The summer of his second year of high school, the divorce lawyer’s son entered a troubling period that caused both the divorce lawyer and his ex-wife to communicate more frequently, out of concern and anxiety, which only served to heighten the divorce lawyer’s already existing anxiety rather than lessen it. He was unable to sleep except for a few hours at the beginning of each night, until he woke late in his loft condo, his girlfriend Cass sleeping beside him. Upon waking he’d find himself in anxious rumination about the boy, often rehearsing conversations—important talks— he needed to have with the boy, not unlike the discussions he had in his office each day with clients. Demanding, psychological discussions, resulting in the divorce lawyer understanding on a profound level the nature of his clients’ relationships in order to determine whether he could legally, and also in good conscience, prosecute a divorce. His ability to listen, question gently but with intent, and form a psychological story—an understanding—all seemed skills he should use with the boy but had been unable to, except in his head. The divorce lawyer’s name was Roger Waters, but everyone called him Pink.
The talks had to do with manhood. How to be a man. A topic he felt he had a certain expertise in, not only because he was a man, but because he was a divorce lawyer. He felt that he knew what made a man a good man, what made a woman, or a partner, want to stay with a man, and part of the boy’s troubles seemed to be in the area of girls, women. Females. He worked out of an office in the uptown of their medium-sized, southern city. It was a small firm, and after fifteen years there, he believed that he would be a partner soon. The firm was in an old Victorian-style house, right off the river, bought before the area was gentrified. Pink’s office was on the second story, and his windows had a view of the brewery district and minor league ball field. Most of Pink’s day was conducted in his office, sending emails, meeting with clients. Or he was in the conference room, which was a space to meet with other parties, other lawyers representing their own clients. He thought of his job as a kind of spiritual calling, but rather than attending to his clients on this Monday, he was thinking about his son and what they needed to discuss.
He stared out at uptown traffic on Church St—people walking to lunch, some old men playing tennis in the park—without seeing it. There was never any time to discuss anything with the boy, Pink thought, never the right moment, always transitional moments, from his mom’s house back to his loft condo, and vice versa, or off to school or a tennis match or a practice, etc, and the in-between times were meant to be fun, easygoing, and so Pink could never breach the subject, and yet he thought that if he had time to discuss with the boy what he felt was the root of the problem, a phrase he often used with clients, when trying to understand their story and why they wanted to divorce, then maybe the boy would better understand his own predicament and would begin to move in the right direction. It seemed that the boy was no longer moving in any direction. The boy was directionless, and his flaws seemed so overwhelming, and the overwhelmingly troubling behaviors that Pink knew needed correcting, or at least addressed, in the boy, were myriad. Pink went to his small refrigerator, got out an iced coffee, thinking that the boy was on his phone too much, nearly all the time, with headphones on, excising external reality from existence—he played video games for hours every day, seemingly addicted. He had no knowledge of nature, the woods, he had no skills. He was a completely average student—a sophomore in high school—and nothing he did, whether in science, math, art, or english stood out. He had been suspended twice over the past two years, once for selling Viagra at school, which he had stolen from Pink. Drinking his coffee, staring out at uptown, a sunny day, thinking he should go to lunch, but also equally thinking that his fifteen-year-old seemed to be only half-awake, as though he still didn’t understand that he was living on a planet that was rolling through the cosmos. Pink sat at his desk, and an image of the boy arose in his mind: long, dark hair covered the boy’s face, and it sometimes felt to Pink that he could no longer even remember what his own son’s face even looked like, until he brushed the hair back and saw it and recognized it. Pink looked at his computer, opened his email. The boy looked at porn often and was caught several times by both Pink and his ex-wife, which itself wasn’t concerning, but the nature of the pornography was: violent, with choking and ropes and various other bondages. Pink drank the iced coffee, barely tasting it, and thought how he told the boy—the boy had been staying in his bedroom at Pink’s condo—that while objectively Pink didn’t object to this material, necessarily, for a fifteen year old boy who’d had no real experience with a girlfriend, his own son, he found it reprehensible. How do you know I don’t have a girlfriend? the boy had said. Sean, Pink had said. I know. Sitting at his desk, vaguely clicking through emails, Pink thought of how the boy had tried to quit tennis. He had been playing for most of his life and had an aggressive topspin forehand and a solid backhand—Pink had worked with him on that forehand for years and had told him he wasn’t allowed to quit tennis, not yet. Pink thought of the time the boy had friends spend the night at the condo, and he’d overhead them discuss girls, in crude and pornographied ways: one of Sean’s friends had referred to a classmate named Alice Motely—whose parents Pink knew, whose father he played tennis with—as a dime piece and total fucktoy, to which his son had said, Maybe if her tits were bigger.
