I Loved You More (23 page)

In the main floor lavatory, the toilet stall where Hank's taking a dump is the place where I scored my first ounce of marijuana.

Twenty-four hard-bound books are heavy. I set my fucking powder blue suitcase down. The air condish seems to be running overtime. Still, beads of sweat roll down from my armpits.

IN THE BASEMENT,
just as you walk into the ISU bookstore, on the right of the door is a wooden table covered with orange and black ISU Bengals stickers. Behind the table, two orange plastic chairs. Overhead bright fluorescence. On the table, a sign, swirly red letters, outlined in gold:
1:00pm – 3:00pm author signing
. There's a woman at the cash register who smiles when we walk in. She looks up from her book but doesn't greet us. The black and white clock above her head is straight out of grade school. Hank sets his suitcase down, unloads his suitcase. I unload mine. Gold, diamonds, rare pearls, truth, the way we touch our books, lay them onto the table, one book on top of another, spine to spine. Hank with his yellow orange books, me with my blue green. In two piles, in three piles, finally four short piles each with one book propped against a pile so passersby can see the cover.

By one o'clock we're set up. Hank's piles of twenty-two books in front of him. My piles of twenty-four in front of me.
Hank and I move the orange chairs around, sit our asses down onto the hard plastic. Hank's wearing his good white shirt. I'm wearing my blue Oxford shirt. Good Catholic boys. On time. Prepared.

In the glass partition, bright wavy reflections of Hank and me. Hank's forehead is way too shiny. He's sweating Budweiser big time. I don't look at my reflection. In lighting like this, you don't look at your reflection. The display table next to us is piled high with Bengal Tigers, stuffed with potpourri. Lavender, eucalyptus, patchouli. Hank cuts one of his famous farts and it isn't long and we have to move a bunch of those Bengal Tigers over onto our table.

1:45. HANK SAYS,
“How many years ago you say you graduated from here?”

At first I say, “seven,” and then add again, then say, “seventeen.”

Seventeen years.

Across the double doors from us, at the cash register, the woman is middle-aged with light brown hair in a flip. Under the overhead bright fluorescence her hair looks gray. Her dress is a blue printed shirtwaist that goes below her knees. It looks gray too. Twice now, she's come over and asked Hank and me if we would like a refreshment. Each time, Hank and I say no, and each time, after she leaves, Hank says, “
A refreshment
? What is
a refreshment
?”

“She's Mormon,” I say.

“That explains it?” Hank says. “
A refreshment
? How do you know she's Mormon?”

“The frock,” I say. “The hair. You just know.”

2:15. THE UNRELENTING
fluorescence from above reflects onto the glass counter. A faux German beer mug with
ISU Bengals
printed on the side sits next to the cash register. I put
my hand on the glass counter, lean onto it. The way the Mormon Lady smiles at me would freak any New Yorker.

“Excuse me,” I say. “The campus seems so empty. Where is everybody?”

That smile of hers stays put.

“It's the weekend,” she says. “Most students have gone home.”

“Wow,” I say. “It's so different from when I went to school here.”

That smile doesn't change one centimeter. I expect the Mormon Lady to ask me when that was, or how long ago was that, or that must have been decades ago, but she doesn't say anything. Her glasses are tortoise shell, big and round.

“This book signing was advertised in the
Idaho State Journal
, wasn't it?”

“Yes,” she says. “In
Buzz of the Burg
, just last Wednesday.”

“Has anyone called or ordered any books?”

She takes off her big round tortoise shell glasses, folds them, lays them next to the faux German beer mug. Her eyes are blue, but under the light look gray.

“No,” she says. “No one has called.”

The place on the glass where my hand has rested leaves a smudge. I walk across to our table, sit back down in the orange plastic chair. At the counter, The Mormon Lady's got out the Windex and a rag.

Hank says: “Maybe these people's children, who are just now graduating from high school, will come in and buy some books.”

Hank laughs his chest up when he says that, but for a reason I don't understand yet, his words hit hard, almost knock the breath out of me. I can tell how I look by how Hank looks at me. Little Ben is all over on my face. Of course I'm trying to cover up, and of course I can't.

“Gruney! Baby!” Hank says. “What's going on?”

“Nothing,” I say.

Hank scoots his orange plastic chair up against mine.

“Your sis will show up tonight,” he says. “Don't worry.”

Hank's knee touches my knee. That's all it takes.

“It isn't just that,” I say. “I don't know. I just thought.”

I'm biting my lip. Little Ben's fucking chin is going to start turning into rubber bands any second.

“It's been almost an hour and a half,” I say. “No one is here. I thought at least Bob and Jim and Brent, maybe Fred, from high school would show. They all read the newspaper. What the fuck? And then there's my fraternity brothers and Diane and Mitch and Lloyd and Suzanne. They all work here at the university for Chrissakes.”

“You heard the lady,” Hank says. “It's Friday and everyone's gone home.”

Over at the cash register, the Mormon Lady is pretending she can't hear us.

Hank says: “Did you make plans to meet with any of these people?”

Hank's question is like a foreign language. Plans? Big Ben doesn't make plans. I was reviewed in the
New York Times
. People should just know.

“Not really,” I say.

“Did you send out any invitations?” Hank asks.

“No,” I say.

“Why?”

“They're all Mormons,” I say.

“Then why the fuck do you expect them to show up?”

Things start crashing in about then. The dream in me, ancient and so strong I hadn't even considered that it wasn't real. Like the dream I was dead and everybody who'd hurt me was standing around my open coffin crying their eyes out. My dream of coming home had played so many times in my head, I couldn't imagine any version where I wasn't the exalted hero.

