Vantage Point, by Ken Pobo

I don't see the world as a place where God can stand, sit down, stand again, walk, stop, turn. I used to call God my Heavenly Father. If my earthly dad could strike a guy out in three pitches, I imagined my Heavenly Dad doing it, only faster, the ball a comet. My Heavenly Dad had an advantage – He built the park. What choice did I have but to marvel?

I was told that that my Heavenly Dad had a son who was just wonderful but we killed him. I felt badly about this. They said I, Bert Gilette, was responsible. And my Heavenly Father knew I was the kid who did it. One day, if I didn't apologize on my knees, I would be in for it. In those days, when I could bend and bow, I did get on my knees, believed that my Heavenly Dad heard me say I was sorry. I tried to prove how sorry I was and did things to please Him.

As a child in Danville, I pleased everybody, not just the Heavenly Father, but my parents, the neighbors, and my teachers. Pictures from that time show I was toothy, had a crew cut, and wore baggy pants and flip-flops. I had a terrible crush in third grade on Miss Wilbertson, a young woman with black hair and thick purple eye make-up. She reminded me of Morticia Addams. I pretended I was Gomez, looked more like Pugsley.

I wanted to please her, but much of what I did angered her. She demoted me from the Blue Reading Group to the Yellow Reading Group because I'd mess up when reading out loud if she sat next to me. "I don't know, Bertie, if you don't stop getting these D's, you'll never get to high school, maybe not even fourth grade."

I did stop getting D's, almost by force of will. While the other kids sharpened their playground skills, I sat behind the swings reading. "He's a faggot," Russell Stone said about me, the first time I had heard that word. Whatever it meant, I didn't know, but when he said it his face looked like jagged glass.

At home I took out the garbage, lugging three plastic green containers out to the parkway on Sunday evening. My weekly allowance was 75 cents, which Dad said had to be divided this way: a quarter for God, a quarter for the bank, and a quarter for spending. I put my bank money in a glass dog I had named Happy, felt rich, which I suppose I was by 1965 standards.

I also had to help mow the lawn, feed my goldfish my brother Ted and I named Zelda, and help keep our room reasonably neat. I admit I made a bad roommate in this regard. I'm a slob. Ted covered for me many times, stuffing my dirty clothes and half-eaten sandwiches in ingenious spots when Mom came around to inspect us. Ted was three years older than me, not my idol because that was my dad (the earthly one), but a hero nevertheless. I told him what Russell had called me. He threatened to beat him to a pulp. "Please don't, Ted," I begged. "He'll find ways to make it worse for me later."

"Don't you ever let anyone call you that, got me?"

"I won't."

He went off to go biking with the big kids – Chris, Roger, Jeff, and John. I wasn't welcome in their clubhouses, games or conversations. I accepted this; besides, I had more fun playing paper dolls with Karen Meadows, a girl my own age from down the street. She had a remarkable collection, at least thirty models to dress and undress, and never called me names. In fifth grade she was the first girl I ever kissed. Karen's married now with two daughters.

The first boy I ever kissed was Wayne, but that was five years later. We were sophomores. It happened in my garage when my folks were out and Ted and my sister Nancy were, I assumed, with friends. Wayne and I got in my parents' car and pretended we were driving to Alaska. Somewhere around Seattle he put his arm around me. By Juneau we were kissing.

"We can't do this," I said.

"Nobody'll know. Don't be scared."

"It's wrong, Wayne."

He stopped, said OK, and let's step on it to get to Fairbanks. I knew what faggot meant, knew if I let my guard down even one second, even for a kiss, I would cease to exist. I would become a word. I withdrew from Wayne out of fear – what had he seen that made him think he could touch me? Eventually he stopped coming around. Our friendship became an occasional wave on opposite sides of the street.

Running. I was very good at running. Came in second in high jump at a track meet. I had long legs, long arms, no chest, short auburn hair that needed washing every day, and acne.

When I ran I felt alert, loved the relentless inhale-exhale. In high school, outside of English class if we were studying plays, I enjoyed track most. The less I tried to win or lower my time, the better I ran. I loved to make up songs as the laps added up, pretended I was a big star, not in track but in music. Stand. Sit down. Stand again. Walk. Stop. Turn.

