My Unrequited Love Story with J.F.Ok., Jr.
His curiosity prolonged to the universe. One evening, at a home get together, John and I ended up within the again yard, consuming beer. All of a sudden he stood up and gazed on the evening sky. “Hey,” he mentioned, “you are taking a whole lot of reli-stu, proper? Can I ask you one thing? Do you suppose there’s a God?”
I mentioned I assumed it was extremely seemingly.
“My household’s Catholic,” John mentioned. (And that was endearing, too. That he didn’t presume I knew that.) “It simply appears to me that there has to be a God. Like, how did we get right here? You already know what I imply?”
There’s an extended monologue in “Quick Eyes,” the place the character of Ice describes his masturbatory fantasies concerning the actress Jane Fonda. At its climax, he cries out time and again, “Janey child! Oh, Janey child!” The soliloquy was one thing of a showstopper at each efficiency. On the evening Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis got here to see our play, the actor enjoying Ice had an thought. We had been crowded collectively within the dressing room, on the brink of go on, when he mentioned, “Hey, John, your mother’s right here tonight, proper? I used to be considering. You already know my monologue, the place I’m going ‘Janey! Janey!’ whereas I’m speaking about jerking off? Perhaps I may change ‘Janey’ out for one more title tonight.”
It took a second to sink in. Then John started shaking his head. “No, no, no, no, no,” he mentioned, to normal amusement.
You couldn’t be round him with out excited about who he was. Even in case you succeeded for a second, you’d quickly get a reminder. I bear in mind being at a loud get together, with loud music, and sweaty our bodies packed collectively on the dance ground. Sooner or later, I started to sense, from the flutter of exercise throughout the room, that John was current. (And that was one other factor, the way in which folks mentioned, “John”—“I simply noticed John,” “Is John right here?” “I used to be speaking to John and . . .”—by no means specifying which “John” they meant and by no means needing to.) Turning my head, I noticed John’s silhouette towards the far wall. He was dancing, too, although it wasn’t simple for him. Nobody would let him alone. Individuals stored developing, ladies particularly, and he would decrease his head so they might shout in his ear. (The identical ear that Jackie Kennedy had whispered in, all these years in the past.) As I watched, I spotted the track that was enjoying was none apart from “Sympathy for the Satan,” by the Rolling Stones. Uh, oh. Right here it got here. The well-known lyric. Nothing may cease it now. I watched John as, from the stereo audio system, Mick Jagger’s voice, within the position of Lucifer, sang, “I shouted out / ‘Who killed the Kennedys’ / When in any case / it was you and me.” Did John hear that? Did he hear it and block it out? Or had he stopped noticing issues like that as a result of they had been in every single place? The lyric got here and went, John confirmed no response, and all of us danced on.
My most intimate encounter with John occurred a number of months after the run of “Quick Eyes.” It was the nighttime. I used to be making a postcoital journey to the lavatory in an off-campus condo that wasn’t mine. As I inched alongside the corridor, in boxer shorts, a door opened and John stepped out. He was additionally in boxers. It wasn’t his condo, both. We confronted one another within the darkness. After which, sizing up the state of affairs, John grinned and mentioned, “You canine!”
Me? A canine? And so designated not simply by anybody however by a Kennedy.
Magnanimously, like Henry V, he had included me in his band of brothers. A little bit contact of John-John within the evening.
He impressed fealty. It’s a must to attain again for a feudal time period like that to explain the impact he had on folks, and particularly males. On the morning of commencement, I used to be standing with John and a gaggle of men as we waited, in our caps and robes, for the sign to start out marching. Somebody handed a joint. At that second, from each course, photographers appeared. They’d left John alone throughout his time at Brown for essentially the most half. However they weren’t about to forgo getting an image of him on commencement day. As they streamed towards him with cameras raised, John did one thing I’d by no means seen earlier than. He regarded embarrassed. He hung his huge good-looking head, defenseless towards the method of the paparazzi. Abruptly, as if by intuition, the remainder of us clustered round him. Turning our backs to the photographers, we unfold our robes and tilted our mortarboards to defend our prince from view. I’d by no means felt something prefer it. The sense of obligation. Of constancy. I would’ve been kneeling earlier than John and calling out, “My liege!”
