The nurse listened to T.J.’s lungs, said he was fine, and scolded him for not taking his medicine. She suggested he rest in the infirmary for a while. I had to go back and dress for chapel, so I said good-bye. T.J. reached out and shook my hand. “I’m glad you were with me when I got sick,” he said, just as I was going out the door.
The sight of T.J. on his knees, straining to breathe, stayed with me for days. T.J. felt fine, there were no aftereffects. He went on the next day as though nothing had happened. But for me there was a change. There was a new warmth now when I looked at him, and a glow around my thoughts of him. When I watched him playing frisbee on the lawn in his bare feet and short pants, when he told me stories about digging tunnels in the snow drifts behind his home in Fairfield County, or when he picked fights and wrestled half-nude with our schoolmates on the dormitory floor, I felt almost giddy with affection. It thrilled me to think that this cool, insane kid had become my very close friend.
T.J. was intuitive, so I felt a need to be secretive about my deepening emotions. As he chattered away, I kept quiet, or avoided his eyes. I selfishly wanted to hoard this new excitement. But inside I was vibrant. My body was aswirl with pleasing sensations, good, warm feelings fluttering about inside me like crystals in a glass snow miniature, shaken up.
Oh! did he turn me on. T.J. sat in an easy chair in the Common Room and dug under his toenails, or tugged thoughtlessly at his crotch. I felt like my body was filling up with hot water. The same tumescence that was in my dick was in my arms and head and belly. I asked myself, and could think of no reason why it was wrong to feel this way.
I couldn’t believe I’d ever been afraid of him. T.J. wasn’t the two-legged tornado I had worked him up to be, like the Tasmanian Devil from the cartoons I loved. I reworked my romantic idealization of him: T.J. was just a boy — one hundred percent teenaged male, the platonic archetype of flushed, smouldering boyhood. Yes, he could be wild. This was how boys behaved. And I was certain now that this was what I liked.
Every day we had imaginary sex. T. J.’s body was so alive, his skin so rich and inflamed; I figured he liked sex more than anyone in the world. I dreamed of him coming — a whole-body implosion followed by jet streams of sperm that would splatter every corner of the room and could never be completely cleaned up. If only I could change (temporarily) into a girl and sneak into his room at night. I would lie on my back and raise my legs (I’d seen this position in a dirty magazine) and T.J. would mash and spear my clitoris. I would let him do anything — everything — to me.
In my daydreams, my vagina was a soft, mushy pit filled with fresh-picked cherries. Every night, I let T.J. crush the cherries into juice, mashing them to fluid against the wall of my clit. The shredded skin of the cherries would tease and tear at the head of his cock, or get caught inside the slit of his penis and drive him insane with an unbearable, confusing sensation. He’d scream and buck uncontrollably, captured by the need to shoot the torn bits of cherry out of the inner tube of his dick. Then he’d flood his come inside of me, washing his urethra clean of the cherry bits. Then turn over on his side and arch his body, relieved of the unbearable pleasure. I wanted to experience T.J.’s lust, to feel his orgasm as if it were mine. I wanted him to go off in my body like a bomb, to blow me to bits and splatter me in pieces on the ceiling and four walls, in every corner of the room. T. J. was my man, and I wanted him to screw my brains out.
Part 2
5
The summer after my freshman year I tried to turn my mother in to the police. We’d been on a church bus outing to Bear Mountain, and it had been a fun day. My mother had opted all afternoon for gin and sodas over grilled hamburgers and punch. When we got back to the bus terminal, she refused to give the car keys to my stepfather and insisted on driving us home. I walked up to a policeman, looked straight up into his eyes and his bushy brown mustache, and demanded he perform his duty.
“Officer, my mother is trying to drive drunk.’’
“What’s that you said, kid?”
“We just got back from Bear Mountain and my mother has been drinking. I want you to arrest her. She’s over there.” “You want me to arrest your mother?”
“Yes.”
“But … that’s your mother.”
“But she’s been drinking.”
