Bettyville by George Hodgman Page A

scariest dreams I saw the Japanese pilot flying in the plane, his yellow scarf blowing in the wind, my father running on the beach for his life.
    In one volume of photographs, there was a shot of a naked soldier working in the tropical heat, taken from the back. I looked it up again and again. When a librarian approached, I slammed the book closed, but the picture was imprinted in my brain.
    Something had told me, from the first time I heard the word “homosexual,” that it applied to me. Absolutely unknowing about anything concerning the subject, I located a book called
The Gay Mystique
at the Moberly library that I camouflaged by placing it inside another, larger volume. Turning the pages, I scanned the room, more seriously on guard than ever before. I thought of stealing the book. No one else within hundreds of miles would want to read it; no one would care if it went missing. Finally, in what I considered a show of courage, I ripped out the back pages, the “Resource Guide.” Included was the address of a gay newspaper,
The Advocate
.
    Because I was truly desperate for
something,
and as it was summer and I could be at home to intercept the mail, I sent five dollars to San Francisco, asking to be mailed as many issues as that might buy. I waited, checking the mailbox every day. When they finally appeared, just as I was about to give up, the papers were a confusing revelation. Taking them in, I was filled with many questions. I read one sex ad with shaking hands, then quickly rolled up the papers in a rubber band and hid them.
    Five minutes later, I was dragging them out again to look at another ad. Then I put them back and then I got them out again. Then I put them back again and then I got them out again. A few days later, my mother, who has a homing device for anything below board or off-kilter, discovered them under my mattress.
    All during the day she found the newspapers, my mother turned her face away when I approached. She looked stricken. I would try never to inflict this hurt again. In an instant, a thousand choices were made. This was the beginning of many silences to follow, our struggle with words. At the time, I thought the silences, the secrets, did not matter. As it happened, they did. This is what I have learned. To build a life on secrets is to risk falling through the cracks. “Shame is inventive.” I read this in a book somewhere awhile back and it has haunted me for years. Shame can make a joke. It can reach for a bottle. It can trip you up when you don’t even know it is there. It can seep into everything without you ever knowing.

7
    O n Saturday morning, I stop for cinnamon rolls at the small farmers’ market held in front of the courthouse by bespectacled Amish matrons in bonnets and farm women outfitted in shirts with flowered yokes. This indulgence is needed by neither of us at 701 Sherwood. I envision my future as that of a person who will have to be cut out of a couch.
    Already, it is steamy, well into the nineties. Today is the All Town Yard Sale and tables in garages across town are loaded with old clothes, housewares, figurines of Jesus and cartoon characters, scenic landscapes framed without glass, lamps without shades, children’s watches and battered toys, pill organizers I am tempted to lick for crumbs. Vans with baby shoes dangling from the rearview mirrors circle yards. On the back gate of a pickup, a hand-lettered sign is taped below a tractor decal: IN MEMORY OF BOBBY T . I keep my eyes peeled for an elderly gentleman whose favored mode of conveyance is a rusty aqua-colored golf cart festooned with American flags. Skinny little black girls in colored barrettes dance around their large, determined-looking mothers in their pastel stretch shorts who search for school outfits and near-fit shoes.
    . . .
    â€œThank you for taking care of me.” That is what Betty said last night, apropos of nothing, really. I was looking at places in the kitchen where