I said it again. “You know what it is,” I added, almost petulant now because he had gone beyond the rights, it seemed, of discovery.
“No you don’t,” he said, leaning toward me even closer, his teeth gleaming dully out of his stretched face, an aspect of frantic gloom seeming to shape him into caricature. “That wasn’t it. What you are doing has another name. That name is self-abuse. Do you know what self-abuse is?”
“They have it in the books,” I said, eager to cooperate, and to bring the scene to some kind of conclusion. My organ was stinging wet, my pants still around my ankles and I wanted little more now than the usual oblivious aftermath of the act at whatever cost. “It means the same thing.”
“Yes,” he said, “it means the same thing. And do you know what that same thing is?”
“It is the same thing,” I said meaninglessly. “I read it. They call it one or the other. What is it?”
But he was off in another direction. “Now I know why Bernice’s girl was so upset,” he said. “Did you do this in front of her?”
I was infuriated. How dared he intimate that my night and day flights were for any witnesses? “No, I didn’t,” I said. “But she took all the magazines into the bathroom by herself. Maybe she was doing it.”
I received a smashing slap on my left cheek, half-kneeling me into the bed, doing this with such force as to leave a small indentation in the mattress which was to plague me for several months thereafter when I tried to masturbate on my side. “Don’t you ever say that again,” he screamed with such force that those bellows could hardly have come from such a small man. “If you say it again, I’ll kill you.”
“Such hostility!” I remarked to D’Arcy at that point. “He could not have been more upset if you had discovered him.”
“Which in certain senses, perhaps, I had,” he agreed. “You always find the apt summation. But that is not the crux of the interview, not at all. You should not interrupt me when I am proceeding so nicely. There are so few crucial, chronologically-ordered events in my history that when I truly find one I should be permitted to proceed without interruption. This is the key to being a sound biographer, my friend.”
“I am sorry,” I said, chagrined. “It was just that the incident, even as you describe it so far, seems so relevant, so crucial, so interlocked with your magnificent career.”
“Hear me out,” D’Arcy said. “What was I saying?”
Oh, yes (he said, after a pause), I was talking of the small indentation on the mattress which now absorbed me like a cove. As it did so, I heard my father’s voice ranting, bellowing, pleading; he was indulging me, now, in a precise description of what self-abuse was; its meaning, its implications, its consequences. The lecture was spiced with detail and example; a never-mentioned uncle, my father said, had abused himself casually for a period of time and had died of congenital insanity. Also he had on evidence the fact that a very good friend of his who had never abused himself—never, not once—was led to the practice by evil and simple-minded companions; the first time he had ever indulged in it he had gone completely insane—it was a variety of paranoia; he believed that everybody was trying to abuse him—and had been institutionalized ever since. Did I think, he asked me, did I ever think for a moment that a man such as my father would engage in the practice?
“No,” I pleaded, “that had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t even thinking of it that way at all. I only wanted to—” I must admit that I was in a state of severe shock.
He grasped me unresistingly by a shoulder and dragged me off the bed, brought me staggering out of the room, down into the hall and through the door of his own room, showed me the huge double bed which he and my mother had purchased at great expense some months ago and which my mother referred to often as her “only true luxury.”
“Do you see that?” he said, pointing at the bed, kicking at the iron framework for emphasis. “Do you see that bed?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the marriage bed. It embraces everything that is holy and meaningful in life. Under contract a man and woman can come to that bed to know and pleasure one another as they choose under the cover of night. They can find fulfilment and joy in one another.”
I had never thought of my parents in that context. I was certainly not interested in seeing them that way now. I was not even sure that I knew what my father was talking about. With a desperate bound, I managed to tear loose his embrace but stumbled and collapsed against a wall, landing on my haunches with bruises, facing the bed. He stabbed a forefinger at me.
“That,” he screamed, pointing, “that is the only place where such acts must go on. To perform them in any other place, to perform them in any other fashion, is to sin between God and man. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” I mumbled, “yes, yes.”
“How much of this can I take, do you think?” he bellowed. “Don’t you think that many times, more than you could ever know, I would have liked to submerge myself in your filth and abuse myself? Don’t you think a man has thoughts, a man has desires, a man has possibilities? But I keep myself clean for your mother. Clean for her, do you understand me! I preserve the temple of my body, the temple of my holy spirit so that it may be purified for the rite with your mother!”
“Yes,” I said, “Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I have to go to the bathroom now. Do you think I can—”
“How much can I put up with? But I protect myself, I hold on to myself and it has its own rewards! I tell you, the goddamned thing has its rewards and plenty of them; I could tell you stories, you rotten little snip, if you wouldn’t trundle right back to your room and start jerking off to them! But I have control, I have the ability to structure my passion. I am a man, goddamn you. Where did you get all those magazines from?”
“Bathroom,” I gasped, “bathroom—”
“I bet you pick that filth right up from the newsstands, take it right into your briefcase, smuggle it home so that it can desecrate your house, four or five feet away from your mother! Oh, I bet you laugh as you strew your seed, I bet that every twinge and jerk is a joy to you, a double joy, I should say, because it not only defiles you but your mother. Oh, I see it now: I understand everything. Don’t you think I’d like to do it? Don’t you think every man would like to do it? But you have discipline, you have control, you see it as a sharing rather than a wandering, you save your seed for where it means best, which is deep in the body of a woman; deep in the temple, the temples meeting, the places meeting, the bodies joining and then—”
But I was far gone, past warning. My poor bowels had opened and the flood had come in earnest, an odor so communicable as to even override my father’s last admonition. I squatted desperately, trying to hold back what remained, but knew with hopelessness that the devil inside was going to clean me out. Small squeals and gasps added to the sense of utter disgrace until finally, utterly spent, I knelt before my father, the consequences of my explosion clear to the two of us. He said nothing, his face slowly slackening back into its accustomed puzzlement and I was able to make my escape.
I stayed in the bathroom for a very long time, cleaning myself out and making further adjustments. When I came out, I found that my room had been cleaned and placed in an almost ceremonial order, the magazines themselves stacked carefully beside the bed, wiped dry, obviously by careful hands. I hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. The impulse to masturbate came upon me maniacally, but I repressed it. I suppose the point is that I was stunned.
After some time, there was a knock on the door and my father came in. He seemed to have shrunk subtly within his clothing, almost as if he had been engaged in some vigorous exercises of his own. He nodded to me and started to say something, shook his head and turned around, then turned back toward me violently and raised his hand.
“Nothing of this,” he said. “Nothing of this to your mother at all. Do you understand me?”
“Of course.”
“I could kill you for what you’ve done but I’ll allow you to forget it. This will be between the two of us only. I don’t want any more discussions of this unless you start them.”
“All right,” I said.
“I could have you institutionalized. I could have you committed for what you’ve done. But I’m willing to let it go.”
“Okay. We’ll let it go.”
“Only because you’re my son. If it was someone else carrying on the way you have, there would be terrible trouble here.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.” The capacity for speech seemed to have left me. I had nothing to say. There was absolutely nothing to say.
“But I’m your father. I have a duty to protect you. I realize that now.” He ran a hand through his sparse hair and looked at me. “I couldn’t possibly forget that.”
“Yes,” I said, “yes.”
“But you are never to do that again. Never, do you understand me? My outburst may have been a little violent; I admit that now. But that doesn’t change the seriousness of your activity. You must promise me that you will stop.”
