Chapter Twenty Eight

For the Tail, feelings of success never lasted for long.  His triumphs were only ever temporary, and oppressed by the possibility of future failure, his defeats seemed much worse than those of other men.  Other men could be joyous, because they never stopped to ponder what difficulties lay ahead.  Other men could be confident, because they failed to remember the disappointments that lay behind.  The Tail often envied those other men, even as he recognized the fact that he would never know the ease in which they traveled, the bliss in which they lived.

The Tail, like the Remedy, was 27 years old, but he was married, and with his first child on the way.  He had also graduated at the top of his class, with a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies, and shortly thereafter he had achieved his professorship, announced just months before.  Every fear and insecurity should have been obviated by his present success, yet he felt uneasy, knowing how easily such things could fall away.

        He was at home.  They had just moved into a new, two-story house, with money they had laboriously saved for some time.  Both he and his wife agreed that buying the house had been a good decision, and worth all of the sacrifices they had made.  The white house, with a spacious yard and a commanding view of Lake Washington, seemed like a seal upon their marriage, a binding contract upon a binding contract.  He often framed the matter thusly in his thoughts.  It tended to assuage a sense of panic.

He was sitting on their living room couch.  He was staring at a television that had been turned off.  He saw only his reflection in the screen, surrounded by the room in which he sat.  The couch was the most expensive thing in the room, but she had liked it so much that he found it impossible to say no.  Aside from the couch, the rest of the room was full of tasteful furnishings that she had acquired, on her own, without consulting him.  She had only allowed him the shelves behind the couch and other shelves upstairs.  He’d filled these shelves with his books.

        He gazed up at a framed photograph of his wife hanging over the television.  She was his most-prized possession.  She was going to bear his child, and this child would never be as fat or as awkward as he had been.  It would be radiant, like her.  It would inherit her grace.  It would love him always.

        And if he ever doubted her, he was careful to push such thoughts away.  He continually reminded himself that he was worthy of her love, that he had done enough to earn it.  He reminded himself that it was she who had chosen him.  He reminded himself that he was a professor at 27, that he wasn’t so fat anymore, and that he didn’t stutter as much.  He was going to write a book that would make him famous, and he was going to chair his department, no matter how long he had to live or what politics he had to play at.

        Last night he had been in bed with her, and he just couldn’t….

        But no, that wasn’t worth thinking about, either.  Next time he would just look at the magazines he’d hidden in the closet, and when she desired him he would pretend that she was one of the beautiful boys in those magazines, so eager to please.  He would exaggerate within himself the strength of her arms, and he would imagine that it was another man’s strength, another man’s urgency.  He had done this before.  It had worked admirably.  The room only needed to be dark.

        He looked back at his reflection in the television.  Behind him, on the wall, he saw his ever-multiplying rows of books.  He could even read some of the titles in the reflection.  Survey upon survey, commentary upon commentary, stretching back to two thousand years before Christ, and further still.  In a moment he would take some of those books down from their shelves and remove them to the other room.  The man on the couch and the other man in the reflection had to study.  He always had to study.  He might graduate from school, but he would never graduate from books.

        His wife was singing in another part of the house, busy with something.  She was so big already, and soon their child would be playing in that house, touching his things, and demanding attention.  He wasn’t sure if he would make a good father.  He wasn’t sure if it really mattered.  Whatever sort of father he ended up being, she would make up the difference.

        He thought back to that time he had first seen her in the library.  Yes, he had desired her then.  Why had it become so difficult?  Not because she was pregnant.  Some other reason.  He could remember wanting women, even though it was always better with men.  He felt so confused sometimes.  He felt so alone in her presence.  There was no one for him to talk to about these things.  He could not bring all of his confusion and lay it at her feet.  Her denial and her acceptance would have been equally painful.

        But more and more it was only men who aroused him.  He fantasized over young interns and graduate students, fraternity boys and even the odd janitor.  A tight ass in a pair of pants.  Muscular arms.  High cheekbones.  He often thought of such disgusting things, such repulsive things, that he grew visibly ashamed in the middle of classrooms and staff meetings.  He had to flee crowds near the registers in the supermarket.  It was as if his imagination was not his own.  He would be somewhere random and it would begin to run away with him, pulling him away from normal, decent things into orgies that bordered on the satanic.  Was everyone so frustrated?  So burdened?

        He saw how easy it was to let everything fall apart.  One false move and he would be undone.  He never rationalized it in quite these terms, but he saw the consequences of failure as a return to friendlessness, to obscurity, to an old house somewhere, where his mother waited with a pair of scissors.  He could even picture all the bullies that had tormented him, waiting with clenched fists for him to fall.

        All at once he stood up and strode over to his bookshelves.  The man in the reflection did likewise, retreating into the depths of a murkier, more curvilinear room in the depths of the television.  He had a lecture to get ready for.  He had to be prepared.  He had a house to pay for, a wife to please, and there was nothing for it but to fight on.  No time for imagining.