Name Games

by Michael Craft

  Trotting down the walk from the porch to the street, I felt the chill of autumn air as it whorled past my bare legs. In my mind’s eye, I could see each hair springing erect in its follicle—my skin’s natural defense against the cold. This brought to mind the section of Carrol Cantrell’s leg that I’d examined just a few hours earlier—its natural defenses as well as its color were four days gone. Pondering this, I gained new appreciation for a phenomenon that I’d long dismissed as involuntary and therefore unworthy of thought: goose bumps.

  Turning off Prairie Street onto Park Street, I whisked past the terminus of Durkee Avenue on my left, then La Salle, skirting the park itself on my right. Ahead lay an entrance to the park, a narrow path ideal for runners, which I’d discovered last winter shortly after my move to Dumont—it had become my habitual route. Scooting over the curb, my feet left the asphalt, crossed a plot of grass, then crunched the gravel of the pathway.

  Entering the park, I was struck again by its pervasive silence, as if this slice of nature had been frozen in time for my sole appreciation. The moraine, with its enormous boulders and steep ravines, had been carved there by a glacier during a long-ago age of perpetual winter. Now, the ice was gone, and the scarred earth had patched itself with a blanket of green. Trees had sprouted in the fertile silt; their roots now burrowed the craggy terrain; their branches reached high toward the patchy light of a perfect September sky.

  All this history, all this geological tumult so benignly resolved, and there ran I.

  Me—this polite, awed intruder, prancing through nature in gym shorts and Reeboks, out for a jog, in need of fresh air.

  The path, which wound and sloped sharply from the street, now settled onto an easier course, straight and level, through an expanse of turf that formed a valley floor within the park’s rugged confines. A stream flowed cold in the distance. The perimeter of trees cast their broad blue shadows across the grassy field. The gravel path stretched long and flat before me, inviting me to find my pace, to up my speed, to burn the calories that would cause me to sweat in spite of the chilled landscape through which I ran.

  Finding my second wind, settling into the cruising pace that would propel the duration of my run, I was at last able to clear my mind of recent stresses, entering that zone of suspended consciousness that is the runner’s compensation for tedium, a reward for the discipline of ignoring pain. The tap of my feet, the beat of my pulse, the rate of my breathing, all these rhythms became fixed and juxtaposed, like the syncopated clatter of the parts of some complex, precise machine.

  As earth and sky blurred past me, I thought of nothing. And yet, I thought of everything. Vague remnants of my workaday life, my waking worries, flicked through my brain like the disjointed scenes of an unwanted dream.

  These half-thoughts were dominated, of course, by the murder of Carrol Cantrell. That very afternoon, his shrouded, iced body had served as a powerful and tangible reminder that a heinous crime had darkened my newly adopted community. In a purely philosophical sense, a wrong had been committed, and righting it was a matter of simple justice—that alone was ample motivation to solve the mystery and unmask Cantrell’s killer.

  But more was at stake than rectitude. Douglas Pierce—the sheriff, my friend—had been implicated in the crime and “outed.” At worst, if he was formally accused and convicted of the murder, he would lose his life’s freedom, not to mention his career, reputation, and every shred of respect. At best, if he managed to debunk the accusations arising from the extortion note, he would still remain at the center of a sex scandal that could seriously jeopardize his chances for reelection. Though his political opponent, Dan Kerr, seemed surprisingly sympathetic to Pierce’s difficulties, he was the one man with the most to gain from Pierce’s possible downfall, and I felt strongly that the town would be ill-served by a voters’ backlash that could whisk Kerr into office.

  Which brought to mind that there was more at stake than Pierce’s future. My own reputation was on the line as well. I’d already published my endorsement of Pierce for reelection, and I was loath to retract it. Not only would such backpedaling humiliate me in the eyes of the Register’s fickle readership, but it would also shift the paper’s support to Kerr, whom I still opposed on philosophical grounds.

