How Long Has This Been Going On (41 page)

"I'm going to write all this down right now." Andy fussed at his desk, actually a little table with a span of books and neat piles of paper and notebooks.

"One more thing," said Henry. "When do you move?"

"In six weeks. April first."

"Whatever happens, don't give them the address, because that's your ace in the hole."

"Oh. But—"

"These people would kill you before they'd let you loose."

Trying a smile, Andy said, "They're not that terrible."

"Yes, they are," Henry replied, with immense conviction.

It wouldn't be the 1960s without an anti-war demonstration—or, to put it as Chris's friends put it, "Testing the barricades is part of your education." But I must tell you that for Chris—and for Ty, who accompanied her—the demonstration in Washington Square Park was something between a go-see and a lark. Chris was young, rather entranced with herself, and a bit in love with Ty. Wherever he was, that place became a romantic rendezvous. Besides, there was very little sense of confrontation about the outing: The police were obviously disgusted but keeping their distance, and bystanders ranged from the neutral through the amused to the firmly supportive.

"Where are all the pro-war people?" Chris asked Mark, the bearded grad student who was in charge of their section of the rally.

Mark shrugged. "Just keep warm and look clean," he said, whereupon Ty and Thompson appeared with the brown paper bags of take-out coffee without which no demonstration could be called idiomatic. Thompson and his dorm roommate, Chase, who was also on the line with Chris, held a major place in Chris's coterie, as fellow stalwarts of the drama club, as natives of cities (Chicago and Washington, D.C., respectively) and thus models of urbanity to small-town Chris, and as (she suspected) gay boys, possibly lovers, which made them especially enticing.

I wonder if Chris has noticed that her friends tend to be male, whether straight or gay?

Chris was closer to Thompson than to Chase, because Thompson seemed to have an endless supply of pot and was always in a mood to toke up. Smoking was rampant on the campus, of course—but most students couldn't afford the habit and more or less bummed off each other. Thompson, however, was a rich kid: also tall and phlegmatic, almost wooden, where Chase was short and energetic, with busy eyes and flailing gestures. Chris wondered what they were like at night together. Quiet Thompson would surely be in charge of Chase. Picturing them, she would flash back to Luke and Tom. Who'd be in charge there, if her two boy friends of the tree house could be reconciled, if the past could be corrected? Tom said he never wants to see Gotburg again.

Well, Chris thought, I probably don't, either. How could one return to that drably pristine world after having directed plays and stood on thebarricades? College wasn't more school, as Chris had anticipated. School was a normalization of the familiar. College was a penetration into the exotic.

For instance: getting fucked by Ty. Because Chris had no doubt that this was where the two of them were headed. It was wild—well, really amusing... or possibly the tiniest bit alarming—to see such dreamily calculating aggression in a man. In high school, it meant he expected to get his hands inside your bra. With Ty, it meant you are going to surrender to him the very center of your body. She had thought about this very carefully, and was very satisfied to give in to Ty, because he'd want it to feel beautiful to her out of his vanity: the actor pleasing his director.

Ty got on well with everyone, Chris noticed, watching him bantering with Thompson and Chase and listening almost respectfully to Mark's occasional notes on the Issues. It wasn't all
that
cold, the sunlight was plentiful, and the kids were enthusiastic. It would have been a highly fulfilling event but for a bunch of frat galoots who came barreling into the park on skateboards, deliberately steering as close as possible to the edge of the line of demonstrators. Immediately, the rally monitors—readily discerned by their orange sashes and clipboards—were converging upon the police, cool and polite but quick, fervent. The police shrugged; twenty years younger and they'd have been on the skateboards, too.

So the protesters started shouting at the goons as they tooled back for another run. The cop in charge, a lieutenant, was halfheartedly trying to signal the goons to ride off, but he had also told his men to stay in formation. Let it happen, was his idea: If these candy-ass lefty bullshitters get physical, the cops can break the whole thing up and clear the park.

Chris said, "I don't like this."

"Are we allowed to leave," Chase asked, "or do we have to be dismissed? Because—"

"Whoa, this is nothing," said Ty. "It's local color. A challenge match. Playing chicken on skateboards."

