Consenting Adult (14 page)

The two extra leaves in the oblong table had elongated it sufficiently to make room for Don and Jenny and their two youngsters and Jenny’s father on one side, and for Nate and Margie and Jeff, as well as Jenny’s mother and old Mrs. Lynn on the other side, with Ken at one end and herself at the other. Ken’s mother, eighty last month, was the one survivor of the four grandparents who had been there so often for holiday dinners when their own children were small, and for one pensive moment Tessa visualized herself at eighty, sitting at some future festive table, the sole survivor of her own generation, and she found herself suddenly fervent with a new insight into Grandma Lynn’s long silences, and with a private wish that she never would need to know them for herself.

Suddenly there seemed to be a fervency of another kind down at Ken’s end of the table, with Nate leaning forward, talking past Mrs. Lynn to Ken, as if to intensify what he had just said, with Margie nodding her agreement, and with Jeff, seated between the two, holding himself erect, stone still, listening. Ken’s color had already risen to the hue she found alarming.

“But it was so damn ugly,” Nate was saying to Ken, insisting on it as if he had already made the point but needed to press it further. “Like the roundup of so many cattle. And I couldn’t even say so in my story. The Objectivity of the Press. God.”

“What roundup, Nate?” Tessa asked. “I missed that.”

“This police story I covered last night. About the cops raiding a bar in the Village and pulling in six men.”

“Arresting them for what?” Tessa asked. But she knew and a knot tightened in her throat.

“For none of their goddamn business. The place is known as a homosexual bar, but the men weren’t doing one damn thing except
being
there, having drinks.”

“The police,” Ken said resignedly. “You can’t expect them to behave like the American Civil Liberties Union:”

“But I can’t say, ‘Oh, well,’ and think it’s okay either. Can I?”

“Of course not, nor I. But when the day comes that the Vice Squad doesn’t round up prostitutes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and homosexuals on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, why, it’ll be a different world, that’s all.”

“I know,” Nate said, still sounding strenuous. “But to slam in as I gather they did, just bust in and round up half a dozen guys—”

“Do they do it as a routine thing?” Tessa asked, her voice guarded. “I never realized that.”

“Sacred routine, the way I get it,” Nate said. “I couldn’t work that into my story either, not this time. New York’s finest have never even heard of the Wolfenden Report or any other point of view.”

Old Mrs. Lynn leaned forward. She had said little during the meal except for talking to Don’s youngsters, but now with sudden energy she said to Nate, “There can’t be too many points of view about abnormal acts, can there?”

Ken looked at his mother as if in reproof for this old-fashioned New Englandism, but to Nate he said, “The Wolfenden Report is that English bill that was voted down by Parliament, isn’t it?”

“Vetoed the first time around, yes. I’m checking into its current status as soon as I get a free hour or so.”

“What’s the Wolfenden Report, Nate?” It was Jeff, speaking for the first time. His voice was deeper than usual, as if he were wrung with feeling too big for him, or too violent to let free. Tessa had not looked at him during the exchange between Ken and Nate, but now she glanced at him as casually as she could.

“It’s a big study ordered a few years ago by the British government,” Nate answered, “and this Wolfenden is the head of the group making the study.”

“About what?” Jeff asked.

“It’s complex, but mainly about whether the state or the law should or should not have any power in regard to homosexuals.”

“What sort of power?”

“Any right to arrest somebody who is homosexual just for being homosexual or for having sex with another person who is homosexual. Of course the report says no.”

“No what?”

“No, the state does not have the right to arrest or interfere with homosexuals. Not when the people involved are two consenting adults and acting in private.”

“I did read something about it,” Tessa put in. “But I can’t remember exactly what it was or when it was.”

“I was pretty vague too,” Nate said. “But last night I looked up what the paper had in the morgue, in a big hurry, with ray deadline hanging on me, and knowing damn well they’d never give me the space for any background fill-in.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Margie asked.

“You know why, darling. Because they’re shoving things like this under the carpet. But pretty soon I’m going to check it out some more, this Wolfenden Report, and the next time there’s this kind of a story, maybe I can talk them into more space.”

