The Night Listener : A Novel (14 page)

“Think about it. Doesn’t it strike you as a little too gothic? This poor little kid who’s always being mistreated. By his evil parents and the evil pederasts and the evil doctors. People have shitty lives, but they’re not shitty
all
the time. This is like
The Perils of Pauline
.

Don’t you think it’s
possible
he’s exaggerating a little?”

“Jewelling the elephant,” I said, nailing him with my gaze.

“Okay. Whatever.” He smiled back at me carefully. “It’s been known to happen.”

“You know, I’ve enjoyed that joke as much as you have. But there’s a lot more than elephants involved here. This kid is probably dying.

If you toned down his life by half it would still be horrendous. And he’s also somebody I happen to love.” This just tumbled out heed-lessly, like a deathbed revelation. My face grew blotchy with embarrassment.

Jess was gentle about it. “C’mon, sweetie. Love? After four phone calls?”

“It’s more like ten. But yes.”

“Well, that’s what makes you who you are.” I knew he was trying to be nice, but I felt trivialized, dismissed as a sentimental fool.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked.

“Just a little disappointed,” I said. “You know how this works.”

“How what works?”

“What they always say about child abuse: the hardest part is getting adults to believe that it actually happened. People don’t
want
to believe something that barbarous, so they find ways to deny it.

That’s exactly what you’re doing, Jess. This kid has somehow screwed up the courage to lay it all on the line, to blow the whistle on his own parents…and all you can do is accuse him of exaggera-tion.”

“I haven’t accused him of anything. I just explained a feeling I had. If I can’t do that with you…”

“I thought you guys would hit it off.”

“We did. I like him a lot. He’s a bright kid.”

“You’re one of his heroes, you know. He sees you as a much bigger hell-raiser than I am.”

“Well…he’s perceptive, too.”

That made me smile.

“And politically he’s right there with us. I was impressed by that.”

“That’s Donna’s influence,” I said, beginning to calm down. “And all that time in the AIDS wards. He knows what it’s like to be an outsider. He’s practically an honorary queer.” Jess locked eyes with me. “I see why you like him. I just brought it up because—”

“It’s okay. I know what you meant. Maybe he
is
a little…vivid sometimes. Maybe we both are. It’s just a mechanism, sweetie. It’s how writers explain things to themselves.”

“I know,” he said, with only a trace of irony.

Jess, of course, had mechanisms of his own. A rough childhood and a decade of near-death experience had turned him into a hardcore skeptic. He distrusted most things until they were proven certainties, until they seemed incapable of disappointing or betraying him.

“Will you talk to him again?” I asked.

“If he wants to. I gave him my number. Don’t these calls get expensive for them?”

“Donna doesn’t seem to mind. It gives him something to do, I guess. And I call
him
sometimes.” Jess’s eyes darted into the coffeehouse where his buddies were deep in conversation. “I should get back.”

“I know.”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Are you really writing?”

I rolled my eyes.

Jess smiled benevolently. “It’ll come. Don’t sweat it.” His face slipped into a scowl when he was jostled by a chubby guy in flannel headed for the terrace with a tray of cinnamon rolls.

“These fucking Bears,” Jess muttered, and went back inside.

When I was about Pete’s age I took a cross-country bus trip to New Mexico with the other boys in my Explorer post. We were heading for Philmont Scout Ranch, where most of us would experience the West for the first time. I remember our excitement when we learned there really
was
a Dodge City, and the rumble that ran through the bus when we heard we would stop there to buy cowboy hats. The other guys went for the ten-dollar model, a cheesy fake with wire in the rim, obviously intended for children. I spotted the word “Stetson” on an upper shelf and decided to go for the best: a mole-colored dome of genuine felt that screamed authenticity. It would take most of my spending money, but
my
souvenir would be one for the ages.

Alas, the hat was less suggestive of Steve McQueen (the person my mother said I most resembled) than of Tom Mix in one of those silly silent westerns. I learned this the hard way when I wore the bulbous monstrosity back to the bus, only to be greeted by a burst of rude laughter and a new nickname—Penishead—that would dog me for the rest of the trip. I told myself I’d be vindicated once the hat had been properly blocked in a mountain stream, but the taunts continued. I shed secret tears that night when we bunked at a nearby army base. And I considered thumbing into Dodge early the next morning, so I could throw myself on the mercy of the haberdasher and beg for my forty dollars back. But I knew there was no undoing the damage I’d already done.

