Page 79 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 49

innocence.
“You press against me too much.”
“What do you mean too much?”
“I don’t know. I mean too hard.” He meant Dave Fahnhorst’s big
German schlong, stiffening in his black chinos, pressed too hard against
his belly. But he could not say that then.
“I can’t help it.” Fahnhorst was mystified. He knew where he was
heading and he had thought Ryan hadn’t minded. They were planning on
being priests together. “We’re buddies. I like you.”
“I like you too.” Ryan thought of Monsignor Linotti’s warning against
special friendships.
“You’re fun.” Fahnhorst interlaced the fingers of his big hands together
and dropped his clenched hands like one big fist between his spread knees.
He bowed his head down and forward. He was himself in-love with Ryan
and Ryan, for no reason, was hurting him. “I mean you’re so...goddam...
pretty.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Ryan was too unsophisticated to
know that long before young boys know they’re gay, they read some lines
like Blanche DuBois.
“You’re so pretty,” Fahnhorst conjugated Ryan’s name like an erotic
litany he used as a nightly jerk off mantra. “Ry, Ryan, Ryan Stephen, Ryan
Stephen O’Hara, you should be a girl.”
There was that dreaded line again. Ryan fled from the bench at the
lake. He thought something was wrong with him if he caused those feel-
ings in another boy. When Ryan told me this, years later, he said, “In
those days, I didn’t want to be an occasion of sin for anyone. Now I write
pornography for men to jerk off to. Can you believe I was once that pure?”
I could believe it. Ryan of God had a will of iron. When he refused to
recognize the first bud of homosexuality in himself, he was honest in his
ignorance. He was not feigning like Agnes of God: “What baby?” When
he was committed to something or someone, he went all or nothing. He
became what they wanted. I think that’s what made Ryan give himself
up completely to Kick. Ryan was a chameleon. Most gay boys are. It’s
survival. He was eager to please. He became whatever people wanted.
An astrologer told him that adaptability was characteristic of Geminis:
to find what somebody else’s trip is and give it to them in spades. That’s
what he did, if not for Dave Fahnhorst, then for Kick Sorensen. He was
fully what he was when he was dedicated to what he was doing. When he
was a Catholic seminarian, no boy was more holy.
“Dave Fahnhorst loved me,” Ryan said, “and I was too pigheaded

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