The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (4 page)

I remembered his body next to mine, hot. I imagined the things we might have done, the things we would never do.

CHAPTER 5
               

I can’t remember exactly when, but my father, being uncharacteristically intimate, told me what he believed to be true about Rick’s death. It may have been a couple of months or a couple of years after it happened.

“The kid killed himself,” my dad said. “His father even managed to get the newspapers to lie.” It was an odd thing to tell me, although I appreciated it. In retrospect, I think that my dad, who courted the notion of suicide, envied Rick’s guts.

My mother’s opinion of a person who chose to take his or her own life was dictated by her belief in the laws of the Catholic Church. She liked to say that she was “educated by nuns,” which seemed to suggest her moral and intellectual superiority. And while her intelligence was never in question, her moral code was blurry. She may have avoided meat on Fridays, but there were other temptations that she was unable to control. No longer validated by my father, she had a longing to be emotionally and physically appreciated by the opposite sex that was not quelled by her spiritual beliefs.

Her inexplicable absences began slowly but gained momentum as the marriage unraveled. The more Daddy was away from the home, either hospitalized or living alone in a downtown hotel, the more Mommy cavorted the nights away. One night a week became two nights a week became three nights a week. No Daddy, no Mommy, at eight years old.

Grandma Katie often babysat me when my dad was in the hospital and Mommy was “working late.” One night when she was watching me, the news came, a phone call that she’d probably been dreading for several years but I had never even imagined.

I had a good and a bad grandma, like the good and the bad witches of Oz. Grandma Katie goodness.

I could tell the phone call was serious by the lifelessness in her voice. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I understand. Yes, that’s true. Why, thank you. Yes, I will. Thank you ever so much.”

She hung up the phone, gracefully made the sign of the cross, and whispered a quick prayer.

“Your uncle John died,” she said. Her voice was flat, hollow sounding. Her flesh and blood had died.

She then began pacing around the dining room table, where I had been attempting to put together a model airplane. She moved as if she had a destination to reach in a limited amount of time, negotiating the right-angle turns with a certain militaristic precision.

The house was silent except for the sound of her breathing, which seemed to be increasingly labored. I was probably holding my breath, having never seen anything like this.

I sat in the chair that my uncle John sat in when he had come to visit. While it was clear that she didn’t want me to talk, it was equally apparent that she didn’t object to my witnessing this expression of grief, hurt, pain and anger.

After what must have been at least twenty minutes, she had worn herself out. Determined to restore a sense of normalcy, she said, “It’s time for a snack.”

After our conversationless snack (popcorn and Pepsi), I asked her to tell me the story about Uncle John and the teddy bear.

“Again?

“He was always more questioning than his brothers,” she said. “And he didn’t believe everything he heard.

“So one day I saw him, from the kitchen window, walking toward the railroad tracks clutching his teddy bear. He must have been six or seven years old.

“He knew he was forbidden to get to close to the tracks. Even though I trusted him, he seemed to be on a mission that made me nervous.

“So I followed him, keeping several yards behind him. He did not know I was there.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw him getting closer and closer to the tracks. I suddenly realized that this kid of mine had timed his walk to coincide precisely with an approaching train.

“Even if I had screamed, I would have been drowned out by the loud sounds of the train.

“The little scamp ran up to the tracks, placed his teddy bear on one of them, turned around and began running away from the train and toward me. You should have seen his face when he realized I’d seen what he’d done.”

No matter how many times she told me the story, it was always like I was hearing it for the first time.

“I said, ‘Land’s sake, boy, what are you doin’?’ I wasn’t yellin’ because I was angry; I was tryin’ to be heard above the train, which had already run over that helpless little bear.

“After the train sounds died down, he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Mama, I was just tryin’ to see if my teddy bear would bleed.’”

I howled at the punch line, the moment I had anticipated. So did she. We were giddy with grief. I wonder if my grandma made the connection that blood would, decades later, prove to be Uncle John’s enemy in the progression of his deadly disease.