Ken said nothing. He no longer was looking at Nate. Tessa thought, He’s upset and Nate’s angry, and there’s something awfully decent in Nate’s anger. She did not look again at Jeff, but suddenly she felt as if she
were
Jeff, listening to this kind of talk for the first time, presumably for the first time, certainly for the first time in his own house among his own family. She felt a surge of thanks toward Nate, and in the same instant heard again his words about “the next time there’s this kind of story,” and the prophecy in them seemed to set a steel string vibrating in her mind as if his words were metal and clanging out a warning.

Through the rest of the dinner and then all evening long, Jeff kept hearing Nate’s voice, as if it were on a tape-recorder, being run over and over. It was exciting and wonderful; he felt lifted up and terrific, like the feeling right after a big rushing gain on the field or a solid thwacking tackle at the key moment “For none of their goddamn business … like the roundup of so many cattle … weren’t doing one damn thing except
being
there … look at the Wolfenden Report before the British Parliament.”

It was horrible and yet marvelous. It was the first time anybody ever had talked about it as if it was any other big question, like ban-the-bomb or civil rights or Kennedy-and-Nixon, not as if it was something to send you to a doctor or psychoanalyst. It had given him a brand-new feeling about Nate, not just as a brother-in-law, not just as Margie’s husband, but as somebody important to
him,
somebody to value in his own life. Nate really was sore about those cops busting in there, not just because it was a police story he was covering, but because something in the idea itself got him damn mad. Nate was married to Margie and they were going to have a baby any minute and he was happy, but he was angry just the same about the roundup, and when you put it all together, you just had to feel that there was something in Nate that was one hell of a lot different from what you always expected in people.

He had heard of bars like the one Nate was telling about; where, he did not know. Read about such bars, rather, for nobody in his whole life had ever just sat at a table with a lot of people and talked out just like that about anything connected with being homosexual. Dr. Dudley of course; he had forgotten him for a minute, but that wasn’t what he meant. That was a doctor, being paid big fat fees to talk about it, not just somebody in your own house, having dinner with your own family, just talking right out as if it were any other subject.

The roundup of so many cattle. It was so
big,
sitting there next to Nate, listening to him, hearing him shove all that Civil Liberties crap right back at the old man. Just like Grandma Lynn’s “There can’t be too many points of view about abnormal acts, can there?” That’s what Dad had grown up with, and what he still felt way down deep, in secret, where he didn’t have to make like a liberal about things.

There couldn’t be two points of view, he supposed, otherwise why would he, Jeff, writhe so about the way he was? Otherwise why would he be going to Dr. Dudley, trying to get over it? That one time with Hank—God, he’d give a million if it had never happened. He’d give a million if he had hated it, that’s what he really meant. He supposed other guys felt the same incredible and terrific thing with girls, and being so different from them was what he hated. He would go to Dr. Dudley forever if there was any chance that he could get away from it all. None of that was altered by Nate and Thanksgiving dinner.

But even to know that somebody like Nate and this Wolfenden man and his committee didn’t think it was anybody’s business if you were a homosexual or not—it was so huge a discovery he couldn’t get used to it. It had never even occurred to him that there might be that kind of people. Not once had he ever thought there might be another way you could feel about it.

Nate and Margie had stayed around long after Don and Jenny took their kids home, but he had kept away from Nate because he might reveal how happy he had made him. Now he wondered if he might go out for a walk and drop in on Margie and Nate, sort of casually, not to talk about it but just in general. They lived on West Eighty-fourth Street near the park in a sort of dump of an old house with bay windows that Nate’s parents had unloaded on them for a wedding present, all crummy and run-down, that they were remodeling by themselves. They loved it and were always repairing things and planting the garden behind it and right now you could count on their being in, what with Margie about as big as the house itself. They’d be surprised to have him pop in but they wouldn’t mind, and even if he didn’t mention the roundup at the bar or Wolfenden or anything, it would be great just to go over. He simply had to go somewhere; he couldn’t just sit around until Grandma Lynn went to bed and he was left alone with Mama and Dad.

If his father ever said anything about what Nate had told them, it would come out in that “liberal” way Jeff couldn’t stand, and if his mother did, it would be unbearable in a whole other way. She would never see that he did know how different she was from his father but that he still couldn’t have a nice cozy talk with her about any part of it not about Dr. Dudley, not about Nate, not even about things like the Wolfenden Report.

