Chapter 6 #2
It was not yet five o’clock and already the afternoon’s tepid light had leeched from skies putty-gray like wet ash.
The talk was in a small auditorium, a satellite of the campus outside its original walls.
In recent years, the college had been gobbling up real estate: collapsing houses local families barely held on to for decades snatched for a song and demolished.
The new building glimmered, steel and dark glass.
Cantilevered wings stretched at oblique angles across a small plaza, the reflecting pool drained for winter.
As I approached, I was surprised to see Addison and then did a double take, the surprise (and then embarrassment) that I also recognized from his Facebook page the two people beside him: his parents. I tried to get by unnoticed but Addison called my name, his arm cutting a wide arc, waving me over.
“Great to see you, Dr. Lausson,” he said, reaching to shake my hand.
“These are my parents.” The father introduced himself—“Charles Mitchell”—his grip almost painful.
“Lauren,” his mother said, both of her hands soft around mine.
“Lovely to meet you.” She sounded luminous, like she meant it.
Charles was even more striking in person, as tall as Addison, same wavy curls, silvering edges.
Lauren’s flaxen hair fell blunt to her shoulders; a sharp profile, cheekbones like open plains.
She could almost pass for a student but was set off by a poise that came from experience.
Even under the wool heft of her sleek trench, she held herself like an exclamation point.
Together the family was almost unbearable to look at it, as if the beauty of each amplified the others.
I pulled at my shirt; I felt like my clothes didn’t fit right, my shoulders too narrow.
Standing between them, Addison radiated, a hand at the back of each, as if posing for a photo.
“Where are you in town from?” I asked, as if I hadn’t been tracking Addison’s life online.
“Los Angeles,” Lauren said, with a slight roll of her eyes that conveyed—ridiculous, I know.
“Sorry about our weather.”
“Honestly, it’s a nice change from the relentless sun,” Lauren said.
“We couldn’t make it last year—work was crazy for me.
” She mentioned they were staying at the new hotel downtown.
I said I lived nearby but hadn’t been; I’d heard the restaurant was good.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “So refreshing to stay somewhere with personality and charm. Not like all these new places that feel like an airport, or a mausoleum. Same thing everywhere you go in the world.”
“And what are your plans for the evening?” I asked.
Addison looked puzzled by my question and then a smile cracked across his face. “We’re here for your talk.”
“Oh.” I laughed, suddenly nervous. “By no means feel obligated.”
“Not at all. We’re looking forward to it,” Charles said.
“Absolutely,” Lauren said. “Part of me always regretted I didn’t do a PhD instead of law school. I’m a little envious.”
Addison checked his phone. “Tyler’s inside. Holding us seats.”
My skin tightened, the hair on my arms pricking alert, my body tensing at the news.
I should have put it together—of course Tyler would be here; he and Addison were inseparable.
A wave of adrenaline rushed though me—the pill’s afterburn or the anticipation of Tyler or both.
We went in, Lauren commenting on the building, a hand tucked in Addison’s arm, Charles asking how I was finding Sawyer.
In the hallway, Safie stood with Susan, speaking in low tones. Safie’s eyes caught mine, sharp with some strain that said I shouldn’t interrupt. “This is it,” I said, steering us to the auditorium. “Last chance to change your minds.”
Tyler sat halfway up in the middle of the room. He called the Mitchells over, and then waved to me. I nodded hello and even that felt like too much: my excitement at seeing him uncontainable. In the front row, Colin sat with Priya. “Man of the hour,” he announced.
I stood at the lectern, scanning my notes. When Safie and Susan came in, I thanked Susan for helping organize the night. She made a small huffing sound and left Safie with me.
“You’re looking sharp,” Safie said.
“Thanks, I did the best I could. Dazzle camouflage to hide my dread.” I lowered my voice. “What was going on in the hall?”
“Nothing,” said Safie, eyes on Susan wrestling with the coffee station at the side of the room. “Tenure stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Concerns about me going up.”
“What? You’re kidding me.”
“I guess P and T met last week”—the promotion and tenure committee—“and raised some questions about my work and its ‘intellectual merits.’”
“They cannot be serious.”
