How to Survive a Summer

by Nick White

  —

  I was the only person in the movie theater. The first ten minutes, the part of the picture I’d already seen with Zeus, went by without incident. The roll of credits, the woman finding the two boys in the hammock, her horrified scream at the sight of them naked and embracing. This time was easier to watch. For a couple of reasons: one, my bloodstream wasn’t laced with booze and antidepressants and, two, my psyche was prepared for what I saw. I was heartened by my resolve, if that’s what it was. After the boys were discovered, the screen faded to black and flashed forward fifteen years. A group of twentysomethings was arriving at the campgrounds in their swanky Land Rovers. The men had beards and tattoos and wore skinny-jean cutoffs, the fraying denim whirling about their knees in yellow wisps. They bounded out of the vehicles, hooting and hollering. Clad in ironic shirts, the women—two brunettes and a blonde—complained of the humidity’s effect on their hair as they unloaded camping supplies from the trunks and called for the men to come back and help. They spoke in naturalistic dialogue, all of them talking over one another, harkening back to Altman’s style of filmmaking. The camerawork was shaky—a technique to give the scenes not only an indie vibe but also the quality of found footage from a documentary, or maybe the director had no clue what he was doing.

  The group built a bonfire, the flames licking up sticks and twigs and clots of brown leaves. Greg rolled out a cooler of beer and the others applauded. They cracked open cans and gathered about the fire to tell stories, a ritual as old as man. “The boys at the camp,” Greg told his friends, starting them off, “were forced to do these cleansing activities.” His hairy arm was slung around a woman, one of the two brunettes, who had an image of Supergirl on her too-tight shirt. She spoke next. “They did more than pray the gay away,” she said. “They took weekly swims in the lake behind us.” Another man, a blond guy, said that swimming didn’t sound so bad. He reminded me of Fred from the Scooby-Doo cartoons. The others had faded behind the flames, and these three took priority in the storytelling. Greg explained how the water was polluted, how it burned the skin. “Too much chlorine,” he said. “Made it harder for them to jerk off—themselves or one another.” Everyone agreed that sounded nuts, but Blond Fred was skeptical. “How much chlorine would you need to pull something like that off?” Nobody knew, but Greg said one of the boys had a particularly bad reaction to the water. “People say his skin,” Supergirl said, “was so badly blistered he could barely walk.” Before one of the swims, the boy had resisted, and the others turned against him. “They threw him in,” Greg said. “And the water took him and didn’t give him back.” The counselors went wading into the lake after him. The police were called. “They dragged the lake,” Supergirl said. “And nothing—he wasn’t there. Gone. Poof!” When Supergirl clapped suddenly, everyone jolted back, and she squealed. “Jumpy?” she asked. “They believed he’d dragged himself out and got lost in the woods trying to escape.” The other brunette woman said, “What was his name?” She was the only one who wore glasses, which typically meant she was smart and virginal and, in the logic of horror movies, marked as the person destined to survive. Greg told her he didn’t remember the boy’s real name. “Only what they called him,” he said. “Rooster.”

  At hearing my old nickname, I remained calm. Rooster. The producers must have consulted the other campers or my father. Maybe they traveled to his home in Mississippi for an interview. I imagined the conversation would’ve been stilted, tense. My father would not appreciate someone asking about his old life, especially now that he had a new one. No longer a preacher, he lived in Bucksnort, a neighboring town to Hawshaw. Last I heard, he had himself a double-wide trailer and a new wife to go with it. An invitation to their wedding had shown up in my campus mailbox at Vanderbilt. When I didn’t RSVP, a barrage of phone calls from him followed. I never answered. By then, my father and I were not on speaking terms, and I didn’t see any reason to change course. No matter what he said, I doubted he wanted me at the ceremony. Plus, my anger toward him was still ripe. I wouldn’t have made for a good guest. The best I could’ve done for him was not go.

