The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart

by Larry Kramer

  “You are not of the faith?”

  “He is of the Hebrew extraction,” Claudia offers in her plummiest voice.

  “Then why in the world did you bring him?”

  “So you could feel his knee and take him to the toilet.”

  Brother Dana shows us out.

  Back in the sunlight, I ask Claudia if we can lie down together sometime in a soft bed, and hold each other close, and kiss and cuddle.

  “Wherever do you get ideas like that?”

  “Because you make me laugh. It sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

  “It sounds icky.”

  “It does not sound icky. It sounds wonderful.”

  “It sounds icky.”

  “You were really funny in there,” I say.

  “Funny peculiar or funny ha-ha?”

  “I just thought what we did was … special.”

  “It was one of the most special things ever,” she says, touching my cheek again in that gesture she has so often used with me, or should I say on me, through all these years. “Now let it go at that.”

  At this point, she stumbles; one of her mother’s high heels breaks. She has to hold on to me as we head toward the car. She refuses to not play the part she’s dressed up to play. She is going to walk to that Cadillac erectly and dramatically, and she does. My arm hurts to prove it.

  Mordy doesn’t play with us again for the longest time; it must be months. I wonder if word got back to his father about naughty exploits among the children, but it turns out, as I learn when Mordy reappears and we are walking alone late one afternoon, that Abe remarried. For a third time. Or is it a fourth? And when Abe gets married, he always requires Mordy to come on the honeymoon.

  “I don’t think this one is going to last either.”

  “Why do you have to go with them?”

  “Because he hates to be alone.”

  “So why does he marry her?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think he actually gets married. I think it’s only pretend. For me.”

  “Really? Why?”

  He just shrugs.

  There was no way I could know about Doris Hardware at the time; I’ve discovered only recently that Mordy knew about her even then; and he knew about Yvonne’s “bloods,” and the fires. That is some set of stories for any kid to carry with him.

  By the time Mordy returns, Claudia’s left for some fancy finishing school in Switzerland, according to the rumor. Or she’d run off with Rupert Chesterfield, the rabbi’s new stepson, who, unbelievably, also stutters and has a huge penis (according to Fifi Nordlinger of the Jew Tank, which I’ll get to later). “Nah, it’s because she screwed with Daniel,” Arnold sneers. “She’s having his baby and had to go away in secret.” Funnily enough, nobody talks about her when she’s gone. I walk around keeping my thoughts of her to myself, but I must confess that, like David, she leaves them after a while and it’s a relief. Life is less complicated. Perhaps it’s the same for the others. Now we can all return to being less mature and less aware of what awaits us.

  And now I can pine for Mordy without interruption.

  Mordy and me.

  It seems almost a relief, after Claudia.

  Yes. Mordy and me.

  We spend summer afternoons walking farther and farther into the country, observing how far out Masturbov Gardens is pushing. It’s amazing to hear him say, as he walks his future land with me, “This will all be mine someday.” The farther beyond Masturbov Gardens we walk, the closer I feel to him, like we’re friends now, really buddies.

  I’m happy being with him. I look forward to him and miss him when he’s left me, when all I can do is think about him. How he really looks me in the eye when I talk to him. How he seems so interested in my opinions. How he isn’t snooty and snobby at all, which, as the son of Abe Masturbov, he’s certainly entitled to be.

  I haven’t the vaguest notion why he wants to be my buddy and I don’t question it one bit. He’s here. We’re together. Good enough.

  My growing friendship with Mordy coincides with Lucas going through a strange period in his growing up. Suddenly he won’t talk to me; he’s silent in general, but he would always talk to me. When I try to make him talk now, he just sort of grunts back. “Answer me!” I hear myself demand. He doesn’t. “Please talk to me!” I plead. “What do you want me to say?” he finally responds. “Are you unhappy?” I ask him. This he certainly doesn’t answer. “Tell me! What is it?” I go and stand right in front of him on tiptoe and stare into his eyes, just stare and stare. He just looks at me, perplexed. He picks me up and stands me somewhere else, and then he leaves the apartment. I feel exiled by my brother’s behavior, and I try to explain this to Mordy, on a walk that will take us even farther into the wilderness his father owns.

