Naked (12 page)

I LIKE GUYS. He held the paper above his head, turning a slow circle so that everyone might get a chance to see. I supposed
he had originally intended to plant the paper on my bunk for one of the counselors to find. Presenting it himself had foiled
the note’s intended effect. Rather than beating me with sticks and heavy shoes, the other boys simply groaned and looked away,
wondering why he’d picked the thing up and carried it around in his pants pocket. He might as well have hoisted a glistening
turd, shouting, “Look what he did!” Touching such a foul document made him suspect and guilty by association. In attempting
to discredit each other, we wound up alienating ourselves even further.

Jason
— even his name seemed affected. During meals I studied him from across the room. Here I was, sweating onto my plate, my stomach
knotted and cramped, when
he
was the one full of shit. Clearly he had tricked me, cast a spell or slipped something into my food. I watched as he befriended
a girl named Theodora and held her hand during a screening of
A Lovely Way to Die,
one of the cave paintings the head counselor offered as a weekly movie.

She wasn’t a bad person, Theodora. Someday the doctors might find a way to transplant a calf’s brain into a human skull, and
then she’d be just as lively and intelligent as he was. I tried to find a girlfriend of my own, but my one possible candidate
was sent back home when she tumbled down the steps of the Parthenon, causing serious damage to her leg brace.

Jason looked convincing enough in the company of his girlfriend. They scrambled about the various ruins, snapping each other’s
pictures while I hung back fuming, watching them nuzzle and coo. My jealousy stemmed from the belief that he had been cured.
One fistful of my flesh and he had lost all symptoms of the disease.

Camp ended and I flew home with my legs crossed, dropping my bag of stolen souvenirs and racing to the bathroom, where I spent
the next several days sitting on the toilet and studying my face in a hand mirror.
I like guys
. The words had settled themselves into my features. I was a professional now, and it showed.

I returned to my volunteer job at the mental hospital, carrying harsh Greek cigarettes as an incentive to some of the more
difficult patients.

“Faggot!” a woman shouted, stooping to protect her collection of pinecones. “Get your faggoty hands away from my radio transmitters.”

“Don’t mind Mary Elizabeth,” the orderly said. “She’s crazy.”

Maybe not, I thought, holding a pinecone up against my ear. She’s gotten the faggot part right, so maybe she was onto something.

The moment we boarded our return flight from Kennedy to Raleigh, Lisa re-arranged her hair, dropped her accent, and turned
to me saying, “Well, I thought that was very nice, how about you?” Over the course of five minutes, she had eliminated all
traces of her reckless European self. Why couldn’t I do the same?

In late August my class schedule arrived along with the news that I would not be bused. There had been violence in other towns
and counties, trouble as far away as Boston; but in Raleigh the transition was peaceful. Not only students but many of the
teachers had been shifted from one school to another. My new science teacher was a black man very adept at swishing his way
across the room, mocking everyone from Albert Einstein to the dweebish host of a popular children’s television program. Black
and white, the teachers offered their ridicule as though it were an olive branch. “Here,” they said, “this is something we
each have in common, proof that we’re all brothers under the skin.”

The man was sent to our class to inspire us, and personally speaking, I thought he did an excellent job. After introducing
himself in a relaxed and genial manner, he started toward the back of the room, only to be stopped midway by what we came
to know as “the invisible wall,” that transparent barrier realized only by psychotics, drug fiends, and other members of the
show business community.

I sat enthralled as he righted himself and investigated the imaginary wall with his open palms, running his hands over the
seemingly hard surface in hopes of finding a way out. Moments later he was tugging at an invisible rope, then struggling in
the face of a violent, fantastic wind.

You know you’re living in a small town when you can reach the ninth grade without ever having seen a mime. As far as I was
concerned, this man was a prophet, a genius, a pioneer in the field of entertainment — and here he was in Raleigh, North Carolina!
It was a riot, the way he imitated the teacher, turning down the corners of his mouth and riffling through his imaginary purse
in search of gum and aspirin. Was this guy funny or what!

