Filthy beasts, p.20
Filthy Beasts, page 20
Robin and Charlotte picked me up from Palm Beach International Airport. I sat up front with Robin. “Let’s play a game,” I suggested when the conversation lulled. “It’s called Who in This Car Thinks They Might Be Gay?” I kept my eyes forward, not wanting to look at them. “The winner is the first person who raises his or her hand.”
I shot up my hand before they had time to think about it.
Robin got a confused look but kept his eyes on the road. It took him a minute to respond.
“You are?” he offered eventually. “That’s great.”
He didn’t say much after that, but the confused smile never dimmed as he kept driving. He tried to mask his bemusement with questions: When did I know, did I know for sure, did I have a boyfriend, and was I going to tell everyone? Charlotte sat defiantly quiet, stabbing her needlepoint needle into the Christmas stocking she was working on, as if she could cure our family dysfunction with holiday gifts. My one-year-old niece, Piper, sat in her car seat, looking around with big, curious eyes.
We arrived at my father’s house after forty awkward minutes. In retrospect, it would have been smarter to wait until we had almost arrived to tell them. I had underestimated the impact of my announcement. Robin looked queasy, and Charlotte seemed angry. Robin had always made cracks about gay people—he would exaggerate an effeminate gesture, or make a gerbil reference here and there—but I never sensed any animosity in his remarks. Instead, I think he thought of gay people as “other”—similar to how poor people, Jews, or black people were “other”—and therefore never imagined that one of them would enter his orbit.
Monty was already at the house when we pulled into the driveway, so I waited until we had a quiet moment on the couch before I played the “Do you think you might be gay” game with him. He looked at me with the same expression that Robin had given me, then leaned over and started laughing. Hard.
He was hunched over on the couch, looking at his feet, a Heineken still dangling from his fingers, quaking with the vibrations of silent hysteria. Anybody walking in would have thought I had just told him his entire family had been killed in a car crash. After thirty seconds, he hadn’t moved, so I looked around the den and noticed that my father and Barb had installed a new television. It was off, which was unusual, since they had become the type of Floridians who kept it on all day. There was a vague smell of beef cooking in the kitchen. I heard muffled voices in the guest room, where Robin and Charlotte were setting up Piper’s travel crib. Barb must be walking the dogs, I thought to myself.
A minute elapsed. Monty had tipped over to the side, his shoulders still shaking up and down. He held out his arm, looking for a perch on which to place his beer, so I gently took it from him and put it on the coffee table in front of us. My father wasn’t around, and it crossed my mind that he was still at work, which also seemed a little weird, since it was already dark and he would normally have been excited enough to see us that he would have been home already. Once freed from his beer, Monty placed his second hand over his face, and I heard a series of sharp intakes of breath followed by muffled howls. He was now fetal, twitching like a Pentecostal congregant who had just been struck with the Holy Spirit.
After a good two minutes, he looked up at me, wiped the tears from his eyes, and asked, “So, does this mean that you like to suck cock?”
“I guess so,” I replied. I didn’t know.
I shared the third installment of the “Who thinks they might be gay” game that night—Christmas Eve—right after we had finished dinner. Monty spit out his red wine and fell forward once again, almost face-planting into his gravy-drenched green beans.
“There he goes,” Robin said.
Neither my father nor Barb looked amused.
After an awkward pause, Barb said, less casually than her words would suggest, “So what? Lots of people are gay nowadays. It’s almost passé not to be. And they look good, and cook beautifully.” She got up from the table and cleared the plates.
My father sat silently for a long time, looking everywhere but at me, as he processed the information. Finally, he said, “Kirkland, I love you no matter what. But I’m not going to believe that this is true until you actually bring somebody home with you. And then I can begin having trouble accepting it.” My father was always manufacturing mind-twisters in response to difficult news. I didn’t know what to say, so I looked over at Robin, who was staring at my father, his face scrunched up in confusion.
“He doesn’t know if he likes to suck cock!” Monty blurted, wine once again spraying out of his mouth.
“He better,” Robin said. “Guys like that.”
“I don’t think you should drink any more wine, at least until this gay thing doesn’t send you into hysterics,” I said to Monty. “You’re making a mess.”
Charlotte bolted up from the table, grabbing Piper and whisking her out of the room as if a tsunami warning horn had gone off.
“Watch the teeth,” Robin continued.
“Oh God,” my father said, lowering his head.
“You better end up with somebody rich,” Robin said. “You’re the Hamill family’s last chance at a private jet.”
“Hey, I’m not married,” Monty said.
“I think you’re looking at this all wrong,” I said to my father. “My boyfriend might like golf, or racist jokes.”
“I need to get out of here,” my father said, getting up from the table and grabbing the keys to his car. “I’ll be back later.”
He had never left our dinner table like that before. Robin and Monty watched him leave with the same surprised expression that I did, and then looked over to make sure that I was okay. I didn’t want to show anybody that my feelings were hurt; the whole plan was to make my being gay as normal as possible, so that my life wouldn’t change any more than necessary. I would rather be teased mercilessly about sucking cock than endure polite and insincere tolerance.