  “I’d give anything to have a brother or sister. You’re so lucky to have two brothers.”

  “Three.”

  “You have three brothers?”

  “I have a twin brother.”

  “You do? More than anything else I’d love to have a twin.”

  He looks at me as if I’m the luckiest person alive. Then he shakes his head in amazement, whispering, as if a hidden fortune lost for eons has just been dug up at his feet, “A twin.”

  We jump over a rusty wire fence. “This is the end of Poppa’s land,” Mordy says casually as we hit the other side and he stalks forward like an early pioneer.

  He wants to know everything about David and why he’s away and do I miss him so much it hurts? Since I can’t remember the last time I thought about David, I’m a bit taken aback that Mordy finds such mysterious glamour in him.

  “He’s away living in another city, going to school there.”

  “Why? Why is he doing that? Why does he have to go away to school? There are plenty of good schools here. He’s your other half!”

  “He is not my other half! I’m whole by myself.”

  I owe these words to Stephen, who was furious when we first learned—has it been over six years already?—that David wasn’t coming back for a while, and I screamed out in terror, “How can I ever be a whole person?” (Rivka had once explained what twins were by drawing a circle and slicing it in half.) Stephen took me by the shoulders and shook me: “Don’t you ever say you’re not a whole person! Do you hear me?”

  “He is your other half!” Mordy’s eyes are huge. “He’s your same-aged brother! He’s your twin! Do you know what’s happening to him at this very minute? If I had a twin brother we would be together every single second of every day and night!”

  I suddenly begin to feel guilty and tears come to my eyes. I want to say, You don’t understand! I don’t know David very well. We were so young when he went away. I don’t think he wants to come home. He doesn’t want to see me. So I don’t let myself think about him. But I don’t say any of this. It all sounds too shameful.

  Mordy sees my tears and stops walking to put his hand on my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  Now I really start to cry. I’m not accustomed to sympathy. His concern touches me more than I know how to handle. I’m wailing and shaking, which elicits more sympathy. Mordy takes me in his arms.

  “He moved away to Boston when we were about six. My father, he didn’t have a job and he found a job in Boston and he took David with him because … because … And when Pop got a job back here, David didn’t want to come home.” I’m blubbering into Mordy’s arms now. “I miss him. Yes, I miss him, but I don’t let myself think about him because it hurts too much!” There. That should do it. I haven’t been aware that it hurts, but now that I’ve said it, why not? Why not?

  As soon as I say it, it’s true. I miss David terribly. I want David back, and right this minute I could run all the way up to Boston to get him. No. Not right this minute. Right this minute Mordy Masturbov has his arms around me and I don’t want him to let go.

  “Aren’t families the worst?” he says, one of his hands cupping my head, the oth
er smoothing my hair, over and over, like a mother comforting a suffering child.

  By now, we’ve walked so far from home that neither of us knows where we are. Evening is falling. We’re surrounded by dark trees and tall green weeds waving in a tender summer breeze. School is out. We’re free till fall.

  He bends forward and kisses me. I must be dreaming. I kiss him back, and he’s still there. I kiss him and kiss him and kiss him. I can’t stop. He laughs, and then he grabs my crotch so roughly it hurts. I don’t care. I do the same to him. I start to pull off his shirt, but he pulls me down in the field beside him, rolling on top of me, laughing, he’s laughing, it must be all right! I can feel a bump in his trousers. Now he’s pumping me like I do to my mattress sometimes in the dark because it feels good. My hand undoes his fly and I grope for his penis. How do I know what to do? Today as I write this my head is hammering with this thought: How did I know so ably what to do? Did Uncle Hyman teach me, or did Uncle Hyman just show me what I would know how to do anyway, when the time came, when the right person came?

