“Suit of armor?”
“Yes—God, it happens all the time! We all try to hide from one another. I think it’s because life’s so fantastically complicated that we all get scared shitless and can’t face it without a suit of armor—or at the very least a nice old-fashioned mask. But it’s terrible to get trapped behind a mask. I’ve been there. I know.”
“What do you mean? When were you ever trapped?”
“When I was pretending to be a heterosexual, of course! When did you think! The worst part was not being able to have an honest conversation with anyone. It’s difficult enough to talk anyway about a personal problem, but when that problem’s sexual in origin …”
I thought incredulously: He knows. He understands. No, he can’t possibly understand. And how can he possibly know? Shall I talk to him? No, I can’t. How can I talk to a homosexual? But I am talking to a homosexual. No, I’m not. I’m silent. There’s nothing I can bring myself to say, nothing. I’m trapped, just as he said. Trapped behind my suit of armor, trapped behind my power.
“Kevin …”
“Uh-huh?”
“My personal life’s all mixed up. Alicia’s the one I love. She’s the one I really want. I only go to Teresa because …” I stopped. I felt as if I’d sprinted a hundred yards at top speed. I’d run out of breath.
“In that case,” said Kevin comfortably, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “I guess you go to Teresa because for some reason you can’t have Alicia.”
“Yes. But …” I found some more air, breathed it, picked up my glass, and gulped the rest of my bourbon. “But none of this is Alicia’s fault,” I said rapidly. “That’s why it’s such a nightmare. None of this is Alicia’s fault. I don’t mean …” I put the glass to my lips again, but it was empty. “I don’t mean I’m impotent. Of course I’m not. I can get it up as well as any other guy. Teresa proves that. I mean, what I’m trying to say is …”
“I understand.”
“What I’m trying to say is, I’m all right, I’m okay, I’m fine. It’s just …” To my horror I found I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t tell more lies and I couldn’t tell the truth. I was aware of the bottle of bourbon, but I dared not reach for it in case my hand shook and I betrayed how upset I was. Kevin would think me pathetic. A homosexual pitying me! God, what a nightmare. I had to pull myself together, had to …
“Jesus, isn’t sex hell sometimes!” exclaimed Kevin suddenly. “Impotence, frigidity, premature ejaculation, adultery, sodomy, and lust—how on earth do we all tolerate it? I think I’ll write my next play about how wonderful it is to be a eunuch. Have another drink.”
I nodded. Fresh bourbon glinted in my glass, and there was a splash as he added an ice cube.
“Of course, any psychiatrist would tell you,” said Kevin, “that these problems are all stupefyingly common. It’s because no one ever talks about them that one assumes one’s going through some uniquely horrific experience.”
I drank half my bourbon straight off. Then I said cautiously, “Do you believe in psychiatrists?”
“I guess they may help some people. But like God and the pope, they’ve never been much use to me.”
“You mean they couldn’t tell you why you’re homosexual?”
“Oh, they told me! They told me in excruciating, interminable, conflicting detail! All I can say is, Neil, that after hours wasted confiding in priests and fortunes wasted talking to psychiatrists, I’m not convinced there’s any one reason for my sexual preferences. And I’ll tell you this, too: contrary to what all the smart people think on the cocktail circuit these days, Freud doesn’t have all the answers. I suspect the human mind is like a version of the street directories of the five boroughs, and that although Freud plowed his way through Manhattan and the Bronx, he never reached Brooklyn, Queens, or Staten Island.”
“Hm,” I said. “Well, I’ve never believed in psychiatrists myself, of course …”
“One good thing you can learn from observing them is how to listen. Do you listen, Neil?”
“Listen?”
“Yes, do you listen to Alicia? Do you listen not only to what she says but to all the things she leaves unsaid? Do you know exactly what’s going on in her mind?”
“I thought it was my mind that was important here!”
“But don’t you see,” said Kevin, “that what goes on in your mind depends on what you think is going on in hers? Have another drink.”