What a nasty little Nazi I was turning into. The officer formed a question mark with his face, probably decided I was crazy and possibly dangerous, and walked away. My mother drove us home. She never said anything about my little bout of fascism; maybe she thought she’d hallucinated it all.
I’d always loved and resented my mother because she was three times the person I was. She had more friends. Everyone was afraid of her. She had ‘two husbands, and l didn’t even have one. I was so different from her, so rational. At times I thought in bearing me she had evacuated all her fears, depositing them in the birth water in which I bathed, so that I was born saddled with the apprehensions of reason, while she was left free to roam her territory, conquering men, like Shakespeare’s inflamed, regal stallion, her ears up-pricked, her braided, hanging mane…
It wasn’t fair. I felt I had been formed as her opposite, created to be her opposite, and I felt cheated of my genetic inheritance. Whether, in her garrulousness, she left me no room to grow comfortable with my own voice, or whether, like Dido, it was her instinct to dominate all males, whole regions of my person were squashed. She filled the living room with her expanding presence; the only space left to me was in the corner, cowed and numb, never heard.
At boarding school I was free. The culture of reason and pale puritan elitism offered to vindicate me in my silent battle with my mother. I can see now that I overreacted, that my receptivity to the traditions of Briarwood was heightened by Oedipal stirrings. (Can a gay boy have an Oedipal complex? Can a woman have a Napoleonic complex? I’ll leave it to strict Freudians to drive themselves crazy pondering what for me is the obvious answer.)
If my sojourn in Connecticut was a sociological experiment, then no one had figured how my being gay would skew the lab results. My education took a surprise Pavlovian twist. The boys at Briarwood became symbols of my school’s traditions — discretely European traditions — in my subconscious mind. They were tough and earthy and gracious. And filthy rich, of course, but the musk of their aristocracy was as slight as the scent of berries on a summer wind, so subtle it did not offend — did I actually smell it? Was that my imagination? The taste of odorless gas on my lip is the only evidence of mind surgery. I awake to the sight of Sean Landport’s milky cock, by now my private friend, peeping out from the slit in his boxer shorts before he roughly tucks it away, brusquely zipping up his Brooks Brothers cords. Until tomorrow. Then the sight of his buns again, the next afternoon, and T.J.’s and Billy’s and Ethan Thayer’s — the rhythm of stripping and toweling and zipping formed a carrier wave, and on that wave was a coded inducement to treason.
Certainly, I wasn’t sent away to school to be turned into a traitor who could turn his own mother in to the cops. And I’m glad to say that didn’t happen. For all my failings, I certainly have turned out a better person than that. But I might not have. My salvation came in the most improbable form — a queer little two-legged hurricane who insisted on reminding me that I was human, after all. A fact I was trying to ignore.
It all comes down to the truth. And the endless convolutions we concoct in our minds in order to resist the truth. I wanted to believe that the secret of life was the will. That manna would flow in direct proportion to my willful exertions, under my direct control. Work hard and succeed — the equation was just that simple. That this thing called my body would interfere, would do what it wanted or had been shaped to do, or born to do, I thought the ripest heresy. That I was bound to my family, and through them to a race of people, and had no say in the matter, that other people could impact my life through their actions and weaknesses — these facts infuriated me. I felt trapped by biology, and I resisted the idea with a dogmati
c’s ritual panic.
T.J. was my link to the truth. His mania, his visceral explosions were glimmers of truth away off on a dark sea, faint beacons. My journey to light would be hard, I would turn back many times. Even now I can’t be sure that I’ve made it.
If I was ultimately saved from a life of psychic fascism, then who can tell what emotional horrors I’ve been spared. Traces of fear do linger. Flashbacks of emotional barrenness from time to time invade my dreams. That may be the reason I’m writing this book. To reinforce my salvation, to keep myself from slipping back, from turning back into that frightening, doomed fourteen-year-old, tugging on the policeman’s coat.
