“I don’t know. Is it?”
“No,” Aaron said. “No.”
Gunther said nothing.
“I’m homosexual,” Aaron said, and he opened his eyes. “Why is that?”
Gunther said nothing.
“It’s really crazy, me being homosexual, because I hate it. I hate it so much. The whole dirty life. Everything. It’s just so degrading. It humiliates you so. I hate the life but I lead it. And that’s crazy. And I hate them too. All of them. The gay boys that swish; the gray boys too. That’s my word. I made it up. The gray boys, the shadowy ones, the ones you can’t tell by looking at. Like me. I’m gray. You couldn’t tell about me, could you? From looking. You didn’t know.”
“No. Why, is it important to you?”
“Yes.” Aaron sank back into the chair, his shoulders sagging, his arms hanging down almost to the floor. “Because I hate them.” His voice was very soft. “I hate them.” Aaron made a smile. “Myself worst of all. I’ve hated myself for so long now and I’m tired. Tired of hating myself. That’s why the clinic, it’s so important. I can’t seem to get straightened away. I need help—something. I just don’t seem to be able to untangle it. I’m just not getting anywhere.”
“Your friends, are they homosexual?”
“No.”
“None of them?”
“No friends; I’ve never had any. Not really what you’d call friends. No, that’s not true. I had one once. My senior year in college. Hugh was his name. I liked him. We were very close. For a while.”
“What happened to the friendship?”
“I killed it.”
“Why?”
“It was very hard. For me to kill it. But I did.”
“Why?”
“I did not ... trust ... my feelings toward him. You see, he didn’t know about me, that I was ... what I was ... I didn’t know it then either, but I suspected, and I cared—you see, he liked me, he really liked me—and I cared for him, but I was afraid ... that he might find out about me ... that I might not be able to ... control ... the way I felt and I could not let him find out that I was ... what I was—that would have humiliated me too much. I couldn’t have taken that, for him to find out. He would have been so disappointed in me if he’d ever found out and I couldn’t have that. So even though it was very ... hard—really it was, so hard—I killed it.”
“How did you do that?”
“I have a gift for cruelty. You see, I’m ... I’m not nice. No, I’m not very nice and I hurt him. I knew where he was weak and I hit him there, just as hard as I could. I hurt him and he tried to make me stop, find out why, but I never let him know. I just hurt him and hurt him until it was dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Gunther said.
“Yes.”
“This gift for cruelty, why do you think you have it?”
“What do you want me to say? That I’m afraid if I don’t hurt them first they’ll hurt me.”
“Say what you want. If that’s what you want to say, say that.”
“I don’t know why. But I do it all the time. I’m good at it. In the Army, there was this rich kid, Branch. Well, he was queer and he ran after me. I never run after people—never. They always come after me. I won’t run after them because that way, whatever they get from me, I figure it’s their fault; they deserve it. This Branch, I humiliated him. I never did the things to anyone I did to him. He liked it, though, but that’s his problem, isn’t it?” Aaron closed his eyes. “I have never been like that before, never that sadistic. I hate that word. I think that’s the ugliest word. But sometimes I think that’s what I am. A sadist. That thought, when I have it, it scares me.”
“What scared you about the robbery? You said at the start it’s what brought you here.”
“The kids, maybe.”
“Kids?”
“There were two of them. They had a basketball. They stood over me and told me to go home. This was in the morning. I had spent the whole night lying there I didn’t know I’d spent the whole night. Oh, I felt the sun, all right, but I didn’t realize how much time had gone, how long I’d been just lying, there. One minute it was night, the next minute these kids were there. It made me wonder that maybe I was losing contact—something; I don’t know.”
“While you were lying there, what were you thinking?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Is that what really scares you? Is that what scares you most?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“All right, Mr. Fire, you can go.”
Aaron sat up, “Go?”
“That’s right.”
“You mean just leave? We’re done?”
“That’s right.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Our time was almost up anyway.”
“You mean you’re punishing me? Like I was in kindergarten?”
“You should hear from the clinic in about two weeks. One way or the other.”
“Look, I didn’t think anything. I just lay there. He’d hurt me, Walker’d hurt me and I wasn’t sure I could move so I didn’t.”
“What kind of a name is Walker?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he a Negro?”
“Yes.”
“Do you always pick Negroes?”
“No. Never.”
“But you did this time.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you like Negroes?”
“I don’t know. Not particularly.”
“You look down on them?”
“Sometimes.”
“This Walker, did you look down on him?”
“Yes. He swished. Yes.”
“You picked up an overt Negro homosexual?”
“Yes.”
“Would it be fair to say that you were perhaps trying to degrade yourself? Particularly degrade yourself?”
“Maybe.”
“Why were you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did anything happen that week?”
“No.”
“Did anything happen that day?”
“No.”
“Think about it.”
“Nothing happened. Nothing.”
“Don’t answer so quickly. Think. That day. Did anything happen?” Aaron said nothing. Gunther sucked his pipe.
“Yes.”
“What?”
Aaron did his best to smile. Gunther waited.
“I saw Branch,” Aaron said, louder. “The boy from the Army?”
“Yes.”
“That upset you?”
