A Boy's Own Story (27 page)

Father Burke had stopped tapping his fingers. His smile had faded and his eyes had gone cloudy. He'd let his face become old and weary, as though to say I had done this to him. Suddenly his eyes were homing in on me, a flicker of his tongue stung his lips back into life and he said, "But shouldn't we set aside this
philosophy"
—generous dollop of irony to suggest that if he was interested in my soul he was bored by my mind, for my soul might be eternal but my mind was all too obviously adolescent—"and move on to something a little more urgent." He pressed his fingertips to his brow and hid behind his hands. "Haven't you something you want to tell me about?" he asked out of this manual tent, his voice hollow.

But he was trying to intimidate the wrong person. I was, after all, a Buddhist. I'd never believed, or only in fleeting reverie, in a warm, concerned, touchy Christian God, who seemed all too obviously a conflation of what people wanted and feared. As a character, Burke intrigued me more than his deity. I appreciated the sense of drama he wanted to inject into my existence and I was flattered he thought I, or at least some essential if rather abstract principle within me, was worth saving.

But I also felt surging within me a fierce need to be independent. Of course I responded to the appeal of divine hydraulics, this system of souls damned or crowned or destroyed or held in suspense, these pulleys and platforms sinking and lifting on the great stage, and I recognized that my view of things seemed by contrast impoverished, lacking in degree and incident. But the charming intricacy of a myth is not sufficient to compel belief. I found no good reason to assume that the ultimate nature of reality happens to resemble the backstage of an opera house.

On a more emotional level I had an aversion to anything authoritarian. I might long for the capacious, sheltering embrace of a father but I detested paternalism. I was quite hostile to it, in fact. "Well, yes," I said, "I am seeing a psychiatrist because I have conflicts over certain homosexual tendencies I'm feeling."

At these words Father Burke's face lurched up out of his hands. Not the nervous little confession he had expected. He recovered his poise and decided to laugh boisterously, the laugh of Catholic centuries.
"Conflicts?"
he whooped, in tears of laughter by now. Then, sobering for a second, the priest added in a low, casual voice, "But you see, my son, homosexuality isn't just a
conflict
that needs to be
resolved"
—his voice picked up these words as though they were nasty bits of refuse—"homosexuality is also a sin."

I think he had no notion how little an effect the word
sin
had on me. He might just as well have said, "Homosexuality is bad
juju"

"But I feel very drawn to other men," I said. Although something defiant in me forced these words out, I felt myself becoming a freak the moment I spoke. My hair went bleach-blond, my wrist went limp, my rep tie became a lace jabot: I was the simpering queen at the grand piano playing concert versions of last year's pop tunes for his mother and her bridge club. There was no way to defend what I was. All I could fight for was my right to choose my exile, my destruction.

"Just because you feel something is no reason to act on it," the priest said. "Americans hold up their feelings as though they were... dispensations." He drained off the brandy. "For instance, I've taken a vow of chastity and I abide by it."

"What do you do for relief?"

He smiled at my impertinence. "Do I masturbate, is that what you're asking? I don't. Occasionally there's a nocturnal emission." He touched his lips with his fingertips. I wondered if the women of his parish who volunteered their services as housekeepers to the priest treasured those stiffened linen relics of sanctity.

The pastoral chat was not turning out. Father Burke was miffed. He was most irritated with the Scotts, who'd misrepresented to him my readiness to leap up into the lap of Mother Church. The priest consulted his pocket watch, then worked a toothpick behind a screening hand, a nicety that seemed to me nearly as repulsive as nocturnal emissions.

My stubbornness caused the Scotts to cool considerably. When I dropped in on Rachel the Monday after Thanksgiving, she scarcely looked up from her
Imitation of Christ.
At last she sighed impatiently, set it aside and said, "I don't think you should spend quite so much time here. It's not healthy for you. You should run and play with the other boys. Besides, I'm doing a lot of reading in
The Golden Bough
for my next poem and I can't just chew the fat with you for hours and hours and hours." Tears sprang to my eyes and I hurried away.