  I find it! I have it in my hand—the penis of someone my own age, someone I want so much. I can’t begin to describe the overwhelming release of need I feel. A lifetime—and for the young time is much longer than for the old, when days pass much too quickly—a lifetime of desire has suddenly been released, the painful pressure of what’s been hermetically sealed now freed to escape. I shiver as I’m being borne aloft and off this earth. I’m dizzy. He’s holding me tightly now, because my penis, which he has pulled out, is jumping with a life of its own while he hugs me tighter and tighter as I find myself screaming out loud, some guttural noise unfamiliar to me, as if from another person, frightening in its hunger, its sheer uncensored pleasure.

  Then something happens. I watch it. I’m terrified by its strangeness. Something spurts out of me and it falls to earth.

  And then I’m aware I don’t feel as good. I’m tired and timid and frightened.

  Why did it end so quickly?

  Why do I overlook that most important fact: he kissed me. He kissed me. He kissed me first!

  He lays me back and looks down on me and gently kisses my nose. “Be quiet while I take care of myself.” And he lies on his side, eyes clenched, holding me in the cradle of his left arm while he uses his right hand to masturbate. It takes him a very long time. He grunts and groans so. His face is pale white and covered with perspiration. I want to help, so I start kissing him again. His exertions take so long that the kisses turn from ardor to arduous. Finally, he too has his release. Now we are both experienced young men!

  But now it’s Mordy who’s crying. Or is he? Is it just accumulated perspiration? No, I’m convinced it’s sadness. Despair isn’t an emotion that boys tend to recognize, but it’s the word I think of. I don’t know how I located it in my vocabulary, but I’m filled with an overwhelming sadness for both of us because … No, not because we’ve done what we’ve done. I just sense he’s vastly troubled, Mordy, though I can’t tell why or how. But then, I’m vastly troubled too.

  Far from anything being resolved for either of us, it just gets more complicated.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, knowing that something is the moment I ask.

  “Nothing’s wrong!”

  He rolls away and sits up, and if I don’t do something he’ll stand up and walk away. I grab his shoulder and pull him back down. At first he resists, but I’m stronger now, or he lets me be. What difference does it make? He’s back and lying with me.

  I use my shirt to wipe his face dry. I kiss his chest through his shirt and I kiss his stomach and where I think his belly button is. I kiss his thighs and his knees and his feet. I silently but certainly declare my love. If he kissed me first, then I more than return his invitation.

  I’m all naked. How am I all naked? I don’t remember taking off my clothes or his taking them off for me. If I am like this, how can he be so fully dressed?

  I don’t expect the question he asks.

  “What was it like, with Claudia?”

  I don’t want Claudia here.

  “I’m in love with her,” he says.

  I don’t expect this either.

  “Are you in love with her?” he asks.

  “We’re very close.”

  He nods, accepting this.

  Has Mordy done with me what we’ve just done because of Claudia, because he wants information from me, or wants to share me because we shared her, or for some other indirect reason, and not because of me, because he wants me, because he feels the same about me as I feel for him? Well, I don’t let myself think any such thoughts.

  I think them all.

  Here in this field I discover how adept I am at automatically absorbing yet another new kind of pain. I don’t even wander the usual route: from rejection to depressed acceptance. As much as it hurts, as much as Uncle Hyman hurt, I go on, smile plastered on my puss. It’s frightening that I stomach pain so well.

  “Can’t you tell me anything?” He’s begging now, so I guess I’m in some sort of vague contol.

  I’m still holding him in my arms. I’m still wiping his face off, now with my handkerchief, though he’s dry and cool. Why am I still holding him in my arms? He’s just said he’s in love with her. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief … I beg you to love me. Is my body ugly? Am I too poor for you? I know something, Mordy. Something you don’t know. Claudia will never love you! She isn’t in love with me either, I know that now, but I don’t care. Oh, I’ll always be her friend, because she’s too interesting not to stay close to. But she’ll never make me feel like I’ve just felt with … this young man like me.

