LOQUITUR

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The University of St. Francis' Literary Magazine

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    Reading has been a substantial part of my life for as long as I can recall. Hell, as far as I'm concerned, life did not start before I discovered books, which have always been a sort of escape for me. No matter how bad anything would get, or seem to get, I could always just leave it all behind and go on a tour of an amazing chocolate factory, listen in on a conversation between a pig and a spider named Charlotte, or just pop some pills with Alice. It never ceases to amaze me the places that one can flee to when journeying into a book.

  One day, my love for books provided an actual physical instead of the normal mental escape for me. Now I didn't get into a library on wheels and end up in a far off land or anything like that, but that sure would make a great story. What happened to me was the absolute greatest thing that could have happened at the time.

  It was the middle of summer between my fourth and fifth grade school years, and this was a typically hot, humid July afternoon. I was riding my bike around our cozy little town looking for something to get into. Perhaps a baseball game would be going, or maybe an extravagant game of hide and seek in the woods down by the creek, or best yet, maybe I would run into the apple of my eye, the newfound love of my life, Dawn.

  Now with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, I realize that everyone considered this an insignificant childhood crush, but you would be taking a pretty big chance of having a bruised shin the size of my young foot had you tried to tell me so then. Dawn had just moved to our town at the end of the last school year, but in that short time she had managed to conjure up emotions that I did not know were possible to have for a girl. Actually, all other girls still had cooties for all I knew. But not my Dawn, she was the prettiest, funniest, and just plain coolest girl in the whole town, and we were going to get married. Now I wasn't just some stupid kid who actually thought we could really get married at our age, but I was willing to wait until we were grown-ups, you know, like when we started high school. Lucky for me, she felt the same way.

  So I'm cruisin' around on my bike just daydreaming about how happy my little princess and I will be together for the rest of our lives, when I hear someone yelling ferociously in the distance. I turned to see who it could be, thinking it would be a friend of mine trying to get my attention, but this yell came from anyone but a friend. Now I don't know if one's blood can really turn cold, or if the fact that it is a sultry July day will have any effect on the temperature of one's blood, but I'll swear to this day that my blood did indeed drop a few degrees when I saw who was trying to get my attention.

  It was my ill-fated luck that Dawn had a brother who was in the eighth grade and apparently loved to fight, or I should say destroy anyone he could lay his hands on. Before school had even let out for summer I had seen him maul a seventh grader at the bus stop who I though was pretty big and was known to put up a good fight. The goon had given the kid two black eyes, and doubled the amount of lips he had. It was not a pretty sight. Evidently, he had found out about the feelings his sister and I had, and word around town was that it would be in my best interests to avoid him at all costs. The situation that I now found myself in definitely did not fit into my best interests. It was Dawn's brother, the good, and his no-mind crony sidekick pedaling up the street on bikes of their own about a block and a half away.

  In situations like this, they say the mind turns to two options, flight or fight. The way I saw it, it was more along the lines of flight or die. With no real decision to be made in this area, I began pedaling as fast as my legs would allow, and glanced back over my shoulder. They were both standing up now and pedaling as fast as they could, and though I had always been tall for my age, and had longer legs than my peers for faster pedaling, I was no match for eighth graders. They were closing in on me fast!

  They had narrowed the distance between us to a block at the most when it occurred to me that I had better figure out where I was going, and I had better do this real quick. It would have been ideal for me to head for home, but there was one problem. I was going the opposite direction of my house! I could have attempted to go around a block and try and head back in that direction, but I knew that that choice would have been suicide. I had no chance of outrunning these guys for that long.

  I could hear the sound of their bikes now, and I turned back to see that they were less than a half block away now. "You're dead you little creep!" shouted the goon. "Yeah, dead creep, huh huh huh," echoed his brilliant accomplice. These and other promises of various degrees of mutilation were being screamed at me as I attempted to elude them.

  I felt like I was in a dream. No matter how much faster I thought I was pedaling than the preceding moment, I was still losing ground. I could feel my heart pounding against my chest, part from the exertion, but mainly from fear, and each breath I gasped for stung in my chest. I had to figure out what I was going to do. The library! I had spent a good part of the majority of the days of the summer in the library, and it was almost like a second home to me. It was only about one hundred yards ahead, but at this point I could actually hear the heavy breathing of the goon and his henchman in between their blood curdling death screams.

  Just as I was contemplating how close someone would have to be before I would be able to hear them breathe, I saw two figures, one on each side of me. At this point they had quit screaming and were just laughing at what had to be one of the most horrified looks they had ever seen. I knew that I was done for, but just kept on pedaling. I looked forward and thought that they were trying to force me into running into a fire hydrant that was near the entrance to the library parking lot, which at the speed we were traveling would be a near fatal blow in itself. Apparently, however, they had no intentions of this, or at least the sidekick had no clue of it, and I swerved at the last second and just missed it. Fortunate for me, but not so fortunate for the goon's partner, because although I did not have the joy of witnessing what happened with my eyes, I heard the initial thud, followed by a brief silence, followed by the unmistakable sound of pavement eating flesh.

