Eating the Moon Page 2

  “Interesting. What do you teach?”

  “Anthropology.” Guy looked up at Richard with eyes that pleaded for him to stop the interrogation.

  “Fair enough.” Richard held up his hand. “You don’t have Alzheimer’s. They checked you out last night. Physically you’re okay. Actually, you’re in great shape, considering.”

  “Yes, yes, I know.” Guy pressed his temples and moaned. “Why don’t you give me something stronger than that Tylenol shit? Maybe some Percocet. My head is splitting.”

  “Well,” Richard said. “I don’t want to lecture you, but you do smoke, drink, and use drugs. That can’t be good for you.”

  “Thank you, Mommy Dearest, but I’ve had these headaches for years.” Guy half closed his eyes and slowed his breathing.

  “What do you do for them? Take anything?”

  “Nothing works, really. Whenever the weather changes, my head throbs.” Guy pointed out the window at the blackening sky. “Lately it’s gotten worse.”

  “That’s rough.” Richard sat upright in his chair. “Have you seen a neurologist or had a CAT scan?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been through all of that.”

  “Well, you were pretty dehydrated last night. That’s why you collapsed.” Richard shifted in his chair and crossed his legs.

  “E can do that.” Guy shrugged slightly.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “Not really.”

  Richard sat quietly, looking at Guy.

  “Okay, fine.” Guy huffed. “Last night was the summer solstice. It was supposed to be the best night of the season: feasting, dancing, and sex until dawn.”

  Richard furrowed his brow. “Summer solstice?”

  “June twenty-first. Some people celebrate Christmas, Ramadan, or Chanukah. I celebrate the solstice and equinox. Or at least I used to. But that was some other place and time.”

  Richard nodded.

  Guy rolled his eyes. “Let’s just say that instead of celebrating, I got high alone on some shit chemicals, then spent the night in hospital. Some festival, eh?” He stretched his arms out along the back of the sofa. An array of tattoos, like graffiti on the side of a subway train, poked out from the sleeves and V-neck of his standard-issue hospital T-shirt.

  Richard studied Guy. His clipboard was positioned on his lap with a pen in his hand, but he still hadn’t written anything.

  “Doc, this is not my first time here,” Guy said, shaking his head. “I know the drill: check me out, dry me out, then ship me down to the psych ward to make sure I’m not a danger to myself or society.”

  “That’s pretty much the drill.”

  “Listen, it’s nine o’clock in the morning. Could we drop the clinical crap, get a coffee, and I’ll answer all your questions?” Guy’s eyes pleaded.

  “Well, there’s a coffee machine down the hall.” Richard swiveled around in his chair and tossed his clipboard onto the desk.

  “I’ll pass. I don’t think my guts could take coin-drop java this morning.”

  “Look, it’s obvious to me that you’re fine, and you’re free to go, of course. But before you take off, I’d like to make a suggestion.” Richard interlocked his fingers and stretched them.

  “Shoot.” Guy leaned forward, and the stiff vinyl sofa groaned.

  “It appears to me that perhaps there are a few things you might want to get off your chest.” Richard’s voice was relaxed and casual. “The way the system works is like this. You’ve been checked in, and so the government is footing the bill. If you agree, but only if you agree”—Richard now spoke with a kind of conspiratorial enthusiasm—“I can recommend further therapy and they’ll go on paying for it.”

  “Nice try, Doc.” Guy forced a smile. “Unless I’m mistaken, you just started here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, a couple of weeks ago.” Richard nodded.

  “Just as I thought. You’re a twinky, fresh out of grad school, and you need to get your case study quota up and put your publication record in shape. So you’re slumming it down here in the public sector for a couple of years before you get a university position or move on to a lucrative private practice in the north of the city. Am I right?”

  Richard uncrossed his legs, placed both feet flat on the floor, and sat back in his chair but said nothing.

  “How old are you anyway? Twenty-eight? Thirty?”

  “I’m thirty-two, as a matter of fact.” Richard crossed his arms. “And you’re right. I just graduated this spring.”

  “So, make me an offer, Dr. Peachfuzz.” Guy propped his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on his knuckles. “What’s in it for me?”

