Stories for Boys: A Memoir (4 page)

Authors: Gregory Martin

BOOK: Stories for Boys: A Memoir

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I hate this. I prefer no break, no distraction, from misery. I want what Jamaica Kincaid calls a “prolonged visit to the bile duct.”

I did not want to tell my father about Oliver’s and Evan’s summer plans. I wanted to rail and shout, “I do not want to be here! How is this even possible that I’m unpacking boxes in this cheap apartment? This isn’t fair. Why do I have to do this? What the hell has happened? How did you suddenly become a complete mystery? Who are you?” But no. I was not vigilant enough. My father said, “But this turkey sandwich still hits the spot,” and without thinking, I said, “Definitely.”

Spending time with my father in those first two weeks after he attempted suicide, I realized how truly talented he was at the pretense of normalcy. His ability to withstand silences without awkwardness, to deflect emotionally-loaded questions with mild evasions, was Olympian. It was as if he had trained his entire life for this event.

At one point, I asked him if he thought his mom (whom we called MomMom), ever suspected that he was gay when he was a teenager.“No. She had no idea.” My father was attaching the cables of the DVD to the TV. “I think I might get DirecTV. Do you know anything about that?”

“No. Do you think your sisters ever suspected anything?”

“No. If I get DirecTV, then I can tape
Jeopardy!
. Well, it doesn’t really tape it, because you don’t have to rewind. It would just store it for you. I’ve wanted to do that for a while, but your mother didn’t think it was worth the expense. When we get the phone line connected and the internet up and running, that’s something I’m going to look into.”

The day passed. My father’s cheap apartment looked less and less bare and more like an inhabited place of exile.

WE WENT OUT to dinner at Perkins. My father ordered chicken fried steak in a thick gravy. I had a cheeseburger and fries. We were quiet together for several minutes.

Finally I said, “How did you sleep last night?”

“ Terribly. You want to know something?”

“What?”

“If your brother hadn’t been with me those first two nights at the hotel, I would have gone to the park.”

My brother had flown back to Maryland nearly a week before. I did and did not want to know the answer to the question I then asked. “Did you go there, to the park, last night?”

I saw what I took to be fear flash across my father’s face. Then he set his jaw and narrowed his eyes, as if I had just broken some unspoken agreement the two of us had always shared, as if, according to the rules, we could imply such things but not state them outright. “I don’t want to answer that,” he said and looked away, out the window, to the traffic headed north on Division Street, the cars with their lights on in the dusk.

“There’s no reason to lie anymore,” I said.

He thought about this for a while. I could almost see him struggling against the inertia of chronic untruthfulness. Then he said angrily, “Okay. Well then, yes. Yes, I did. I went there last night.”

Spokesman Review
Metro Edition

PLAGUE IN THE PARK

Those trying to enjoy creek, river areas find debris repulsive

BYLINE: JoNel Aleccia, Staff writer
SECTION: A; Pg. 1

There’s nothing new about the sexual detritus left in the bushes at Spokane’s High Bridge Park.
Discarded underwear, empty lubrication packets and used condoms are only the most visible evidence of public sex acts occurring regularly at the 200-acre city site. In fact, almost no one – from City Council members and park managers to health officials and police officers – disputes that the area has been notorious for lewd activity for years, even decades.
“It’s just kind of one of those knowns in Spok ane,” said Spokane Police Officer Jennifer DeRuwe.
But that explanation doesn’t sit well with Ruby La Fleur, 62, a longtime neighbor who said she’s worried about the health effects of the sordid litter – and tired of the people who leave it behind.
“I have grandkids up here,” said La Fleur, who lives just above the park at the confluence of the Spokane River and Latah Creek.
“I don’t want them walking through the bushes, saying ‘Grandma Ruby, what’s that toilet paper? What are those rubber gloves for? What are those pictures?’”
And La Fleur is not alone. Spokane police have been fielding an increasing number of complaints about the area of High Bridge Park and nearby People’s Park, said DeRuwe.
In the past five years, the department has recorded 27 calls for service involving lewd conduct and 30 calls about suspicious people in vehicles, said Cpl. Tom Lee, police information officer.
Some of those calls have led to arrests, including six in June for lewd conduct.
But that’s only a fraction of the actual illegal behavior that goes on, said La Fleur and a young city parks employee who has been assigned to the area this summer.
In the nearly two months that he’s worked in the park, the 22-year-old caretaker says he has been propositioned by men seeking homosexual sex and witnessed evidence of public sexual activity.
The young man, who asked not to be identified because of fear about his safety, said he has begun warning unwary visitors attracted by the new disc golf course and a new bike trail link.
“I tell them, ‘Don’t let your kids go in there.’”

Propensities

I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO RECONCILE MY FATHER’S “LEWD conduct” with the man I thought I knew. My father? 1,000 men? What was I supposed to call that? Desire gone haywire, its idle set too high? Compulsion? Obsession? Addiction? Whatever it was called, I had to find some way to separate my father’s authentic sexuality from what seemed like absurdity and squalor.