Pink closed his email. He picked up his phone. He thought that he was done with all this, done with the attitude, the behaviors, the seemingly aloof coolness regarding sexuality and masculinity that was covering up what he knew was a deep insecurity. A basic inauthenticity in the boy. He was done with the attendant stress and anxiety and shame it was causing him—did other people know that his son was a video-game-and-porn-addicted little asshole? He texted his ex-wife, Jeannie, and said that he knew it wasn’t his weekend, but could Sean stay with him a night or two. They needed to have a man-to-man chat. Get him back on track. After a moment, the three dots appeared on his phone. Yes, please, Jeannie said. He needs some guidance. Pink told her he was on it, pleased to be of need to his ex-wife.
They agreed he would pick the boy up on Thursday, but a day after texting, Pink was called into the office of the firm’s senior partner and founder, Rafe Bannon. Bannon had three pieces of modern art on the wall, colored lines, squares, which receded into one another, somewhat chintzy dark-wood furniture, what had once been contemporary. Bannon himself wore tweed sport coats, olive, brown, beige, with wide lapels, which contrasted with Pink’s own Ludlow’s in Ink or Sea Grey.
Pink sat in the chair across from Bannon. What’s up? he said. Rafe Bannon had a serious look on his face, and Pink immediately knew there was bad news. Maybe a client was unhappy with their settlement. But it wasn’t this. Bannon told him a young-ish woman was saying that she had experienced inappropriate behavior. She has experienced inappropriate behavior, Pink repeated. Bannon nodded. She indicated, well, she indicated you, Bannon told him. The firm was investigating. Pink sat across from Bannon, shocked and vaguely amused. This can’t be right, he said. I’m sorry, Bannon said. It is. If you can, think about the time after your divorce. It seems to be from around then. Pink nodded, asked if Bannon could say more. I’ve said too much already, Bannon said. It’ll be okay, Pink. Nothing to this, I’m sure. He was put on a leave-of-absence.
Over the ensuing days, Pink felt his anxiety move beyond manageable levels. One morning, drinking tea in his kitchen, he felt a constriction in his chest, making it hard to get a breath. He had anxiety issues, and had once, in high school, had a panic attack in the fourth quarter of a conference tournament game. He’d been fouled, there was less than a minute on the clock, his team was in the bonus, down by two, and he had a one-and-one at the line. The other team called a timeout, and during the timeout, Pink—still Roger then—felt himself unable to get a breath, his chest—not unlike this morning—constricting. He was unable to focus on what his coach was saying, though he was saying it directly to Pink, the crowd very loud and pressing down on him, and then his breathing was getting very fast, too fast, he couldn’t breathe at all, and he was trying to hide it, and when he went up to the line, he missed the front end of the one-and-one, and collapsed on the floor while chasing a rebound. Medics had been called. Everyone thought he was having a heart attack. It was humiliating when it turned out he was just mentally weak and his team lost the game. He’d spent a year learning techniques to calm himself down. He thought he was over it, but now it was back. He told no one. Nothing to his on-and-off again girlfriend, Cass, nor his ex-wife, and certainly not his son, Sean, not about the feelings of panic returning and not about his situation at work—his son couldn’t know. He rubbed his chest, drank coffee, took deep breaths.
In order to do something, he went to shoot hoops at Cleveland Park. Everyone was at work except him, but he told himself to relax, it would be okay. He began close range, moved the elbows of the free throw line, further out. He didn’t know what this inappropriate behavior could have been, and he near-loathed Rafe Bannon, who had given him this news and indicated that the allegations seemed to have occurred during Pink’s “difficult period,” meaning a period of six months after his divorce from Jeannie, nearly ten years ago, when he had drank too much and slept around, a period which disgusted him now in retrospect and which he regretted immensely, and now it was Rafe Bannon who gave him this news, Rafe Bannon, a man who wore tweed jackets, was sixty-three years old, and had once said to Pink, after several cocktails, that his new wife (he was twice divorced) complained that giving blowjobs made her jaw hurt. You have one job, Rafe Bannon had said to Pink. One job. And that’s to give a blowjob without complaint maybe once a month. Pink hated being with him in public, though he laughed at the jokes, tried to change subject. On the court now, he took a deep three, missed badly, the ball bouncing off the concrete court. He walked to get it, the day warm and sunny, not quite fall though it was September, but he was barely able to see or feel it.
