I HADN’T SEEN MY best friend in sixteen years, half of our lives ago, so I didn’t recognize him when I pulled him out of the car and hit him in the face. I’d taken a few self-defense classes, so I’d learned to strike with the heel of my open hand. It’s too easy to break fingers if one slams a fist against the hard bones of the head. A good student, I also remembered to stand with my feet a shoulder’s width apart, for maximum balance, and to twist my hips and shoulders back before I thrust forward, for maximum leverage and striking power. And so, maximally educated, I hit my best friend and snapped his nose.
It made an astonishing noise. I imagine it could have been heard a block away. And the blood! Oh, his red glow drenched my shirt. He screamed, slumped back against his car, and slid to the ground. After that, it would have been impossible to recognize him because his face was a bloody mask. Drunk and enraged, I tried to kick him and might have beaten him unconscious or worse, but Bernard, my old college friend and drinking buddy, wrapped me in a bear hug and dragged me away.
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-snapped 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.
I sat there for a few hours, bewildered. Yes, I was bewildered. When was the last time a white American male was truly bewildered or would admit to such a thing? We had taken the world from covered wagons to space shuttles in seventy-five years. After such accomplishment, how could we ever get lost in the wilderness again? How could we not invent a device to guide our souls through the darkness?
I prayed to Our Father and I called my father. And one father remained silent and the other quickly came to get me.
In that North Bend parking lot, in his staid sedan, my father trembled with anger. “What the hell are you doing up here?” he asked. He’d left a meeting with the lame-duck mayor to rescue me.
“Jeremy drove me up.”
“And where is Jeremy?”
“We got in a fight. He left.”
“You got into a fight?” my father asked. “What are you, a couple of girls?”
“Jeremy is a fag,” I said.
“What?”
“Jeremy told me he’s a fag.”
“Are you homosexual?” my father asked.
I laughed.
“This is not funny,” he said.
“No, it’s just that word, homosexual; it’s a goofy word.”
“You haven’t answered the question.”
“What question?”
“Are you homosexual?”
I knew that my father still loved me, that he was still my defender. But I wondered how strong he would defend me if I were indeed gay.
“Dad, I’m not a fag. I promise.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
We sat there in silence. A masculine silence. Thick and strong. Oh, I’m full of shit. We were terrified and clueless.
“Okay, Dad, what happens next?”
“I was hoping to tell you this at a better time, but I’m going to run for the State House.”
“Oh, wow,” I said. “Congratulations.”
“I’m happy you’re happy. I hated to make the decision without your input, but it had to be that way.”
“I understand.”
“Yes, I knew you would. And I hope you understand a few other things.”
And so my father, who’d never been comfortable with my private school privilege, transferred me from Madison Park to Garfield High, a racially mixed public school in a racially mixed neighborhood.
Let my father tell you why: “The Republican Party has, for decades, silently ignored the pernicious effects of racial segregation, while simultaneously resisting any public or private efforts at integration. That time has come to an end. I am a Republican, and I love my fellow Americans, regardless of race, color, or creed. But, of course, you’ve heard that before. Many Republicans have issued that same kind of lofty statement while living lives entirely separate from people of other races, other classes, and other religions. Many Republicans have lied to you. And many Democrats have told you those same lies. But I will not lie, in word or deed. I have just purchased a house in the historically black Central District neighborhood of Seattle, and my son will attend Garfield High School. I am moving because I believe in action. And I am issuing a challenge to my fellow Republicans and to all Democrats, as well: Put your money, and your house, where your mouth is.”
And so my father, who won the state seat with 62 percent of the vote, moved me away from Jeremy, who also left Madison Park and was homeschooled by his mother. Over the next year or so, I must have called his house twenty times. But I always hung up when he or his parents answered. And he called my private line more than twenty times, but would stay on the line and silently wait for me to speak. And then it stopped. We became rumors to each other.
Five hours after I punched Jeremy in the face, I sat alone in the living room of my childhood home in Seattle. Bernard, Spence, and Eddie were gone. I felt terrible. I prayed that I would be forgiven. No, I didn’t deserve forgiveness. I prayed that I would be fairly judged. So I called the fairest man I know—my father—and told him what I had done.
