I Loved You More (7 page)

That moment.

Twenty of them and two of us. But that isn't going to stop the Capricorn goat, Guardian of the Doorway Hank. At least that's what I'm thinking when I look over at him. There's a way Hank can make his face go. It's like he can erase any feeling from it and his eyes go cold and far away and all of a sudden he's a big slab of marble staring you down. Three times I've experienced Hank look that way. One of those times he was staring at me. Made my stomach feel like it was full of ashes.

That's how Hank is looking at the skinhead dude.

Here's another place where I have no idea how a guy should act. When two guys square off and start acting like gorillas. It's like back in the day, when I still could get high enough to get hard, when I was fucking someone and they'd say,
Oh! fuck that wet hole with your big fat dick!
or something just as awful. It never
failed. I got so embarrassed I had to put my pants back on. Same way with the male-to-male squaring off, the fists up, the shifting back from side to side, the chest beating, the motherfuckering – all of it – the whole scene makes me crazy, so I get myself out of there.

In that moment, though, Hank isn't about to budge. Neither is the skinhead dude. He and Hank are already in an eye lock. They're a parking meter apart, but still you can tell, this is only going lead to something brutal. At that point, I do a quick look around. That world, the miracle umbrella, where had it gone so fast? It was still Hank and me, still the same night. Hank and I were still the Indians, but the cowboys were skinheads – one skinhead in particular, and the other twenty skinheads were still back on the corner, crack high, some of them pounding down beers. None of them had noticed yet. The way things were going, though, it wasn't going to be long.

The skinhead dude smiles the way you do when you know twenty of your buddies are behind you. He pulls a cigarette from behind his ear, snaps open a silver lighter, and puts the flame to the end of the cigarette. Snaps it closed.

This moment. This long long moment.

Myself, I'm afraid and I don't know how not to show it.

I'm a sissy, all right – a fag, I know, but that doesn't mean I can't defend myself. Or my friend. My defense started when I was born, although it took me a long time to understand that I was under siege, that the story of my life was the sacred battle I was in to save my life. Finally, I left my mother, my father, my sister, my home, and the Catholic Church. Years later I left my wife. Since then, my life has been one long lesson on where to draw the line and when.

Twice in my life, well I guess three times really, Big Ben knew that this was it and I had to do it: play the gorilla, do the square-off thing, the fists up, the shifting from side to side, the chest beating, the motherfuckering, the punching, the kicking, the screaming, the gasping for air. The first two times it was a
fight for my life. Both times Little Ben was trembling and afraid and was crying and I showed it. Both times I walked away more alive than ever.

The first time happened way back in Idaho, the second was just a couple months before I met Hank.

The third time was the last time I saw Hank. And I'll tell you all about it later.

But that night, in that moment, those first two times fighting for my life were right up close to me, inside, in my fists, the breath in my chest. Went on forever that moment – the adrenaline making me pop.

But I couldn't figure it out. Why was Hank taking this fight on? The skinhead dude was an asshole but not worth a minute of our time. Plus there was twenty of them and two of us.

Fag
.

Fag
. Out of that moment
fag
was what was sucking out all the air.

THERE'S A CODE
of honor among straight guys. At least for Hank. I don't think it's as formal as that. I mean there's no rule book. Maybe it was because he was Italian, or maybe because he grew up in a mill town in Pennsylvania, or who knows for what the hell reason. I never found out. For Hank Christian, though, there was definitely a code of honor. I never understood the code, how deep it went. For sure it has a lot to do with – after Hank got the
got to go pal
letter – why he never spoke to me again. I've come to understand that letter broke a couple big rules. Never turn away from your buddy. Never let a woman come between.

The hair tip. I should have given Hank the hair tip. Made him laugh.

Always been an odd duck. My father hardly ever spoke to me, let alone to talk about what it means to be male, and I was raised by women, so how could I possibly know something as mysterious as a male code of honor. I'm just not wired that way. I've tried, believe me. In high school, I never could go out for
sports because at home there was always so much goddamn work to do. But in college, I pledged a fraternity, twice, knew the special handshake, the secret knock, and the secret word. All that secret crap. Brothers. But that didn't stop that guy John Farrell from getting blackballed because of a birth defect that gave him a weird-looking left ear. United in a fraternal embrace, my ass. And I spent two years in
ROTC.
I was voted outstanding squad leader for chrissakes. The day it all crashed in for me, the reason I never went advanced
ROTC
was the day we had bayonet practice. We put the bayonets on the end of our rifles, lined up one squad against another, and in a hot little room in the basement of the gymnasium practiced lunging at one another in a series of three steps and bayonet thrusts while the officer yelled:
what is the spirit of the bayonet?

There I was, the bayonet attached to the end of my
M14
, lunging and thrusting at Clyde Jablonski, the dorky guy who sat next to me in French class, yelling
kill! kill!

Maybe gay guys miss out on that part of being male. I mean I understand loyalty to friends, I understand keeping your word, and I understand sticking up for what is right. But somehow it's never been enough. It's like the first rule for
Fight Club
. With a twist. If you have to talk about it then you're obviously not in it.

Male love is back to back. Female love is front to front. That's the way Hank put it. If you feel love for a guy then it's your duty to protect him against any kind of physical threat. When two guys become friends, when two guys feel love for each other,
they've got each other's backs
. They become a team, interdependent and exclusive. That exclusive team of two can expand to include a squad or a platoon, say, or other members of the playing team, or the gang. The important thing to understand is that the men unite back to back
against
something else. I mean as an outsider that's the way male love
looks
: male love unites
against
something, whether real or imagined. They can feel good feeling good with each other because there's a threat to that feeling good.