“Yes,” louder.
“Why?”
“It just did.”
“But why?”
Aaron mumbled something. “I didn’t hear you.” Aaron said it again.
“Please, I can’t hear you. You don’t want what?”
“I DON’T WANT TO BE A WHORE! I DON’T WANT TO BE A WHORE!” and he was halfway up out of the chair when Gunther said “Aaron” very softly and probably that stopped him, his name, his name coming for the first time from the lips of the fat man with the pipe, for he froze, his body petrified for just a moment, before he slumped back deep into the chair, talking tonelessly. “He didn’t say anything, Branch, really—just was I living here and was I living alone and I said yes, I was, yes, I was, both times, and then he said he was coming and would I wait for him until he got there. Would I wait for him. That was all he said. He’s rich, don’t you see? He’s rich. He’ll keep me. He’ll get a nice apartment somewhere and he’ll keep me. I won’t have to do anything but be his whore and we’ll all live happily ever after.”
“If he calls you, say ‘no.’ ”
Aaron moved his head, slowly, from side to side. “I don’t think I could do that. I couldn’t do that because, see, I’m not—how can I put it?—see, I like nice things. If somebody offers me something, it’s very hard for me to turn it down. I’
m not strong. Oh, I’m strong on some things, but not here. Because I don’t feel much. Nothing warm. I feel cold things only. And when someone offers me something, I take it. I let them use me when I’m really using them, because, see, I have the seeds of the whore in me. I’ve seen whores. They come out of theaters with their ... their patrons, and if they’re young, then it’s not so bad, but I’ve seen them when they weren’t so young anymore and then it’s painful. And I have the seeds of the whore in me. In the Army once, this guy—his name was Sergeant Terry—and he was ugly like an ape and he ... he ... introduced me to this splendid life and then when Branch came with his money I dumped him, Terry, without even thinking I dumped him, even though he cared for me, and I let Branch wine me and then when Branch got shipped someplace there was this Terry, begging for me to come back, and I couldn’t much stand the sight of him but I came back to him for a while because it got me out of the Army. Terry, he had a friend, a doctor up at the post hospital, and so in return for the doctor setting up my discharge I let Terry use me for a little and that was a bad thing to do, a whore thing to do, but I didn’t care, I mean they’re only touching you on the outside, so what’s a little touching, what harm does it do? Except ... except see ... it does do you harm because it was just another step toward being ... It’s the one thing in the world that scares me the most, being a whore, and I can feel it happening to me. It’s why the clinic, I need the clinic, because I’m not strong enough, I don’t think, to resist it by myself and ... I can just feel it happening ... me becoming what I most don’t want to become ... and that’s why, after Walker, he’d rolled me, I cried. I don’t cry much, I really don’t, almost never, but it started to rain and I was lying there trying to raise up on my elbows and there was this terrible lightning and after a while I got up on my elbows and in the lightning I saw a puddle with my face in it and I thought that at last I had hit the bottom, nowhere to go but up, but then ... then ... I started to cry because ... I remembered that Branch was coming ... and I was going to end up a whore ... nowhere to go but down ... so I cried because ... these last three years ... they’re going to be the good years compared with what’s coming ... I know that. These are the good years ... these years now ...”
“Let’s hope not,” Gunther said.
“Yes,” Aaron said.
“Let’s hope not,” Gunther said again.
“Is my time up?”
“Five minutes ago.”
Aaron nodded. “Thank you,” he said and he stood, said “Thank you” again and walked toward the door.
“Fire.”
“Yessir?”
“Fire, I am about to pay you the supreme compliment. I almost never do this. If my other patients heard about it, they would either hate you, hate me or switch analysts. But here it is, the supreme compliment: Fire, I shall walk you to the door.” Gunther strained his arms against his chair, pushing, and slowly, very slowly, he got to his feet. “I’m never sure I’ll make it,” he said, and he exhaled deeply. Then, step by heavy step, he approached the door. “May I tell you something, Fire?”
“Yessir.”
“I have had husbands who tried to destroy their wives, wives who wanted to kill their husbands, parents who craved the ruination of their children, so let me tell you—although you probably won’t want to hear it and, when you do hear it, probably won’t believe it—but you’re only trying to destroy yourself, Fire, so you see, in the long run, you’re not so bad. You’re really not, not compared to the masters I’ve known, not so bad at all.”
“Thank you.” Aaron opened the door, stepped out, turned. Then he said, “And I don’t think you’re a bit overweight, either.” Gunther laughed. Aaron smiled.
End of session.
