A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White

Author:Edmund White [White, Edmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Gay, Bildungsromans, Coming of Age, Teenage Boys, Gay Youth
ISBN: 9780143114840
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1982-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

That summer I spent with my father; I worked the Addressograph machine and I hired a hustler, who was as blond asTommy. When I returned home to my mother I was a bit smug—but also frightened by the tenacity of my homosexual yearnings.

One fall evening Tom called me to ask me if I'd like to go out on a double date. He'd be with Sally, of course, and I'd be with Helen Paper. Just a movie. Maybe a burger afterward. Not too late. School tomorrow. Her regular date had come down with a cold.

I said sure.

I dashed down the hall to tell my mother, who in a rare domestic moment had a sewing basket on her lap. Her glasses had slid down to the tip of her nose and her voice came out slow and without inflection as she tried to thread a needle.

"Guess what!" I shouted.

"What, dear?" She licked the thread and tried again.

"That was Tom and he arranged a date for me with Helen Paper, who's the most beautiful and sophisticated girl in the whole school."

"Sophisticated?" There, the thread had gone through.

"Yes, yes"—I could hear my voice rising higher and higher; somehow I had to convey the excitement of my prospects—"she's only a freshman but she goes out with college boys and everything and she's been to Europe and she's—well, the other girls say top-heavy but only from sour grapes. And she's the leader of the Crowd or could be if she cared and didn't have such a reputation."

My mother was intent upon her sewing. She was dressed to go out and this, yes, it must be a rip in the seam of her raincoat; once she'd fixed it she'd be on her way. "Wonderful, dear."

"But isn't it exciting?" I insisted.

"Well, yes, but I hope she's not too fast."

"For me?"

"For anyone.In general. There, now." My mother bit the thread off, her eyes suddenly as wide and empty and intelligent as a cat's. She stood, examined her handiwork, put the coat on, moved to the door, backtracked, lifted her cheek toward me to peck. "I hope you have fun. You seem terribly nervous. Just look at your hands. You're wringing them— never saw anyone literally wring his hands before."

"Well, it's terribly exciting," I said in wild despair.

My sister wasn't home, so I was alone once my mother had gone—alone to. take my second bath of the day in the mean, withholding afternoon light permeating the frosted glass window and to listen to the listless hum of traffic outside, in such contrast to my heart's anticipation. It was as though the very intensity of my feeling had drained the surroundings of significance. I was the unique center of consciousness, its toxic concentration.

I was going out on a date with Helen Paper and I had to calm myself by then because the evening would surely be quicksilver small talk and ten different kinds of smile and there would be hands linking and parting as in a square dance you had to be very subtle to hear called, subtle and calm.

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