thought that had distressed him. As though a switch had been turned, I saw his usual alacrity return. He was taking the measure of the hotel guests in our vicinity, staring at them quite openly, his expression successively contemptuous, quizzical, and droll.
Dreadful, he announced. It is my habit, whenever I find myself in a place like this, to check whether there is anyone in sight worthy of being screwed. Zero! I was wise to bring Toby and, of course, lucky to run into you.
He gave my knee another squeeze.
It seemed stupid, and open to being understood as a form of rejection, to change the subject and talk about the newhotel he was going to build, his other work, or American politics, although the latter subject was very much on my mind and he could have given me fresh information, having left New York only a few days earlier. Instead, I told him that his tirade had left me shaken, but also very curious. After all, I knew so little about his life. We had seen each other only once since he got married, perhaps twice—I wasn’t quite sure.
That’s true, he replied. I wouldn’t be surprised if you wanted to hear about the making of a pervert.
I began to protest that I didn’t mean to pry, but he stopped me with a particularly hard squeeze of my knee.
Don’t be so shittily humorless. I didn’t think you were asking about the sort of details you can look up in Krafft-Ebing next time you are in a library. I am keeping those for my memoirs, which I will write only after I turn celibate. I took your remarks as a perfectly appropriate question: How did you get from the man I knew to the man you have become?
I nodded.
The facts are uncomplicated; on the other hand, my nature, or rather the changes in it, and the work accomplished by time to bring about those changes, very mysterious. I was not a closet faggot during the years when we saw each other in Cambridge, or before that at school, or when I married Diane. Certainly, at St. Mark’s there were a few rather sweet incidents that today would be called homoerotic. That’s an odiously pompous adjective; try to avoid it as your interest in queers continues to grow! Group jerkoffs, a master who would have kissed my bum and everything near it if he had dared, a couple of characters rather like you having wetdreams about my jockstrap. I took it as a tribute—it went with the job! If you are the captain of the crew and look like me you expect little faggots to want to lick your balls, but there was no one whose balls I had the slightest desire to lick. My dick was in fact getting licked by my first cousin—peace, Max, a girl cousin!—who had been thrown out of Milton and was living with my parents, to give her old man a chance to cool off. When the next chapter opens, I am in Korea, not in the fleshpots of Seoul, but in a foxhole, wetting my pants each time I am ordered to climb out and start running up some hill. I did make one visit to a teahouse in Pusan, just before some shrapnel visited me. The dose I got there was taken care of, together with everything else, in the hospital, which was a great piece of timing; the battalion commander would have had me up on charges. Getting the clap was like damaging army property; it ranked with rust in the barrel of your rifle!
One pleasant stop in Hawaii, and we will move along the highway of sex to Harvard and Janie. In the hospital in Honolulu, they did some specialized work on my back and got it into perfect shape. I was immobile for more than two months, though, and, just like in a war movie, a thoughtful nurse—Gauguin’s Tehamana on leave from the Art Institute in Chicago—extended her care to my dickey. She quite spoiled the little fellow.
An odd prelude to homosexuality, I remarked.
As usual, you are most perceptive, but we aren’t there yet.
He poured the remaining gin into our glasses, and we made our way into the restaurant. I was eager for Charlie to continue his story, but the waitress reduced the number
Dreadful, he announced. It is my habit, whenever I find myself in a place like this, to check whether there is anyone in sight worthy of being screwed. Zero! I was wise to bring Toby and, of course, lucky to run into you.
He gave my knee another squeeze.
It seemed stupid, and open to being understood as a form of rejection, to change the subject and talk about the newhotel he was going to build, his other work, or American politics, although the latter subject was very much on my mind and he could have given me fresh information, having left New York only a few days earlier. Instead, I told him that his tirade had left me shaken, but also very curious. After all, I knew so little about his life. We had seen each other only once since he got married, perhaps twice—I wasn’t quite sure.
That’s true, he replied. I wouldn’t be surprised if you wanted to hear about the making of a pervert.
I began to protest that I didn’t mean to pry, but he stopped me with a particularly hard squeeze of my knee.
Don’t be so shittily humorless. I didn’t think you were asking about the sort of details you can look up in Krafft-Ebing next time you are in a library. I am keeping those for my memoirs, which I will write only after I turn celibate. I took your remarks as a perfectly appropriate question: How did you get from the man I knew to the man you have become?
I nodded.
The facts are uncomplicated; on the other hand, my nature, or rather the changes in it, and the work accomplished by time to bring about those changes, very mysterious. I was not a closet faggot during the years when we saw each other in Cambridge, or before that at school, or when I married Diane. Certainly, at St. Mark’s there were a few rather sweet incidents that today would be called homoerotic. That’s an odiously pompous adjective; try to avoid it as your interest in queers continues to grow! Group jerkoffs, a master who would have kissed my bum and everything near it if he had dared, a couple of characters rather like you having wetdreams about my jockstrap. I took it as a tribute—it went with the job! If you are the captain of the crew and look like me you expect little faggots to want to lick your balls, but there was no one whose balls I had the slightest desire to lick. My dick was in fact getting licked by my first cousin—peace, Max, a girl cousin!—who had been thrown out of Milton and was living with my parents, to give her old man a chance to cool off. When the next chapter opens, I am in Korea, not in the fleshpots of Seoul, but in a foxhole, wetting my pants each time I am ordered to climb out and start running up some hill. I did make one visit to a teahouse in Pusan, just before some shrapnel visited me. The dose I got there was taken care of, together with everything else, in the hospital, which was a great piece of timing; the battalion commander would have had me up on charges. Getting the clap was like damaging army property; it ranked with rust in the barrel of your rifle!
One pleasant stop in Hawaii, and we will move along the highway of sex to Harvard and Janie. In the hospital in Honolulu, they did some specialized work on my back and got it into perfect shape. I was immobile for more than two months, though, and, just like in a war movie, a thoughtful nurse—Gauguin’s Tehamana on leave from the Art Institute in Chicago—extended her care to my dickey. She quite spoiled the little fellow.
An odd prelude to homosexuality, I remarked.
As usual, you are most perceptive, but we aren’t there yet.
He poured the remaining gin into our glasses, and we made our way into the restaurant. I was eager for Charlie to continue his story, but the waitress reduced the number
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