Halfway Home by Paul Monette Read Free Book Online
Authors: Paul Monette
plays do you do? Your own? I always thought you'd end up being a writer instead of an actor."
"We don't exactly do plays," I reply with infinite precision. Brian is recalling my thespian days at UConn, where I ran with a crowd of earnest misfits, putting on Shaw and, Albee. Then summer stock in Williamstown, doing walk-ons and touching the hems of minor stars, and sucking them off late at night. I don't remember Brian ever coming to see me in a play, those being the years when he first recoiled from the horror of my gayness. Yet he seems to know I was a lousy actor, all too true. So over-the-top I practically ate the scenery.
"Yeah, what I saw yesterday, it was more like stand-up." He says this tentatively, taking a slurp of tea. If it was stand-up, he seems to wonder, then how come it wasn't funny?
"Performance is kind of a hybrid," I reply, and then I can't bear the PBS professorial bullshit in my voice. I can't be nice a moment longer or I'll scream. "Actually, I was pretty notorious there for a while. I used to do a thing called 'Miss Jesus.' " He looks at me blankly. "You know, Christ as a raging queen. Getting it on with Peter and Judas. Kind of a pain junkie." I'm amazed how proud I sound, and how confrontational. Of course it was the nature of the piece to stick it in people's faces.
Brian stares abstractedly at the hollow rind of his cantaloupe. "I don't get it."
"Well, it started with a chubby little pederast priest, Father O'Hanion, who liked his bottle and dicking twelve-year-olds. But that was too easy. Then I did the Pope in this silk organza gown, 'cause he was going to the Vatican prom. That was very interesting, but after a while it seemed like one big Polack joke. See, I wasn't trying to be funny." I deliver this truncated resume with maximum cool. Brian's discomfort is visible. He neither eats nor drinks, and his hands grip the edge of the table as if he will lift it off the floor. "Then I thought, go for the big boy. It took a while to evolve, and it's always changing. Plus I adjust for the season—a Christmas pageant, and an Easter piece that's all in leather."
Ravenous now, I spoon a great dollop of jam on my muffin, eating as if I've just come in from swimming the Catalina Channel. Brian is slowly shaking his head. "How do you live like that, so pissed off all the time? What does it get you?"
I shrug. "It's a job. Somebody's gotta do it."
"Can't you stop being flip for just one minute? So you had a shitty childhood. So the church isn't perfect. So let it go."
"You were right the first time, Brian—you don't get it." We're locked eye to glittering eye now. It's a little like arm wrestling. "I'm glad I came from a fucked dysfunctional family. And growing up Catholic was perfect, like an advanced degree in ruined lives. 'Cause it's helped me a lot with my work. Otherwise I might be just another middle-class troll, dead from the neck up and eating lies like peanuts."
"They had hard lives," he hisses back in my face. "They did the best they could."
"For you. And your life turned out perfect. So you keep the shrine, okay?"
He explodes. "My life is not perfect!" It's almost a scream, so violent it backs me against my chair. He raises a hand as if to cuff me, then slams it down on the table, rattling the dishes like a 4.5. "I'm sorry you're dying, kiddo, but everyone has it hard. Nobody has it easy." The bitterness in his voice takes my breath away. His face is beet-red with the violence he can't unleash on a sick boy. He hasn't called me "kiddo" in twenty years either. It used to be half a taunt, half a sneer, accompanied by a body check.
He breathes heavily in the silence that follows, cooling down. There's no more point to breakfast. "Yeah, well I'm sure life sucks all over the place," I declare with a certain numb reserve, "but I don't have room for anyone else's. I'm better off by myself."
We don't move for a moment. It's exactly the same deadlock as last night, when he left the first time.
"We don't exactly do plays," I reply with infinite precision. Brian is recalling my thespian days at UConn, where I ran with a crowd of earnest misfits, putting on Shaw and, Albee. Then summer stock in Williamstown, doing walk-ons and touching the hems of minor stars, and sucking them off late at night. I don't remember Brian ever coming to see me in a play, those being the years when he first recoiled from the horror of my gayness. Yet he seems to know I was a lousy actor, all too true. So over-the-top I practically ate the scenery.
"Yeah, what I saw yesterday, it was more like stand-up." He says this tentatively, taking a slurp of tea. If it was stand-up, he seems to wonder, then how come it wasn't funny?
"Performance is kind of a hybrid," I reply, and then I can't bear the PBS professorial bullshit in my voice. I can't be nice a moment longer or I'll scream. "Actually, I was pretty notorious there for a while. I used to do a thing called 'Miss Jesus.' " He looks at me blankly. "You know, Christ as a raging queen. Getting it on with Peter and Judas. Kind of a pain junkie." I'm amazed how proud I sound, and how confrontational. Of course it was the nature of the piece to stick it in people's faces.
Brian stares abstractedly at the hollow rind of his cantaloupe. "I don't get it."
"Well, it started with a chubby little pederast priest, Father O'Hanion, who liked his bottle and dicking twelve-year-olds. But that was too easy. Then I did the Pope in this silk organza gown, 'cause he was going to the Vatican prom. That was very interesting, but after a while it seemed like one big Polack joke. See, I wasn't trying to be funny." I deliver this truncated resume with maximum cool. Brian's discomfort is visible. He neither eats nor drinks, and his hands grip the edge of the table as if he will lift it off the floor. "Then I thought, go for the big boy. It took a while to evolve, and it's always changing. Plus I adjust for the season—a Christmas pageant, and an Easter piece that's all in leather."
Ravenous now, I spoon a great dollop of jam on my muffin, eating as if I've just come in from swimming the Catalina Channel. Brian is slowly shaking his head. "How do you live like that, so pissed off all the time? What does it get you?"
I shrug. "It's a job. Somebody's gotta do it."
"Can't you stop being flip for just one minute? So you had a shitty childhood. So the church isn't perfect. So let it go."
"You were right the first time, Brian—you don't get it." We're locked eye to glittering eye now. It's a little like arm wrestling. "I'm glad I came from a fucked dysfunctional family. And growing up Catholic was perfect, like an advanced degree in ruined lives. 'Cause it's helped me a lot with my work. Otherwise I might be just another middle-class troll, dead from the neck up and eating lies like peanuts."
"They had hard lives," he hisses back in my face. "They did the best they could."
"For you. And your life turned out perfect. So you keep the shrine, okay?"
He explodes. "My life is not perfect!" It's almost a scream, so violent it backs me against my chair. He raises a hand as if to cuff me, then slams it down on the table, rattling the dishes like a 4.5. "I'm sorry you're dying, kiddo, but everyone has it hard. Nobody has it easy." The bitterness in his voice takes my breath away. His face is beet-red with the violence he can't unleash on a sick boy. He hasn't called me "kiddo" in twenty years either. It used to be half a taunt, half a sneer, accompanied by a body check.
He breathes heavily in the silence that follows, cooling down. There's no more point to breakfast. "Yeah, well I'm sure life sucks all over the place," I declare with a certain numb reserve, "but I don't have room for anyone else's. I'm better off by myself."
We don't move for a moment. It's exactly the same deadlock as last night, when he left the first time.