Mark and the other monitors were conferring with two students who were not part of the protest.

"They're from the paper," said Thompson. "The tall one is the deputy editor."

The other one had a camera. After shooting the demonstrators and the cops, he paused, watching the frat goons spinning their wheels and smirking. Then he raised the camera and took them into the story, even as the monitors rejoined the students and told them to leave the park and staycool and avoid contact with the goons. There would be an editorial in the paper tomorrow and a fresh demonstration the following day, this time not in defiance of the war but in defense of free speech.

"Don't give them anything to play with," the monitors urged as the demonstrators dispersed. "Say nothing and leave immediately."

Thompson and Chase were happy to get out of there, however, and Ty, looking over the scene, gave a shrug and started moving. But Chris was staring at those frat goons, smug and self-righteous as Crusaders mounted before some defenseless town. She paused as the student with the camera had paused; like him, she was realizing something. This is where the violence in the world comes from, she was thinking. These aren't simply the odious jocks that students in the arts majors joke about. (For instance: A jock picked his nose—and his head caved in.) No. These are the men who beat and rape women, who most enthusiastically subscribe to the conventional bigotries because everything different from them is hateful, who spoil freedom for everyone else.

The field was so cleared by now that Chris, with Ty pulling on her arm, stood out. One of the goons, showing off, glided by on his board, his body planted sideways so it directly faced Chris, his arms thrown out to the sides, his face lit with a merry grin.

"Hey, honey box!" he called as he sailed past.

Chris stared at him, Ty gently telling her to give it up. He said, "It's all over, boss."

Hitting a dead end, the goon reversed and flew back before Chris, shouting, "Hey, leave the faggot and meet a real man!"

The other goons laughed and hooted and made various tribal signs.

"Darlin'," Ty began; Chris said, "Hold this," handed him her attache, and walked over to the police, immobile in their line. She looked up and down the file, looked them right in the eyes. She said—not all that loud, but they surely heard her—"Where I come from, the police are heroes. They are courageous and kind. They do amazing things like trekking out at night in blizzards to search for folks who haven't been accounted for and may be stuck on the road. They comfort injured children on the way to the hospital. They attend to the grief of survivors at a time of death. We call them police, but they're really guardians. They see their job as protecting the innocent, whether against Acts of God or a predatory creep."

Without shifting her gaze to the goons ranged to her right, Chris went on, "There's a gang of predatory creeps right over there, and you're on their side. You're not like the police in Minnesota. You're no one's guardian. The only difference between those frat rats and you is that you're in blue coats."

Chris really expected to be arrested, and this was a frightening proposition, now that all her confederates had gone. Everyone knew that getting arrested in a group as part of a political manifestation was routine, a process, almost a joke—because, if nothing else, the television film was running, and cops generally don't like to be filmed while they're beating the citizenry.

Anyway, nothing happened to Chris. The goons went on making their noise, and the cops—probably more baffled than offended—just stood there regarding her. Chris turned, walked back to Ty, retrieved her attaché, and let him lead her to the coffee shop on Greene Street. Ty said nothing for a while, then: "Darlin', you daunt me."

The joint was jammed with kids from the rally in exactly the way that Chris's teenage haunts in Gotburg would be after a prom or a football game, everyone—won or lost—stimulated and commentative. It was fun wading into the gang, waving the attaché that was one of your distinguishing features as a Person of the Campus, a star in the place where you belonged. It was great.

Chris and Ty found Thompson and Chase, and crawled into their booth with a few semi-strangers. Chris looked around: Someone was explaining the
facts
of Vietnam to one of the waitresses, who did not look impressed; kid after kid upon kid was thrashing out the Issues; monitors were Considering in the center of the room, occasionally slapping a shoulder as a comrade passed. (Chris noticed that they never slapped a girl.)

"Something's happening," Chris announced. "I don't even think it's political. But there will be changes."

The coffee arrived. Ty's fingers dawdled on Chris's. Mark the graduate student loomed above them. "The system's flowing along," he said bitterly. "They'd be happier if we shot someone instead of protesting federal policy."

