by T L Barrett
“Who are these guys?” Barry asked. Damien interrupted his own head bobbing and singing to give Barry an incredulous grin.
“You’re kidding me right? It’s Erasure. I can’t believe you don’t know them. They’re the future of music, you know.” Barry just nodded, and continued to head beat. He thought the stuff sounded like alternative stuff from almost ten years before, but he knew he had a lot to learn from a poetic genius like Damien Goldrick.
“So, this place is pretty inspirational, I guess,” Barry said.
“What?” Damien asked. “Oh, the picnic spot, yeah, it’s the tops, man. Nearby there’s a sweet swimming hole to jump in if we get all hot up there.”
“Awesome,” Barry said. The day was nice, but Barry couldn’t really see how it could be conceived as a swimming type of day. Certainly, he didn’t get how eating and talking about poetry and maybe smoking a little grass would get you that hot, but…
Damien slid his hand over Barry’s thigh.
Barry stopped breathing.
His brain scrambled for a reasonable explanation for this. He looked down and tried to see if any of the condoms had escaped his notice, and Damien was merely trying to pick it up for him.
Damien’s hand, palm-down on Barry’s thigh, squeezed.
Barry saw a number of images in quick succession: Damien giving him furtive smiles, Damien sliding in the tape he had made special for their ‘picnic’, Damien and Barry covered in sweat and grass running gleefully down a bank and throwing their clothes off like the trappings of the establishment.
Barry shifted his legs and leaned against the convertible’s door.
“Hey, man, you all right?” Damien asked. Barry cleared his throat.
“Uh, no, I think I’m going to be sick. Could you stop the car?” Barry said in a distant voice.
“Sure,” Damien said and pulled over. Barry had the door open and was stepping away from the car before it came to a complete stop. He bent over and placed his hands on his knees.
He wasn’t sure he was going to be sick before, but now that he was here, that seemed like as good an idea as any. He made deep chuffing noises in his throat.
“Hey, hey, baby, it’s all right,” Damien said as he approached. He put a hand on the small of Barry’s back. Barry bolted upright and took two big steps away. He put a finger in the air, but could not find the capacity of speech, nor could he look the other man in the eyes.
“Oh, man, you’re not out yet, are you?” Damien asked. “Jesus, Damien does it again. I’m sorry. I guess I just have a way of attracting you types.” He looked at Barry’s confused look on his face. “Oh, man, you’re not even out to yourself, are you?”
“No…what?” Barry asked. “I’m not…I’m sorry…I think you’ve got me confused with someone else…I’m not…”
“Come on, Barry. You can relax. I’m okay with it. We both know what you’re feeling. I’ve been there, all right?” Damien turned. “Jesus, why do I keep doing this to myself?”
“I’m not…gay. Is that what you think?” Barry asked. He cleared his throat, and tried to stand with as much masculinity as he could.
“No, Barry, I don’t think you’re gay,” Damien said. “I know you are.”
“Look…I…thought…I thought…”
“You thought that a couple of straight guys like you and me were going to go have a picnic and discuss poetry and become inspired by the landscape? Okay, let’s talk poetry. How about the one you wrote about the oak tree? I liked that one. How did the line go: “as I run my hand over its rounded and swollen outthrust knob…”
“That oak tree reminded me of my grandfather. I mean…of our time together.” Barry felt like crying. He bit his lip.
“Well, maybe you need to talk to a therapist about that.”
“Hey!” Barry barked in anger. “I’m…I’m not like you.”
“No, you aren’t like me. I wouldn’t lead somebody on for weeks and then pull this psycho-bullshit on them! I wouldn’t walk around, writing bad poetry and being afraid of being who I really am!”
“Shut up!” Barry said.
“Oh, he’s a tough guy, now. I can play this game.” Damien batted his eyelashes at Barry. He put a splayed hand over his lips. “Are you going to make me, big boy?” Damien sidled toward him, swaying his hips.
