Free Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

I would have been fair, I would have been honest if I had—if—”
    â€œI mean you could have been fair to me by despising me a little less.”
    â€œI’m sorry. But I think, since you bring it up, that a lot of your life
is
despicable.”
    â€œI could say the same about yours,” said Jacques. “There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man yousee before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.”
    There was silence for a moment, threatened, from a distance, by that laugh of Giovanni’s.
    â€œTell me,” I said at last, “is there really no other way for you but this? To kneel down forever before an army of boys for just five dirty minutes in the dark?”
    â€œThink,” said Jacques, “of the men who have kneeled before you while you thought of something else and pretended that nothing was happening down there in the dark between your legs.”
    I stared at the amber cognac and at the wet rings on the metal. Deep below, trapped in the metal, the outline of my own face looked upward hopelessly at me.
    â€œYou think,” he persisted, “that my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself
why
they are.”
    â€œWhy are they—shameful?” I asked him.
    â€œBecause there is no affection in them, and no joy. It’s like putting an electric plug in a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.”
    I asked him: “Why?”
    â€œThat you must ask yourself,” he told me, “and perhaps one day, this morning will not be ashes in your mouth.”
    I looked over at Giovanni, who now had one arm around the ruined-looking girl, who could have once been very beautiful but who never would be now.
    Jacques followed my look. “He is very fond of you,” he said, “already. But this doesn’t make you happy or proud, as it should. It makes you frightened and ashamed. Why?”
    â€œI don’t understand him,” I said at last. “I don’t know what his friendship means; I don’t know what he means by friendship.”
    Jacques laughed. “You don’t know what he means by friendshipbut you have the feeling it may not be safe. You are afraid it may change you. What kind of friendship have you had?”
    I said nothing.
    â€œOr for that matter,” he continued, “what kind of love affairs?”
    I was silent for so long that he teased me, saying, “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
    And I grinned, feeling chilled.
    â€œLove him,” said Jacques, with vehemence, “love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last? since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that,
hélas!
in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they
will
be dirty—they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty; you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will
not
be ashamed, if you will only
not
play it safe.” He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. “You play it safe long enough,” he said, in a different tone, “and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.” And he finished his cognac, ringing his glass slightly on the bar to attract the attention of Madame Clothilde.
    She came at once, beaming; and in that moment Guillaume dared to smile at the redhead. Mme. Clothilde poured Jacques a