"Let's shoot Doctor Rodinis," said Chase. "He gave me a D on my—"

"Because, look at it, criminals are as much a part of the system as your parents are," Mark went on. "They've got the apparatus to handle crime—judges, jury duty, prisons. Crime's okay—run it through the system. But a
group of people
standing in a
public place
to
refuse to accept
this
business-as-usual governmental war
on..."

Mark was so upset that his voice broke and he started to cry. "We're nothing," he got out. "We're such trash, they don't even have the apparatus to deal with us. We're less than the most lurid, murdering pieces of criminal garbage that..."

"Whoa, Mark," said Ty. "It's cool, give it time."

"A couple of skateboards and we run. What's lower?"

"A couple of fags, maybe," said Chase.

Chris, startled, looked sharply at him. "The word is 'gay,' isn't it?"

Chase shrugged.

Mark left.

"Who do you think you are, junior?" Chris went on, getting angry. "'A couple of—'"

"He's sorry," said Thompson. "He's wrong and he will improve."

Ty was smiling and shaking his right hand: Watch out, she's perilous.

"I mean, what do you think you're separating yourself from?" Chris went on, still annoyed at Chase. "Something's happening, can't you see that? Something's going to open the whole thing up, finally. From Berkeley to Yale, kids are saying no to the lies—has that
ever
happened before? I'm not even a political, but I can see the potential, so why can't you? 'A couple of faggots'! And who do we think those faggots are, may I ask?"

Chase looked at Thompson.

"This lady means to change the world," said Ty.

"Right, first thing after rehearsal, which starts in twenty minutes, so I might as well... Yes, thank you, gentleman Ty, and my coat is... ? Yes, and..."

So Chris had had it with that section of the day, and she was off to
The Elephant Calf,
to her cast, to her belief in herself. She led a sternly invigorating assault on the play, loaded with improvs and insights; and when it was over she felt exhausted and unhappy. Alone with Ty, she wept a little as she packed up, and Ty took her in his arms.

"Oh, I'm all right," she said.

He shook his head.

"It's... the frustration, I suppose...."

Ty kissed her, long and deep and slow.

Chris responded in kind. Good, she thought.

He kept on kissing her, and she thought back a few months to the party after the Senior Prom, when Tom kissed her. He was gentle, boyish; Ty is elaborate, probing, a man.

"Come on," says Ty. "This is our special time."

"Where?" she asks. He doesn't answer, just smiles. Anyway, she knows where. Good, good, good. Now I find out about this. Some women probably think this is a great step in their lives. What, because it's the firsttime? Getting hired to direct
Love's Labour's Lost
at the Old Vic—
that's
a great step. This is... homework.

Ty took Chris's hand as they crossed Sixth Avenue; neither was wearing gloves despite the nippy weather, and Chris felt a pleasurable tingle as she looked at Ty and he smiled (the game young man with hidden pain). Chris smiled back; something's happening. Of course, a woman's first time is always awkward on one level, if only because it types her as a novice. But this belief that one must yield up her virginity only to That Special Someone is silly. If such a One does indeed happen along, one wants to be ready for him, broken in and practiced and well beyond the so-this-is-what-it's-like stage. This is sex as Chris sees it.

Ty lived in a dour old mid-rise on Christopher Street, just west of Seventh Avenue. Here is the Village at its most urban, the narrow sidewalks and even the roadway crammed with people, some scurrying off to some opulent new thing in their lives, some lounging, waiting for the thing to come to them. Chris was so keen to take it all in that Ty had virtually to propel her inside; once they gained his apartment, she became fascinated anew.

"It's so roomy," she said, exploring.

"One life, many rooms," said Ty, as Chris peered into a bedroom filled with books and records. "My roommate," Ty explained. "He's never around when I am, so it works out pretty well. It's his place, mainly. I'm kind of the guest artiste here. A sublet. Real New York-style."

Chris was staring at a black-and-white print, framed on the wall, of two gigantically built men in some sort of struggle. One of the two was nude, wrestling the other out of his clothes, an outfit of motorcycle leather from cap to boots, and both sported impossibly vast erections.