  I could also tell him, though I certainly won’t, that Claudia prides herself on not being in love with anybody, ever, and that I’ll bet a million dollars she’ll never change.

  Yes, I’ve written off her entire romantic life. How could I know back then? Well, I could and did and I was right.

  “She’s so beautiful, especially naked. We … she…” He’s telling me a story I don’t want to hear. But I guess I’d better listen. The doctor-to-be in me is now enduring this scene of rejection in order to extract every ounce of dirt for the records, toward any diagnosis. “It was just great.”

  Is that it?

  “You’re not telling me the whole story.”

  He nods and he stares out into the night. I wait and watch as his eyes fill with tears again and he finally says, “I have such trouble … You saw how long … I can’t seem to … And it hurts so … and … besides…”

  He’s sobbing like a beaten man. He stands up and starts walking, farther out into the country. I run after him, and we walk quietly for a while. Then he starts talking.

  He talks (I’d say he tells me, but he’s talking to the air, the space out there, perhaps to her, but certainly not to me) about the time he and a bunch of his friends from St. Anselm’s went downtown to some whorehouse. “I was last. I’d been hard for so long, watching the other four do it, that I was dripping and throbbing, and when the last guy did it and he … ejaculated, I ejaculated too. Right out into the room.” We keep walking. I don’t say a word. Then he starts up again. “I found a book. I can’t tell you where. It wasn’t a book. It was typewritten. It was all about a bunch of soldiers off at war without any women around. None at all. Just them. They didn’t know what to do. They were real bored and had a lot of time on their hands. One of them said, ‘Let’s cover ourselves with honey and lick each other clean.’ And that’s what they did. And it was the most exciting thing for all of them.” He’s got me excited again, but now I can’t kiss him because he’s in love with Claudia. “Let’s do it again,” he suddenly says. And this time he lays me back and undoes my fly and pulls out my penis and puts my hand on it, and I sense that he wants me to masturbate, which I do while he watches without doing anything to himself, which makes me think he must still be sore from his first time, and I ejaculate—how swift my facility—and then he jumps up and starts back toward home. I cl
ean off with some leaves as quickly as I can and button up my pants and jump up and run to catch up. I’m the beggar again. We walk home in silence, and he leaves me at my front door. I guess he’ll walk up to Abe’s office, where there’s always a limousine, no matter what time it is, to take him across the city to his house with its columns of women with big breasts.

  Just as he leaves to go, he says: “I think next time we want to do it with chocolate syrup, not honey.” And he winks at me.

  * * *

  When I come home Philip is sitting in the dark in his undershorts and T-shirt, his slippers on his pale feet, staring at a television program. It’s hot indoors and he’s got a towel hanging around his neck. We’re been living alone together for a few weeks. Rivka’s off at some conference of her fellow saviors, and Lucas and Stephen are working on a farm in Maine for a woman named Dorothy Thompson.

  He comes into the bathroom without knocking just as I’m ready to take a shower. So far as I can remember he’s never seen me naked. He is going to take a pee.

  “What’s that?”

  He’s eyeing my crotch. Am I too small? What now?

  No, he’s staring at the dried white gook embedded in the growing black tuft of my pubic hairs. Mordy’s and my dried semen. There seems to be a good deal of it matted into a peculiarly protuberant clump.

  “What is that?” His voice is louder. He looks me in the eyes, a terrified expression inside his own.

  “Where have you been? What have you done? What’s … what is this?” His voice is hoarse and squeaky and trembling, and almost macabre. His fingers dart in swiftly and yank a hairy glob out of me.

  “Ouch! What are you doing?”

  “What is this!”

  I can’t answer him. He knows what I don’t want to tell him. Or enough of it to hate me even more. How do I know he knows? How does he know?