War Dances (7 page)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the car, a faggot was winning his fight with Spence and Eddie, my other friends. They’d picked the wrong guy to bash. He was a talented fighter and danced, ducked, and threw mean kicks and elbows that
snap-snap-snap
ped into my friends’ faces. This guy had to be one of those ultimate fighters, a mixed-martial artist.

This was in Seattle, on a dark street on Capitol Hill, the Pacific Northwest center of all things shabby, leftist, and gay. What was I, a straight Republican boy, doing on Capitol Hill? Well, it’s also the home of my favorite Thai joint. I love peanut sauce and Asian beer. So my friends and I had feasted in celebration of my new junior partnership in the law firm of Robber Baron, Tax Dodger & Guilt-ridden Pro Bono. I was cash-heavy, lived in a three-bedroom condo overlooking Elliott Bay, and drove a hybrid Lexus SUV.

My father was in his first term as U.S. senator from Washington State, and he was already being talked about as a candidate for U.S. president. “I’m something different,” he said to me once. “This country wants Jimmy Stewart. And I am Jimmy Stewart.”

It was true. My father was handsome without being beautiful, intelligent without being pretentious, and charming without being sexual. And he was a widower, a single father who’d raised an accomplished son. My mother had died of breast cancer when I was six years old, and my father, too much in love with her memory, had never remarried. He was now as devoted and loyal to curing breast cancer as he had been to my mother.

A University of Washington Law graduate, he had begun life as the only son of a wheat farmer and his schoolteacher wife. Eagle Scout, captain of the basketball team, and homecoming king, my father was the perfect candidate. He was a city commissioner, then a state representative, and then he ran for the U.S. Senate. After decades of voting for the sons and grandsons of privilege, the state’s conservatives were excited, even proud, to vote for a public school veteran, a blue-collar prince, a farmer’s son, a boy with dirt in his shoes.

His best moment during his senatorial campaign was during the final debate with his Democratic rival. “My opponent keeps talking about how hard he’s worked for his country, for our state. And I’m sure he has. But my grandfather and my father taught me how to be a farmer. They taught me how to plant the seed and grow the wheat that feeds our country. I worked so hard that my hands bled; look, you can still see my scars. And I promise you, my fellow Washingtonians, that I will work hard for you. And I will work hard
with
you.”

My father lost liberal King County by a surprisingly close margin but kicked ass in the rest of the state and was declared senator at 9:35
P.M.
on the night of the election.

Yes, my father had become Jefferson Smith and had marched into the other Washington as the first real populist in decades.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried a little on the night my father was elected. You’ve seen the photograph. It was on the cover of the
Seattle Times
and was reprinted all over the country. Everybody assumed that I was happy for my father. Overjoyed, in fact. But I was also slapped hard by grief. I desperately missed my mother, but I desperately missed my father as well. You see, he was now a U.S. senator with presidential ambitions, and that meant he belonged to everybody. I knew I’d forever lost a huge part of his energy and time and, yes, his love; I’d have to share my father with the world. I also knew I’d lost my chance to ever be anything other than an all-star politician’s son.

But who wants to hear the sob story of a senator’s son? The real question is this: Why the hell would I risk my reputation and future and my father’s political career—the entire meaning of his life—for a street fight—for a gay bashing? I don’t know, but it was high comedy.

So I laughed while that tough faggot beat Spence and Eddie into the pavement. And I laughed as Bernard dragged me toward his car, shoved me into the backseat, and slammed the door shut. Then he popped open his trunk, grabbed his tire iron, and ran back toward the fight.

I powered down the window and watched Bernard race up to that black-belt fag and threaten him with the tire iron.

“Stop this shit,” Bernard yelled. “Or I’ll club you.”

“Why the hell are you waving that thing at me?” he screamed back. “You started it.”

It was true, playground true. Spence, Eddie, Bernie, and I had started it. We’d been drunkenly ambling down the street, cussing and singing, when Spence spotted the amorous boys in their car.

“Lookit,” he said. “I hate them fucking fags.”

That’s all it took. With banshee war cries, Spence and Eddie flung open the driver’s door and dragged out the tough guy. I dragged my best friend (whom I didn’t recognize) from the passenger seat and broke his nose.

And now, I was drunk in Bernard’s car and he was waving a tire iron at the guy we’d assaulted.

