Some years back, I was at a college party in Roseland, New Jersey. I wasn’t in college at the time and neither were the guys who were throwing it, but the invite featured a red solo cup and what appeared to be a beer-pong table, so I feel fairly confident in labeling it as a college party. It also progressed just like a college drinking party in that there was a lot of awkward standing around while watching beer-pong, someone locked themselves in the bathroom moments before passing out, and it ended in a Guitar Hero hangover.Somewhere in-between the beer-pong and the Guitar Hero, I was having a discussion a friend-of-a-friend on the front porch at about midnight. She was a teacher and I was working on becoming certified to be a teacher, so the obvious topic of conversation was the impending 2012 apocalypse (this was years before the movie, so the concept hadn’t finished jumping the shark just yet, or so I like to think).
We were interrupted when some ripped-out-of-his-mind meat-head bumped into me and as a result he spilled some beer. The meat-head, who seemed to move and gesture in an exaggerated way, much like a professional wrestler, asked me what my problem was, informed me that I lacked respect, and then explained to me that I was, in fact, a “faggot.” I apologized and offered to suck his dick if it would make him feel better. He got uncomfortably close and breathed heavily at me with flared nostrils and told me that I knew what he meant. I stood there, keeping eye contact but wincing since his breath was drying my eyes. Eventually he pushed me like an irritated older brother and went away.
When I got back to my teacher friend-of-a-friend, she moved our conversation to the overuse of the word faggot. “Oh don’t worry,” I said dryly, “I’m sure he just meant faggot as a generic insult.”
“But that’s just it,” she said, “the children in my class call anyone they don’t like a ‘fag’ or ‘faggot’ and most of them don’t even know what it means.”
“What ever happened to the good old fashioned insults like ‘retard’ or even ‘fuck-face’?” I asked.
“I’m serious.”
“I am too!” I said, throwing up my hands. “Alright fine… its homophobia. That guy was way too into being manly. Usually someone like that just wants to talk about how he’s banging chicks and going to the gym to get ‘big’. They’re so into themselves that they feel threatened by anything homosexual because it could mean that’s what they’re into, and we all know how Jesus feels about that.”
“That’s an interesting outlook,” she said nodding her head.
“Yeah… I don’t know, I was watching American Psycho last night, so I’m thinking of that meat-head from violently banging a chick from behind while pointing at himself in the mirror.
“Anyway, I could be completely wrong, but there are a lot of closeted guys out there. I mean, hell, they say Hemingway could have been a closeted poof. It would explain a lot.”
“I never heard that,” she said.
“Oh sure, he pretty much always portrayed homosexuals in bad way in his writings. Here’s a guy who writes with masculinity being a major factor in his voice and then suddenly it changes to a childish, insecure voice when dealing with sexuality, add in there that he writes gays as cliche sodomites; I think it all points in one particular direction…”
“I don’t know,” she said, rolling her eyes, “I feel like that’s the sort of thing that people just assume and then spread around as fact.”
“Could be,” I said, “but Gertrude Stein had said that she talked to Hemingway about homosexuality and that he seemed like he was hiding something.” She shrugged. “You know, just saying… Gertrude Stein… besides, I’m sure there’s a good number of guys like that who go through their whole lives living in a closet of masculinity like that and don’t even know it.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“Sure, maybe. I’ve had bad relationships with women… overbearing mother… calling dead authors poofs… yeah, sounds like I could be pretty deep in the closet.”
“Well I know a guaranteed way to tell if you’re gay or not,” she said.
“Does it come with a money-back guarantee? …because that could be a deal-breaker right there.”
“If you make out with my sister and get a boner, then you’re not gay,” she said and then called across the room to her sister. While the idea seemed sound in principle, I don’t think she had thought it out all too well. It was awkward. Her sister came over and was immediately confused. Even when she had everything explained to her, the sister still seemed uncomfortable.
At that time something, that I still don’t quite understand, happened in my stomach.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” I said. The friend-of-a-friend and her sister backed away from me. “Unrelated, I’m sure. If I weren’t about to heave, I’d totally make out with you…” the sister’s response wasn’t exactly a smile. “…you know, if you were up for it and all… just saying… I’m Lou, by the way,” I blurted out, shook the sister’s hand, and then stumbled off the porch and into the street.
As I already stated, I don’t exactly know what happened with my stomach, but for several minutes I was in a constant state of ‘about to vomit.’ It wasn’t very pleasant. I had broken out into a cold sweat and there was a lot of pain in my intestines. I had no concept of where I was going or what was going on, only that I was about to vomit but it just wasn’t happening. Finally, I ran into a trash can and regurgitated the night’s snacks and beverages into it.
