The Best Little Boy in the World Page 5

  In college you had to do more than just leer and chortle. You had to date. Maybe you didn’t have to if you were ugly, and maybe you didn’t have to if you weren’t worried about your normality. But if you were me, you had to date.

  Not counting high school parties and camp dances, where everyone had to go by the busload—more like holding a special dancing lesson than a date—I can remember having had three dates prior to entering Yale.

  The first was when I was seven. It was with Holly Frye, who would cry at the slightest provocation. She was unbelievable. She would cry if the teacher squeaked chalk against the blackboard. She would cry if cookie crumbs got on her dress. She would cry when she heard someone else crying. I certainly didn’t like her, but for some reason I found her one afternoon with my mother and her mother in our car, picked up from school, on the way to my room, of all places.

  It was a disaster. We started playing with my chemistry set, the litmus paper bit, and she used an entire piece of my litmus paper to test—I don’t know what it was, probably some lemon juice or something of equal scientific significance. Well, any fool knows you are only supposed to use just a tiny corner of the litmus paper! The whole piece! My God, she used the whole piece! I didn’t hit her. I just said something nasty and then ignored her. Which was hard to do, as she immediately began to wail and cry and scream and howl and was finally taken home, much to my relief.

  Dumb girl. Ukh.

  My second date, I think I was fourteen or fifteen. I can’t remember this girl’s name, but I remember that she was a regular at the dances I would force myself to go to. She had a four-inch chin, but was otherwise attractive for a fourteen-year-old girl, as best I could tell. Maybe she would grow into that chin, or have a chin job. Meantime, when she walked through doors, she had to turn her head sideways so her hand would reach the door knob before her chin hit the door. I didn’t care. I was infatuated at the time with a genuine preppie, who flew into the city only for vacations and who suggested we double. My eagerness to be cowboys with this preppie knowing no bounds, I got a date.

  We doubled to a double feature, my first movie date. Movie people are forever making movies of kids going to movies early in their sexual careers to experiment with arms around their dates, around a little farther, hand cupped around what will someday be a breast, another hand moving toward the popcorn in her lap—and the movies the four of us went to may well have been movies like that. I can’t recall. I just spent the four hours watching what the preppie did and doing as much of it to my date as I could bring myself to do. That is, I put my arm around the back of her chair. And once, by mistake (I had long since lost all feeling in and control over that arm), I think I brushed her shoulder. Maybe it was the back of her chair. Maybe it was her chin.

  The problem was, I felt nearly as uncomfortable not doing anything to her as I would have felt doing something. I wanted to do something, the way the preppie did, but all I could do for four hours was wonder what it was that made me different—an upside-down chromosome? The Great Phonifier? What was I going to do when it came time to get married?

  We took a cab back uptown—in the days when the meter started at a quarter and clicked by nickels. Had I tried to kiss my date good-night, which of course could not have been further from my mind, her chin would probably have gored my Adam’s apple.

  My third date was also when I was about fifteen, my last summer in camp, and Tommy Roth’s. Tommy was dating a counselor at our sister camp. Who was I dating? I had to be dating somebody, so I was dating Hilda Goldbaum, from Queens. Hilda’s chin was in proper proportion to the rest of her face and body, which in total couldn’t have weighed thirty pounds more than mine. She was particularly weighed down by two of the most enormous, terrifying boobs I could imagine. But that’s how things happened to pair up the first night they took a busload of us seniors out to the sister camp for a dance, so it was Hilda and me for the summer.

  Brother-sister camp dances, as you may know, are very risky affairs that send camp directors’ hearts aflutter. Once, in 1932, a girl got pregnant possibly as a result of one of these dances, and the sister camp went out of business then and there. Since 1932, the state militia had been called out to guard the exits at all of our brother-sister camp dances, and the only way you could possibly hold your head up in the bus on the way back to camp was if you had been missed—that is, if you and your girl had been missed at some point during the course of the evening. Maximum points were scored by the couple who could turn up under the yellow circle of flashlight—down at the rifle range. Where they have mattresses.

  “This bus ain’t leavin’ till we find Tommy. And when we do find him, he’s gonna catch hell, lemme tellya.”