“Come on, Spence, Eddie,” Bernard said.

Bloodied and embarrassed by their beating, Spence and Eddie staggered to their feet and made their way to the car. Still waving that tire iron, Bernard also came back to me. I laughed as Spence and Eddie slid into the backseat beside me. I laughed when Bernard climbed into the driver’s seat and sped us away. And I was still laughing when I looked out the rear window and saw the tough guy tending to his broken and bloody lover boy. But even as I laughed, I knew that I had committed an awful and premeditated crime: I had threatened my father’s career.

Sixteen years before I dragged him out of his car and punched him in the face, my best friend Jeremy and I were smart, handsome, and ambitious young Republicans at Madison Park School in Seattle. Private and wealthy, Madison Park was filled with leftist children, parents, and faculty. Jeremy and I were the founders and leaders of the Madison Park Carnivores, a conservative club whose mission was to challenge and ridicule all things leftist. Our self-published newspaper was called
Tooth & Claw,
borrowed from the poem by Alfred Tennyson, of course, and we filled its pages with lame satire, poorly drawn cartoons, impulsive editorials, and gushing profiles of local conservative heroes, including my father, a Republican city commissioner in a Democratic city.

Looking back, I suppose I became a Republican simply because my father was a Republican. It had never occurred to me to be something different. I loved and respected my father and wanted to be exactly like him. If he’d been a plumber or a housepainter, I suppose I would have followed him into those careers. But my father’s politics and vocation were only the outward manifestations of his greatness. He was my hero because of his strict moral sense. Simply put, my father kept his promises.

Jeremy, a scholarship kid and the only child of a construction worker and a housewife, was far more right wing than I was. He worried that my father, who’d enjoyed bipartisan support as city commissioner, was a leftist in conservative disguise.

“He’s going to Souter us,” Jeremy said. “Just you watch, he’s going to Souter us in the ass.”

Jeremy and I always made fun of each other’s fathers. Since black kids told momma jokes, we figured we should do the opposite.

“I bet your daddy sucks David Souter’s dick,” Jeremy said.

Jeremy hated Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who’d been named to the court by the first President Bush. Thought to be a typical constitutional conservative, Souter had turned into a moderate maverick, a supporter of abortion rights and opponent of sodomy laws, and was widely seen by the right as a political traitor. Jeremy thought Souter should be executed for treason. Was it hyperbole? Sure, but I think he almost meant it. He was a romantic when it came to political assassination.

“When I close one eye, you look just like Lee Harvey,” I said.

“I’m not Oswald,” he said. “Oswald was a communist. I’m more like John Wilkes Booth.”

“Come on, man, read your history. Booth killed Lincoln over slavery.”

“It wasn’t about slavery. It was about states’ rights.”

Jeremy had always enjoyed a major-league hard-on for states’ rights. If it had been up to him, the United States would be fifty separate countries with fifty separate interpretations of the Constitution.

Yes, compared to Jeremy, I was more Mao than Goldwater.

It was in January of our sophomore year at Madison Park that Jeremy stole me out of class and drove me to the McDonald’s in North Bend, high up in the Cascade Mountains, more than thirty miles away from our hometown of Seattle.

“What are we doing way up here?” I asked.

“Getting lunch,” he said.

So we ordered hamburgers and fries from the drive-thru and ate in the car.

“I love McDonald’s fries,” he said.

“Yeah, they’re great,” I said. “But you know the best thing about them?”

“What?”

“I love that McDonald’s fries are exactly the same everywhere you go. The McDonald’s fries in Washington, DC, are exactly like the fries in Seattle. Heck, the McDonald’s fries in Paris, France, are exactly like the fries in Seattle.”

“Yeah, so what’s your point?” Jeremy asked.

“Well, I think the McDonald’s fries in North Bend are also exactly like the fries in Washington, DC, Paris, and Seattle. Do you agree?”

“Yeah, that seems reasonable.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “If all the McDonald’s fries in the world are the same, why did you drive me all the way up into the mountains to buy fries we could have gotten anywhere else in the world and, most especially, in Seattle?”

“To celebrate capitalism?”

“That’s funny, but it’s not true,” I said. “What’s really going on?”

“I have something I need to tell you,” Jeremy said.

“And you couldn’t have told me in Seattle?”