6
For all his impish ways and provocativeness, T. J. was a bright and serious student. He got to know me by studying with me, first ancient history in our Third Form year, and then trigonometry in the Fourth Form. In the Fourth Form, T.J. and I lived on different floors in Chase Hall. He came to my room during study hall often, usually shirtless and barefoot. I sat in my easy chair and he took over my bed as if it were his own, wrinkling my blankets and twisting his body into assorted angles and positions. One spring night he seemed particularly agitated.
“You want to come home with me?”
“What?”
“Come home with me. For a weekend. You want to?”
T.J. had caught me by surprise again. Sophomores were allowed one weekend off campus each term, and T.J. was suggesting he and I take a weekend together.
“Sure,” I muttered.
“‘Sure,’” he mimicked. “You’re such a twerp, Givens. It’ll be fun.”
We were studying for our spring trigonometry midterm. My grades were a bit better than T.J.’s (I just passed the cutoff for high honors and he just missed it), but in mathematics we were equals.
“I can’t wait until this fucking test is over.” He slammed his math book shut and tossed it in my lap. “You like this stuff, don’t you? Sines and cosines. You probably beat off thinking about angular velocity.” ’
“I just want to beat Barrett Granger’s ass.”
“I’m starting to hate this fucking school.” T.J. bit his lower lip to exaggerate the “f” in “fuck.” He screwed his body up into an impossibly contorted position. “Fuck trigonometry,” he said loudly, his breath whistling between teeth and skin.
We were both young enough that just saying dirty words gave us erections. T.J. reminded me of my little Puerto Rican friend Louis from the fifth grade, with whom I’d discovered swear words at age ten. Louis and I would curse each other chummily, tickled by the wicked-sounding consonants. Instead of saying hello, we’d greet each other with “Suck my dick,” and laugh. We’d wave good-bye and say “Fuck you,” instead of “So long” or “See you later.”
T.J. flopped backwards on my bed and stretched out his legs. He kicked me in the thigh and smiled, then rested his ankle on my knee.
“Why are you so weird, Givens? How come you’re such a queer? How come you’ve never been laid in your life?”
“At least I’m not a fairy in women’s clothing.” He kicked me again and threw a paper clip at me.
When we were Third Formers, T.J. loved to bother me — he called it “giving me grief” — because he knew I wouldn’t respond verbally. I couldn’t compete with T.J.’s sparkling lunacy. I’d act calm for as long as I could, then grab him by both arms (his skin was always hot) and order him to leave me alone, but he’d only giggle crazily, egged on by our physical contact, and I’d end up punching him in his chest to shut him up.
By our Fourth Form year, his lust for me had grown into affection. I was still quiet and he still insulted me, but with a lighter touch, and I grew more confident and more fun for him to be with. He went out of his way to spend time with me now, studying in my room or playing basketball with me on Saturday nights.
“So you want to come home with me?”
“Definitely,” I said. “Next weekend, after the test.”
T.J. jumped up off the bed, grabbed his math book from my lap, and went out the door.
The next Friday afternoon T.J. and I took a taxi into Hartford and then the train from Hartford to Old Greenwich, Connecticut. His mother met us at the railroad station. “Hi, Tom,” she beamed, standing up on her toes to kiss her son. Mrs. Adams was a small, attractive woman in her middle forties. Her hair was black and done stylishly. She looked well conditioned in a pink jogging outfit.
“Hi, Mom. This is my friend Peter Givens. He’s spending the weekend.”
We got into a green Volvo station wagon and drove a mile or so parallel to the railroad tracks, then over a bridged river and several miles of narrow, winding road through what seemed an uninhabited forest. T.J. talked to his mother about her tennis match, which she had won. (“Do you play tennis, Peter?” “No, ma’am.”) Houses began to appear, then light auto traffic.
Mrs. Adams turned sharply into the driveway of a two-car aluminum garage. To the side of the garage was a wall of seven-foot hedges. T.J. led the way over a crooked cobble pathway through the opaque greenery. Several yards into the brush was a gravel clearing, and then a great wide lawn that dipped downwards. Ahead I could see a bright yellow house, holding perhaps ten rooms, with black shingled roofing and black framed windows. We walked around to the side of the house and entered through the glass doors by the patio.
