Arkansas by David Leavitt Read Free Book Online Page B

Leavitt, novelist, was available to write term papers for good-looking male undergraduates; no articles appeared in
The Daily Bruin,
or graffiti (so far as I am aware) on bathroom walls. Still, in a controlled way, news got out, and as the spring quarter opened, no less than five boys called me up with papers to be written. And how had they gotten my number in the first place? I tried to imagine the conversations that had taken place: “Shit, Eric, I don’t know how I’m supposed to finish this paper on ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ by Friday.” “Why don’t you call up Dave Leavitt? He’ll do it for you if you let him give you a blow job.” “A blow job, huh? Sounds great. What’s his number?”
    Or perhaps the suggestion was never so direct. Perhaps it was made in a more discreet language, or a more vulgar one. The latter, I suspect. In fact I’m sure that at some point all the boys, even Eric, made rude, humiliating remarks about me, called me “faggot” or “cocksucker,” then qualified those (to them) insults by adding that I was “still a basically decent guy.” Or some such proviso.
    Business got so good, I started turning down offers, either because I was overworked, or because the boy in question, when I met him, simply didn’t appeal to me physically, in which case I would apologize and say that I couldn’t spare the time. (I hated this part of the job, but what could I do? Profit was my motive, not charity. I never gave anything for which I didn’t get something back.
    You’d think I
had
gone to business school.)
    All told, I wrote papers for seven boys—seven boys toward most of whom I felt something partway between the affection that ennobled my friendship with Eric and the contempt that characterized my dealings with Hunter. The topics ranged from “The Image of the Wanderer in English Romantic Poetry” to “The Fall of the Paris Commune” to “Child Abandonment in Medieval Italy” to “Flight in Toni Morrison’s
Song of Solomon”
to “Bronzino and the Traditions of Italian Renaissance Portraiture.”
    Of these boys, and papers, the only other one I need to tell you about is Ben.
    Ben got in touch with me around midterm of the spring quarter. “Mr. Leavitt?” he said on the phone. “My name’s Ben Hollingsworth. I got your number from Tony Younger.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œYes. He told me to call you. He said you might ... that we could—”
    â€œRelax. There’s no need to be nervous.”
    â€œThanks. I’m really ... I don’t know where to start.”
    â€œWhy don’t we meet?” I offered, my voice as honeyed and professional as any prostitute’s. “It’s always easier to talk in person.”
    â€œWhere?”
    I suggested the Ivy, only Ben didn’t want to meet at the Ivy—or any other public place, for that matter. Instead he asked if he could pick me up on the third floor of the Beverly Center parking lot, near the elevators. Then we could discuss things in his car.
    I said that was fine by me.
    We rendezvoused at ten-thirty the next morning. It was unusually chilly out. Ben drove a metallic blue Honda, the passenger door to which was dented. “Mr. Leavitt?” he asked as he threw it open.
    â€œIn the flesh.”
    I climbed in. Altogether, with his carefully combed black hair and short-sleeve button-down shirt (pen in breast pocket), he reminded me of those Mormon missionary boys you sometimes run into in the European capitals, with badges on their lapels that say “Elder Anderson” or “Elder Carpenter.” And as it turned out, the association was prophetic. Ben
was
a Mormon, as I soon learned, albeit from Fremont, California, not Utah. No doubt in earlier years he’d done the very same European “service,” handing out pamphlets to confused homosexual tourists