The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt Page B

directions, laughed too, figuring that this would be his lot in life, to fart at parties and win that peculiar furious attention which seemed perhaps as close as he would get to love. When the boys called him a faggot, curiously neither he nor they ever connected the word with any reality, or with his by-then highly evolved masturbatory life. The girls stared at him, some with their lips upturned in sneers, or their tongues out, the smart, quiet ones pityingly, in groups, at the library tables. He absorbed and steered right around their disapproval—it was attention after all.
    One afternoon Gerard, his once-fat, dogged best friend since kindergarten, his beloved Gerard with whom he had stolen candy and stared at dinosaurs in the Museum of Natural History—one afternoon Gerard had a girlfriend. He had been teasing Laura Dobler for weeks, had scoffed when other girls brought messages that she liked him. Then, to Philip's immense shock and betrayal (for Gerard had sworn he would never do it), he "asked her," and they were going steady. At recess they sat hand-in-hand on a bench in the playground, and the girls came up to them, to flirt and smile, or to ask their solemn advice. In the afternoons, in math class, Gerard wrote Laura love notes which he signed "Love Always," in imitation of his sixteen-year-old brother, Stuart. Philip, in a panic of confusion, asked Tracy Micelli to go with him. He was desperately fearful of losing Gerard, who had been his faithful friend since infancy, and he imagined he and Tracy Micelli might double-date with Laura and Gerard, thus providing a reason for the friendship to continue. He asked Tracy Micelli to go steady in a long letter, written in red magic marker and complete with illustrations, which he slipped inside the grate of her locker. A few hours later, he saw her. She was with Laura and some other girls, and as soon as In came into their view, they ran into the girl's room.
    After that, in the course of four days, Philip asked seventeen other girls to go steady with him, and they all turned him down. It became a minor scandal; even the teacher was aware of it. Finally Donna Gruber, who at thirteen was five foot ten and flat-chested, and as a result had a no-nonsense air about her. decided something had to be done. "You're making a fool out of yourself," she told Philip sternly in the library, her two best friends nodding on either side of her in corroboration. "You're a nice boy, but you're being stupid asking all those girls to go with you. And while we're at it, you've got to stop scratching yourself. It's very unattractive."
    Philip's mouth opened in shock. He had never thought anyone had noticed.
    "It's my underwear," he said meekly. "My underwear is too tight."
    The girls on either side of Donna Gruber turned red.
    "Do you think that's why they wouldn't go with me?" Philip asked.
    "Oh, Philip!" Donna said. "You asked seventeen girls. Seventeen."
    "Would you think about going with me?"
    "Philip!" they all shouted, exasperated. "Boy, are you stupid," Donna said. "You really don't get it, do you? Well, I've put in my bit. The rest you have to figure out for yourself." And they left him.
    It was after that that he threw himself against the wall. No one saw. He went to Central Park to do it, to an obscure wooded corner where he could have gotten mugged or beaten up. Again and again he threw himself, unsure which he wanted to crack more—the wall or his head—or if he just wanted to get to the other side, where he might take tea with hedgehogs and be king.
    "Kid!" a voice said. "Kid! What are you doing?"
    A hand grabbed him by the collar and pulled him away from the wall. Philip's eyes were red with tears, his fists red, little pieces of grass stuck in the creases.
    "Nothing!" Philip said, and wondered if the man was going to Kill him. He was a tall man, in his thirties, with a black mustache and very short hair. Although he was dressed mostly in leather, he didn't look