“I’m Trowbridge,” the starstruck boy said.
“Where are you going, Trowbridge?” Kittredge asked him.
“I’m going to brush my teeth,” Trowbridge said in a trembling voice.
“And after that, Trowbridge?” Kittredge asked the boy. “No doubt you’ll soon be pulling your pud, imagining your face pressed between a couple of enormous knockers.” But by his aghast expression, I thought it unlikely that Trowbridge had yet dared to jerk off in the dormitory; he surely had a roommate—Trowbridge was probably afraid to beat off in Bancroft. “Whereas this young man, Trowbridge,” Kittredge continued, still holding me in his strong arms, “this young man has not only challenged the public image of gender roles. This nooky master, this poontang man,” Kittredge cried, jouncing me up and down, “this stud has actually porked a transsexual! Do you have any idea, Trowbridge, what transsexual snatch even is?”
“No,” Trowbridge said in a small voice.
Even holding me in his arms, Kittredge managed his signature shrug; it was his mother’s insouciant shrug, the one Elaine had learned. “My dear Nymph,” Kittredge whispered, as he continued to carry me down the hall. “I am so impressed with you!” he said again. “An actual transsexual—in Vermont, of all places! I’ve seen some, of course, but in Paris—and in New York. The transvestites in Paris tend to hang out with one another; they’re quite a colorful crowd, but you get the feeling that they do everything together. I regret I’ve never tried one,” Kittredge whispered, “but I have the impression that if you pick up one, the others will come along. That must be different!”
“Do you mean les folles?” I asked him.
I couldn’t stop thinking about les folles—“screaming like parrots the details of their latest love affairs,” as Baldwin describes them. But either Kittredge hadn’t heard me, or my French accent was so off the mark that he ignored me.
“Naturally, the transsexuals are another story in New York,” Kittredge continued. “They strike me as loners—a lot of them are hookers, maybe. There’s one who hangs out on Seventh Avenue—I’m pretty sure she’s a hooker. She is really tall! I hear there’s a club they all go to—I don’t know where. Nowhere you want to go by yourself, I’ll bet. I think if I were going to try it, I would try it in Paris. But you, Nymph—you’ve already done it! How was it?” he asked me—seemingly with the utmost sincerity, but I knew enough to be careful. With Kittredge, you were never sure where the conversation was headed.
“It was absolutely wonderful,” I told him. “I don’t imagine I’ll ever have a sexual experience exactly like it again.”
“Really,” Kittredge said flatly. We’d stopped in front of the door to the faculty apartment I shared with my mom and Richard Abbott, but Kittredge didn’t look the least tired from carrying me, and he gave me no indication that he ever intended to put me down. “I suppose she had a penis,” Kittredge said then, “and you saw it, touched it, and did all those things one does with a penis—right, Nymph?”
Something in his voice had changed, and I was afraid of it. “To be honest with you, I was so caught up in the moment that I kind of lose track of the details,” I told him.
“Do you?” Kittredge softly asked, but he didn’t seem to care. It was as if the details of any sexual adventure were already known to him, and he was bored by them. For a moment, Kittredge looked surprised that he was holding me—or perhaps repulsed. He suddenly put me down. “You know, Nymph, they’re going to make you talk to Harlow—you know that, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I was wondering what I should say to him.”
“I’m glad you asked me,” Kittredge said. “Here’s how to handle Harlow,” Kittredge began. There was something oddly soothing and (at the same time) indifferent in his voice; in the way Kittredge coached me, I felt that our roles had been reversed. I’d been the Goethe and Rilke expert, tutoring him through the tricky parts. Now here was Kittredge, tutoring me.
At Favorite River Academy, when you were caught committing an act of carnal folly, you were interrogated by Dr. Harlow; Kittredge, who (I presumed) had a wealth of experience with carnal acts, was an expert at dealing with Dr. Harlow.
I listened intently to Kittredge’s advice; I hung (as they say) on his every word. It was painful to hear, at times, because Kittredge insisted on spelling out for me the details of his sexual misadventure with Elaine. “Forgive the specific example, Nymph, but just so you know how Harlow operates,” Kittredge would say, before launching into his short-term hearing loss—the result of how loud Elaine Hadley’s orgasms were.
“What Harlow wants to hear from you is how sorry you are, Nymph. He’s expecting you to repent. What you give him, instead, is nonstop titillation. Harlow will try to make you feel guilty,” Kittredge told me. “Don’t buy into that shit, Nymph—just pretend you’re reciting a pornographic novel.”
“I see,” I said. “No remorse, right?”
“No remorse, Nymph—that’s exactly right. Mind you,” Kittredge said, in that eerily changed voice—the one I was afraid of. “Mind you, Nymph—I think what you’ve done is disgusting. But I applaud you for having the courage to do it, and you absolutely have a right to do it!”
Then, as suddenly as he’d swept me into his arms on the dormitory stairs, he was gone—he was disappearing down the third-floor hall, with those admiring boys in the doorways all watching him run. It had been classic Kittredge. You could be careful, but you could never be careful enough with him; only Kittredge knew where the conversation would end. I often had the feeling with him that he knew the end of our conversation before he started.
It was then that the door to our faculty apartment opened; both Richard Abbott and my mother were standing there, as if they’d been standing on the other side of the door for quite a while.
“We heard voices, Bill,” Richard said.
“I heard Kittredge’s voice—I would know his voice anywhere,” my mother said.
I looked all around me in the suddenly deserted hall.
“Then you must be hearing things,” I told my mom.
“I heard Kittredge’s voice, too, Bill—he sounded rather passionate,” Richard said.
“You should both get your ears checked—have your hearing tested or something,” I told them. I walked past them into the living room of our apartment.
“I know you’re seeing Dr. Harlow tomorrow, Bill,” Richard said. “Perhaps we should talk about that.”
“I know everything I’m going to say to Dr. Harlow, Richard—in fact, the details are pretty fresh,” I told him.
“You should be careful what you say to Dr. Harlow, Billy!” my mother exclaimed.
“What do I have to be careful about?” I asked her. “I don’t have anything to hide—not anymore.”
“Just take it easy, Bill—” Richard started to say, but I wouldn’t let him finish.
“They didn’t kick out Kittredge for having sex, did they?” I asked Richard. “Are you afraid they’re going to kick me out for not having sex?” I asked my mother.
“Don’t be silly—” my mom started to say.
“Then what are you afraid of?” I asked her. “One day I’m going to have all the sex I want—the way I want it. Are you afraid of that?”