“Susan seems to think they are. She said they might recommend I take an extra year.”
“That’s absurd,” I said. And it was. “They’ve told us all along—a book and a couple articles. That’s it. You’ve gone way beyond that.”
“I thought so, too.”
“They say you hit those benchmarks and you’re fine.”
“That’s what they say, until they say something else. Anyway—” Safie shuffled the air with her hand—“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“You’ll be fine—I’m sure of it.”
Safie looked toward Colin and Priya, bent close in their row. “Is something going on there?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said. “Seems like an odd choice, for Priya at least.”
And then—“Here you are.”
I looked up. Stephen. He pulled me in for a hug, mashing my arms to my sides. I felt on display, there in the front of the room.
“It’s just a lecture,” I said.
“Well I’m excited about it. But I thought we were coming over together?”
“Oh fuck. Sorry.” I had completely forgotten. “I was writing all day. I lost track of everything.”
“It’s fine, I figured,” he said, but I couldn’t tell if he meant it.
“Well, we’re all here now. Let’s grab some seats,” Safie said. “While we still can.”
Stephen squeezed my arm, mouth a straight line. “Have fun with it.”
Some minutes later, Hal scrambled in, apologizing for running behind.
I stepped aside and gave him the podium.
He welcomed the assembled group. You would think he was recounting the history of NATO, the gravity with which he spoke of the humbling experience of being in charge.
The display of false modesty made me think of Cassie.
Fake, for Cassie, was the greatest insult that could be attached to a person, a band, an outfit, an idea.
Listening to Hal drone on, I felt grateful Cassie had inoculated me against the great fakes of the world.
Hal had asked Susan to introduce me after his opening remarks.
I knew this because she grumbled about it for weeks, as if it were something I had done to her.
But Hal must have forgotten, because he launched right in, reading from a printout of my faculty page and butchering the titles of two of my publications.
Susan grimaced in her seat. She lifted a sheet of paper from her lap, folding it in half, and then half again.
Hal finished his remarks and I stepped forward.
It was a full house, a bigger crowd than I expected.
Some colleagues I recognized, and students from various classes.
I stole a glance in Tyler’s direction. He leaned forward, eyes intent.
Waiting for me to begin. I held back a smile and looked down at the pages in front of me: They glowed a brilliant white.
“If you have come to hear a heartwarming story about queer resilience,” I started, “you have come to the wrong place. There are no heroes here.” Some laughter. “But if you are looking for the stories of some very bad gays, you might leave satisfied.” Laughter again, the room warming up.
“This project started, like many, as an argument, this one with a colleague from grad school. We often got into a debate about how to tell gay stories. In fiction and films, this colleague felt, gay life only appeared as tragedy. Why, he would ask, must gay stories always end in misery and death?
“A movie came out a few years ago—I won’t go into it, you know the one—and this colleague could not have been happier.
The story tracked two well-adjusted white gay guys living problem-free, well-adjusted lives.
When I heard about it, I thought, well who wants to see that?
” More laughs. “Most of America, it turned out.
“I was annoyed. I hated this desire to make gay good, to take everything messy and troubling about queer sexuality and recuperate it into some sanitized version.
And so I decided to commit myself to finding the worst gays possible—unrepentant murderers, preferably repeat offenders—and spend all my time with them.
“So tonight I’ll share a bit of what I have found so far.
This is not an account, though, of why these figures killed.
I will leave that question to the dubious science of forensic psychologists.
Instead, I want to think about why we find these stories fascinating.
What they tell us about how we imagine depravity—sexual and criminal.
And, ultimately, what we can see in these stories about ourselves—or as French philosopher Michel Foucault might put it, the ‘mirage in which we think we see ourselves reflected—the dark shimmer of sex.’
“I am going to focus on a case from 1924, the kidnapping and murder of a young boy by the infamous maybe-lovers, Leopold and Loeb. Let’s see what we can learn from these extremely bad gays.”
The room broke into bright applause. From the front row, Stephen grinned—wide and warm—and Safie winked. I smiled back and lifted my eyes toward the middle of the auditorium: Tyler—upright, smiling, clapping along.