A funny thing happened on my way to graduation. I became three people. It wasn't planned; I didn't wake up one day with a personality disorder, and mine would have defied a medical book's smug diagnosis.

There was Bert, good boy, bellbottoms and a paper route. The adults loved him. "You're so lucky to have a son like Bert, always so even-tempered and sweet." I suppose I did come across as "even-tempered." When my temper was uneven, I hid in our basement or in my room, which was almost always mine now that Ted was away at Eastern Illinois University majoring in Accounting.

There was Bert, popular with his classmates, polite, with a paper route, someone to hang out with at our local Hamburger Heaven. "Bert's always got a crazy story to tell," my friends said. Telling stories got the attention away from myself – or from the self these friends knew. Real. When it was called upon to materialize.

There was Bert, homosexual. I have always marveled at my gay and lesbian friends who got married and had children before discovering their preference. As a teenager, I never considered it a preference anymore than breathing is a preference. Even in my most "I am not this" days, which were many, I knew what I was. Well, knowing what we are and being what we are – in the free country? I remember thinking I should get married, should want to want this, but didn't think even a guy with three selves could give a good enough performance to make it believable. Many can and do.

Maybe that's why I've always loved plays, loved acting, loved waiting in the wings for the actors to finish, to be the first to congratulate them. The most acting I've ever done (outside of real life) was as narrator of our church Christmas pageant. Pageant is a generous term. Baby Jesus was a doll bought from Woolworths in the fifties and taken down from the Sunday School nursery for our play. During some lean years, Joseph doubled as a shepherd.

"Bertie has a voice just like Linus," my Sunday School teacher, Mrs. McFall, liked to say. The Word of God conveyed through a comic strip character. Maybe Linus was another personality rattling around inside of me, silence being my security blanket. My three selves slept in it every night.

Like Ted, I went to Eastern Illinois University too, though Accounting was not for me. I majored in history, not because it interested me, but it seemed better than other choices. Most of college was a waste of time. I found a group of friends, did enough homework to get by, and went to movies and to church. My professors kept busy doing research. I was a social security number on a test booklet.

My three selves got along OK for the most part. I decided sex was out. The Heavenly Father would see anything I did, his paparazzi camera clicking at the most inopportune moments. He needed evidence for Judgment Day. God loved me. If I loved the Heavenly Father, He wouldn't have these awful pictures.

During my senior year, the three selves got in a wrangle. I had my first affair. In his mid-thirties with a thick blond moustache and gold wire-rimmed glasses, Dennis worked graveyard shift at the 7-11 where I picked up my basic supplies – Newport Light 100s, Kleenex, batteries, and the news. We had many long conversations in the mostly deserted store.

No candlelight and roses, not at first. In the supply room behind several boxes labelled SCOTT PAPER TOWELS. I returned to my dorm with a liter-sized Dr. Pepper.

"Where were you? Out with Sheila again?" my roommate Alex asked half-asleep. Sheila was someone I'd made up.

"Well..." I let him wonder.

"Gettin' serious, huh?"

"I guess," as I flopped into bed, scared and happy, guilty and free from guilt.

I had a bad dream that night. Ted, Nancy and I were in a big city, maybe Chicago. We were walking, telling jokes, asking the opinions of mannequins in store windows. We didn't know we were lost. Streets turned and turned. Darkness fell. Going forward or going backward made no difference. We kept bumping into a closed courthouse. Our parents were locked inside.

"Help us," my mother cried.

My dad said nothing, looked like the farmer in American Gothic.

We banged against the doors, threw rocks at them, kicked them, but nothing helped. Mom fell on the floor in some sort of seizure. She stopped moving. Dad stood there, imaginary farmer's fork in his hand.

"Bert, Bert, wake up, man, wake up."

Which I did.

"What were you dreamin' about?"

"I don't remember," I lied. "It was scary, that's all."

Dennis and I lasted about a month. I was, as he put it, "too intense" and he wanted more of "a little light-weight thing." Oh. By the end of the semester, I was another guy buying doughnuts or aspirin.

I wondered about the "too intense." I liked to listen to him talk, usually about weird customers or stories he'd read in the tabloids. Elvis Presley fascinated him. He believed Elvis was living quite well. Dopey enough with affection, I agreed with him, nodded at all his opinions, didn't mess up his room or bathroom too much, laughed at his jokes. Go figure.