  There was no time to celebrate yet, though. This seemed to infuriate the goon even more, and as we neared the entrance to the library, he smashed into my bike with his own. This didn't seem to me to be a very effective move because it really only stopped his forward drive, and caused me to swerve a bit. At about ten feet from the door to the library I jumped off my bike without even slowing down, and just started to run as fast as I could. I was reaching for the door when the entire midsection of my body completely lost momentum. I heard the good laugh and snarl, "Get over here!" as he yanked on the end of my shirt. This produced one last bit of adrenaline rush as I yanked on my shirt as hard as I could and spun at the same time. I was free and had my hand on the door! Yanking the door open, I felt another pull on my shirt, this time at my sleeve. This wasn't as bad as the first grasp he had, and a quick pull produced one small tear in my shirt, and one giant leap into safety for me.

  I'm not sure how I knew that I would be safe from the goon inside the library, but it just seemed logical that way. Libraries repel goons like churches repel evil spirits. Sure enough, he did not even cross the threshold to the entrance of the library, and I had indeed escaped. My love for books actually provided me with an escape that was more substantial than any previous escape that reading had provided for me mentally. Now, however, it was time to find a book that would allow me an escape from my first broken heart, because although I was able to escape this time, I knew I wouldn't be willing to take the chance again. The goon may have not been able to beat the crap out of me, but he did a fine job of scaring the love away.
 
 

    "Lieutenant! Get your ass out of bed, now! We have a new shipment arriving in half an hour! I want you in full uniform and out on that platform in twenty minutes!" Peter was shaken from his sleep by his commanding officer, an angry, savage look on his face. Peter glanced at the alarm clock on the shabby nightstand next to his bed. One-thirty AM. He had overslept. He must have forgotten to set his alarm. He quickly began to dress himself by the stark light of the over head bulb. His quarters were the same as all the other lower officers' quarters. Stark and drab, with only two simple twin beds, a night stand between them, and two footlockers, one his and one belonging to the other lieutenant, his roommate. Being assigned here wasn't exactly considered an honor. He wasn't complaining, though. He knew the way that some people in this place lived, and his quarters were a palace by comparison. The stark light hurt his eyes; he still had not adjusted to working the night shift. His head was pounding. He had been dreaming about a world in which none of this was happening. A dream world.

    Peter dressed himself in his uniform and was out at the platform in ten minutes. As always, his heart was racing. It wasn't long until he heard the shrill, harpee-like whistle of the train approaching. It pierced through his pounding head like a razor sharp knitting needle, slowly, as the train grew closer. Soon it would start, and he would have to begin the dance.

    It wasn't long until Peter could see the single, unblinking eye that was the train's headlight approaching down the track. Soon he could make out the symbol on the front of the train. That carnivorous bird with its wings spread straight, perched upon that symbol. A symbol that had once signified peace and prosperity, a symbol that Peter had once so loved, and that now hurt his eyes to look at. When the train finally stopped at the platform, and the engine had died down, Peter had just enough time to hear the moans of the adults and the crying of the children before he ran to his assigned car and began to open the door. It was hard to see because it was dark, and the air was filled with snowflakes that weren't snow. He quickly opened the door and began screaming at the passengers to get out, quickly, quickly! He brutally grabbed many of them by the arms and shoved them back to the lines that were waiting for them. Some of them were bleeding from the hands and face. There were always a couple of bleeders on every car. They were packed in so tightly that whoever was unlucky enough to be next to a window got pushed up against the barbed wire that covered it. One of the men that he grabbed was bleeding from his hand, and some of his blood smeared on Peter's uniform. It didn't bother Peter anymore, though. There was always blood on his uniform, whether visible or not. As he jerked the arm of one little boy, he could feel the boy's shoulder dislocating. Peter's heart had been dislocated when he had learned of this terrible business. But what could he do?

    Peter knew that what he was participating in was wrong. But he was terrified about what would happen to him if he tried to do anything about it. He had heard the stories. He wasn't supposed to have heard them, but sometimes he overheard things. He had really only committed one act of kindness, a minor gesture really. But he had been caught, and as punishment (they had told him that it was for his own good) he had been sent here. To hell on earth.

    He hadn't been frightened at all, at first. His foolish eyes and young mind had been filled with visions of glory about reclaiming the Fatherland. He had listened to the Fuhrer's speeches with wide eyes and a sense of awe, like a young child who hears the magical tales of Kris Kringle bringing toys on Christmas. But he would soon feel very confused and horrified. He had never thought it would come to this. He hadn't really even thought of the Jews as people until he had witnessed their suffering first hand. He had been shown all the "educational" films, telling of how the Jews controlled all the money, and that the Jews had made the Germans so poor after the first war, how they were not human, but subhuman, a form of vermin. He remembered the films cutting back and forth between footage of Jews in their temples and rats in a sewer. He couldn't understand how he had believed that, how everyone had believed it, a whole nation brainwashed. Now he knew that they were people. They were innocent people, who hadn't hurt anyone. He had come to despise his SS uniform, the black prison that he wore everyday, poisoning his soul with its blackness, its lightning bolt collar stinging him like the wrath of God. He hated Hitler. He hated himself.