Trains were part of the Kearns folklore. In fact, my grandfather Lannes Kearns was working for the railroad when he first laid eyes on Katherine, his future wife.

Several years her senior, he would watch her walking to school every day with her sisters through the fields of wildflowers adjacent to the railroad. She stood out, not only because she was the tallest, but also because she appeared to be the most sensible. And while she was more distinguished than beautiful, her strong features added to her allure.

“See that girl?” my future grandfather would say, indicating the statuesque one. “I’m going to marry her one day.”

Katherine and Lannes did indeed wed. Their firstborn was my father, Joseph, who would eventually find himself on a train—in the dining car of the New York–Chicago–St. Louis Railroad (nicknamed the Nickel Plate Road), working as a waiter. My mother wistfully recalled taking trips from St. Louis to Chicago and New York with her dashing husband before my brother and I were born.

Hearing stories about those glamorous cities made me aware that there was a way out of St. Louis. It always felt to me like it was a city one should escape from.

There was a tree in our backyard that must have been about six feet tall, with scrawny branches virtually void of foliage. I had a recurring dream: the balloon from
The Wizard of Oz
would land there, carrying Dorothy, Toto and the faux wizard, with one seat left for me. The balloon would take Dorothy to Kansas and me to my home. Home. I was in the backyard of our family house and dreaming of being taken home.

CHAPTER 6
               

Being in our backyard was not confining, like being in St. Louis was. It was limitless terrain, defined only by the parameters of my imagination. I’d play on the swing set, finding as many ways as I could to wrap my body around the various bright red poles that made up the structure. Then I’d swing for long stretches of time and eventually return to exploring every inch of the swing with every inch of my body. I could hear the psychiatrist say, “Don’t fall on your butt.” I remembered the way his blond hair swept across his forehead.

I often got hard, like I had on that day with Davey, and once, as I recreated our skinny-dipping scene in my head, I was completely shocked to feel something involuntarily squirting out of my dick.

Even though the unexpected eruption felt good, it was a bit scary. Within a few weeks, however, I was sidling up and down those poles and shooting on a regular basis. A pole dancer is born.

That multipurpose backyard proved to be a romantic getaway with a same-sex partner who committed suicide, an outdoor theater, which I headlined, and a place to get my rocks off without a breath of shame, only wonder.

Entering third grade in a new school could be pretty intimidating, especially if you already felt like an outsider. Very early on, I learned how to get attention and a bit of respect from my peers. By serving up some relatively acceptable version of myself, rather than imploding, I could make some friends.

During recess, while most of the boys were engaged in some competitive game, I would perform solo on the monkey bars. I’d do something either extremely silly or extremely dangerous in order to attract a crowd.

In daredevil mode, I would swing across the monkey bars like a dervish, skipping one bar. Then I’d skip two. Then, stretching my long arms to the max, three.

I fell. Hard. My audience began running for help in all directions. I looked at my arm and saw a bone poking through the skin, which was turning all shades of blue. No blood.

A teacher arrived. The school nurse followed. Then the principal. This must be serious, I thought. Everybody is paying attention to me. Before too long, even my mom showed up.

It turned out to be a nasty fracture, requiring several days’ hospitalization.

What I remember the most about the hospital stay were my mom’s daily visits. They may not have lasted long, but she was available. She wasn’t fighting with my father or getting drunk or gussying up to go out for a night of carousing.

I returned to school, playing up the fallen-hero scenario. You’d have to really be heartless to make fun of a kid with a big white plaster cast on his arm.

I was grateful to be excused from the humiliations of gym class but distressed that the jolt of the accident didn’t appear to improve my brain waves. I didn’t feel very smart, which was another contributing factor to my outsider status. Ugly and dumb.

Shortly after my arm was pronounced “as good as new,” I had another mishap.

