Chapter VII: Inspiration and After

After another disciplined drink, he picked up the two sheets from Don Wassermann, which Dora had opened and not even bothered to place back in the original envelope. He was prepared for the worst, maybe even the kiss-off, the righteous dismissal, from his long-indulgent editor.

March 21, 1957

My Dear Bill,

It’s been a long while since you called or wrote to me, and I am eager to go ahead with “Wry Beach.” I was very surprised to read the poem that you put in the forward. When did you start writing poetry? I’ve no great expertise as a poetry critic, but the piece does seem to have merit to me; certainly in the context of the stories, which however loosely connected are so evocative and bittersweet. The verses do set up the first two stories particularly well. The sense of nostalgia and regret is palpable. The evocation of the seasons and landscapes of New England is superb. The elegiac tone might owe something to Cowper and Wordsworth, but your perceptions of character and the spirit of place are all your own. I have long suspected that you love the place far more than you do the people who inhabit it.

These longish stories strike a new note for you; I am eager to see more of them. The form is a bit problematic--are they stories or novellas? Are they a novel, or “proto-novel,” in their connectedness? I wonder, too, what conflicts are being avoided, since many of the characters are so repressed and “submerged” in their own (solipsistic?) worlds. There is--forgive me for purloining this phrase from a writer you so disdain--a “beast in the jungle” waiting to be set free.

Please don’t regard these as carping criticisms. You know that I believe in you and your talent. I feel that you are on the verge of some great breakthrough, and everyone here at Eboracum Press is keen on this work. Even Mr. Greenleaf, who is such a curmudgeon with most of his “terrible infants.”

But, dear Bill, you must pick up the pace. And you must communicate with me before too much more time elapses. Writing has a shelf life like anything else--like bread, ideas can go moldy with astonishing speed, I find--so we must forge ahead now that you have established the foundation of a fine volume. There is much work to be done--new work that, I hope, you have written in the recent months, as well as the usual tedious editing for which I am paid. I believe you call it “nitpicking,” but I do hope that I’m a a little more visionary than that!

To that end, I expect that we will meet when I am visiting at my wife’s parents’ in Brookline over the Easter holidays. I can drive up to see you at Angleport, or you can come to Boston. We can meet at the Somerset Hotel, perhaps. How does Easter Monday the 22^nd at 10 A.M. sound? I will look forward to seeing you there.

My best to your lovely mother. And to Gwynne and my cousin, who has risen so far from his humble beginnings at CCNY.

Yours as always,

Don Wassermann

No mention of a check. Don always stated, in the body of the letter, whether or not a check was enclosed. He knew Dora wasn’t above taking it out and depositing in her own account. So: they were keen on the work, but not that keen. Or that old piker, Mr. Greenleaf, wasn’t.

And, obviously, his “friend” Don despised him. Why else the cheap dig about Gwynne and the successful Harold Blumberg? Appropriating his cousin’s success for himself, too, which beat all for gall.

Bill stewed. He had a wild idea that Dora had called Don up and orchestrated this double-barreled attack. Actually, it wasn’t such a wild idea. He sat on the couch and comforted himself with the image of him throwing a chair through the window and its landing on both their diminutive heads as they lounged below, talking of Michelangelo or some other pretentious rubbish. He ranted inwardly. In ten minutes got himself under control.

As he sat watching the fire die away to a heap of red embers, he felt a peculiar calmness, a blankness that may have been no more than a cessation of internal hostilities. Inner truce, he thought with an inner smile. The phrase “use your pain” returned to him; and, not for the first time, he sensed redemption in a huge blank sheet of paper, which he would fill and fill, on which he would inscribe his discoveries in a new territory. Connections would be made, explanations delivered, and all would become clear and honest and suffused with a kind of grace that might last beyond the ten-minute afterglow of a good fuck, say, or a good cry that emptied the sinus cavities.

In his mind’s eye he ascended into some sort of spiritual firmament. All impediments, all the petty tyrannies of habit and imposed duties fell away. He was filled with the certitude that, this time, he’d succeed in expressing everything he knew and felt and desired and aspired to. Everything. All. All of everything, all in one beautiful place, a world that he would create--had already created, although more in his notebooks (so far) than on the published page. And that would change.

From now on, he thought, this will be my life. Writing and nothing else.

A thrill shook his body, welling up from his heart. He felt sober, energetic, invincible.

He descended in his firmament of helium just enough to account for immediate practicalities. April 22 was only three weeks away--no, less. These tedious yokels would have to wait to get his undivided attention again. Too bad. He had a reputation to make, power to wield with the written word!

He got up feeling alive, purposeful, eager to live up to someone’s expectations for a change. He washed his face. He even brushed his teeth and gargled several times with Listerine. He carried his dinner tray downstairs and amazed Claire with his appearance in the kitchen.

“Not a word, Claire. I know I’ve been a self-indulgent—“

“Hein?”

“A pain in the ass.”

She nodded, looking somewhat dubious as she washed the dishes. “Et maintenant que veux-tu?”

Bill forgave her insolence in using the familiar form with him. “A big strong pot of coffee. And a plate of cookies or doughnuts or something to get me through the night. Got any fresh fruit? Some candy bars would be good, too. I have to work! All night, all night! Till the chill gray dawn!”