Aaron lived the next days on the edge of panic. He fidgeted, tried to read, tried to sleep, smoked his throat raw. Outside his second-floor window, Puerto Ricans paraded, clogging the hot sidewalk, overflowing into the street. Stoop-sitters, they appeared to be; stoop-sitters, window-watchers, penny-pitchers, laughers and gossips. That was how they appeared, and on other crosstown streets, that was what they might have been. But not on 84th Street. Not West 84th. Peddlers, they were, peddlers all, hawking dope or their mothers or their sisters or brothers or wives or, if need be, themselves. For a buck. For the Yankee dollar. And day and night, from behind the semi-safety of sooted glass, Aaron eyed the swarthy Lilliputians, wondering why they had come here, what had possessed them to uproot themselves from their golden beaches and light here as dark strangers in a city of eternal cloud. Why here? What was here? Beyond the relief rolls, what? Was there dignity in pushing a cart through the garment district? Was there honor? Was there pride? Yet here they were, a million of them nearly, thin-bodied, red-eyed, their sole accomplishment being that they had at last given the Negro someone to look down on. Here they were, spindly little things, loathed, huddling in their ghettos, dreaming of golden sand (past imperfect) of green money (future improbable). Here they were, strutting on 84th Street, desperate for violence, cocks with no walk. Here they were born, here they died, the journey swift and chill. That was their great unwanted gift: aging. That was what they did best: age. Not the men. The men were born old. But the women: the smooth-skinned women, flashing and sultry, slender and strong—the women aged. Budding at twelve, at fourteen in bloom, fading at sixteen and at twenty gone, used, done. Plucked.
From his window, Aaron watched them wither.
There he would sit, elbows on his desk, smoking and watching. For two days and more, whenever it became clear that he could not concentrate to read, he would slip to the window and stare. Sometimes he could almost lose himself in the restlessness outside, the staccato shouts, the punctuating bursts of sad laughter. He came to recognize some of the faces and he would imagine little stories about them. There was one, a scrawny little girl, thick-legged and homely, but Aaron liked her. For she had eyes. Great black eyes, bright and frightened, frightened, he hoped, because inside she had a mind, and she was afraid she would die in this ghetto before anyone found out, before she ever had a chance to use it.
Her Aaron liked, and his little stories were mostly concerned with chance meetings with men who saw inside the flat body, who ripped her clear of the ghetto and set her down in some cloudless place where she could run and think and be. Carmen, he called her in his mind. Carmen Diaz, a pretty name for a girl with eyes, and when she stood on the street, off by herself, Aaron could almost relax, forget. But every so often, too often, his eyes would flick out like the tongue of a snake, flick toward the phone. And then he would remember what he was waiting for.
And then, panic.
The phone. The phone. The black phone. Silent now, but when it rang, whose voice would follow the ringing? Fat Gunther or bald Branch? How could he fear such a harmless thing, lying there on his floor that needed sweeping, next to his bed that needed making? If Gunther called first, then everything was possible; if Branch, nothing was. Gunther had said two weeks, but that might be too late. What if Branch called first? I’m sorry, Branch, I’m busy, Branch, goodbye, Branch. Just like that. Easy. Easy. Sure.
In the heat, Aaron shivered with the cold.
Gunther had to call first. Gunther liked him. Gunther would push it through fast. A little pressure here, a phone call there; Gunther was a good man, a kind man. If anyone could shake up the clinic, Gunther could. The boy needs help. Let’s give it to him. That’s our job. To give help. To that boy. Help to that boy because if we don’t, then ... then ... the boy, in my professional opinion as a doctor, the boy, I feel quite sure, will become just like those people out the window, a peddler, peddling his own flesh to those who can afford him, and I feel, since he is doing his best to help Carmen Diaz, that we, dedicated physicians that we are, should do our best to give, to that boy, hellLLPPPPPPP!
In the heat, Aaron waited for the phone.
He waited for two days and three nights, or three days and four nights, leaving his room only once, and then just to rush down the
stairs through the slave market to the corner for a fresh carton of cigarettes, first carefully taking the phone off the hook so that if Gunther called he would know from the busy signal that he was only out for cigarettes and would be right back. So Aaron waited, and paced and smoked, and then one morning, either the third or the fourth, Aaron got up from his bed, stretched, glanced down at the phone and started to laugh. He laughed for a long time, standing there, and after that he toppled backward onto his bed and laughed some more, because it was so funny, his waiting for the phone to ring, his dying by inches as he waited for the phone, his tying his life to the single expectancy of a single shrill sound. It was hilarious, his waiting like that. It was.
Because his phone never rang.
Oh, it worked; it was connected; he paid his monthly bill. But it never rang. Not if you didn’t count wrong numbers. In the past year he had received thirteen wrong numbers, the majority of them asking for a French restaurant on Broadway in the 70s. Thirteen wrong numbers; that was all. Not once from Charlotte; not once from his sister; not once from anybody really, except eight people who wondered if the Château de Lille was open on Mondays and five women who were looking for Kermit, Dutch, Beau-Beau, Blanche and Charlene.
Aaron had the damn phone installed only because you couldn’t trust Cue as to when movies started, and since he hated being late he ordered the phone because that way you could call the theaters direct and find out exactly. That was all he used it for—to call movie theaters and occasionally Time when his watch stopped or Weather because outside his window it always looked like rain. One call a month, that was his average, and here, after less than a week, he was climbing the walls, begging for lung cancer, so what would he be like if Gunther took more than two weeks? Ripe for the loony bin, that much was for sure, and Aaron rolled to one side of the bed and, picking up the telephone, threw it against the wall. It fell with a satisfying crash, the receiver buzzing. He grabbed the receiver and slammed it against the wood floor a while before replacing it in its cradle. Then he stood.