Afterward, the fatman said he liked me and gave me money. I left the room and walked to the drugstore, where my mother picked me up after shopping for groceries. I bought a lot of comics at the drugstore. Mom didn’t ask where I got the money.
When I returned to his room a week later, I climbed the steps very slowly, trying not to make any noise because I didn’t want to get the fatman in trouble. A clot of tension rose along my spine, vibrating like an embedded blade. I felt hollow—my heart pounding, sweat trickling down my sides, my mouth dry, my stomach congealed to stone. The fatman opened the door and ushered me in. The bed sagged when he sat on it. The money lay in sight on the bedside table. Time stopped as I slid away from my body, imagining a life beyond the hills. I would be a movie actor. Beautiful women would throw themselves at me. I was the mayor’s son, the governor’s nephew. I was secretly adopted. I was anyone but a lonely kid feeling the dampness of fat fingers in my pants.
Later I decided that my parents would be proud of my open-mindedness in such a small town. They considered themselves progressive. I believed that what I was doing with the fatman made me similar to them. They wrote porn and had affairs. If they knew about the fatman, they would respect me, maybe even like me.
The fatman took me to the movies. We stood in line but didn’t have to buy tickets. The fatman looked at the owner, put his hand on my shoulder, and nodded once. The owner stared at me without changing expression and let us in free. The fatman bought me a large buttered popcorn. Occasionally Mom made popcorn at home, but she never put butter on it. I felt special, eating buttered popcorn and watching The Godfather, which affected me in a very powerful way. I’d never seen a movie that long or that slow. The world it depicted was utterly foreign, but I understood its insular nature, the power dynamics, the violence and loyalties. After the movie, the fatman gave me a dime because I insisted on calling my father and telling him that if anything ever happened to him, I would avenge his death. I was crying into the phone. My father said little. I could hear the clatter of his typewriter keys as I spoke.
The fatman wanted me to touch him in his bed, but I refused. I explained that I liked girls, although I’d never been with one. I’d kissed three and touched one’s bra strap. The fatman offered me two hundred dollars to help him make a movie. They’d shoot the whole thing in a hotel room nearby, but I’d have to touch a man, maybe another boy about my age. I told him that I really wanted to be with a girl and suggested we make that kind of movie instead. He said if I made a movie with a man, he would provide me with a girl afterward. I told him no. He told me to think about it, but I didn’t. I looked at the light fixture and went away in my mind.
I’d developed the ability to go rapidly, to vanish from circumstances and enter a trancelike state in which I was a prince with a personal garrison at my command, a lavish kingdom to rule, and a harem of lovely women. Abruptly I was back in the dim room. My legs were bare and cold, my body tense. The fatman was breathing hard. I took the money and left.
The last time I went to the room, I encountered another boy on the steps. He was a year older than I was, with long hair the same color as mine. New to school, he lived with his mother in a trailer. I’d seen him outside the building before, but we both pretended we hadn’t noticed the other. This time he was crouching on the steps. He motioned me to be quiet. I joined him, moving silently. We were midway up the staircase. The bathroom was at the top of the steps and the door was partly open. Through it we could see the fatman standing in the shower, his vast naked bulk exposed. He was vomiting and defecating simultaneously. It was a sickening sight, so repulsive that it was hard to stop staring. The fatman began crying, an uncontrollable sobbing that made his shoulders quake, his torso ripple. He leaned on the wall as if in surrender.