I went home and demonstrated the invisible wall for my two-year-old brother, who pounded on the very real wall beside his
playpen, shrieking and wailing in disgust. When my mother asked what I’d done to provoke him, I threw up my hands in mock
innocence before lowering them to retrieve the imaginary baby that lay fussing at my feet. I patted the back of my little
ghost to induce gas and was investigating its soiled diaper when I noticed my mother’s face assume an expression she reserved
for unspeakable horror. I had seen this look only twice before: once when she was caught in the path of a charging, rabid
pig and then again when I told her I wanted a peach-colored velveteen blazer with matching slacks.

“I don’t know who put you up to this,” she said, “but I’ll kill you myself before I watch you grow up to be a clown. If you
want to paint your face and prance around on street corners, then you’ll have to find some other place to live because I sure
as hell won’t have it in my house.” She turned to leave.
“Or in my yard,”
she added.

Fearful of her retribution, I did as I was told, ending my career in mime with a whimper rather than the silent bang I had
hoped for.

The visiting actor returned to our classroom a few months later, removing his topcoat to reveal a black body stocking worn
with a putty-colored neck brace, the result of a recent automobile accident. This afternoon’s task was to introduce us to
the works of William Shakespeare, and once again I was completely captivated by his charm and skill. When the words became
confusing, you needed only to pay attention to the actor’s face and hands to understand that this particular character was
not just angry, but vengeful. I loved the undercurrent of hostility that lay beneath the surface of this deceptively beautiful
language. It seemed a shame that people no longer spoke this way, and I undertook a campaign to reintroduce Elizabethan English
to the citizens of North Carolina.

“Perchance, fair lady, thou dost think me unduly vexed by the sorrowful state of thine quarters,” I said to my mother as I
ran the vacuum cleaner over the living-room carpet she was inherently too lazy to bother with. “These foul specks, the evidence
of life itself, have sullied not only thine shag-tempered mat but also thine character. Be ye mad, woman? Were it a punishable
crime to neglect thine dwellings, you, my feeble-spirited mistress, would hang from the tallest tree in penitence for your
shameful ways. Be there not garments to launder and iron free of turbulence? See ye not the porcelain plates and hearty mugs
waiting to be washed clean of evidence? Get thee to thine work, damnable lady, and quickly, before the products of thine very
loins raise their collected fists in a spirit born both of rage and indignation, forcibly coaxing the last breath from the
foul chamber of thine vain and upright throat. Go now, wastrel, and get to it!”

My mother reacted as if I had whipped her with a short length of yarn. The intent was there, but the weapon was strange and
inadequate. I could tell by the state of my room that she spent the next day searching my dresser for drugs. The clothes I
took pride in neatly folding were crammed tight into their drawers with no regard for color or category. I smelled the evidence
of cigarettes and noticed the coffee rings on my desk. My mother had been granted forgiveness on several previous occasions,
but mess with mine drawers and ye have just made thyself an enemy for life. Tying a feather to the shaft of my ballpoint pen,
I quilled her a letter. “The thing that ye search for so desperately,” I wrote, “resideth not in mine well-ordered chamber,
but in the questionable content of thine own character.” I slipped the note into her purse, folded twice and sealed with wax
from the candles I now used to light my room. I took to brooding, refusing to let up until I received a copy of Shakespeare’s
collected plays. Once they were acquired, I discovered them dense and difficult to follow. Reading the words made me feel
dull and stupid, but speaking them made me feel powerful. I found it best to simply carry the book from room to room, occasionally
skimming for fun words I might toss into my ever fragrant vocabulary. The dinner hour became either unbearable or excruciating,
depending on my mood.

“Methinks, kind sir, most gentle lady, fellow siblings all, that this barnyard fowl be most tasty and succulent, having simmered
in its own sweet juices for such a time as it might take the sun to pass, rosy and full-fingered, across the plum-colored
sky for the course of a twilight hour. ’Tis crisp yet juicy, this plump bird, satisfied in the company of such finely roasted
neighbors. Hear me out, fine relations, and heed my words, for methinks it adventurous, and fanciful, too, to saddle mine
fork with both fowl
and
carrot at the exact same time, the twin juices blending together in a delicate harmony which doth cajole and enliven mine
tongue in a spirit of unbridled merriment! What say ye, fine father, sisters, and infant brother, too, that we raise our flagons
high in celebration of this hearty feast, prepared lovingly and with utmost grace by this dutiful woman we have the good fortune
to address as wife, wench, or mother!”

