The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (8 page)

All I could think about was the day of President Kennedy’s death, when the news unexpectedly came over the foreboding box hanging on the wall above the blackboard. Mr. Hernandez, my macho Spanish teacher, took a white handkerchief out of his pocket, turned his back to us and began to cry. I can still see the silhouette of his big, strong shoulders against the blackboard, shaking in grief.

“Come to my office first thing in the morning,” the principal said. “You can say whatever is in your heart. Then you can take the rest of the day off.”

I wrote and rewrote my comments, long into the night, describing how our teacher-student bond grew into a friendship as the wedding approached. I insisted that my beloved teacher “died in a state of happiness.” I knew enough about acting not to cry during my delivery (if you cry, the audience won’t) and my tribute was appreciated.

In the same way that I orchestrated her wedding, I helped organize her funeral. Less than a week after I picked up the wedding flowers, I was at the same florist, ordering a funeral bouquet with money gathered from members of the Thespian Society.

The florist, a buxom bleached blonde with a big-hearted personality, burst into tears when I told her Miss Wilkinson’s fate. “Oh, baby,” she said as she walked from behind the counter that separated us so that she could hug me. “You poor boy. Oh, baby, I’m sorry. I am truly sorry, lovey.”

Lena, the sweet florist, made an outlandish arrangement for Miss Wilkinson that was probably worth ten times the amount of money we had collected. Not a sophisticated woman, she called me at the last minute and asked if she could include comedy and tragedy masks “since she was a dramatics teacher.” I told her I thought it was a swell idea. Lena’s extravagant creation from the Thespians overshadowed all the other floral expressions of sorrow at the funeral home.

The widower was remote, robotically accepting the words of sympathy that flowed from dozens of students and teachers. Even though he refused to make eye contact with me, I saw something in him that I had never seen before: Miss Wilkinson’s husband reminded me of the men who gave me blow jobs in those downtown bathrooms.

On display in an open casket, dressed in her wedding gown, the bride corpse was the star attraction. I saw her in profile from a distance, but I refused to get too close. I chose to remember her radiant smile as she walked down the aisle.

Over the next few weeks, while a search was being conducted to replace Miss Wilkinson, a thesis began to circulate among her peers. One of the concerned teachers, who had attended the wedding and obviously trusted me, called me into the teachers’ lounge (where students are never allowed) one afternoon.

“I feel that you should know about this, Mike,” she said. “Several of us have concluded that there’s the possibility …”

She studied my face. It was stoic.

She was trying not to crack.

“The possibility that Miss Wilkinson’s death may not have been accidental.”

It didn’t take long for me to draw my own conclusions, but she helped me organize my jumbled thoughts.

“Her husband collected a great deal of insurance money,” she said. “And there are other disturbing little details, like the fact that he moved a grand piano out of Colleen’s mother’s house weeks before the wedding. And it’s suspicious that no one witnessed the accident at midday in a city full of tourists.”

“So he could have pushed her into the bus?”

She nodded yes. Then, after a very long pause, she delivered the most conclusive piece of evidence.

“And,” she said, leaning in to me, emphasizing that she was about to divulge something that she probably shouldn’t be telling me, “he was a confirmed bachelor.”

In other words, he was a homosexual who targeted this needy woman and married her in order to collect sizable insurance benefits. I got it. I wanted to let her know that I understood but that was more than I could reveal.

“I’m sorry,” she said. It was unbearable for me to believe, although I knew it was probably what had happened to my vulnerable Miss Wilkinson. Murdered on her honeymoon. The only person who could have pursued a criminal investigation was the bride’s elderly mother. So he got away with it. The closet case got away with murder.

I hurled myself into the school musical, playing Hugo in
Bye Bye Birdie
. Since most of the roles went to juniors and seniors, playing the rejected boyfriend of the ingénue who fell for the Elvis-inspired Birdie was another victory.

Cast as one of the older women in the show, Bonnie Pollard possessed a bawdy sophistication that resulted in a magnetic charisma, onstage and off. In spite of the three-year age difference, considered a big deal when you’re a fifteen-year-old boy and she’s an eighteen-year-old girl, we were an item.