Douglas came in as he was declaiming. “Problem, Mr. Blake?” Bill avoided his searching gaze.

“On the contrary. Things are ducky! I got a letter from my editor. It’s do-or-die time. They love my newest stuff. I have to get cracking--get back on track, I mean, with my writing. Vite vite! Ideas get stale, you know. Like bread.”

“Oh.” Douglas looked at Claire, who shrugged her ignorance.

“It will be late to start typing, though…” Douglas said.

“Don’t worry. I always write in long hand. Several drafts. Then I find a typist. Maybe you’ll help me with that when the time comes, Douglas.” Bill grabbed hold of Douglas’s arm and looked up at his wary face with sudden confidingness. “But I’ll be quiet as a literary mouse tonight and for the foreseeable future!”

He ran back up to his room. He opened his notebook for the first time in months. He sat at the desk, stared, mused and scribbled. He didn’t notice when Douglas knocked on the door, then entered and set the tray on the dresser. He barely looked up when Douglas poured him a cup of coffee from a silver pot and set a pile of goodies on the desk.

Douglas smiled to himself and stole out of the room. Bill caught the smile out of the corner of his eye and scowled. Buzz off, you big faggot. I’m the fucking person of consequence around here and I sure as hell don’t need your condescension.

As the night went on, Bill was transported to another place. It was a realm of his own creation. He inhabited a zone where only gods and great creative minds dwelled, for however brief a time. Patterns asserted themselves, secret connections were made, characters and motives came together united in a symphony of literal and metaphorical meanings, actions and images meshed with destiny. Wit, humor, understanding, compassion, fatefulness. A key word, a secret code to the entire work kept coming through, kept appearing on the paper as if by some angelic hand: Home. “Home”? What did this mean? He didn’t understand his own code. In time it came to him, and he rejoiced. It meant he was approaching some kind of Truth for once. Not literary truth and stylistic devices but something more, maybe even something enduring. Enduring themes and emotions--things that connected, and in this junction of the real and the possible he detected his own rise. Out of the ashes, he thought. Little me, a fucking phoenix.

He understood that his life, finally, was beginning. At forty years old!

It’s all here. This is the breakthrough! I’m on my way at last. The apprenticeship is over!

He was free. He was heir to a kingdom that transcended time and human suffering. No, he was the king himself, and his realm transcended politics and morality, and it made human folly seem like a diversion from some divine purpose, a trajectory of meaning that made sense of the world and redeemed the silliest and meanest of people.

He wrote furiously all night. He’d never known such exaltation, such power, such grace. Such happiness.

The dawn light exposed his haggard appearance and the calamitous squalor of the Sarah Orne Jewett room. He read what he’d written over the past twelve frenzied hours. The cold April morning turned his divinely-channeled words into nonsense. Pretentious, high-falutin nonsense. Vacuous burbling. Almost as bad as automatic writing, and he didn’t even have the excuse of being high. He’d been sober all night, sober and focused, in command of his exalted realm. And, besides his swollen right hand, he had this to show for it? Fifty pages of uninspired horseshit? Vapid dialogue between paperdoll characters who stepped out of some Platonic definition of tediousness? Florid descriptions that sounded as generic as any best-seller twaddle?

Christ. There’s a worm in this rose, too. I might have known.

It occurred to him that the worm might be his own unphoenixlike self.

The fire was out. Otherwise he would have tossed his notebook into the flames. He did throw it on the floor. He had failed again. His work was horrible, he was an imposter and an idiot. His fate--his miserable end--was as clear as the new day that dawned, cheerless in its cold, mocking in its phoney promise of warm spring sunshine.

He poured a large Scotch and brooded. What had set him on this course? How and why and when, exactly, did he decide to devote his life to something so impossible and out of his range? What kind of vanity and sheer stupidity had pushed him along all these years, years he could actually have been building a life and being a regular guy with a normal life? Oh, sweet humdrum normality!

I am like an imbecile in a room full of geniuses, a dwarf in a land of basketball players.

He lay down on the bed in a heap, wrapped in his wool robe.

I am but a coat upon a stick.

He inched toward asleep, exhausted and still sober, wishing for a miracle. A shot in the temple would qualify. He imagined some minor personage pulling the trigger. Claire--yes, she’d do it quickly and without a lot of posturing and sermonizing. In his emerging dream he saw her take up a pistol…smoking a Gauloise, wearing a beret…fresh from an Apache dance in a striped jersey and tight skirt…shrugging in that Frenchy manner, aiming, shooting, playing the ironic observer as his meager brains oozed from his splintered cranium…and she was muttering, in good Parisian for a change, “Alors, quel ivrogne pathetique. Mieux qu’il ne vive plus.”

Just get it the fuck over with. I want to die. I was deluding myself. I am shit. The world is shit. My work is shit. The universe is shit.

His was a turbulent asleep in a familiar realm of distorted mirrors and bad lighting.

* * * *

Lunchtime came and went. It had been hours since his star boarder had made a sound. Mrs. Morton asked, in a whisper, if he thought Mr. Blake was quite all right.