My enthusiasm knew no limits. Soon my mother was literally begging me to wait in the car while she stepped into the bank or
grocery store.

I was at the orthodontist’s office, placing a pox upon the practice of dentistry, when the visiting actor returned to our
classroom.

“You missed it,” my friend Lois said. “The man was so indescribably powerful that I was practically crying, that’s how brilliant
he was.” She positioned her hands as if she were supporting a tray. “I don’t know what more I can say. The words, they just
don’t exist. I could try to explain his realness, but you’d never be able to understand it. Never,” she repeated. “Never,
never, never.”

Lois and I had been friends for six months when our relationship suddenly assumed a competitive edge. I’d never cared who
made better grades or had more spending money. We each had our strengths; the important thing was to honor each other for
the thing that person did best. Lois held her Chablis better than I, and I respected her for that. Her frightening excess
of self-confidence allowed her to march into school wearing a rust-colored Afro wig, and I stood behind her one hundred percent.
She owned more records than I did, and because she was nine months older, also knew how to drive a car and did so as if she
were rushing to put out a fire.
Fine,
I thought,
good for her.
My superior wisdom and innate generosity allowed me to be truly happy for Lois up until the day she questioned my ability
to understand the visiting actor. The first few times he visited, she’d been just like the rest of them, laughing at his neck
brace and rolling her eyes at the tangerine-sized lump in his tights.
I
was the one who first identified his brilliance, and now she was saying I couldn’t understand him? Methinks not.

“Honestly, woman,” I said to my mother on our way to the dry cleaner, “to think that this low-lying worm might speak to me
of greatness as though it were a thing invisible to mine eyes is more than I can bear. Her words doth strike mine heart with
the force of a punishing blow, leaving me both stunned and highly vexed, too. Hear me, though, for I shall bide my time, quietly,
and with cunning, striking back at the very hour she doth least expect it. Such an affront shall not go unchallenged, of that
you may rest assured, gentle lady. My vengeance will hold the sweet taste of the ripest berry, and I shall savor it slowly.”

“You’ll get over it,” my mother said. “Give it a week or two and I’m sure everything will be back to normal. I’m going in
now to get your father’s shirts and I want you to wait here,
in the car.
Trust me, this whole thing will be forgotten about in no time.”

This had become her answer to everything. She’d done some asking around and concluded I’d been bitten by what her sister referred
to as “the drama bug.” My mother was convinced that this was a phase, just like all the others. A few weeks of fanfare and
I’d drop show business, just like I had the guitar and my private detective agency. I hated having my life’s ambition reduced
to the level of a common cold. This wasn’t a bug, but a full-fledged virus. It might lay low for a year or two, but this little
germ would never go away. It had nothing to do with talent or initiative. Rejection couldn’t weaken it, and no amount of success
would ever satisfy it. Once diagnosed, the prognosis was terminal.

The drama bug seemed to strike hardest with Jews, homosexuals, and portly girls, whose faces were caked with acne medication.
These were individuals who, for one reason or another, desperately craved attention. I would later discover it was a bad idea
to gather more than two of these people in an enclosed area for any length of time. The stage was not only a physical place
but also a state of mind, and the word
audience
was defined as anyone forced to suffer your company. We young actors were a string of lightbulbs left burning twenty-four
hours a day, exhausting ourselves and others with our self-proclaimed brilliance.

I had the drama bug and Lois had a car. Weighing the depth of her momentary transgression against the rich rewards of her
private chariot, I found it within my bosom to forgive my wayward friend. I called her the moment I learned the visiting actor
had scheduled a production of
Hamlet
set to take place in the amphitheater of the Raleigh Rose Garden. He himself would direct and play the title role, but the
other parts were up for grabs. We auditioned, and because we were the youngest and least experienced, Lois and I were assigned
the roles of the traveling players Hamlet uses to bait his uncle Claudius. It wasn’t the part I was hoping for, but I accepted
my role with quiet dignity. I had a few decent speeches and planned to work them to the best of my ability.