“Where’s Dad these days?”
“Your father is in Chicago on the Bodner project, you remember. And I will be joining him tomorrow morning. So you kind boys please don’t destroy the house while I’m away.” T.J. turned to me and grinned, freezing in his steps for a moment as though he’d had a mild cataplexy.
Inside the house, the main visual theme was varied shades of brown wood — wall paneling, uncarpeted floors and stairways, ceiling crossbeams, dark polished furniture. T.J. and I went upstairs to his bedroom and dropped off our carrying bags. I sat nervously on the corner of his bed while he changed his clothes.
“I love weekends,” said T.J. ‘‘The only thing Briarwood is good for is vacations and weekends.” He had stripped to his undershorts and was searching through his bureau for something to wear. He pulled a pair of blue jeans out from under some sweaters and put them on.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re acting a little nervous. You want to hear some music?”
“You mean that hillbilly crap you like. No thanks.”
“Sorry I don’t have any stinking soul music.”
“It’s weird to hear your mother call you by your real name.”
“Everybody in town here calls me Jerrett. But my father’s name is Jerrett, so my mother calls me Tom. But at school they call me T.J.”
“It must get confusing.”
“Not really.” T.J. slouched back in his desk chair and knotted his fingers across his stomach. “I’m hungry. Let’s go down and eat, Pete.” We got up and went back downstairs.
We had steak and french fries for dinner in a very large and old-fashioned dining room. T.J. shoveled food into his mouth while Mrs. Adams interrogated me about growing up in New York.
“Pete’s really smart, Mom. He’s number two in the class. But that’s just because he brownnoses all the masters.’’
“And Barrett Granger is still number one?’’ she asked.
“Granger is a jerk,” I opined.
“I’ll tell him you said so, Pete.”
“Go ahead.”
“Don’t forget to fill your prescription tomorrow, Tommy.”
“Sure, sure.” Mrs. Adams stared blankly at her son for a moment, then smiled dearly.
“Well, I have to rest tonight. My plane leaves at seven, so I’ll be gone when you wake up, probably. Where’s Peter going to sleep, Tom?”
“I’ll move a mattress into my room. Okay?”
“Okay. Just put it back, please.”
“Sure, sure.”
“Yes, sure.” She turned to me. “Peter, you’ll make
certain Tom doesn’t burn my house down, won’t you?”
T.J. put his hand on his mother’s wrist. “You’re kind of obnoxious for a parent, you know that?” She pulled away and slapped his hand sassily and got up from the table. I thought again of how T.J. made my mother laugh the first night I met him.
“Good night, Peter.”
“Good night, Mrs. Adams.”
“Good night, Mom.”
“Good night.”
I decided T.J.’s mother was a cool person and a genius at raising kids. She’d given T.J. the leeway to develop his manic personality and still imbued him with values of hard work and integrity. And she loved him dearly, totally. I could tell.
T.J. and I watched television in the study and went upstairs around eleven o’clock. We dragged a mattress and bedspread from a guest room into T.J.’s bedroom. T.J. kept pressing his warm torso against mine and smiling while we moved furniture around to make room for the mattress.
Then we lay down on our beds and talked. T.J. did most of the talking, as always. His words triggered my free associations, and my mind wandered, half-attentive, over thoughts of tennis matches, the railroad station, the teenaged girl who kept looking at us from across the railroad car. T.J. prattled away in his soothing tenor.
I curled myself in my bedspread and listened to the sound of French horns that was hidden in T.J.’s voice. Most of the white kids at school spoke with some element of that sound, a slight brassiness buried in the overtones, something unique in the construction of the throats and chest cavities of young Caucasians. In T.J., the horns were especially shiny and golden, the tone somehow both smooth and sharp.
“So what’s it like living in Harlem? It must be pretty tough.”
“I didn’t think it was that horrible. I was used to it when I was living there. Now I can see it’s pretty bad when I go back.”
The Color of Trees Page 6