He took a short jumper, made it. Another, banked in. He thought of the irony of Rafe Bannon delivering this information. Bannon divorced his first wife when she found out he’d been stepping out on her. His second wife divorced him claiming that he controlled everything, which Rafe had enthusiastically agreed with. It’s my fucking money, he’d said to Pink. Why shouldn’t I control it? Now he had another wife, younger, but only by about a decade, Rafe had said to Pink, winking. On occasion, Pink had to have a drink with Rafe. It was more to appease him and be part of the firm than anything else, and often Rafe Bannon was sentimental after a second Manhattan. I don’t know what I thought I was doing with all these women, he’d said one night. And now this one, I don’t know in the least. I live with a stranger. You live alone, right? That’s the way, Pink. That’s really probably the only way. Pink had nodded, though he hadn’t agreed, and Bannon stared ahead at the bottles above the bar like a man in deep concentration on some unsolvable problem of the universe. He took another shot, bricked it badly. Pink stood there, hands on his hips, the ball bouncing away. He couldn’t stop thinking. It was in moments like these that Pink disliked his job and his nickname and wanted only to be Roger, but it felt as though Roger was a foreign identity, or only the name of Roger Federer, and Pink could only see himself as Pink, the divorce lawyer, a good divorce lawyer, a once-good point guard at a midwestern school, a semi-hotshot in town, who viewed all life through the lens of matrimony and connection and dissolutions, and now Rafe Bannon, or some confused, mistaken woman, had taken this away. On top of that, he now felt like a hypocrite of some kind, like who was he, who was under investigation for inappropriate behavior, who was he to have this talk about manhood with his son? He picked up the ball, headed back home, his heart not in it.
A week passed. To get clarity on the matter and temper his mounting anxiety—not to mention his mounting fears that everyone in the office knew and it would inevitably get around town and then his ex-wife would know and then his son, Sean, would know that he was, what, an asshole, a harasser?—Pink formulated a plan. He waited until the end of the week, tamped down his humiliation and then planned it out, sat in his car down the street, watched most everyone from the firm head to lunch, and then slipped into Katy Roswell’s office, who he knew ate later, and said, Katy, Katy, I need some info. From behind her desk, she looked momentarily baffled. If she could please, please just tell him something, anything, he was literally begging her here, he helped get her hired, he had found her, and if she could just shed some light on what was happening to him, he would be eternally grateful. He noticed that as he said this he was kind of almost tiptoeing, hunched over—he only noticed because she seemed to notice. Why are you walking like that? she said. He stood up straighter and said, Katy please. She wore a pantsuit, her blonde hair sleek and pulled back. She said, Pink, if you even being here gets back to Rafe, I will kill you. I’ll help you kill me, he said. I’ll guide the knife. She shook her head and rolled her eyes and then got up and closed her door. She told him she wasn’t sure, but she had heard a name.
Pink felt himself descend through his mind, the name like a distant star or a thing long buried in the sea. Cynthia Cooper. Then he got her face, swimming up from the depths of his being, the newly discovered salvage being hauled up from the bottom of his consciousness. That’s just the name I heard, Katy Roswell said, her hands up, palms out, as if pushing him away. Then she was, physically pushing him away from her desk, toward the door. I’m not even sure that is the person making the allegation, she said. Pink nodded. How long will the investigation take? he asked her while she continued to gently push him, feeling he was onto something, feeling that this could all be worked at, that all he needed was a date of return, and then his life could be his life again. No idea, she said. Hasn’t even begun. We have that joint deal on the Baker case. Don’t hold your breath, Katy told him, opening the door again, pushing him out. Seriously, thank you Katy, he said. You were never here, Pink, she said.
Pink felt better in the immediate aftermath, but then, when he got home, he realized he still had nothing, and not only that, there was nothing to do. What was he going to do? Call Cynthia Cooper? All these years later. Hey, remember me? Got a question. Remember when we hung out, did I happen to… it was idiotic. Calling her felt almost as impossible as talking with Sean now, giving him advice on how to be a man in the world when his own behavior and masculinity was now under suspicion. He needed to get work sorted first.
No new information came from work. Days began to pass like channels being changed in search of nothing. From his condo, Pink awaited an email from the firm, a phone call, but nothing came. He spent his days getting takeout, visiting Cass at her co-op, shooting baskets, going to the gym, but he was bored and anxious, constantly refreshing his email, the constriction in his chest now constant. As September came to an end, fall came for real, cooler and brisker. At night, not even trying to sleep anymore, Pink sat in a reading chair in corner of his bedroom, while Cass slept. A shoji lamp that gave off a deep, soft yellow light sat on the endtable. A book about physics Pink pretended to read sat next to the lamp. Instead of reading, he thought of things he should tell Sean, remembering other men, people he’d been around. He imagined telling Sean about this guy who was the small forward on his college basketball team, Gary Wei, a junior when he was a freshmen, a senior