    When all the work of unloading and sorting the people into their appropriate lines was finished, Peter requested permission to report to the mess hall and get something to eat. He was given one and a half hours to do so, the next train being due in two hours. It was unusual to be given such a long lunch break, but apparently there had been some problems with the next train's engine, so Peter actually had some free time, something he seldom got. Before going over to the mess, Peter decided to stop and have a cigarette first. He tried not to smoke them unless he really needed one; cigarettes had become increasingly scarce over that summer. He knew why, of course. He had heard the news about the Allied invasion of France last June. He knew that Germany was going to lose the war. Pretty much everyone knew it by now, although no one was allowed to say so. As he lit the cigarette, he shivered slightly. The nights were starting to get chilly. Winter was on its way. He knew in his heart that a lot of people were going to die this winter, not just the people in the camps, but the soldiers on the fronts as well. Both German and Allied. He was so tired of people dying. He had seen (and been a part of) so much death. He didn't know how much more he could take. He looked down at the cigarette smoldering between his fingers, slowly being transformed from a clean white little stick into smoke and ash, like everything all around him. He wanted to throw it to the ground and stamp it out, yet he continued to smoke it, not really enjoying it but doing it merely out of routine. Doing what was expected.

    When he finished, he started on his way over to the officer's mess, even though he wasn't really hungry. On his way over to the mess hall, he passed by the pit where the bodies from previous exterminations were being exhumed, so they could be burned. They wouldn't be doing that if they didn't know that the Allies were going to be here soon. He didn't know why they were bothering. Who were they kidding? There was no way that so many people missing were going to go unnoticed. Over the past several months, he had felt the sense of impending doom. He knew that they would be caught, and the first ones to the gallows would be the SS, including himself. He didn't care though. He was already dead. He noticed that the majority of the people doing the digging were prisoners. He was amazed that they could still endure such heavy labor, what with how skinny they were. Some of them looked like nothing more than walking skeletons. As he watched the spectacle, one of the prisoners facing him looked up and caught his eye. The man's eyes were sunken deep in their sockets, and looked like only black holes because of the dark and distance. Another corpse digging its own grave. Peter's eyes started to sting at the thought of this, and he quickly walked past the area and got to the mess hall.

    Once inside, Peter got himself a bowl of soup and some bread. The rations here had never been that good, but in the last few months they were becoming worse and worse. Still, it was better than nothing at all. Peter sat down at a table by himself, under the light of yet another stark bulb. He had been here for over a year, and he still could not get used to that light. He stared down into his soup bowl, the surface of the stew reflecting the light back at him, mirroring its image. It looked so anonymous. The soup didn't care what was going on. The soup didn't know where it was. The soup didn't care. Peter envied the soup. It was completely unappetizing. Yet he felt obligated to eat it, if not for himself, then for the starving prisoners, who would probably do anything to have it. But he still sat and stared at it. His mind was starting to drift. If he hadn't done what he did on that March day of last year, he might not be sitting here staring at this anonymous soup, and yet he did not regret doing it at all. He would gladly eat anonymous soup for eternity if all of this would just end.

    It had been cold that morning. Cold for March even. But it always seemed to be cold in that miserable country. Peter hated being stationed in Poland, he wished he could have stayed in Berlin. But he knew in his heart that he was doing the right thing, and serving the Fatherland. Today was the day that they would move the vermin Jews out of the ghetto, where they sat on their lazy asses and did nothing all day, and put them into work camps. Peter's father had toiled for a Jew most of his life. Toiled himself to death. Had been paid next to nothing. Peter remembered nights when his whole family would have nothing for supper but a loaf of bread. One loaf for all five of them. All the meanwhile, the greedy Jew went home to his house filled with riches and feasted and laughed at the Germans. But now things were different. Now the Jews would toil for him, while his people enjoyed the riches. They were the slaves now.

  The whistles began to blow and Peter and the others started running into the ghetto. The liquidation was on. Peter ran to his assigned sector and began pulling people out of their tenement. Man and woman. Young and old. None were to be left behind. Peter and the rest of the forces had been ordered to round up every Jew and herd them out into the street, forcibly if necessary. They had also been authorized to shoot if attacked. Peter recalled the chuckle this had gotten from many of the men when the order was given, and had been slightly surprised by it. He didn't expect that any of them would attack, but then again this was his first field assignment since leaving Berlin. He quickly dismissed it. The veterans must know how these things work. It couldn't have been more than a minute into the operations when the first of the shots rang out. Peter jumped with a start and quickly pulled out his gun. The adrenaline tore through his body. Maybe they were fighting back, after all. He would have to be careful. He ran through the building, ordering people out into the street. He wasn't surprised to see many of the rooms empty. He had been warned that some of them would try to hide. The occupants he did find, though, went quietly enough. No one tried to stop him. They didn't seem to have it in them. When the whole building was empty (or at least appeared to be), Peter went back down to the street to get to the next Jew. When he got to the door, he stopped cold.

