Blind Sight (21 page)

“What about Ecstatic Dance Class? That’s pretty juicy. I still think you can market this whole being-raised-by-women angle. I’ve milked the my-mom-was a-single-mom stuff myself. It totally works.”

“I see dangers with that,” I said. “I mean, what did I really learn from playing the bongo for Ecstatic Women? I learned that women like to run around and yell as much as boys, only they don’t shove each other. They like to wave scarves. Some women, anyway; obviously not all women are into scarf waving. I learned that when you are a thirteen-year-old boy, it’s problematic to be in a room with
adult women in leotards. I learned that the more grounded I am in my yang, the more free I am to experience my yin. But I don’t think a college admissions board wants to hear about my yang.”

“That chick wrote about
Star Trek
.”

“Yeah, but she tied it into lessons about a shared sense of purpose and collective humanity.”

“We could all use grounded yang or what have you, right?” Mark asked. “Imagine if that was a thing that everybody did. Like, before the Senate sat down to make laws and pass bills and shit, they all ran around waving scarves while you played the bongo for them.”

“That would be cool. Although I’m not sure that the Inner Goddess would be helpful with things like the federal deficit.”

“More people would watch C-SPAN, though. Anyway, you learned a life lesson. It’s better to hit a bongo drum than a face, is all I’m saying. Your mother did well by you.”

“Maybe that should be my first sentence?” I asked. “It’s better to hit a bongo drum than a face?”

“It’s not bad. Not bad. You want to catch the reader’s attention, like you said. Yeah, we could work with that. Put it in quotes and write it down.”

So I did.

“ ‘That is something my mother taught me,’ ” Mark said slowly. “ ‘And while she mostly let me learn my own lessons, that was one I was prepared to accept at face value, as it were.’ ”

“Ha,” I said, typing.

“ ‘I have never hit a face,’ ” Mark continued. “ ‘But I’ve gotten pretty good on the bongos.’ ”

“Cool,” I said. “You’re good at this.”

“I’m channeling,” he said. “I’m channeling you. It’s making me more interesting. Okay, now we talk about how you come from a single-parent home.”

I told him that it really didn’t feel like that.

“Yeah, because you had all these great people in your life,” he
said. “That’s the point of the essay. Okay, so write this: ‘I was raised by my mother, my grandmother, and my two sisters. I’ve had no specific’—um, what’d you call it—
‘paradigm
of maleness to observe at close hand, but I think the women in my family did a pretty good job of teaching me how to be a man.’ ”

“What’s a real man anyway?” I asked. “Like, what is the criteria for that?”

“Who knows? Anyway, let’s give examples. What did you learn from your Nana?”

From my grandmother I learned that to believe in a biblical God totally requires that you carry an invisible sword with which you can slice off anything that doesn’t make sense, seems ridiculous or cruel, or flies in the face of every evidence of the physical world and the conclusions of reason.

“Ummm …” I said.

“Write this: ‘My grandmother taught me how to change the tire on our Chevy Impala.’ ”

“You,” I said, “are kidding me.”

“It’s not like they’re gonna check,” he pointed out. “Keep going: ‘She also taught me how to bake a mean pie crust. This may not be a traditional “manly” attribute but it’s useful if, like me, you really enjoy pie.’ ”

I typed that out.

“This is great,” Mark said. “I like being you. Okay, how many words we got?”

“One hundred forty-nine. We’re halfway there.”

“Now you can say what your sisters taught you.”

“Oh well,” I laughed. “Where to start, really?”

“Highlight reel. Or wait. Just free-associate for a sec.”

My sisters taught me that my maternal grandfather was killed by accordion-wielding natives. It’s not the bleeding that hurts when you get your period, it’s the muscular cramping and the bloating. Some bras have this wire thing that pushes everything up. Girls masturbate
too but they like to think of stories more when they do it. Umm … how to ride a skateboard, how to ride a bike with no hands. The three parts of the Hegelian dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Mrs. Podner gives pop quizzes so always look over your notes. Foreign films are cool. Drawing a horizontal line though the number seven. Don’t count on nobody claiming the last piece or bite because someone
always
does and so if you really want it you should say something. I went on like this for awhile and then Mark closed his eyes, sort of conducting the air with his hands while he was thinking.

