Three Ex Presidents and James Franco (8 page)

              "And what if it is genetic?” Jake asked. “It could be that this recessive gay gene is in us all. That’s why we're all bisexual. You have this vision of a world where everyone is bisexual and we all can live happily with whoever we like. But the only reason you believe this is because you're in love with a straight man. The idea that he could just turn around and take you, be with you, without embarrassment or discomfort. That’s what you want."

              "The idea of Brandon really bugs you doesn't it?"

              "Yeah, maybe it does." Jake conceded. "But what bugs me more is the fact that you haven't come to terms with yourself. Get over it, being gay means you will only end up being with a gay man. We're all shades of grey, sure. But Brandon is such a dark shade he might as well be called black and you're such a bright shade you might as well be called white."

              "I can't help who I'm in love with."

              "Then you haven't figured out who you are. This bisexual nonsense is a sex scale. It’s who you would or could have sex with. But sex is all it is. If you had a scale of who you could or would fall in love with, that’s just a handful of people. That's the difference between gay and straight. Love, not sex.

              "Your friend Brandon knows it. He can have sex with you. Though seeing as you spend your time with me, I doubt he does it anymore. But he knows he can't fall in love with you.

              "So if you ask me,” Jake continued. “What’s my problem with the shades of grey? What’s my problem with everyone being bisexual? The problem is that it means sex and nothing else. In another world, in another time, maybe anyone could fall in love with anyone. But not here. Not in our lifetimes."

              Jake had become quite animated, the car swerved a couple of times as he was speaking, but he adjusted it, albeit without lowering his tone or calming any.

              We continued on in silence for a while. I knew I should say something in my own defence. Jake had been waiting to say this to me for quite a while. However, as violent as his rant had been by the end, I could only accept that there was some reason to it. I wondered if I was placing barriers before myself, preventing me from connecting with someone new. Someone like Jake.

              The cogs and wheels in my brain were whirling. I realised that it was possible I didn't gravitate towards Jake because he educated me. It could well be because I liked him. All I needed to do was let myself open to that possibility. That my affection for him could transform into something even stronger than what I felt for Brandon. I thought these things and thought that this could be what irritated Jake the most.

              I thought these things and turned to look at Jake. He was grey, scowling at the road ahead of him. Smoking deep, deep drags. As I continued to look at him, he didn't turn to catch my stare, just drove on in silence.

              At that moment I realised something else. The speech, the outburst, may have been the truth. It was, however, also the end. Looking at him I knew he had decided that my education was over.

              In the past, in the time of Lincoln, men may have had sexual feeling towards other men, feelings they didn't recognise. Now, in the 21st century, with that problem overcome, a boy sat in a car speeding down a freeway, contemplating the next step. I did not know how to say what I felt. Something seemed broken and I didn't know what to do.

33.
It was late when we arrived at the motel beside the prison. Jake booked us two separate rooms. When I awoke the next day he had left. There was a note under my door saying to hang around he would be back tomorrow. I took it easy that day, watching TV, drinking coffee, reading the papers. The headline of the local newspaper read: Home of Buchanan now Gay Tourist Attraction.

Eric - The Third Part

34.
"Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness."
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

I didn't see much of Jake over the next few months. He was a man possessed. He spent his time driving from town to town applying to sperm banks. Originally it was just him and James. Eventually though he had new accomplices. He recruited from Coxx, from college, from bars he'd drop into on his travels. All of them converted by his belief that the gay gene needed to be  protected.

              The gay man was becoming endangered due to his own success.

              Eventually Jake himself stopped donating, he was just too busy, the operation had been too much of a success. Now he coordinated the operation from home. The house had become even more frenetic than it was on the night of the party. There was a constant stream of people in and out. Such a gathering of gay men. Such a perfect pick up spot, potentially. But to the best of my knowledge it never became that.

              The seriousness one felt on entering Jake's house, Jake's control room, was palpable. His zeal seemed to have infected all around him. He encouraged everyone who arrived not to waste their seed in idle sex. All of the sperm needed to be preserved for use in the great endeavour.

              Jake also tried to maintain high levels of secrecy. Apparently sperm banks don't like having donors who frequent many clinics. If there is a mutation in your genes it could lead to it being spread over a much larger population than otherwise would have been the case. Which, indeed, was the whole point Jake was trying to achieve.

              I would not have been aware of the operation myself had I not dropped in on Jake uninvited. It had been a month since we got back from the prison. I didn't know exactly where we stood. But I felt we were friends and at least had that to fall back on. Besides, he was the only social outlet I now had for the gay side of my life.