In that moment, under the bright fluorescence in the hard orange plastic chair, I tried my best to answer Hank, one part of
my mind trying to contact another part, but I didn't come up with anything. Couldn't say what I didn't know yet.

Havana. I'd have been much better off in Havana, Cuba.

What Hank says next, he says no different from how Hank usually says things. Direct. No nonsense. And way too loud.

“Do they know you're gay?”

The Mormon Lady looks up. The black and white clock above her head, the red second hand, stops. 2:37. Everything stops. All the traffic lights in Pocatello, the seven people left on campus. Stop. My heart. My breath. Even Hank stops.

A pain right between my eyes. Dizzy. Fire on my heart like the sacred heart of Jesus. My stomach doing flips. Last night's margaritas, today's bad gas. Then something really weird. Something my body remembers but thought it had forgot. But it's more like a somebody.

It's Little Ben, the tormented Catholic nightmare version of him, me. That picture in the
Baltimore Catechism
of Heaven, Limbo, Purgatory, and Hell. At the top, the clouds and the sun and the bearded white God in a heavenly gown, the trumpets, the rays of light, the angels. Then down and down and down, the descent into suffering, Limbo, Venial Sin, Mortal. How my eyes went down, straight to the nastiest, the most miserable of all, at the bottom of hell. Every time. That naked guy down there, with his front to you and he's got no cock, just a straight line down there, his crotch like a woman, flames all around him up to his ass. Suffering without hope.

Little Ben down there all alone in hell. Just him and his original sin.

Everybody up in heaven pointing down at him and laughing.

THAT MORNING ON
her bed, on the white chenille bedspread I don't remember, September or October 1948, lying in the patch of sun. The Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder. She is my mother, without her I will die. I look close into her eyes to see how I'm going to be. She sprinkles the white powder on my cock and balls,
around my bum. It feels cool and dry and something else. I kick my legs, let go a big smile for my very first time.

The audacity to get hard in front of the Virgin. Our mother, Mary. My mother, Marie.

My sin.

The first time Virgin Mary Marie was alone in a room with a hard dick she could control.

All those Vatican statues with their cocks lopped off. Somewhere down in the catacombs, drawers and drawers of Dead Lorca severed penises.

Cock-hating, fucking Catholics.

How can a cockless man in hell, full of hate, flames up to his ass, no fucking way out of this mess, do anything but blame himself the way his mother blamed him? Then the humiliation, the degradation, the sharp needle adrenaline rush, the sick pain he begins to jones for: to lose, to lose, to lose and never win, to always be wrong, off, to be cast out, never to be good enough, big enough, hard enough.

Mother Church, Papal Bull. Hell is your Virgin mother got inside you. Once that shit gets in, it grows and grows and doesn't stop growing. The world outside a loop, outside what is inside, one example after another after another. How you're not good enough. How everybody else has got it better.

THE BLACK AND
white clock above the Mormon lady's head says 2:38. Hank's face is up close.
Gay
is a blinking red neon word between his black eyes and mine.

“No,” my mouth is saying. “Well, probably. Yes, I'd imagine.”

One big fucking tear comes rolling down my cheek. As soon as I feel it on my chin, I try to laugh but it doesn't work. Hank's big hand, his long fingers, give my knee a squeeze.

“Hometowns, man,” Hank says. “They always fuck you up.”

THE BATHROOM IS
the bathroom next to the pool hall. Twenty years ago, I'd go into that bathroom just to read the one line of
graffiti that maintenance didn't catch for months. Near where the stanchion is bolted to the wall:
suck cock Tues here at 4
.

Tuesdays at four, those months, I always knew where I was.

Never in that bathroom.

The day of the book signing, I am in that bathroom. Projectile vomiting eggs and ham and hash browns and tequila. Loud, strange, animal sounds coming from deep inside. It's forever I'm on my knees holding on to the big white toilet.

In the mirror, when I can stand, the me who tries to talk to me is trying to talk to me. But I'm nowhere around. All there is to see is the Most Miserable, the naked guy without a dick at the bottom of hell. His finger goes to near where the stanchion is bolted to the wall.

At the sternum, right in the middle of my chest, a light bulb that you can see the filament flickering.

Idaho.

This is what we do in Idaho.

The Most Miserable of all is everywhere.

And all we know how to do is run.

2:55. WHEN I
make it back into the bookstore, Betty and Fergi, Margaret's friends from grade school, are standing at the table. They're hot and out of breath, not yet used to the air condish. Hank stares up at them. I stare. The Mormon Lady stares.

“I hope we're not interrupting anything,” Fergi says.

“We thought we'd be too late,” Betty says.

“Are there any books left?”

Betty and Fergi each buy one of Hank's books, one of mine. When I go to make my first author signature in Betty's book, I write
thaks
instead of
thanks
. Crooked shaky penmanship. Fuck.

Fergi's tall and still has her ratted black hair from the sixties. Betty's not a bottle-blonde anymore and a mom three times. In her, I can just barely see the girl from my childhood. They talk at the same time and too fast and ask a lot of questions. Life in New York. How it feels to publish a novel. What they want
to ask, they don't. Are you really a homosexual? And: Is Hank your boyfriend? The Great Omniscient Hank watches me, watches them, watches all. I ask about their marriages, their children.

When Betty and Fergi leave, both of them give me a hug. I try to make my body not stiff. Close my mouth tight, my breath. They hold Hank's hand a little too long. He looks them back in the eye. Let's them see they're being seen.

OUT ON THE
quad, in the bright hot windy day, the wind feels good on my face. In my lungs.

Idaho.

In a moment I understand why I've always liked the wind. The way it blows on your ears you cannot feel alone.