John Irving - In One Person

“But it originally meant something, Mary,” Mr. Hadley had insisted. “It surely originated for a reason, ” the history teacher had intoned.

In my deliberate and detailed recounting to Dr. Harlow of my sexual experience with Miss Frost, I very much enjoyed remembering Mr. Hadley’s historical speculations concerning what a bald-headed owl-fucker actually was. Dr. Harlow clearly was one, and—as I prolonged my discovery that Miss Frost and I had had an intercrural sexual experience—I admit that I borrowed a few of James Baldwin’s well-chosen words. “There was no penetration,” I told Dr. Harlow, in due time, “therefore no ‘stink of love,’ but I so wanted there to be!”

“Stink of love!” Dr. Harlow repeated; I could see he was writing this down, and that he suddenly didn’t look well.

“I may never have a better orgasm,” I told Dr. Harlow, “but I still want to do everything —all those things Miss Frost was protecting me from, I mean. She made me want to do all those things—in fact, I can’t wait to do them!”

“Those homosexual things, Bill?” Dr. Harlow asked me. Through his thinning, lusterless hair, I could see him sweating.

“Yes, of course ‘homosexual things’—but also other things, to both men and women!” I said eagerly.

“ Both, Bill?” Dr. Harlow asked.

“Why not?” I said to the bald-headed owl-fucker. “I was attracted to Miss Frost when I believed she was a woman. When I realized she was a man, I was no less attracted to her.”

“And are there other people, of both sexes—at this school, and in this town—who also attract you, Bill?” Dr. Harlow asked.

“Sure. Why not?” I said again. Dr. Harlow had stopped writing; perhaps the task of the opus ahead of him seemed unending.

“Students, Bill?” the bald-headed owl-fucker asked.

“Sure,” I said. I closed my eyes for dramatic effect, but this had more of an effect on me than I’d anticipated. I suddenly saw myself in Kittredge’s powerful embrace; he had me in the arm-bar, but of course there was more to it than that.

“Faculty wives?” Dr. Harlow suggested, less than spontaneously.

I needed only to think of Mrs. Hadley’s homely face, superimposed again and again on those training-bra models in my mother’s mail-order catalogs.

“Why not?” I asked, a third time. “ One faculty wife, anyway,” I added.

“Just one ?” Dr. Harlow asked, but I could tell that the bald-headed owl-fucker wanted to ask me which one.

At that instant, it occurred to me how Kittredge would have answered Dr. Harlow’s insinuating question. First of all, I looked bored—as if I had much more to say, but just couldn’t be bothered.

My acting career was almost over. (I didn’t know this at the time, when I was the center of attention in Dr. Harlow’s office, but I had only one, extremely minor, role remaining.) Yet I was able to summon my best imitation of Kittredge’s shrug and Grandpa Harry’s evasions.

“Ah, well . . .” I started to say; then I stopped talking. Instead of speaking, I mastered that insouciant shrug—the one Kittredge had inherited from his mother, the one Elaine had learned from Mrs. Kittredge.

“I see, Bill,” Dr. Harlow said.

“I doubt that you do,” I told him. I saw the old homo-hater stiffen.

“You doubt that I do!” the doctor cried indignantly. Dr. Harlow was furiously writing down what I’d told him.

“Trust me on this one, Dr. Harlow,” I said, remembering every word that Miss Frost had spoken to me. “Once you start repeating what people say to you, it’s a hard habit to break.”

That was my meeting with Dr. Harlow, who sent a curt note to my mother and Richard Abbott, describing me as “a poor prospect for rehabilitation”; Dr. Harlow didn’t elaborate on his evaluation, except to say that, in his professional estimation, my sexual problems were “more a matter of attitude than action.”

All I said to my mother was that, in my professional estimation, the talk with Dr. Harlow had been a great success.

Poor, well-meaning Richard Abbott attempted to have a friendly tête-à-tête with me about the meeting. “What do you think Dr. Harlow meant by your attitude, Bill?” dear Richard asked me.

“Ah, well . . .” I said to Richard, pausing only long enough to meaningfully shrug. “I suppose a visible lack of remorse lies at the heart of it.”

“A visible lack of remorse,” Richard repeated.

“Trust me on this one, Richard,” I began, confident that I had Miss Frost’s domineering intonation exactly right. “Once you start repeating what people say to you, it’s a hard habit to break.”

I SAW MISS FROST only two more times; on both occasions, I was completely unprepared—I’d not been expecting to see her.

The sequence of events that led to my graduation from Favorite River Academy, and my departure from First Sister, Vermont, unfolded fairly quickly.

King Lear was performed by the Drama Club before our Thanksgiving vacation. For a period of time, not longer than a week or two, Richard Abbott joined my mother in giving me the “silent treatment”; I’d clearly hurt Richard’s feelings by not seeing the fall Shakespeare play. I’m sure I would have enjoyed Grandpa Harry’s performance in the Goneril role—more than I would have liked seeing Kittredge in the dual roles of Edgar and Poor Tom.

The other “poor Tom”—namely, Atkins—told me that Kittredge had pulled off both parts with a noble-seeming indifference, and that Grandpa Harry had luxuriously indulged in the sheer awfulness of Lear’s eldest daughter.

“How was Delacorte?” I asked Atkins.

“Delacorte gives me the creeps,” Atkins answered.

“I meant, how was he as Lear’s Fool, Tom.”

“Delacorte wasn’t bad, Bill,” Atkins admitted. “I just don’t know why he always looks like he needs to spit !”

“Because Delacorte does need to spit, Tom,” I told Atkins.

It was after Thanksgiving—hence the winter-sports teams had commenced their first practices—when I ran into Delacorte, who was on his way to wrestling practice. He had an oozing mat burn on one cheek and a deeply split lower lip; he was carrying the oft-seen paper cup. (I noted that Delacorte had just one cup, which I hoped was not a multipurpose cup—that is, for both rinsing and spitting.)

“How come you didn’t see the play?” Delacorte asked me. “Kittredge said you didn’t see it.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” I told him. “I’ve had a lot of other stuff going on.”

“Yeah, I know,” Delacorte said. “Kittredge told me about it.” Delacorte took a sip of water from the paper cup; he rinsed his mouth, then spit the water into a dirty snowbank alongside the footpath.

“I heard you were a very good Lear’s Fool,” I told him.

“Really?” Delacorte asked; he sounded surprised. “Who told you that?”

“Everybody said so,” I lied.

“I tried to do all my scenes with the awareness that I was dying,” Delacorte said seriously. “I see each scene that Lear’s Fool is in as a kind of death-in-progress,” he added.

“That’s very interesting. I’m sorry I missed it,” I told him again.

“Oh, that’s all right—you probably would have done it better,” Delacorte told me; he took another sip of water, then spit the water in the snow. Before he hurried on his way to wrestling practice, Delacorte suddenly asked me: “Was she pretty ? I mean the transsexual librarian.”

“Yes, very pretty,” I answered.