Spine Intact, Some Creases. Victor J. Banis
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and I can only hope it will provide a glimpse or two of what happened and what changed in those ten or fifteen years.
I hope too that you will find it interesting. I certainly did, both living it and reliving it. Although I said at the beginning that this was not the story of my life, I could hardly write about my experiences without sometimes talking about myself and how I came to be who and what I was, so, yes, some of my life pops up here and there; but you expected that all along, didn’t you?
It is, as I have indicated, a discursive work, and some of the subjects I touch upon will no doubt seem arbitrary and certainly peripheral to the main theme. Since I wrote at length, for instance, on my success in teaching other writers, it seemed to me that I should give some idea of how or what it was that I taught them. And since I wrote what I can now see was a rather large if uneven chapter in the history of gay fiction, I felt qualified to offer my opinions on the subsequent state of gay fiction. And after that I thought, “What the hell?”—and threw in some sleazy gossip and a few diet tips because, let’s face it, those things sell better than history.
Soon enough, however, I began to worry that I might have left myself open to charges of venality, so to be safe I added my thoughts on religion and the soul. Hmmm. Better, surely. No one could accuse me now of prostituting my art.
But then I got to thinking about those diet tips. Anyone who sees me on Oprah will know at a glance that diet tips are not my strong suit. So to offset that, because I didn’t want to come across hypocritical, I added some recipes, good fattening ones that would be more in keeping with my image. Or at least more in keeping with my figure.
And after that…but the point is, you can see that things get away from me. Which really is the story of my life, although I realize I promised at the beginning that this wasn’t going to be that.
I have made free with my opinions on all of these matters but they are only my opinions. I have also been cavalier in ignoring, where I chose, the thoughts or positions of others on the same subjects. You may object all you want. This is a personal expression. If your objections are particularly vehement or you think your diet tips are better than mine, you can always write your own book and leave my coattails alone—or as an old friend used to say, “Get off the runway, Rose, it’s my turn.”
This is a work of nonfiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is probably unavoidable.
* * * *
I have written, in addition to verse, short stories and articles, well over one hundred books. The best estimate I can make is somewhere around one hundred and forty. This, however, was far and away the most difficult writing I have ever done, for the very reason that it was so personal.
The only easy part was a phrase that I ran across in a book collector’s catalog, describing the condition of a particular book offered for sale; “Spine intact, some creases.”
“Little book,” I thought, “I know just how you feel.”
And dog-eared, too.
CHAPTER ONE
SEARCHING, SEARCHING…
I fell in love with Carol on my first day of school. She was a vision all in pink (for all I can actually remember, she might have been wearing green and yellow, but in my memory I see pink and pink it shall remain).
I can’t tell you what exactly I was wearing except that there would have been new shoes—in my large, poverty beset family, we mostly went barefoot in the summer. And whatever else I wore, I’m certain it was stained when I arrived home from that first day. I was much too shy to hold up my hand and say I needed to go to the bathroom. Anyway we didn’t have a bathroom at home, we had four rooms and a path. Probably the teacher wouldn’t have known what I was talking about if I had said I needed to use the path. Stains were simpler.
We lived then in what we called “The Burnt Place,” a house in the country that belonged to a friend of our parents and which had indeed burned sometime in the past and had never been rebuilt. I was number ten of eleven children and I have no doubt that today they would arrest our parents for moving a brood like that into what nowadays would be considered a deathtrap.
Truth to tell, I suppose it was a deathtrap. There were stairs that ended in landings and nothing but space beyond, rooms with no roofs, some with no walls and even one with no floor. No amount of cleaning or airing ever quite got rid of the scent of charred wood. Outside, and there was lots of outside, there was a creek, a barnyard complete with nasty bull, and a nest of bees buzzing under one of the derelict staircases.
We loved it. We had moved there from “The Streetcar,” which was exactly that, an old streetcar that had been parked on an empty lot and made more or less habitable. Mostly less. When you crowd parents and a gaggle of children into a streetcar, with a sort of kitchen and some accommodations for sleeping, there is not much room left for anything or anyone.
Now we were in the country and there was plenty of room for everyone and no end of places to explore. I very soon discovered that the bees under the stairs, in their infinite wisdom, did not sting me. After that I had great fun stirring up the nest and listening to the screams of my brothers and sisters as they fled in terror. I didn’t say I was a pleasant child.
The house talked to us at night, whispers and creaks and groans, but I think she was happy that we were there. My sister saw a ghost. We all saw our brother, Bill. Bill was the oldest of the boys, away in the war, but there he was one night in the glare of our headlights, by the side of the road, smiling and splendid in his uniform.
Our father stopped the car and we tumbled out to greet our surprise visitor—and could not find him, though we searched in the ditches, behind and up trees, everywhere he might have hidden to tease us.
Disappointed, we piled back into the car. In the back seat, we debated what could possibly have happened to him after that first sighting. In the front our mother only gazed pensively at the darkness beyond the car’s window.
The telegram came nearly three months later. When she read it, our mother gave a single, heart wrenching wail of anguish. Bill had been killed in action, in Italy; as near as could be determined, at the very same time when we saw him along the road.
I don’t imagine there could be a good day for such a telegram to arrive but there could hardly have been a worse one; Happy Mother’s Day, Mrs. Banis.
* * * *
When you are as poor as we were, with a father in ill health and a mother constantly in motion, big sisters are important. Big brothers too, but the times and the ages were not favorable, with the older brothers away at war. This left much of the responsibility for us younger ones to Fanny, who was twelve or thirteen at the time. That is just old enough to look after younger brothers and sisters and yet young enough to communicate on our level—which is to say, the perfect big sister, and so she has mostly remained through many years, though I have no doubt that she has often wished to be rid of the lot of us.
Significantly, the chief weapons in Fanny’s arsenal were books from the library—not just stories, either, though she read those to us as well. Most important, however, we were intended to learn as much as we could, as fast as we could. This, though she did not put it in so many words, was to be our passport to a better life. If we had been given not much in the material sense we had been given brains and we must not waste them.
By the time I was four Fanny had taught me to read and write. I was surprised when, as an adult, I looked again at The Wizard of Oz. It was only a small book after all, though it had looked enormous when I first read it at four. Significantly, it was the beginning of my love affair with books. She also, by the by, introduced me to the Nancy Drew books, which I enjoyed and which later played a significant role in my life’s direction.
* * * *
With or without books, The Burnt Place was definitely a move up for the Banises. Still it was simply the gutted shell of an old house—no central heating, though there was certainly no lack of air. No water, no electricity, no plumbing, much of it, indeed, with no roof. Carol lived in a town manse called Home Acres. I think you can see