Relieved, I stood up and took a breath, and then was struck in the face by a hard right-jab. It knocked me down and disoriented me further. I realized there was a man standing above me. He kicked me while I was down.
“I’m sorry, man! I’ll clean it up,” I yelled between kicks.
“Call me a faggot, will you?!” the man shouted at me. I looked up at him and saw that it was an old man with gray hair and mustache but a white beard wearing a comfortable looking knit sweater. He continued to kick me.
“Hemingway?! Are you fucking serious?!” I shouted.
“Believe it, you son-of-a-bitch!” he yelled, kicking me again in the ribs.
“But you’re dead and shit!” I eloquently replied.
He stopped. “What?”
“You’re dead, dude… like 50 years ago dead.” I said. He stumbled backwards, but caught himself. “…the sixties… I think. I don’t know, man. I never really paid attention in school.” He sat down on the curbside. After picking myself up, I sat down next to him. “So wait, you’re seriously Hemingway?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Well that just doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “You have to be the ghost of Hemingway, or something like that.”
“You think?” he asked.
“Sure… I mean, you think you’re him, you’re beating the shit out of some dude in his name, you look like him, and yet you don’t really know why you’re here… sounds like you’re some kind of ghost, dude.”
“This is a lot to take in,” the ghost of Hemingway said. I nodded.
“You want to smoke some pot?” I asked him.
“Sure…” he shrugged, “can’t hurt.”
We looked for a place to blaze, since the open street wasn’t an option, and eventually settled on a tree house we found behind someone’s house.
“So people are saying I was a poof, huh?” Hemingway asked after a few passes of the one-hitter I had brought.
“Yeah… sort of,” I replied. “There’s no real proof, but scholars have psycho-analyzed the shit out of your writing. Psychiatrists seem to think any guy who shows off his masculinity is hiding something. Also, Gertrude Stein—”
“—that fucking cunt!” he cried out. I paused for a moment. “Sorry, I just knew it was her the moment I heard people saying I was a poof. Of course that bitch would spread those rumors about me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She stole a book idea from me this one time and nobody ever believes me,” he said. “That bitch.”
“What book was it?”
“The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” the ghost of Hemingway said.
“Okay that’s a little odd.” I said. “Was it originally your idea or something? What part of it did she steal?”
“All of it,” he said.
I paused for a moment to see if he was serious. “So let me get this straight…”
“Shoot,” he said.
“You had the idea to write The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas…” he nodded, “…which is a fake autobiography…” he nodded again, “…about the lesbian relationship between Toklas and Stein…” he nodded, “…which makes sense if it’s written by Stein, but you’re saying you were going to write it?” He nodded again. I looked up at the stars for a moment. “Yeah, I can’t see why people wouldn’t believe you on that one.”
“Whatever,” Hemingway said, passing me the one-hitter. “It doesn’t sound very believable, I know. To be truthful though, this being a ghost thing is kind of freaking me out. I’m feeling really weird, man. First I find out I’m dead, then I learn that people are saying I’m a homosexual; it’s a bit much to take in.”
I nodded. “It’s cool dude, you might not be the ghost of Hemingway,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, first of all I’m about 99% sure there aren’t ghosts. I mean, I’ve seen that show where the plumbers are chasing after ghosts on the Sci-fi channel… you know… they never really find anything except unexplained blips in camera footage, weird noises, and idiotic help…”
“Okay, I know those words you’re using… it doesn’t quite make sense to me, but I’m listening,” Hemingway said.
“…also, you’re not at all talking like Ernest Hemingway probably would. You sound more like… me, really. You’re probably just a representation of Hemingway that my drug and alcohol addled brain has come up with.”
“That’s deep,” my manifestation of Hemingway said.
“Yeah, I mean it must be,” I said. “Like poof… I like the term poof. It seems kind of silly and derogatory all at the same time. What’s the chance that the real Hemingway would favor the use of the word poof?”
“It was one of my favorite insults,” he insisted.
“Yeah sure it was,” I said, standing up. “Listen, I should get back to the party.”
The Hemingway illusion stood up and shook my hand. “Good evening to you sir; you are a gentleman and a scholar,” he said. I humored him and shook his hand.
“Sure whatever… I’ll see you in hell,” I told him, then headed back to the party.
When I got back to the party, everyone asked about the cuts and bruises I had acquired during my absence. I told them that I ran into Ernest Hemingway and that he beat the shit out of me.
“What was he like?” the friend-of-a-friend asked me.
“Alright,” I said. “Honestly, he came off a little gay.”
And that was the time that the ghost of Ernest Hemingway beat the shit out of me for calling him gay and then smoked with me.
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