  He had expected that maybe some sort of riot had been starting given the increased frequency of the shots. That wasn't it. What he saw were people being pushed into lines. People standing in lines and being shot. Not all of them, only some here and there. A few were trying to run away, and were just being shot. One woman spit on an officer, cursing him for taking her son away, and was simply shot in the forehead. This was not what Peter had expected.

  "Come on, Peter!" a voice called out, breaking the spell. It was Heinrich, one of the other guys in Peter's unit. "I know it's fun to watch, but we've got work to do!" Because he didn't know what else to do, Peter went on with his assignment.

    For the next several hours, things went on in much the same manner; Peter no longer surprised by what he was seeing. But he was feeling something different. Some thing he had not yet experienced in his time in the SS. Doubt. He knew that the Jews were filthy vermin that were infesting the Fatherland, polluting it with their genes and eating all of its wealth. He, as much as anyone, wanted them to repay what they had stolen from the Aryan race, and he certainly wanted them banished from the Reich. But he was doubtful as to whether killing them was the fair way to do it. As a teenager in the Hitler Youth, some five years ago, he had been taught that the Jews were subhumans. He remembered that as being his favorite way to describe them. But now he thought to himself: didn't the word subhuman contain a human?

  When the chaos was over and the Jews that they had found were shipped out and the corpses moved away (stacked in a heap next to the wall near the entrance), the commandant called the men to assemble at attention. "Men," he began, "you have all done good work here today. Most of the ghetto has been cleared of Jews. Those that came willingly have now been shipped off. But this place is not yet cleansed. I have no doubt that many of them are still here hiding in the dark, like the rats they are. They must still think they can outsmart us." A brief chuckle from the men. "Well they will soon learn that they can not. We will now break for supper. I want all of you conduct yourselves quietly, though. When it is dark, and those stupid subhuman kykes think that we have left, we will go back in. We will search every millimeter of this ghetto until we have found all of them. And when we do find them, they will be very sorry for hiding. For they will be joining their friends." he turned and pointed at the body heap "here."

  Peter spent the next couple of hours thinking about things. He ate his supper with some of the guys from his unit, but he didn't talk much. When they asked him what was wrong, he just said that he was tired. He didn't really want to eat, but he did anyway. He wasn't sure what to do next. He knew what the commandant had meant by pointing at the death pile. He knew what was expected of him. He was, after all, an SS lieutenant (thanks to a little help from his uncle). He wasn't a very good SS officer, though, and he knew it. But he had wanted to join so badly that he had pushed and struggled for it. Now there was the doubt. The horrible doubt. It wasn't that he didn't still hate the Jews, but he kept thinking back to the way the commandant had used the term subhuman, after he himself had been thinking of it earlier. But he didn't know if he could go through with it. He had never killed before, not even an animal. And he couldn't get that word out of his head. Subhuman. Subhuman. Subhuman.

  Peter had been so lost in his thought that he hadn't even noticed as the darkness had cloaked Poland all around him. Not a single point of light could be seen anywhere. Not a candle in a window, not a star in the sky. It was time to begin phase two. It was time to Peter to find out what he was made of.

  He and all the other troops all began stealthily searching the building for a second time. They crept patiently around with flashlights, looking and listening for any signs of movement. Occasionally a shot would ring out here or there, making Peter jump. Most of the troops were herding the Jews they found outside, though. To be killed later. It made sense. Why shoot them in the building and have to carry them out when you could make them walk to the spot and do it there?

  Peter crept around in the dark for awhile, he wasn't sure how long. He wasn't really sure if he was looking for any Jews or not. As he crept past a bedroom, he heard the faint sound of sobbing. He cautiously entered the bedroom and followed his ear. It seemed to be coming from under the bed. He looked under the bed with his flashlight. Nothing. Then he realized that it wasn't coming from under the bed, but from the night stand next to it. He slowly opened the cabinet door of the nightstand and shone his light in. It was a little boy, perhaps no more than six, quietly crying to himself. Peter sat and looked at him for a moment. The boy slowly turned his head to look at Peter. His tear soaked eyes glittered in the light of Peter's flashlight. There was something about the boy's eyes. Something familiar. Then it struck him. It was the look that had been in Peter's little brother's eyes when their father had died some ten years ago. The teary, glittery look that he had given Peter when Peter had had to tell him that papa wouldn't be coming home again. Peter was the man of the house at twelve. His brother was six. Peter knew what this boy was going to ask him before he even opened his mouth.