  Five minutes later Tommy and Kathy are discovered down at the rifle range. The bus pulls off with all kinds of adulation being showered on Tommy. Hey, Tommy! What were you shooting down there anyway? Har, har, har. The camp director would find out about it the next morning, telephone Tommy’s parents, and threaten to have Tommy sent home. Tommy’s proud father, who had been caught down on the same rifle range in his day, would mention Tommy’s three younger brothers, nearing camp age at $1,000 apiece—and the matter would be dropped.

  So Hilda and I had to be missed. Yet this was one test of my manhood I was just going to have to fail. I couldn’t bring myself to seduce Hilda into the dark piney woods. I would just have to blame it on the security guards and change the subject when people asked me.

  As it happened, Hilda had different ideas. She led me through a maze of piled tables and chairs, through the kitchen and the dishwashing apparatus, to an unguarded ratty old warped sinful-looking screen door, and out into the dark piney woods. She was hot, she said, why not go for a walk? I stopped after a few yards to try to marshal my resources for some kind of brilliant excuse. When I got older I planned to use the one about having had my thing shot off in the war, but Hilda, I knew, would not have accepted this from a fifteen-year-old. Maybe I could say it was shot off at the archery range. I started to open my mouth, in a hesitating sort of way because I was not sure of what I would say, and Hilda grabbed me as though she were an alcoholic and I were the last bottle left on earth. She pressed her lips hard against mine. I gritted my teeth and held my breath.

  It was awful. The kiss itself, my first on the lips, could have been worse. It was just like pressing your lips against something squishy. Nothing more, nothing less. But knowing that it was nothing more, when it should have been, and, far worse, knowing that when this kiss was over (it was dragging on and on), Hilda and the world would have discovered that I didn’t know how to kiss—that was awful.

  Finally she loosened her grip and moved her face away, and I prepared for the worst. I had just stood there, after all. Whatever kissing is, however they do it in the movies, I had just stood there. My major achievement had been to repress the natural impulse I had to wrinkle up my nose. But do you know what she said? She said, “Oooow, that was wonnderful. It’s been a month since I had a man!” That line sent me a lot of conflicting signals. Of course, I was tremendously relieved to know I could pass for a lover just by standing in the woods letting her squish her lips against mine. I felt like remarking in amazement, crying with relief. laughing at the ridiculous thing she had said, gloating at having pulled it off. And now she was doing it again.

  I had heard of French kissing, but I didn’t think we were doing it. Before she decided to get into that, I figured I would take a gamble, newly self-confident as I was, and when she backed away, I said in my deepest, most leadership kind of voice, “I think we’d better get back before they miss us.” Apparently, I noted, she had gotten her rocks off, as she dutifully followed her man back to the dance.

  The following week, Hilda and Kathy somehow contrived to get over to our camp to see Tommy and me. Tommy was delighted, and after lunch (I remember it was ravioli) he commandeered an empty tent for us. He put the flaps down. I kept trying to protest about the grave risk we were taking, but Tommy had h
ad the flaps down before. He started making out with Kathy, lying on top of her, kissing her, putting his hands all over her. I made some very awkward attempts, with more help from Hilda than I wanted, to do roughly the same things, hoping against hope that some counselor would come along and break it up. Even being sent home would be better than this. And by now, all things considered, it might not have been altogether bad for my image at home to be sent back for this. My parents weren’t pushing, but they let me know I would be more than welcome to start bringing girls home, to start dating under proper circumstances, to go to more dances—and who was I planning to take to the Junior Prom?

  But no counselor came along. Hilda, meanwhile, was getting ready to go all the way. It was time to French kiss. She pried open my mouth with her crowbar tongue and stuck it in. Agh! Germs! Germs, hell: ravioli! I don’t mean to be vulgar; but her breath smelled like ravioli, and I felt like puking. Or running, or passing out. But there was Tommy, whose respect meant more to me than anything, making out gleefully with Kathy. Please stop. Please don’t look at how awkward I am. Please Great Phonifier, at least don’t make me puke.