The sun was rising when my father strode alone into the room and slapped me: once, twice, three times.
“Shit,” he said, and stepped away.
I wiped the blood from my mouth.
“Shit,” my father said once more, stepped up close to me, and slapped me again.
I was five inches taller, thirty years younger, and forty pounds heavier than my father and could have easily stopped him from hitting me. I could have hurt him. But I knew that I deserved his anger. A good son, I might have let him kill me. And, of course, I know that you doubt me. But I believe in justice. And I was a criminal who deserved punishment.
“What did you do?” my father asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was drunk and stupid and—I don’t know what happened.”
“This is going to ruin everything. You’ve ruined me with this, this thing, do you understand that?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll confess to it. It’s all my fault. Nobody will blame you.”
“Of course they’ll blame me. And they should blame me. I’m your father.”
“You’re a great father.”
“No, I’m not. I can’t be. What kind of father could raise a son who is capable of such a thing?”
I wanted to rise up and tell my father the truth, that his son was a bloody, bawdy villain. A remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain. But such sad and selfish talk is reserved for one’s own ears. So I insulted myself with a silence that insulted my father as well.
“Don’t just sit there,” he said. “You can’t just sit there. You have to account for yourself.”
My father had always believed in truth, and in the real and vast differences between good and evil. But he’d also taught me, as he had learned, that each man is as fragile and finite as any other.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, my father prayed aloud for the victims. All day, the media worried that the body count might reach twenty or thirty thousand, so my father’s prayers were the most desperate of his life. But, surprisingly, my father also prayed for the nineteen men who’d attacked us. He didn’t pray for their forgiveness or redemption. No, he believed they were going to burn in a real hell. After all, what’s the point of a metaphorical hell? But my father was compassionate and Christian enough to know that those nineteen men, no matter how evil their actions and corrupt their souls, could have been saved.
This is what my father taught me on that terrible day: “We are tested, all of us. We are constantly and consistently given the choice. Good or evil. Light or darkness. Love or hate. Some of those decisions are huge and tragic. Think of those nineteen men and you must curse them. But you must also curse their mothers and fathers. Curse their brothers and sisters. Curse their teachers and priests. Curse everybody who failed them. I pray for those nineteen men because I believe that some part of them, the original sliver of God that still resided in them, was calling out for guidance, for goodness and beauty. I pray for them because they chose evil and thus became evil, and I pray for them because nobody taught them how to choose goodness and become good.”
Of course, my father, being a politician, could never have uttered those words in public. His supporters would not have understood the difference between empathy for a lost soul and sympathy with a terrorist’s politics. Make no mistake: My father was no moral relativist. He wanted each criminal to be judged by his crimes, not by his motivations or biography.
My father refused to believe that all cultures were equal. He believed that representative democracy was a God-given gift to humans.
“I think that our perfect God will protect us in a perfect afterlife,” he was fond of saying in public. “But in this highly imperfect world, we highly imperfect humans need to be protected from one another, and only a progressive republican government can guarantee any sort of protection.”
In private, my father said this: “Fuck the fucking leftists and their fucking love of secularism and communism. Those bastards haven’t yet figured out that the secular Hitler and the communist Stalin slaughtered millions and millions of people.”
Don’t get me wrong. My father knew that the world was complicated and unpredictable—and that only God knew the ultimate truth—but he also knew that each citizen of that world was ultimately responsible for his actions. My father staked his political career, his entire life, on one basic principle: An unpredictable world demands a predictable moral code.
“Son,” my father said to me many a time in the years after September 11, “a thief should be judged by the theft. A rapist should be judged by the rape. A murderer should be judged by the murder. A terrorist should be judged by the terror.”
And so I sat, a man capable of inexplicable violence against an innocent, eager to be judged by my God and by my father. I wanted to account and be held accountable.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have attacked those men. I shouldn’t have walked away from the scene. At least, I should have gone back to the scene. I should go back now and turn myself into the police.”
“But you’re not telling me why you did it,” my father said. “Can you tell me that? Why did you do it?”