“Thanks. No, I’d better not. I don’t want to arrive home drunk.” I was thinking of Alicia’s crushing pity and rigorously suppressed contempt and her loss of sexual desire for me. I knew what went on in her mind, all right. It was no mystery. It was all too painfully obvious. “Well, like I said, Kevin, I don’t truly believe in all this psychoanalysis crap—it’s just like a religion, and how can a religion ever work for you unless you’ve got faith in it? Anyway, there’s no miracle cure for this situation, I just have to live with it, I’m powerless to do anything else. … Powerless. Yes, that’s it. That’s why I get so upset. It seems so wrong that I should have so much power at my fingertips, yet in this one area of my life … It’s all a question of power, isn’t it? Power’s communication. Do you remember Paul saying that to us once at Bar Harbor?”
“Ah, Mephistopheles!” said Kevin, dividing the dregs of the bourbon between us. “How could I ever forget Paul Van Zale and all his dangerous crypto-fascist bullshit!”
“Kevin!”
“Ah, come on, Neil! Don’t tell me you still have any illusions about Paul!”
“I’ve no illusions, but I still respect him. He made a success of his life.”
“I think he wasted it. I think he was a deeply dissatisfied, perhaps even a tormented man. Has it never occurred to you that it was a damned odd thing he did, appropriating the four of us like that and converting us to the Van Zale way of life? In retrospect, I think it was not only extraordinary but sinister. I’m surprised our parents allowed it. Well, my father was probably glad to get me off his hands for the summer, and Sam’s parents were no doubt blinded by the prospect of social advancement, and Jake’s father was as bad as Paul, but I wonder what the hell your mother thought. I’ll bet she had mixed feelings.”
“She didn’t want me to go. But, Kevin, why should you think Paul’s habit of picking out protégés meant he was dissatisfied and tormented? He just liked to do it because he had no sons of his own.”
“That was the excuse he allowed to be circulated, but I don’t believe it, not now. I think the whole thing was an exercise in power and also an attempt to justify himself. If he could convert a bunch of bright young men to his way of thinking, then maybe his way of thinking wasn’t so goddamned rotten as he secretly suspected it was.”
“But—”
“Don’t get me wrong. In many ways I liked Paul, and I certainly enjoyed my time at Bar Harbor. But a lot of what he said was not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense. For instance, ‘Success at any price’ is certainly an attractive slogan. But his idea of success? And at any price? I tell you, Neil, that’s not a recipe for real living! That’s a prescription that puts you in hock till you die. Shall I open another bottle of bourbon?”
“No. Oh, hell, okay, why not? Let’s get drunk. Kevin, I know what you’re trying to say about Paul, I’m not dumb, but you see, Paul’s philosophy was never meant to apply to someone like you. You’re an artist. You’ve got your own special power which sets you apart and makes you independent of the kind of power Paul was talking about. When Paul talked about power and success, he was really talking to people like me—and Sam and Jake too, of course, but especially to me, because he knew I’d never be happy until I’d made his world my own—”
“And are you happy, Neil?”
“Sure I am! Oh, I know I have a problem or two, but only a fool would expect life to be a hundred percent perfect. I’m really very happy indeed. Life’s great.”
“Wonderful! In that case you can sit back and look smug while I tell
you how I’m currently sunk in gloom and think life’s fucking awful.”
“Is this something to do with—?”
“No, relax, this has nothing to do with my sex life! It’s all about being what you’re pleased to call an artist. If you’ll keep your mouth shut for a minute, I’ll try to explain what it’s like to be a successful American playwright who’s nearly cutting his throat because he’s not as good as Eliot and Fry.”
“I’ll bet you make more money than those two put together!”
“But can’t you see that’s the crowning awfulness? If I had the guts to write the kind of play I really want to write, nobody would touch it. But sometimes I think I’d rather be a first-rate failure than a second-rate success.”
