Free Rat Bohemia by Sarah Schulman Page A

me ashamed.
    For thirty-four years, which will soon be the totality of my life on earth, my family has been trying to kill me. Each one of them has their own personal motive for plotting my death.

    My father’s pathetic excuse was revealed only last summer as we sat sweating in his office. I had asked for an appointment and he scheduled me in between his 10:15 and his 11:05. Of course I was twenty-five minutes early. Since his entire emotional life travels in segments of forty-five minutes, mine, behavioristically, does the same. His first client had canceled, so I approached that place only to find him standing anxiously in the doorway. Without clients to engage with, the poor guy had nothing to do.
    â€œYou blame me for everything,” he said. “But it all actually has to do with you. You have always been a difficult child. You would never co-operate. Why, I remember when you were just born. Your mother loved you so much. She could never have imagined that you would grow up into this.”
    He leaned back into his chair and buried his chin into his neck.
    â€œI would come home from the office and you would be lying in your crib, crying and crying. You must have been three months old. You were so agitated. Something was troubling you even then. There I was, a young law student, and I patted you on the back but you wouldn’t be comforted. You’ve been a problem ever since.”
    My mother’s complaints are a bit more complex.
    â€œWe were always so close,” she has said. “Maybe you don’t remember this, but you told me everything.”
    I have flashed this sentence through my mind a thousand times. I do remember my mother standing up for me in a conflict with another child in grade school. Johnny Goodman. Fuck him. I was about seven and making what was then known as “phony phone calls.” I dialed whatever numbers popped into my head and said things like “Hey Mack, we know you’ve got the jewels. Bring them over to Ninth Street or you’re a goner.”

    Things like that.
    Unfortunately, one of the numbers that popped into my mind was not as arbitrary as I might have wished, but rather belonged to Johnny. His mother had the bad judgment to press charges by calling my mother and informing her that I had anonymously threatened Mrs. Goodman’s life. Technically, this was true, but in terms of intention, culpability, and context, it was utterly false. Of course, being prepubescent and having not yet read any great books, I was unable to fully explain the extenuating circumstances and so was forced, through lack of resources, to deny the crime.
    My mother promptly got on the phone with Mrs. Goodman and defended my honor. I think that somewhere it was obvious to her that Mrs. Goodman’s precision of accusation was virtually impossible to match with my psychic state—with what kind of person I have always been. And armed with this correct hunk of instinctual information, for the first and final time she did the right thing. She defended me.
    Unfortunately, after she hung up the phone with Mrs. Goodman, I fled, crying into the bottom of our closet and sat there shaking with grief. I did not know how to articulate the truth, but could not live with a distortion. It was not an issue of honesty, but rather that the real truth was acceptable to me and I wanted it to be acceptable to her. So, unable to survive with either option, I confessed to my mother that I had indeed committed the crime as defined by Mrs. Goodman’s language, even though it was unrecognizable in comparison with the actual event. My mother never defended me again.

Chapter Eighteen
    Last Monday night in the restaurant there was an unexpected discomfort. I walked in with Fabio, Robert’s new Italian boyfriend and there was Kurt, suddenly, with some ugly short white man who could not be his lover. They were standing ahead of us on line waiting for a table. I said hello, awkwardly, and