A/N - Channeling Finny is no easy task. I don't see him as a writer, and don't think anyone else does either. I've allowed him to ramble a bit, and have a certain disorganization of thought, but he doesn't lie, or if he does, is unaware. Naturally this ties into my view of how things might have developed. nnnnnnnn
Some notes from Finny
Afternoon, October 9, 1946
Three beers in. Now old enough, plus some weeks, to drink – legally.
Gene, being Gene, has some strange opinions. A lot of them are about me – he writes these things down. I write a few notes as a small response.
He writes about us at the Devon School - more than is healthy, I think. He writes at truly impressive length about the seasons there, the grounds and buildings there and of course, the people. I've noticed that the most of the people are only sketched in and he and I are the real subjects he tackles. It doesn't take a psychiatrist to see he's trying to work something out (which maybe can't be worked out - nothing new there). He says having me around helps. I would like that to be true.
In the spring of 1942, for the first time, I remember thinking of myself as an adult; or at least being within spitting distance of being one. I never became that adult. All because of the kink in my road named Gene. Someone I thought I knew, then thought I maybe loved, then for a few hours absolutely hated, then pivoted and found I still loved. You can't go through all that and stay the same. Wearing the cast he put me in, I changed.
Everything Gene writes comes from the space that existed between us at that time. An unlikely bond developing, full of flaws and wrongnesses. I doubt that's a word somehow. Not looking it up. Sounds like a word Gene would like and I like it, so there.
He says he remembers the first time we met. Maybe he does. Not sure I remember it, all more of a hazy maybe. It seems I looked right through him, or tried to. And that look I gave him? Entirely a product of his own head, most like.
No great surprise, his liking to write and in fact, his majoring in journalism. For me, writing usually means something made up – and as such, very like journalism. Not that I could make anything up that way, I have just enough brains to know storytelling is a often a form of lying and I'm an incompetent liar and as such have just enough sense not usually to try.
I'll try to put down some reactions to what he writes; the way his truth was different from mine - without making a story, a personal fable. (Which is maybe what he's trying to do.) And his reading me won't hurt. Will probably surprise him, partially because he thinks I'm, well, semi-literate.
I like some of what he's shown me that he's written, and to my probably unqualified eye, he writes well enough. But reading him when I'm the subject – here sometimes I have a hard time reading what I'm looking at. It can make me uncomfortable, someone I care about trying to pin me down with words.
I don't think I was ever as, well, starry eyed and in love with the world as he makes out. He may remember seeing me that way, but he was wrong. I doubt such a person could survive kindergarten, let alone Devon. It could be a treacherous place; at times almost a minefield. That's the way boys' schools are.
I really felt something, reading him about the time just after the tree, when he took out that pink shirt, and put it on, and when it was as if it was me looking back at him. Phineas to the life I think he said. A chill went up my spine then; these years later, But it wasn't an unpleasant one, if that is possible.
Last week he showed me another great dollop, half way to a memoir– my eyes glazed over a bit. I'm probably not the best judge. Much was familiar territory. I came across where he wrote about the moments in the tree that afternoon, late, toward sunset. I'm not ready to read that and told him so; even after four years, still not. I gave him the sheaf back without really reading much.
What he told me, the words he spoke after I'd come back from the infirmary (second time) were enough, for me.
Easier for me, like everybody, I suppose, the happy moments. For instance, I'm pretty sure that when, balancing on the prow of a canoe (and it was fun, I remember that day clearly), I looked no more like Apollo or Dionysus than, say, the better looking quarter and usually taller half of the sixteen year olds enrolled at Devon. I don't think there's any false modesty here. I was aware what I look like, be a fool not to, and was aware that I could use it; I was sixteen, not eight. Anyway it's a natural thing to do, charming your way to an advantage. It is, isn't it?
More than once Gene caught me in the act of charming (or trying to charm) a master or useful person at Devon and he thinks it's some kind of key to my character – I doubt that.
He loves me he says, anyway. Anyway?
I admit to doing it; I wasn't past setting out the charm to gain some innocuous point; but never intentionally to use it on him, I always liked him well enough, and you don't set out to charm those you truly like. Or at any rate, I don't.
When I leafed through that memoir he offered me I saw things I've have already read, without asking him. Not that I'm any kind of snoop, but you shouldn't leave stuff sitting around; other people have eyes, after all. He's always had a tendency to be just a tad oblivious - especially with me. I have always tried not to take advantage. But still, sometimes it's been useful – the things he's let me learn through his lapses. Ultimately, he wanted me to know these things, so no harm done.
My grandmother's doctor calls her a "poor historian". I begin to think I might be one too, but as for Gene, despite the occasional ray of light, Forrester is more the fuzzy poet than he realizes and less any sort of a recorder of truth. Oh God, he's getting in my head; reading this over, I begin to sound like him! Or maybe it's the beer.
Supposedly you can't believe a word you read (exception here) and I begin to think he proves it. But I love the guy, and will, as he's fond of saying, humor him, when, and however necessary, to the degree required.
He's been in my head for a long I time. I kid no one. Why him, you ask? I know from the thousand looks he's given me almost from the first. I didn't ask for or expect them, but when they came I knew what they meant for me. Just knew, there was no mistaking; I was being spoken to directly and understood it early on. He was both seductive enough and entirely unaware all at once. Maybe I was the same.
Very badly he got completely confused and had to play catch-up, after the tree. He told me that himself, and it wasn't hard for me to believe. Accepting took a while, but belief came right away.
Opposites attract is a truism, a cliché, what have you. It probably made us what we are. We're a pair. History began the day when our names were posted on the housing roster by whatever housemaster was put in charge of changing people's lives forever. Well, it did happen that way, didn't it?
The upper-middler year began with me half expecting some total asshole, like the one I roomed with the year before. He (Gene's predecessor) may serve as an example of my not seen through the eyes of my Mr. Forrester self. I hereby note: he (Gene's predecessor) was, neither liked nor respected, much less "loved" by yours truly! But as it happened, the name "Forrester" was suddenly there in front of me, paired with mine. "I know Forrester" I thought to myself, "…sort of".
We'd barely palled around before that. Gene was too deep off into serious study to be in my sights very often before he found me in "our" room the first time. He seemed almost shy and half intimidated at first. Doubtless dazed by the nakedness of me (yes, I've read part that too), though to the best of my recollection at that moment, I was actually full clothed. What's more, lots of guys were naked in the hallways, give or take a towel, so it would seem that Gene only noticed me, and I can live with that, but I digress.
It was a few weeks before we broke in one another, then smooth sailing – for the most part. He found me sprawled on his bed a few rainy afternoons in a row and his clothes were the same size as mine, so who cares who wears what or who (whom?) sleeps where? And here I'm excluding some of the dubious clothes he'd brought with him to Devon that, believe you me, I wouldn't have been caught dead in. These he gradually replaced locally from the allowance he was sent from the generally bogus seeming South he hailed from. For what it's worth, he'll wear almost anything of mine. All that, and Gene was very bourgeois back then - viz. "non-rule-breaker".
Let's see, where was I?
Gene clipping my toenails when I was still in the cast comes to mind. I don't know why. An odd memory to have cross my mind, I suppose. I was looking down at the whorl in his hair. Seems like five minutes ago, not almost four years. It was a moment like that when I really, consciously knew I loved him. I guess that's why it sticks with me.
There's more to say about what happened between us, but the beer catches up with me and I've run out of things I'm easily able to say. Will have to get back to this.