Treacherous

Trigger warning: internalized homophobia, homophobic slurs

Something had happened, some words between my mother and me that winter afternoon when I was eight or nine. Sleet had pounded the windows all day but now all was gray and still. The loud voices and insistent laughter from a TV talk show ricocheted against the walls with false hilarity. Maybe I wanted something or perhaps my presence had become a burden. Whatever the specifics, the exchange escalated. When my mother reached her limit, she resorted to Yiddish, frequently an exhortation to “go hit your head on the wall or play in traffic.” Maybe she had suggested the traffic, maybe I said that I would do just that. Maybe all she really wanted was to be left alone with her book and cigarettes.

I got my coat from the closet.

“You going somewhere?” she sweetly asked.

“Out!” I angrily responded.

“Then put on your rubbers. It’s a sheet of ice out there. Treacherous.” She knew what she was doing. I didn’t.

But I wasn’t going to put that footwear she insisted on calling rubbers. Did she know what rubbers were? Even I did. So out I went wearing a winter coat and my canvas sneakers.

Going down the stoop required holding onto the metal handrail with both hands. Oh, it was treacherous. I imagined myself sprawled on my back at the bottom of the steps bleeding. She’d be sorry! But no such luck. I lost control and slid down the last two steps on my ass. All I had to show for my effort was embarrassment and a wet seat. My desire to make her pay only grew. I’d walk long and far. Until dark. They’d have to go out looking for me. Maybe I’d suffer frostbite. No, that would be too much. I knew that they amputated frostbitten limbs. I raised myself up with more difficulty than I expected. I slowly made my way to the end of the block, half walking, half sliding. I hoped a neighbor would see me and call me in, but no. I continued to Brevard Avenue, the main commercial street. I watched the traffic lights go from red to green and back again. No, it was too wide to cross, so I turned left.

I came to a little one-way street lined with parked cars. There wasn’t a soul out and a cold rain had started falling. I decided to walk between two parked cars to give myself something to lean on as I stepped into the street. I steadied myself. The cars were as icy as the street, and I watched myself as if in slow motion coming down to a seated position on the curb.

This wasn’t going well. I considered hiding out under one of the cars. I looked one way and then the other and saw some bright paper fluttering under one of the cars. Not an advertising supplement, not a copy of Time magazine, something about it drew me in. I reached to pick it up from the small pile of snow holding it in place. I had been right to stop. I had found a gift worth the trouble. Even before I could figure the specifics I could see the photos of naked people. Not people generally speaking, but men, naked men. One was wearing a cowboy hat and leaning against the hood of a truck thrusting his hips. Another was straddled a motorcycle. He had soft blond hair above and below. There were maybe four pages of smooth, muscly guys. This was a thing perplexing, terrifying and intoxicating. I wondered what kind of person posed like that and, more troubling, what kind of person bought this stuff?

As I stood there transfixed, breathing in the frigid air, no longer aware of the cold or wet, indifferent to sitting on an icy curb, I heard a voice call out. Then again: “What are you doing?”

What was I doing? What exactly was I doing?

The voice wasn’t angry, more surprised, but it scared me. I turned around, dropping the paper, wishing I had thrown it under the car. I saw a high school-age guy wearing a green parka with a fur-trimmed hood.

“Nothing,” I answered. Not much of a reply, so I expanded. “I got thrown out of the house. I didn’t know where to go.”

“Wait. In this weather? What’d you do?”

Maybe it wasn’t a great answer. Parka guy was adult enough that I felt compelled to answer, but I couldn’t think of a plausible response. I settled on “Oh, nothing.”

“You know you’re hunkered down there behind my car.”

All I wanted was to get away without him seeing what I was looking at. More than that I wanted to keep those pictures, bring them home, hide them where I could study them again and again.

“Sorry,” I said. The best I could manage was to get away. I tried to stand up but it wasn’t easy. He reached down to give me a hand.

“I’m fine! I’m going.”

“I don’t care about my car. You could’ve been killed if backed up.”

“I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said in a way that was sarcastic but not as mean as it could have been. “You want a ride home? It’s stupid of me to drive but it’s more stupid for you to be out walking.”

“I’m fine. But I could use a hand.”

I looked down to see the pages growing dark as they sopped up water. I watched an arm stretch over my shoulder to pick them up.

“I see, I see,” he mused.

No, he didn’t see. Not yet.

“You shouldn’t be looking at this stuff. You’re too young.”

I looked up. I didn’t speak. If I could have run, I would have.

“It’s no big deal,” he said, as if he could read my shame. “Everybody looks at this—”

He knew. A moment passed, I didn’t look up. Now he knew what I was looking at. What could I say?  That I didn’t know what it was, that I wasn’t into that stuff. And then I came up with the just the thing. With as much disgust as I could muster, I said, “What kind of sicko looks at this stuff?”

“I think the word’s ‘gay.’” He spoke quietly. “Gay people look at it.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had heard some hateful words about this stuff. I knew it was the worst thing in the world, maybe worse than cancer, and this stranger was talking quietly, kindly even. I had to escape. I had the word. “This is fag stuff.”

He paused before speaking. “I know some people say that, but they’re ignorant.”

I tried to take in what he was saying, what he was trying to do. I wish I had just nodded. I wish I had just walked away, slid away, whatever. Instead I said very quietly, almost choking on the words, “Then you must be some kind of fag yourself!” My self-righteous, self-loathing anger gave me the strength to stand up.

It was the only time I looked him in the eye. He looked at me with an expression that I couldn’t read, but thinking back all these years later what I think it was kindness. He balled up the pages, then threw them, surprisingly far for something weighing so little, into the slush of Brevard Avenue.

He put the key in his car door and opened it. He looked back for just a second. “Be careful. It’s slippery.”

I began my walk home stepping through patches of slush that were starting to form. The sky was growing dark. When I pushed open the front door, my mother was in the kitchen. “Glad you’re back!” she called. “You must be frozen.” She never asked where I’d been or what I’d done.