  In the movie, when the campfire talk ended, Blond Fred ventured to the lake by himself while the others went to their cabins to sleep. Toting nothing but a flashlight, he trampled over brush and through trees to an area that was once Lake John. His flashlight revealed it was no longer a lake. The water had been drained, or had evaporated, and all that was left was this mushy oval of ground sucking at his feet as he stepped in. Here, the camerawork subtly changed—became smoother. I was no longer watching the character; I was stalking him. The point of view was now firmly aligned with that of the killer’s. This was a technique employed by older slasher flicks—perhaps most famously in the original Friday the 13th where, before the murders, potential victims were viewed through the eyes of the vengeful Mrs. Voorhees, the mother of the dead Jason. Blond Fred knelt and placed a hand to the ground, then to his nose, smelling for chlorine. A noise, something like footsteps, got his attention. He glanced toward the camera. He pointed the flashlight, momentarily blinding the shot, filling the screen with light. “Hello?” he called, moving the flashlight away, coming closer. His face took up most of the thirteen-foot screen, a giant peeking into the real world. “You okay?” he asked, and I said, despite myself, “No, I’m not.” Then it happened: the squish of a sharp object pushing into soft flesh. The camera stayed on Blond Fred’s face, capturing the realization in his eyes as they widen in surprise, then shock, at being stabbed.

  The movie theater wobbled under my feet. The sticky floor tilted forward, rolling me out of my seat. I tried to stand but fell again, my knees not properly working. The voices returned. The boys screamed. “Now,” they cried. “Do it now!” I yelled back, “No!” so long and so loud that an usher ran in. She carried one of those LED batons that ground crews use at airports. She looked all of fourteen years old, even in her uniform, a tuxedo with shiny cuff links. She offered me a hand, and I took it and stood. My legs worked again. The movie screen had gone black, and as she helped me down the stairs toward the lobby, the lights were cut on, revealing row after row of empty seats. I was thankful. The usher spoke to me when we were in the hallway by the restrooms. “You need a water?” she asked, and I said that would be nice, and she said, “Wait here.” But I left before she returned, ducking through the side exit that emptied directly into a parking lot full of gleaming cars. The place had filled up. Parents waddled around on the baking asphalt wearing sandals and weary expressions, their children pulling them toward the theater. When I got to the car, the inside was almost unbearable—air slick with heat. As the vents pumped cool gusts onto my face, I called Zeus. I didn’t expect him to answer, and he didn’t. Calling him had become, in this short time, routine. Something to hold on to. Lord knows what I’d have said to him. The more of the movie I saw, the more bizarre my connection to it seemed. I wasn’t sure anyone would believe it. I had trouble believing it myself.

  —

  The first time I saw the killer’s mask I laughed out loud: a princess face, one of those plastic husks with hollowed-out eyes and nostrils. Pink cheeks framed in chunky brown curls. A yellow crown topping the forehead to indicate royalty.

  The movie revealed the mask midway through. During the same night the blond guy got murdered, the girl with glasses woke up in the cabin she shared with the other girls to what she thought was screaming. Like your typical dimwitted character in a horror movie, she left the cabin to investigate. At first, she set out toward the lake carrying a flashlight similar to the one the blond guy had with him. As soon as she was outside, we were back in the killer’s perspective, following her at a distance. His footsteps were loud through the brush, and when she turned, he dipped behind a tree in time to avoid notice. When he looked again, she had stopped in front of the shed, the metal lock unhooked from a chain looped through a hole in the door. Of course, she went inside. Instead of following, the killer went around the
shed and peeked through a window. There was someone else in the shed. Greg came forward, smiling. They embraced. Their conversation was muffled, but the gist was basically this: He had thought she would have been there sooner, and she explained how she’d fallen asleep waiting for Greg’s girlfriend to fall asleep first. She asked, “Did you hear any screams?” and he smiled again. “Not yet,” he said, and I understood then that neither of them was long for this world.

  The killer moved back around to the door and slipped inside. The girl had removed her glasses and held her arms above her head as Greg took off her shirt. The light in the shed came from a fluorescent bulb above the door, giving the workroom a blue tint. As they made love, the killer examined the tools on the wall. The scythe, the machete, the double-sided ax. A gloved hand reached out to touch them as if they were old friends, familiar in their rust. The couple didn’t notice him, so he took his time. On the table by the door, there were more options—a hatchet, a lawnmower blade—but he settled on the garden shears, using both hands to open and close the long blades. When they cracked shut, the girl told Greg to stop. “I hear something,” she said. And that’s when he rushed them.

