But I recognized something important that most people do not understand: that homeless man was pretending he had the right to speak openly and freely, and pretending can be more important than settling for what is agreed upon as true—what everyone else is holding up as fact. (In this case, the fact was this: homeless men are not supposed to speak to people with homes—especially in a confident manner.) Facts are not always as important as pretending. Pretending gave that man the power he needed that day to speak his mind. Most of the government employees will never speak their minds, which is why they were so afraid of the homeless man. He disrupted their lives with his pornography and interesting presidential proclamations. If only more people pretended for good causes. If only The Girlbrarian could pretend more effectively—she would accomplish many great things, I am sure of it. The problem is that madmen do all of the pretending and action taking. Have you noticed this?
I always write down interesting important things.
I don’t look at pornography because I am a Catholic, and I try not to masturbate, but I’m not always successful with my efforts.
Do you ever masturbate, Richard Gere?
I bet you haven’t had to masturbate in a long time—not since you became famous. When you marry a supermodel like Cindy Crawford, you probably don’t ever have to masturbate again. (I know you are no longer married to Cindy Crawford, but Carey Lowell. Like I said, I’ve been researching you.) Why would you even need pornography, with such beautiful women in your home?
Is it wrong for Buddhists to masturbate?
I used to tie my hands to my bedposts—you can do this without help if you practice enough times to master the art of making effective wrist nooses—in an effort to keep from masturbating as I fell asleep at night. But then Mom—who seemed never to tire of liberating me in the a.m., whenever I called out for freedom—reluctantly told me it was better to masturbate than have sex with strange women who have diseases like AIDS and herpes and the flu. She said you can even get the flu from having sex with strangers, and that many people die from the flu every year, which is why we got flu shots at Rite Aid every September.
But Mom also said, if I needed gratification, I should take care of it myself. She said that to me when I was in my twenties and was arrested for trying to solicit a prostitute who was an undercover cop.
Father McNamee arranged for a lawyer to help me and took me to the thrift store to shop for a suit. The men working at the thrift shop were homosexuals, and were—according to Father McNamee—therefore well versed in fashion. They were nice and helped me find the perfect courtroom outfit. “How does he look?” Father McNamee asked them when I came out of the dressing room. “Innocent,” one of the homosexuals said, and then smiled proudly.
“Catholics aren’t supposed to approve of homosexuality, right?” I asked Father McNamee when we were walking home.
“Catholics aren’t supposed to get arrested for soliciting the services of prostitutes either,” he said in this terse, almost mean way, even though he knew I was (and even looked) innocent.
“I liked the homosexuals who helped me find my suit. Is that wrong according to the Catholic Church?” I asked. “I just want a definitive answer.”
“Between you and me only—off the record—it’s not wrong,” Father McNamee said. “I liked them too. I’ve known Harvey for thirty years.”
“Who’s Harvey?”
“The owner of the store—and my friend.”
“So you have homosexual friends?”
“Of course,” he said, but he sort of whispered it fast.
During a dinner at our home, Mom once said to Father McNamee, “Seventy-five percent of all priests are gay. That’s why the church makes homosexuality a sin. Every rectory would be an all-out Roman orgy if they didn’t.”
They both laughed so hard at that one, maybe because they had been drinking bottles of wine.
When I went to court the judge said it was entrapment, because the cop—who was dressed up in a pink wig and a leather miniskirt and pointy cone bra and the highest heels you have ever seen—had stopped me on my way home from the library and rubbed up against my leg, calling me “Big Baby Daddy” (which was confusing, because how can you simultaneously be a baby and a daddy?) and asking me for money.
I asked how much she needed, and she said, “Twenty for head. Sixty for anything you want.” (I wrote that down later in my Interesting Things I Have Heard notebook.) No one had ever rubbed up against my leg like that before—it felt like I was frozen in time and space, like an ancient caveman trapped in ice or amber maybe—like it was a moment, and so I agreed to give the pink-haired woman some money with a nod, mostly because I thought it would make her happy, and my mouth was too dry to speak.
To be honest, I thought it would make her keep rubbing against my leg too, and that felt really, really good—like I was a stack of pancakes and she was the butter melting on top of me, sliding down. And I also did this because she had hypnotized me with her lips and eyes and mind and her makeup and her smell and her sweat—I wanted her to rub up against my thigh forever.
Pancakes and butter.
It all felt very lucky, like I had won a prize.
But just as soon as I pulled money out of my wallet, all of these men jumped out from behind trees and trash cans—pointing guns and flashing badges and screaming for me to get down on my knees and put my hands behind my head. They had a bullhorn that hurt my ears and made me feel like there were angry wasps tunneling through my mind. When they handcuffed my wrists behind my back, I was so afraid, I peed my pants and the cops yelled at me because they didn’t want “the piss” to get on the seat of their cruiser. One of them called me “a fucking retard,” I remember, because I wrote that down later in my notebook too—and also, I don’t like to be called a retard, but have often been called one, which is unfair and maybe even cruel.