A break in life November 8, 1985

  

He tells me he might have AIDS.

But these words fall from his lips the way they might if he was reading a newspaper article. As if he has memorized them. He doesn’t sound scared. He doesn’t jump at the mention of the word. But he clearly isn’t happy about it.

I never thought of him as gay; he certainly isn’t a drug user – at least not the kind of drugs that involve needles.

But as I think more on it, the more his being gay seems possible. He doesn’t deal with women well, even the ones he’s in charge of.

Nearly all his life he has been in the company of men, his father having sent him to one military school after another – trying to break some independent spirit that seemed to the elder man like weakness, fully expecting his son to come out the other end whole when it was not possible.

No, I don’t think military school turned him gay – those schools only masked what he already was, and made him feel ashamed of it. Part of that sad savagery we subject our children to when they don’t turn out to be what we want them to be.

I think his father simply hated or feared his son, perhaps envious of his being something beyond what the father thought the son could be or more to the point, more than the father ever could be.

Gay or not, he could never live up to his father’s expectations, and so he decided to go the other way, and embarked on a self-destructive life. He did everything he knew his father hated, drinking and other violent acts.

By the time he was ready for college, he was such a physical wreck, he failed the ROTC physical – bad knees, stomach in an uproar. This began a second round of self destruction, fast cars, faster motorcycles, dangerous adventures into wilderness, and car crashes, motorcycle chases with police, and weeks in hospitals after returning from woods or mountain peaks.

Then, he got it into his head that he was going to prove his father wrong and became as drunk with ambition has he had previously been with booze.

But he never got as far as he wanted to, or rose as high, or got as much money, and nothing he did every pleased his father anyway.

Coming to this company, he thought he might rise up the corporate ladder and so come to success less on his own than as part of a team.

Then, he fell and broke his leg so severely, he was laid up for months – and was just able to get out again when he got assigned to my neck of the company, finding out finally that this was as much a nowhere job for him as it was for us on the bottom rung. His health grew worse through a number of ailments.

But then a few months ago, he got a new boss, someone so much like his father that he wanted to quit, but dared not. He needed the salary and the insurance since he was becoming weaker and didn’t know why.

I don’t know if this is real or just his imagination, but his thinking it real says a lot about him that I did not know before, and I dare not ask if he is gay or not, but I feel sorry for him. In the end, I get to walk away from this job because it is just a job to me. But this is his life or what’s left of it, and if he dies, he will not have much to look back on when he is on his death bed, and that makes me feel sorry for him.

I know he has talent. I’ve seen the photos he’s taken. I know he has a great mind because of the hours I’ve spent talking to him.

Some people just can’t get a break in life. He’s one of them.

 

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