This wasn’t just one of those symbiotic showbiz teamings that played well in public but was without passion behind closed doors. Bonnie and I were nuts about each other and making out with Bonnie was a blast, nothing like my attempts at getting intimate with other girlfriends I’d had, which were forced and clumsy.

I certainly liked the idea of being sexual, but most girls probably expected me to be more aggressive than I was. Sex with Bonnie was a hit because she made most of the moves as confidently as she did everything else.

While Bonnie was authentically feminine, her boldness made her “one of the boys,” resulting in what I considered an appealing girlfriend. Foulmouthed, with a laugh that spoke louder than words, Bonnie was on her way to becoming a broad.

I don’t recall ever trying to quiet my yearnings for boys by fitting in with my pussy-obsessed peers. The quirky relationship with Bonnie was proof of that; in spite of the fact that we had sex, we were a queer couple.

Based on my bond with Miss Wilkinson and my diligent organizational skills, it was obvious who would help transition the new drama teacher and sponsor of the Thespian Society.

Predisposed to resent Miss Wilkinson’s replacement, I had no idea he would provide me with so much ammunition.

Ghoulishly pale, with thinning red hair and only a tad over five feet tall, Mr. Ewald was a bona fide fairy. Brazenly effeminate, he was snotty, witty and sarcastic. I was fairly certain that he knew me better than I knew myself, but it was his superior intellect that rattled me the most.

In spite of the fact that we learned he was married, the students began labeling him: “fruit,” “queer,” “homo” and “pansy” (the same names that had been hurled at me).

It was amazing how quickly I learned to play the role of the harasser. Having been the victim, it became easy to become the bully.

Mr. Ewald embarrassed me. I was afraid of him. I wanted Miss Wilkinson back. Much later in life I would learn that this extreme response upon initially meeting someone would lead to lessons of great consequence. If someone elicits a negative visceral knee-jerk reaction, there is often an underlying attraction. Perhaps this is love-hate self-identification. But as a fifteen-year-old still grieving the loss of my teacher-chum, I was intent upon behaving as pugnaciously as I could.

CHAPTER 15
               

The strength of his small hands, squeezing the muscles of my shoulders, was surprising. I could feel each of his fingertips as he massaged my neck with just the right amount of pressure.

No one had ever touched me like that. There were tears in my eyes—not because his touch was hurtful—unless being this close to someone was inescapably painful. They were tears of bliss.

I was lying on my stomach and although I was fully clothed, I could feel the heat of his touch through my shirt. He had rolled up the long sleeves of his starched white shirt and sat next to me on a daybed with his upper body slightly twisted so that he could make the most direct connection to my back without being on top of me.

The smells of dinner in the oven filled the room and I remember classical music was playing almost imperceptibly.

We were waiting for Karen, Mr. Ewald’s gorgeous wife, to come home from work. This was not the first time I had dinner with the Ewalds at their artfully decorated apartment, but it was the first time I had dinner with an erection that threatened never to shrink.

Shortly after he replaced Miss Wilkinson, when I was behaving as obnoxiously as I could, I insisted that we do
Pygmalion
in honor of our dead leader (“She had already chosen
Pygmalion
,” I argued). Even though it was clearly within his rights to choose the second play the Thespian Society was to produce that year, he let me have my way.

He even cast me as Professor Higgins, the role I’d had my eye on since I saw
My Fair Lady
with my mom and Neil, her new (finally!) husband.

Little did I realize what a rigorous journey I was about to embark on. Initially, I thought Ewald was punishing me for coercing him into doing the Shaw play. That’s how demanding he was, how tough he was on me.

I seemed to be the target of most of his admonishments, while the other cast members were treated more civilly. Perhaps this was because I had the most difficult role, I tried to convince myself.

At first I balked and became defensive. That only intensified the nature of his direction. This was not the Marian Epstein approach, which only went so deep, since she was always aware of the ages of her “junior” thespians. And Ewald’s approach could not have been a starker contrast to that of his predecessor, the results-oriented Miss Wilkinson. Ewald demanded that the cast respect the process of acting, immersing themselves in the rehearsal period. He taught us an entire new vocabulary that we were expected to digest and incorporate immediately.

