Kevin Bentley - Lets Shut Out the World

LETS SHUT OUT THE WORLD

Kevin Bentley

Published by Chelsea Station Editionsat Smashwords

Copyright 2005 and 2016 by KevinBentley.

All rights reserved. Nopart of this book may be reproduced in any form without writtenpermission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quotebrief passages in a review where appropriate credit is given; normay any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic,photocopying, recording, or otherwithout specific writtenpermission from the publisher.

Book design by Peachboy Distillery& Design

Cover photo courtesy of CrawfordBarton Collection,

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, TransgenderHistorical Society

Published by Chelsea StationEditions

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Print ISBN: 978-1-937627-29-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-937627-67-6

Library of Congress Control Number:2016940539

Originally published in 2005 by GreenCandy Press.

Some proper names and details havebeen changed and in some cases composites created in theseautobiographical essays to protect the privacy of livingindividuals.

Six Crises of Bullmoose firstappeared in The Man I Might Become: GayMen Write About Their Fathers, edited by BruceShenitz; Slender first appeared in His2: Brilliant New Fiction by Gay Writers, edited byRobert Drake and Terry Wolverton; When I Was a Poet firstappeared in Sex by the Book ;Deeper Inside the Valley of Kings first appeared in Flesh and the Word 4: Gay EroticConfessionals, edited by Michael Lowenthal; Do YouBelieve I Love You? first appeared in BarStories, edited by Scott Brassart; My Clementinaappeared in different versions in DiseasedPariah News and POZ ; Widow-Hopperappeared in Diseased Pariah News and Boyfriends fromHell ; Chimay firstappeared on beliefnet.com; Suddenly and Moon of Monokoora firstappeared in ZYZZYVA.

For Joyce

The sable divinity would notherself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit herpresence. At the first dawn of the morning we closed all the massyshutters of our old building; lighted a couple of tapers which,strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest ofrays. By the aid of these we then busied our souls indreamsreading, writing, or conversing, until warned by the clockof the advent of the true Darkness .

Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in theRue Morgue

LETS SHUT OUT THEWORLD

SIXCRISES OF BULLMOOSE

My mother got leukemia the year beforeI turned forty, and the prognosis was grim. I hadnt been back toEl Paso in thirteen years, and we hadnt been talking much for thelast six, but now we talkedlong phone calls about her condition,current events, and some awkward words of regret. Im sure youregoing to make it, but I still want to come see you, Isaid.

Wait, she said. I haveto talk to Daddy.

That had a sadly familiar ring. In theperiod after Id first left home, when she and I were still inregular touch, she would call me from the back bedroom, her voicelow so Daddy wouldnt hear. Critical conversations had often endedthis way, with a follow-up call a day or two later to deliver theverdict.

No, my best friend couldnt stay overat the house during a brief trip home. No, they wouldnt loan me amodest amount of money against my dying lovers life insurance sowe could afford cab rides to the doctor.

Daddy says if wegive you this money now itll just be more next timeand then whatif you getsick?

I did go back that once, for a fewdays in the summer of 1982a visit that made clear all Id missedout on by making a life so far away. On my last evening we gatheredfor a backyard cookout. My older brother Randy arrived with hisnew, second wife, a peppy Filipina in a halter top and cha-chaheels, and popped open a Coors. My younger brother, Mark, who wasstill living at home, cranked up some country rock. Withoutwarning, my father rushed out of the house, flushed, his fistsclenched. Turn down that goddamn music! he snarled, and knockedover the boom box.

Fuck you! Markabandoned the sizzling steaks, stomped to the driveway, and toreaway from the house, tires screeching.

Randy slammed his beer on the patio,where it fizzed like a grenade. You fucking asshole, why do youalways have to spoil everything? He headed for his truck, Tinawobbling after, her heels sinking into the grass.

My mother, whod been making potatosalad in the kitchen a few feet away, screamed, I hate you all! which seemed abit unfair, as I hadnt moved from my lawn chair or uttered awordand slammed her bedroom door so loudly I expected to see thehouse collapse in on itself like a set in a Buster Keaton film.Flames were shooting wildly from the barbecue and I walked over andshut the lid.

Twenty minutes later, as I sat at thekitchen counter eating potato salad out of the serving bowl, andthinking about whom I might meet at the Castro Street Fair when Iflew home to San Francisco the next day, my mother appeared, wentinto the garage, and returned. Daddys sitting in his car cleaninghis rifle.

I dont understand, is hegoing to asphyxiate himself or blow his head off?

You know I couldntsurvive on just my salary, without his retirement, she said,loading the untouched dishes into the dishwasher.

Daddy. His relationship to us was morethat of a spiteful and jealous sibling than the wise andheartwarming TV dads like Fred MacMurray on My Three Sons or Carl Betz on The Donna Reed Show we watched indisbelief. Bullmoose, my mother called him when we were little:King Bullmoose has spoken. What must have begun as a pet name waslater uttered with sarcasm and resignation to the kind of bullying,indifferent authority he exercised.

I remember sitting weeping in a swingin our backyard while my father chased down the now-gangly Easterchicks wed gotten at the dime store two weeks before and strangledthem in their ludicrously half pink, half chicken-colored state,with pliers.

At Christmas, when the elaboratelybrown-paper-wrapped and twine-bound package arrived from hiseccentric mother in Georgia, addressed to my brothers and me in herloopy nineteenth-century handwriting, hed open it up and smash orrip apart the contents. Granted they were oddly inappropriate giftsfor childrenchipped figurines, ancient sheet musicbut still.Years later my mother told me, Your fathers mother caught him,you know, touching himself in the bathtub when he was a little boyso she whipped him with an egg turner and put Tabasco sauce onhis potty-er .

Any remotely anthropomorphic toy Italked to, slept with, or tried to put outfits on, mysteriouslydisappeared. Half my childhood was spent in a grim battle to get myhands on a doll. An aunt gave me a Cecil the Sea Serpent toy for myfifth birthday: he was only a bendable plush green tube with gogglyeyes and a gaping mouth at one end and red felt scales down hisback, but he came with disguisesSherlock Holmes cap and pipe,Zorro cape. My father observed me carefully tying the red capearound Cecils neck, and the next day the toy had vanished. Idont know, are you sure you looked in your toy chest? hed say.Maybe you left it outside and a dog carried it away. For a whilepuppets escaped his scrutiny. Soon I had a shelf full of handpuppets with which I privately acted out complicated soap operaplots: Dopey the Dwarf, Lambchop, a furry monkey. The best was aMattel Dishonest John, in a black gown and black villains hat,which uttered, at the pull of a string, Yaah -ah-ah! and a withering, Go soakyour head! But someone waswatching. When we unpacked after a move several states away to anArmy base in Alabama, not one puppet could be found. Moversthosejackasses! They always lose one box! my father said.

His occasional staged attempts atfatherly hijinks invariably went awry. Hed stretch hissix-foot-four length down on the carpet and offer my older brothera quarter if he could make him laugh or say uncle, and arollicking wrestling match would ensue. Once, probably five yearsold, summoned to make the same attempt, I matter-of-factly reachedfor his testicles through the baggy slacks, and was angrily drivento my room in a hail of slaps and cuffs. Dont you ever touch me there again! he screeched,red-faced.