A. Homes: Safety of Objects: Stories

Sally stood, a child in her room, safe with her parents in the room next door. All she wanted to do was stay there, crawl into her bed, pull her Huggy Bear close, and sleep until her mother came in the next morning and kissed her forehead again and again until she was awake.

“Go back downstairs,” her mother said.

Sally left the underwear drawer half open and went out of her room, only remembering to turn out her light when her mother mumbled, “Turn out the light.”

The hall seemed darker than ever and Sally couldn’t see anything. She pressed her hands against the wall and just stood there for a minute. Ben was asleep downstairs and as much as she wanted him to be awake she didn’t want to wake him up. She wondered if they’d remembered to lock the back door, and thought that the boy from outside or someone worse, the man in the furnace room, would be waiting for her on the steps, or down there in the basement, and would do something to her, she didn’t think what.

On her way downstairs, she passed the bay window in the living room. Sally stopped and looked outside. The streetlight at the end of the driveway lit the road like part of a movie set. Outside there was something red and glowing. Sally pressed against the glass and saw red lights silently flashing in front of the house that she and Ben had hidden behind to light their fires. The flashing red lights were mounted on top of a police car and Sally thought she and Ben hadn’t put out the fires well enough; they were still burning in the backyard, the woods glowing red embers like a barbecue. Sally thought the people in the house had seen them either setting fires or maybe out there naked in the night and were turning them in.

She stood fixed in the bay window, looking out. Another police car drove slowly down the block, scanning the houses with a white searchlight mounted on the hood. The searchlight, like a flashlight, carefully examined the fronts of all the houses and then turned itself on the other police car. Sally saw policemen and two tall figures leaning against the car and a TV and a bag on the ground, along with other stuff that wasn’t clear against the night.

The searchlight rotated around again and she felt it sweep over her. Sally felt the light over her nightgown. She could feel the finger in her crotch and the light finding it there. Sally felt the light catching her in the dark living room. The light swept over again and Sally dodged it, running downstairs ahead of it. Her feet landed hard on every step, causing the people in the house to roll over in their sleep and try to get comfortable again.

I am sitting naked on a kitchen chair, staring at it. My jeans and underwear are bunched up at my ankles. I walked from the bathroom to here, shuffling one foot in front of the other as though in shackles.

This has been a terrible week. I have been to the doctor. It is evening and I am sitting at my table staring down. I half wish that it had done what was threatened most in cases of severe abuse and fallen off. If I had found it lying loose under the sheets or pushed down to the bottom of the bed, rubbing up against my ankle, I could have picked it up lovingly, longingly. I could have brought it to eye level and given it the kind of inspection it truly deserved; I would have admired it from every angle, and then kept it in my dresser drawer.

I have an early memory of discovering this part of myself, discovering it as something neither my mother or sisters had. I played with it, knowing mine was the only one in the house, admiring its strength, enjoying how its presence seemed to mean so much to everyone. They were always in one way or another commenting on its existence from the manner in which they avoided it when they dried me from the tub to the way they looked out the car window when we stopped on long road trips and I stood by the highway releasing a thin yellow stream that danced in the wind.

This stub of maleness was what set me apart in a house of women; it was what comforted me most in that same house, knowing that I would never be like them.

From the time I first noticed that it filled me with warmth as I twirled my fingers over its top, I felt I had a friend. I walked to and from school and noisily up and down the stairs in our house, carrying it with me, slightly ahead of me, sharing its confidence.

I was a beautiful boy, or so they said. If I stood in my school clothes in front of the mirror I did not see anything special. My haircut was awful, my ears stuck out like telephone receivers, my eyes, while blue, seemed to disappear entirely when I smiled. And yet when I stood in front of the same mirror naked, I danced at the sight of myself, incredibly and inexcusably male.

I had no desire to be beautiful or good. Somehow, I suspect because it did not come naturally, I longed to be bad. I wanted to misbehave, to prove to myself that I could stand the sudden loss of my family’s affection. I wanted to do terrible, horrible things and then be excused simply because I was a boy and that’s what boys do, especially boys without fathers. I had the secret desire to frighten others. But I was forever a pink-skinned child, with straight blond hair, new khaki pants, white socks, and brown shoes.

My only true fear was of men. Having grown up without fathers, brothers, or uncles, men were completely unfamiliar to me, their naked selves only accidently seen in bathhouses or public restrooms. They lived behind extra-long zippers, hidden, like something in a freak show you’d pay to see once and only once. Their ungraceful parts hung deeply down, buried in a weave of hair that wound itself denser as it got closer as if to protect the world from the sight of such a monster. As I grew older, I taught myself to enjoy what was frightening.

I never wore underwear. Inside my jeans, it lay naked, rubbing the blue denim white. I went out in the evenings to roam among men, to display myself, to parade, to hunt. I was what everyone wanted, white, clean, forever a boy. They wanted to ruin me as a kind of revenge. It was part of my image to look unavailable, but the truth was anyone could have me. I liked ugly men. Grab your partner and do-si-do. Change partners. I kissed a million of them. I opened myself to them, and them to me. I walked down the street nearly naked with it in the lead. It was pure love in the sense of loving oneself and loving the sensation.

I was alive, incredibly, joyously. Even in the grocery store or the Laundromat, every time someone’s eyes passed over me, holding me for a second, I felt a boost that sent me forward and made me capable of doing anything. Every hour held a sensuous moment, a romantic possibility. Each person who looked at me and smiled, cared for me. To be treasured by those who weren’t related, to whom I meant nothing, was the highest form of a compliment.

Men, whose faces I didn’t recognize, bent down to kiss me as I sat eating lunch in sidewalk cafés. I kissed them back and whispered, It was good seeing you. And when my lunch dates asked who that was, I simply smiled.

I felt celebrated. Every dream was a possibility. It was as though I would never be afraid again. I remember being happy.

I look down on it and begin to weep. I do not understand what has happened or why. I am sickened by myself, and yet cannot stand the sensation of being so revolted. It is me, I tell myself. It is me, as though familiarity should be a comfort.

I remember when the men I met were truly strangers; our private parts went off in search of each other like dogs on a leash sniffing each other while the owners look away. I remember still, after that, meeting a man, and looking at him, looking at him days and months in a row and each time loving him.

I feel like I should wear rubber gloves for fear of touching myself or someone else. I have never felt so dangerous. I am weeping and it frightens me.