  "Where's my mom?" the boy asked frightendly.

  "--------I don't know," Peter replied softly. "Stay here," he whispered, as he softly closed the cabinet door. He stood up and looked out the window silently for a moment. When he turned around there was a silhouette in the doorway. He recognized the shape of the SS uniform. It was one of his superiors, the division leader. Peter jumped slightly and then quickly saluted him.

    "Well Lieutenant, taking a break for the scenery?" he inquired, nodding his head at the window.

    "Sorry sir. I thought I saw something out there."

    "And did you?"

    "No sir. It was nothing."

    "Well then, have you finished searching this room?"

Peter hesitated for half a second. "Yes sir, it's clean."

    "So there are no Jews in here?"

    "No sir."

    "Not a single one?" Peter was getting very nervous now.

    "No sir."

    "Not even one in the night stand?" Peter was speechless. He knew he'd been caught. The commander had probably seen the whole thing. He decided to remain silent. "Open that night stand, Lieutenant! Now!" Peter opened it as he was told. "Well, I guess your eyesight must be going. There is a Jew in there after all."

    BANG! The flash from the commander's Luger illuminated the dark room like lightening, the thunder of the blast almost deafening in the small bedroom. Peter looked over at the boy. He was now sprawled on the floor, the blood from the head wound forming a thick red puddle around his head. A puddle as red as Peter's armband.

  "I've had doubts about you all along, Lieutenant. You'll have to be reported for this. You'll probably get off easy, though. Considering who your uncle is. You might not even be thrown out of the SS. But rules are rules so I'll have to report you. Go wait for the rest of us by the trucks. The commandant and some of his men are down there. If you're smart, you'll tell them what happened before I have to."

  Peter made his way to the commandant's jeep in shame. But he wasn't exactly sure what he was ashamed of.

  The sound of a truck engine passed Peter by on his left, slightly muffled. He didn't even look up from his soup. He knew where it was going. To make more snow. The soup was almost gone now. Peter had been eating it like the factory component that he had become. The bread remained untouched. He didn't want it. He'd eaten all he could take.

    As he got up from his seat, Peter realized that he had spilled some soup on the front of his uniform. A small grin crossed his face. He picked up his small loaf of bread and headed for the door with it. When he got outside, he was stopped by the guard.

    "Lieutenant, you know you're not supposed to take food out of the mess hall," the guard stated wearily.

    "I know, but I've spilled some soup on my uniform and I need to go change. Would it be all right if I took this back to the barracks with me? So I won't be late for the new arrivals."

    "All right," the guard sighed.

    Once out of the guard's sight, Peter began to grin. He hadn't lied, after all. He was taking it to the barracks. He simply hadn't mentioned which ones. After all, what did it matter? Peter had been dead for well over a year.
 
 

    "GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS" the sign reads in front of a "gentlemen's club" in Coates, Minnesota. Coates is a small town with a population of only 383 people, but the nearby city of Minneapolis helps to keep business at the "gentlemen's club" booming until the early morning hours. However, to see this form of entertainment one need not go as far as Coates; it is available everywhere. Pornography is freely available, whether videos, direct broadcasts, or printed material, not just in the United States but throughout the entire Western World. In America, primetime network shows, like NYPD Blue, have been known to show partial nudity. Most people are not even shocked when they see Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres kissing on television. Keeping all of this in mind, it is unimaginable to think that one hundred years ago it would have been found indecent to say the words breast or thigh, even in reference to chicken.

    Does this mean that the Victorian Age was free of vice? Far from it, but still sexuality was highly suppressed, especially in the case of homosexuality. Looking back on late nineteenth century we see that drinking was a horrible problem both in England and in the United States. Public drunkenness and other crimes related to heavy drinking were commonplace. In a similar vein, narcotics plagued Victorian society; the drugs of choice at the time were opium and cocaine.¹ Prostitution seemed to be an almost acceptable form of recreation for men, even married men, as long as it was not spoken about. There is clear evidence that the problem was very pervasive in Victorian urban centers. It is estimated that in 1880, London had 80,000 streetwalkers, which would have been almost three percent of the city's total population at the time. It is important to note that figure does not include prostitutes who worked in brothels or so-called gentlemen's escorts. Pornography was another form of entertainment available to all men with the money to purchase it. Yellow covered books were sold containing sexual stories and nude or partially nude photographs of often prepubescent girls for a mere pittance.² So what was the difference between then and now? The Victorian Age was filled with various forms of perversion and deviance. However, unlike today, "perversion" could not be discussed in public; prostitution and pornography were present, but never spoken of; huge expectations were set for both men and women as to how they should behave sexually. There was a virtual war on masturbation by the church, schools, and the medical community, which dispensed pamphlets, cartoons, and stories to young men warning them about its dangers.³ The Victorian social and intellectual elite could not have even fathomed a program like the one proposed by President Clinton's first Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders. Elders' program, which would have instructed children how to masturbate in public schools, led to her downfall. However, the very fact such a program was proposed by a person of Elders' standing is significant.