  Richard held his palms out. “I can’t offer anything, just a sympathetic ear. Come in twice a week and talk for an hour and I’ll listen.”

  Guy scratched his head and blew out a puff of air. “What time?”

  “I have slots Mondays and Fridays at nine in the morning.”

  “Mondays and Fridays, eh?” Guy tapped his finger on the arm of the sofa. “And you’ll write me a medical certificate so I can get out of my dreadful Monday-morning steering committee and the Friday-morning departmental meetings?”

  “I could do that.”

  Guy looked over and surveyed the books on the shelf over Richard’s desk, focusing on the worn spines of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and Bion’s A Memoir of the Future. “Are you sure you have the balls to put up with me?”

  Richard uncrossed his arms and leaned toward Guy. “I don’t want you ending up facedown on a dance floor again.”

  Guy rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. “Before I agree to be your couch gerbil, I want to clarify something.” Guy looked directly at Richard. “You’re homosexual, right.”

  The expression drained from Richard’s face. His chair squeaked as he sat back, crossed his arms again, and cleared his throat. “And why would that be important?”

  “First of all, that was a rhetorical question. And secondly, because I don’t want to waste my time playing word games with some muffin head who’s read about repressed homosexuality and castration anxiety.” Guy paused and grinned like an innocent child. “But you…. You’re a man who knows what it’s like to have a dick in his mouth, aren’t you?”

  “You’re very direct, Guy.” Richard scrunched up his face, and his eye twitched. “Actually, I have a girlfriend.” There was a subtle playground sneer in his voice.

  “Ahhh, of course you do.” Guy leaned his head backward against the sofa and slapped his forehead. “You’re one of those bookworm-sexuals, aren’t you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s a term I invented for nerds like you who study other people’s sexuality and intellectualize their own so that they can remain hidden within the safety of the academic closet.”

  Richard balked. “You don’t know anything about me.” He looked as if he were trying to contain his anger.

  “Of course I don’t, and I’m sure your girlfriend has the best boyfriend in the world—thoughtful, attentive, and considerate. Besides, real passion is overrated anyway. She’s not missing out on anything.”

  “Enough about my personal life, please,” Richard said with a tone of clinical authority. Then he breathed in deeply, uncrossed his arms, and leaned forward again, softening his expression and voice. “Don’t worry. I’m not looking to mess with your head or your sexuality, but I am someone you can talk to. And if I’m not mistaken, you could use a friendly ear.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll do it.” Guy looked at Richard ambivalently.

  “And one other thing,” Richard said cautiously. “I also want to ask your permission to record our sessions.”

  “Why not?” Guy flipped his hand in the air like he was swatting at a fly. “I just agreed to be your lab rat, didn’t I?”

  Richard got up, took the recorder from his desk, and returned to his swivel chair.

  As he fumbled with the buttons, Guy continued to speak
. “Doc, you see me now. I’m a semibald, loose-skinned old man, but I was once young like you.”

  “Everybody gets old.” Richard lightly touched the salt-and-pepper hair on his temple.

  “Yeah, but getting old really sucks if you’re gay.” Guy scrunched up his face. “I guess it really wasn’t much easier when I was young.” Guy stared back at Richard but said nothing more. The wall clock ticked, and sounds from outside crept into the room.

  After a few minutes, Richard leaned forward. “This is where you’re supposed to tell me something about growing up.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Doc. I know how head shrinking works.” Guy shifted in his seat. “Well, here goes. I grew up in a rural, redneck Ontario village. I was an only child, and my parents were almost forty when they had me. I came as quite a shock. My mom and dad owned the only general store, and our house was above it. My folks put in long hours in the store—from eight in the morning till ten at night, six days a week. They had a big dream of retiring early and spending their winters in Florida. I guess when I came along, I spoiled their dream.”

  “Did you feel unwanted?”

  “Hmm, maybe not unwanted but certainly not wanted. Growing up, I spent a lot of time alone. I used to read comic books. I guess it was my way of hiding from reality. Tarzan was my favorite.”

  Richard chuckled. “Tell me about it.”