Until their relationship completely disintegrated, my parents repeatedly made futile attempts to glue our broken family back together again. On a snowy Sunday afternoon, we ventured out for an excursion to Forest Park, the location of the World’s Fair in 1904. The massive park, carpeted with snow, contains several lakes that freeze over when the temperature is below thirty-two degrees for several days, creating natural ice-skating opportunities.

I loved it, largely because it gave me a chance to perform in public. Even though I was wearing pedestrian shoes, I felt like I was a diva in the Ice Capades, turning and spinning, imagining the applause and going faster and faster.

I was also going farther and farther away from the curb where my mom and dad were parked—sitting in silence, I guessed—watching me.

Faster and faster, farther and farther. I was reaching new dramatic heights when, in a split second, I plunged under the freezing water. Gasping for breath, to keep from going under the ice, I attempted to hold on to the edge of the ice that remained intact.

My hands kept slipping, making it impossible for me to pull myself out of the water. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably. The weight of my wet clothes made the situation even more treacherous. Did I try to scream for help?

A crowd was beginning to form. “He’s going to drown,” someone said. “Oh, my God,” said another. “What happened?”

My mother would later tell me that she saw it coming. From her vantage point of about fifty yards away, she could clearly see where the ice was unfrozen, maybe better than I could. Even though she knew I couldn’t hear her, considering the distance, she screamed my name anyway as the ice cracked and I submerged.

“Where are his parents?” I heard someone say.

Then, out of nowhere, a man was at the edge of the ice, reaching out to me. “Grab my arm and I’ll pull,” he said. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my mom and dad on the sidelines, frozen in shock.

He was risking the possibility of falling in himself, something the rapt spectators surely must have known.

“Easy, kid,” he said. “Let me do the work.”

I grasped his muscular forearms and with a steadiness that seemed impossible considering the immediate danger of the situation, he pulled me from the deadly waters.

He saved me. The crowd cheered like they were at a sports event as he scooped me into his arms.

He had a big yellow mustache and perfect white teeth, reminding me of the psychiatrist. The more I shivered, the tighter he held me and the warmth of his body calmed me. Even though it was ice-cold, my shriveled dick started to grow.

My mom and dad approached, thanking my savior profusely. My dad removed his big navy blue overcoat and wrapped me in it. Then he lifted me into his arms and carried me to the car.

It was the first—and the last—time that I remember my father ever holding me. Even when I was a baby, my mother relished telling me years later, he had refused to touch me because I was “a mistake.”

“You’re going to be okay, honey,” my mom said as we began the drive home. She ordered my dad to turn the car heater all the way up.

Exhausted, I fell asleep thinking of my hero with the Technicolor mustache and teeth but secretly wishing that my dad had been the one to save me.

The next morning at school, I achieved instantaneous celebrity status. A broken arm followed by a brush with death made me the Elizabeth Taylor of my elementary school. But fame, especially when it is predicated only on being accident prone, is short-lived. I knew I had to find something more substantial to keep me in the spotlight.

CHAPTER 7
               

When the divorce finally became a reality, after years of anticipation, like coming attractions you’d see at a movie theater, I was compelled to find the family photographs and study them, determined to identify a clue that might help me salvage the crumbling marriage.

One of my favorites was an oversize black-and-white photo, safely ensconced in a glossy white folder. On the cover was a drawing of a nude woman in an erotically charged pose with the words “Latin Quarter” emblazoned under her curvaceous body.

Each time I opened the folder, my heartbeat accelerated as I soaked in the glamorous beauty of my mommy and daddy. They were a breathtaking couple; made for each other, I thought.

They looked like movie stars, meticulously coiffed and groomed, ready for their close-up. She was all curves—her eyebrows, cupid lips and rounded cheekbones. Her beauty was astounding, a blessing that would become a curse. He was elegant, verging on effete, but maintaining a sensual masculinity. The photograph was so luminous that it practically made you squint—his silky tie, her shimmering dress, the pomade on his slicked-back hair.