been trying to remember to do this, play at being tentative so they wonât feel as though Iâm shoving ideas into their skulls. âJust possibly Kafkaâs real point is that, if we are scrutinized, examined, we know ourselves to be guilty. When a McCarthy or a Hoover investigates you, he might nail you for the wrong crime--he is sure to, you are incomprehensible to him--and then you can whine about the injustice, meetings will be held, editorials written, you might even be vindicated. Except youâll know, always,you were guilty. And they know, too, they just charged you with the wrong violation.â
Miss Uh knew she had been ⦠what is that new phrase of Mickeyâs?--âput downâ somehow. Mr. Glover cast her a sympathetic look, a few of the other students shifted uneasily. There was an air of indolent sedition in the room. What crime was I talking about, is that really all this weird book is trying to say, if Kafka really meant anything he could goddamn well have just spilled it.
Somehow I finished the hour, made my way to the tearoom at the West Fourth Street station. No one there but a guy I had done before: my age at least and stocky, modestly hung, a broken face masking some unutterable injury. I had done him before and I did him again, quickly, spitting out his sour aggrieved come and then hightailing it home, shamed but exhilarated.
Exhilarated because I was ashamed. Because I pictured Glover stumbling into the john and catching Professor Ascher on his knees. He would learn more from that than from anything I could say in a year of classes on Twentieth Century Fiction. This is what I have to teach, I think--teach not Glover and Miss Uh but the world. This is, somehow, the way to the revolution.
I am the one who has stumbled into the john and caught Professor Ascher on his knees.
Of course Iâve always known that, as he put it the night he proposed, he had been with a lot of people . And, if I had ever chosen to think about it, I might have recognized that being with people required him to select from a limited catalogue of achievable postures. But I never did choose to think about it. If anything, I envisioned Jonathan and his latest paramour lying stiffly side-by-side, like the tomb effigies of a knight and his dame.
Iâm sure I could have gotten through the rest of my days quite happily without ever learning whether Jonathan swallowed or spat. But it isnât what I learn that counts, is it? Will Mr. Philip Marks, eager to expose Jonathan to a new generation of young readers, choose toexpose him in the tearoom? And if he doesnât, would he be protecting Jonathan or betraying him?
Really, I could have gotten through the rest of my days without ever learning the expression âtearoom.â
June 26, 1964
Last night I was more lonesome than horny, so instead of going to the subway or the baths I headed for the Poplar Inn to have a couple beers and listen to the paintersâ bullshit. But as I was nearing the door I saw Jim Something, a French teacher at a Catholic high school who brays about Camus while batting his eyes like a love-crazed librarian.
I didnât even go in, just staggered home in the heat. Stood at the base of our stoop, drenched, thinking next summer Iâll go to Cape Cod and Martha can camp out on the fourth floor of a row house like a brick oven on 17th Street. At last I went over to Fahertyâs, the bar on the corner.
Half a block from home, and Iâd never been in it. Not a queer bar, I donât think, just one of the thousand Irish dives that litter this island. But sometimes youâll see a couple of guys walk out together--not faggoty, just ordinary schmos, a bus driver still in uniform and a super with a hundred keys dangling from his belt. Theyâll keep a decorous distance between them, just buddies whoâd had a few beers, yet you can tell by the way they donât look at each other that their night
Miss Uh knew she had been ⦠what is that new phrase of Mickeyâs?--âput downâ somehow. Mr. Glover cast her a sympathetic look, a few of the other students shifted uneasily. There was an air of indolent sedition in the room. What crime was I talking about, is that really all this weird book is trying to say, if Kafka really meant anything he could goddamn well have just spilled it.
Somehow I finished the hour, made my way to the tearoom at the West Fourth Street station. No one there but a guy I had done before: my age at least and stocky, modestly hung, a broken face masking some unutterable injury. I had done him before and I did him again, quickly, spitting out his sour aggrieved come and then hightailing it home, shamed but exhilarated.
Exhilarated because I was ashamed. Because I pictured Glover stumbling into the john and catching Professor Ascher on his knees. He would learn more from that than from anything I could say in a year of classes on Twentieth Century Fiction. This is what I have to teach, I think--teach not Glover and Miss Uh but the world. This is, somehow, the way to the revolution.
I am the one who has stumbled into the john and caught Professor Ascher on his knees.
Of course Iâve always known that, as he put it the night he proposed, he had been with a lot of people . And, if I had ever chosen to think about it, I might have recognized that being with people required him to select from a limited catalogue of achievable postures. But I never did choose to think about it. If anything, I envisioned Jonathan and his latest paramour lying stiffly side-by-side, like the tomb effigies of a knight and his dame.
Iâm sure I could have gotten through the rest of my days quite happily without ever learning whether Jonathan swallowed or spat. But it isnât what I learn that counts, is it? Will Mr. Philip Marks, eager to expose Jonathan to a new generation of young readers, choose toexpose him in the tearoom? And if he doesnât, would he be protecting Jonathan or betraying him?
Really, I could have gotten through the rest of my days without ever learning the expression âtearoom.â
June 26, 1964
Last night I was more lonesome than horny, so instead of going to the subway or the baths I headed for the Poplar Inn to have a couple beers and listen to the paintersâ bullshit. But as I was nearing the door I saw Jim Something, a French teacher at a Catholic high school who brays about Camus while batting his eyes like a love-crazed librarian.
I didnât even go in, just staggered home in the heat. Stood at the base of our stoop, drenched, thinking next summer Iâll go to Cape Cod and Martha can camp out on the fourth floor of a row house like a brick oven on 17th Street. At last I went over to Fahertyâs, the bar on the corner.
Half a block from home, and Iâd never been in it. Not a queer bar, I donât think, just one of the thousand Irish dives that litter this island. But sometimes youâll see a couple of guys walk out together--not faggoty, just ordinary schmos, a bus driver still in uniform and a super with a hundred keys dangling from his belt. Theyâll keep a decorous distance between them, just buddies whoâd had a few beers, yet you can tell by the way they donât look at each other that their night
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