  My reputation was on the line in another sense too. On the Monday afternoon when Pierce had told me about the discovery of the extortion note, he had asked me to help him. A friend in need, he called upon my past skills as an investigative reporter to help solve the mystery and save his neck. I readily agreed. Since then, however, I’d merely littered the investigation with a growing throng of suspects, only one of whom, at this point, could convincingly be argued to have had the motive, means, and opportunity to commit the crime: Pierce himself.

  In a more abstract sense, the whole “gay thing” was also at stake. The victim, we now knew, had been a gay pornographer. A publicly named suspect, Pierce, the closeted gay sheriff, had slept with Cantrell the night before he died. Wouldn’t it be just ducky if, in the public’s mind, the whole sordid mess were dismissed as gay infighting? They’d conclude that the murder simply didn’t matter.

  But it did matter. Someone had blood on his hands—and I couldn’t consider for a moment that it might actually be Pierce. Was I too trusting? Was I blinded by friendship, or possibly by gay unity, or even by my underlying, unspoken attraction to Pierce? Could he have, in fact, killed Cantrell?

  I had to believe that it was someone else. Bruno Hérisson, Dan Kerr, Harley Kaiser, and even the seraphic Dr. Ben Tenelli all raised varying levels of suspicion within me. And now a new possibility, an extremely promising suspect, had reared her ugly head. Miriam Westerman had the clear motive of hate. Her knowledge of Cantrell’s allergy gave her the means to kill him. But did she have the opportunity to mix motive and means—with nuts—in a deadly cake? Lab reports were pending on the cake itself. If it proved to contain nuts, could I prove that she’d concocted it?

  These thoughts were not the purpose of my run—far from it. I’d taken to this trail in hopes of escaping such vexing questions, if only for half an hour. Without missing a step, I shook my head, clearing my brain. I again focused on my surroundings and was quickly lost in the late-afternoon splendors of the park. The path had looped around the valley floor and now began its gradual ascent through the tree-thick slopes on the far side of the ravine.

  Running on this incline, I had to work harder to maintain my pace. My breathing quickened, and with the extra gulps of oxygen came a familiar light-headedness—the gentle, pleasing “high” of hyperventilation that some runners equate with meditative, trancelike bliss. Preferring to enjoy this phenomenon simply as a physiological oddity, I was nonetheless struck by the vivid impressions, the flashes of insight, that it inspired.

  The run up the hill reminded me of a morning some three years earlier. It was Christmas, bright and warm, on a mountainside in Phoenix. I’d met Neil a few months before while he was visiting his friend Roxanne in Chicago. There was an immediate spark between us, but that was during my repressed, closeted days, and I failed to act upon my feelings for Neil during his visit. Later, when he suggested that I spend the holiday with him in the desert, I went. Arriving late on Christmas Eve, I slept the sound sleep of exhaustion that night, then awoke to his coffee and his invitation to join him for a shirtless morning run through his mountainside neighborhood.

  Unaccustomed to running on hills, I followed him up the street, mesmerized by the sight of his body in motion, by the trickle of sweat down the lumps of his spine, forming a damp V in the crack of his shorts. When he turned at the top of a hill, I realized that he was as thoroughly aroused by our workout as I was. Sprinting back to the house in perfect unison, we instinctively, wordlessly made love outdoors that morning at the edge of a secluded pool. It was not only our first intimacy, but also the first time I’d had sex with another man. It marked the beginning of a whole new life for me, one that seemed so suddenly right and natural that I have
never looked back, never regretted it. Indeed, the only question it raised was, What took me so long?

  Recalling all this during my run through the park, I’d become aroused again, just as I had on that first morning with Neil. Running with an erection—an erection cramped by a pair of shorts—was not altogether comfortable. Perversely, this confusion of pleasure and pain did not diminish the pleasure, but rather intensified it. Before long, my mind was in the throes of a full-blown fantasy, indulging in erotic scenarios triggered by nothing more than my stream of consciousness.

  Ahead of me now on the hilly pathway was not Neil, but the long-gone porn star Rascal Tyner. He wore only his white leather running shoes, and he turned now and then to egg me on, urging me to follow to some secret clearing. Then he stopped on the path, facing me. He stroked his penis, not yet fully erect, telling me, “I could use some help with this.”