Recently a new part-time teacher had been added to the staff, a Mr. Beattie, who had been hired to instruct three afternoons a week those students interested in jazz. Beattie himself was a jazz drummer and had even toured with a band; he still held regular jam sessions somewhere downtown on weekends. Chuck told me Beattie was a "character," his highest accolade. Chuck was so sure of himself he was always seeking out "characters" in order to introduce dissonance into his otherwise tonic experience.

Chuck was famous for his escapades. He'd regale me for hours with the details. His current girl was the pert granddaughter of an almost comically conservative senator, one of those mastodons my father voted for. At the moment Janie had her own house, an unusual possession for a girl of seventeen. Her mother, who was supposed to live with her, was off sailing the Aegean with an Argentine. Her playboy father, about to divorce his third wife and already separated from her, lived on a neighboring estate by himself. He'd lost his license after repeated arrests for drunk driving, and his daughter had to chauffeur him everywhere. They looked like brother and sister. A maid cooked and cleaned for Janie, but the maid didn't live in. Someone else maintained the indoor pool.

At night Janie was alone and she was free to invite anyone she liked to stay over. That would usually be Chuck on weekends. Even on some weeknights Chuck would escape the dorm after lights-out. Janie would be waiting for him at the gate in her battered old MG, lights off. She'd return him to school before dawn. In the interval he'd persuade her to perform some new sexual stunt. They'd experiment with exotic lubricants (papaya juice, chocolate syrup, cold bacon grease). He'd insert a balloon in her and then inflate it. Eventually she would return the favor as they both drifted on an air mattress across the heated swimming pool on a sub-zero December night. Snow blew up in banks against the thick glass doors and spun in minor swirls under the porch lights. Farther up the hill stood pines laden with snow like ermined dons gathering for the procession.

Chuck grew more boisterous, reckless, impatient after every adventure. No outrage was enough for him. Only a war would have been equal to his hunger for danger. He and several members of the Butt Club became friends with Beattie. Just before supper every other afternoon they'd sit around with him down in the music building and smoke cigarettes in one of the record-listening booths. They'd spin jazz records. Sometimes Beattie would play along on his own drums. The noise of their talk, laughter and drumming was confined to the soundproof room. Whoever might report they were smoking off limits and at an impermissible time of day could be spotted at a safe distance through the glass window set into the wall separating the booth from the glee club's big practice room.

Beattie wore black suede shoes and had his hair cut in a flattop, longer in back than in front. It sloped down toward you like a ski jump. If he bent his head, his scalp showed white. His handshake was limp, but a second after he'd removed this cold, boneless fillet from your hand he was slicing the air with a powerful snap of his fingers in response to some mental or recorded riff he was hearing. He'd squint and bite his lower lip and his head would bob up and down in an accelerating rhythm. Soon he'd be whispering, "And-a one, and-a two..." He had, it seemed, only one suit, a shiny gray sharkskin, the baggy pants radically pegged, the jacket's lapels narrow and usually turned up as against a draft. On off hours he wore no tie but just a black shirt buttoned tightly at the neck to give him a throttled look. His neck and face and hands were pale and big; he seemed like a prisoner in a cheap suit he's been given on dismissal. He projected a strong, almost rancid sexuality, but it was hard to place. It was too canny and too asymmetrical to seem robustly masculine in the old sense. He had a way of grabbing his crotch and holding it, sometimes even shaking it for a second while he was talking. I suppose he'd picked this up from the Negroes he'd met in the jazz world.

This gesture seemed designed to lend an extra weight to his words. Or perhaps it was a proof to the listener that he was being honest, all there, a body behind his words.

His ears were a shade pinker than his pale face. His eyebrows were very solid and dark and looked as though the draftsman had pochéd them in quickly. His upper lip was so thin as to form just a line, but his lower lip was full. On some days he laughed hysterically at simple statements; he'd double up and keep repeating an ordinary word someone had chanced to use as if he hoped to wring some new meaning out of it. When he held his crotch, his baggy pants would ride up to reveal how powerful his thighs were. He wore socks of bright pinks and purples and they were only ankle-high. His responses were sometimes weirdly delayed. Someone would ask him a question and he'd study his face a moment, two moments, before saying a soft, feathery yes or an even less audible no.

