It
was 1961, or whatever year the song was “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” and the song was everywhere I went: on my little
tinny-voice transistor radio with the 9-volt batteries that last about a day,
on the jukeboxes and car radios, just everywhere. My best friend Steve had his
first steady girlfriend, but he was still my best friend and we hung around
together, the three of us, and then there four of us and Steve would drive us
out over Addicks damn, which was really a levee that was in the country west of
Houston.
Sarah was his girlfriend. She didn’t mind that the friends I found, those
nights that we did go out of town to feed the mosquitos with lusty teenage
blood from our bare butts, were male. I suppose it was her upbringing. Her
mother subscribed to a magazine called USSR, which looked just like
LIFE except it was full of communist stuff. We didn’t have to be making
the sweaty-sweaty out in the boonies. Sarah’s mother had said, more or less, we
could do it in their living room. In fact, Sarah’s mother was fairly careless
about her breasts at first. At first they would sort of fall out of her kimono,
right into my face, whenever she served me a Coke or something, but when she
figured how it was with me, she stopped that. She did call me “the poofter,”
which I hated and I really would have much rather she said “queer.” That was
the word then. But it was a tiny apartment and doing it in Sarah’s living room
would have been too creepy for me, and besides, most of my dates would have
ended up with Sarah’s mother anyway. Fortunately, it was also too creepy for
Steve, too. I think his reason was different. He had always been crazy about
older women — and there were hints, nothing specific, but hints that he had
visited Sarah’s place when Sarah wasn’t home. He wouldn’t even discuss it with
me, just like he wouldn’t even discuss with Sarah whether his relationship with
me ever had any physical aspect.
Hell, he wouldn’t even discuss that with me, and I had been there. One day he
just said, “None of that stuff we’ve done ever happened,” and afterwards
whenever I mentioned it, all he would say was, “It never happened.” So, I think
probably something had never happened with Sarah’s mother, too, and that was
why it would just be too creepy if we did stuff in Sarah’s living room with her
mother right in the next room.
A moony July night in
Houston, the air thick and moist, we were in Steve’s ’49 Ford. It was his first
car, before his Dad, probably because of guilt, bought him the Cutlass. Sarah
and Steve were in the front seat. I was in the back seat between Keith and
Eddie. That was possible because Keith had the smallest ass in the world. He
didn’t look like skin and bones, but he sure was on the slender side. And he
looked great in starch.
I’d always see him in a service-station shirt. Come to think of it, he must
have worked at a service station. But at the time I only noticed how really
tough he looked in the shirts, starched until they were like cardboard, the
short sleeves rolled up, his name embroidered in the oval over the pocket, and
the dark circles spreading from his armpits.
When Eddie wasn’t looking Keith would grab my hand and put it on his crotch.
He hadn’t always been quite that bold. The first few times he was worried about
what Steve would think. But when he realized Steve really wouldn’t have any
nasty comments about what went on in the back seat, it was different. Besides,
nothing had ever happened between Steve and Keith, too, but that had only been
one time and it had been a long time ago. Once, when Sarah had got out of the
car to pee, Keith suggested to Steve that they switch partners.
“Fine with me,” Steve said, “But Sarah thinks you’re a prick.” I don’t know
whether Sarah had ever said that. She didn’t have to. We all knew Keith was a
prick. But he didn’t wear any underwear and he left his service station shirt
unbuttoned half-way down and when the car was moving and the wind spread his
smell around the back seat, I didn’t care.
The problem was to get
rid of Eddie. Almost every night, the problem was to get rid of Eddie. Eddie
was the fifth wheel.
I forget whose friend Eddie was supposed to be. I guess he was the friend of
all us. Somehow we’d end up with him, maybe at the Palladium, which was the
bowling alley, or at the soda fountain or something. And he was a lot of fun
and okay to have around until it would get dead dark and the moon would be high
and we would have something that had to be done that didn’t involve him. For
several nights running we ditched him. Steve would yawn. Keith would say he had
to work tomorrow. And then we would drop Eddie off at his place doing what we
could to create the impression that we were all going right home to bed
ourselves. But Eddie wasn’t stupid. He knew where we all lived. He realized
that dropping him off first didn’t make sense. It about doubled the driving.
And for a while, he was content with the explanation that Sarah was Steve’s
girlfriend and of course Sarah would be the last to be dropped off so that
Steve and Sarah could be alone.
That he understood. But then it occurred to him that it didn’t make any sense
either, on account of the geography, for him to always be the first guy we
dropped off. And when he got that far, that was the night I had to draw him a
diagram. That was our expression for telling him plainly what the deal was.
We had gone through the yawning and the work-tomorrow stuff, and Steve had
actually started driving towards Eddie’s place. Eddie wanted to know where we
really were going after we dropped him off. He started raising hell about it.
And Keith said if we all went to the drive-in first, he would buy us all lime
Cokes. I hated going to the drive-in with Keith. He would make all kinds of
smart remarks to the carhops, and few times he even dumped the tray, reaching
out of the car to pinch the carhop’s ass. Keith was a prick.