  End-of-rest-hour was bugled out over the loudspeaker, which, thank God, was the call for retreat. It was over. The girls had to go back with the counselor who had brought them over. If anything, Tommy thought I was more normal than ever. Kathy was happy. Hilda was happy. I went for a gargle in the lake.

  That was the sexual experience I brought with me to Yale. And now I had to date in earnest. I was in the majors. A few people were even thinking about getting married, for crying out loud.

  Freshman year I rested on the laurels of my fictitious wet dreams and thap, thap, thapping. The first thing I did that year was subscribe to Playboy. Like a blind man at a silent movie I would religiously thumb through my monthly Playboy, forcing myself to check out, leer, and nudge my roommate, Roger. I liked Playboy because I didn’t have to worry about chortling over a dog by mistake. I would hang the centerfold on the wall over my bed for all to see. Of course, each time I returned from a vacation, I told my roomie lascivious stories designed to be impossible to check. I was still hung up on a couple of girls at home, I said, and what’s there to do in New Haven, anyway? Albertus Magnus High School?

  The authorities seemed to be on my side. Freshmen were not allowed cars. Girls were allowed in the rooms from four to six on Tuesdays and Saturdays, or some equally Victorian bits of time. But was I going to argue with prudish administrators?

  The people at Yale were genuinely considerate of freshman problems and offered counseling services of all kinds to make it easier to assume manhood, to conform to acceptable social standards. On an ad hoc basis, faculty members would also try to help. More than one would look at my cosmic depression expression (I thought it looked cosmic, anyway) and ask me what was troubling me. I remember being alone in the office of a young geology professor who radiated sympathy and understanding as he invited me to open up. He seemed to sense that I had never opened up to anyone; he wanted to help me break out of my shell. Go ahead, he said. He wouldn’t be shocked.

  The last time someone had told me to go ahead and say the worst thing I could think of, I was eleven, just finishing elementary school, over at Wendy’s house for a class party. We were playing a new game. Everyone was given a crayon and a scrap of paper. We had to think of the worst word we could and write it on the paper. Then we would fold the papers, hand them in, and Wendy would read a story—only the story had blanks in it, and every time she came to one, she would fill in the word from the next folded paper. Fun?

  No. Like all party games, it made me nervous. Just how bad a word were you supposed to use? I think someone asked that, or maybe several of us did: Wendy made it clear that we were supposed to write a really bad word. Well, my natural instinct was to write a word like “darn” or even “damn.” That was about as bad as I could usually get. In fact, while “darn” was tolerated in our house, “damn” was not. But I was well aware that normal kids had vocabularies far filthier than that, and if the object of this crazy game was to be bad, I wanted to be bad with the best of them. I had been trained to win, after all. And there may even have been a tinge of rebellion in what I wrote. As the papers were all anonymous, I could do just what they said, and write a really bad word.

  Wendy collected all the papers and started reading her story:

  Once upon a time there was a young prince named Arthur and a young princess named Guinevere. They lived in a … toilet, by a beautiful… ugly, on the other side of the hill from a … wart.

  One day, feeling kind of … backside, the prince and the princess called their … puke on the … devil, and said: “We are going out to take a …

  Wendy burst into tears and went running to her mother with what I could only assume was my word. In retrospect I have to congratulate myself not only for having written the worst word, but also for having written the only word that happened to fit the context of the story perfectly. But at the time, I was a nervous wreck. If I didn’t look nervous, they wouldn’t know it was me who wrote it, but I kept trembling anyway. (Of course, if Chip Morgan had written that word, he would have just sat there smirking mischievously or, if caught, would have taken his spanking and exile without even a gulp. In fact, if Chip had done it, then I would have wished I had.)

  But I had done the deed, and Wendy’s mother, who had apparently not sanctioned the game to begin with, came running in to find out who had the red crayon. The red crayon! Of course! How could I be so dumb? How could I fall into their trap?

  Actually, there were several red crayons, so that, while guilt was clearly written in four letters over my face, a reasonable doubt had to remain in the mind of the jury, and they did not call the Supreme Court. But that was the last time I was going to fall for any of this “Go ahead, tell us your worst thoughts; we won’t be shocked!” shit.

