Goode showed up in Boston on the afternoon of January 18th, 1974. The Semester was over, and Cal was done with exams. He flew into town and was picked up by Smith. They had a drink in a bar on Boylston Street, not far from Smith's apartment.
"How you holding up, Hill?"
"'Kay, I guess. It was quite a blow, o' course."
"We were all shocked. Shocked and very deeply saddened."
"Yes. He..."
"It's ok."
"No, he was out of it that last week or so, but before that, he was always talking about your young protege."
"Yes, The young Mr. Hunter. Don always called him a 'goodie.' I can't believe how well they took to each other."
"How's he getting on?"
"Oh, I don't know. His piano is really only so-so. If it weren't for you, I might well fail him. You'd know better about the rest."
"Not so much, really. He's put some distance between us, he's pulled back."
"It happens, I s'pose."
A pause. The bar is dimly lit and nearly empty on such cold night. Goode leaned in.
"I'm going to try to see him in the dorms."
"Is that entirely wise?"
"No."
Another pause.
"In fact, I think it's crazy. I'm in enough trouble with...you know, back home."
"Yes. I heard."
"It's just that, I don't know, I think I need to shake that kid a little, see what he's got. See if it's worth risking so much, losing so much sleep over, getting so worked up. The long distance thing is very difficult."
"You started it. You didn't have to pull the strings. They'd never have taken him on here without that. You might've just kept him in DC."
"I thought about it a lot. I saw some of myself in him, some sort of spark."
"Well, there's some talent there, I suppose. He had a piece on the composer's forum. I thought it was awful, full of repetition, monotonous. He played it in a lesson and I told him so. Well, not in so many words. I remember I asked him if his teachers had seen it, if they approved of such static harmony. You know him. He does not take criticism well. But then I heard Bonkowski raving about it in a meeting. Apparently his wife, the dancer, thought it was genius."
"That's very funny. But you think it's bad work."
Smith looked down.
"What do I know. I'm a fuddy-duddy."
"Not true. You're an artist."
"I'm a small time piano player."
"You have a right to an opinion about new work."
"Different strokes."
There was a random clatter of plates.
"Hillary, you hungry?"
"Not particularly. My appetite's been off."
"You look like the same old bean pole."
"Are you...going to the dorms tonight?"
"No. I have to wait. His roommates go out of town on the weekend. I need an all-clear."
"How are you going to get in?"
"He'll let me in. I hope. If not, I'll be seeing more of you!"
"I wish you very good luck."
Goode took a big slug of his very good beer.
"I know you think I'm crazy..."
"Even you think you're crazy."
"He's got a good mind."
"And an even better ass."
"That's the old Hillary Smith!"
"He's a goody. Go in and get him. You don't have to justify anything to me. We been friends forever. If I could do it, I'd try it myself. Go have a good time, John Goode."
Goode and Hunter met at the exact same bar after Smith had been seen back home. It was late-ish. There was a noisy after-theater crowd. Hunter bought the drinks.
"Are you drinking anything better than soda pop these days?"
"I think they call that tonic up here."
"How soon I forget!"
"No. I'll take a glass of white wine. Liebfraumilch."
"Fabulous. You've graduated to 'lover's milk.' A good sign."
"Yeah, I've been learning up here. You won't hear that from Smith."
"You know, Cal, I'm not sure Hillary's the right teacher for you. Don used to call him, what...'stuffy Smith?'"
"Something like that. I know, but really, who would be better?"
"Almost anybody."
"The pair-'o-dykes?"
"OK. OK. I'm just saying that it's your education."
"I appreciate your concern."
"Cal, we're bickering like a pair of old queens."
"Yes, I'm kind of a jerk. I know that. I'm just edgy. School's starting back, I've been having these nosebleeds. It's a whole new ball game. I don't know why they let me in to this place, but I suspect you had something..."
"Nope. No such thing."
"Well. Anyway. I'm at the bottom of the totem pole."
"Smith tells me Bonkowski liked your piece."
"You talked to Smith?"
"Of course!"
Sullen, miserable pause.
