“But we assaulted you. We could have killed you.”
“Doubtful. James had already kicked the crap out of your friends. And he would have kicked the crap out of you and the guy with the tire iron. Let’s just call it a split decision.”
“You didn’t tell James it was me, did you?”
“No, of course not. I told the police a completely different story than James did. And I was the one with the broken face, so they believed me.”
“But what about James? What’s he going to do?”
“Oh, who cares? I barely knew him.”
“But it was a hate crime.”
“Aren’t all crimes, by definition, hate crimes? I mean, people don’t rob banks because they love tellers.”
“I don’t understand you. Why haven’t you gone public with this? You could destroy my father. And me.”
Jeremy sighed.
“Oh, William,” he said. “You’re still such an adolescent. And so romantic. I haven’t turned you in because I’m a Republican, a good one, and I think your father is the finest senator we’ve ever had. I used to think he was a closet Democrat. But he’s become something special. This kind of shit would completely fuck his chance at the presidency.”
Jesus, was this guy more a son to my father than I was?
“And, okay, maybe I’m a romantic, too,” Jeremy said. “I didn’t turn you in because we were best friends and because I still consider you my best friend.”
“But my father hates gay people.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
And so Jeremy explained to me that his sexual preference had nothing to do with his political beliefs.
“Hey,” he said. “I don’t expect to be judged negatively for my fuck buddies. But I don’t want to be judged positively, either. It’s just sex. It’s not like it’s some specialized skill or something. Hell, right now, in this house, one hundred thousand bugs are fucking away. In this city, millions of bugs are fucking at this very moment. And, hey, probably ten thousand humans — and registered voters — are fucking somewhere in this city. Four or five of them might even be married.”
“So what’s your point?”
“Anybody who thinks that sex somehow relates to the national debt or terrorism or poverty or crime or moral values or any kind of politics is just an idiot.”
“Damn, Jeremy, you’ve gotten hard.”
“That’s what all the boys say.”
“And what does James say? What if he goes to the press? What if he sees my face in the newspapers or on TV and recognizes me?”
“James is a little fag coffee barista from Bumfuck, Idaho. Nobody cares what he has to say. Little James could deliver a Martian directly to the White House and people would think it was a green poodle with funny ears.”
I wondered if I’d completely scrambled Jeremy’s brains when I punched him in the head.
“Will you listen to me?” I said. “My father will destroy your life if he feels threatened.”
“Did you know your father called my father that day up in North Bend?” Jeremy asked.
“What day?” I asked. But I knew.
“Don’t be obtuse. After I told you I was gay, you told your father, and your father told my father. And my father beat the shit out of me.”
“You’re lying,” I said. But I knew he wasn’t.
“You think my face looks bad now? Oh, man, my dad broke my cheekbone. Broke my arm. Broke my leg. A hairline fracture of the skull. A severe concussion. I saw double for two months.”
“How come you didn’t go to the police?”
“Oh, my dad took me to the police. Said a gang of kids did it to me. Hoodlums, he called them.”
“How come you didn’t tell the police the truth?”
“Because my dad said he’d kill my mom if I told the truth.”
“I don’t think I believe any of this.”
“You can believe what you want. I know what happened. My father beat the shit out of me because he was ashamed of me. And I let him because I was ashamed of me. And because I loved my mom.”
I stared at him. Could he possibly be telling the truth? Are there truths as horrible as this one? In abandoning him when he was sixteen, did I doom him to a life with a violent father and a beaten mother?
“But you know the best thing about all of this?” he asked.
I couldn’t believe there’d be any good in this story.
“When my father was lying in his hospital bed, he asked for me,” Jeremy said. “Think about it. My father was dying of cancer. And he called for me. He needed me to forgive him. And you know what?”
“What?” I asked, though I didn’t want to know.
“I went into his room, hugged him and told him I forgave him and I loved him, and we cried and then he died.”
“I can’t believe any of this.”
“It’s all true.”
“You forgave your father?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “It really made me wish I was Roman or Greek, you know? A classical Greek god would have killed his lying, cheating father and then given him forgiveness. And a classical Greek god would have better abs, too. That’s what Greek gods are all about, you know? Patricide and low body fat.”
How could anybody be capable of that much forgiveness? I was reminded of the black man, the convicted rapist, who’d quietly proclaimed his innocence all during his thirty years in prison. After he was exonerated by DNA evidence and finally freed, that black man completely forgave the white woman who’d identified him as her rapist. He said he forgave her because it would do him no good to carry that much anger in his heart. I often wonder if that man was Jesus come back.
“The thing is, Willy,” Jeremy said, “you’ve always been such a moral guy. Six years old, and you made sure that everybody got equal time on the swings, on the teeter-totter, on the baseball field. Even the losers. And you learned that from your father.”
“My father is a great man,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. I had to believe it, though, or my foundations would collapse.
“No,” Jeremy said. “Your father has great ideas, but he’s an ordinary man, just like all of us. No, your father is more of an asshole than usual. He likes to hit people.”
“He’s only hit me a couple of times.”
“That you can remember.”
“What does that mean?”
“We wouldn’t practice denial if it didn’t work.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“Oh, you’re scary. What are you going to do, punch me in the face?”
We laughed.
“It comes down to this,” Jeremy said. “You can’t be a great father and a great politician at the same time. Impossible. Can’t be a great father and a great writer, either. Just ask Hemingway’s kids.”
“I prefer Faulkner.”
“Yeah, there’s another candidate for Father of the Year.”
“Okay, okay, writers are bad dads. What’s your point?”
“Your father is great because of his ideas. And those great ideas will make him a great president.”
“Why do you believe in him so much?”
“It’s about sacrifice. Listen, I am a wealthy American male. I can’t campaign for something as silly and fractured as gay marriage when there are millions of Muslim women who can’t even show their ankles. Your daddy knows that. Everybody knows it.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I hate to sound like a campaign worker or something, but listen to me. I believe in him so much that I’ll pay ten bucks for a gallon of gas. I believe in him so much that I’m going to let you go free.”
I wondered if Jeremy had been beaten so often that it had destroyed his spirit. Had he lost the ability to defend himself? How many times could he forgive the men who had bloodied and broken him? Is there a finite amount of forgiveness in the world? Was there a point after which forgiveness, even the most divinely inspired, is simply the act of a coward? Or has forgiveness always been used as political capital?