I searched my soul for an answer and could not find one. I could not make sense of it. But if I’d known that it was Jeremy I’d assaulted, I could have spoken about Cain and Abel and let my father determine the moral of the story.
“Spence and Eddie—”
“No,” my father interrupted. “This is not about them. This is about you.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m really confused here, Dad. I’m trying to do the right thing. And I need you to help me. Tell me what the right thing is. Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
And so my father told me what he had learned from confidential sources. The gay men had reported the assault but, obviously shocked and confused, had provided conflicting descriptions of Spence, Eddie, and Bernard and no description of me other than “white male, twenties to thirties, five-eight to six feet, one-eighty to two hundred pounds.” In other words, I could have been almost any Caucasian guy in Seattle. The victims didn’t catch the license plate of the suspects’ car and could only describe it as a “dark four-door.” There were no other witnesses to the assault as of yet. Most curious, the victims disagreed on whether or not the perpetrators brandished guns.
“What do the police think?” I asked.
“They think the victims are hiding something,” my father said.
“They’re just scared and freaked out.”
“No. I agree with the police. I think they’re hiding something.”
“No, they’re not hiding anything, Dad. They’re just confused. I’d be confused if somebody attacked me like that.”
“No, they’re hiding the fact that they started the fight and they don’t want the police to know it.”
I was shocked. Was this really my father or his lying twin? Was I talking to my father or his murderous brother?
“Listen,” he said. “I don’t think the police really have anything to go on. And I don’t think they’re going to pursue this much further. But we’re going to monitor the investigation very closely. And we’re going to be preemptive if we sense any real danger.”
“What are you talking about? Are you going to hurt them?”
More enraged than ever before, my father grabbed me by the shirt. “Don’t you say such things. Don’t you dare! This is the United States of America, not some third world shit heap! I am not in the business of intimidation or violence. I am not in the business of murder.”
It was true. My father believed in life, the sacred spark of humans, more strongly than any other man I’d ever known. As a Republican, he was predictably antiabortion, but he was also against capital punishment. His famous speech: “It is the business of man to judge and punish on this mortal Earth; but it is the business of God to give and take away life. I believe that abortion is a great evil, but it is just as evil to abandon any child to the vagaries of economics. I believe it is evil to murder another human being, but it is just as evil for a government to kill its citizens based on the vagaries of justice.”
Yes, this was the man I had accused of conspiracy. I had insulted my father. I’d questioned his honor. I’d deemed him capable of murder. He was right to shake me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m just confused. Help me. Please, Daddy, help me. I love you. Please, please help me.”
And so he held me while I wept.
“I love you, son,” he said. “But you have to listen to me. You have to understand. I know that you were wrong to do what you did. It was a mortal sin. You sinned against God, against those men, and against me. And you should pay for those sins.”
My good father wanted me to be a good man.
“But it’s not that easy,” my father said. “If you turn yourself in to the police, I will also pay for your sins. And I know I should pay for your sins because I am your father, and I have obviously failed to raise you well. But I will also pay for your sins as a U.S. senator, so our state and country will also pay for them. A scandal like this will ruin my career. It will ruin our party. And it will ruin our country. And though I know I will be judged harshly by God, I can’t let you tell the truth.”
My father wanted me to lie. No, he was forcing me to lie.
“William, Willy,” he said. “If we begin to suspect that you might be implicated in this, we’re going to go on the offensive. We’re going to kill their reputations.”
If it is true that children pay for the sins of their fathers, is it also true that fathers pay for the sins of their children?
Three days later, I returned to my condominium in downtown Seattle and found a message waiting on my voice mail.
“Hey, William, it’s—um, me, Jeremy. You really need to call me.”
And so I called Jeremy and agreed to meet him at his house in Magnolia, an upper-class neighborhood of Seattle. It was a small but lovely house, painted blue and chocolate.
I rang the doorbell. Jeremy answered. His face and nose were swollen purple, yellow, and black; his eyes were bloodshot and tear-filled.
“It was you,” I said, suddenly caught in an inferno of shame.