THE SCREAM-YELL-KILL-HATE MUSIC
blaring out into the street. Hank is standing there next to me in his white T-shirt, his cutoffs, white socks and white tennis shoes, his sweaty hair, a celery soda in his hand, staring down a skinhead dude with a wise-ass smile who's working on the second puff of his cigarette just ready to turn around and whistle for his leather, colorfully topped, twenty cowboys. That moment. Sometimes you think you've lived just to live through a moment like that. For whatever reason – fate, personality, or shit just happens – it, whatever
it
is, all comes together.

Then I see clear as day.

In that moment, Hank Christian had never in his life been in this place before. Hank could've gone through his whole life letting men call other men
fags
and while maybe he wouldn't have agreed, or maybe he would have even found it offensive, until that night, Hank could always have dismissed it. He had never been in the position of ever having to defend against it. That night, by the time the skinhead dude called us fags, though, the bond between me and Hank was already strong. The trouble was, neither one of us knew what kind of bond it was: the male kind, or the female kind. Or something else altogether.

That's what Hank is doing when his eyes go cold and he's turned to marble. Fags are what you called the guys you were united
against
. And there he is, Hank Christian, with a friend, Ben Grunewald: fag. Male love was being called upon to defend a different kind of love. A love Hank didn't know anything about except that he felt it.

So in Hank's way of thinking, since
fags
were him, he was obliged. Hank's sense of responsibility – that I was the first one in his life ever to call him on – had kicked in big time. Like that first night I'd really looked at him, in Jeske's class as he stood arms out guarding the doorway.

That's what you do when you love, you protect.

THAT MOMENT. THE
skinhead dude has his lighter back in his pocket and is standing up, his back to us, waving his arms. He's yelling, trying to get the attention of his twenty skinhead cowboy dudes. That loud loud music.

I have to act fast. I step in front of Hank, up close but not too close. The normal male-to-male propinquity. I put my eyes right into Hank's eyes, the way he's making them go dead. I'm going to touch him, maybe on the shoulder, but when my hand reaches up, I put it right back down again. Big Ben starts talking:

“Hank,” I say, “you don't have to smooth this out. You told me yourself – you've been doing that your whole life.”

Like talking to a fence post. Hank's black eyes stare past me just over my shoulder. The dude behind me is doing something, because Hank's eyes are moving like crazy. I want to turn around but don't. I wipe the sweat out of my eyes with the butt of my hand. Take a deep breath.

“So he called us fags,” I say. “The irony of it is, the guy can tell how close we are tonight. Don't let some asshole put a label on it.”

Hank's eyes start coming back from the dead, but his gaze on the dude behind me never lets up. Then a sign from God, or the universe agreeing, or just something makes it all stop, and suddenly Hank raises his chest up with a quick breath of air.

“How many times you been called a fag, Ben?”

“Enough,” I say.

“When's it going to stop?”

“It's not up to you to stop it, Hank,” I say. “It's not your job to take this on.”

I turn around quick, stand myself square next to Hank. Check out the situation. Over here, Hank and I are still the Indians. Four lunges away over there, the skinhead dude is in a torpor, facing his friends, jumping up and down yelling and screaming and waving. But his friends don't see him. They're way too fucking high. The music is way too fucking loud.

I turn my face, put my mouth close to Hank's ear.

“This guy with the red, white, and blue-striped hair in front of us here is a cocksucker. He just don't know it yet.”

It's amazing all that can happen in a moment.

Hank walks the space between up to the skinhead dude, taps him on the back of the shoulder. Me, I'm right next to Hank – male code of honor, I guess. The dude thinks he's dead for sure. He jumps back, goes into a crouch. The crack-high cowboys behind him carry on into oblivion.

Hank is holding his body the way he does. His chest pushed out and up, his chin down, shoulders down, his hands made into fists, biceps flexed. The celery soda can in his hand was a wadded up piece of aluminum. I have no idea where my can of root beer has gone.

“You need to watch out!” Hank says, “Who you're calling a Republican.”

LATER ON THAT
night, before I go home and Hank gets on his train, on St. Mark's Place at #77, we stop at W. H. Auden's house and I read Hank out loud the poem on the plaque below the second story window. We stand there for a long time. Closer than most men would stand, but not touching. That fucking poem, man. The city's going from Friday night to Saturday morning. I think for sure I'm going to cry.

A big old smooch right on the lips, Hank gives me. Hank Christian's sweet lips on mine. He walks away and waves without turning around, the same way we'd walked away from the skinhead dude. Just move your legs and walk. Into a brand new world. It's that easy.

      
3.

The bullies

THE FIRST TIME BIG BEN KNEW THAT THIS WAS IT AND
I had to stand my ground and fight was the end of school my senior year. The last year, the last class, the last day in high school ever. Mechanical drawing. And in mechanical drawing there was a guy named Abe Martin. For some reason, Abe Martin hated my guts. I never could figure out why Abe Martin hated me so much. Years later now, it's pretty clear.

In grade school, Abe and I were in the same 4-H club. Our club meetings were on Thursday nights. It was tough having 4-H on a Thursday night because our club jackets were green and if you wore green on Thursday that meant you were a queer. I didn't know what queer was, but I knew it wasn't good. The other boys in the club, as they started high school, stopped wearing their jackets to the meetings altogether. Myself, in eighth grade, as soon as my ass was out of Catholic school, I was out of 4-H too. Not because of the green on Thursday thing. I just wasn't no farmer. I was going to college.