when he was a sophomore, who liked to tell new players on the team, incoming freshmen, before a night of partying, what he called his Philosophy of the Natural Order of Things: it’s very simple, Gary Wei’d say as the new guys gathered around in one of the dorm suites. Pink imagined telling Sean, maybe as they drove home from school, that Gary Wei had said that if young gentlemen wanted to have success with the ladies, this was the way. This was Wei’s Way. And it was very simple: some beings had power, and other beings were subservient to that power. That was it, Gary Wei had explained. Anyone can have power, and anyone can be subservient. You just have to know how to get power, or if you like being subservient, then you look for a way to get that. Either way, you don’t have to be an asshole. Especially if you want power. And you, gentlemen, do, trust me. All you have to do is, you have to be nice to these girls here. And not like Pink is nice to them, okay? Gary Wei had said. Don’t do what Pink does. If you don’t want pussy, then do what Pink does. If you do, listen to me. Here’s what you do, fledglings, Gary Wei had told the young players on the team. You listen, you care, you be affectionate, and you be thoughtful and nice. That is all it is. That is really all you have to do. You listen, you care, you be affectionate, and you be thoughtful and nice. If you listen to them, if you sit and listen, and really pay attention to them, and ask about their family, and like just are affectionate to them, with them, then they’ll let you do anything. They’re just like animals, basically. Treat them well, feed them with a gift or two, gentlemen, make them feel unique, special, praise them, say that’s so cool, say they’re pretty, say that’s such an interesting class to take, say these things, be this way, and even if they are an intellectual, a feminist, make them feel beautiful and unique, then everything is open to you. The door is proverbially open, gentlemen: they’ll be loyal, do anything you want, their cunts will spread wide. Me, I like to give them a love tap on their face with it. Slap their face with it, a little. Michael Shorter, a back-up guard piped up: he has this ball gag that they act all prudish about at first, but every one of them ends up with it in their mouth. Everyone in the room laughed, Pink remembered. I mean, Gary Wei said, if you’re going to sit on my face, I see no reason to not slap you with my cock and put a ball gag in your mouth. More laughter. And how to do this, how accomplish your dreams gentlemen: just listen to them, just be affectionate with them, just care for them, coddle them, then, they beg for it, they will literally beg for it.
Sitting in his bedroom room, his girlfriend asleep in bed, Pink thought that he couldn’t tell this to Sean. Why would he? He remembered being in this dorm suite, surrounded by half the team, mostly freshmen, who were all grinning and nodding, listening to this faux-philosophy, a bowl being passed around, blowing the smoke through an empty toilet paper roll filled with dry-cleaning sheets. Pink had laughed along with everyone else, pretending, though he also had felt the tightness in his chest. A part of him wanted this, wanted to do this, was drawn to the possibility of getting a girl to do whatever he wanted them to do, but there was another part of him that felt sickened, disgusted, and was totally ashamed that what Gary Wei said had somehow titillated him. He had felt the beginnings of an anxiety attack, and in that moment, Pink had been able to see both parts of himself, almost as though looking into some multidimensional mirror, in which he could view both his best and his worst self. But they were both him. Now, in his bedroom sitting up in the reading chair, he wondered if Sean could understand this. He wondered if he could say to him: look, we have this animal mind, but we also have this higher mind. And, well, well what? Shit. Pink didn’t know.
As he sat there while Cass slept, Pink noticed he was chewing his lip, a thing he did when he was stressed. Cass shifted in her sleep. He took a breath, rubbing the sore spot on his chest, breathing deeply. He tried to allow himself to feel what he had felt back then, and what arose—just as it had arose in the past—was a basic, fundamental revulsion toward Gary Wei, which in turn felt like a revulsion toward himself. Sitting in his bedroom, Pink thought that he hadn’t found any of it funny then and now he saw his inaction, his not speaking up, his not saying something to Gary Wei, as cowardice. Or was his inaction toward being dominant the cowardice? He couldn’t tell, but it was there, some cowardice. That he knew. Pink remembered then that Duncan Berry—the starting point guard—had tapped him on the shoulder and said, This sucks. Let’s go. They’d left, Gary Wei calling after them, The pussies go for a walk. But Pink was glad Duncan got him out of there, preferred the walk where they smoked and snuck into the cemetery and meandered and watched the blinking downtown from afar. He felt better being out, the dome of the starred sky above the cemetery. He was able to breathe freely again. If Pink hadn’t been a coward then, he imagined telling his son while he watched his girlfriend sleep, he would have said something to Gary Wei. But he had been a coward, he imagined telling Sean—he maybe always had been. He was a coward with Gary Wei, and, if he was frank, he was a coward with women back then too. Had always been. Always. Duncan had said something like, Gary Wei is a dumbass. He’s an insecure man-child. Don’t pay any attention to him. But Pink remembered wondering whether he was actually respectful of women or whether he was he simply a coward, afraid of his own animal nature? Was this what Sean needed to hear? That in some way being a man had to do with being courageous about all this?