“But you’re not a second-rate success! I like you better than Eliot and Fry. I never understood The Cocktail Party, and as for The Lady’s Not for Burning—”
“Neil, you’re wonderful. Come and drink here more often.”
Some unknown time later I heard myself say emotionally, “Kevin, I’m sorry I was such a son of a bitch to you after you let everyone know you were a homosexual. I’m sorry I took you out of address book number one and put you in address book number five and wouldn’t go to your parties. I’m very, very sorry—yes, I truly am—but I want you to know, Kevin, that I’m not a son of a bitch, not really, not underneath.”
“Yes, you are,” said Kevin, “but that’s okay, because if you can accept me as I am, then I can accept you as you are, even though you’re a son of a bitch.”
We shook hands very solemnly and swore eternal friendship.
It’s funny how simple and straightforward life seems when you’re drunk.
Less than six weeks later we were no longer on speaking terms.
Chapter Three
I
THE TROUBLE BEGAN WHEN Kevin received a subpoena to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. We were moving toward the end of 1952, and in the Senate McCarthy was at his zenith. Afterward I blamed the whole disaster on McCarthy. If it hadn’t been for his questionable success in winkling the communists out of the woodwork of government, the House committee might have remained as it had been before those fatal years of the late forties and early fifties, a backwater for political has-beens with racial prejudices.
However, with McCarthy on the rampage in the Senate, the House committee saw the opportunity to increase their power and by 1952 they had turned their attention to people in the arts, either communists or radicals, who could provide them with information about the hidden reds in America. Kevin had never been a communist, but like so many writers and artists, he had had radical views in the past and had often mixed with people whose political views could be considered questionable. So it was not surprising that the committee, scrounging around for new sources of information, should select him to testify on the subject of his past and present acquaintances.
In spite of this, it was still a shock when one evening Teresa met me with the news that Kevin had received his subpoena. And it was an even bigger shock when she added that he had every intention of taking the Fifth Amendment and refusing to testify against his friends.
I went to see Kevin at once. I pointed out that any attempt he might make to take the Fifth would result in him being blacklisted; no one would dare to produce his plays, and his career would be ruined.
“You could even be jailed for contempt,” I added. “Look what happened to Dashiell Hammett—a writer who refused to testify! Kevin, your only hope of saving yourself is to tell the committee everything they want to know. It’s done all the time nowadays, and your friends will understand that you’ve got no choice.”
“But Neil,” said Kevin, “the whole point is that I do have a choice. Is it really so impossible for you to see that?”
We argued for some time but got nowhere. He claimed that unless someone took a stand against the committee, the government might soon decide to start chasing Jews and homosexuals as well as communists. I claimed that the inauguration of Eisenhower as president would see the initiation of a new approach to the cold war, with the result that communist persecution would no longer be politically necessary. “So whether or not you sacrifice your career for idealistic liberal principles, it won’t make one blind bit of difference to the future of America,” I concluded. “It’ll be irrelevant. If you ruin yourself, you’ll have ruined yourself for a cause which exists only in the minds of you and your fellow intellectuals.”
But he couldn’t see it. We continued to argue until at last he said, “Neil, I don’t want this to degenerate into a serious quarrel. You go your way and let me go mine. It’s my life, after all, and my career. Not yours.”
I said no more, but of course I was determined not to give up the fight on his behalf, and two days later I invented some business excuse, stepped aboard my private plane, and was flown at top speed to Washington.
Luckily I didn’t have to go as far as the Oval Office, although I would have gone there if it had been necessary. I just went to my favorite congressman, the one most heavily involved with the Committee on Un-American Activities, and after reminding him who had recently helped extricate him from a budding scandal (why are politicians always so reckless about graft?), I said it would be sad if his little problem were to surface again so soon after his reelection. I then remarked that it would make me very happy if the committee could forget all about the New York playwright Kevin Daly, who had never been a card-carrying party member and whom I personally knew to be a good loyal American, and I’m glad to say the congressman was very understanding about the whole matter, so understanding that after a round of handshakes I was assured I had nothing left to worry about.