“I’m sure he is,” Douglas smiled. “He was up all night working on his new book.”

“Artists,” she said. A tolerant little smile.

“Yes.” He gave her a courteous little bow and went upstairs. He knocked softly on the door. He waited a couple of minutes, then opened it with his house key.

He surveyed the room and stifled a groan. It was hard to believe that he had cleaned it thoroughly the day before. It looked like the Russian Army had swept through. Clothes, papers, crumbs, silverware, tissues, books, bottles--all that and more littered the floor and every other flat surface.

He started when he saw Bill. He looked like a dirty laundry bag tossed on the bed.

Bill snuffled, turned over, and began to snore lightly.

Douglas went around picking up the papers and the notebook. He peeked at the bed, then tried to sit down in the armchair by the window, which was loaded with clothes and books. He gave up and sat at the desk, careful to switch on the light as quietly as possible. He skimmed through the papers, including the letters. He opened the notebook.

He read until the hall clock bonged three.

He looked over at the bed.

Bill was lying on his side, watching him read.

Douglas started. He shut the notebook. He was about to say something but stopped.

“It’s horrible.” Bill sounded like he was talking through cobwebs. “I was in heaven all night. A realm of divine light. In flat daylight it’s drivel.”

“No, don’t say that.”

“It’s true. Let me sleep.” He rolled over. He spoke into the pillow.

“What?”

“Did you think it was pure shit?”

“No. Much of it is beautiful. I never would have thought…”

“What do you know?”

“More than you think.”

Bill sat up. “Really.”

Douglas blushed. “About writing. About writers. Some of my dearest friends—“

Bill laughed bitterly. “’Some of my best friends.’”

“Come with me.” Douglas stood up and held out his hand. “I want to show you something.”

“No.” Bill looked at him dubiously.

Douglas dropped his hand. “Well. Better clean up in here.”

“No. Wait. Give me the notebook.” Douglas handed it to him. “It really isn’t so bad?”

“No. Read it when you’ve had a meal and coffee. You’ll see then.”

Bill leaned against the headboard and leafed through the pages he’d just written. He read for a minute and put it down with a dejected shake of the head. “No, Douglas, it’s hopeless. Not good stuff.”

“I’m making you eggs and coffee. You take a shower and I’ll come back with breakfast.”

“No. It’s—“

“Yes.”

“Fine. Have it your way.” Bill tottered into the bathroom and locked the door behind him.

Douglas picked up some of the mess. He called to Claire from the top of the stairs and ordered a large breakfast. “Vite vite,” he said, imitating Bill. She squinted up at him in surprise; he never used French with her. Then she burst out laughing.

The Mortons peered out of the parlor, amazed by the levity. They shook their heads, whether in wonder or disapproval, Douglas couldn’t tell.

He went back into the Jewett room and ran around cleaning up. He made sure he left again when he heard Bill thump around after his shower.

He sat fidgeting at the desk in his suite. He heard Claire take the tray into the next room. He waited ten minutes and got up. His heart was pounding. His face shone. He knocked on the door and marched right into Bill’s room.

He ignored Douglas. He was munching toast, sipping at his coffee, reading the new pages. “So. You think…?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. Not bad.”

“Quite good. You have a talent that I—“

“Didn’t believe I had.”

“A kind of talent that I didn’t expect.” Douglas struggled to express himself. “There is a tense poetry in your prose. What I mean is, it’s lyrical even when it’s harsh. I can’t really explain it but….It’s like being a refugee who climbs up a mountain and finds a splendid new world on the other side. That’s--that’s not really what I mean, I’m sorry, but—“

“But now you believe.” Bill pretended to be moved to tears. “I’ve always wanted someone to be-leeeeeve in me.”

Douglas smiled as if he’d been slapped by a superior. “What?”

Bill looked at him coldly. “Such obvious motives.”

“That was uncalled for.” Douglas’s face got red.

“Was it.”

“If you don’t want my help, I will gladly—“

“What sort of help exactly?”

Douglas seemed to retreat to a place of memory. “I can read your work with discernment. Ask questions. Help you make choices: this word or that…this direction or that. Organize things somewhat. Help you stay on track. And remain true to your vision.”

“Vision!” Bill was amused. “I conclude that you have experience.”

“Yes. It’s the job of first reader.”

“Is that an accepted term?”

“I don’t know. It’s my term.”

Bill pondered. “Who with?”

“People you would despise.”

“In New York?”

“Yes.”

“Are they well-known?”

“Some of them.”

“Actually published?”

“Yes.”

“How do I pay you?”

Douglas was silent. He cleared his throat. Then he looked at Bill with a brave smile. “Don’t leave?”

Bill thought about it. Then he gathered up the loose sheets and the notebook. He got up and handed them to Douglas. “You’ll do me one favor, though. No deal otherwise.”

“What?”

“This is our secret.”

“Yes.”

“No one in this town—“

“No.”

Bill put on his coat. Douglas said, “Where are you going?”

“When can you have your comments back to me? Tomorrow afternoon?”

“Saturday.”

“Good.” Bill sat down at the desk and began to write. Take the hint, Douglas.
After a moment, Douglas left, closing the door quietly behind him.

