Naked (11 page)

It was my hope to win a contest, cash in the prizes, and use the money to visit a psychiatrist who might cure me of having
homosexual thoughts. Electroshock, brain surgery, hypnotism — I was willing to try anything. Under a doctor’s supervision,
I would buckle down and really change, I swore I would.

My parents knew a couple whose son had killed a Presbyterian minister while driving drunk. They had friends whose eldest daughter
had sprinkled a Bundt cake with Comet, and knew of a child who, high on spray paint, had set fire to the family’s cocker spaniel.
Yet, they spoke of no one whose son was a homosexual. The odds struck me as bizarre, but the message was the same: this was
clearly the worst thing that could happen to a person. The day-to-day anxiety was bad enough without my instructors taking
their feeble little pot-shots. If my math teacher were able to subtract the alcohol from his diet, he’d still be on the football
field where he belonged; and my Spanish teacher’s credentials were based on nothing more than a long weekend in Tijuana, as
far as I could tell. I quit taking their tests and completing their homework assignments, accepting Fs rather than delivering
the grades I thought might promote their reputations as good teachers. It was a strategy that hurt only me, but I thought
it cunning. We each had our self-defeating schemes, all the boys I had come to identify as homosexuals. Except for a few transfer
students, I had known most of them since the third grade. We’d spent years gathered together in cinder-block offices as one
speech therapist after another tried to cure us of our lisps. Had there been a walking specialist, we probably would have
met there, too. These were the same boys who carried poorly forged notes to gym class and were the first to raise their hands
when the English teacher asked for a volunteer to read aloud from
The Yearling
or
Lord of the Flies.
We had long ago identified one another and understood that because of everything we had in common, we could never be friends.
To socialize would have drawn too much attention to ourselves. We were members of a secret society founded on self-loathing.
When a teacher or classmate made fun of a real homosexual, I made certain my laugh was louder than anyone else’s. When a club
member’s clothing was thrown into the locker-room toilet, I was always the first to cheer. When it was my clothing, I watched
as the faces of my fellows broke into recognizable expressions of relief.
Faggots,
I thought.
This should have been you.

Several of my teachers, when discussing the upcoming school integration, would scratch at the damp stains beneath their arms,
pulling back their lips to reveal every bit of tooth and gum. They made monkey noises, a manic succession of ohhs and ahhs
meant to suggest that soon our school would be no different than a jungle. Had a genuine ape been seated in the room, I guessed
he might have identified their calls as a cry of panic. Anything that caused them suffering brought me joy, but I doubted
they would talk this way come fall. From everything I’d seen on television, the Negros would never stand for such foolishness.
As a people, they seemed to stick together. They knew how to fight, and I hoped that once they arrived, the battle might come
down to the gladiators, leaving the rest of us alone.

At the end of the school year, my sister Lisa and I were excused from our volunteer jobs and sent to Greece to attend a month-long
summer camp advertised as “the Crown Jewel of the Ionian Sea.” The camp was reserved exclusively for Greek Americans and featured
instruction in such topics as folk singing and something called “religious prayer and flag.” I despised the idea of summer
camp but longed to boast that I had been to Europe. “It changes people!” our neighbor had said. Following a visit to Saint-Tropez,
she had marked her garden with a series of tissue-sized international flags. A once discreet and modest woman, she now paraded
about her yard wearing nothing but clogs and a flame-stitched bikini. “Europe is the best thing that can happen to a person,
especially if you like wine!”

I saw Europe as an opportunity to re-invent myself. I might still look and speak the same way, but having walked those cobblestoned
streets, I would be identified as Continental. “He has a passport,” my classmates would whisper. “Quick, let’s run before
he judges us!”

I told myself that I would find a girlfriend in Greece. She would be a French tourist wandering the beach with a loaf of bread
beneath her arm. Lisette would prove that I wasn’t a homosexual, but a man with refined tastes. I saw us holding hands against
the silhouette of the Acropolis, the girl begging me to take her accordion as a memento of our love. “Silly you,” I would
say, brushing the tears from her eyes, “just give me the beret, that will be enough to hold you in my heart until the end
of time.”

In case no one believed me, I would have my sister as a witness. Lisa and I weren’t getting along very well, but I hoped that
the warm Mediterranean waters might melt the icicle she seemed to have mistaken for a rectal thermometer. Faced with a country
of strangers, she would have no choice but to appreciate my company.