Watching Cass sleep, he wondered if he should tell Sean about his own relationship now, which was casual, to say the least, but also respectful. Though, he wasn’t sure he really knew Cass. She was a potter. Pink had bought some of her mugs. Then some plates. Then some bowls, and then had asked her out. She had divorced parents. He was divorced. But what else could he say about her or their relationship? Should he just come out and say that he was in trouble at work with a woman who had seemingly misunderstood him? But he couldn’t even remember what this misunderstanding could have been, so he couldn’t even start there. He rubbed his chest, breathing deeply, determined to not let his anxiety become unmanageable. When he and Cass began, when they had drunk too much early on, came home, stripped quickly, hands everywhere, he’d been near frozen when, mid-doggystyle on his bed, as he was reaching orgasm despite the many whiskeys he’d drunk, she’d said, Which pink hole do you want to cum in? He’d nearly paused. Pink hole? he’d thought. His intellectual mind suddenly turned on: was this a reference to his name, like these holes were his, or was this a reference to the actual colors of the holes, something younger people were saying? He’d had no idea. Where? she had said insistently, backing herself onto him, and he’d quickly and idiotically said, Mouth. Just like he had no idea what she had meant, he had no idea what he’d actually wanted in that moment he’d been so perturbed, and he realized the next morning that he had been perturbed by what she wanted, what she desired, so openly and directly. His own desires were obscured or perhaps had slowly dissipated over time—he was ten years older than Cass after all. What he wanted with Cass was a friend, a partner, someone to enjoy his nice loft and fairly easy money, and while a part of him fantasized about a sort of taboo sex, while in the past he had had sex that was in fact disgusting, beautifully disgusting, in his present reality now what he wanted was some version of quiet, slow, loving sex, maybe even tired, quick sex. Or just someone to watch TV with. But he also wanted to do and be for Cass according to her needs. In any case, Cass had never said anything like it again, which he attributed to her drunkness, some fun inhibition, but she was younger, and he was older, and this in turn made him question whether they should be together, whether she might want and need a different sort of man, a different kind of sexuality, whether she was hiding some part of herself from him, though he didn’t bring it up out of simple cowardice: what could he possibly say? Could he say this to Sean? Definitely not. What was the message here, anyway. Women are full persons! Jesus. He could do better. He got up, got into bed, pulled the covers over himself and told himself sleep, please go to sleep.
He sat up many nights, late, thinking, thinking, waiting for the firm to finish its investigation, thinking of what to tell Sean, anxiety like an imaginary friend now, something he could almost talk to, almost see. Cass came around less, stayed over rarely, as though sensing a wounded animal. His inability to sleep extended through the whole night, and he wondered if he was avoiding his subconscious mind. His life seemed to be thinking. The takeout containers that piled on the granite countertops seemed more like thoughts than food. His phone sent him texts from friends at work telling him to hang in there, no real substance to this thing, nothing to worry about, thinking at him, for him. His ex-wife sent him thoughts about his son, about how he should be handling his son. He eventually told Cass what was going on, and Cass told him he should leave the firm, thinking for him. She told him he had so much more to offer people in a private practice. She told him he shouldn’t be working for a man like Rafe Bannon, who everyone knew was a serial philanderer. Honestly, think of the irony of that, she told him. All thinking that presumably he couldn’t do on his own. It made him feel infantilized, not in control of his own life.
Then the firm let him go. Nothing to be done, too much shit, Bannon told him. They wouldn’t make it a thing, Pink could start a private practice, Bannon said. Pink seriously hated the guy. He now began to ruminate what seemed endlessly on the murky period after the divorce. That period felt as though lived in another dimension that his memory could only vaguely apprehend. He slept with a half dozen women, some several times. He had let himself do it, he had told himself that he hadn’t in college or in grad school, out of cowardice, and now he was going to do this thing that he saw all other men do. He didn’t believe anything that had happened was non-consensual, but he admitted to himself that he couldn’t say for certain that nothing had happened. He couldn’t remember, the lack of sleep made everything seem to come to him through smoked glass. He remembered he’d been drinking too much, did coke a couple times out of, it seemed, some sad nostalgia. He’d hung around with Tanner Gartner, a guy who he played ball with Thursdays at the Y, a guy who he otherwise disliked, but who, during that period, provided him with high quality bags of weed, some coke, and who, after receiving these items, Pink felt obliged to go out with on occasion. Tanner owned a restaurant called Bar 11— why it was called that, no one knew. Tanner was often there, drinking, and had introduced Pink around. He knew many women, and during that period, Pink wanted women. He was still in shape, six foot even, slim but strong, still worked out, still was good looking, and after the divorce he felt free to be himself. The true Pink. At the same time, the lasciviousness of that period—coupled with what he felt was an objectification of women so derisive that it made him feel like merely an instrument, a sexual object himself, as though his entire being was his dick (he had dreams of his member during that period, priapic dreams, his member huge and bumping into people, while he tried to hide it under a tiny napkin, this enormous, raging erection that faceless people in dreams pointed out, and then, in one nightmare, he was the erection, a huge phallus walking and dripping while trying to get into his office)—had eventually so thoroughly disgusted him that he didn’t try to see a woman or date for nearly a year afterward. All the women Tanner Gartner introduced him to had been professionals with that little wild side, out on Thursday nights. Dirty girls, Gartner had said. They wore fancy underwear, thongs, elaborate bras apparent beneath silk blouses, younger than Pink by a decade, sometimes more. Ladies, this is Pink, Gartner would say. Pink what? one said. Pink Pink, Pink said. But all of them he’d been respectful to, he thought during what he was now calling his period of reflection and contemplation.