“Of course it was me. Get your ass in here.”
Inside, we sat in his study, a modernist room decorated with beautiful and useless furniture. What good is a filing cabinet that can only hold an inch of paperwork?
“I’m so sorry, Jeremy,” I said. “I didn’t know it was you.”
“Oh, so I’m supposed to be happy about that? Things would be okay if you’d beaten the shit out of a fag you didn’t know?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Okay, then, what did you mean?”
“I was wrong to do what I did. Completely wrong.”
“Yes, you were,” he said.
He was smiling. I recognized that smile. Jeremy was giving me shit. Was he going to torture me before he killed me?
“Why didn’t you tell the police it was me?” I asked.
“Because the police don’t give a shit about fags.”
“But we assaulted you. We could have killed you.”
“Doubtful. James had already kicked the crap out of your friends. And he would have kicked the crap out of you and the guy with the tire iron. Let’s just call it a split decision.”
“You didn’t tell James it was me, did you?”
“No, of course not. I told the police a completely different story than James did. And I was the one with the broken face, so they believed me.”
“But what about James? What’s he going to do?”
“Oh, who cares? I barely knew him.”
“But it was a hate crime.”
“Aren’t all crimes, by definition, hate crimes? I mean, people don’t rob banks because they love tellers.”
“I don’t understand you. Why haven’t you gone public with this? You could destroy my father. And me.”
Jeremy sighed.
“Oh, William,” he said. “You’re still such an adolescent. And so romantic. I haven’t turned you in because I’m a Republican, a good one, and I think your father is the finest senator we’ve ever had. I used to think he was a closet Democrat. But he’s become something special. This kind of shit would completely fuck his chance at the presidency.”
Jesus, was this guy more a son to my father than I was?
“And, okay, maybe I’m a romantic, too,” Jeremy said. “I didn’t turn you in because we were best friends and because I still consider you my best friend.”
“But my father hates gay people.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
And so Jeremy explained to me that his sexual preference had nothing to do with his political beliefs.
“Hey,” he said. “I don’t expect to be judged negatively for my fuck buddies. But I don’t want to be judged positively, either. It’s just sex. It’s not like it’s some specialized skill or something. Hell, right now, in this house, one hundred thousand bugs are fucking away. In this city, millions of bugs are fucking at this very moment. And, hey, probably ten thousand humans—and registered voters—are fucking somewhere in this city. Four or five of them might even be married.”
“So what’s your point?”
“Anybody who thinks that sex somehow relates to the national debt or terrorism or poverty or crime or moral values or any kind of politics is just an idiot.”
“Damn, Jeremy, you’ve gotten hard.”
“That’s what all the boys say.”
“And what does James say? What if he goes to the press? What if he sees my face in the newspapers or on TV and recognizes me?”
“James is a little fag coffee barista from Bumfuck, Idaho. Nobody cares what he has to say. Little James could deliver a Martian directly to the White House and people would think it was a green poodle with funny ears.”
I wondered if I’d completely scrambled Jeremy’s brains when I punched him in the head.
“Will you listen to me?” I said. “My father will destroy your life if he feels threatened.”
“Did you know your father called my father that day up in North Bend?” Jeremy asked.
“What day?” I asked. But I knew.
“Don’t be obtuse. After I told you I was gay, you told your father, and your father told my father. And my father beat the shit out of me.”
“You’re lying,” I said. But I knew he wasn’t.
“You think my face looks bad now? Oh, man, my dad broke my cheekbone. Broke my arm. Broke my leg. A hairline fracture of the skull. A severe concussion. I saw double for two months.”
“How come you didn’t go to the police?”
“Oh, my dad took me to the police. Said a gang of kids did it to me. Hoodlums, he called them.”
“How come you didn’t tell the police the truth?”
“Because my dad said he’d kill my mom if I told the truth.”
“I don’t think I believe any of this.”
“You can believe what you want. I know what happened. My father beat the shit out of me because he was ashamed of me. And I let him because I was ashamed of me. And because I loved my mom.”
I stared at him. Could he possibly be telling the truth? Are there truths as horrible as this one? In abandoning him when he was sixteen, did I doom him to a life with a violent father and a beaten mother?