I sat around with the Butt Club boys and Mr. Beattie on two or three different afternoons, but I didn't like him. He reminded me of that hustler I'd met two summers ago. He had the same air of being a con man. Something shifty.

One day Chuck told me Beattie was about to receive a shipment of marijuana. Did I want to buy in or at least try a joint or two?

"What is it, exactly?" I asked. "Isn't it like heroin?"

Chuck laughed. "No. Great stuff, Beattie tells me. Makes you happy. Good for sex. Good for listening to music. Come on down next Wednesday to the music room and we'll blow some weed." He snapped his fingers with a hard snap. But this was precisely the invitation to a lifelong addiction I'd always heard about, a fate so dire no one actually had ever had to warn me against it. Not that I'd met an addict, but I had seen movies in which a handsome musician—exactly!— sweated in a hotel room and vomited and pleaded with his girl friend to put him back on the needle or weed or whatever, but she refused him for his own sake, despite his hallucinations and writhings on the floor. Why had Mr. Beattie come to Eton? Perhaps he was so addicted to marijuana he could no longer afford to maintain his habit unless—that's it—unless he also became a dealer to bored teens.

In those days all drugs except alcohol, tobacco and diet pills and sedatives were unknown to conventional Americans.

I wasn't sure what I should do. I wanted to do the right thing. Chuck and the other guys in the Butt Club seemed hopeless to me. They would succumb to any temptation, I knew, but not if the temptation was removed. They valued nothing. One of them had lost an eye in a fight, but all he could say was, "So what? I've still got one left."

During my next session with Dr. O'Reilly I asked him for advice. He didn't want to discuss my problems. He was telling me about his daughter's latest escapade. While he had been addressing a parents' group, she had gone into the best restaurant in town, been careful to identify herself as his daughter and then tried to set the place on fire.

When I brought O'Reilly back to the subject, he snapped, "I can't tell you what to do, you know that."

"Then give me some information. Is marijuana dangerous?"

"Can be." He was picking his nose in an elaborate way, examining his handkerchief for portents.

"How?"

"It can cause a psychotic break." He had just received a shipment of Polynesian carvings, statues with real human hair and giant phalluses; three of these totems stood behind his chair, lending force to his opinions.

"What's a psychotic—"

"Craziness."

"And does marijuana always lead to heroin?"

"It can, if only because you start living in the drug world and you think you might as well try everything."

"What does it do, marijuana, to ordinary people?"

"Makes them paranoid."

I thought I knew how my father must feel all the time: lonely and responsible. No one looked to my father for amusement. He was dull. He wasn't fashionable. He was deliberate, but he didn't shirk his responsibilities. He could always be counted on to do the right thing.

I went to the headmaster's secretary to make an appointment. "I must see him now."

"What is it exactly?" she asked. "Do you want to argue over a grade? It's too late for that—"

"No, no," I said disdainfully. "It has nothing to do with me personally. It concerns the reputation of the school and it can't wait a moment."

She nodded and went into the headmaster's paneled, carpeted office for a moment. When she emerged she told me to come back at four.

I was agitated. I knew I was doing the right thing and yet I feared what Chuck would say when Mr. Beattie was fired. Would Chuck drop me, persecute me, organize a cabal against me, tell everyone I was a hateful little prig?

I knew I wouldn't be able to face Mr. Beattie. I'd never spoken out against anyone before. Would his wife and children go hungry? Would he ever find another job? Never before had I wielded so much power over an adult man; the power excited and scared me. Paradoxically, I who didn't much like Eton, I who concealed sexual longings most Etonians would have condemned far sooner than dope peddling, I who had rejected the school's religion and slept with a master and his wife, I who had once bought a hustler ten years older than I and last summer had slept with a boy three years younger, I who'd serviced Ralph, the special camper—paradoxically I was the one whom circumstance had chosen to defend this institution I despised. I was to be the guardian of public morality.