He jumped up, kissed Grandma Lynn on the cheek and said, “I’ll say g’night Grandma, I have to go out.” Then he waved to his parents and said, “I’m catching a flick, okay?” and was on his way out before they could stop him.

Once outside he began to walk down Fifth. There was a picture he could see, at the Paramount, or Rivoli, but he couldn’t sit still right now and watch a movie. There was a holiday air on Fifth Avenue, he could feel it. What a day it was, one of the greats. Windows were alight in all the apartment buildings on his left; way ahead, below Fifty-seventh, the Christmas lights were already shining around a lot of the stores, and in his pocket right now were those two theater tickets for tomorrow night.

A first step anyway. The good old journey of a thousand miles and that good old first step. Nate talking that way today—somehow that was a first step too.

Jeff tapped the brass bell at the Wisters’ pinkish brick house and wished he was meeting Sue right at the theater instead. She had suggested “dinner at my house,” but the idea of a couple of hours with her mother and father watching how he acted gave him that sliding in the solar plexus, as if it were a 7-6 score with one minute left on the clock. The Wisters owned a big printing plant that specialized in books, so naturally they were business friends of his own parents and they all had dinner once a year or so. That was how he had met Sue a couple of years back, but having dinner alone at her house would be a whole other thing, so he had made up an excuse and said they’d go to Antonio’s for pizza afterward.

She opened the door, looking pretty and glad to see him, and a sort of excitement hit him. Here he was on his first real date with a girl, not a kids’ birthday party but a real date. She was wearing a dark-red dress and looking like a college girl, and he suddenly felt grown-up and sophisticated himself. He whistled up a cab from Park Avenue and said, “Now this is what I call all right. Right?” Sue said, “Right,” and they both burst out laughing for no good reason. A cab came squeaking to a stop at the curb.

Inside the cab, he remembered the cigarettes in his pocket and drew the pack out. He had bought it that afternoon so he wouldn’t look like a fool if she wanted to smoke and he had to say he never did and had none. He had even opened one end of the pack, pulled out two cigarettes and tossed them away, to make it all look more natural. Now he offered her the pack and when she took a cigarette and asked for a light, leaning toward him for it, he felt more man-of-the-world than before. Free and fine and like everybody else. She blew a wisp of smoke at him and he realized that burning tobacco really did have a pleasing aroma.

“No wonder Sir Walter was a great big hero,” he said.

“Sir Walter?”

“Raleigh. Didn’t he discover tobacco in Virginia, and get knighted by the Virgin Queen after the first puff or something?”

She laughed again. He felt clever, even witty. He knew how to get along with a girl; this wasn’t some trumped-up Joanie or Connie or Gloria, this was a real girl and he certainly wasn’t behaving like somebody who couldn’t like a girl. He did like her, liked being in a cab with her, liked knowing she liked him. Again he was glad he had thought up the whole evening. How could anybody tell what might come out of it? Not right off, but there was no sense in not giving yourself every chance. Dr. Dudley had made that plenty clear, that he should start real dating and see how it went It couldn’t hurt Sue in any way, that was for sure or he wouldn’t have tried it. She was too nice as a person, apart from being good-looking and tall, not like Margie or his mother.

“It’s crazy,” he said, “but it’s great that you’re tall, not a peewee like my sister.” He saw her astonished look and went on, “That sounds queer, but it always gives me a pain to look down and see the top of somebody’s head.”

“I’ll stretch myself and be even taller.” She straightened her back, raised her shoulders, tilted her chin. “See how tall?” He joined her laugh but he scarcely had heard her. He kept hearing the word “queer” in his own voice and realized how naturally he had said it. He must remember that when other people said it. They were just using one little old word that was like any other word in the language, not loading it with special meaning. Dr. Dudley had already asked why some words took on such “lethal power” for him, had even made him say some of them out loud, right there on the couch, as if to defuse them. “Queer,” he had said obediently, “queen,” “swish,” “one of the boys,” “fairy.” The only one he couldn’t manage was “faggot.”