“My sisters taught me how to dance with a girl,” Mark said at last. “This is where the man needs to lead and make all the decisions, but, as my sister Pearl says, the man should never get too used to this idea.”

It’s not that far off. Kind of like the cartoon version of Pearl.

“In addition to the bongo drum lessons, my mother taught me …” Mark prompted.

“My mother taught me that my father was a beautiful comet on his own path and that I should honor him.” I raised my left eyebrow at my dad, the same eyebrow that he raises when he raises one eyebrow.

“Your mother taught you to have compassion for assholes.”

“My mother taught me not to judge anyone as an asshole.”

“Wow, Luke, you said another bad word,” Mark laughed. “Good thing we’re not talking about what you learned from your father. Okay, let’s have your mom teach you dude stuff. Throwing a baseball. Okay, maybe not throwing a baseball. Let’s keep it somewhat realistic.”

“Installing a ceiling fan?” I suggested. “I did that at Sara’s studio.”

“With your mom?”

“By myself, but I had an instruction manual.” I could see where he was going, though. Yin and yang. Masculine and feminine aspects of a similar action. “How to tie a tie and make an origami crane? How to shave and how to cut flowers?”

“Yes, keep it manly, though. We don’t want you to sound like a wuss.”

I typed, then showed him what we had so far.

“Good, good. Yeah, how to fix electrical wiring and how to meditate, that’s good. See what a great guy your mom taught you how to be?”

“Actually,” I told him, “recent studies show that children are mostly influenced by their peer group, rather than their parents. And people often get their data backward. They think that little Jimmie is a rebel because his dad is so authoritarian. But it’s just as likely that Jimmie actually
is
a rebellious person, and his behavior is
making
his dad act in an authoritarian way. Little Jimmie would be just as much a rebel if he were raised in a commune. And hey, you didn’t have a father around growing up either.”

“ ‘
I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing,
’ ” Mark quoted. “You got me thinking about
King Lear
again.”

“You should do Shakespeare,” I said, making him repeat the quote so I could write it down. I liked the sound of it. “Maybe you could do a production of
King Lear.
”

“I think I’m a little old for Edmund,” Mark said. “Although God, that would be great. Anyway, back to you. Now that we’ve been cute and gotten their attention with some humor, let’s go for the deep stuff. Say something about yin and yang and how we need to have both to be complete.”

So I wrote about how Chinese philosophy contains the idea of yin and yang, two opposite forces that balance each other and move together as part of a whole: darkness and light, hard and soft, masculine and feminine, and without this unification, one cannot be complete. I read it out loud to Mark.

“And you say you can’t write an essay. I could never write that sentence. Wait. Check this out: ‘Understanding the flow of yin and yang within you is essential for understanding yourself as a complete human being.’ ”

“That’s perfect,” I told him. “That sounds exactly like something Sara would say. Okay, what next?”

“Start talking about how this balance is something that you seek out. That as committed as you are to your academics, and to competitive sports, you know you also need time for contemplation, and for personal relationships. Those are the things that give meaning to the other stuff. Like, enhance it.”

I felt sort of in character at that point. Like I could see an alternate Luke who would say this kind of thing, you know, sincerely. Mark read over my shoulder as I typed, saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s good.”

“Okay, I need a concluding sentence,” I told him. “C’mon, Dad. Bring me the juice.”

“ ‘So when I really think about it,’ ” Mark said, grandly, “ ‘I have the women in my family to thank. Not for showing me how to be a real man, but for showing me the path to becoming a real person.’ ”

I checked word count. We had 413 words. Done.

“Read it back to me,” Mark commanded, settling himself back into his seat.

So I did.

“Wow,” I said, when we had finished laughing. “It’s totally ridiculous, but I think it might actually work.”

“Welcome to show business.”

The flight attendant appeared with drinks and a cheese plate. I showed Mark my list for Hawaii. We ate some cheese and he fell asleep again.