Bill completed the letter.

April 5

Dear Don,

I received your letter yesterday. I would love to meet with you in Boston, but I am in Maine and writing quite a lot, and I can’t leave because I am on a roll. The work is good. A reader of discernment has told me that it’s like finding a splendid new world.

I will mail you pages in another week, I promise. I have 60-70 new ones. You will be pleased. This may not be enough, realistically, for you to approve a reasonable advance, but if you could persuade Mr. G. to part with a few shekels, I would be forever in your debt.

He thought better of the word “shekels” and rewrote the letter with “bucks” in its place. He addressed the envelope and put it in his coat pocket. Reclaiming his kingdom would begin with the purchase of a three-cent stamp. And a wee bit of celebration.

He left the house without encountering anybody. He thought the “reader of discernment” bit was a stroke of genius; Don would think he’d been scribbling diligently for ages.

He could smell the advance and April snow in the air. And something less pleasant.

* * * *

An applewood fire crackled. He smoothed out the crumpled loose sheets, read and annotated, compared with entries in the notebook, traced narrative lines, pieced together characters’ traits and scattered lines of dialogue. Under his eye and hand a coherent work began to take shape. The two longish stories were knitted together with the third, the current work in progress, to form a narrative arc of some subtlety and power.

The anger and poignancy tasted much like his own. Even the same kinds of unsaid words pulsed beneath the white surface of the paper. But he felt it wise to soften the harshness of the language and the cynicism of the characters’ attitudes. They could hate each other all they wanted; but Douglas saw that they might be wrapped in a kind of coolly ironic affection. The impression should be that the Deists’ God had stopped by to rewind the clocks and dawdled to look indulgently on the shenanigans below.

He made a guilty face when he thought of God. Early in the evening he had had a couple of conversations that must have surprised some people. To Russell Cobb he’d said, “I’m not going to services this weekend. Far too busy. Afraid you’ll have to do without me at Sunday dinner, too. I’m not up to it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Douglas,” Mr. Cobb said. “You do sound... Anything we can do for you?”

“No. I’m fine. Just terribly busy.”

“Are you sure all is well at your place?”

“Yes. Of course. Good night.” Douglas hung up the phone. It rang almost immediately, and he sighed. “Hello.”

“Douglas, I heard from Allie Cobb. Are you well? Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes, Evvie, I’m fine.”

“But you never beg off ch—“

“Well, this time I did. And if you really want to do something for me, you can come in the morning and take over for me after breakfast.”

“Well, OK, but can’t Claire--?”

“She has her crippled niece’s birthday party in Rockland. She’s leaving for her sister’s before lunch.” The fluency of his own lie astonished him. I must remember to give Claire the day off.

Evelyn sounded put out. “You know, Douglas, you’re entirely too easy on her. She takes advan—“

“Evelyn, please. Will you help me or not?”

Evelyn seemed to be gasping. “All right. All right. What time?”

“Ten. Thank you.”

He hung up.

“For once,” he’d added as he put the phone on the hook.

Then he had holed himself up in his study, leaving Claire to handle the guests. Eight hours of escape from his own thoughts, from himself. From his responsibilities. He imagined writing a letter to be printed in the town newspaper, either among the legal notices or the obituaries:

Dear Selene Harbor,

From this day forth I refuse to be your plaster saint. LEAVE ME ALONE.

Your Private Neighbor,

Douglas Broadwood

Douglas got up and stretched. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. It was almost three in the morning. He would send the manuscript out for typing on Monday. He smiled as he imagined Bill’s reaction when he was presented with the tangible evidence of his work. Bill’s work.

The snow had begun about midnight, hard. Bill had come home at one, singing a doo-wop version of “White Christmas” so loud and so badly that he knew Mrs. Morton would mention it first thing at breakfast. “Artists!”

Bill had popped his head in for a moment. “How’s my first reader doin’ tonight? My old amanuensis! Love ya, babe.”

He grinned. “Where did you go, Billy boy, Billy boy?”

“I bet you can guess!” A comical wink and then off to his own room, where he crashed around in his usual way before passing out.

A kind of odd little--what? Thrill? Gurgle? Some odd feeling welled up in his chest, and popped out of his throat. Could it be a “chortle” perhaps? As far as he knew, people in his part of the world never actually chortled.

Douglas undressed by the fire, banked the ashes, and slipped between the covers naked. He was quite tired. But so warm, and his very body felt happy.

As he drowsed he thought of Jack and another Bill and the owlish poet who once had been his friends, his idolized friends. Sometimes he’d been their “first reader.” But they’d always had a crew of hangers-on, sycophants of little discernment and usually poor education. Addled brains. First readers weren’t always prized for discernment and the ability to see clearly and assess judiciously. Often they were used for their doggy eagerness to dig up new superlatives and, of course, score whatever drug was in demand at the moment.

But Mr. Blake had nobody else. He’d make sure it stayed that way. He would be devoted to Bill’s art, even if Bill wavered. The coals of the fragrant fire grew dim. Douglas smiled as he fell asleep dreaming that he was needed. He sent a sleepy prayer up to God, the God he loved more than ever tonight. He was as hard as a rock.