Each line, he said, had an intention; every word spoken by a character was spoken for a reason. Since I had the bulk of the lines, I had to analyze and study pages and pages of dialogue, attempting to carry out his requirements. While he was patient to an extent, he had high expectations. This was not “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain”; this was the density of George Bernard Shaw’s tangled language. Eventually, I understood (instinctively, at least) that his demands on me were based on his belief in me. When I quit being such a brat, I began to learn how to act and knew that I was privileged to be taught by a master. Physical energy, vocal energy, subtext, sensory work, relationship to costumes and props, attention to antecedent action: all this and more I learned from Ewald.

As the weeks of rehearsal intensified, I—along with other cast members and students who weren’t involved in the play—became head-over-heels enamored with the new teacher whom we’d all ridiculed. He turned out to be playful and a bit irreverent, two qualities that appealed to high school kids.

He didn’t change. In fact, that is precisely the point. Ewald (everyone called him by his last name only, a bonding ritual among students, not teachers) remained his effete, prissy self and we accepted him. He possessed other qualities that were decidedly winning. He was smart, funny, silly, imaginative, supportive, caring and passionate. Ewald was irresistible.

My relationship with him extended beyond the high school grounds where
Pygmalion
was produced. The performances, thanks to my teacher-director-coach, marked my finest hour as an actor.

Off campus, Ewald had begun exposing me to other aspects of life that he considered important. On some school days, we’d leave the campus and meet Karen for lunch at a low-key but chic restaurant.

I had never been in a restaurant of that caliber and I observed my mentor’s every move: how he communicated with the staff, how he ordered the meal, how he treated his wife. Ewald was unlike any member of my family (with the exception of Uncle John), instilling me with an appreciation of things elegant and graceful, contrasting with the boisterous angst I’d come to accept as normal.

In terms of my desire to become an actor, he took it very seriously and didn’t allow me to ever take it less seriously than he did. In Ewald’s world, everything related to the art of acting. From architecture to zoology, everything contained acting lessons if one looked closely enough.

He suggested books for me to read. He took me to the art museum in Forest Park. He introduced me to live ballet. Did it occur to either of us that we had begun living lives parallel to those of the characters in
Pygmalion
? He was my Professor Higgins and I was undergoing a transformation as stunning as Eliza’s was. Perhaps the strongest sociological element that mirrored the relationship was the class difference.

While I wasn’t exactly a guttersnipe, I was of a different class from Ewald and he was set on a mission to elevate me. This is, of course, a common phenomenon in the gay community. An older man, often a lover, grooms the younger man—whether he wants to be changed or not—to escape his lower-class roots. Sex is very often part of the equation.

However, in the Shaw play and in the real-life drama I was costarring in with Ewald, there was no sex. The one back-rubbing encounter was as close as we ever got. The unconsummated love affair between Professor Higgins and Eliza was a bold move on Shaw’s part because of the intended ambivalence in a theater world where happy endings were usually a guarantee.

The class difference is one of the reasons Higgins couldn’t (or wouldn’t) marry Eliza. Ironically, he was unable to eroticize his masterful creation. Perhaps because he made her too healthy? (How many of those boys, once groomed, leave their sugar-daddy mentor?)

This certainly wasn’t the scenario Ewald and I were living, but the fact that ours was a love affair that was fated to be sexless was the same. Ewald, unlike Higgins, was very much married and not unhappily. And to be honest, I’m fairly certain that his libido was permanently on hold. If he’d never had gay sex, was he gay? The element that kept our love affair from a by-the-numbers happy ending was the sexual preference question.

At the end of
Pygmalion
, Higgins tells Pickering, his cohort, that Eliza is going to marry Freddy, a rather supercilious young man who is smitten with her. Higgins is laughing as the act five curtain falls, leaving the audience to figure out whether or not she will marry Freddy or return to Higgins. He is laughing instead of crying.