Had it been a client who he’d treated poorly, somehow? Or who had misperceived his actions? He had never even touched women clients in the office, except to shake their hand, from across his desk. He made a point of it. Was it Cynthia Cooper, as Katy Roswell told him? But they had gotten along. Then he recalled that she had friend requested him and they had spoken not a year afterward, very friendly, sharing details of their lives, and messaging each other a few times. It wasn’t her at all. He remembered a few other names, some faces. He remembered sex, the tacit shame afterward, the smell, how sometimes afterward he was repulsed by the smell of alcohol and sweat and cum. Nothing else stood out that he could remember. But he may have been wrong, he kept making himself think. He didn’t want to be one of these men who made excuses. Still, it was ten years ago. At the time, one of the women had written a text that had said, Seriously, you’re going to be that guy, after he didn’t text or call her. What was her name? Jane, Joan? Catherine? Could she have seen him as a predator in the aftermath? Did she feel like she hadn’t consented after the fact, after he didn’t call her? Another had texted him, saying: That was fun, but let’s not do it again.
He thought of his old life, pre-divorce. It felt sometimes like he was trying to look at his own eyeball. His ex-wife lived in the same house they had lived in together when they were married, out near the old rock quarry in one of the nice neighborhoods. The house was brick, now stained a sort of grey, which he didn’t like. It was on a wooded lot with a stream behind it. It had been incredibly difficult to leave that house. He’d felt sentimental and nostalgic when packing, and his ex-wife had said at the time, Please don’t do the wounded puppy bit. It’s time Roger, and you know it. Do you need reminding of why we’re divorcing? Yes, he had said, initially angry, as he so often was then, frustrated. But she was fearless: she told him that she was done, she couldn’t live anymore with a man who didn’t know how to make sacrifices, whose time was more important than hers, than everyone’s. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a good father, he was. It wasn’t that he didn’t provide, he did. It was that his time was more important than her time. Everything revolved around his time, hisjob as the divorce lawyer, his Thursday nights playing ball at the Y, that he could never miss, and when Sean arrived, it was his sleep prioritized, and even if he made a point of getting up and helping, he slept in, went into the office late. That was the thing, he sacrificed but only in theory. Everything calculated like that, Jeannie had said that day. His whole life a selfish calculation. That is why we are divorcing, Roger, she had said.
Jeannie texted one morning while he threw out to-go boxes, attempting to clean up his condo. You have a meeting at school tomorrow. I’m done. Call the school. Set up the meeting. Talk to your son. You promised. He also heard from administration at the boy’s school, a phone call about what they said was a difficult matter, asking if he could please meet tomorrow in the a.m., whatever time was good for him. He took a sleeping pill the night before, and it helped, but only some. Pink knew that such a meeting was the opportunity for the talk that seemed to never occur, seemed to always be delayed, though now that he was jobless he felt a horrid frenzy in his chest, as though there was a beehive there, which made him constantly dizzy, unbalanced. He still hadn’t told anyone that he’d been officially let go, but he had a plan for the day. He had to step up, be a decent father, a good role model, despite the feeling that he was some kind of hypocrite. He had to be brave. His idea was that he would take the boy out for lunch, maybe, after the meeting, depending on what exactly the meeting was about, how much trouble the kid was in. Part of him wished the school might reschedule, or that he’d get in a car accident on the way there, something to put this all off, but he thought, that’s not brave. Come on, Pink.
Sitting in the lobby of the administration offices, Pink tried to feel the lightness and humor of being the father of a wayward high school kid, like some kind of 80s comedy, but he didn’t. He felt dread at the impending meeting with school administration, fearing that the boy had done something even more reprehensible than he could imagine. It couldn’t be worse than when Sean had stolen and sold Viagra, though. Let it not be another Viagra incident, Pink thought. He looked down the hallway, which was that tiled black and white kind found in many schools, squares from one angle, or diamonds from another. Cinderblock walls painted an off-white. Everyone was in class. It was quiet, smelled of disinfectant. A custodian was rolling a trashcan down the hallway, making a rumbling sound that got louder, then faded as the custodian turned a corner. Pink glanced at his phone, a more interesting place to put his mind than the bland angles of the school, when his son, wearing huge headphones, a backpack slacked over one shoulder, and his curly hair hiding his eyes, loped into the room. The boy said a quiet hello. Mr. Waters, the receptionist said. You can both go back now. Pink said a brief hello to his son, asked quietly what this was about. The boy shook his head. Pink followed him into an office, which had college posters on the walls, advertising for various state schools, other pamphlets about mental health and suicide prevention on a small end table, a stack of student handbooks. On the faux-wood desk, Pink saw that the vice-principal had family photos, stacks of documents, a computer with an enormous screen. The typical degrees in frames behind the desk. A grey industrial filing cabinet, filled with what Pink figured were permanent records of students. He felt vaguely irritated by all of it, like it was the idea of a principal’s office rather than a real office.