"His wife liked my piece. Smith asked if I was sure I knew what the hell I was doing."
"You can drop Smith at any time. Don't suffer on my behalf. You'll end up bitter about something that should be a joy."
"I know you're right. I'll tell you the truth: I actually like Smith. He is a no bullshit guy. If he ever likes something I do, I'll know I'm getting somewhere. Besides, I know he's going through a hell of a hard time right now."
Goode bit his tongue. He could see Cal make the transition to a weak attempt at amelioration of the many wounds. If he ever hoped to get into that dorm room, he could not afford to say the least catty thing. He turned his mind away from, 'fat lot you care,' to casting about for another gambit. His mind was drawing a blank. He stared at the drink before him. He wondered if he should just go back to DC and fuck it. (Or not fuck it.) Huge risk, truculent child, slender chance of acceptable outcome. 'Ah, there!' He thought to himself, 'do I really think of him as a child? Is it really that I'm a pederast? Is this what I am? Better, the sake of sanity and the both of us I should treat him as an adult. What would I do with an adult? If this brat were an adult, a genuine queer adult, I'd take him down to the Combat Zone and we'd check out some porn as an appetizer.
"Cal, you wanna hit the Zone and check out a flick?"
The boy grinned back at him.
"A dick flick?"
"I'm AC/DC," he lied. "I'll look at whatever you prefer."
"You'd take me in to the 'live nude girls?'"
"I might let you go in there on your own."
"See, you're DC, no AC. Just as I suspected. Or whichever way that goes."
"I'm starting to appreciate your adulthood."
To this Cal had no snappy response. He was starting to appreciate his own adulthood. He'd recently learned how to fuck a real, live girl. Of course, he'd bled over his girl, and had not seen hide nor hair ('and in the lamp light, downed with light brown hair') for a month. Perhaps it was time to test the idea whether he himself could stomach AC/DC. He'd led this guy on long enough, taking advantage of his money and influence, enough so to be plunked down here in this frigid town at this seedy bar.
"Alright, Cal. You can look at titties all you want. I can't say I'll dig it, but I can tough it out like a red-blooded American fag."
"You know, I love you."
"For real?"
"Really. You've been more than patient with me. I'd love to see a tit flick, but I'll check out the dick flick too. All we have to decide is which to see first."
"Let's do dick, then chick."
And that's what they did. To his surprise, he found both stimulating. The sight of a huge, throbbing erection pumping seemingly gallons of semen all over a delightfully delicate male porn star did not leave him cold. By the time they got through the same sort of thing with the "anal magic" double d femmes fatale getting rogered in every conceivable orifice, he was making a mess in his jeans.
"Do you need a plastic bag," whispered his John.
"No, I, we...need to get back to the dorm."
They took a fucking taxi and asked him to step on it.
"I thought your roomies didn't split until tomorrow."
"No. They left this afternoon. It's cool."
Boston taxi drivers are a fearless bunch, capable of death-defying hurtles over sheets of ice. The commute from the Zone was relatively short, but in the cold cab, the passions cooled off for this strange duo. Then, there was the way past the sentry to the second floor of 54 Fenway... Goode moved like Dastardly Dan in a silent movie, all arches of the back and sidelong glances. It would not be good to be caught out, either for being in the dorm after-hours, or by being recognized. He could imagine the headlines: "Former Dean of Boston Conservatory Arrested in Back Bay Brownstone." But the sentry was long asleep in her room. It was two in the AM. Once in and up the stairs, Goode realized with horror that there were no locks on the doors to the rooms. That conversation with Alphin now poured back into memory.
"Shouldn't we provide these students, especially the women, with personal locks?"
"Hmm. Hmph. The expense of all those keys? The doors to the streets will be locked! We're paying for monitors on the ground floors. That's a pile of dough, John. I don't think we need it."
"Don't they need some privacy? You really know what goes on in these rooms?"
"Oh, they're good kids. What? Ya think they're doin' dope? If we lock 'em in, they can better hide that sort of thing from the monitors. Topic closed. Motion denied."