My father didn’t go to a public park late at night for anonymous sex nine days after he tried to kill himself because he was seeking existential healing. He went for a moment of relief. What I wished, then, was that I didn’t know this about him, because this knowledge pained and embarrassed me. I did not want to accommodate it, integrate it somehow into my notions of family and father. I did not want to be associated with such sordid desperation. I felt tainted, compromised, ashamed. I was this man’s son?

But I refused to pursue these thoughts then, in those first few weeks and months. I refused to admit these things to myself, to descend to that level of emotional honesty, because such acknowledgements ran contrary to my notion of myself as open, understanding, compassionate. These were not the feelings of the person I thought myself to be.

The father I’d always known was grounded, affable, calm. But this man was driven by a carnal appetite I couldn’t comprehend. I’d always assumed that my father’s inner life was a mirror of his outer life. This man’s inner life was a cauldron, a maelstrom. Yes, his homosexuality was a shock. But the real, lasting shock is that unquenchable desire that I never, not once, had any intimation or sense of—that he was so profoundly different from the man I thought I knew. 1,000 men. The self-loathing and shame and dark, inner loneliness; the cathartic, self-flagellation that must accompany the confession of such a number.

Subject: RE: checking in
Date: Wed, 30 May 2007

Hi Greg,

Sorry about taking so long to reply to your email. I didn’t have internet service until last week and I’ve gotten so little email over the past few years that I really didn’t even think to check until the other night and it was too late to give a reply the thought I thought appropriate.

I am doing OK as far as I know. I don’t break down into a ball of mush anymore and that’s an improvement. I think a lot about your Mom and I miss her a great deal. The divorce papers have been filled and will probably be final on Sept. 20. I, quite frankly, look forward to having an excuse to call Mom just to talk to her for a while. Otherwise, I’m doing OK at work and getting the apartment settled. This weekend, I bought a new sofa and side chair as well as some living room tables. They won’t be delivered for about 4 weeks.

As to who I really am, I’m still and always will be the same person you’ve known all your life, except that now you know the one part of my life that I’ve only shared with a Priest in confession before. You have lost an image of me once thought to be carved in stone and it must be difficult to imagine what might eventually replace it.

About your questions: Your mother and I were raised in a different atmosphere, both from each other and from the era in which you were raised. We didn’t talk about such things openly, especially in the South. It never occurred to me to bring it up, much less admit to it. It was enough that I felt so much hate for my father because of what he did to me and the rest of my family. There was then, as there is now a great deal of shame attached to sexual abuse by a family member, especially one’s own father. The difference now is that children are encouraged to talk to a responsible person in literally dozens of places in their environment, TV, radio, school, church, camp, etc. This was never the case when I grew up. I don’t know what else to say, except that it was a different time.

Even though I know your papers, work, and family take up a great deal of your time, I hope this kind of dialogue can continue as much as you are able. I promise to check my email more often. Please give Christine and the boys a kiss and a hug for me and tell them I love you all very much.

Dad

The Mayor

MY NICKNAME AT THE PARK IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD IS “The Mayor.” It’s earned. I play the part. I know the names of all the parents, the toddlers, all the babies in the Baby Bjorns. I know the names of most of the dogs. I remember the names of visiting grandparents and where they’re from. I don’t have to try. I can talk sports or charter schools, sleep-deprivation or kitchen remodel while at the same time making sure the boys aren’t pouring sand on a baby’s head, peeing in the bushes with their shorts and underpants at their ankles, or chasing a ball into the street. I have a talent for benign neglect. At the park, when someone asks how I’m doing, I give them an update, generally upbeat, and follow up with my own questions. I tell corny jokes. Some of the best involve Bascos – people who share my Basque heritage. Here’s one.

Five Bascos are in a boat and they have six cigarettes but no lighter. So they decide to throw one of the cigarettes overboard to make the boat a cigarette lighter.

All my life, I had prided myself on my emotional stability, my lack of angst. I took credit for my temperament the way one might take credit for a pleasant smile which never required orthodontic intervention. I didn’t need to always “process.” The overexamined life was not worth living. I believed in myself. I believed that, with hard work, good things would happen. I said things like, “You make your own luck.” I suffered from a classic case of what psychologists call “optimism bias,” believing that I was far more competent and in control than I actually was.

But that summer after my father attempted suicide, I stopped bantering. I cut the corny jokes from my stump speech. I found myself processing, strangely, with my constituents.

“Hey, it’s the Mayor, how are you?”

I’d wait for Oliver and Evan to run over to the swings or the playground structure. Then I’d say, “Well, not so good, really.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, my father tried to kill himself. He’s gay. He was molested as a child.”

A look of confusion and then horror would come over their face, followed by a long awkward silence. “Wow. That’s hard. I’m really sorry.”

We’d stand there for awhile, looking at our feet, then at the kids on the playground having fun. After an excruciating twenty more seconds or so, one of us would walk off in the direction of our children. It was embarrassing. Aside from my easily stored mayoral data set, I did not know these parents well. My closest friends had heard about what had happened from Christine. It was a relief that they knew and I didn’t have to explain anything. Most offered brief, non-specific consolations, but didn’t attempt to draw me out. I wandered the periphery of our summer gatherings. A few friends from my past who lived far away listened on the phone while I talked and talked. But at the park, with these playground acquaintances, I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t just go through the motions. I must have had a feral look in my eyes, like I might start howling any moment.

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