In rereading Giovanni's Room just recently, I not only found the novel to be as perfect as I'd remembered it; I also discovered something I had missed, or I'd read without noticing, when I was eighteen. I mean the part where Baldwin writes that "people can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents."
Yes, that's true. Naturally, when I was eighteen, I was still inventing myself nonstop; I don't only mean sexually. And I was unaware that I needed "mooring posts"--not to mention how many I would need, or who my mooring posts would be.
Poor Tom Atkins needed a mooring post, in the worst way. That much was evident to me, as Atkins and I conversed, or we tried to, on the subject of crushes (or thrushes!) on the wrong people. For a moment it seemed we would never progress from where we stood on the stairs of the music building, and that what passed for our conversation had permanently lagged.
"Have you had any breakthroughs with your pronunciation problems, Bill?" Atkins awkwardly asked me.
"Just one, actually," I told him. "I seem to have conquered the shadow word."
"Good for you," Atkins said sincerely. "I've not conquered any of mine--not in a while, anyway."
"I'm sorry, Tom," I told him. "It must be tough having trouble with one of those words that comes up all the time. Like the time word," I said.
"Yes, that's a tough one," Atkins admitted. "What's one of your worst ones?"
"The word for your whatchamacallit," I told him. "You know--dong, schlong, dick, dork, willy, dipstick, dipping wick, quim-stuffer," I said.
"You can't say penis?" Atkins whispered.
"It comes out penith," I told him.
"Well, at least it's comprehensible, Bill," Atkins said encouragingly.
"Do you have one that's worse than the time word?" I asked him.
"The female equivalent of your penis," Atkins answered. "I can't come close to saying it--it just kills me to try it."
"You mean 'vagina,' Tom?"
Atkins nodded vigorously; I thought poor Tom had that verge-of-tears aspect, in the way he wouldn't stop nodding his head, but Mrs. Hadley saved him from crying--albeit only momentarily.
"Tom Atkins!" Martha Hadley called down the stairwell. "I can hear your voice, but you are late for your appointment! I am waiting for you!"
Atkins started to run up the stairs, without thinking. He gave me a friendly but vaguely embarrassed look, over his shoulder; I distinctly heard him call to Mrs. Hadley as he continued up the stairs. "I'm sorry! I'm coming!" Atkins shouted. "I just lost track of the time!" Both Martha Hadley and I had clearly heard him.
"That sounds like a breakthrough to me, Tom!" I hollered up the stairs.
"What did you just say, Tom Atkins? Say it again!" I heard Mrs. Hadley call down to him.
"Time! Time! Time!" I heard Atkins crying, before his tears engulfed him.
"Oh, don't cry, you silly boy!" Martha Hadley was saying. "Tom, Tom--please stop crying. You should be happy!" But I heard Atkins blubbering on and on; once the tears started, he couldn't stop them. (I knew the feeling.)
"Listen to me, Tom!" I called up the stairwell. "You're on a roll, man. Now's the time to try 'vagina.' I know you can do it! If you can conquer 'time,' trust me--'vagina' is easy! Let me hear you say the vagina word, Tom! Vagina! Vagina! Vagina!"
"Watch your language, Billy," Mrs. Hadley called down the stairwell. I would have kept up the encouragements to poor Tom, but I didn't want Martha Hadley--or another faculty person in the music building--to give me a restriction.
I had a date--a fucking date!--with Miss Frost, so I didn't repeat the vagina word. I just went on my way down the stairs; all the way out of the music building, I could hear Tom Atkins crying.
IT'S EASY TO SEE, with hindsight, how I gave myself away. I wasn't in the habit of showering and shaving before I went out in the evening to the library. While I was in the habit of not saying to Richard or my mom which library I was going to, I suppose I should have been smart enough to take Giovanni's Room with me. (I left the novel under my pillow, with Elaine's bra, but that was because I wasn't intending to return the book to the library. I wanted to lend it to Tom Atkins, but only after I'd asked Miss Frost if she thought that was a good idea.)
"You look nice, Billy," my mother commented, as I was leaving our dormitory apartment. She almost never complimented me on my appearance; while she'd more than once said I was "going to be good-looking," she hadn't said that in a couple of years. I'm guessing that I was already too good-looking, in my mom's opinion, because the way she said the nice word wasn't very nice.
"Going to the library, Bill?" Richard asked me.
"That's right," I said. It was stupid of me not to take my German homework with me. Because of Kittredge, I was almost never without my Goethe and my Rilke. But that night my book bag was practically empty. I had one of my writing notebooks with me--that was all.
"You look too nice for the library, Billy," my mom said.