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Caliban
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
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241 Dave King Gay-boy friend ship, pre-gay: what cu ri ous mag ne tism draws us to each other, even be fore we’ve ac knowl edged the sex? Re call ing the lit tle co terie that or bited my friend D in those years, I think of danc ing in our dorm rooms. I think of learn ing the lyr ics to No, No, Nan ette and per form ing “I Want to Be Happy” im promptu on the stair case, long after lights out. My God, I re mem ber a slew of dull win ter even ings when other boys gath ered to hear me read aloud from Auntie Mame and The Wind in the Wil lows, no one doing the ob vi ous math, no one look ing too deeply at his own soul. Then we’d re turn to the world and be main stream again, some of us kiss ing or even fuck ing a hip pie girl friend, each of us don ning the oddly tail ored man tle of early-’70s mas cu lin ity. For the world then was one of com munes and right eous pol i tics, gui tar feed back, both types of Deep Throat, War ren Beatty, H. R. Halde man, and TM. How did a Y-chromosome fit into all that? And how did a Y-chromosome jibe with nos tal gia fash ions and uni sex hair—so very neu ter ing on pu bes cent boys—or with the sup ple sex less buzz of the drugs? In a few years we’d be sen iors, and when our birth days rolled past we’d rooster up and reg is ter for the draft. Al ready I’d spent years im a gin ing the war, which I saw as a ghoul ishly height ened Boy Scout Jam boree, set in a rain for est and cal i brated to ex pose my fail ings: Cal i ban Dave King 242 my cow ar dice and lack of pa tri ot ism; also my lit tle girl’s throw ing arm. The wan der ing eye I still be lieved I could keep se cret. Per haps we all had such wor ries, we eight or so blithely ac cept ing friends gath ered for win ter story hour. In the end, though, it was not Viet nam that took out a quar ter of our num ber; a decade later came the virus. And in the val ley of the shadow of child hood? No one was yet gay, and friend ship was largely a mat ter of in stinct. Each of us hid him self be hind screen con ceal ments; all of us trusted the scrims the oth ers put up. My friend D com manded a room. Out spoken and bois ter ous, he had a ter rific laugh and strong opin ions and an air of being fully him self, even at four teen. And flair—flair!—which came down to a per sonal dress code, an iron will, and a cool walk I at tempted to em u late. We looked noth ing alike, but we had the same first name, and I was a com pe tent if crude mimic. So is it really any won der peo ple saw us as one per son? I don’t re call how we met. He’d en tered our prep school the year be fore I did, and by the time I ar rived he was part of the stew. For a while dur ing my first term, we weren’t yet friends, and I wan dered the cam pus draped in the bleak iden tity I’d packed up and brought from home. Really, it was like some dry husk I stum bled around in, even as I at tended classes or dragged my fat butt to the soc cer field, even as I tried out for drama and band. Who knows how this husk ap peared from the out side, but in side stood a boy who’d grown up shy and in dif fer ently nur tured, who lacked the imag i na tion to do other than suc ceed in school, who’d al ready mas tered the fine art of being for get table. Whose bland ness and do cil ity must have been con vinc ing, as they went...