the symptom by literally sleeping with women. I could look forward to years of speculation about Mommy-Daddy; once all my mudpies were neatly stacked, in principle I’d wake one day finding my penis pointing due south, no longer north.
“What do you think of him?” Annie asked me. We were walking diagonally across campus. The snow lay in dirty piles all around us as though it represented all the soiled linen we’d ever slept on. “Isn’t he exciting?”
“And just a bit phony,” I said.
“Does he excite you?”
I swallowed. “Yes.” I’d never discussed these things with her before, although O’Reilly had told her of my diagnosis.
“He excites me,” Annie declared. “I love his big blue eyes. They look like they’re going to pop out. And the cute way his teeth are gapped. He’s a real little dynamo. And that baby skin—I’ll bet he’s smooth all over. Well, I may be finding out tonight.”
“Aren’t you going too fast? I think you’ve got sex on the brain,” I muttered.
“And you don’t?”
I pinched my mouth sourly and said, “Chinese is not exactly an easy major, Annie.” We fell into silence as we squeaked our way through the black sludge. The wind blew a shelf of snow off a low eave.
“Are you jealous?” she asked. I glanced over and I could see from her reined-in smile and nearly crossed eyes that she wanted me to say yes. I ducked out by taking a higher philosophical line: “I’m not sure what jealousy is.” Then, bearing down on her as O’Reilly might: “Why are you so eager to wound me? Have I become a substitute father for you, someone who tortures you (in my case by not sleeping with you) and whom you must punish because you could never punish your real father?”
And we were off. She and I ascribed the most appalling motives to each other out of some seemingly scientific zeal, but unlike a real scientific proposition, which can be verified or at least negated, ours submitted to no proof, since the very things being discussed were unconscious, hence unknowable. I say “things” because I hesitate to speak of them as feelings. An “unconscious feeling” strikes me as an impossibility; the one thing we know for sure is what we arefeeling. At least now I believe that no one else can correct our feelings; they are pure, incorrigible.
Always, at the onset of such a conversation, I had the half-thrilling, half-dreadful sensation of being cranked up to the first, highest hill of a roller coaster. We were scaring each other (“You want to castrate me,” or, “Have you looked at your incestuous feelings toward me?”), but the mutual attention was flattering, as when a lovely palm reader holds your hand, looks into your eyes, and predicts tragic eventualities.
There was also a Talmudic fascination about the exercise. If the real horror of living is its failure to mean, to accumulate, then our constant decoding was a comfort, for it found design everywhere—still better, a design of one’s own making. It was easier for us to accept that we were sick than to acknowledge that we were powerless and life vapid.
Of course, we would have been insulted if someone had accused us of cheating on an exam or confounding lie and lay , but we smiled charmingly when charged with wanting to murder our father—smiled and shrugged our shoulders. The attribution of Sophoclean passions to ditherers could only be heartening.
William Everett Hunton was one of the first handsome homosexuals I’d ever met, a small, neatly made little guy who would flounce and languish around me but turn gravely masculine around the other law students. Even though he was hoping to reform himself and was quite optimistic about a cure, at least for a while he had been gay, and could still be considered at least a transitional case. Annie and I would sit around his room in the law quad and listen to his adventures, presented as evidence of his depravity but with a suggestion that his scarlet sins, at least, had
“What do you think of him?” Annie asked me. We were walking diagonally across campus. The snow lay in dirty piles all around us as though it represented all the soiled linen we’d ever slept on. “Isn’t he exciting?”
“And just a bit phony,” I said.
“Does he excite you?”
I swallowed. “Yes.” I’d never discussed these things with her before, although O’Reilly had told her of my diagnosis.
“He excites me,” Annie declared. “I love his big blue eyes. They look like they’re going to pop out. And the cute way his teeth are gapped. He’s a real little dynamo. And that baby skin—I’ll bet he’s smooth all over. Well, I may be finding out tonight.”
“Aren’t you going too fast? I think you’ve got sex on the brain,” I muttered.
“And you don’t?”
I pinched my mouth sourly and said, “Chinese is not exactly an easy major, Annie.” We fell into silence as we squeaked our way through the black sludge. The wind blew a shelf of snow off a low eave.
“Are you jealous?” she asked. I glanced over and I could see from her reined-in smile and nearly crossed eyes that she wanted me to say yes. I ducked out by taking a higher philosophical line: “I’m not sure what jealousy is.” Then, bearing down on her as O’Reilly might: “Why are you so eager to wound me? Have I become a substitute father for you, someone who tortures you (in my case by not sleeping with you) and whom you must punish because you could never punish your real father?”
And we were off. She and I ascribed the most appalling motives to each other out of some seemingly scientific zeal, but unlike a real scientific proposition, which can be verified or at least negated, ours submitted to no proof, since the very things being discussed were unconscious, hence unknowable. I say “things” because I hesitate to speak of them as feelings. An “unconscious feeling” strikes me as an impossibility; the one thing we know for sure is what we arefeeling. At least now I believe that no one else can correct our feelings; they are pure, incorrigible.
Always, at the onset of such a conversation, I had the half-thrilling, half-dreadful sensation of being cranked up to the first, highest hill of a roller coaster. We were scaring each other (“You want to castrate me,” or, “Have you looked at your incestuous feelings toward me?”), but the mutual attention was flattering, as when a lovely palm reader holds your hand, looks into your eyes, and predicts tragic eventualities.
There was also a Talmudic fascination about the exercise. If the real horror of living is its failure to mean, to accumulate, then our constant decoding was a comfort, for it found design everywhere—still better, a design of one’s own making. It was easier for us to accept that we were sick than to acknowledge that we were powerless and life vapid.
Of course, we would have been insulted if someone had accused us of cheating on an exam or confounding lie and lay , but we smiled charmingly when charged with wanting to murder our father—smiled and shrugged our shoulders. The attribution of Sophoclean passions to ditherers could only be heartening.
William Everett Hunton was one of the first handsome homosexuals I’d ever met, a small, neatly made little guy who would flounce and languish around me but turn gravely masculine around the other law students. Even though he was hoping to reform himself and was quite optimistic about a cure, at least for a while he had been gay, and could still be considered at least a transitional case. Annie and I would sit around his room in the law quad and listen to his adventures, presented as evidence of his depravity but with a suggestion that his scarlet sins, at least, had
Similar Books