Fortunately, when we got to the drive-in, Eddie had to go to the men’s room.
He made us promise not to ditch him there. We weren’t planning on it. He was
our friend. We wouldn’t do it. When Eddie was out of the car, Keith made an
exasperated sound and then stuck his tongue down my throat — quickly, before
the carhop got to us to take our order.
“What if I draw him a diagram,” I said. It was up to Keith. He was the only
one with a reputation to protect. Steve and Sarah were sixteen. They were going
to get married, someday. She wasn’t a slut and they were going steady, so she
wasn’t going to get a rep. I was thirteen and I had a rep, but in fact I really
didn’t deserve it. I mean, I did deserve it, but the guys who were talking
about me didn’t really know, and the guys who did really know weren’t talking.
I don’t know how old Keith was. He had dropped out of school. Did it matter to
him?
“Okay,” he said. “No one would believe it anyway.” So I got out of the car and
stopped Eddie as he was coming out of the restroom, which was a pretty busy
place on a summer night, because it had a rubber machine, and as far as anyone
knew, this was the only place in the world to buy rubbers.
I told him, Eddie, we don’t want to hurt your feelings. We all like you. But
you are right, that something does happen after we let you out. Look, we drive
out in the country and have sex, so you see it is like you would be a fifth
wheel.
Eddie’s eyes got really big. Eddie was fifteen and he was even in some of the
same classes with Steve, so I was pretty sure he had heard of sex, although you
couldn’t tell it from his reactions. I might as well have been telling him that
we went to the airport and hopped on a plane to Dallas.
“You mean,” he said, “you three guys and Sarah?”
“No.”
“So what’s wrong with me? Why not me?”
“No. No. No. Not we three guys and Sarah. Steve and Sarah, and Keith and
me.”
“Yeah. You three guys and Sarah. I didn’t think… Sarah? But I mean, if
that’s the way it is, why not me too? What’s one more?”
I tried again and this time he thought what I meant was that Keith and I each
had girlfriends that we picked up after we dropped him off, and he thought that
must make the car real crowded. Finally I had to say, look, Keith and I are
having sex. We are having sex with each other.
Eddie flinched. He looked me in the eye for a long time and he raised a corner
of his mouth, trying to break me up, like in a stare down, but I didn’t laugh.
I thought, why can’t he see it on my face, where Keith’s whisker stubble had
burned my upper lip like so much sandpaper. Finally he shook his head like a
wet dog shakes its body.
“I don’t believe you. Keith… Keith works on cars, for chrissakes. Naw, no, I
don’t buy it. So what do you really do? Do you get some beer? Do you go to a
party? What? Go to Galveston?”
Well, a couple of times Keith had got some beer. He knew a guy who would buy
it for him. And when we got out over the dam he would open one for each of us.
And we’d all force ourselves to drink it down because none of the rest of us
liked beer. And even Keith didn’t want more than one, and Steve would make him
leave the last two out there because Steve didn’t want the beer in the car in
case he was stopped by a cop.
We drove to Eddie’s place.
Eddie did not believe me. He sulked the whole time. And then when he was out of
the car, before we pulled away he went around to Keith’s window and grabbed
Keith’s arm, which was, as usual, hanging out.
“Tell me,” he begged.
“Larry told you,” Keith said. I was known as Larry then.
“I don’t believe that shit,” Eddie says. “Look, I’m not asking you to take me
along. I just want to know. What is it? Where do you go, what do you do? What
is that thing you do?”
He was not sobbing or wailing or anything, but there were tears running down
his cheeks. Then Keith told him in those crisp, short, blunt, and vividly frank
words, with which English is equipped against the event of the diffusiveness of
Latinate polysyllables being not up to the task of conveying the meaning,
precisely what he did to me and I did to him. The way he put it was so brutal
that Sarah drew in her breath sharply, shocked to hear it put into those words,
although of course she had actually seen and heard us doing what the words
described. I was shocked too, because generally Keith would try to pretend that
there wasn’t a what-I-did-to-him part and once had almost fought Steve because
Steve had noticed there was that part of things.
We left. Eddie stood by the curb yelling “Liar, liar, liar,” at us. Steve
turned the radio up. Of course, it was “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.”
We thought it a daring thing — as no doubt it was — to share our secret with
Eddie in order to spare his feelings. But he would have none of our secret.
Instead he wanted to know that other secret, that other thing, the thing we
were really hiding from him, the thing too good for him to know.
Now sometimes, as I reflect upon the joys and terrors of my youth, I do wish
that once, just one of those summer nights in Houston, we had done that other
secret. That other thing. Whatever it was. n Lars Eighner will be honored at a reading at Bookstop Central Park on
Thursday, August 15, 7-9pm, to help him defray medical expenses. Participants
will include Eighner, Mary Willis Walker, Marion Winik, and Lawrence Wright.
This article appears in August 9 • 1996 and August 9 • 1996 (Cover).