I was never very happy at camp, and Philmont was no exception.

I became the Designated Dork—an easy mark for the other boys—who, oddly, had never been that mean to me back in Charleston. This was the wilderness, though, and all rules were apparently off, so I kept to myself as much as possible and counted the days to my release. The only break in my misery came after a huge thunderstorm, a biblical downpour that loosened our tent pegs and drenched us to the bone. We were rescued by some Yankees at a neighboring campsite—New Jersey boys, as I recall—who shared their food and dry clothes with us. That night, as the rain pounded down, we joined them around their campfire. One of them put his arm across my shoulders so I could inhabit his poncho, and urged me to lean against him for warmth. The comfort I felt was a revelation. I can still conjure up the smell of that mildewy tarp, the toasty warmth of his chest against my back, those rough Yankee vowels forming so close to my Southern ear.

I had learned to jerk off earlier that year, but the experience had seemed more of a medical emergency than an act of lust. At Philmont I became an expert. I would jerk off in my sleeping bag after Taps, drawing on the images of the day: those olive-skinned Yankees in their wet underwear, the loinclothed braves of the Order of the Arrow, the time Bo Brandt dropped his shorts to prove to us how he could stick the tip of his little finger in his pee-hole. And when Taps was too far off, I would lock myself in the outhouse and pound away. It was there that Penishead (a limber lad in those days) made the useful discovery that he could suck his own dick—or at least, with some effort, lick the end of it. It wasn’t exactly Nirvana, but it was a lot closer than he’d ever been to his heart’s desire.

This came back to me last week when I rented a Cadinot porn movie called
Hot on the Trail
, in which a dozen French

“scouts”—most of them at least twenty—tramped across the coun-tryside and enjoyed each other’s company. The film spent a lot of time on preliminaries: wrestling and swimming, tempting bulges in loose khaki shorts. It understood the essence of that youthful longing, the exquisite ache of anticipation and denial. And this, I have to say, is what
still
excites me, after all these years of license and exploration; this is why I liked it best when Jess left his Jockey shorts on.

It’s hell to lust for your tormentors, to know from the beginning that your deepest need can only betray you, only expel you from the tribe. So when you grow up, you find a tribe of your own, with guys just like you, to keep from feeling that way ever again. Only you do sometimes, as I had done that morning at Pasqua, seeing Jess among the leathermen, wondering what they could offer that I could not. That age-old pain came roaring out of nowhere to remind me that I’d never be strong enough, never be handsome enough, never be young enough, to really be a man among men.

TEN

THE MONKEY WRENCH

I CAN PINPOINT the day the bottom fell out. It was the day Matthew Shepard died, because that was the reason Donna Lomax called—”to hear a friendly voice,” as she put it, to sort out her feelings about the latter-day crucifixion that had hit so close to home everywhere in America.

“What is it?” she asked. “Are people getting meaner?” I told her this kind of cruelty had always existed, that only the circumstances around it had changed. Matthew Shepard had been openly gay, after all, and his parents had never been ashamed of him. For once there was no reason to hide the cause of his death, so the truth could be examined in full. And that was progress, I suggested, as grim as it might be.

“He was so
little
,” she said, ignoring my political analysis. “I think that’s what got to me. I know it’s what got to Pete. He hates bullies more than anything. He’s been a mess about this for days.” I told her I knew that.

“Did he call you?”

“No. But Jess talked to him right after it happened.”

“Really? You mean…
your
Jess?”

How I loved the sound of that possessive pronoun. “Yeah,” I said, feeling warmer toward her than ever. “I thought it might be good for Pete. Jess has done so well with his own treatment.”

“That was sweet of you.”

“Actually, I thought they’d both enjoy it. And I wasn’t wrong, as it turned out.”

(Never mind Jess’s talk about jewelling the elephant; he would just have to get over himself.)

