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.

 

1985 Menu


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An old nemesis December 11, 1985

Image
    Surisky hated me from early on in grammar school, although “hate” may be too strong a word to describe his reaction to me. I was simply available to him for abuse, Third grade was pivotal for both of us. Prior to that, we were simply feeling our way through Catholic School routine, emerging eventually as whole personalities from the muck of early childhood. He came across as a thug, trying to convey the image of a tough guy. He wore a leather jacket and spiked boots, and snuck into see James Dean movies. Third grade was tough on everybody, including the teachers, who considered us the worst class in the history of the school – even in the safe grades of Kindergarten, First and Second. Two of the three nuns retired after passing us on. But it was in the third grade that we began to work our magic, driving even the stout-hearted nuns crazy. Later, the nuns tried to break our spirit. But we fully represented our age and had the full impact of the 1960s behind us. So,
Read more

Pauly leaves Passaic for the final time July 24, 1985

Image
    Pauly is leaving Passaic again. This comes after two years of us rubbing shoulders after he had been cast out of paradise in Towaco, after his goddess, Jane, went and married that man Pauly calls “a bum.” This has been a tough two years, filled with Pauly’s typical manipulation, his usual shaping of reality to his own needs often at other people’s (mine) expense. When Pauly first came I had Fran’s cultist brother as a temporary guest and Pauly spent most of his time trying to push me into getting that guest out. A few months later – in November – Fran got the ax from her ex and changed her mind about moving in with me after I had committed the spare room to Pauly. He assumed she meant more to me than he did and was already packing when I told Fran no. She had no place to go except for her father’s house, a father she had a love/hate relationship with, and she held it against me, even though we continued to see each other romantically. Pauly being Pauly drove me out of
Read more

The clock is ticking July 18, 1985

Image
  We’re talking love here – silly fictional love with all the connotations of disaster. I seem to be on the meat chopping block with Safire looking for qualities in me that are lacking in her husband. The fact that there is a husband in the first place greatly disturbs me. All this said, I’m uncertain as to why I haven’t ended this already, except to know she is too much like my ex-wife to pass up without a closer examination. Even the way she thinks: slow, methodical, going from point A to point B. It has only been a week since she blurted out drunk that she wanted me in bed. It seems like much longer. And she hints of something more permanent, suggesting that I might fill in for her husband for a much longer duration. The night before last she suggested I come see her in her trailer, as if she is legally separated from her husband, when in fact she is supposed to be biding time until he finds them both a place to live in Baltimore. This is the same kind of smoke and mir
Read more