  Stopping, watching his hands, I told him, “But you never need a fluffer.”

  He laughed. “I don’t need anything. But I do want you.”

  Not inclined to argue, I stepped forward and hunkered down in front of him, indulging for a moment in the sight of him so near, the smell of his sweat, the warmth of his panting breath. Wrapping my arms around him, I cupped his buttocks in my hands while nuzzling his cock. My hands slid down his legs, feeling the long tendons of his thighs, the fine mat of hair, the plump bulge of his calves, and then his shins. My fingers slipped inside his socks to explore the bony knobs of his ankles, then traced the contours of his feet, feeling the cracked, soft leather of his running shoes, the web of their laces, the jagged tread of their soles. I’d lost all interest in his penis and was focused instead on the guy’s shoes.

  Wait a minute. This seemed not only goofy, but familiar. For as long as I could remember, I’d had fantasies of those feet, those shoes. In recent years, with Neil, I’d learned to simply indulge this harmless fetish and not question its roots. But now, running alone in the park that afternoon, I suddenly became aware of how and when I’d acquired my overenthusiasm for sneakers. It wasn’t something I was born with. It wasn’t a locker-room experience that had stuck with me since high school. No, it happened much later.

  In the early eighties, when Rascal Tyner was felled by AIDS, I’d borrowed that videotape from a fellow reporter at the Chicago Journal. The compilation of clips was titled Rascal Tyner’s Hottest Hits. In one of the scenes, the porn superstar was out for a run, leading the camera and the viewer deep into a woods. He wore only his running shoes—those white leather running shoes—and the video provided loving close-ups of those shoes as Rascal brought himself to orgasm.

  On the pretext of journalistic curiosity, I watched the tape several times that night, masturbating (more than once) to the shoe scene. The next day, I returned the tape to my colleague, assuring both him and myself that my curiosity had been satisfied. Years passed, and the tape was forgotten.

  Or so I’d thought. Clearly, that shoe scene had stuck with me—it had just replayed itself in rich detail before my mind’s eye. Why had I repressed the memory of something that had so deeply intrigued me? Was I too embarrassed to admit, even to myself, that the sight of a guy’s sneakers was sufficient to pop my load? Embarrassed? I was probably mortified.

  That was nearly twenty years ago, back in my heterosexual days, when I wouldn’t dare admit that I was attracted to men—let alone shoes. Now, of course, my perspective had shifted dramatically, but I still felt unprepared to confront the psychology of this private, squelched fantasy. Did I fear that by acknowledging it, I might lose it?

  The wooded path had circled back to the valley floor, and the level terrain eased the strain of my run. Similarly, my muddlement ebbed, and I dismissed the issue of Rascal Tyner’s track shoes as little more than a blip in my psychosexual makeup. Besides—I reminded myself—if demons were lurking in that old video, I would soon have my chance to vanquish them. Roxanne was driving up to Dumont that weekend, and at Neil’s bidding, she would bring along a copy of the very tape in question. While the prospect of seeing that tape again inspired me with trepidation, that emotion was far outweighed by my eagerness to see, once again, Rascal Tyner shooting semen on those shoes.

  This whole line of thought, I realized, had grown a little weird. Here I was—a responsible, mature adult, a businessman to boot, committed to a loving relationship with another man—pondering a worn-out fantasy of some college guy on tape, a Hollywood creation who simply wasn’t real. He was, after all, long dead, and even in life he wasn’t really gay—that was just an act that assured him a niche audience. Why waste any thought, any emotional energy, on a memory that was essentially false and manufactured? Why allow myself to be manipulated? If I needed prurient fantasies (and I was sufficiently self-aware to admit that I did enjoy them), I was creative enough to concoct my own.

