Saint Jack by Paul Theroux

Author:Paul Theroux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It was so easy I could not stop. I hustled at a dead run until the streets were empty and the bars closed. New to the enterprise, I had the beginner’s stamina. It wasn’t the money that drove me; I can’t call it holy charity, but it was as close to a Christian act as that sort of friendly commerce could be, keeping those already astray happy and from harm, within caution’s limits. I raided my humanity to console them with reminders of safety, while reminding myself of the dangers. I was dealing with the very innocent, blind men holding helpless sticks; their passions were guesses. It especially wounded me that Griswold had lied about his name: in my conscientious shepherding I believed I was doing him, and everyone, a favor.

Guiding rather than urging, I paid close attention to a feller’s need and was protective, adaptable, and well-known for being discreet. In those days it mattered, and though I acted this way out of kindness, not to impress anyone as a smoothie, it won me customers. There were so many then, and so grateful. I shouldn’t remember Griswold among them, for he was so typical as to be unmemorable—something about the very desire for sex or the illicit made a feller anonymous without trying. But Griswold had lied; the lie marked him and identified his otherwise nameless face and brought back that evening. His distrust made me relax my normally cautious discretion, and for years afterward if a feller said he was from Baltimore I replied, “Know a feller named Griswold there?” Some knew him, or said they did, and one night a feller said, “Yes, we were great friends. That was such a damned shame, wasn’t it?” And I never mentioned him again, this man who had refused my grace.

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