    How could our viewpoint on sexuality have changed so drastically in such a short amount of time? To attribute all of this change to a single event would be foolish. However, if there was one event that set the stage for a change in Victorian feelings about sex, it was the trial of the famous Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. Wilde was tried for the crime of "gross indecency with other male persons." Despite the fact he was convicted, Wilde became a social icon and a "sexual martyr" thereby changing English society and the way the Western World views sex.

    Wilde was born in Dublin on the sixteenth of October 1854. He was the second son of Lady Jane Elgee-Wilde and Dr. William Wilde. Oscar's mother was a self-proclaimed Irish muse. Under the pseudonym of Speranza, she wrote both poetry and prose including several rather revolutionary works for the Irish nationalistic magazine, The Nation.³ Wilde's father was a very successful Dublin surgeon. Ironically, when Oscar was ten, his father was involved in a very public sexual scandal involving one of his young female patients named Miss Travers. In some ways, this incident foreshadowed Oscar's eventual fall from grace. Luckily, Dr. William Wilde's trial was only a civil suit and when the jury found in favor of Miss Travers, he only had to pay a cash settlement.⁴ A year after his father's trial, at age eleven, Oscar was sent to the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen, where his older brother Willie was a student. Wilde spent six years at Enniskillen. After that, at the age of seventeen, he was admitted to Trinity College.⁵ Wilde would complete his education at Oxford where he had an illustrious educational career.

    Shortly after finishing his education at Oxford, Wilde moved to London. There he fit into London's society well and made many friends, even though he was not particularly wealthy or from a very well-known family. It was through such friends that Oscar first met Constance Lloyd in 1881. After returning from the United States, where he gave a lecturing tour; Constance and Oscar began their romance. They were married on May twenty-ninth, 1884 at St. James's, Paddington.⁶ Their marriage was a happy one at first. Constance gave Oscar two sons early on, Cyril in June 1885 and Vyvyan in November of the following year. Vyvyan's birth marked the beginning of a long decline in the quality of Oscar and Constance's marriage.⁷ As his marriage fell apart, Wilde began to experiment with homosexuality. It is thought his friend Robert Ross was the first to seduce him in 1886. Wilde became more and more involved in the homosexual underworld of London after that point.

    In 1891, Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas. Douglas was a young student at Oxford at the time. He came from a very wealthy and powerful Scottish aristocratic family. In the years following their first meeting, it was rare to see them apart from one another.⁸ Wilde and Douglas's close relationship led to rumors of possible improprieties being spread throughout London society in the early 1890s. These rumors displeased Douglas's powerful father, Lord Queensberry. Lord Queensberry had good reason to worry. After all, it had not been long since his eldest and most beloved son, Lord Drumlanrig had committed suicide. Drumlanrig had been close friends with then Foreign Secretary Lord Roseberry (Roseberry would later become Prime Minister). It was widely held that Drumlanrig and Roseberry were actually homosexual lovers. It was these rumors that would eventually drive Drumlanrig to kill himself.⁹ Therefore, it was no surprise that Queensberry was so adamant about not allowing his youngest son, Lord Alfred Douglas, to become involved in a homosexual scandal. Queensberry was not a good enemy to have: he was extremely vindictive and quick to anger. An example of such behavior was the way he treated Roseberry after Drumlanrig's death. Queensberry actually chased Roseberry around the Parliament building with a dog whip until the Prince of Wales himself put an end to the fray.¹⁰

    Queensberry wrote to Douglas shortly after rumors began to surface about Douglas and Wilde's relationship. Queensberry demanded Douglas stop seeing Wilde or he claimed he would disinherit Douglas. Douglas's only response was a telegram to his father that read, "What a funny little man you are." Enraged after receiving the telegram, Queensberry argued with Wilde in public and threatened that if he did not stop seeing his son a scandal would surely ensue.¹¹ Despite this threat and various rumors, Douglas and Wilde continued to be lovers. Wilde and Queensberry's aforementioned argument was the beginning of a pattern of harassment that Wilde was forced to endure. Queensberry set out to publicly embarrass Wilde any way he could. Queensberry actually bought a ticket to Wilde's play, The Importance of Being Earnest, so he could disrupt the show. Luckily, Wilde found out and had the ticket returned and made sure the police were present to stop Queensberry from entering the building.¹² Shortly thereafter, Queensberry left a calling card at the Albemarle Club, where Wilde was a member, which read, "for Oscar Wilde, posing as a somdomite" (Queensberry's spelling). This was more than Wilde could take. He promptly filed charges against Queensberry accusing him of "unlawfully and maliciously publishing a defamatory libel" against him.¹³