              On arriving he was unsurprised to see me. He barely noticed me as he fielded some calls, tapped away on his laptop and smoked with his usual vengeful purpose. James was just sitting watching television, he raised his hand in a friendly hello, smiled and then returned to doing just that.

              Completely distracted, Jake communicated his plan to me in a broken monologue, interrupted by phone calls from which I was able to garner enough information to put together the big picture. When he asked if I wanted to join in I immediately said no. The thought of spending my time on roadtrips with young gay men was appealing, but I felt a bit insulted. To Jake our two months together may have been just a time filler, but to me it was my first experience of a proper relationship, or something like it. I expected to be treated a bit better than a pawn in his little game. And in thinking this I realised I was in danger of becoming a shrill person.

              Before leaving I did impart a little advice. Perhaps to impress Jake by showing I could still be useful, perhaps to prove to myself I need not be that shrill guy. I told him he would do well to direct his efforts in the Midwest. The sperm count was going down in these states. All the pesticides they used on crops drained off the land into the water. Whatever cocktail of chemicals was being used seemed to inhibit sperm production in men. His eyes lit up, he smiled, he banged away on his keyboard again.

              On leaving him I was frustrated about something unrelated to his sperm adventure. There was something in particular I'd wanted to talk to him about. With all of his theories about cognitive dissonance and shades of grey, I wanted to know his opinion of a plan of my own I had been hatching. I was in the process of seducing Eric.

35.
There is always something appealing about the jock. There are the obvious attractions. In Eric there was a man who was charismatic, popular, good looking, well built and confident.

              But there were other reasons that appealed perhaps more to gay men then anyone else. His easy and sensitive physical familiarity with his friends, the back slapping, the hugging, the affectionate though manly touching. A jock's world, screaming at me that I'd never be a part of it.

              There was the blatant manliness. An inability to adequately describe or deal with his feelings. This was expressing itself in his heavy drinking as he came to terms with his injury that was keeping him off the football team. Night after night he could be found down in the Station, emitting mating calls to the passing girls. Squeezing out the last life of being the most popular man on campus. His ambition seemed to have slipped away, and his girlfriend with it, but he refused to be outwardly upset.

              In socio-biology they try to walk the line between the nature and nurture arguments when it comes to the gays. I
t’
s a bit of both, so the theory goes. When we're kids we have a genetic predisposition to doing some things and not doing some other things. Boys play football and girls don't. And so the boys and girls start to hate each other. Boys are rough and dirty and girls are stupid, and so on.

              Then puberty hits. All the boys who hate the girls suddenly start getting strange urges towards them and re-evaluate their opinions. Girls are no longer stupid. They're hot. The process is sometimes called the exotic becoming erotic. What we hate we grow to love when we hit sexual maturity.

              Caught up in this are the gays. The boy who plays football because he thinks he has to, to conform, but secretly hates it and secretly hates his team mates for making him play. He is not genetically programmed to play the game. So he plays a game of deception, deceiving himself most of all, with his love of the sport. Then around 12 or 13 the changes happen. The boy on the football team, or the boy who refused to play football, finds his hatred for the football players ebb away. Suddenly football players aren't all that bad. Suddenly, in fact, they start to give the kid a very real sense of pleasure, and he doesn't know why.

              All bullshit obviously. If we start finding people attractive because we hated them as kids, then the world would be full of people with a school teacher fetish. But I mention it to give some kind of sense of the feelings I was developing towards Eric. The explanation isn't one simply of animal attraction. He was the epitome of the boy I had hated as a child, then grew to love. In a manner I felt he had created me.  All my life had been a constant attempt to confront and conquer this man.

36.
I needed some sort of a plan of action.

              There was no desire in Eric to be part of this scheme of which he was not aware, so I needed to invent some sort of incentive. Or at the very least make it seem like something minor which he could in good conscience go along with. The tactic was simple. All I needed to provide him with is a type of friendship he would enjoy but was never aware he sought.

              Men, generally, don't get many compliments from other men. Not because they don't crave them, but just because it's a social norm not to give them. And like all social norms, breaking it may be in itself a harmless act, but the act of breaking it arises suspicion. A man might like to be told he has beautiful eyes. If another man says it it’s still flattering, but the fact it was said raises discomfort.

              So though Eric and his friends spent an interminable amount of time in the gym perfecting themselves, bringing too close attention to each others bodies was crossing a line. While they would appraise each others with their eyes, out of envy or curiosity as to what they did to get their arms just like that, to give vocal expression to such jealousy or curiosity was inappropriate. This blatant homoeroticism has always fascinated me. The fact that it is unacceptable to tell another man they have achieved a beautiful body, or to admire it with the eye, makes no logical sense. Women do it with each other all the time. But that is the problem, as women do it its seen as being a feminine trait. Surely it has not always been like this.