Barry put his hands out defensively. Damien took them. Barry wrenched his hand free and smacked Damien in the chin. Damien’s teeth came together on his tongue with a clunk. All playfulness evaporated from Damien’s blue eyes. They filled with pain and anger.
“That fucking hurt!” Damien said and punched Barry in the face.
Barry fell against the car and held his throbbing cheek and eye.
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry,” Damien said. “I just…you surprised me, is all.”
“I’m not gay!” Barry roared in pain from behind his hands.
“Okay, I get it. You’re not gay. Just let me see the damage, okay?” Damien bent close.
Barry bowled past him and began walking down the roadside, still clutching his throbbing face. He felt thankful for the pain. It gave him something behind which he could hide.
“Hey, wait, Barry, come back. I’m sorry, all right. Let me make it up to you, okay?”
“Just go away, I want to be left alone,” Barry said.
* * * *
At this time, Gentle Readers, I’d like to invite you into the tormented thoughts of Barry Trudeau as he walked away from the poet, Damien Goldrick. These thoughts speak of the most primal sufferings of Barry’s past. It was to these that Barry’s mind went on that lonely stretch of highway surrounded by the northern New York woods. Of these memories Barry has not spoken aloud, nor has he allowed himself to ruminate upon them. He has not told Glen, who is the third best friend Barry will ever have. Barry’s second best friend was Todd Wilmot who attended Bearfield Elementary school from kindergarten to third grade. In third grade, Todd’s parents got a divorce and Todd was forced to move to Wyoming with his mother. There, tragically and most ironically, Todd and his mother were eaten by werewolves.
In a little over a year, Barry will confide these memories to Brenda Woodmansee, a wonderful woman who you will not have a chance to meet until chapter thirteen of this volume. Brenda will be Barry’s best friend—with benefits.
Before I give any more “spoilers”—as Glen is fond of calling them—I will illustrate the nature and details of these haunting recollections.
Before I do, please keep in mind, two things. The first is that Barry is not a homophobe. He has never slandered anyone of a different sexual orientation. The second fact is that Barry is not gay.
In fact, Barry had to come to terms with his raging heterosexuality at an early age. Barry had been entranced by his mother’s friends when they had bent over him and goo-gooed at him during ceramics making parties or macramé sessions. He loved their smell, their curving bosoms and expressive lips.
“Look at how he’s studying everything that we do!” Rhonda Peters remarked to the other woman in attendance. “You can tell he’s going to be a smart one.” This statement, although misinterpreting the nature of Barry’s infantile stare, was not altogether incorrect, however. Barry would grow up to be a young man with promising intellect, a fact that would set him woefully apart from his parents and three brothers. He would also be a very, very horny young man, who sadly lacked the natural charisma to alleviate his pubescent sufferings.
As Barry dreamed of enormous African goddesses that would kidnap him and wrap him between their huge black thighs, he understood one vital thing. He could not help being who he was. He also understood that if he had happened to be born with the desires and inclinations of homosexuality, he would not be able to help that, either. It made him increasingly wary around his father’s beer-chugging and homophobic friends. He wondered how anyone could be born without the faculties to understand this basic biological concept. He also considered the fact that if this reasoning faculty did not function within
these beings, lord knows what else was wrong with them. He decided that it would be best to just avoid them, altogether. This of course further alienated Barry from his cowboy hat-wearing father, by excluding him from hunting trips, sports events, and just about everything that Reg Trudeau loved.
Despite, his persistent sexual urges toward all of the women he encountered, Barry’s sexual experiences remained isolated to what he could manage behind closed doors with himself. In reality, despite Barry’s instant stutter when around girls, he could have managed to find a willing co-experimenter in all things conjugal, except for two things.
One: he possessed a crippling self-consciousness which would only allow him to do anything naturally, but instead, he watched himself do things, and then feeling alienated from even this experience would often watch himself, watching himself do things. This usually led to an overall disconnect between his thoroughly distanced brain and his body, which would abruptly graze the bosom of a nearby female, or lose the ability to walk in a straight line.