    The trial itself began on the third of April 1895. Queensberry pleaded not guilty, claiming that not only had his statement been true but he had also intended it for the public's benefit. Wilde's prosecution team was heading by the eminent lawyer, Sir Edward Clarke. Clarke called only two witnesses, Sidney Wright, who was the porter who delivered the calling card and Wilde himself. In cross-examining Wilde, Mr. Justice Carson, Queensberry's Lawyer, focused on two letters that Wilde had written to Douglas and some of Wilde's literary works. Carson questioned him about the effeminate and explicit language used in the letters to Douglas. However, it was easily defended. After all, this was Oscar Wilde writing to another poet. What kind of language should he have been expected to use? Then Carson asked Wilde about his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which had clear homosexual overtones.¹⁴ Carson asked him if he had ever adored another man like he spoke of in Dorian Gray. Wilde responded "No, I have never adored anyone but myself." Wilde further defended Dorian Gray by saying, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written." Then Carson questioned him about the article, The Priest and the Acolyte, which he was rumored to have written. When Carson asked him if he thought the article was immoral he responded "Much worse than immoral, it was badly written." Wilde summed up his feelings on the matter by saying that "No work of art ever puts forward views, views belong to the Philistines and not to artists."¹⁵ The first day of the trial came to an end with Carson asking Wilde about his relationship with several young men who were named Wood, Allen, Shelly, and Conway. Wilde denied doing anything improper with those men and the courtroom was cleared for the day.¹⁶

    The second day of the trial started with Carson asking Wilde about Alfred Taylor who had allegedly procured young men for him. Wilde said he had met a number of men through Taylor, and he had a close relationship with five of them. Carson then brought up the name of one of those men, Charles Parker, and told Wilde that Parker was willing to testify about a sexual relationship he claimed to have had with Wilde. Carson also brought up the names of numerous other young men and asked Wilde about his relationships with them. When Carson asked him about Walter Grainger, a young steward who worked for Douglas, Wilde made a terrible mistake. Carson asked if he had ever kissed Grainger and Wilde replied, "Oh, dear, no. He was a peculiarly plain boy. He was, unfortunately, extremely ugly." So Carson asked Wilde if the only reason he did not kiss Grainger was because he was ugly. Wilde became disoriented and after Carson hammered away at him he almost broke down completely on the stand. Clark was able to re-examine his client, and he had Wilde deny emphatically that anything improper had ever happened between him and any of the men Carson had brought up. On the morning of the third day, Clarke petitioned the court for an end to the proceedings. Wilde left the courtroom even before the verdict was handed down. It stated, as Queensberry had hoped, that not only was he not guilty, but indeed his statements about Wilde had been intended for the public's benefit.¹⁷

    That same evening Wilde was arrested by two police officers at the Cadogan Hotel. He was taken to the police headquarters at Bow Street where he was placed in a holding cell. The actual trial did not begin until April twenty-sixth.¹⁸ Wilde was being tried jointly with Alfred Taylor, and they were charged with twenty-five counts of "gross indecency" and three counts of conspiracy to commit such acts. The charges revolved around the alleged affairs that Taylor and Wilde had with Charles Parker, William Parker, Frederick Atkins, Alfred Wood, Sidney Mavor, and Edward Shelly. All of the young men gave damning testimony that described various sex acts between themselves and Wilde or Taylor. However, Sir Edward Clarke, who was still representing Wilde, could easily repudiate all of their testimonies except Shelly's. The rest of the young men, after all, were male prostitutes, blackmailers, and petty criminals. Shelly was different; he was a middle class boy who had met Wilde under normal circumstances. Shelly testified that Wilde had tried to coerce him into performing sex acts, despite his numerous objections. After Shelly's testimony, a masseur, chambermaid, and housekeeper from the Savoy hotel were called to the stand to support the claim that Wilde had been found in a bed at the hotel with a young boy. The prosecution rested its case by reading some of the more damaging transcripts from the Queensberry libel trial.¹⁹

    Sir Edward Clarke's defense was very simple. Wilde and Taylor were called to the stand and they both denied doing anything wrong. That was followed by Clarke's summation. Surprisingly, Mr. Justice Gill, the prosecutor, decided at the last minute to drop the conspiracy charges. After three hours and forty-five minutes of deliberating, the jury was unable to come to a clear decision. Therefore, it was decided that the case would be tried again. However, since the conspiracy charges had been dropped, the two men were tried separately.²⁰

    Taylor's trial was first. He was convicted after only one day of testimony. However, his sentencing was postponed until after Wilde's trial. On May twenty-second Wilde's final trial began. There were some marked differences between the first criminal trial and this one. First of all, Mr. Justice Lockwood, who was known for being ruthless, replaced Mr. Justice Gill, who was a relatively fair prosecutor. Also, the presiding judge was Sir Alfred Wills, a staunch conservative who seemed to be biased against Wilde from the start.²¹ The trial was over by the twenty-fifth, and Wilde had been found guilty of seven counts of "gross indecency." Sentencing took place that very day: both Wilde and Taylor were given two years of hard labor. As the sentence was handed down there was some cheering in the gallery but also cries of shame were directed at Justice Wills.²²

