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expect me to stop. You expect that the spectre of
all that
will be enough to shut me up. I’m not sure that it is.
    I
will
talk about him, and I will say that I blame it all on the ushers — one in particular. His name was Francisco. Frank, for short. I am not saying my father didn’t experience desire for the ushers, but I don’t believe his lust was ever consummated. It was a different era. Do you understand what it was like to be the manager of a movie theatre back then? He was a member of a Showmen’s League, of course. He was a showman and a performer. But back then running a movie theatre was more than just hiring projectionists. When he started, there were vaudeville acts between the films. Nowadays we know only the megatheatres we create for ourselves in our heads, the cyberexperience of going to the theatre.
    It’s my fault if I
go
back there
, as you kept repeating, over and over. I can’t believe you use that phrase, as if I could actually go back in time! How can I convince you? It’s gone! I am not
her
. My body is desiccated; I’ve come to terms with it, and so can you. But those ushers were fucking beautiful. And people who are beautiful and know it just don’t understand those who aren’t and don’t.
    There are two different kinds of people in this world; there is simply a dividing line and never, never, shall the twain meet. Yes, Mayer called me his “little hunchback.” But look what I have become! He was right, of course. I’m more than a hunchback: I am the Hunchback of Notre Dame. But it wasn’t about what I looked like, it was never that. And it has nothing to do with anorexia. I wasn’t anorexic — a disease that causes you not to see your real body at all. Anorexia is about control — about controlling life and death. That is not relevant to my case. I just hated the way I looked. And Louis B. could call me whatever he wanted, and men could ejaculate all over me — many did. But it didn’t matter, because I never believed, I never once believed, for one second, that I was beautiful. I was never connected to my body. But I knew that beauty was the most important thing. And I knew there were people like that, people who were connected to their bodies in a fundamental way. They didn’t have to learn how to love their bodies, or how to be attractive. They just
were
.
    When I think of the ushers around my father, I think of how they tortured him. My father, like me, always hated his body, didn’t understand it, would have been better off without it. But Francisco and the other ushers were different. They were all dark boys, for some reason. They were probably Hispanics — it was southern California. My father would take me to the theatre and introduce me to them, and they would swarm around him like flowers showing their faces to the sun — and they’d touch him! I saw them touch him. I’m not fucking saying that if my father molested them, it wasn’t his fault. But he didn’t! I’m sure he didn’t. Sure he wanted them, he wanted
it
so badly — and it wasn’t just because he was a homosexual. Who would
not
fucking want them?
    You know very well about those who used be called “straight” men — the men who have sex with women — how proud they once were about
not
being attracted to other men. But how can anyone
not
be attracted to men? Oh Christ, how I hate those women who go on and on about how they don’t have “those kinds of desires” — we all know what that means. It’s all about the penis being ugly. June Allyson was like that. Sure, I loved her onscreen. Who wouldn’t love her, if for no reason other than that
voice
, and what happened to it. She was a very nice person — but nice only goes so far, you know? There was a “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth” thing going on with her.
    I think there are two kinds of