Chapter VI: A Brief History of the Unspeakable

• This is the chapter where Bill finally begins to let the truth about himself leak into his consciousness, or into his present-day existence anyway. It would never have happened without the colossal, laconic presence of Douglas Broadwood. This chapter has seemed to receive very good responses from those who have read it--no doubt because people think it's terribly autobiographical, but it is not.
  

Exactly what had the old dipso meant with her insinuations and implications? It was one thing if she thought Douglas Broadwood was queer--and it was clear that she did--it was another thing entirely for her to think that he was.

Bill sat in his room all the next day and into the night. It took that long for the cold feeling to leave his guts. Depending on the word he used—queer, fairy, sissy, pansy, nancy-boy, candy-ass, Priscilla, faggot, homo, fruit, swish, pouf, queen, cornholer, bugger, sodomite, turd burglar--he conjured up a different vision of sickening manners and affectations (not to mention repulsive activities) that were despised by all and persecuted by many. At best, they were mere objects of ridicule. Clifton Webb. Franklin Pangborn. Liberace. Fussy, prissy, pathetic, tiresome. When they were worse than ridiculous, as scout masters, guidance counselors and priests, they were a threat to the holy and the innocent.

Shit, even I believe in innocence.

And lesbians? Dykes? Jesus! Worse, far worse, in his mind. All he had to do was think of Gertrude Stein, and his cock played turtle.

He examined all aspects of homosexual perversion. He was a writer: nothing human should be alien to him. But it was. He grieved over his limitations as a writer and, less strenuously, as a human being.

I know I’m a shithead. I just wish I were a shithead who wrote better. And more pages.

He sighed. The little burst of honesty elated him a bit. He felt calmer, more hopeful.

He paced round the room. He poked at the fire Claire had lit for him in the interval before tea. He looked deep inside himself and tested his own actions, emotions, responses. Was he attracted to his tall, somewhat gloomy host with the melting green eyes? Hardly. If he were inclined that way, he’d certainly go for someone younger and better-looking. Not that Douglas is so bad-looking, actually. The 1940 wardrobe doesn’t do much for him, though. Get hep, big boy.

Bill paced some more. Not that it had anything to do with him. Douglas Broadwood was a lonely person, cut off from the main in this lousy little backwater. He dressed like a retired librarian. He pussy-footed around his own house like the upstairs maid. He always hesitated and second-guessed himself and said sorry all the time. All that self-abnegation was creepy.

What’s more, supposing Mr. Broadwood found him attractive? Well, he wouldn’t be the first. Bill admitted, under duress, to being a handsome man. His appeal crossed several boundaries. He understood it. It did not disturb him. He was self-aware.

He grinned into the little mirror on the mantelpiece. Goes with the territory, I guess.

So it wasn’t surprising--wouldn’t be to anybody--that he had experimented when he was in high school. What perpetually horny, curious youngster won’t try something once, only if to prove to himself that he doesn’t go for it? The scornful accusations of his ex-wife and the bitter doubts voiced by his mother blended with a chorus of voices and faces that had cast stones at his manliness ever since he was an undergrown boy. Even now it pained him to think back on his--what? His off-the-record episodes of humiliation and not because they had been exceptional: they had been frequent, a leitmotiv of public ridicule and shame.

He believed it--It being his secret history of shame--began early. He was a skinny, bookish kid with a big vocabulary and the la-dee-da vowels inherited from his father’s side of the family, which was close to a radio comedian’s parody of Brahmin accents with their drooping diphthongs. How many times had he been beat up by his schoolmates? How many schoolday run-ins with the caustic, snot-encrusted bullies who infested Merrimac Street, from the falling-down triple-deckers by the river? They had thrown literal rocks at him got up in a cunning little Eton-style suit (gabardine shorts, jacket, starched white shirt and beanie-like cap that made him look like an undecorated Mr. Potato Head). One famous time, led by the feared/mocked Booger Eaton, they launched a piece of granite that knocked him out and had him in the hospital for a week of groggy pain and stitches, of which he recalled snapshots of his tsk-tsking nurse, Dora’s restless nicotined fingers, and heaps of athletically themed presents that his father, portly, red of face and sour of breath, dumped on the bed before he split for a do at the Myopia Hunt Club or some other spot with éclat.

As usual, memory begot memory, and the glories of the night somehow dissolved in the endless chain of shame and self-disgust. He could almost smell that gabardine and feel its weave grate on his tender skin.

That fucking Eton getup. He remembered getting dressed for school one day when he was about 10 or 11, when he saw some hairs were already sprouting in his crotch. He started playing around in that forbidden zone discovered that his newly outsized cock looked bigger when he dressed on the right. It sort of stuck out. In the mirror he could see his dick’s head outlined in the gabardine. He liked this, and the fact that it seemed to be growing as he diddled and stared. It had gotten browner somehow, and the head was huge and purple. He stopped and put it in his pants, on the right. Shaking. Breathless, light-headed with a new sensation, a sick excitement. He felt his head was going to pop off, especially when he looked at the changed topography of his pants.

He remembered thinking, as he sat on his bed, I don’t like this. This is bad.