“I didn’t want anybody to hear,” he said.

“Oh, nobody is going to hear anything up here,” I said.

Jeremy stared out the window at Mount Si, a four-thousand-foot-tall rock left behind by one glacier or another. I usually don’t pay attention to such things, but I did that day. Along with my best friend, I stared at the mountain and wondered how old it was. That’s the thing: the world is old. Ancient. And humans are so temporary. But who wants to think about such things? Who wants to feel small?

“I’m getting bored,” I said.

“It’s beautiful up here,” he said. “So green and golden.”

“Yeah, whatever, Robert Frost. Now tell me why we’re here.”

He looked me in the eye. Stared at me for a long time.
Regarded
me.

“What?” I said, and laughed, uncomfortable as hell.

“I’m a fag,” he said.

“What?” I said, and laughed.

“I’m a fag,” he repeated.

“That’s not funny,” I said, and laughed again.

“It’s kind of funny.”

“Okay, yeah, it’s a little funny, but it’s not true.”

“Yes, it is. I am a fag.”

I looked into his eyes. I stared at him for a long time. I
regarded
him.

“You’re telling the truth,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“You’re a fag.”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.”

“That’s all you have to say?”

“What else am I supposed to say?” I asked.

“I was hoping you would say more than ‘Wow.’”

“Well, ‘Wow’ is all I got.”

“Damn,” he said. “And I had this all planned out.”

He’d been thinking about coming out to me, his unveiling, for months. At first, he’d thought about telling me while we were engaged in some overtly masculine activity, like shouting out “I’m gay!” while we were butchering a hog. Or whispering, “I’m a really good shot—for a homosexual,” while we were duck hunting. Or saying, “After I’m done with Sally’s vagina, it’s penis and scrotum from now on,” as we were screwing twin sisters in their living room.

“I’m not gay,” I said.

“I know.”

“I’m just saying it, so it’s out there, I’m not gay. Not at all.”

“Jeez, come on, I’m not interested in you like that,” he said. “I’m gay, but I’m not blind.”

“That’s funny,” I said, but I didn’t laugh. I was pissed. I felt betrayed. I’d been his best friend since we were five years old, and he’d never told me how he felt. He’d never told me who he was. He’d lied to me all those years. It made me wonder what else he had lied about. After all, don’t liars tell lies about everything? And sure, maybe he’d lied to protect himself from hatred and judgment. And, yes, maybe he lied because he was scared of my reaction. But a lie is a lie, right? And lying is contagious.

“You’re a liar,” I said.

“I know,” he said, and cried.

“Ah, man,” I said, “don’t cry.”

And then I realized how many times I’d said that to girls, to
naked
girls. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’d seen him cry before—we’d wept together at baseball games and funerals—but not in that particular context.

“I’m getting sick to my stomach,” I said, which made him cry all that much harder. It felt like I was breaking up with him or something.

Maybe I wasn’t being fair. But all you ever hear about are gay people’s feelings. What about the feelings of the gay people’s friends and family? Nobody talks about our rights. Maybe people are born gay, okay? I can deal with that, but maybe some people, like me, are born afraid of gay people. Maybe that fear is encoded in my DNA.

“I’m not gay,” I said.

“Stop saying that,” he said.

But I couldn’t help it. I had to keep saying it. I was scared. I wondered if I was gay and didn’t know it. After all, I was best friends with a fag, and he’d seen me naked. I’d seen him naked so often I could have described him to a police sketch artist. It was crazy.

“I can’t take this,” I said, and got out of the car. I walked over to a picnic bench and sat.

Jeremy stayed in the car and stared through the windshield at me. He wanted my love, my sweet, predictable, platonic love, the same love I’d given to him for so many years. He’d chosen me as his confessor. I was supposed to be sacred for him. But I felt like God had put a shotgun against my head and pulled the trigger. I was suddenly Hamlet, and all the uses of the world were weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.

Jeremy stared at me. He waited for me to take action. And yes, you can condemn me for my inaction and fear. But I was only sixteen years old. Nobody had taught me how to react in such a situation. I was young and terrified and I could not move. Jeremy waited for several long minutes. I sat still, so he gave me the finger and shouted, “Fuck off!” I gave him the finger and shouted, “Fuck off!” And then Jeremy drove away.