“Where did your father go?” Barb asked, returning from the kitchen.
* * *
“ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT to do this?” Robin asked. It was the day after Christmas. We were pulling into a parking space next to my mother’s new convertible Rolls-Royce, a car she had never driven. The person who sold it to my stepfather told him it once belonged to Barbra Streisand.
“I’m kind of excited about it,” I said.
“This is going to be so good,” Robin said, giggling.
“More money for me!” Monty said, clapping his hands. They were both convinced that my announcement would oust me from the will, assuming John died before my mother and there was something to inherit.
Years earlier, we had decided that the best way to mitigate the hurt my mother felt that we chose to spend Christmas with my father was to offer to have lunch with her on Boxing Day. It was an English holiday, providing minimal justification for why it might hold some meaning to her when it didn’t hold any to my father. A flimsy excuse, it provided an out that we all needed. As much as my mother felt slighted that we chose my father over her, she was relieved that we didn’t come to her place for Christmas. The holiday had been ruined for her many years earlier because my grandfather died on Christmas Eve, not long after he and my grandmother left Bermuda for Australia. (Her birthday had also become a time for mourning because our dog, Lady Diana, died during her birthday week the year after she lost her father.)
John answered the door. As usual, my mother was nowhere to be seen. For the past few years, she didn’t appear from her bedroom until the last minute, looking as if she were recovering from massive surgery.
A few minutes later, she shuffled out of her room behind a walker, with a forced smile that came out like a grimace. She hid her eyes behind her ever-present blue-tinted sunglasses.
“Hi-i,” she said to us without looking up. My mother was the only person I knew who could infuse a single word with equal parts judgment, betrayal, and sadness.
“Hey,” I said lightly. “You look… good.”
“No, I don’t,” she said.
She walked straight through the dining room and into the sunroom. She had abdicated the responsibility for interior decorating to John, who had festooned the dining room with a seven-hundred-pound Lucite table and chairs with matching grandfather clock, surrounded by deep red Chinese wall hangings and side tables.
My mother sat down in the sunroom and asked John to get her a drink.
“How about some tomato juice, darlin’?” he said.
“Fuck your tomato juice,” she replied.
“What can I get you boys?” he asked, waddling to the bar. “I have gin, vodka, bloody mary mix, whatever you want.”
“Whatever’s fine,” Robin said.
“How about a bloody bull?” he continued. “It has a little bit of beef broth in it, and some Clamato. Your mother loves it, although I try to tell her to, you know, dial it back a little bit.” He grabbed a Campbell’s can from the cupboard and walked back into the kitchen to retrieve whatever else he needed to make the drinks.
Someone had placed a bowl of Planters Cheez Balls, a small dish of M&M’s, and a platter of caviar and toast points on the table. As we settled in, drinks in hand, there was an awkward silence. I took a large gulp. Robin and Monty looked at me expectantly, devilish grins on their faces.
“I have something to tell you,” I said to my mother.
“What is it?” she said accusingly. “I don’t want to hear any bad news today.”
“It’s not bad news. Well, I don’t think so, anyway.”
Monty hiccupped into his drink.
“If it’s not one thing with you children, it’s another,” she said.
“I haven’t even said anything yet,” I said.
“What is it?”
“I just wanted to play a game.”
Monty hiccupped again, lunging forward just in time to catch an ice cube rocketing from his face. Did he ever not have anything in his mouth?
The game thing had become lame, but I wanted to communicate playfulness rather than misfortune. When I was done, hand waving solo in the air, my mother narrowed her eyes at me. The same confused smile I had seen on my brothers swept her face. It occurred to me that all of them had thought I might be kidding.
“Shut up, Kirkland.”
“No, it’s true.”
Monty dropped his drink on the table and ran out of the room.
“Robin, I need another drink.”
“He’s not kidding,” Robin said.
“A mother like you should have a gay son,” I said lightly. “My God, a mother like you makes a gay son.”
My mother looked out the sunroom window wistfully, brought a hand to her face, and watched as a fifty-foot pleasure yacht made its way through the intracoastal waterway below. My comment had landed where I wanted it to, bonding us together in my gayness, so that she couldn’t judge me without judging herself. I was no longer the little boy who would do anything to make her laugh, or the teenager who tried to stop her crying, or the young man who turned every negative feeling in on himself until his heart stopped beating. I had fought hard to claim myself, and if being that person caused others pain, I hoped for them the resilience I had found to endure it.
“I got you a book,” I said, handing her a copy of Andrew Sullivan’s Virtually Normal, which I had kept tucked away in my lap during our conversation. “It’s supposed to help people understand what it’s like to be gay.” This was only partially true; the book was written by a gay conservative who used an intellectual argument to help convince people who were opposed to homosexuality why it was in society’s best interests to accept it.
My mother looked at the front cover, turned it over, looked back at me, and in one swift motion tossed it over her shoulder into the potted palm behind her. It landed with a dull thud.
“That’s what I think about your book,” she said.
