The other boy and I slipped down the stairs and laughed about what we’d seen. What else could we do? We laughed at the hideous sight. We never talked about it and he soon quit school. A few years passed before I wondered if he’d made a movie at the motel. By then he was already dead of an overdose. The fatman once suggested I bring my brother to visit, and I got very angry. The only good that I can find in all this now is that I protected my brother. At least I did that.
The fatman left town as suddenly as he’d appeared, and I didn’t speak to anyone about him. Instead, I began to shoplift. Every time I entered a store, I walked around as if browsing, while secretly examining lines of sight and avenues of getaway. I was a meticulous planner. The best technique was to set the object I intended to steal near the door, then buy something cheap that required a shopping bag. On my way out of the store, I’d surreptitiously slip the preset goods into the bag. I got very scared as I walked to the door, my body encased in the same adrenalized state as when climbing the steps to the fatman’s room. I breathed slowly through my mouth, sweating inside my clothes. On the sidewalk outside, I felt the euphoria of relief at having gotten away. Stealing made me feel bad about myself, but that didn’t matter, because feeling bad was my normal state. I never got caught. I never stole anything I really wanted.
In a college psychology class, I read an article that referred to people who’d been sexually abused as “victims.” This made me uneasy because I didn’t like the idea of being a victim. I knew the whole fatman business was my fault. Nobody had forced me to enter that building and climb those stairs and push open the dark wooden door. I’d gone there freely. I’d been there more than once. I felt special. I felt bad. I wondered if I was gay. I dropped the class and got stoned, then drunk, and stayed that way for a good while.
Twenty-five years later I began talking about the fatman. I thought I might feel relieved or unburdened, but I didn’t. I told my wife. I told my parents and siblings in a group letter, which I suppose was cowardly, perhaps even cruel. It was shocking enough that no one knew how to respond. My father, surprisingly, called. He wanted to know if the fatman still lived in the county. Coincidentally, Dad evoked The Godfather, saying that he would send Vito and Luigi to kill the man. I didn’t tell him how that particular movie had figured in to things so long ago.
After revealing my old secret, I mainly felt embarrassed. Worse things happened to other boys, and much worse things happened to women. I was never forced or hurt. It was a long time ago. I knew that I should find it in myself to forgive the fatman, an act that ultimately would benefit me. But I couldn’t do it. I’d spent too many years hoping he went to prison. I hoped every inmate spat on him in the corridors. I wanted them to fill his food with poison, smack him around in the yard, and ambush him in the shower. I wanted him to be scared and alone. I wanted his life to be so miserable that he spent every day wishing he were someone else. I wanted him to memorize the dim flat light fixture in his cell. I wanted him as dead as I felt, as dead as I still feel sometimes, as dead as the other boy I saw on the steps will always be.
Chapter Eighteen
WHEN I was fifteen, the most direct impact of my experience with the fatman was a deep fear that I was secretly gay. The answer to that was obvious—find a girl who’d let me have sex with her—but I couldn’t get dates, let alone sex. Before my father shut down his insurance agency, he’d accidentally given his secretary a porn manuscript to type. Rumor and gossip about my father’s writing spread through the county. Though tame by pornographic standards, his SF novels contained descriptions of sex that offended local people. As a result, concerned parents refused to let their daughters go out with me.
Dad never talked about his work overtly; the formal subject was forbidden, but I knew about it and sought the porn when my parents were away. I was as afraid of the material as I was intrigued. That it was secret made it “bad,” which increased its appeal. I wondered if my mother knew about it, then realized she had to—she did his typing.
Spanking figured prominently in most of the books. It was appealing in the abstract, since it seemed to induce sex, but being beaten by grade school teachers had left me with a disregard for pain and punishment.