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“You just want them to be gay because you are,” he accused.
“You may have a valid point,” our professor said, “but don’t we all interpret the world and thus literature through lenses formed by our individual beliefs, desires, and perception of the world? Why is Oren’s interpretation less valid than yours?”
“Batmanaired from 1966 to 1968, before ‘gay’ was a thing—”
“Gay has always been a ‘thing,’” I snapped.
“Oren is interpreting this in a post-Stonewall era,” the reluctant gay insisted.
“Isn’t all art, including literature, viewed through a contemporary lens?” our professor shot back.
I turned to the reluctant gay. “Batmanthe TV show may not have been explicitly gay, but it was certainly informed by a not-so-subtle gay sensibility. Look at the Joker with his face full of pancake makeup and lipstick, and the Riddler flitting around in what was essentially a green catsuit with question marks all over it. What is he doing if not questioning the heteronormative narrative that was meant to be the perceived default for the series?”
I floated through the rest of my classes on a cloud. Tonight, we were lying on the couch when I told Jackson what happened in class. He laughed. “Wait,” he said, “Which one of us is Batman? Who’s Robin?”
“You’ll always be my Batman,” I told him. He lay back down, and I settled my head on his stomach. “I’m hungry,” I said.
He sat up abruptly. “Alfred,” he shouted, “we’re hungry. When’s dinner?”
Monday, May 8, 1978, University City—Today, crossing the Quad, I ran into the reluctant gay whose name is Jeremy. He pulled me onto a bench and sat beside me. “I’m gay,” he said simply.
I struggled with an appropriate response:How nice for you. Welcome to the club. Oh, I’m shocked. Yes, I know.I settled on murmuring noncommittally.
“Except,” he confided, “I don’t like anal sex.”
“Oh,” I said, promptly filing the information in the part of my brain where I put things I never intend to think about ever again, like the farm, my grandfather, my parents’ death.
“Well,” he said brightly, “I’m off to student health. I’m pretty sure I have gonorrhea.”
I pulled open the dusty file cabinet in my brain once again.
Saturday, October 14, 1978, University City—MJ and I were studying for midterms. She sat at the tiny desk in my and Jackson’s bedroom, and I sprawled on the bed. She pulled myparents’ wedding album off the shelf above the desk and began looking through it. Again.
She paused at a photo that showed my parents standing in front of a mantel; seated in front of them in a frothy lace dress and a modest hat was my grandmother. “Tell me again. Who’s the gentleman next to your dad?”
“That’s his father, my grandfather, Grampy Eddie.”
“You called him Grampy Eddie?”
“Everyone did,” I said. I did not tell her that Grampy Eddie was known as the “king of numbers” back in Springfield. The illegal gambling operation had made him wealthy, which paid for the new Buick every two years and an endless string of girlfriends, not always his alone. For all the kids in the neighborhood, he was an endless source of quarters and penny candies.
MJ turned to a page on which my mother’s maid-of-honor was setting the headpiece that held her veil onto her head as they gazed at their joint reflection in an enormous shadowbox mirror. “Your mom was so beautiful,” MJ said.
“Yeah, and Dad was handsome. I used to wonder if I’d look like him when I grew up. He used to call me ‘little man,’” I suddenly recalled.
“Do you miss them?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really remember them.”
“You don’t have any baggage, do you?” MJ asked.
“Sorry?”
“Emotional baggage, I mean. After all you’ve been through—losing your parents so young, growing up gay… Did someone used to hit you?”
“What?” I asked, startled, trying not to think of my grandfather, of the bullies at school…
“I’m sorry. It’s just that if anyone makes a sudden move towards you—even me—to, like, hug you, you wince. And your whole body stiffens as if you expect a blow.”