Feeling very pleased with myself, I flew home to New York and went straight to Teresa to announce that Kevin’s problems with the committee had been unequivocally solved.
In delight Teresa phoned Kevin, but he hung up on her. I thought that was odd, but supposed he was too overcome with relief to speak, and when I later found him waiting for me at my home on Fifth Avenue, I naturally assumed he had come to celebrate his reprieve. His towering rage, which exploded as soon as we were alone together in the library, was such a shock that I nearly dropped the bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon which I stocked specially for his visits.
“You goddamned interfering son of a bitch, how dare you try to play God with my life!”
“Kevin! What do you mean? You had a problem, and I fixed it, that’s all! Why are you so angry?”
“I didn’t ask you to play fairy godmother!” Kevin yelled. “I didn’t ask you to go waving the magic wand of your corrupt political influence! I asked you to leave me alone so that I could take a good hard slam at the committee—I had lawyers who were willing to help me, I had liberal backers, I had people from the press on my side—”
“You’d all have come to grief, and anyway, I consider I had a moral duty to stop you from wrecking your career!”
“If I want to wreck my career, I’ll wreck it! It’s no goddamned business of yours!”
“Well, okay, but you might at least be grateful that I—”
“Grateful! I’m supposed to be grateful because you get a kick out of waving your power around as if it were a Colt forty-five … or any other phallic symbol I could name?”
“Look, pal,” I said, setting down the unopened bottle of bourbon with a crash, “get this straight, and save the psychological crap for one of your dumb plays. At great trouble and expense and even risk to myself I did you the biggest possible favor, and if you think I got some kind of degenerate sex kick out of it, you must be out of your perverted pro-communist mind!”
Without a word Kevin turned and walked to the door.
“Kevin!” My legs were moving. There was cold sweat on my back. Something was happening to my breathing, but I paid no attention because I was so upset. “Kevin …” I just managed to grab his arm before he opened the door, but he shoved me away.
“Fuck off! If you we
re any other guy, you wouldn’t still be in one piece!”
“But Kevin, I’m your friend!”
“Not anymore,” said Kevin violently, and slammed the library door in my face.
II
“… and he slammed the door in my face,” I said to Jake half an hour later. I was three blocks north of my home in the library of the Reischman mansion. Vast olive-green drapes covered vast ugly windows. A dim light in the ceiling far above us shone limpidly on the untranslated German classics and the masterpieces of English literature. Jake and I were sitting facing each other in leather armchairs poised on either side of an immense fireplace. Jake was drinking Johnnie Walker Scotch. I had by that time progressed to neat brandy.
“God, I feel so mad!” I said, trying to sound angry but only succeeding in sounding miserable. “I mean, how ungrateful can you get? I only wanted to help him!”
“Come, Neil,” said Jake, giving me one of his thin smiles, “you’re not really that naive.”
“I only wanted to help him!” I repeated stubbornly, but I knew what he meant. My misery broadened to encompass my shame. “Oh, hell, okay, maybe I did do it to impress him. I certainly enjoyed impressing Teresa. Maybe I did it because I wanted to prove something to him—that I wasn’t vulnerable … not someone to be pitied … No, forget I said that, I take it back. But I did do it too because I wanted to help him, Jake! My motives weren’t all bad. I did mean well, I swear it!”
“Well, never mind your motives now. The important thing is that you should learn from your mistakes. You do realize, I hope, what your mistakes were? Number one: never put your friends in your debt by a naked display of power. Your friends are only your friends because they like to kid themselves that underneath all those millions you’re as ordinary as they are, and you let them kid themselves because you want to think that you have friends who like you in spite of the money. But if you go around manipulating their lives, no matter how altruistic your motives, you destroy this mutual illusion, with the result that neither of you can continue to live comfortably with the truth. And the truth is, of course, that you’re not ordinary, you have a surplus of the commodity most men secretly want—power—and you have more control over them than they can psychologically stand.”
Sins of the Fathers Page 31