But he savored the thrill.

And now he remembered, appalled but magnanimous, Have I always been such a fucking little liar?

He remained on the bed for a couple of minutes. He forced himself to quit squeezing his thighs against his dink.

Fanny, then a sweet-natured young girl just over from a priest’s household in County Wicklow, cried up the back stairs, “Master William! Get your dear self movin’, my honey!”

In control of his breath, he went downstairs to grab his books and head straight for the beat-up classroom that looked like a Little Rascals set. But Dora came in from the kitchen, sipping a cup of coffee, dragging on a Chesterfield through her femme fatale cigarette holder. She inspected him a moment. He thought she was going to say something cloying and pleasant to his ears--so often she did. “The sun rises and sets on my Billy.”

Her eyes narrowed. She stuck the holder firmly between her teeth. Then she hit him, hard. He skittered backwards and knocked over the end table holding his books and a bowl, some family heirloom from the China trade. The books flew, and the bowl crashed into the baseboard. “Only wicked men dress themselves that way.”

Billy flashed to Betty Stevens’ piano teacher, Mr. Devane, who wore a floppy tie, talked in a drawling Dorchester accent and flattered one with his toothy smiles (“You have lovely strong hands, Billy. You’d make a very apt pupil.”). Now that she mentioned it, Mr. Devane dressed himself that way, and he must be one of the wicked men she had in mind. He had noticed this for a while now, and Mr. Devane let Billy know that he knew by flashing him a specially toothy smile.

Dora’s sharp tone made him jump out of his own thoughts. “Go adjust yourself properly. And clean up this mess.” She pointed to the coffee that she’d spilled on the Turkish rug. She didn’t seem to care about the bowl; it had come from her mother-in-law. She walked out, sipping at the empty cup in a pantomime of serenity.

He picked himself up, too shocked to cry tears or call out, “Mummy! Mummy!”

She went back to the kitchen. His face got red with anger and shame. He wanted to shout, How dare you! Instead, he went upstairs, changed into his play clothes, pulled $3 from under his mattress, and sneaked out the back door when Fanny and Dora were in the front sitting room, arguing over how to wash the windows. He walked downtown using side streets were he thought no one would report him to Dora, and he caught the first bus to the beach, where he spent his three weeks’ allowance on fried clams and French fries, ice cream, taffy, candy apples and thrill rides. When he was at the rocking top of the Ferris wheel he looked out at the rough gray sea and felt his gorge rise again and again. He held it in. He felt proud of himself for that.

He didn’t mind being by himself all day; he liked being with his thoughts, watching the people go by. His observations and desires were his alone.

When he got home that night, well after supper, Dora didn’t look at him or say a word as she read the evening paper, except, “I guess you don’t have to wear those silly clothes any more.” As close to an admission of wrong, or forgiveness, as ever issued from Dora’s lips. No questions, no prying. He thought, She likes being ignorant.

Lesson learned. It suited him to keep secrets, to hide them away in a place where even he often couldn’t locate them. Only once or twice before had--he turned restlessly on the bed, moaning from the old labor of holding onto thoughts in solitary.

There was more, of course. He sat in front of the fire and remembered a carefree summer when he was fifteen or sixteen. One day he met up with a school friend at the beach, they got tight on some hooch he’d stolen from his father, and they necked--engaged in “heavy petting,” to be precise--on the cool sand under the arcade. They started out horsing around, then tickling like little kids, then so naturally a playful kiss, then another and another and suddenly the play had an edge to it, an aim. He closed his eyes and tried to recall the scene fully after 25 years. He sipped his Scotch and tried to taste the bootlegger’s rotgut.

He did remember the taste of Edgar Williams’ mouth and the mounting sense of power in his crotch, and that Edgar was responsive and whispered directly in his ear, “I like you, Bill.” His cock was much bigger than Edgar’s, and Edgar cooed and slid his tongue all the way down---

Bill got up and cursed at the memory. What the hell was I doing? Little fool!

He ignored his current state of excitement. He tossed back his drink and remembered something else.

It was a chilly evening. He and Edgar walked out to the open air sweating, disheveled, covered with sand. They must still have been semi-erect or something, because people gaped and nudged each other, some wearing hostile smiles. Bill overheard a young woman say to her boyfriend, “Look at them two”--she didn’t say “fairies” but she didn’t have to. He took off without looking back and caught the bus that was about to depart for home. Edgar was standing in the swirl of pleasure-seekers, and his face was desolate--abandoned, cast off--

Double shame. It hit him again as it had on his way home in the back of the jouncing bus. Cruel and a coward. He groaned. It had power over him even now.

Not that these memories and realizations were about to redeem him. Or make a better person of him? God forbid! Cheap grace, he thought with a sneer.

For despite the years of monkish self-denial, he’d always had these sickening little affairs of the heart. Edgar Williams--excessively gentle, tediously elegiac Edgar, who wrote him letters of confessional misery till he went away to college and never returned Angleport. After the war Bill heard that he died a suitable death for someone so sensitive and “artistic.” He hanged himself with a silk stocking in a Back Bay apartment owned by a prominent banker or something equally sensational and squalid.