Two: he had watched far too many after-school specials. These haunting exposes on the rigors and challenges of modern teen life, exposed him to the horrors of drug addiction, peer pressure, and most importantly, teen pregnancy. The idea of living through the horror, shame and hardships of unplanned parenthood scared Barry out of his wits and out of any desire to consummate even the most pedestrian of his secret fantasies. He was sure that should he start dating he would end up a baby-daddy, be leaping off ledges, and sniffing Elmer’s glue with a straw. This was why at sixteen, Barry remained a virgin, a fact which filled Reg Trudeau, his father, with great anxiety and a secret shame. As Barry’s seventeenth birthday approached, Reg and his wife, Donna, decided to sit down with Barry and try to get the truth behind the reclusive book worm that had the most incomprehensible habit of winning teen poetry writing contests.
“Barry, we want to ask you something, that your father and I have been worried about for some time,” Donna said. Barry nodded but continued to read the novel he had on his lap.
“Barry, put the damned book up,” his father shouted. “Your mother is talking to you! You read too damned much, anyways. It isn’t normal. If you keep this up you’ll be living all by yourself in twenty years with no prospects, no job, no family and eating beans out of cans.” Barry sighed and shut the book.
At that moment Barry’s twin older brothers came barreling through the adjoining kitchen from outside.
“Come on, Brett. Let me fuck your girlfriend! Just once, okay?”
“Don’t be a douche, you cunt-lapping bitch!” Brent replied.
“I don’t know what the big deal is. She’s just another cum-dumpster!” Brett retorted.
“Oh, they aren’t taking off their shoes again!” their mother warbled in a histrionic whisper.
“Boys, take your damned shoes off! Do you understand?” Reg yelled over Barry’s head.
“Yes, Dad,” they groaned and kicked off their steel toed work boots and chased each other through the house making pinching swipes at each other’s backsides.
“What we were trying to say is…I mean…We thought you could tell us…” Barry’s mom stalled, looking at Barry like a frustrated and very lost stranger.
“Barry, we want to know straight out: are you gay?”
The color drained out of Barry’s face. The intrusive shock of this question resonated deep within him, as if his father had reached out and cuffed him without warning across the face. Then deep inside him a spark of indignation arose, fanned by the years of being misunderstood by those around him in a poorly educated family, in which he had been either cosmically misplaced, or into which he had been placed by a mad god doing cruel psychological experiments.
“Well, two can play at that game, mad god,” young Barry thought. His eyes cleared and a corner of his mouth twitched up.
“Why, yes, father. I am. I am gay,” he lied and sat back in his chair to see what the reaction would be.
Unlike his more brutish and aggressive brothers, Barry had never dared to strike his father or mother. The recoiled and devastated look upon their faces at that moment had been exactly the look that he had imagined they would possess at such an event. His father grunted and got up from the table. He clomped out of the kitchen with his own work boots. His mother put her face up to what Barry had to assume was the mad god, himself, and began to entreat him with a flood of tears and a great keening sound.
Barry heard his father ransacking the woodshed for his stashed bottle of whisky. A few minutes later, discovering that his sons had helped themselves to all but a sliver’s worth, he set to beating one of the support beams with a great stick of wood.
Barry and his mother turned to stare at their own reflections in the china cabinet as his father worked away his wrath upon the unsuspecting beam.
“Is it true, are you really..?” Donna Trudeau hiccupped her grief and snorted her dismay. “Are you really..?”
“Gay? No, Mom. I’m not. I just wanted to see what you guys would do. Frankly, I’m pretty sure this means I should be happy I’m not,” he said. He felt a strange sense of calm and detachment as his mother sat in front of him with a great look of hurt and wet the dining room table with her tears. His father did not share this relief. A few minutes later he cried out in a great torrent of curses as the support beam gave way and half of the wood shed roof caved in upon him.