The door was open and the dark room concealed no occupants, exactly as Cal had assured. Still, once the lights were on and they were taking off the coats, flinging them on beds in the triple, the idea lingered like a ghost in his imagination that they could indeed be barged in on in flagrante delicto.
"Welcome to my humble abode."
"Charming. Turn up the heat."
Ironic, since the heat was blazing.
"Make yourself at home."
"You mean, 'take of my clothes?'"
A shrug from the lad.
"The cab ride took me down a notch."
"Got any booze?"
"Hey. You were the Dean of this place. You know the rules."
"We always managed to break 'em."
"I guess we're just not so hip. My roommates are a priest and a buzzard, respectively."
"Preists drink like fish."
"Oh god! Ain't that the truth! This guy is really a student priest, by which I mean an organist...
"An old gal that rides the swell pedal..."
"He's not an accomplished drinker. We all went out to the dive around the corner after he played some shit in one of those mini concerts. He got totally fucked up. We came back up here and he floundered around on that bed right there..."
Let the record show that they'd piled their coats and Goodes slight luggage on the priest's bed.
"...he yelled about how much he loved God and all of that, but wanted to have at least one good blowjob before he died. Then, he proceeded to dry hump the bed."
"I hate to ask what comes next."
"Right. Good sense of foreboding. He pukes all over the floor. Corn chips and gin and tonic."
"Lovely."
"The buzz cleaned it up, running around singing 'I'm a coprophile!'"
"That's not quite the right usage."
"Right, again, maestro. He needs to separate the shit..."
"...from the shinola."
Much laughter at this long-sung refrain.
"Well. We'll have do make do without a nightcap."
"Bareheaded and bare assed."
Now the squeamish need to turn aside. Flip ahead the many pages to the next chapter in this kiss and tell. Even if you relish pornography, even the sort with literary pretensions like 'Lady Chatterly,' this is not the real thing. It must be told, because the omniscient narrator has his own inner purpose: to expose hypocrisy and posturing, to let the chips fall where they may in regard to judgement of this life. Human sexuality, as Kinsey took a pseudo-scientific crack at proving (to the consternation of his long-suffering wife) is very messy. We are among the animals, and that is as it should be. Let the Puritan layer be set aside. Let the Victorian values be laid to rest in light of the facts of the matter. The impulses that lead to the heat of desire are not orderly. They do not line up in parallel with convention. It would seem that convention is concocted to trammel them. The shit on the sheets that came up in the Wilde trial was cited as evidence of diarrhea by the defense. The prosecution had the more vivid imagination and didn't buy it. Oscar should never have let it get that far. Nor, we must admit, should have John Goode. If we zoom as far back as we can, we can tell you that this will not turn out well. Even our evidence, if patience be rewarded, is scanty.
In fact, for all his posturing as an urbane adept, Calbraith Hunter was of very limited experience. His entire knowledge of actual mechanical homosexual practice was limited to what he had just recently witnessed in "Butt Fucking Broncos." We have seen how he became engorged when fingering the drippings of his High School sex mate. We have seen how this same female had kept at it and brought him, with the help of nature and biology, to 'his full manhood.' His instinct (and yes, we know that the term may not apply to the Homo Sapiens) was to duck this next scene altogether. He had already begun to see the fact: that he was deeply lured by the female scent and form and that his notions of a more catholic sexuality was, for himself, a sham. He knew he was not about to be damaged by what was about to transpire, but he had the glimmering of the knowledge that this was not his thing. His thing, in fact, was wilder and even more primal. The intimate knowledge of another, female being, one that would open every private act and stare unashamedly at his own. Where does Kinsey stand on this? It is not aberrant. It is the ordinary sexuality practiced one way or another by the vast majority of the human sample. The homosexual act, on the other hand, was statistically aberrant. Kinsey does not make a value judgement. In the many discussions that Goode and Hunter had about the subject leading up to this encounter included the ones that debunked the epithet 'gay.' There is nothing 'gay' about the situation of the male homosexual. It has been forced underground and has tended towards furtive, frenetic encounters in the most unsanitary places. In time, it will work its way towards the light. Nevertheless, it has an inherent double alpha element. What is to done with two penises? What is to done with two male egos? What of the fit of peg into hole?
