been kind of thinking about doing something a little unusual.
Again, I did not have the words to answer him right away. I could have joked. Get a sex change? Try ballet? But I resisted, and maybe because I resisted, it gave him the freedom or the safety to utter what should never have been spoken.
You remember how we joked once how easy it would be to rob a bank? he said.
I did not remember at first because the context had been so different. Then it came back to me. It was one of our many running what-if conversations. What if zombies attacked—would you abandon anyone who might slow you down? Whatif there were no guardrails on the side of the bridge—would you be able to stop yourself from driving off the edge? What if you knew you could get away with it—would you actually rob a bank?
Yeah, I said, hesitantly, warily, not entirely lacking in curiosity.
Well, I’ve been thinking about that one a lot, Chris said.
I waited.
What do you mean, thinking about it?
About the process. About the mechanics of how to do it.
I laughed, but not too harshly. I was, I have to admit, sort of in awe. The process? The mechanics of it?
And I’ve come to the conclusion, Chris continued, turning his head to look at me across the shared blanket of snow, that it’s completely doable. That, done right, no one would ever know.
I did not, could not, say a word.
I felt a kind of vertigo, as though the tectonic plates beneath us had suddenly forced our ice floor a hundred feet into the air, then dropped it a hundred feet back down. The vertigo was due to some innate realization, some unexpected illumination that Chris and Chris alone was fully capable of doing such a thing. Not merely robbing a bank—that was extraordinary enough—but doing it successfully and doing it without anyone knowing. Going on as before, as though nothing had ever happened, bearing secret knowledge.
Have you? I asked, a pit in my chest. I meant, Have you already done it? And I did not know whether that would have been a relief, or whether I would have felt betrayed and passed by if he’d said yes, the same way I’d felt when he got laid before me, and all those many times since.
No, he said. I’m not sure I could pull it off on my own. I’m thinking it takes two to commit the perfect crime.
That was what I wanted to know, and what I most feared. I wanted to be needed. I wanted to be essential. But I did not want to do the thing that was needed. I wanted only the knowing, not the being or doing.
If there ever was a time to stop the madness, it was then. A laugh. A disparaging comment. That was all it would have taken to quiet Chris about his feeling of lack, and his fantasy for filling it, to shove it all back within, and to force him to find other outlets or partners. Our friendship might have been altered forever, diminished by the absence of unconditional support, but I would have avoided the dangers that lay ahead. And yet, God help me, I said nothing.
More silence. Just snowflakes sparkling down in that
Star Wars
jump-to-hyperspace sort of way. I had no faith in hyperspace. To me, it had always seemed unlikely you could avoid being obliterated by a random meteorite.
Like a coward and a friend, I introduced that subject as a way of diverting our conversation.
Not surprisingly, Chris didn’t share my doubts.
4
Every writer, Graham Greene might have said, like every spy, and every homosexual, leads a secret, double life.
So began mine, as writer and bank robber both.
When I look back on the process of being convinced—or convinced enough to co-conspire, though burdened by the lack of any wholehearted commitment to the cause—I grasp it through the filter of Nietzsche’s will to power. I’m not saying that Chris asserted his will over mine, dry-humped my values and viewpoints into submission like an alpha dog does to its smaller, less vicious companion, but I’m not saying he didn’t either. I think that a battle of wills, if you can
Again, I did not have the words to answer him right away. I could have joked. Get a sex change? Try ballet? But I resisted, and maybe because I resisted, it gave him the freedom or the safety to utter what should never have been spoken.
You remember how we joked once how easy it would be to rob a bank? he said.
I did not remember at first because the context had been so different. Then it came back to me. It was one of our many running what-if conversations. What if zombies attacked—would you abandon anyone who might slow you down? Whatif there were no guardrails on the side of the bridge—would you be able to stop yourself from driving off the edge? What if you knew you could get away with it—would you actually rob a bank?
Yeah, I said, hesitantly, warily, not entirely lacking in curiosity.
Well, I’ve been thinking about that one a lot, Chris said.
I waited.
What do you mean, thinking about it?
About the process. About the mechanics of how to do it.
I laughed, but not too harshly. I was, I have to admit, sort of in awe. The process? The mechanics of it?
And I’ve come to the conclusion, Chris continued, turning his head to look at me across the shared blanket of snow, that it’s completely doable. That, done right, no one would ever know.
I did not, could not, say a word.
I felt a kind of vertigo, as though the tectonic plates beneath us had suddenly forced our ice floor a hundred feet into the air, then dropped it a hundred feet back down. The vertigo was due to some innate realization, some unexpected illumination that Chris and Chris alone was fully capable of doing such a thing. Not merely robbing a bank—that was extraordinary enough—but doing it successfully and doing it without anyone knowing. Going on as before, as though nothing had ever happened, bearing secret knowledge.
Have you? I asked, a pit in my chest. I meant, Have you already done it? And I did not know whether that would have been a relief, or whether I would have felt betrayed and passed by if he’d said yes, the same way I’d felt when he got laid before me, and all those many times since.
No, he said. I’m not sure I could pull it off on my own. I’m thinking it takes two to commit the perfect crime.
That was what I wanted to know, and what I most feared. I wanted to be needed. I wanted to be essential. But I did not want to do the thing that was needed. I wanted only the knowing, not the being or doing.
If there ever was a time to stop the madness, it was then. A laugh. A disparaging comment. That was all it would have taken to quiet Chris about his feeling of lack, and his fantasy for filling it, to shove it all back within, and to force him to find other outlets or partners. Our friendship might have been altered forever, diminished by the absence of unconditional support, but I would have avoided the dangers that lay ahead. And yet, God help me, I said nothing.
More silence. Just snowflakes sparkling down in that
Star Wars
jump-to-hyperspace sort of way. I had no faith in hyperspace. To me, it had always seemed unlikely you could avoid being obliterated by a random meteorite.
Like a coward and a friend, I introduced that subject as a way of diverting our conversation.
Not surprisingly, Chris didn’t share my doubts.
4
Every writer, Graham Greene might have said, like every spy, and every homosexual, leads a secret, double life.
So began mine, as writer and bank robber both.
When I look back on the process of being convinced—or convinced enough to co-conspire, though burdened by the lack of any wholehearted commitment to the cause—I grasp it through the filter of Nietzsche’s will to power. I’m not saying that Chris asserted his will over mine, dry-humped my values and viewpoints into submission like an alpha dog does to its smaller, less vicious companion, but I’m not saying he didn’t either. I think that a battle of wills, if you can
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