  “During the long cold winters, I would spend hours submerged in a hot bath. That’s when I first created my little fantasy world: a steamy tropical jungle, crystal pool, and half-naked natives. Old Tarzan films and National Geographic specials were like clues that other realities were not only possible, but maybe they really did exist.” Guy furrowed his brow. “Maybe that’s why I chose to study anthropology in the first place.”

  Richard cocked his head. “Because of old Tarzan films?”

  “You could say that.” Guy smiled. “Maybe I was looking for my own gay jungle or a homo Shangri-la.”

  Richard nodded.

  “My folks had a little cottage on a lake north of our village, and during the summers, whenever possible, I would escape to the privacy of the woods, strip off my clothes, and lie naked in a sunny patch or steal away to a secluded little pond and skinny-dip. I was Tarzan’s Boy, swinging with him, side by side from vine to vine through the jungle.” Guy paused. “That’s how I discovered masturbation.” He tugged at his T-shirt and scratched his neck. “Do they wash these things in a special soap just to make them itchy? Anyway, as I was saying, I wasn’t ashamed of wanking, you understand. I knew other boys did it. More than anything, it was my growing desire that frightened and isolated me. Everything I knew back then told me that my fantasies were sick.”

  “Well, I’m sure you know fantasies are a sign of a healthy, creative mind.” Richard rested his chin on his knuckles.

  “Yes, isn’t that lovely.” Guy gave him a pained smile. “But if you are a lonely, confused gay kid, living in a homophobic village, fantasies are all you have. And that’s the problem. Queers build their lives on fantasy.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because reality sucks, and we don’t have many other choices.”

  “It’s true that some queer kids have it pretty rough growing up.” Richard cocked his head. “But things are getting better.”

  “Oh, thank you, Pollyanna. I’ll remember that.”

  Richard clenched his jaw.

  “Doc, what if things were the other way around? If queers were in control and the heteros were the freaks?” His tone sounded more like a challenge than a question. “Do you think such a society could exist, or is it just a ridiculous fantasy?”

  “You tell me,” Richard said. He folded his hands on his lap.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Guy said. “The analyst enters into the delusional world of the patient in the absence of containment. The patient projects his unbearable emotions onto the analyst, who, capable of understanding these emotions, contains, elaborates, and gives them back to the patient in a form in which he can think and dream about—essential to the coherent construction of his personal emotional history and tolerable truth.” Guy rattled off the phrase, then paused.

  Richard looked at Guy curiously. “You’ve read Bion?”

  “Well, that’s a very crude summary of Bion.” Guy shrugged. “But more importantly, you’ve read Bion?” He grinned.

  “Of course.” Richard raised his eyebrows. “He’s required.”

  Guy tapped his head with his forefinger. “A friend of mine once wrote, ‘Freud gave us the road map to the human unconscious, and Bion challenged us to take a journey within.’” Guy held up both hands, as if he were praying. “Listen, Doc. I want to take you on a little journey, tell you a story I’ve never told any other living soul.”

  “You can confide in me.” Richard’s expression was sincere, almost hopeful.

  “Okay, here goes. A long time ago, I discovered a place which was like no other place I could have ever dreamed of or imagined.” Guy held out his hands like a man pleading for salvation. “It’s real. I swear it is. I’ve kept it secret my entire life, but now—I don’t know why—I need to tell someone about it.”

  “Maybe you need to validate it in some way?” Richard leaned forward and rested his elbows comfortably on his knees. “Remember, I’m here to listen, not to judge you.”

  Guy slumped into the sofa. “Because of my own stupidity and greed, I lost it. And I’ve spent almost fifty years trying to find my way back.”

  “And where is this place?”

  “Hang on. I haven’t even started telling you my story yet.” Guy reached back and scratched his nape. Then he stared at the far wall and began.

  I’M TWENTY-TWO years old. My body is hard, my smile white, and my eyes bright. I’ve just finished my final year at the University of McGill in Montreal—the year is 1970. That’s also the spring my parents die in a car accident driving home from their first winter in Florida. My folks were never very good at accounting, so there is no life insurance policy, and after the lawyers clean up their debts, mortgage on the store, and my school fees, there really isn’t much left. With no job, no money, and nothing to tie me down, I say to myself, why wait for someone else’s permission to see the world? Why not go down to the docks and get my own ticket to adventure?