Goode, of course, knows that Hunter is a virgin. (He's wrong by now, but in his sense it's true.) He knows he will have to guide and teach. Hunter senses that this is wrong for him, but he can't give up now. He's instantly figured out that there is a type of man he likes to gaze upon and allow himself to covet (though not quite desire as he desires a female ass). That sort is fair, boyish and blond. That man has delicate features, and a girlish torso. He might be tanned and posing in some ripped up and bleached out jeans. Then, Cal can imagine sitting in Socratic rapture over the truths of being, being carried away by the bliss of argument to some fundamental need to express brotherly love. He can imagine taking this fair creature's hand, stroking that erection out of pity and compassion, and even, when the other's desire cannot be relieved, sucking on that dick. He just can't imagine fucking this delicate structure up the ass. (He can easily imagine fucking Linda Litman up the ass.) Ass fucking, in any case, takes some practice. Goode fishes out of his valise a small bottle of KY. He sits down on the bed and guides the belt out of Cal's buckle. He undoes the button on his jeans. He unzips the fly. He parts the fabric and strokes the buried treasure. He finds it less than half mast. Cal lets his head fall back and tries to conjure something sexy. Litman's ass. He cannot look at Goode. Goode looks like a toad. His bald head is shining in the street light through the window. Goode reaches over and prophylactically shuts the shade. Cal imagines the wetness between Litman's legs, and how it seeps down between the cleft of her buttocks and lubricates her anus. Goode frees the penis from the underwear. He squeezes out some KY into his palm and rubs it on the flaccid dick, which, he notes, is stirring slightly. Cal gasps. The KY is cold. His imaginary fingers are in that delightful swamp, finding the treasured scent, deeply experiencing the sweet sensation. He feel himself respond. Goode is relieved by signs of life. He works on disrobing. Soon they're side by side, Goode's naked back side within striking distance of Hunters workable front side. Cal Hunter takes his own member in hand. This is the 'what the fuck' moment. He works his dick between the folds of an aged buttocks. He seeks a way in. He's too distracted and concentrated on his artificial construct to be subtle. Besides, he's never done this before, even with Linda. (He's never had the balls to ask about it.)
"Ooh! Careful!"
"Sorry."
There must be a way out. Orgasm is not it. Sitting on the side of the bed, Cal watches as Goode gets dressed. There is silence. It's three o'clock in the Back Bay morning.
"Sorry."
Cal is trying to get some condolence for his failure.
"It's OK. It's not your thing."
"Are you...going to Smith's?"
"No. I have a...
He wants to say that he has a very frustrated cock and he needs to go get it professionally, or at least competently, sucked. That's too much truth for Cal.
"...cab to catch."
"You have a place to stay, then?"
"Please. Don't worry about me."
"Well, you know, I do a little. I might've hurt you."
"I'm disappointed, I won't deny that. You don't know your own mind. I feel used."
This is not spoken with vitriol, but it feels like that to the trembling young man.
"OK. That's that."
He turns, still naked, to the wall. He closes his eyes, listening as Goode descends the stairs and, undoing all of the locks and bars, opens the big door to the outside world. Cal thinks that he'd better be a good lad and go down and lock up. Before he can do that, though, he has to let out his sobs. In the early morning, he does an intemperate thing. He writes a passionate poem about Adonis. He's thinking of Mara, recalling her sleeping form as he watched her from his restless perch beside her on her floor, his insomnia driven by unrelieved desire. He puts the poem, with a note that just says 'for you' into an envelope and walks it down to the women's dorm. He thinks of Goode, on his flight back to DC, of his wish to be done with this, of his hope to be forgiven, and his idea that he's learned something important about himself. His fear and humiliation have turned to a dull resentment. His emotional growth is slow, but it is steady. He's like a climber on a ledge, feeling his way, looking for the next step, the next perch. We do not think that he's been a victim. We think, rather, that this has been the crucible of his art. His conservatory education continues, but this lesson is the one worth the expense. This man stumbles, as all humans seem to do, towards maturity.