Then there was that priest. That terrifyingly handsome Catholic priest at his in-laws’ parish in Haverhill, Father Purefoy. Bill met him after mass one Sunday with the Ross clan, and the shock of the man’s cerulean eyes and celestial beauty--no, the man’s steady gaze and knowing expression, neither coy nor insinuating--had Bill stammering and blushing to such a degree that even the self-obsessed Rosses snapped out of themselves and looked at him curiously. And he found himself saying, without transition, “Well, father, I must confess that there is something lacking--a spiritual dimension--in an otherwise full and satisfying life. I’ve even wondered if spiritual instruction in the Catholic faith might not be the thing for me.”

And what had Father Purefoy said, in his plummy, prep-school tones? “There’s always a place for the true seeker, Mr. Blake. But perhaps you’d better examine your heart more searchingly as to your motives for this important, eternally reverberating decision.” He hesitated, as if reconsidering his brusqueness, and he laid those godly blue eyes on Bill. “Although--yes, perhaps I’d be available one day to meet and talk of your discernment.”

Of course this pastoral rejection had its effect, and Bill’s desire flourished like rust. He began faithfully attending that distant parish of St. John the Disciple--a seemingly endless fifteen miles from Angleport--in a faith he’d been raised to despise. Gwynne began exulting to her relatives, “He’ll be a convert within the year!” She would come out of her disgrace with glory if she were responsible for the proper conversion of another soul and the father of her child.

But Father Purefoy finally rebuffed all his overtures and his stated hopes for instruction in the faith. He would gaze at Bill, shining his beautiful eyes and cruelly knowing looks at him, and he would shake his hand after mass with idiotic pleasantries that had Bill raging inside. “Lovely weather for March, isn’t it. So glad you could come. My, Mrs. Blake, you two look handsome together in your Easter best. How is your novel proceeding, Mr. Blake? I promise to buy a copy,” etc., and he would grant Bill the favor of these perfunctory comments each week. It never went any farther; Bill made an appointment to meet Father Purefoy, but cooled his heels in the waiting room, observed the snoopy, whispering, somewhat hysterical female volunteers, and went to a bar. He decided to pass on the Catholic faith.

A few months later he lay in bed one Sunday and told Gwynne, “Fuck your church. I’ll never set foot in one again.” Her perfectly made-up face suddenly was a mask of disdain, curled lip and all. She slammed the front door harder than usual, the gravel in the drive flew up when she jolted into gear.

Oh good for them, weren’t they smart. Well, let ‘em keep guessing. No one’s gonna hear a word from me.

They didn’t have to keep guessing any more, did they? Thanks to that idiot captain.

His C.O. in the Coast Guard, Capt. Parnell, whose favor Bill curried so ardently that the other men teased him, some with malicious envy. Captain William Parnell--the fact that they had shared the same commonplace name gave him an absurd thrill, as if they were members of a secret society, and only they knew the password to enter into the clubhouse.

Ah that Captain Parnell. He was a tall, blackly hairy man with a sense of command that radiated from a face like a Roman emperor’s, whose robust form Bill undressed secretly, every night, with reverential thoroughness while he lay next to the lactating Gwynne. Ah, Captain Bill Parnell, who once actually commanded Bill to feel him up--sort of.

“Damn it, Blake! I’m losing my hair! Feel this.” And he crouched down in front of him, guiding Bill’s hand to his ruddy forehead and pushed Bill’s hand into his scalp. “It’s receded a full inch since I came to this command. You guys are such a bunch of assholes, you’re making me go bald!” And he held Bill’s hand there for a minute, pressed it against his skin with a big hairy mitt, grinning at him as if to say “Imagine me fucking your cute little ass, Blake.”

And there was young Chief Blake himself, on full display in his summer whites and boxer shorts, hard cock poking down his thigh, straining against the fabric. The captain grasped Bill’s hand, squeezing it so tight he thought his all his fingers would fracture. A stain appeared at the crotch of on his uniform. Bill gaped at it, mortified.

The captain stood up. He inspected his subordinate with a sardonic expression and nodded toward his crotch. “At ease, Blake.” Parnell’s crotch was creating its own stir. Bill stared, mesmerized by the thick, treelike shape.

And that was as far as it went. Even though, at the time, he would have thrown away everything--risked everything--to spend time with the man, to go away with him.

Bill felt a stirring in his pants, but he ignored it by pouring a drink. Memories and imaginary trysts were safe and cost him nothing, after all. All this delving would be good material. If he could bear to write about such things. If he wouldn’t be anathemized from here to eternity. He imagined what the leading critics of the day would say about his work. And him if he wrote frankly about such things. Things that men did every day of the week, he guessed, but usually wrapped in a poisoned cloak of Shame.

Still, even if I am destined to be a minor footnote in the annals of American literature, he thought as he leafed through a collection of Cheever stories, I sure as hell don’t want to be known as a homo or a homo sympathizer.

Did he encourage those searching looks, as if Douglas expected him to be transformed into someone else? No. They’d exchanged some pleasantries but, in truth, he’d hardly paid any attention to the man. He’d been rude as hell to him. What kind of attractiveness was there in that?

