Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [87]
So they lay there, both of them, in the smutty darkness, each dreaming and wishing the other would make a move. Billy, of course, was afraid that Jack would break his neck if he got funny.
One morning on the big yard, Jack was watching a game of dominoes between two of the best players in the prison, and a man standing next to him, whom he knew only slightly, said, “That Billy’s awfully sweet, isn’t he?”
“I guess so,” Jack said. He was getting resigned to this kind of talk, even though it sent a pang of guilt through him.
“You guess so?” the man grinned. “Who would know better than you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean, motherfucker?” Jack snarled.
“Shut up, you guys,” said one of the players.
That night Jack said to Billy, “What’s all this shit about you and me?”
“You and me what?” Billy asked.
“You know goddam well what. Everybody in the joint thinks you and me’re shacked up.”
“Well, we ain’t,” Billy snapped. “So why bug me about it?”
“Because I think you probably started it yourself, that’s why, you little shit.”
Billy looked disgusted and climbed up on his bunk with a book. Jack was ashamed of himself, but he would not apologize. “Piss on the little bitch,” he thought.
A few nights later Jack heard strange noises from the upper bunk. He knew what was going on. Still, out of spite, he whispered, “What’s goin on?”
The noises stopped. After a moment, Billy’s furious whisper: “I’m jackin off! What the fuck did you think I was doin?”
Jack giggled. “I thought you had somebody up there with you.”
There were moments of silence.
Jack whispered, “Well, go ahead. Don’t let me stop you.”
“She-it,” Billy said. “I done lost mah train of thought.”
Gutty little bastard, Jack thought. He went into a deep and pleasant sleep.
But if homosexuality was absurd, what about no sex, or masturbation, or normal sex itself? Wasn’t it all equally absurd, futile, and comical? Think of the things people do to each other, and for each other, just to get rid of an itch! Think of how it must look to an observer! Think of a creature so constructed that in order to survive, eat, sleep, procreate, get the snot out of its nose, it had to be triggered by pleasure instead of rationality; think of an animal that wouldn’t have sense enough to evacuate its bowels if it weren’t fun, and who, blinded by that very pleasure, actually pursued it as if the pleasure was the goal! Think of the lengths this creature would go, to make sure his itch was stroked by one particular person, of one particular size and shape, when in truth any other person would accomplish the same end! What a joke! Imagine a man horribly afflicted with psoriasis, great itching scabs covering his entire body, who got it into his head that no one but a certain girl’s fingers could relieve him; think of this man in all his agony dressing in an itchy woolen suit, his whole body trembling, screaming out, while he stands before a mirror combing his hair, scenting himself, then rushing across the city to the home of this girl, waiting on her, babbling to her about home and future and love and flowers and sweetness, while beneath his suit his body cries out in anguish to be scratched; think of him, seated on the couch beside her (she all modestly pulled away into the corner, and he knowing deep in his heart that she, too, itched and must be scratched or die) and secretly