rodney grew uneasy.

  “Some of that’s a matter of taste though, right? Personal preference?”

  “No.” Archie put down the pen. “You’re going to have to rewrite the whole thing.”

  Hollingsward let out a yelp.

  “My cock,” Rodney sighed. To Caulkins and Hollingsward he said, “Hell, you guys go on without me.”

  Hollingsward raised his eyebrows at Caulkins, who held up one index finger. When at last he opened his mouth, it was to belch the word oligarchy. Then he rose to his feet. “Works for me.”

  Hollingsward sprang to life and clapped Rodney on the shoulder. “We’ll keep them warmed up for you.”

  “Where are you going?,” Archie asked.

  “Oh, just into town.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Thursday.”

  “And what happens on Thursday?”

  “Are you kidding?” Rodney looked at him earnestly, as if deciding between pity and admiration. “Thursday’s when Downsfield lets out, man.”

  “And nubile tarts are free to roam the earth,” intoned Caulkins sacerdotally, “and seek out the hot young willing cock.”

  Hollingsward tugged at his arm. “Come on come on, Mullens said he’d catch up.”

  Archie looked at the essay on the desk. “I guess it would probably be easier for me to fix myself.”

  Rodney looked at him.

  “I mean, I’d be doing most of the work myself anyway. There’s no point in both of us …”

  “Now that’s the ticket!” said Hollingsward, slapping Archie’s shoulder.

  Rodney took his hand and shook it, then seemed embarrassed by the gesture. “You’re a good cock, Arch,” he said, wit
hout meeting his eye.

  “Go on,” said Archie, feeling rather like the eunuch persuading the sultan to have a little fun for a change.

  When they were gone, he wondered what had come over him. He hadn’t wanted them to leave. He hadn’t wanted to be left alone with his thoughts, which had been spinning around the same track for so long that they were making him nauseous. Was he hopelessly self-destructive, or did he just relish the role of martyr? He didn’t think he did. But did he?

  Perhaps he was playing a new part, trying it on for size: The lonely homosexual, unable to derive pleasure from the same coarse pursuits as his peers, stays home and distracts himself with his airy lucubrations …

  Or perhaps he had not wanted to be left alone with Rodney? But that was ridiculous. Even if he was a homo, surely Rodney was not his type. Surely he would be attracted to someone like Clayton Fishpool, someone intelligent, and attractive, and—

  “Those guys are dicks.”

  Archie blenched, as if his thoughts had been visible.

  “Let’s get this motherfucker done,” said Rodney, almost shyly, from the doorway. “Then let’s go into town and rustle up some quim.”

  “The thing about women,” said Rodney astutely, “is that they act like they’re in control, but what they really want is to be controlled.”

  Archie nodded, astutely sucking Cherry Coke through his straw. “They behave so cool and superior but meanwhile all they really need is somebody to take charge.”

  “It’s biological basically,” said Rodney. “Their mode opérant is basically nurturing. So it makes sense that they’re looking for someone to protect them, someone to provide for them.”

  “Someone to bring home the bacon.”

  “Someone to slip them the salami.”