Meyer Levin - Compulsion

It was lucky the letter hadn’t been sent to Lewis, because Lewis would have insisted it was a matter for Momsie and Popsie. But James didn’t like trouble. He liked a good time himself. And he couldn’t have already told anyone, or he wouldn’t be bringing it up like this. Christ, if the family knew about this one, it would be worse than that time with the car accident.

Artie took it easy with James, giving him the boyish wink, and letting him win the set.

But that was a mark against Judd, Artie told himself, turning down 49th Street toward Judd’s house and casting quick glances right and left.

Judd’s fault, that time with Morty. First, being such a damn fool as to start playing around, with the door unlocked. Hell, he himself didn’t get any special kick out of it, but he let Judd play around just for the hell of it. Judd was the one who started all that stuff. And then, once Morty had seen them and once they had got him out in the canoe, and when they saw he had tricked them about not being able to swim, they ought to have held the tattler’s head under water. If Judd hadn’t been so scared Morty would have been taken care of right there.

Instead, they had let him leave. So he not only had the story to tell of catching them fooling around, but, even worse, about their trying to drown him. Morty told everybody he saw that summer. Then, instead of coming back to the frat in the fall, he had to spend a year in Denver, with TB – the reason he didn’t exert himself swimming.

Even with Morty Kornhauser away from the frat, Judd should never have insisted on coming to Ann Arbour. That was another mistake to charge up against Judah Steiner, Jr. First he had to go and make a whole issue of it with his brother Max, who had received the same kind of dirty letter as James. Instead of simply gabbing his way out of it, Judd had to make an issue, declaring that just for that, the family had to show they trusted him by letting him go to Ann Arbour even though Artie was there.

And then another mistake. Mr. Judd Steiner had to insist he wanted to get into the frat! Morty heard about it and wrote one of his letters from Denver: to Al Goetz, president of the chapter. “Do you want to have a real pair of perverts, right in the house?”

The president took Artie aside for a man-to-man talk. Hell, it was so bad, Artie even had to get James to come up, casually, like for a football game, but to remind Al Goetz of a thing or two. And hell, Al finally admitted everybody knew Artie was okay – why, Artie helled around in the Detroit cat houses with the rest of the boys; they knew he was regular. As James said, he’d even caught a dose at fifteen. But after James was gone, Al told Artie, Why not face the facts? The thing wasn’t only because of Morty’s tales. Judd simply was not well liked, so why make an issue of getting him in?

At least – a point for the defence – Judd didn’t push it. He suddenly was against fraternities. He even made a Hebe question out of it. A principle.

The fact was, the Delts had taken him for a ride. For a couple of days he had the idea he was going to show up Alpha Beta by getting into a real gentile fraternity. Some Delt had made the mistake of inviting Judd over because of his being a genius prodigy and a millionaire too. But then they dropped him cold, and Judd suddenly made a principle out of it. He was against the idea of Jewish frats and non-Jewish frats. Being a Jew was simply an accident of birth. So now he was anti-fraternity. He would never join a Hebe frat either, on principle. Moreover, frat men were all a bunch of rubber stamps, Judd declared. They would come out a bunch of Babbitts. He would drop over to the house and spout this stuff, and some of the fellows would laugh, but a lot of them didn’t like it. They started telling Artie to keep his friend away from the place. On account of Judd he’d almost become unpopular.

Artie walked a little faster. He thought of an idea that suddenly made him feel bubbly, even gay. He would go in through the basement and up the back stairs. He would give Dog Eyes the scare of his life.

Judd was sitting erect, unable to study. He detested being at the mercy of a physical need. It seemed never to leave him. Others didn’t have it so bad. Artie didn’t have it so bad. Those two years at Ann Arbour, near Artie, had nearly driven him crazy.

None of the coeds would put it out. The cat houses weren’t enough. He had to have it all the time – oversexed, he guessed.

And that was the time when the image of Artie began to get in the way. Even when he was with a girl. Inside himself he would be saying to a drunken, laughing Artie, “You goddam whore! You goddam whore!” Whoever she was, he would make her into Artie, and he would be tearing in a rage at his own bondage, at having to have it, at the flesh being stronger than the intellect.

The times he had waited, in agony like tonight, always waiting for that capricious bastard – “See you at nine” – and you’d wait, getting more and more excited, imagining what you would do to him as soon as he came in.

Then, like some damn girl, Artie would behave as if the two of you had never done it at all, as if an idea like that never entered his thoughts.

The house was safe now. If only Artie would show up, they could be alone to themselves in the house, in this room. For two hours, even longer, without the worry of someone walking in.

Artie was already late. You could never be sure with Artie. But under Judd’s fretful impatience there was an almost gratified feeling. Artie, superior, should acknowledge no convention of punctuality.

Judd touched the typewriter. He felt a dreadful reluctance to part with it, to destroy it. It was the one thing he had kept from all they had done together; it was like a token of their pact. Perhaps instead of getting rid of it, they could hide it somewhere?

Judd had an impulse, tender and tragic, to write a farewell note on the machine, a lone confession, taking all the blame. He could mail the note and then disappear. They would recognize the typing. If one could vanish, truly vanish, dissolving into nothingness as though never even born! Would Artie feel regret, appreciate what he had done?

For, caught or not, Judd had a heavy presentiment that it was over now between Artie and himself. And parting with this machine would be like closing the circle.

The night they had got the typewriter was the night they had made their pact. Only last fall. Both of them were back living in Chicago. A bunch of Artie’s frat brothers from his old Ann Arbour chapter had come down for the football game. And Artie had got into their pool on the Big Ten. Then after getting back to Ann Arbour they had ruled him out. He claimed he was the winner. Was he burned! He’d show those bastards! And suddenly the inspiration struck him. “Hey, Jock, we’ll drive up there and clean out the whole frigging house!”

They could do it the following Saturday. Leave at midnight, three hours of travel, twenty minutes for the job, home by daylight. If anybody wondered where they had been, they’d had a big Saturday night and wound up on 22nd Street, and boys will be boys!

In Artie’s room, they had plotted it. A lazy November late afternoon, with Judd stretched out on Artie’s bed – one of those afternoons when he felt his energy ebbed, when he didn’t want to go anywhere, do anything. And Artie, relaxed in his Morris chair, his face in a desk-light glow, the petulant lips full-blown in his anger at the frat – in that moment Artie was Dorian Gray.

And as though recognizing a new closeness, in his anger at the lousy bunch up there in Ann Arbour, Artie suddenly offered, “Hey, you want to see something?” Artie went to his closet. There, under a jumble of junk, which he swept aside, was a treasure trunk that Artie had from when he was a kid. Opening it, he dug beneath a cowboy suit and broken toy guns. Underneath was his loot.