Our father accompanied us to New York, where we met our fellow campers for the charter flight to Athens. There were hundreds
of them, each one confident and celebratory. They tossed their complimentary Aegean Airlines tote bags across the room, shouting
and jostling one another. This would be the way I’d act once we’d finally returned from camp, but not one moment before. Were
it an all-girl’s camp, I would have been able to work up some enthusiasm. Had they sent me alone to pry leeches off the backs
of blood-thirsty Pygmies, I might have gone bravely — but spending a month in a dormitory full of boys, that was asking too
much. I’d tried to put it out of my mind, but faced with their boisterous presence, I found myself growing progressively more
hysterical. My nervous tics shifted into their highest gear, and a small crowd gathered to watch what they believed to be
an exotic folk dance. If my sister was anxious about our trip, she certainly didn’t show it. Prying my fingers off her wrist,
she crossed the room and introduced herself to a girl who stood picking salvageable butts out of the standing ash-tray. This
was a tough-looking Queens native named Stefani Heartattackus or Testicockules. I recall only that her last name had granted
her a lifelong supply of resentment. Stefani wore mirrored aviator sunglasses and carried an over-sized comb in the back pocket
of her hiphugger jeans. Of all the girls in the room, she seemed the least likely candidate for my sister’s friendship. They
sat beside each other on the plane, and by the time we disembarked in Athens, Lisa was speaking in a very bad Queens accent.
During the long flight, while I sat cowering beside a boy named Seamen, my sister had undergone a complete physical and cultural
transformation. Her shoulder-length hair was now parted on the side, covering the left half of her face as if to conceal a
nasty scar. She cursed and spat, scowling out the window of the chartered bus as if she’d come to Greece with the sole intention
of kicking its dusty ass. “What a shithole,” she yelled. “Jeez, if I’d knowed it was gonna be dis hot, I woulda stayed home
wit my headdin da oven, right, girls!”

It shamed me to hear my sister struggle so hard with an accent that did nothing but demean her, yet I silently congratulated
her on the attempt. I approached her once we reached the camp, a cluster of whitewashed buildings hugging the desolate coast,
far from any neighboring village.

“Listen, asshole,” she said, “as far as this place is concerned, I don’t know you and you sure as shit don’t know me, you
got that?” She spoke as if she were auditioning for a touring company of
West Side Story,
one hand on her hip and the other fingering her pocket comb as if it were a switch-blade.

“Hey, Carolina!” one of her new friends called.

“A righta ready,” she brayed. “I’m comin’, I’m comin’.”

That was the last time we spoke before returning home. Lisa had adjusted with remarkable ease, but something deep in my stomach
suggested I wouldn’t thrive nearly as well. Camp lasted a month, during which time I never once had a bowel movement. I was
used to having a semiprivate bath-room and could not bring myself to occupy one of the men’s room stalls, fearful that someone
might recognize my shoes or, even worse, not see my shoes at all and walk in on me. Sitting down three times a day for a heavy
Greek meal became an exercise akin to packing a musket. I told myself I’d sneak off during one of our field trips, but those
toilets were nothing more than a hole in the floor, a hole I could have filled with no problem whatsoever. I considered using
the Ionian Sea, but for some unexplained reason, we were not allowed to swim in those waters. The camp had an Olympic-size
pool that was fed from the sea and soon grew murky with stray bits of jellyfish that had been pulverized by the pump. The
tiny tentacles raised welts on campers’ skin, so shortly after arriving, it was announced that we could photograph both the
pool
and
the ocean but could swim in neither. The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis, and then called it a day. Our
swimming period was converted into “contemplation hour” for the girls and an extended soccer practice for the boys.

“I really think I’d be better off contemplating,” I told the coach, massaging my distended stomach. “I’ve got a personal problem
that’s sort of weighing me down.”

