Changing the Past (33 page)

“I'm afraid I signed over most of my property to him, so I couldn't afford a breakup now.”

Phyllis' problem was then essentially one of irresponsible naïveté. This must be apparent to all, and Kellog felt that to maintain the respect of his listeners he had to make note of it. “How did you let this man gain such power over you?”

“Sex,” Phyllis said. “I never had been made love to by anybody else like that. I never even had an orgasm with my first husband. With this guy, every single time. I have a whole series with the clitoris and then there it comes, the big vaginal bang. I didn't believe in that until the first time I had one.” She chuckled. “And you know, his penis isn't all that big. It's just a little bitty thing, in fact. It's the way he uses it, and his fantastic hands, and also his incredible ability to stimulate me orally.”

Kellog could well remember that not too many years earlier “damn” and “hell” were taboo on radio and that he himself had not known the proper name for the clitoris during his first marriage, and that wife returned the favor by never even, unless guided physically, touching him below the waist. And yet at the time he had thought they were satisfactorily compatible as to sex, and so apparently had she, whose complaint against him was that his business kept him too much on the road, whereas the choirmaster was always nearby. Now there were ordinary laypersons who not only were possessed of clinical information about sex and routinely practiced refinements and embellishments of an act that was basically so stark as practiced by all other mammals, but also boasted to an audience of countless invisible strangers. Certainly it was something that Kellog himself could not have considered doing, and no doubt it was his disdain for such callers that gave him sufficient authority to be respected by them.

He now told Phyllis that the choices before her were simple: she had only to assemble the respective arguments, one, two, three, on either side, and then count up the points of each. Such enumeration was soon institutionalized by him as the Count, and it became a kind of Kellogian trademark. Before long the callers anticipated it and by the time they reached him already had made their counts and wanted them assessed.

“Made two columns on a sheet of paper like you said, listed everything in either Column A or B. What I get from my girlfriend in A, as opposed to the disadvantages in B. Like she's real pretty, A. But she's unfaithful, B. B, her father hates me. A, I get along real well with her mom. She claims she's really in love with me: that's A. But so far I can't get her to engage in any real sex, B. It's not like she won't ever do it, according to her: she's just waiting for the right time. I guess that would be A, because it's not turning me down. But suppose it's just teasing: that would definitely be in Column B.”

“All right, Tim. I get the point.”

“Then what should I do?”

“I can't make your mind up for you. That's what you're supposed to do with the help of the Count.”

“Trouble is,” Tim said, “I know she's having some kind of sex with other guys, which isn't good, but if it's nothing more than she does with me, then it's not
all
that bad. I guess I could live with it, if all she's doing is hand jobs.”

“That's what she does for you?”

“That's right.”

“Well, it's something, then, isn't it? But maybe you should consider playing the field as she does. Try dating some other girls and see what happens.”

“I
knew
you'd come up with the perfect solution,” Tim said fervently.
“Thank
you, Doctor.”

Male homosexual callers tended to be more romantic and less coarse or clinical than many of the heterosexuals who applied to Dr. Kellog. Their sort of conjunction was invariably called “making love” and references to it were sans details—to Kellog's great relief, for any show of distaste for any sexual variant could get one in trouble in contemporary New York, yet he still found certain images uncomfortable, e.g., any that featured the rectum of any living thing (of whichever sex) as an erotic part. And if they were almost never merry or even light of heart while calling themselves “gay” (a term he eventually identified as a kind of whistling in the dark, a self-courage builder), they were unfailingly civil in the purest sense of the word, commonly amongst the best citizens, unless of course some individual went too far, but that could happen with zealots of any persuasion.

“My lover and I have gotten into a complex situation,” said a caller named David, “and I can't talk directly to him about it. He's—I'll call him Martin—Martin's a good deal older than I. He's middle-aged, married, and with a family. His children, a boy and a girl, are of my generation. Now what happened was by accident, really. I got to know his son, who is absolutely straight. This son, I'll call him Rob, and I in fact work together at the same firm. He hasn't any idea I know his father, let alone have an affair going with him. Now, Rob keeps wanting to introduce me to his sister, in fact to double-date with him and his fiancée. I have kept putting him off, but unfortunately he knows that I don't have a regular girl. He really cares for me as a friend, and I am touched, because I don't think ever in my life I've had any male friends with whom I wasn't also involved sexually, except maybe when I was just a little kid.”

“Has he ever mentioned you by name to his father?”

“He and his father have had nothing to do with one another for several years. What's more, I don't know but strongly suspect from little hints that their estrangement is due to Martin's, the father's, sexual orientation, which I think Rob may have his suspicions about. Rob is quite bigoted, very anti-gay. I don't have the courage to reveal myself to him, let alone my relationship with his father. He keeps pressuring me about his sister. You might think I could go out with her once anyway to get him off my case, but she lives at home. Imagine calling for her and being greeted at the door by her father, my lover.”

“Why don't you try this?” said Kellog. “You say Rob knows you haven't got a regular girl. But I'm sure you could get a date with one of your female friends. Take her out with Rob and his fiancée. You don't have to pretend you and she are that closely involved as yet, but you could let Rob think you're sufficiently interested in her not to want to see anyone else romantically at this time. That would take care of the matter of the sister.”

“I suppose I could do that,” said David. “I'm on good terms with the divorced lady in the next apartment, but then I've got all kinds of female friends.”

“I wouldn't advise much real lying, though, David,” Dr. Kellog said. “Asking your date to say she knows you better than she does and so on. Such misrepresentations can be embarrassing when you least expect it. Now, as to your lover, Martin. Why in the world couldn't you tell him about your friendship with his son Rob? Tell him just as you've told me. There's nothing shameful or dishonest about your friendship with his son, who is your colleague at work. By the way, isn't he at least aware that you work at the same place as Rob?”

