Dave Eggers - Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

— I don’t know what this has to do with you and your tendencies toward boys.

— The point is that it’s similarly polarized. The thinking is similarly flawed, and it makes people crazy. Tell me, do you have any friends who are alcoholics?

— Yes.

— Are they all the same?

— No.

— Do they all go on three-day benders and kill people in drunk-driving car accidents?

— No.

— Do they all lose their jobs and families because they can’t quit drinking? Because they’re drinking twenty-four hours a day?

— No.

— So are you sure they all have the same disease?

— I don’t know.

— If I walked into an AA meeting and suggested that I had a “problem” with alcohol but was not an alcoholic, they would run me out of the building. And yet maybe I do have a small problem. Maybe, twice a year, I have one more drink than I should, and I say something I regret. Maybe once or twice a year I pass out, alone, at home, after drinking too many Manhattans. Once a year I drive home when I should take a cab. Am I an alcoholic? Many would say yes. Many would say you either are or are not. They use that old chestnut, You can’t be a little pregnant . You know that one?

— Yes.

— It’s trotted out in situations where nuance is unwelcome.

— Like yours.

— Right. I’m not an alcoholic, and I’m not a rapist. I’m a flawed person who has wandered into territory that could be very dangerous, but then I wandered back to a less problematic path. You can call me a sick man. I am. You can say I did a number of things I should not have done. But I am not a rapist and not a pederast. And I have never touched any naked part of a child, nor have I asked them to touch any naked part of me.

— But you twisted the minds of many people.

— Did I?

— Of course you did.

— Can I give you a corollary?

— Can you give me a corollary?

— Yes.

— Sure. Give me a corollary, you sick fuck.

— When I was growing up there was a house on my street that was overrun with foliage. You could hardly see the house through all the trees and ivy. But this house was known by us kids as the place where you could go and get candy. You could just knock on the door and this older woman would invite you inside and you could choose candy from a bowl. Now this, today, would seem wildly inappropriate, right?

— Yes.

— And telling that story to anyone, which I’ve done over the years, has always provoked disgust. People assume that any child walking inside that place was a victim and that the woman had some ulterior motive. That there were cameras somewhere, that there was some sick purpose to her inviting us in. It all fits some narrative that’s now so well established that it’s crowded out all other possibilities. There was the green-shrouded house, the gingerbread look of it. You assume dark and terrible things are happening inside. But they weren’t.

— How do you know?

— Because they never did. I’ve talked to a dozen others who knew the house and went inside and nothing ever happened to any of them. The lady just wanted it to be Halloween every day. She was lonely. But we could never accept that now. We categorize everything with such speed and finality that there’s never any room for nuance. Let me posit that the mind-twisting you speak of comes from outside, not within. That is, those who want to name things, to sweep them into categories and label them, have swept your experience into the same category as those children who were actually raped, those who were lured into showers and thrown against the wall and had a grown man’s penis inserted into their rectum repeatedly.

— See, just your ability to talk that way …

— Thomas, this is important. Is playing tailor fully dressed the same as having a penis thrust into your twelve-year-old rectum?

— See, you are sick. Only a sick fuck could have said that.

— I’m trying to make clear the difference between what I did and what an actual rapist does. I couldn’t even undress you boys. Doesn’t that make clear that I’m not the same kind of monster?

— Maybe you’re a different kind of monster. But you’re still a monster.

— I won’t accept that. You came over to my house. Don came over to my house. We watched movies. We played tailor. Then you fell asleep on my bed. You woke up and went home. That is the work of a monster?

— Absolutely. We trusted you and you had other intentions toward us. You used us.

— And what would you call what you’re doing to me?

— I’m asking you questions. You harmed me, and this is the least amount of payback imaginable.

— How about the astronaut? You kidnapped him to ask him questions. But he did nothing to you.

— Don’t worry about the astronaut. I haven’t harmed the astronaut. You’re the only one I would even think of harming.

— You would be harming someone who harmed no one.

— That is fucking insane.

— I did nothing but imagine them.

— So you admit that you got sexual excitement from children.

— Of course I did. Don’t you ever see a woman on the street and later masturbate thinking about them?

—

— Well, I do the same thing. My fantasies might be sick, but I can’t make it work any other way. The machinery of my mind is what it is. And mine is warped; it is societally unacceptable. But I know that touching a child, that acting on these desires, is wrong, and I have done nothing illegal.

— You don’t buy child porn.

— I don’t anymore.

— You don’t anymore ?

— When I was younger I did. But I realized how it impacted actual children, so I stopped. The last time I saw an image of a naked child was 1983.

— So since then you just see a boy on the street and then imagine him naked?

— Not exactly.

— Then what exactly?

— This level of detail isn’t useful, is it?

— This level of detail is exactly why you’re here.

— Okay. I think of a boy measuring my inseam.

— Oh god. Like how old is this boy?

— The same age you were. Eleven, twelve. That’s why we played the game.

— So you could store up those images for later masturbation.

— Yes.

— And all these years since, you’re still thinking of Don Banh measuring your inseam?

— Not so much him. Listen, I know it’s sick. I wish my brain worked in a different way. I know it’s wrong, that it’s considered sick. But none of this extends beyond the confines of my head, Thomas. I swear to you.

— So that’s it? For twenty years, you just think of boys measuring your inseam? No action taken?

— That’s right. Listen. I am sorry that you came to my house. And that Don came to my house, and anyone else. I can never rectify the fact that I acted inappropriately and that I scarred you kids in some way. But again, there are limits to the blame I can assume for whatever else happened in your lives after that.

— But why Don?

— Don was from a certain kind of home. You must know that those who seek to be close to boys seek out those whose parents are missing or inattentive, or who have certain blind spots.

— So Don’s mom thought this was some great honor, that you’d invite him over to your house.

— Yes. She trusted me, and she valued my mentorship.

— Your mentorship. Holy shit.

— Again, you’ll find it unacceptably complex, but I spent many hundreds of hours with Don and his brother, and most of that time was in the role of a parent. I cooked for them, I helped them with their homework, I took care of them. I was a male figure in their lives where there was no other.

— A male figure who masturbated thinking of them measuring your inseam.