  I shut my eyes during what happened then. The screaming, the sound of flesh being torn apart. When silence returned, I looked. Still in the killer’s point of view, we were gazing at the window in the shed, the same one we had peered through while outside, but from this side there was a glare. I blinked and leaned forward. The mask reflected back.

  I was probably more shocked by my laughter than anyone else in the theater had been. The mask wasn’t particularly funny, but the drive to Nashville had exhausted me and I was loopy. That morning I had left Cincinnati and made good time, rolling up to Music City a little before noon. This theater had more patrons in the seats than the one in Cincinnati had, and I disturbed several of them with my giggles. Bodies in the dark turned in my direction. When voices shushed me, I doubled over, my chest shaking with a sort of mad glee. I sat in the middle row of the theater, and someone from behind pelted me with popcorn. Other people were laughing now, but before it could become a trend, a man in the front stood and told us to shut the hell up. My stomach aching from the laughter, I stood and excused myself from my aisle, people gladly pushing in their knees so I could pass, ready to be rid of me. I held on to the railing as I climbed down the stairs to the entranceway, avoiding the glare of the man who had risen to hush me. He was still on his feet, arms crossed, when I passed by his row. He wore a wifebeater and sported a fascist undercut. Feeling ridiculous, I gave him a little wave, and a hand grabbed his wrist. The hand belonged to another man, still seated, who wore a matching undercut. This guy pulled on his boyfriend’s arm until he nodded and sat back down.

  —

  My hotel in Nashville was fancier than the motel beside Big Tally’s. Most of the cheaper places were booked up in the city, I had been told, because of two events coinciding on the same weekend: an SEC softball tournament and a music festival celebrating the life and times of a recent country music singer who had died. Only the expensive rooms at the higher-end places were available, and I could have kept going, found something outside the city, but I was tired, and the movie was on my mind. I wanted to see it again, interested in how my life was being twisted and curious if I could endure watching it. My credit card all but smoked when the woman at the front desk ran it through the machine. Later that afternoon, after being run out of the movie for laughing, I walked up to a nearby Target to buy some extra clothes. All of them cheap and loose fitting, the shorts braided with elastic bands. I put on a pair and was on my way down to relax in the Jacuzzi when Zeus called. I let my cell ring four times before answering it.

  All he could talk about was the movie, which depressed me. When I told him about my experiences trying to see it, he said, “So you haven’t seen the ending yet?” And I said no. The ending was the most controversial part, he told me. “Radical,” he kept saying, and I didn’t know how he could sit through it. “All that killing,” I said. “What’s the point?” I sat on the large bed in my room looking at my reflection in the mirrored wall. In the oversize shirt, I looked small. Like a grown-up who had shrunk. Zeus asked if he needed to let me go, and I said, “Sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “You know.”

  He did, but he had no intention of talking about my standing him up. “How are the gays in Nashville?”

  “What?”

  “The gays—maybe you can get a little strange.” There was meanness in the way he said it. I understood then that I had hurt him far worse than I imagined by not showing up at the restaurant. His question was a way of testing the parameters. Friend or lover—neither of us was sure yet about the shape of the relationship. “Maybe it would be good if you fucked something on your excursion home,” he said, his breathing heavier. He was losing his temper and, what’s more, was pushing me to lose mine.

  “Can I call you tomorrow—on the drive?” I wanted to end the conversation before he could say any more.

  “I’ll be around,” he said. “And, by the way, I found it exhilarating.”

  “Huh?”

  “The killings—it’s like a dark gay revenge fantasy. When the blonde was offed, I almost stood up and fucking applauded.”

  I didn’t know what to say about that so I didn’t say anything at all.

  —

  The next day I drove through Tennessee at a diagonal, cutting through limestone cliffs and gradually moving into flatter land, into more fields and trees. A familiar geography, and with it came a tingling in my chest. And I knew why, of course. I was getting closer and closer to my father in Bucksnort, to the parts of myself I’d not considered in a long, long while. I didn’t call Zeus. Or Bevy. I listened to public radio instead, zoning out to bigger crises in the world, the interstate pulling me south toward Memphis. I knew one of the boys from camp lived in the city. Someplace downtown near Beale Street. I flirted with the idea of stopping. The two of us had reconnected over social media during my years at Vanderbilt. We never spoke of the camp, and we never offered to drive the three hours to see each other, but our messaging had been pleasant enough, focusing on the now. He told me how he owned a popular chain of snow-cone booths throughout the city, and I told him about my majoring in film studies, my slow accumulation of useless degrees. A year ago he had sent me a message asking if I was still hiding in academia. Embarrassed, I didn’t answer him, eventually pulling back from all of my social media accounts.

