Page 281 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 269

To try life on for size, I read each billboard and movie marquee
along the way. I sopped up the way of the world, the way it walked
down the street, or shifted lanes with one arm and no backward
glance. Clark Gable had died, like Marilyn Monroe and Montgom-
ery Clift, after the three of them filming The Misfits. Jack was gone.
James Dean was gone. Hemingway was gone. Marilyn, Monty, and
Gable were gone. Gable was the man’s man women loved and men
wanted to be like. Same as Jack Kennedy. Suddenly, all the grown-
up people were dead. My little world shifted crazily on top of the
great shifting shelves of the big world. Something was happening.
Outside Misery, the world was picking up speed. The world needed
new people. No more misfits. I bought the long-play album, Meet
the Beatles, because it was new and an antidote against the universal
sadness after Jack’s assassination. John and Paul and George and
Ringo made me happy. “I Want to Hold Your Hand!” Rector Karg
would ban them.
I asked our parish pastor, Father Gerber, could I go to the Varsity
Theatre on the Bradley University campus. “It’s an art theatre.”
“They show condemned movies.” he said. “But with your educa-
tion, you can go if you go in the side door, so as not to give scandal to
people who might not know what you understand. People will never
forget,” he said, “that you were nearly a priest. You must conduct
your life with that caution.”
In one week, I saw The Longest Day, Long Day’s Journey into
Night, and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.
“I can’t,” Annie-Laurie said, “keep it straight where you’re going.”
“They’re wonderful black-and-white movies about life.”
“Be careful of movies about life.”
I grew hungry for humans. I want to hold your hand. I wanted to
see people wearing tweeds and corduroy and the foreign black sheen
of faille and the weightless blue of nylon tricot. I smelled the world
up close in the warm fragrant female smell entwined in long loose
hair, bare scented arms pulled warm from greatcoats. I dreamed of
the world applauding exhibits and lectures and theatres, till all its
clapping became concerted applause, heady as Chanel and cigars,
sumptuous cheeses carved on old wood with a silver knife, warm
breads washed down with fine wine. What had happened to that

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