After Dennis I found others, started going to bars, swung from one extreme to the other. For half a year I'd be either celibate or sexually faithful to one guy; the other half of the year I gave myself freely, or didn't give myself, just my body, all that was asked and all I wanted to give – a fair exchange.

After college, I found my own place and a job working as a clerk at a Holiday Inn. I went through great repentances, complete with bent knees and lowered head, asking the Heavenly Father to forgive me. Feeling more angry than disowned, after a few years I quit asking.

My earthly father and mother suspected but said nothing. As long as we said nothing, it didn't matter who I was or what I did. Dad turned off the TV whenever I was home if the subject was about homosexuality. Mom made food and rearranged the kitchen.

I told Nancy first.

"Really? Well, I'm not surprised. Do you have a boyfriend?"

"No."

"Well, if you find one, let me know. Brother, the things you need to know about men. I could write a book."

"Me too. Let's write it together someday."

"Fine with me – provided I have a heart left."

"Should I tell Ted? He and Carol are Republicans."

"It's up to you. If they don't like it, fuck 'em!"

"And Mom and Dad?"

"Lost causes. Christmas is tough enough around here. Why make it worse?"

Nancy lived in a trailer park and owned her own card shop. She and Ted hardly ever spoke. "He's become a real butthole since he got that big house," she said. I was in the middle of the seesaw, wanting to keep peace. Until last year, I never made a scene, never yelled at anyone, walked away when things look bloody.

Ted wasn't as easy to tell as Nancy.

"Once a faggot always a faggot," he said. We haven't spoken since except at parties at our parents' house. My nephews know who I am, but either Ted or Carol stays in the same room whenever I'm with them.

As a boy I thought adults had it made – coming and going when you please, where you please. Not having to answer to anybody. I thought each day must be an adventure, certainly more fun than me getting on my bike and riding up to Ben Franklins for baseball bubblegum cards to stick in the spokes back in my garage.

I didn't think one day would leak into the other, a slow IV drip. A month. A year. A decade. Work five days a week. Get laid on Saturday (if lucky and not too beat). Sleep on Sunday (if lucky and not too guilty about how messy the apartment had become in a week's time). My life became the montage of calendar pages falling in a thirties film, dates dropping so quickly that they appeared as smudges on the screen.

Mom died of a stroke. Dad stayed on in the house. We never have had "the conversation." Nancy ran her card shop and married a realtor named Lenny ("Yeah, he's boring, but he's a great card player," she said). Ted and Carol got divorced. She got the boys and stayed in their house, and he moved to Pueblo, Colorado.

I heard a TV shrink call it "desensitization" or something like that. With each year, the impact of events in our family didn't affect me as much; even though I was present when asked to be present at some function or another, I was never really there.

As for romance, men came and went. Though most of my affairs have been brief by some people's standards, each one has given me something valuable. A touch. A conversation. A place to take the duct tape off my mouth and speak.

I became a manager of the same Holiday Inn I started in after college, and was, I thought, well liked by my employees. Except for one. I hired Danny to run the kitchen. He had come highly recommended from his previous two employers. When I interviewed him, he was polite and confident.

"Watch out for him, Mr. G.," a couple of employees told me during the two months he worked for me. I brushed them off. No confrontations, please.

One June night I was walking out to my car, exhausted from a headachy day, and Danny stepped out in front of me. He started hitting me, not with his hands, but with some kind of club or bat. "Faggot!" he kept yelling, again and again. I blanked out fairly quickly, which was a mercy, I suppose.

My spinal cord. When I woke from what reconstructive surgery the doctors could perform, paralyzed from the waist down, only Nancy and Lenny were at my bedside. I was groggy, not able to make much sense. Nancy was crying while Lenny held both her hand and mine.

Stand. Sit down. Stand again. Walk. Stop. Turn. Once I did these things, these simple things, took them for granted like the scent of wind and detergent in laundry on the clothesline.

Never again. Friends will stand in my place in front of government offices, courthouses, churches. Walk – and they will march. Stop – and they will look you in the eye. Turn – not the other cheek. I see sunlight through the hospital window, hear a terrible cry from down the hall. Figures run. It could be anyone: a mom, a brother, a faggot. Someone with a mouth who cannot speak.