Erasure (23 page)

I was just tall enough to dunk the basketball, but not quite big enough to get close enough to the basket in a half-court game to do so. I enjoyed the exercise and the game, but not so much playing the game. I wasn’t very good at it. I would catch the ball, look to make a reasonably safe pass while dribbling, then make that reasonably safe pass and move to another spot on the perimeter. One day, a sunny May Saturday, I was playing on a court near my house. I was seventeen and feeling more awkward than I ever had or would feel again. I had been playing for about thirty minutes, making safe pass after safe pass when I found myself considering the racist comments of Hegel concerning Oriental peoples and their attitude toward freedom of the self when I was bumped into the lane and so appeared to be cutting to the basket and the ball was thrown back to me. I threw up a wild and desperate shot which had no prayer of going in; it was ugly. A member of my team asked me what I was thinking about and I said, “Hegel.”

“What?”

“He was a German philosopher.” I watched the expression on his face and perhaps reflected the same degree of amazement. “I was thinking about his theory of history.”

The order of the following comments escapes me now, but they were essentially these:

“Get him.”

“Philosophy boy.”

“That’s why he threw up that brick?”

“Where the hell did you come from?”

“What are you thinking about right now?”

“You’d better Hegel on home.”

Novel idea: The Satyricon

Let us put this affrontery behind us. This from Fabricus Veiento, and he laughed in the middle of his lecture on the follies of what we took generally to be religious belief, though he couched it in terms of particular mania for revelation and prophecy. Indeed, all lofty themes, religious, political or otherwise, were equal in their being subjects of ridicule or simple askance-looking. Indeed (again), I learned from him and agreed that the seductiveness of the verbal engagement which Veiento so disparaged was the reason why so many pupils, namely young men like myself, grow up to be idiots. That the young would rather be entertained by tales of the extreme rather than the mundane is not arguable. Pirates defeat accountants. Beheadings outweigh slivers of wood in buttocks.

Academic training catering to such vulgar taste can only promise vulgarity. Rhetoricians are at the root of the decline of Oratory—empty speech for empty heads, pretending eloquence and so redefining the very thing it has killed.

While paying Mother’s and my own bills in mid-August, I found myself nearly ready to accept the poorly salaried lecturer position at American University. I put in a call to my brother to see if he might be able to help.

“I have no money,” he said.

“She’s your mother, too,” I said.

“I can’t even see my kids,” Bill said. “I have my own problems.”

“Do you have a car?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What kind of car is it?” I asked.

“What are you asking?”

“Is it expensive?”

There was a long pause and he said, finally, “I don’t actually own the car. It’s a corporate lease. I’m incorporated. I get paid a salary and that’s just enough for me to live.”

“Can you take a less expensive apartment?” I asked. “Listen, Bill, I’ve left my job to come here and live with Mother. You could do a little something.”

“Sell the house and move her to a cheaper place.”

“The house is paid for. There is no cheaper place.”

“But selling it would give you some cash. You could get three-four hundred thousand for that house.

“Actually, Monk.” His pause was a fat one if not terribly long and I could imagine his habit of looking at the ceiling before speaking. “I’ve taken a lover.” Taken a lover was how he put it. Removed one from the closet? Conned one out of his savings? Taken a lover.

“So?” I said.

“His name is Claude.”

“I don’t care what his name is,” I told him. “What is he? French?”

“I want you to meet him.” And suddenly Bill’s voice was different, but it was more than just the sound of a man in love. His pronunciation changed. It was not quite that he developed a stereotypical lisp, but it was close.

“Why are you talking like that?”

His voice went back to normal. “Like what?”

I collected myself and tried to make my way back to important matters. “What about Lorraine?”

“What about her? We don’t owe anything to Lorraine.”

“So, you’re telling me to sell Mother’s house, move her into a home and kick Lorraine out into the street.”

“Basically.”

I hung up.

The phone rang the next morning while I sat at what had been my father’s desk staring at the gray box across the room. It was my agent.

credo quia absurdum est

“Sit down,” Yul said.

“I’m sitting,” I said, though I was standing and looking out the window at the street.

“I sent it over to Random House.”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t offer any qualifiers or anything.”

“Yes?”

“Six hundred thousand dollars.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said, sitting now.

“Paula Baderman, a senior editor over there, wants to meet Mr. Leigh.”

“Tell them he’s shy.” I was elated and ready to be angry. “Tell me what she said.”

“She called it true to life. Called it an important book.”

“What did she say about the writing?”

“She said it was magnificently raw and honest. She said it’s the kind of book that they will be reading in high schools thirty years from now.”

I said nothing.

“Monk?”

I looked out the window.

“Monk? This is what you wanted, right?”

“Random House.”

“Yep.”

“This is really fucked up, you know that.”

“You don’t want the deal.”

“Of course I want the deal,” I said. “Just tell them that Stagg Leigh is painfully, pathologically shy and that he’ll communicate with them through you.”

“I don’t know if that will cut it.”

“It’ll cut it.”

I never before felt so stranded. Alone in that house with Mother and Lorraine. But with the new bit of change I would be collecting for that awful little book, I could hire someone to come in and care for both of them. Perhaps for dramatic effect, I should have had to wait longer for my windfall, given my brother’s newfound flakiness and my sister’s debt (both what she owed and what I owed her), but it didn’t happen that way. The news of the money came and I breathed an ironic and bitter sigh of relief. Maybe I felt a bit of vindication somewhere inside me. Certainly, I felt a great deal of hostility toward an industry so eager to seek out and sell such demeaning and soul-destroying drivel.

“Monk?”

“Bill? What time is it? Jesus, Bill, it’s three in the morning.”

“Sorry, it’s only one here.”

“Is something wrong? Are you okay?”

“How long have you known I was gay?”

“Come on, Bill, it’s too early to talk about this. I mean, it’s too late. Too late in a couple of ways. You’re gay. Deal with it.”

“How long have you known?”

I sat up and switched on my bedside lamp. “I don’t know. For a while, I guess.”

“Did you know when I was in high school?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“I didn’t know then, but I must have been, right?”

“I don’t know how these things work. Are you all right?”

“Have you ever had any gay feelings?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You know that I love my children.”

“I know you do, Bill. Is there anything I can do?”

“Can you imagine if Father knew I was gay?”

“He wouldn’t take it well, that’s for sure.”

“How do you think Mother will take it?”

“I don’t know. Why tell her?”

“Why not tell her? Do you think I should be ashamed of what I am?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“Tell her if you want to. But first, she’s not going to understand what you are telling her and second, she’s going to forget two seconds after you’re done. So, tell her if you want to. It’s not going to make much difference to anybody but you.”

“So, you think I’m only concerned with myself.”

“I didn’t say that either. But, basically, that’s true of all of us.”

“I don’t need your platitudes.”

“Did you call looking for a fight?”

“No, I didn’t. I just thought I’d get a little more support from my little brother.”

“Support. You don’t need me to be gay. How’s your new—”

“Partner, it’s called a partner. Or boyfriend. You can say boyfriend. His name is Tad and he’s fine. I don’t know where he is right now, but he’s fine. Are you seeing anyone?”

“No.”

“Sell any books lately?”

“No. Listen, I’ve got to get some sleep.”

Click.