Because we were first and foremost Americans, the camp was basically an extension of junior high school except that here everyone
had an excess of moles or a single eyebrow. The attractive sports-minded boys ran the show, currying favor from the staff
and ruining our weekly outdoor movie with their inane heckling. From time to time the rented tour buses would carry us to
view one of the country’s many splendors, and we would raid the gift shops, stealing anything that wasn’t chained to the shelf
or locked in a guarded case. These were cheap, plated puzzle rings and pint-size vases, little pom-pommed shoes, and coffee
mugs reading SPARTA IS FOR A LOVER. My shoplifting experience was the only thing that gave me an edge over the popular boys.
“Hold it like this,” I’d whisper. “Then swivel around and slip the statue of Diana down the back of your shorts, covering
it with your T-shirt. Remember to back out the door while leaving and never forget to wave good-bye.”

There was one boy at camp I felt I might get along with, a Detroit native named Jason who slept on the bunk beneath mine.
Jason tended to look away when talking to the other boys, shifting his eyes as though he were studying the weather conditions.
Like me, he used his free time to curl into a fetal position, staring at the bedside calendar upon which he’d x-ed out all
the days he had endured so far. We were finishing our 7:15 to 7:45 wash-and-rinse segment one morning when our dormitory counselor
arrived for inspection shouting, “What are you, a bunch of goddamned faggots who can’t make your beds?”

I giggled out loud at his stupidity. If anyone knew how to make a bed, it was a faggot. It was the others he needed to worry
about. I saw Jason laughing, too, and soon we took to mocking this counselor, referring to each other first as “faggots” and
then as “stinking faggots.” We were “lazy fag-gots” and “sunburned faggots” before we eventually became “faggoty faggots.”
We couldn’t protest the word, as that would have meant acknowledging the truth of it. The most we could do was embrace it
as a joke. Embodying the term in all its clichéd glory, we minced and pranced about the room for each other’s entertainment
when the others weren’t looking. I found myself easily outperforming my teachers, who had failed to capture the proper spirit
of loopy bravado inherent in the role.
Faggot,
as a word, was always delivered in a harsh, unforgiving tone befitting those weak or stupid enough to act upon their impulses.
We used it as a joke, an accusation, and finally as a dare. Late at night I’d feel my bunk buck and sway, knowing that Jason
was either masturbating or beating eggs for an omelette.
Is it me he’s thinking about?
I’d follow his lead and wake the next morning to find our entire iron-frame unit had wandered a good eighteen inches away
from the wall. Our love had the power to move bunks.

Having no willpower, we depended on circumstances to keep us apart.
This cannot happen
was accompanied by the sound of bedsprings whining,
Oh, but maybe just this once.
There came an afternoon when, running late for flag worship, we found ourselves alone in the dormitory. What started off as
name-calling escalated into a series of mock angry slaps. We wrestled each other onto one of the lower bunks, both of us longing
to be pinned. “You kids think you invented sex,” my mother was fond of saying. But hadn’t we? With no instruction manual or
federally enforced training period, didn’t we all come away feeling we’d discovered something unspeakably modern? What produced
in others a feeling of exhilaration left Jason and me with a mortifying sense of guilt. We fled the room as if, in our fumblings,
we had uncapped some virus we still might escape if we ran fast enough. Had one of the counselors not caught me scaling the
fence, I felt certain I could have made it back to Raleigh by morning, skittering across the surface of the ocean like one
of those lizards often featured on television wildlife programs.

When discovered making out with one of the Greek bus drivers, a sixteen-year-old camper was forced to stand beside the flagpole
dressed in long pants and thick sweaters. We watched her cook in the hot sun until, fully roasted, she crumpled to the pavement
and passed out.

“That,” the chief counselor said, “is what happens to people who play around.”

If this was the punishment for a boy and a girl, I felt certain the penalty for two boys somehow involved barbed wire, a team
of donkeys, and the nearest volcano. Nothing, however, could match the cruelty and humiliation Jason and I soon practiced
upon each other. He started a rumor that I had stolen an athletic supporter from another camper and secretly wore it over
my mouth like a surgical mask. I retaliated, claiming he had expressed a desire to become a dancer. “That’s nothing,” he said
to the assembled crowd, “take a look at what I found on David’s bed!” He reached into the pocket of his tennis shorts and
withdrew a sheet of notebook paper upon which were written the words I LIKE GUYS. Presented as an indictment, the document
was both pathetic and comic. Would I supposedly have written the note to remind myself of that fact, lest I forget? Had I
intended to wear it taped to my back, advertising my preference the next time our rented buses carried us off to yet another
swinging sexual playground?