A woman named Chandra Reeves stood from her desk, shook Pink’s hand, said, Please, sit, and then was saying that she was thankful he could come in today on such short notice to support Sean here because there’d been a bullying incident, or she should say incidents, that have been going on for some time, but that the school only recently found out about. She was talking fast, making it difficult for Pink to process her sentences. Then he realized that he was here because Sean was bullying someone and had been for months. He felt his anxiety turning into anger. He kept himself from looking at the boy, who was not really a boy anymore, but who he thought of as a boy still. Pink composed himself, straightening his tie, and said that that was terribly disappointing to hear and just as he was about to ask what happened, the vice-principal reached a hand out, palm down, and said that it wasn’t what he was thinking, and she was sorry to not have spoken more clearly a moment ago. They weren’t dealing with Sean bullying anyone today, but with Sean being bullied. Pink was quiet for a moment, then said, By whom? She explained that there were a group of girls, or, she guessed, mainly girls. Mainly girls? Pink said. Some of them were, you know, she stopped. All born biological girls all, the vice principal said. Okay, said Pink. I get it. Right, the vice principal said. So, as she was saying, they had the text messages, one of Sean’s friends had come forward and had explained that Sean was facing what appeared to be months of online harassment. The vice-principal now turned her computer’s screen, which showed screen captures of text and online messages, vitriolic and aggressive: Sean Waters is a misogynist by nature. He hates women, doesn’t respect women, and has no idea that being female-bodied is different than being male-bodied. Another: Sean Waters is the most disgusting version of a male chauvinist: it’s his general attitude toward everything that makes him so disgusting when he should know better. He’s a cliché cis-white male and will eventually turn into an incel. Another: Sean Waters pretends to be an intelligent, caring person, who wants to have deep conversations with you, but really he’s just a pervert who looks at porn and thinks very little of female-bodied persons and he doesn’t make GNC persons feel safe. He’s the most inauthentic, misogynistic person I know. Pink asked what GNC was and both the boy and the vice principal said, Gender non-conforming. Right, right, he said. He glanced at the boy: his head was down, eyes covered up by his curly, black hair, hat in his lap, covered by his hands. Pink looked back at the vice-principal, only now seeing her: she had big brown eyes, a kind of purple, glittering eye shadow, and sleek hair. He cleared his throat. What exactly did Sean do to bring this on? he said. Pink shifted in his seat, recognizing his mistake, as Sean sunk lower. The vice-principal smiled gently and said that there was no doubt that Sean probably had said or done things that were out of line in the past—he’d been suspended twice since beginning high school, after all, but aside from the Viagra debacle, his troubles were mainly for classroom behaviors. Attendance, the vice-principal noted, adding that she believed this was something that had been resolved. Isn’t that right, Sean? she said. Yes ma’am, he said, quietly. In this case, she said, I can’t see these texts as anything except online bullying. Sean has done nothing wrong. We just want to make you aware and see what you’d like from us. What you need from us.
Pink said he was a little confused. He straightened his tie and suit jacket. He asked the vice-principal what the girls had said in response to getting caught, what had caused them to send these things among themselves, and then to Sean. The vice-principal had said that was what was strange. She had thought there would be something, well, bigger here, but what she got from the girls was this: Sean, when he talked in class, which was not often, exactly, but not never either, well, he talked louder than other people class. Like his voice was very important. He seemed to only like bands with male performers, and had said, apparently in biology class, that he thought men and women were different biologically, and that that was okay and he liked that, and they were also similar, but not in all ways. Pink didn’t say anything. Then he said, Go on. Oh, the vice principal picked up yellow legal pad with notes on it, and said that Sean’s English teacher said that Sean had made the argument—they were studying rhetoric in AP Lang—that women shouldn’t try to do all the things that men do, that it was ridiculous to make a movie like Oceans 8, and that simply swapping out females for males was still just the patriarchy at work, that it was still masculine traits of power, strength and dominance that were being upheld, and that feminine traits like being nurturing and caring were not being upheld. He apparently said maybe things wouldn’t be, and I’m quoting now, “raped and pillaged” from the environment of other countries the way they were if all things in the world didn’t revolve around men and power and dominance, and maybe women trying to be powerful and dominating like men wasn’t the best idea. He had said he thought it was kind of messed up. His English teacher notes here that it was actually a decent thought, but you can’t really say these kinds of things, especially the rape and pillage part. Wait, what? Pink said. The vice-principal cleared her throat. One of the girls appears to be an ex-girlfriend, she said. And her friends seem almost to be leading the charge. They’re asking that Sean be expelled. Pink looked over at his son, who was slouched further in his seat, feeling that there was something not being said here, that Sean had done something else. Obviously that’s not happening, the vice-principal said. The girls have two Saturday schools, and for Sean, well we just think Sean needs to tone it down some. What do you think? Is there anything the school can do to support Sean and you? Pink shook his head and said thank you for letting him know about this and that he would be talking to Sean in more depth about all of this, to get to the bottom of this. He shook the vice principal’s hand, and she gave him a quizzical look. Have a good afternoon, Sean, she said.