“But you know the best thing about all of this?” he asked.
I couldn’t believe there’d be any good in this story.
“When my father was lying in his hospital bed, he asked for me,” Jeremy said. “Think about it. My father was dying of cancer. And he called for me. He needed me to forgive him. And you know what?”
“What?” I asked, though I didn’t want to know.
“I went into his room, hugged him and told him I forgave him and I loved him, and we cried and then he died.”
“I can’t believe any of this.”
“It’s all true.”
“You forgave your father?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “It really made me wish I was Roman or Greek, you know? A classical Greek god would have killed his lying, cheating father and then given him forgiveness. And a classical Greek god would have better abs, too. That’s what Greek gods are all about, you know? Patricide and low body fat.”
How could anybody be capable of that much forgiveness? I was reminded of the black man, the convicted rapist, who’d quietly proclaimed his innocence all during his thirty years in prison. After he was exonerated by DNA evidence and finally freed, that black man completely forgave the white woman who’d identified him as her rapist. He said he forgave her because it would do him no good to carry that much anger in his heart. I often wonder if that man was Jesus come back.
“The thing is, Willy,” Jeremy said, “you’ve always been such a moral guy. Six years old, and you made sure that everybody got equal time on the swings, on the teeter-totter, on the baseball field. Even the losers. And you learned that from your father.”
“My father is a great man,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. I had to believe it, though, or my foundations would collapse.
“No,” Jeremy said. “Your father has great ideas, but he’s an ordinary man, just like all of us. No, your father is more of an asshole than usual. He likes to hit people.”
“He’s only hit me a couple of times.”
“That you can remember.”
“What does that mean?”
“We wouldn’t practice denial if it didn’t work.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“Oh, you’re scary. What are you going to do, punch me in the face?”
We laughed.
“It comes down to this,” Jeremy said. “You can’t be a great father and a great politician at the same time. Impossible. Can’t be a great father and a great writer, either. Just ask Hemingway’s kids.”
“I prefer Faulkner.”
“Yeah, there’s another candidate for Father of the Year.”
“Okay, okay, writers are bad dads. What’s your point?”
“Your father is great because of his ideas. And those great ideas will make him a great president.”
“Why do you believe in him so much?”
“It’s about sacrifice. Listen, I am a wealthy American male. I can’t campaign for something as silly and fractured as gay marriage when there are millions of Muslim women who can’t even show their ankles. Your daddy knows that. Everybody knows it.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I hate to sound like a campaign worker or something, but listen to me. I believe in him so much that I’ll pay ten bucks for a gallon of gas. I believe in him so much that I’m going to let you go free.”
I wondered if Jeremy had been beaten so often that it had destroyed his spirit. Had he lost the ability to defend himself? How many times could he forgive the men who had bloodied and broken him? Is there a finite amount of forgiveness in the world? Was there a point after which forgiveness, even the most divinely inspired, is simply the act of a coward? Or has forgiveness always been used as political capital?
“Jeremy,” I asked, “what am I supposed to do with all this information?”
“That’s up to you, sweetheart.”
Oh, there are more things in heaven and earth than can be explained by Meet the Press.
Jeremy and I haven’t talked since that day. We agreed that our friendship was best left abandoned in the past. My crime against him was also left in the past. As expected, the police did not pursue the case, and it was soon filed away. There was never any need to invent a story.
I cannot tell you what happened to James, or to Eddie and Spence, or to Bernard. We who shared the most important moment of our lives no longer have any part in the lives of the others. It happens that way. I imagine that someday one of them might try to tell the whole story. And I imagine nobody would believe them. Who would believe any of them? Or me? Has a liar ever told the truth?
As for my father, he lost his reelection bid and retired to the relatively sad life of an ex-senator. He plays golf three times a week. State leaders beg for his advice.
My father and I have never again discussed that horrible night. We have no need or right to judge each other for sins that might have already doomed us to a fiery afterlife. Instead, we both silently forgave each other, and separately and loudly pray to God for his forgiveness. I’ll let you know how that works out.