  Mind you, I’m no stranger to the docks. I know my way around. Back then the gay bars were as dangerous as the docks, if not worse. I’m familiar with certain nighttime passageways and shadowy nooks. I know how a casual glance and a pause can start a game of lead and follow. I know how to initiate a touch without words. I know a flash of five fingers and an open palm cements a deal. Sailors are lonely and have money, and I need money and more.

  I ask around a bit and find a tramp freighter, the Crescent Moon, Liberian registry, leaving Montreal and sailing south. The captain of the Crescent Moon is an old German guy who smells of booze. I say old. He seems old. I don’t know, he must be fifty or something. He tells me most of his crew are Chinese and he’s sick of noodles and chicken feet. Then he asks me two questions: Am I running from the law and can I fry an egg? I answer no to the first and yes to the second. Maybe he likes me because he sees himself when he was young. For whatever reason, he offers me passage as cook, cabin boy, and deckhand. All I know about being a sailor is from books and movies, Kipling and Doyle, Mutiny on the Bounty, and stuff like that.

  The Crescent Moon is carrying fertilizer and farming equipment, or so I believe, heading for Cuba and some of the smaller Caribbean islands. We sail at 4:00 a.m. on a brutish spring morning and head down the St. Lawrence River and out into the Atlantic, past the fishing banks and beyond the territorial limits. Of course we can’t enter American waters since the US has an embargo against Cuba—our first stop—so we make a wide sweep out past Bermuda.

  At first it’s all very exciting, and I take every chance I get to look outside, not that I see very much apart from deep blue rolling waves. I have a canvas hammock strung in a kind of anteroom
behind the galley with no window, but I don’t get to spend much time there anyway. When I’m not preparing meals for the captain and the first mate, I’m washing dishes, cleaning heads, bringing coffee to the bridge, and generally running errands. For never more than an hour at a time, I manage to crash in my hammock, only to be summoned from my brief sleep for some chore or other. It isn’t long before I start to think maybe I’ve made a big mistake, but it’s too late to change my mind.

  The captain and crew are decent enough and treat me well, although I can’t say we become mates or anything. We don’t have very much in common other than sharing space on this old rust bucket, and many of the crew can barely speak English. To the crew, I’m sure I’m just some stupid kid who has signed on for adventure, and they know I’ll jump ship at the first semidecent port.

  The first mate, an Italian-American guy named Luca, is the only one on board I make friends with. He’s not much older than I am, twenty-four to be exact. The Chinese crew assumes we are brothers. Sometimes they even confuse us, calling us by each other’s name.

  The funny part about it is, we are really quite similar in appearance. We are about the same height and build. Luca sort of looks like a more muscular version of me, I guess. Of course he’s slightly darker, and he has blue eyes while mine are green. He could be my big brother or a cousin, maybe. Luca thinks it’s a joke and says his great-grandpa must have been in my great-grandmother’s underpants.

  Most nights we have coffee together during his watch. He complains about my coffee while he explains the ship and shows me various charts and things, but he never really tells me much about his personal life, and I don’t ask too many questions. It’s understood that men on a ship like this usually don’t talk about their personal histories. I sense Luca has a dark side that I’m not sure I want to discover.

  After about five days out at sea, as we arch past Bermuda and turn toward Cuba, we hit rough weather. I don’t know whether it’s particularly bad or just the kind of nasty storm that the Atlantic is famous for. At first it’s exciting, with mountains of water all around. Even the sky has now become sea. The rusty old bucket of a ship booms, groans, and echoes with each pounding wave, and I’m sure that the sea will rip us apart. None of the crew appears to be particularly worried. Instead, they go about their business, coping with each lurch and toss of the ship as if this is normal and expected. I try my best to do the same. Their smirks and grins tell me I’m not deceiving anyone with my false nonchalance. By nightfall my stomach begins to churn and my head starts to ache. Next thing I know I’m hanging on to the toilet bowl for dear life. I moan, “Oh God, kill me.”