“I’m not a leader,” I said.
“You shouldn’t be,” he said. He spat out a fragment of nail. “Leadership is dinosaur thinking. You should be in the vanguard of creating a way for the other kids to educate themselves and create their own organization. That’s why we don’t believe in going into schools and setting up chapters ourselves. That’s age chauvinism.”
“Rafe would be a good choice,” Julie said. She was in a black leotard and faded jeans. She looked extraordinary: at the peak of youth’s bloom, her skin as luminous as porcelain, her black hair glinting, her big brown eyes full of passion and yet as innocent as a fawn’s. To look at her for more than a few seconds was painful, although it was also a sublime pleasure. “He’s political and a real teacher. And he wouldn’t try to dominate them.”
Gus nodded. “How can we help you do it?”
I said nothing. More secrets were piling up. The need to impress Julie and her friends, including her lover, was insistent, but I couldn’t risk my uncle’s wrath by openly embracing left-wing politics. And Halston? Dare I tell the doctor about my new secret life — or was it too close to my mother’s madness? Halston might believe Ruth’s ideology caused her lunacy.
“You know what?” Gus said. “Rafe should come to the demo today and to some meetings next week.”
I marched beside Sandy that day. Julie and Gus walked ahead of us. I was apprehensive, expecting violence and then discovery by my uncle. But my first experience of political protest was like a stroll in the country: getting high before we started, chanting together as we marched cheerfully in the sunny spring day, linking arms at the gym site to listen to a few speeches. Gus’s was the best. His relaxed manner made him convincing. He talked to the crowd in the same tone and language he used in conversation — although it’s true that his conversation was rather like someone giving a speech. Afterwards, we ate at the college hangout, the West End Bar. Whether it was the grass or the fresh air or my exaggerated feeling of having been brave, I was famished. I ate two hamburgers while around me there were more arguments between the tables as members of rival student groups took issue with Gus and the other SDS leaders, not about whether Columbia was wrong, but what exactly should be done about it.
It got to be time for me to head for my uncle’s Manhattan apartment. I announced I had to return to the girls’ place for my overnight bag.
“Overnight bag,” someone repeated. “Far out,” he added and laughed.
“I’ll go with you,” Sandy said.
“I’ll take him—” Julie said.
“He can take my key and leave it there,” Kathy said.
Sandy drained her coffee cup, stood up and said with a frown, “No, I gotta go, anyway. Come on.” She left the bar quickly without me, as if I were an afterthought.
“Bye, honey,” Julie said. She took my hand, pulled me to her and kissed me on the cheek. She had never called me honey before and the kiss, although chaste, was impressed firmly, with an affection that also seemed new.
Walking with Sandy, still thrilled by the lingering sensation of Julie’s lips, I thought about why my cousin had become physical with me. It was because I marched in the demonstration, I decided, disappointed by that conclusion.
My gloomy turn of mind must have been obvious. “You okay?” Sandy asked while we were in the elevator going up.
The familiar construct of my relationship with Julie and her friends was depressing. I experienced this dismay (its cause so obvious from this distance) as an enervating achiness, like the onset of a flu, rather than as a realization that I had created yet another hall of distorting mirrors in which I would never find a true reflection or escape from my emotional maze.
[The dazzlingly rapid re-creation of self-defeating patterns in a neurotic is exactly what makes therapy so often frustrating for both doctor and patient. I have come, in a perverse way, to admire the resilience of mental illness. It is helpful for a therapist to bear in mind that neurotic behavior is actually a survival mechanism, however misguided. Its longevity is a sign of the patient’s passion to live and in that paradox there is hope for a cure.]
Sandy put her hand on my arm and repeated, “You okay?”
The terror lived again. My skull was fragile, my skin vibrating: leaks were about to spring. Say what you’re feeling, I urged myself, desperate to fend off madness. “I’m sad,” I said.
Sandy nodded. She didn’t ask why, to my surprise. She rubbed my arm and smiled encouragingly, but never said a word. The elevator doors opened. She marched out in her waddle walk, saying, “Come on.” She opened the apartment door, tossed the keys into a bowl and kicked off her sandals. The soles of her feet were black. She extended her left hand, fingers asking for mine.
I looked at her, not understanding.
She wiggled her fingers again, eyes mischievous, and the request was clear.
She was strong and confident and I knew that she, unlike me, was real. I gave her my hand.
She towed me through the hall into her room. Her platform bed was unmade, the yellow cotton blanket twisted at the foot, a pillow squashed against the wall. She kicked the door shut, pulled me to the bed and we sat, side by side on its edge. With a light touch, she stroked my left cheek once, ran her fingers through my hair, traveling to the back until she held my now very solid skull in her palm. She moved close to my lips and whispered, “You okay with this?”
My need was so heavy that I could hardly manage to do more than nod.
She kissed me. She pushed my lips apart with her tongue and explored my mouth restlessly; her hands were also restless — rubbing my back, kneading my neck, as if she wanted to mold me to her shape. I woke from passivity and pushed back into her mouth, for a moment tasting the eggs she had for brunch mix with my hamburgers, and then we were only a single human flavor. I touched her thin hair and dropped my hands to her back. It was soft, much softer than I expected from her vigorous body.
She broke from the kiss to unbutton my shirt. She undid each one with deliberate care, reverently. I kissed the top of her head once or twice as she descended and thought to myself: “Thank God. Thank God.” When she reached my waist, she paused at the sight of the bulge in my jeans. She put a hand on it, raised her eyes and looked earnest. “Are you a virgin?” she asked.
I nodded.
This information seemed to galvanize her. She yanked my belt once, said, “Take ’em off,” and stood up. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and into the air in a single motion. Without a pause, she had her jeans open. They dropped to the floor. She pushed them off the rest of the way with her feet. Fingers slid under her red panties and shoved. She stepped out of them and looked at me. I hadn’t moved. The sight of her frank nakedness was mesmerizing. Her breasts were small, nipples dark and turned a little outwards, like poorly coordinated eyes.
“You’re beautiful,” I said.
She laughed. “Your turn,” she said.
I didn’t trust my trembling legs to stand. I tried to get my jeans and underpants off simultaneously while still on the bed. They got stuck on my thighs. I had never seen my penis in so ridiculous and desperate shape: levitating off me, flagging the world for attention. Sandy laughed again and pulled at the tangled mass of clothes. I flopped my legs up and down, like a baby being changed, as she negotiated them past my knees and ankles. She pushed my clothes onto the floor, then moved to lie beside me. We turned our bodies to each other. She kissed me briefly and looked at my erection. I followed her eyes. She lightly ran three fingertips up from its base to the head. It might as well have been an electric shock. My thighs and torso came off the mattress and I groaned.