  I wanted to open up; I just couldn’t risk it. In martyr-think, telling one solitary soul breaks the perfect record. If I was going to be lonely, then I was going to be the loneliest boy in the world. Tell one soul, and the shell is broken forever. No turning back. You have lost control of the secret. You have given life to an idea which would otherwise die with you.

  The thing about opening up was it had to be to the right person, or what good would it do? I didn’t want sympathy from a young geology professor; I didn’t want to be given the name of a prominent psychoanalyst; I didn’t even want the address of the local gay bar (until my junior or senior year I didn’t even know there were gay bars). What I wanted was to be cowboys with someone like Brian or Tommy or my freshman roommate with the Kleenex, Roger, and my sophomore roommate without the Kleenex, Hank.

  It was obvious to me, in a theoretical, mathematical sort of way, that I could not be the only straight-looking, athletic young man in search of someone to be cowboys with. Yet it was equally obvious to me in a very real, practical sort of way that it would be impossible for me to find the right buddy. Because he, too, would be pretending with all his might; he, too, would refuse back rubs and look girls up and down and leer. Even if one in ten boys really did have “tendencies,’ who was going to risk everything on a one-in-ten chance?

  I guess I was never more tempted to take the one-in-ten chance than with Roger. We shared the same dorm room, beds just a few feet apart. He had gone to a summer camp. And he frequently would laugh and say, “Hey roomie! Wanna jump into bed with me?”

  Tempting? But he was kidding. He had to be kidding. He laid his girlfriend twice a week in that bed, so he had to be kidding. He was so sure of his masculinity that he could even afford to joke about being queer. Maybe he had doubts about me (no Kleenex) and was trying to trap me. I would accept one of those invitations to bed, he would get nauseated and violent, and then he would call the dean and say he wanted a new roommate because I was a homosexual.

  The dean would call me in and ask if it were true. I would deny it. He would hook a machine up to measure my pupil dilation and show me two
sets of pornography. At the sight of naked women and pussy and untold other horrors, I would wrinkle my nose and feel like I had a tongue depressor way down my throat, and my pupils, all defenses at my command notwithstanding, simply would not dilate. Then he would show me pictures of young athletes (no doubt from his personal pornography collection, although that wouldn’t have occurred to me at the time), and I would force my nose to wrinkle, I would say I thought it was disgusting—but the machine would know. My pupils would be as big as nickels.

  Yale would not expel me. They would give me a private room, daily therapy. And they would call my parents for permission for the therapy and send them a letter confirming that their son was a queer.

  Sophomore year you got to choose your own roommates for the next three years. Roger and I parted on friendly enough terms (well, friendly enough for him anyway), and I spent the next three years in a three-man suite in one of Yale’s several colleges, as the upper-class dorms are known. One of my roommates was captain of the lacrosse team. The other, Hank, was more of an intramural jock, the touch football type, and president of the Yale Key, the group charged with presenting Yale’s best face to the public. I was hopelessly in love with both of them, though of course I couldn’t let on.

  My lacrosse-playing roommate spent most of his time doing just that or else off with the other preppies in his circle, playing pool, watching TV, studying, and, no doubt, feeling superior to all his classmates who hadn’t been tapped for the club. I didn’t see him very much, and I guess I really didn’t love him at all. He just turned me on.

  Hank was around much more often, and he and I were truly best of friends. Hank I loved no end.

  In writing honestly this way, I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Presumably, it rubs you wrong to read about guys loving other guys. Perhaps you instinctively picture me as having been, at best, the assistant-soccer-team-manager type tagging along with the Big Man On Campus, wearing very thick glasses, and getting nose bleeds at the slightest exertion. Real guys don’t love other guys, right? Perhaps so. But at least to all outward appearances, I was a real guy, and something of a Big Man On Campus myself. True, where I was good-looking, Hank was downright charismatic. And though I could beat him in tennis and could swim faster, he was clearly the better athlete. But if anything, I spent less time studying than he did, and the little publishing empire I ran was at least as noteworthy as his Yale Key. I even got my face in Time once (way in the back, a small picture). So we weren’t exactly Wild Bill Hickok and Andy Devine, if you know what I mean. If only I could have told Hank that I loved him.