T. Boyle - The Inner Circle

“Suzy,” the sister put in, swaying back and forth over the pivot of one foot. “My name’s Suzy.”

“Ah,” Prok said, and he was still bent at the waist, his face at a level with theirs, “so you’re not princesses, then? I thought you were princesses for sure.”

A giggle. More swaying. “No,” the little one said, and they both burst out in laughter.

“And what do you think of having the principal’s office all to ourselves? Pretty special, isn’t it? Well, this is a special afternoon for some very special little girls. I’m Uncle Kinsey, and this”—indicating me, and I smiled as genuinely as I could to show everyone concerned how harmless I was—“is Uncle Milk.”

Both girls gave me a brief examination, their smiles flickering uncertainly and then coming back to life again as Prok went on in his most facetious and whimsical tones: “And what of Mr. Owl — you see Mr. Owl up there? He’s going to play a part too, because the game I’ve thought up for us is a camping game — do your mommy and daddy ever take you girls camping?”

Oh, yes, yes, they did. And where had they gone camping? A look to their mother and back again. “In the woods,” Katie said.

“Good, very good.” Prok had got down on the floor now, and he eased himself into a cross-legged posture, as if he were an Indian chief presiding over a sheaf of tobacco leaves. “All right, girls,” he said, “sit right here with me, that’s right, cross your legs just like this, because we’re going to pretend that we are out in the deep woods sitting round a campfire roasting marshmallows — do you like marshmallows? Yes, good. Very good. Of course you do.” And, magically, from his coat pocket, appeared two white puffs of the very substance.

I should say here that despite what you may have heard to the contrary — and I am aware of some of the more malicious and odious rumors spread by enemies of the project, people who choose to see dirt in everything — that Prok was as delicate, respectful and proper with our juvenile subjects as anyone I could imagine. And we all learned from him and attempted to adopt his methods, though none of us could ever manage to establish the instant rapport with children that Prok was capable of. This was one of his great gifts as an interviewer, and as a personality too. Just as he could sidle up to a urinal at Penn Station and immediately cultivate the trust of a homosexual hustler in search of action or wander the Negro neighborhoods of Gary and Chicago with the authentic argot dropping from his lips, so too could he relate in the most open and innocent way to children. And children’s histories were vital to the research, because while we routinely asked our subjects about their initial sexual awakening, nearly all of them were at least somewhat hazy on the details, and we felt we could correct for the inadequacy of memory in our adult subjects by collecting data directly from children, whose experiences were still vivid and ongoing. That seemed to make sense. And yet, inevitably, there was criticism — we were sullying the children’s minds, leading them astray, that sort of thing. But I can assure you that nothing could have been further from the truth.

On this particular day, as Prok led these two beautiful wide-eyed girls through an imaginary forest and sat with them round a fanciful camp-fire, ever so subtly and gracefully posing his questions, first to Suzy as her sister played in the corner, and then to Katie, I have to admit it was an education for me. The questions were entirely innocent, yet telling: Do you play more often with girls or boys? Do you like boys? But boys are different from girls, aren’t they? Yes? And how is that? How do you know? I sat there in the principal’s chair, clinging to a grin and exchanging the occasional glance with the mother while recording her daughters’ responses, and I felt myself expanding into the possibilities. Children. I’d never really thought much about them one way or another. In fact, they’d always made me nervous and uncertain — I didn’t know how to act around them, didn’t have a clue — and now here was Prok, one of the most eminent men of his generation, a starred scientist, showing me the way. “Just talk to them,” he said. “Just talk and listen.”

All this sex, and what was it for? For this. For children. It came to me as a revelation that afternoon, my brain struggling with the insupportable image of Iris spread out naked on my desk and Corcoran rising above her even as the piping immature voices gave rise to opinions and qualified expectations. They trooped through the office, one child after another, shy, brassy, eager, reticent, and I found myself groping toward the beginnings of perspective. Those organs we’d so diligently focused on with Ginger and her clients, the acts, the consummation, the reproductive tract —it came to this, to children. And John Jr. wouldn’t be born for another five years yet.

We got back to Bloomington late on the third night, after having overstayed ourselves in order to record a number of serendipitous interviews that came our way at the last minute — the school janitor and his brother, who ran the filling station, and a local minister, his wife and their seventeen-year-old daughter. I came in the door and there was Iris, in her kimono, waiting up for me over her poetry text. “But you didn’t have to wait up,” I said, and she came to me, her eyes full, and held me, rocking gently with me there in the middle of the living room. “Don’t you have class tomorrow?”

“Hush,” she said, “hush,” and then we went to bed, and I was made of wood. We had intercourse though, almost as soon as I could get my clothes off, and she might have broken down during the process — might have cried, might have buried her face in my chest and sobbed for all I know — but I was made of wood and I can’t really say for certain. She was gone before I woke in the morning, and then I was at the office in Biology Hall, surrounded by galls and running a slow, lingering hand over the surface of my desk as if I’d never seen anything like it before.

There was the sound of footsteps clattering in the stairwell, the faint reverberant echo of voices, growing louder now, coming closer, and my first thought was of Prok, returning from his early class with students in tow. By this time I’d recovered myself and I was settled in at my desk, organizing the material we’d collected at the Fillmore School and sinking numbly into the familiar grip of routine. I’d sharpened all the pencils, squared away the papers on the desk. A mug of black coffee stood at my elbow, giving off steam. Outside, beyond the windows, a mild drizzle softened the lines of Maxwell Hall, across the way.

But that was Prok’s voice, no doubt about it, a sort of lucid mumble rising above the ambient sounds, and there was another voice attached to it, hearty and unflappable, a voice I couldn’t help but recognize, and a moment later, there they were, Prok and Corcoran, ducking through the door. “Milk, good morning,” Prok sang out, “sleep well?”

“Morning, John,” Corcoran put in. He stood there hovering over Prok’s desk, no more than ten feet from me, arms akimbo, exuding nonchalance — nothing wrong here, not a thing in the world. “I tell you, it’s good to be back — the drive was killing, absolutely killing. And how was your trip?”

For the moment, I was at a loss for words. I suppose I’d thought of nothing really over the course of the past four days but Corcoran and what I would say to him, what he would say to me, how I’d face up to him and what it would mean for all of us — for the present and the future too. “We, well,” I faltered. “I’m sure Prok—” I gestured vaguely, and then let my hand drop, too full of anguish to go on.