  Not to say that I don’t recognize the value of a healthy balance between the real world and the imagined. In the investigation and reporting of news, for instance, I have trained myself to tread only in the realm of the objective—if I can’t see it, hear it, or measure it, I don’t write about it. While this rigorous standard can be applied to all aspects of life, I have come to appreciate that it signals no loss of intellectual integrity to indulge occasionally in the more emotional realm of the subjective. Our creative growth—whether as artists, as dreamers, as sexual beings, or simply as people—depends, to some extent, on our ability to let loose. Though there is a reality that is fixed and external, a reality that can’t be changed by wishing or by prayer, there is another environment that exists solely within us, and it would be folly to deny or to thwart this spirit that makes us each uniquely human. Our challenge is to develop the insight to distinguish between these two natures, while cultivating the discipline to disregard external reality only when appropriate. In other words, there’s a time and a place for everything.

  Which is precisely why I now felt a measure of guilt for the whims I’d allowed myself that afternoon. It was hardly the time (in the midst of a vexing murder investigation) or the place (a public park) to be flexing my libido in daydreams of encounters with a young porn god. After all, I was happily committed to Neil. While I saw scant danger in indulging in sporadic fantasies of other men, particularly this “unreal” man who existed only in old videotapes, I was still wary that too much pining over imaginary men might dull my appreciation for the real one I had.

  Even more disturbing was the fact (still not comfortably entrenched as part of my fixed, external reality) that I was now a “father.” Thad was sixteen, only a few years younger than the fantasy hunk Rascal Tyner, who’d just invited me to fluff him in the park. Thad had barely begun to shave. And though I had never ever thought of Thad in any way but the paternal, I knew that I was veering near the edge of dangerous territory.

  Don’t go there, I warned myself. Don’t even think about it. Forget that his sixteen gangly years will blossom into eighteen strapping ones. You do not find the kid attractive—not that way. The very notion fills you with a revulsion that’s been hardwired into your psyche by society, by law, and by nature itself.

  My run had slowed to a sloppy jog, barely a brisk walk. So I stopped, alone on the trail in the middle of the park. Breathing deeply, I assured myself that this angst was unwarranted. I had weighed the fear routinely promoted by homophobes—that I was unfit to serve as Thad’s father, that I was somehow out to recruit the boy. And in weighing this fear, I was able to dismiss it. I knew myself well enough to understand that Thad did not live at risk under my roof. I had made a commitment to his mother, my cousin, that I would raise him in her absence. Granted, when I made that promise, I felt certain that I’d never be called upon to fulfill it, but circumstances had decreed otherwise, and I was determined to prove myself the boy’s best possible father—for my own sake as well as Thad’s. Within such a mind-set, any sort of leering thoughts, to say nothing of abuse, were simply unthinkable.

  With that resolved, I continued along the path, w
alking at a comfortable pace, heading back up the hillside that would take me home.

  Home. The house on Prairie Street had in fact become a home for me, but it still lacked Neil’s permanent presence, and I fretted again over whether he would eventually feel drawn to join me there. He took so naturally to the task of parenting Thad, and he enjoyed it too. While I had initially feared that my responsibilities toward Thad might make Neil feel distanced from me, the effect was the opposite—emotionally, Neil was closer to me now than ever before, a partner in the unlikely duties of raising an orphaned adolescent. For Thad, the house on Prairie Street was now the only home he knew; he had no other options.

  It was humbling to realize that I now played such an important role in this kid’s life. We hadn’t asked for this arrangement, but then, kids never do get to choose their parents, and similarly, the babies dealt to even the most willing parents are a bit of a genetic crapshoot. So my relationship to Thad, while unconventional, had at least one advantage—we both knew what we were getting.

  Even so, the whole setup was still new and unnatural to me. I wasn’t Thad’s father—not really. I wasn’t even his uncle—Roxanne had explained, with lawyerly precision, that we were cousins once removed. And now I realized that I was profoundly (perhaps irrationally) bothered by the lack of a clear label for my relationship with Thad.

  I also realized that I’d been playing these name games all my life, most recently with Neil, back when we met. Though instantly attracted to him, it took me months to act upon my desires simply because I dreaded losing the label that described my former life—and I mortally feared the names that would apply to the new life I was entering. Then, when it finally happened, the transition was painless, indeed joyful. Though much had changed around me, I was still “myself.”