The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [27]
For two days he sat in the little room. Out twice to buy a tin of spaghetti and pig's trotters. On the third day, remorse hardening with idleness. Reading letters of those with problems in the back of a women's magazine and a few proverbs from the Bible, for the Christianity that was in it And suddenly the sound of mail. On the hallway floor a letter from O'Keefe.
Dear Phony,
I'm up to my teeth. I'm a hungry son of a bitch, enough to eat dog. I bought a tin of peas and I ration myself twelve after every meal This place is the dullest I've ever been. I put an ad in the local paper to give English instruction to girls that wanted to take posts in England with families. Two showed up. One as ugly as an old man's sin and knew what I was after and didn't mind at all but as hard up as I am I couldn't get myself to seduce her, even for academic purposes. I am destined to love beautiful women and to inspire in them a desire to lay for someone else. But things are more complicated than that. The other girl complained to the head master and I was scared I was going to get the kaput But the head master is a good skin and he laughed and sympathized but told me to lay off because it wasn't so hot for the school. So much for my heterosexual life from which I have officially retired.
My homosexual personality is complete. I have been reading André Gide in French, the Marquis de Sade and Casanova. It's just like they say it is, being in love with a boy. I'm afraid of getting caught or that he might report me. He comes to my room at night and teases me by turning off my light and then wrestling with me in the dark. Jesus Christ, I think it will drive me crazy. I'm sure he must know, these French kids know everything, but he's teasing me just like Constance used to do in my rooms at Harvard. If I were in America the class would have reported me long ago. They notice I always ask him questions and that I never yell at him when he comes up to my desk but treat him like a bowl of cream. Being in love with a boy is an experience everyone should have but it's breaking my balls, but I must say that for me it is more exciting than chasing women who never gave me a tumble. Everyone does that. Fm dying for the want of a smell of the ould sod. Eire is in my blood. veins and jowls. I'm thinking of joining the Jews to fight the Arabs or the Arabs to fight the Jews. What the hell. Fm sick of it all. Fm raising a beard among other things. No more women—I've discovered Fm impotent, ejaculatio praecox.
Now what about the money? You've let me down badly. You've got to realize that Fm up against it. I'm depending on you. Nothing else except that I hope to get up to Paris soon. Fm saving a hundred francs from my pay every week and Fm going to lose my cherry once and for all to a pro. My best to Marion.
God bless you,
Kenneth O'KEEFE,
Duke of Serutan.
Will I ever see time of largess. Say with a bit of butler. With O'Keefe at the front door blasting his way in with a pukka accent. Kenneth must have money troubles but he'll be all right. Nice little job. Quite a pleasant life that. He doesn't know that he has it good now. But I do think that Kenneth needs a menopause.
This is the month of August. Football season, a sunny New England afternoon. An indifferent summer air blowing sweetly softly across the grass. There is that word enthusiasm. And watch these people running out of locker rooms full of pep and zip and of course, enthusiasm. To see a ball spiral lazily down the field, plunging into the brute arms of a gentle idiot who charges through this so strange indifferent summertime. I could get down on my knees in this wretched little room and weep for things like that. I don't play football, however, but it wrings my heart for that dry wistful air. O the aching pangs of it. And the wholesome girls. Like bread, good enough to eat. Eat me. And brandy, rugs and cars. What have I now? The G.I. Bill. Of Rights too. And when you get as old as I am now I can only feel I need preferential treatment Preference of the veteran. I had a dream that these veterans were looking for me. They were arriving in Battery Park. Thousands of them off the Staten Island ferry. More out of the subway from Brooklyn. Beating great drums with leather-thonged fists, holding aloft torches of liberty. Going to get me. And a dreadful feeling it is. Get me for lechery and cheating. For not being at the front. I tell you, you oafs, I was behind the book. The man behind the book. They had a statue of the Blessed Virgin. But I beg of you, I'm just an ordinary guy. Say, bub, you're a moral leper, and degenerate. We're the Catholic war veterans and we're going to purify lousy bastards like you by hanging. But I tell you I'm rich. You're not rich bub. They were marching through Wall Street, coming up through the city to get me. Sleeping in my booze-stained room with someone's crying sister. Finding my room, picking out my brown fireproof door from a million others. I was in the Washington Heights for the anonymity that was in it. They were at 125th Street, a rumble of drums. Please, protection. None. Me an example. A mile away with placards, "Wipe Out Degenerates." But I tell you, I'm not degenerating. My God, they have dogs too. This sister of somebody, sobbing. Gentlemen, I put it to you that I am a Protestant and above this nonsense. Look, bub. we know what you are. But, gentlemen, I'm an Irish Catholic. Bub, we're going to hang you for sure for saying that. Mercy. Pounding feet up the stairs. I must say it was all most distasteful. The door was down. A football player plunging into the room. Bub, I'm from Fordham and we make short work of perverts like you. What are you Bub, crazy or something? Needless to say, I winced in terror and they pushed a flag pole out the window and dragged me from my corner, punching me in the ribs and twisting my balls and hanged me. I woke up with the bed sheet in shreds. Marion thought I had a touch of distemper, or papaphobia.