“No,” David said quickly. “He doesn't have any idea of even what kind of work I do. I happen to love Martin, but he's terribly self-concerned. All he really wants me for is his own gratification. Despite his age, he's sex-crazed. That's all he cares about, not me really. Yet I love him. Isn't it weird, with me the young and attractive one? Yes, it's true. I would put my hand in the fire for him. In return, he'd just jump into bed with someone else. He's cold, ruthless. Martin's cruel. He—” David sounded ready to weep, and Kellog couldn't let that happen.

“All right, then. I think your best course of action would be to tell Martin about knowing Rob. If Martin's interest in you, as you say, is mostly physical, then why would he care much about your friendship with his son, since it is furthermore nonerotic?”

“Oh,” said David, gasping, “you don't know how malicious he can be. He'll immediately call up Rob and taunt him. ‘Your best friend is one of those faggots you so detest!' He wouldn't pass up a God-given opportunity of that sort.”

“And Rob would be outraged with you…” Kellog really had nothing against the sexually inverted as long as their problems were routine, but when complexities appeared, one's instinctive though unspoken reaction could too easily be, even in an oversophisticated era:
Why in the name of God don't you just go straight?

As it was, the doctor took an extended breath. “Rob sounds like the better man, not because he's heterosexual but because, at least as you present him, his friendly affection for you seems genuine. In return, you know, you haven't been genuine with him. I'd take the chance if I were you and make a clean breast of it. If he can stay bigoted after knowing you all this while, and thinking you a fine enough human being to have as his close friend, then he's not worth bothering about.”

“You see,” David said sadly, “the reason Rob's so anti-gay is a serious one. I can't find it in my heart to condemn him. He was raped by a male teacher when he was only five years old.”

“He told you that?”

“His father told me—not being aware, you remember, that I knew his son.” David was silent for a moment. “And there's more: that teacher was a lover of Martin's. Maybe Rob even knows that. Furthermore, Martin says this man was the only person he has ever really loved his life long, that since their breakup he has had no feeling left for anyone else.”

Kellog was claimed by a probably quixotic stubbornness, but it was suddenly a matter of pride for him not to dispose of this ever more complex matter by recommending application to a therapist. “All right, but I'll stick by my guns. Unless you are yourself a violator of little children, and somehow I doubt that you are—”

“I'm certainly not!”

“Then the point stands. You're a decent man, who happens to be homosexual. A
friend
should be able to accept that.”

David reported back several weeks later. With all the calls Kellog had received in the interim, it was necessary that most of the story be retold before it was remembered by the doctor, not to mention those listeners who had forgotten it or had missed it first time around.

“Yes, David,” said Kellog eventually. “And what has happened?”

“You won't believe this,” David said. “I told him everything, and Rob's reaction was to
proposition
me! Right then and there, in my car! ‘But you're not gay,' I said—I always
know
. ‘Why are you doing this? To make fun of me?' ‘It's quite true that I'm not queer,' said he. ‘But apparently everyone else in the world is, so maybe I ought to try it.'”

“And?” asked Kellog.

“I've never been a whore,” David said. “I've got morals. If he wants to be a thrill-seeker, he can try someone else.”

“So you said no. How did he respond to that?”

David spoke flatly, with no audible emotion. “Rob hasn't spoken to me since, and I have good reason to believe he's slandering me around the office. Also he called Martin immediately and said / had been the one to make a pass at
him
. Ordinarily Martin, alley cat that he is, couldn't care less if I had other lovers, but now he's used this thing to break off relations with me altogether. I realize that he was just looking for an excuse: I'm not as young as I once was.”

Of course this debacle could have been interpreted as the result of a grievous error on thé part of Dr. Kellog, and after David hung up there were several callers who wanted to chide the radio psychologist, but his producer diverted them from the air. Kellog himself felt no guilt: he had been honest in giving what after a reasonable amount of thought had seemed the best advice. Nothing more could be asked of a practitioner to whom an unseen patient spoke for three minutes.

And in fact David had no complaint. “Doctor, after all is said and done, and after quite a bit of intense pain—I'll admit that—I'm beginning to feel nothing but a profound sense of relief. These are terrible people! I'm glad to be free of them both. The atmosphere at work has become too poisoned, and I'm going to have to quit. But I've been stuck in that dead-end job for too long anyhow! It's as if I've been imprisoned both personally and professionally, and now the jail doors have sprung open. I'm ready to spread my wings and fly on my own! And I owe it most of all to you, Dr. Kellog. My profound gratitude!”

This was always Kellog's favorite moment. “David, you owe me nothing. You've done it yourself. All you needed was a very little push, and you proceeded in the right direction. If I or anyone else had tried to
tell
you what to do, it wouldn't have worked. Now you can see what your basic strengths are. You're going to be all right from here on.”

“Don't I know it!” David said. “And I'm in love again. This time it's for real.”

Kellog would have shown a wry moue to his producer behind the glass partition, had the veteran Pat still held that job, Pat having been Lesbian since puberty and thus secure enough to be ironic about quick infatuations. But she had risen to an executive post at the station and been replaced by Jill, an emotional young woman who regularly fell in love with men who treated her like dirt: Jill would identify absolutely with David.

As to Kellog's personal life, since the brief and unsuccessful marriage with the daughter of his boss in an earlier job, he had made it a rule never to have a relationship beyond the professional with any of his colleagues or employees. It was unthinkable to have any association with someone who had called him for advice. Emotionally troubled women were hard enough to endure at the end of a telephone line. He was only made uncomfortable by learning there were those who found his voice aphrodisiac. If rebuffed on the phone (in exchanges that never reached the air), some would apply by mail, a few indecently, enclosing nude photos and perfumed underwear.