I’m glad I have this essay. In case the real me turns out to be too hard to organize, it’s good to have backup.

Luke puts his computer away, reclines his seat back. He looks at his sleeping father, smiles, shuts his own eyes.

There had been a conversation, after the cheese eating, which Luke has chosen not to record.

“Hey,” Mark said. “Getting back to little Jimmie who is a natural rebel?” Mark had given a quick glance at the passengers seated across from them, an elderly couple who were napping. The two men behind them were both wearing headphones and working on their computers.

“Yeah?” Luke said.

“So say someone is a closet case,” Mark said, his voice so low Luke had to lean in to hear. “We think they are a closet case because society doesn’t accept their lifestyle, and they are afraid or whatever. But maybe they would be a closet case no matter what.”

“Like, there would there still be closet cases in a totally accepting society? Like being a closet case is a state of being, not a reaction to something?” Luke kept his voice low too.

“Right.”

“Well, probably,” Luke said, who didn’t know if this was true but had correctly guessed that Mark would like it to be. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Mark had said. “Probably”

Luke thinks now that he and his father might be on to something, but that social activists—including his sister Aurora—would never accept that “closet case” could simply be another delineation of sexuality. Aurora might even say that Mark had an obligation to come out. A flight attendant appears with an extra blanket. Luke takes it from her, and unfolds it over Mark’s sleeping form. Tenderly, he tucks his father in.

S
o you know when it’s really great weather, really warm and sunny but not too hot and the air is really fresh and you’re almost freaking out that it’s so nice? Yeah, that’s when the weather of wherever you are is trying to imitate the weather of Hawaii. Likewise whenever you see waterfalls or bunches of tropical plants or beaches with clear waters you are probably seeing places that are doing their best to look as much like Hawaii as possible.

My dad says there are other places as beautiful, but that Hawaii is special because it’s still America and so you don’t feel as much like a tourist here, you still feel like you’re home, and that makes a difference.

“I like the idea of being a total stranger, though, too,” I said. “Stranger in a strange land. Totally out of my element.”

“Everywhere is your element, Luke.”

We were originally supposed to be here for ten days, but after the
fifth day, my dad extended it to a full two weeks. I’m glad because I really think he needs the vacation.

Anyway, it’s like every day here is the best day ever. Every morning we get up and go for a run, or we do sprints on the beach. Then we make each other breakfast at our condo. Then we go for surfing lessons with this guy Edvin, who is totally cool. After surfing my dad and I eat someplace and then we snorkel, or hike, or ride around on these scooters we rented. Every night we go to the same restaurant, Iolani’s, which has organic food and where we’ve gotten to know all the people that work there. They call us “the boys.” After dinner we go back to our condo and play Scrabble and talk and just hang out. Mark’s been telling me stories: about things he did as a kid, about stuff that happened to him in New York, about making movies and being on television. Sometimes he’ll stop in the middle of a story and say, “That was October 1996, so how old were you then?” and it’s like we’re able to draw this line from the Mark-that-was to the me-that-was. Or we’re able to move the parallel lines of our lives closer together.

Tonight we were walking on the beach back to the condo from Iolani’s and we passed these two guys who were holding hands, and about a hundred yards after we passed them he said, “What do you think about that?”

“About what?” I said, although I knew he meant those two guys.

“To see two guys holding hands like that. You saw that, right?”

“Yeah, sure. I didn’t think anything.”

“No, you did.”

“Um, well, I noticed it, I guess,” I admitted. “You don’t see guys holding hands that often. I guess I was glad that they were. You know, that they felt comfortable and all.”

“In front of their gay friends they feel comfortable holding hands. When they’re at the mostly gay restaurant or the rainbow resort, or the all-gay synagogue or whatever, they don’t have to think about it. But I bet when they saw us walking toward them there was some
moment where they consciously decided to keep holding hands. Maybe they felt comfortable, but I bet they still had to think about it.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Luke? I worried that I kind of … grossed you out, in Chicago?”

“You didn’t,” I told him. “You could have told me right away that you wanted to see somebody, but it’s okay.”