She refused to talk about it after that. We sat through lunch with Monty snickering and my mother occasionally looking my way with an inscrutable expression. I wondered if she was trying to formulate the combination of words that would shame me out of who I was, as she had done when I was younger. But I had become too much like her now, certain in who I was and unwilling to bend for anyone.
* * *
I WENT ON MY FIRST gay date when I was thirty-two years old, two years after I came out. His name was Josh, and he worked as the head librarian of the local library. A mutual friend set us up in the same way that most gay people are set up on dates in small towns, which was that we were the only two gay people my friend knew and we were single.
Josh wasn’t my first choice. Not long after I had come out, I had been introduced to Lawrence—Roanoke’s most high-profile gay man, from a prominent family, who spent much of his time in New York City when he wasn’t managing the local family business. I was so starved for any entry point into the gay world that I had been desperate to meet him. I was so used to living a sexually dulled life that this newly discovered power felt like a fully loaded Uzi placed in the hands of a child.
Lawrence invited me over to his apartment on a Saturday morning somewhat reluctantly, explaining that he only had a few minutes to spend with me before he was scheduled to fly to New York. I was confused and a little annoyed by this, having assumed he would be similar to pop-culture depictions of gay men over thirty-five in small towns, desperate for validation and nursing an open wound of societal rejection. I assumed he would try to seduce me, so I didn’t shower or brush my hair, and wore the baggiest clothes that I owned.
Lawrence buzzed me up to his downtown apartment. When he opened the door, I noticed that he was unmistakably handsome in the effortless way that I never was, with a captivating smile and a self-possessed aura. He was dressed casually, yet impeccably, like it took a lot of work and no work at all.
I walked into a meticulously decorated apartment outfitted with modern décor in monochrome black and white, with tasteful flashes of color strategically placed on uncomfortable-looking leather furniture. He was friendly, but I noticed an undercurrent of impatience, which he explained by saying that he hadn’t yet fully packed and would need to do so before we spoke. My immediate thought was that the packing thing was a ruse for him to disappear into the bedroom and return in a shortie robe to pounce on me.
Instead, he emerged from the bedroom a few minutes after I arrived with a roller bag, apologized again, and asked me what he could do for me as he sat down on the couch and checked his watch. I hadn’t expected that question, assuming that there was a preset protocol for the onboarding of new gays, so I sputtered through a “just wanting to get to know people” answer while he nodded his head.
“Most of my weekends are spent in New York, so I’m not sure I’ll be much help on the social side, but I’m certainly happy to serve as an ear if you need one,” he said, not unkindly.
“Okay, thank you. That would be great,” I said.
“How is your family taking the news?”
“They seem to be okay. They aren’t thrilled, but there’s no danger of being cut off.”
“That’s good.”
He paused and pursed his lips, and I could tell by the bounce in his foot that it was time for him, and me, to go.
“Well, thanks for taking the time to see me,” I said.
“No problem at all. Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything.” Lawrence walked me to the door and waved as I stepped into the hall. I barely had the chance to return the wave before the door closed behind me. I realized that I didn’t have his phone number, as we had made arrangements through email.
On my way back to my car, I ran my fingers through my oily hair and smelled beneath my armpits, conscious that not only had it not been necessary for me to discourage Lawrence, it was looking more like my shabby appearance had repelled him. In ten minutes, my newly forming gay self-image had plummeted from irresistible temptress to rejected newbie. I realized that I had no idea what being a gay man was about, except that I now understood with humbling certainty that Lawrence was out of my league.
I felt cheated. Having never actually known any gay people, I had adopted society’s idea of the insatiable sex predator on the prowl for young, vulnerable flesh. Lawrence was my second example (the Seattle ginger being the first) of a gay man who not only didn’t fit this stereotype, but also seemed conspicuously unmoved by my presence. Was it possible that gay people were less one-dimensional than I had been led to believe? I had thought the most difficult part of my journey would be picking the person who would be right for me. Now I wondered if I needed to be more concerned with whether I would ever be chosen.
And so, almost two years later, there was Josh. I didn’t want to spend any time alone with him, lest I inadvertently adopt a judgment that might deter me from my newfound priority of getting laid. I still had never had any meaningful sexual contact with a man. By now it was becoming clear to me that not only was I not in danger of being devoured by an army of gay men, I might have to work a little bit at getting one interested in me. So I invited Josh and my friends Lee and Ruth over to my apartment for an after-dinner drink one night.
Josh showed up an hour after Lee and Ruth had arrived, having come from a work event. He was wearing a gray suit and smiled nervously as he entered the apartment. Lee and Ruth greeted him and made small talk about Roanoke to help ease any weirdness associated with my having invited a stranger to my house.
I sat next to Josh the way Danielle had sat next to me, with my body turned toward him and my hand casually playing with my hair. When Lee got up to get himself another drink, I followed him into the kitchen. He asked me how things were going.
“Good, I guess.”
“Do you like him?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Do you think anything will happen?”
I lifted my eyebrows and smiled. If the ice cube Lee was dropping into his glass could have stopped mid-fall, it would have as he realized that the only impediment to sex was their presence.