A few years later, with the help of his sensitive and eccentric great-aunt, Barry embarked on his quest for a liberal education and enlightenment at a small university in upstate New York.
Trying to conquer his social anxiety, Barry decided to challenge himself by minoring in speech and theater. He performed in many small parts and student-directed plays. In his sophomore year he managed to get the part of Uncle Jack in the campus production of Dancing at Lughnasa. On open night he ruled the stage, could feel the audience as if they laughed at the end of strings that he masterfully pulled with quirks in his voice and the jaunt of his elbows. Basking in the after-glow of this experience he managed to lose his virginity to a sorority girl who had gone to the play because she needed the extra credit or fail her fine arts requirement.
In the morning, the girl remained with him telling him about her life in Greenwich, Connecticut. They had dinner together later that day, and made love again that next evening. Life, for Barry, finally began to feel comfortable. He wondered if the mad god got bored or had called in sick.
Then, that Monday in dramaturgy class the professor made a point of congratulating Barry on his accomplishments.
“Yeah, well,” a short girl said from the other end of the conference table. “The part was obviously a natural for him.”
“Still, I don’t think it sullies Barry’s performance. Congratulations, again, Barry,” the professor said.
“What do you mean, it was natural for me?” Barry asked.
“Well, it is obvious that Father Jack is totally gay,” she said.
“What?” Barry wasn’t sure he had heard the girl correctly.
“He’s gay, with all that dancing around and, I mean, he’s a priest, right?”
“Uncle Jack isn’t gay, is he professor?” Barry asked. The professor spread his hands out and shrugged.
“I think that is left to the imaginations of the audience. Remember, we talked about the difference between authorial intention, even performance intention, and audience reception?” With this, the professor continued in a rehash of his pet theory.
After that, Barry began to notice many strange things.
* * * *
On Tuesday, Barry sat down at a table in the middle of the student center restaurant and fell to devouring a pizza roll. A couple of sorority girls, long haired and glamorous, drew his subversive attention. One of them caught his eyes and looked away.
“Hey, that guy over there is pretty cute,” the dark-eyed beauty said in a tiny voice to her friend. Her equally-beautiful cohort gave him a cursory look and then bent toward her shorter
friend.
“Yeah, I know, it’s too bad that…” and she whispered the rest into her friend’s ear.
“Wait, what’s too bad?” Barry wanted to get up and ask. He watched as understanding dawned on the girl’s face. She gave Barry a strange look and pouted out her beautiful lips petulantly.
The hypnotic and intrusive rhythms of some song called, Doodle-boppin’ Girl, beat from the student center speakers. The girls in the next table squealed with delight and bobbed their beautiful heads.
“Like mares, wild and precociously perfect,” he thought. A poem began to percolate in his head.
“Jeez, what’s with this boy-band crap,” Tony Cantoni said as he slid his tray of pasta onto the table. Tony had been in several performances and classes with Barry.
“Well, it has a catchy beat,” Barry said, prying his eyes off the girls.
“So does a dryer,” Tony drawled.
“Hey, Tony, some of us are getting together on Thursday for a little party. I thought you might like to drop by. You don’t have to bring anything,” Barry suggested. Tony froze with a huge forkful of spaghetti half way to his mouth.
“Yeah, Barry, okay. I’ll have to check my schedule.” This was the third party to which Barry had invited Tony. Tony had yet to show up. Barry didn’t understand it. Barry could tell that the Staten Island native really didn’t have a lot of friends at the largely upper-middle class winter camp for the inebriated.
On Wednesday, Barry went to visit his old friend Patty’s room. They had been neighbors in their freshman dorm, and even though they had nothing in common, the fact that Barry had held Patty’s hair while she vomited up the night’s celebrations on more than one occasion, they enjoyed a cordial friendship. Patty was now a residential advisor, which to Barry seemed like a fascinating turn of events.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Barry?” Patty said.