As he relaxed a bit, it occurred to him that, if Douglas actually were queer, all he’d have to do is say, “No thanks, Doug. Not my style, old boy.” No need to get panicky or hostile or weird. No need to make the poor bugger feel even worse than he did already.

Well, sure, that’s it. He feels so bereft--looks at me that way--because he’s carrying the torch for some guy. Not me. Some other guy. Oh that poor old bugger.

Bill felt indulgent, merciful. Almost affectionate toward poor Douglas Broadwood, male spinster.

There was a light knock on the door. He opened it and saw his host walking quickly, almost on tiptoes, away from the door.

“Douglas, wait.”

Douglas headed downstairs without looking back or saying good evening.

Sensitive, these fruits, aren’t they?

Bill picked up the dinner tray. His mail was on it. The first mail since he’d arrived. When he saw the familiar handwriting on the envelope, his heart skipped beats. He ate first. He couldn’t face the letter on an empty stomach. After another drink he had the nerve to open the envelope.

March 29, 1957

Dear Billy,

You will forgive your poor old mother for tracking you down and sending along this enclosed missive from your editor, the ever-patient Mr. Wassermann. Don’t ask how I managed to find out where you were--but you have to give me credit for perseverance if nothing else.

Well, that dreary business aside--not simply the dreary business of your vocation and ability to make a living, I mean--I did manage to clean some of the taint you smeared over your family on the 10^th. Gwynne invited me to visit her and Harold B. in Cambridge. They have moved to a beautiful house, which her parents are outfitting at enormous expense. It seems that the handsome Harold has been given tenure at Harvard after the success of some book on an obnoxious Irish novelist whose name escapes me--it is making his reputation. The ways of Academe are not my ways, I can tell you. Anyway, Harold was, as always, gracious, charming, and sensitive. He is also the soul of responsibility. He dotes on your son, for which I am no less grateful than the boy’s mother, and he told me that Gregory’s autism isn’t so severe a case that he can’t, one day, lead a fairly normal existence. Harold has had some of the top specialists in the country examine the boy, and they are optimistic about his future. Shock treatments may be called for. His mother, of course, is thrilled.

They were all generosity and kindness, which surprised me, in light of the recent fiasco. Besides, I wasn’t all that good to her when she was married to you, and I regret it somewhat. Harold even told me that I reminded him of his own mother.

Coming from a gang of pushy Hibernians as she does, I believe that Gwynne really is a good sort of person, and she looks absolutely glowing in her new marriage. Well, so would I if I had a man like Harold Blumberg, despite the name, to wake up to every morning.

With all of their prosperity, you are still legally obligated to provide child support. Of course you knew that. You tend to overlook unpleasant facts, though, don’t you?

On that note, I strongly suggest that you do not ever, EVER again communicate with the person who was here on that horrid day. I blame myself, Billy, because your father was nowhere to be seen when you needed him.

All is not exactly forgiven, but here is a check to keep you going for a while. You’d better get cracking on the new book. Publishers don’t hand out advances like Christmas candy at grammar school, you know. I will do my duty by you (my above and beyond duty, in reality) until you start to produce again. But even my generosity has its limits, and I can’t afford to keep the checks flowing as I did in the past. I have been dipping into my capital of late, because I may have lived a little too long and, incidentally, suffered too much disappointment.

I had rather hoped you might be home by Easter. On further reflection, that wouldn’t be a good idea. Too much shock and anger have rattled by old system--I am looking Seventy hard in the eye, as you may recall--so I will spend the holiday with Gwynne and Gregory. They won’t drag me to Mass, though. I’ll stay home with Harold and sip grands crus classés; he has a lovely cellar of clarets. They’d kill for it at Oxford, I imagine.

They have the kind of life I had years ago--before the Crash and before your father ran off to Santa Barbara and so forth.

Who cares--all ancient history. Woe is me, etc. I have been alone over 20 years now and will always be alone.

I will keep in touch with you even though you probably won’t bother get off your derriere to write or call me. Cashed checks will tell me that you are still alive. The banking system--a mother’s unexpected friend.

Goodbye for now, my dear. Despite all, you know I miss you. In a way, I wish you were still living here. I am simply covering my pain. None too successfully, I fear.

loving

Your loving/ Mother,

Dora W. Blake

P. S.--That person called for you a couple of days ago. I told him that you’d gone away and I believed you’d gone to New York.

He read the whole letter only once and the P. S. five or six times. Then he balled it up and threw it in the corner. He was almost hyperventilating. But he carefully set the check--a pretty generous one--on the desk. He’d be able to live well on it for weeks, months.

His shame wasn’t so complete or irredeemable as he’d feared. Money meant approval of some kind. A cold war instead of a nuclear holocaust--that wasn’t so terrible, was it? It meant he could go home eventually.

He poured himself a small drink of celebration, an abstemious finger of Scotch.

Pretty soon it’ll be as if the captain never existed.

And in a sense, he hadn’t. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

He thought about it for a few minutes, twirling the meager quantity of amber liquid in the tumbler. He thought, Maybe I should get back to work. Get cracking, as Dora says. Deeds, not words.

He didn’t delve into the humor of that statement.