They left the meeting. Before Pink could ask Sean to go to lunch with him, the boy was walking back to class, down the empty school hallway. Pink caught up to him, feeling an elemental frustration, and said, We can talk about this later. I’m assuming there’s more to the story than what I just heard. Dad, Sean said in the hallway, stopping, turning to him. There’s really not. There obviously is, Sean, Pink said. Girlfriend. Not me or your mom knew you had a girlfriend. Sean’s voice got quiet. It was weird to tell you, the boy said. It wasn’t like something to tell. I don’t know what that means, Pink said. What does that mean? Sean shook his head and his voice got even quieter and he said it was hard to explain and it wasn’t like they talked much anyway. Pink told him to try, try to make him understand. I don’t know, the boy said. Like after two months of being together she said she didn’t feel like she was a girl anymore, Sean said. So I broke up with her. I felt bad about it. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, Sean said. Did you say something else? Pink said. Did you say something to her to make her mad at you? Did you do something to her? Sean was looking at him, looking at the ground, then he was saying, too loud, What about you dad? What did you do? Pink stared at him, the boy’s eyes suddenly fierce, angry. We know, Sean said. You’re such an asshole. Sean, Pink said, pushing his own hands down, like lower your voice. Pink tried to say more but he felt unable to, like some wound in his chest was being opened wider and wider. Then Sean’s voice got quieter but was still angry or frustrated, Pink couldn’t tell which. I just didn’t understand, Sean said. She wasn’t a girl anymore she said. I didn’t know what that meant. I’m okay with it, but I didn’t know if I could date her. Him. Them. I tried to say that but how can you say that to anyone? That made her mad. Him mad. But it’s just like Mrs. Reeves said. I didn’t do anything. Everything I said was scrutinized after that. I haven’t said anything in class in months because of it. His eyes were looking around, then looking at Pink, and he was saying, You have to believe me. I do, Pink said after a moment. I believe you.
The sore, constricted spot in his chest seemed to open, and Pink felt his anger abate, like a seizure ending. He saw Sean for a moment on the tennis court, at maybe three: a little brown-haired boy with curls holding a small, child’s racquet, wacking the ball back at Roger and saying, This is making me happy daddy. He’d hit the ball, run after it, his curls bouncing, his face red and sweaty, and then he would bring it back, hit it again when Roger tossed it to him. This is making me happy, he cried. At only three years old the boy had said that. He began carrying a racquet around, keeping it with his toys and putting it in his bed to sleep at night, saying, Can we play again tomorrow?
Pink felt like he was coming apart, like something in him was dissolving. For a moment he seemed to be falling through the void. Where was he going? He wiped his eyes with his thumb, shook his head. Dad, Sean said. It’s okay, Pink said, stepping back, composing himself again. Thank you for talking to me. I’ll text you tonight. Or give you a call. Sean nodded, hesitated. The bell for class rang, a kind of electronic alarm, and students moved into the hallway. A quiet murmur rose, teachers’ voices calling after students, laughing, lockers opening, closing, footfalls and bodies moving, a buzz. Sean said, Yeah, okay. He walked down the hallway, looking back once. Pink made sure his face was neutral, then he smiled, and said, Have a good day. Call you tonight. Sean nodded and pulled his noise canceling headphones onto his ears.
Pink watched him among the other bodies, moving down the hallway, turning a corner, the din of the school rising slightly higher. When the boy was gone, Pink took his phone out to text his ex-wife. He hesitated, not knowing what to text. The anxiety he had felt for months had been replaced with something else, an engulfing sadness. He rubbed his chest. He texted Jeannie, Everything’s okay. Proud of him. He put the phone back in his pant pocket. He felt overcome, as though things were not impossible, as though his son was okay, would be okay out there with the other moving bodies in the hallways, the other voices, rising now in a clamor along with the clatter of books tossed into lockers and another bell announcing the beginning of a new period.
Pink walked out to his car, the pavement and windshields and all that metal making a hazy heat radiate upward as he walked. His chest was open now, energy like the energy off the pavement radiating out. It had felt so good, he realized, to think of Sean, to really think of anyone else. He felt he could see him, that he was real. But then it began again. He saw himself putting a hand on a woman’s knee. He saw himself buying her a drink. He saw himself putting an arm on the back of her chair. He couldn’t help it. He was so sick of it. He saw himself arguing with Jeannie. He saw himself helping a client. He saw himself going to the gym, he saw himself running the court. He saw himself flirting with a client. He saw himself thinking about himself. He saw himself getting into his car, he saw himself cranking the engine, he saw himself driving down the freeway. He saw himself, he saw himself, he saw himself.