“By the way,” said Donna, “I hope I’m not out of line, but Pete said that you guys are…sort of…”

“Yeah. We’re apart for a while.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. We’re hanging in there.”

“You guys are still talking, though. That’s good.” I chuckled ruefully. “I don’t know who else to talk to.”

“Well,” she said. “I’m here, if you need me. I know a thing or two about this stuff. My ex-husband was a couples therapist.” I laughed at the absurdity of that, then caught myself. “Sorry. I know that wasn’t meant to be funny.”

“Oh, yes it was,” she said.

Now she was laughing with me.

“We learn this shit however we have to,” she added.

And then the door buzzer sounded.

“What was that?” she asked.

“A visitor. Probably the gas man. Could you hold for a sec?”

“Sure.”

I bounded downstairs to the intercom where I discovered that the visitor was Jess. I buzzed him up, thrilled about his serendipitous timing, then waited as he climbed the steps through the garden.

“I’m on the phone,” I told him at the door. “With Donna Lomax.”

“Who?”

“Pete’s mother. Why don’t you say hi?”

“I don’t know…”

“C’mon. Just for a minute.” I picked up the extension by the sofa.

“Donna, there’s someone who wants to meet you.” Jess gave me a frosty glance as he accepted the receiver. I sat down on the sofa and watched him with an expression of proud propriet-orship.

“Hi,” he began, turning his back to me. “This is Jess.” Their conversation must have lasted twenty minutes, but I was present for only the first five. They seemed to be getting on so well that I retreated to my office to allow for greater intimacy. The part I
did
hear began with a discussion of treatment options but soon relaxed into more folksy, personal stuff: movies they loved, politicians they hated, the limitations of small-town life. Jess grilled her about everything with obvious interest, like someone on a blind date that has turned out far better than expected.

I knew the call was over when the light on my office phone went off.

So I went back down to the living room. Jess was standing by the French doors, staring out at the city. He didn’t turn around as 136 / ARMISTEAD MAUPIN

I approached, or even speak to me. He just stood there, looking oddly distracted.

“How did it go?” I asked.

His silence lasted a moment longer. Then he turned and faced me.

“You’ve never even noticed, have you?”

I felt uneasy without knowing why. “Noticed what?”

“It’s the same voice, Gabriel.”

“What is?”

“Pete and Donna have the same voice.”

“Oh, I know. It’s that flat Midwestern thing. Not very pretty.”

“
No. I mean it’s the same person
.” Very slowly, my jaw went slack. “What in the world are you talking about?”

“How much plainer do I have to make it? His voice is exactly the same as hers. It’s just a higher-pitched, more childish version. The rhythms are the same and the…intonation or whatever you call it.

It’s really obvious once you listen for it. That’s why I stayed on the phone so long. To make absolutely sure. Somebody’s been jerking your chain, sweetie.”

I tried to absorb this, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I couldn’t even reconstruct Pete’s voice—or Donna’s, for that matter—as recently as I’d heard them both. “This is absurd,” I said feebly.

“You haven’t noticed it, then? The similarity?” I shook my head absently. “No. Not particularly. Except the accent, of course, which must be what you’re—”

“Have you ever heard them talking at the same time?” Had I? I couldn’t remember. I remembered that Donna had woken Pete once, so he could talk to me. I remembered her calling his name, and the sound of that tiny Bart Simpson voice, struggling out of sleep…

“Look,” I said. “There are dozens of people who know them both.”

“Name some.”

“Well, his doctors, for one thing. And everybody at the hospital.”

“You don’t know that. You’ve just been told it.”

“All right, then. What about Ashe Findlay?”

“Who?”

“Pete’s editor. From Argus House. You met him at the ABA in Las Vegas.”

“That old preppie guy with the dandruff?”

“Yes. He’s publishing his book, for God’s sake. Nobody does that without knowing—”

“Did he ever go out to Wisconsin?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure he must have. Jesus, Jess, what possible reason could anybody have to do something like this?”

“I haven’t gotten that far,” he said.

No, I thought, you haven’t. You just want to deny the reality of this heroic child. For some reason, it’s too much for you to handle.