  Sixty miles from the Memphis exit, Bevy called. She wanted an update as to my whereabouts, and when I told her, she said, “Taking your time, I see.” I told her about the strained conversation with Zeus the day before. “He sounded different,” I said. “Not like before.” I passed a slow-moving eighteen-wheeler then set Doll’s cruise control on seventy. Bevy said, “He thinks you may not be good for him.” Then she breathed in and continued, telling me something she didn’t want to tell: “He has his own problems—and he’s worried about getting involved with yours.” I told her that I didn’t want anyone’s involvement, that I had left to figure shit out by myself for this very reason. “I don’t even talk about it,” I said, and she told me that this was inaccurate. “You talk about it,” she said, “in every other way but words. The way you act, the way you move through spaces. We aren’t stupid, Will. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out something is going on—something with you and that goddamned movie.” I had unwittingly tapped the brakes and slowed down to forty-five miles an hour. A car behind me honked then passed. I put on my emergency lights and pulled onto the shoulder. All the while, Bevy kept talking: “I don’t know what happened to you—but Zeus can’t be burdened with it right now.” I said I wasn’t asking him to, and Bevy said, “You don’t get it—all you can see right now is your own story—you’re blinded by it—which is fine, and understandable. But other people have their own shit and . . .” I said, “I don’t know what to d
o about that,” and she said, “Just let him come to you—give him time.” I remembered what he’d told me the night we saw the movie together. How he said he’d had bad days, too. I wanted to ask Bevy what he had been talking about, but what right did I have to know when I wouldn’t share mine? Instead, I said the only thing I knew to say, an apology. “We don’t need your sorries,” she said. “We need you to get better; I need you to come back.” I said I would, and I believed I was telling the truth.

  Later a midday call-in talk show on public radio devoted a brief segment to the hubbub surrounding Proud Flesh. The host, a man with a thick Chicago accent, reported how the response to the movie from the queer community had been split. While a portion of us saw the movie as offensive, many others who watched it had a more nuanced and thoughtful critique, very similar to what Zeus’s had been. “Some critics argue the movie is a defense of queerness as difference,” one commentator—a professor of gender and sexuality studies from UCLA—told the host, “and contend that the killings are more symbolic than anything else.” The host pressed the commentator on the particulars of this, and she said, “Well, there has long been a faction in the community who have resisted the push of mainstream queers to assimilate in heteronormative culture. Usually, the fight has centered on the question of marriage. Many militant queers contend that by marrying we bend our identities to shapes that don’t fit us.” The host asked, “Yes, but can a scary movie really do all that?” The professor urged him to consider the response of the director. When asked about the political dimensions of his film, he said the movie spoke for itself. “If it confuses you,” he was quoted to have said, “then by all means, see it again.” The professor said that was a clear invitation to look at the movie as something more than a gritty low-budget horror flick, but the host didn’t see how. “But let’s see what our listeners think,” he said, and the show was opened up to calls. The first caller—a man named Dave—asked about the movie’s relationship to The Silence of the Lambs and, more broadly, to Psycho. “Oh, there are clear connections to these films,” the commentator said. “With one clear exception, of course—and that is the ending.” When the host asked what she meant, the commentator refrained from further comment. “No spoilers from me,” she said, and gave a little laugh. Then a woman named Cathy phoned in to say: “I read that book it was based on, and if you ask me, it all sounds completely different.” The commentator agreed. “Yes,” she said. “The production took many liberties—but like with most adaptations, there is a level of interpretation that we must take into account.” Cathy said, “Uh-huh,” and the host asked if she had another question, and she did. “Does the director hate gay people?” she asked. “Or does he just not care one way or the other?” The commentator laughed, more loudly this time, and said that neither was really true. “Robert Dolittle is actually gay himself,” she said.