"In due time," I told him. "You can't rush that part of the story."
"I want to know exactly what happened, Bill!" Dr. Harlow exclaimed.
"Oh, you will!" I cried excitedly. "The not-knowing is part of the story."
"I don't care about the not-knowing part!" Dr. Harlow declared, pointing his pencil at me. But I was not about to be rushed. The longer I talked, the more the bald-headed owl-fucker had to listen.
At Favorite River Academy, we called the faculty and staff we intensely disliked "bald-headed owl-fuckers." The origin of this is obscure. If the Favorite River yearbook was called The Owl, I'm guessing that this hinted at an owl's presumed wisdom--as expressed in the questionable claim "wise as an owl," or the equally unprovable "wise old owl." (Our stupid sports teams were called the Bald Eagles, which was additionally confusing--eagles were not owls.) "The 'bald-headed' reference may indicate the physical appearance of a circumcised penis," Mr. Hadley had said once--when all the Hadleys were having dinner with Richard and my mom and me.
"What on earth makes you think so?" Mrs. Hadley asked her husband. I remember that Elaine and I were riveted by this conversation--my mother's obvious discomfort with the penis word being part of our enthrallment.
"You see, Martha, the 'owl-fucker' part is indicative of the homo-hating culture of an all-boys' school," Mr. Hadley continued, in his history-teacher way. "The boys call those of us they most detest 'bald-headed owl-fuckers' because they are presuming that the very worst of us are homosexual men who diddle--or dream of diddling--young boys."
Elaine and I howled; we thought this was so funny. We'd never imagined that the expression "bald-headed owl-fucker" actually meant anything!
But my mother suddenly spoke up. "It's just one of those vulgar things the boys say, because they're always saying vulgar things--it's how they think," my mom said, bitterly.
"But it originally meant something, Mary," Mr. Hadley had insisted. "It surely originated for a reason," the history teacher had intoned.
In my deliberate and detailed recounting to Dr. Harlow of my sexual experience with Miss Frost, I very much enjoyed remembering Mr. Hadley's historical speculations concerning what a bald-headed owl-fucker actually was. Dr. Harlow clearly was one, and--as I prolonged my discovery that Miss Frost and I had had an intercrural sexual experience--I admit that I borrowed a few of James Baldwin's well-chosen words. "There was no penetration," I told Dr. Harlow, in due time, "therefore no 'stink of love,' but I so wanted there to be!"
"Stink of love!" Dr. Harlow repeated; I could see he was writing this down, and that he suddenly didn't look well.
"I may never have a better orgasm," I told Dr. Harlow, "but I still want to do everything--all those things Miss Frost was protecting me from, I mean. She made me want to do all those things--in fact, I can't wait to do them!"
"Those homosexual things, Bill?" Dr. Harlow asked me. Through his thinning, lusterless hair, I could see him sweating.
"Yes, of course 'homosexual things'--but also other things, to both men and women!" I said eagerly.
"Both, Bill?" Dr. Harlow asked.
"Why not?" I said to the bald-headed owl-fucker. "I was attracted to Miss Frost when I believed she was a woman. When I realized she was a man, I was no less attracted to her."
"And are there other people, of both sexes--at this school, and in this town--who also attract you, Bill?" Dr. Harlow asked.
"Sure. Why not?" I said again. Dr. Harlow had stopped writing; perhaps the task of the opus ahead of him seemed unending.
"Students, Bill?" the bald-headed owl-fucker asked.
"Sure," I said. I closed my eyes for dramatic effect, but this had more of an effect on me than I'd anticipated. I suddenly saw myself in Kittredge's powerful embrace; he had me in the arm-bar, but of course there was more to it than that.
"Faculty wives?" Dr. Harlow suggested, less than spontaneously.
I needed only to think of Mrs. Hadley's homely face, superimposed again and again on those training-bra models in my mother's mail-order catalogs.
"Why not?" I asked, a third time. "One faculty wife, anyway," I added.
"Just one?" Dr. Harlow asked, but I could tell that the bald-headed owl-fucker wanted to ask me which one.
At that instant, it occurred to me how Kittredge would have answered Dr. Harlow's insinuating question. First of all, I looked bored--as if I had much more to say, but just couldn't be bothered.
My acting career was almost over. (I didn't know this at the time, when I was the center of attention in Dr. Harlow's office, but I had only one, extremely minor, role remaining.) Yet I was able to summon my best imitation of Kittredge's shrug and Grandpa Harry's evasions.
"Ah, well . . ." I started to say; then I stopped talking. Instead of speaking, I mastered that insouciant shrug--the one Kittredge had inherited from his mother, the one Elaine had learned from Mrs. Kittredge.
"I see, Bill," Dr. Harlow said.
"I doubt that you do," I told him. I saw the old homo-hater stiffen.