    The press covered the trials in a biased manner. Most of the wealthy united against Wilde and since they owned and controlled the newspapers, it was difficult to obtain an accurate and fair account of the trial. Furthermore, most of Wilde's friends were silenced or in exile so there was no one to speak on his behalf. There was, one exception to this rule: a young journalist and writer named Robert Buchanan who came out in strong support of Wilde. Buchanan was a frequent contributor to the Daily Telegraph and other newspapers. He started a spirited debate over the treatment of Wilde through the Star's correspondence column. Others joined Buchanan eventually, including Alfred Lord Douglas, in criticizing the way the press and the justice system had treated Wilde.²³ However, Buchanan's plea fell on deaf ears, and his protests would have done little good anyhow since Wilde had already been convicted.

    Wilde served his two years in prison quietly. While he was in prison he suffered many personal tragedies. He went bankrupt, his mother died, his wife left him, and he suffered a mental breakdown.²⁴ After being released, he went with his old friend Robert Ross to Dieppe, France. Ross and Wilde only stayed there for two weeks before moving to Bernaval.²⁵ That summer Wilde met with Douglas for the first time since the Queensberry libel trial in the small French resort town of Rouen. Wilde then made arrangements to join Douglas at his villa in Posilipo, Italy in six weeks. He stayed with Douglas for almost three months before he decided to return to France. Upon his return, Wilde made Paris his home. He stayed there until his death in 1900.²⁶

    Wilde lived a degenerate life in Paris. He was completely broke and depended entirely on his remaining friends for money, he was an alcoholic, and his only intimate contact with others came in the form of cheap French gigolos. Also, his health was in a steady state of decline. On November twenty-eighth, Ross rushed to Paris overnight from London after receiving word that Wilde was deathly ill. Two days later, Wilde died in the company of a few friends at a Paris hotel. The exact cause of Wilde's death is disputed, although it appears to have been the result of some type of neurological disease. His funeral was a simple one, and only fifty people were present at the burial.²⁷

  Despite, his rather quiet death and funeral, Oscar Wilde was far from forgotten (although many in British society wished that he had been). It was clear from his obituary in the London Times that people's perceptions of him were changing. The article focused mostly on his accomplishments in life and barely mentioned his fall from grace.²⁸ His obituary had a clear remorseful tone and it made the reader regret the loss of such a great writer. It was hard to imagine the same newspaper that published this obituary had raked Wilde over the coals only five years earlier during his trial.

  Not only did some people regain respect for Wilde again, some grew to idolize him. Wilde became a mythic figure to many of Europe's young artists and aesthetics. France had formerly been the hotbed of decadence in Europe, but Wilde changed all that. The French had many notable decadents like Verlaine (who ironically also served time in prison for sodomy), Bourget, and Pierrot, but it was Wilde who popularized their ideas in England and elsewhere in Europe.²⁹ Wilde's "martyrdom" was also instrumental in the growth of the German naturist movement. The naturists in Germany followed Wilde's example and lived frivolous and decadent lives. They were responsible for the opening of various nudist clubs, the popularization of promiscuous sex, and a surge in drug abuse.³⁰ By the time of World War I, this kind of decadent lifestyle was not uncommon all over Europe including in England. In London, Wildean clubs like the Golden Calf, with its golden phallic mascot, were opened. The Golden Calf, and other clubs like it, was modeled after the infamous Café Royal that Wilde frequented when he was alive. These clubs became places where the young literary figures of the time, like Ezra Pound and Gaudier-Brzeska, could go and talk, flirt, get drunk, or experiment with narcotics, much like the naturist clubs found in Germany.³¹

    The Wilde trial also helped to bring about a revolution in thought on the subject of homosexuality. People commonly referred to Wilde's homosexuality as "abnormal," by today's standards that might sound backwards, but for the Victorian Age it was not. It meant that some people realized that Wilde's homosexuality was due to a physical or psychological characteristic that made him different from most people. During the 1890's, in Germany, men like Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Karl Heinrich Ulrich, and Magnus Hirschfeld did pioneering work on the subject of "same-sex passion."³² Unfortunately, the English medical and scientific community lagged far behind their continental brethren on the subject of homosexuality. However, the Wilde trial served as a direct catalyst for Haverlock Ellis's voluminous work, Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Ellis chose for his first volume the subject of "sexual inversion" (i.e. homosexuality) and he spoke directly of how Wilde and his trial led to an increase in open homosexuality. This particular volume was published in 1897, only two years after Wilde was convicted, and became the first scientific work written about homosexuality in English ever.³³

    The Wilde trial was also the inspiration for changes in sodomy laws in Europe. England maintained its law against "acts of gross indecency" until 1961. However, other countries, such as France, legalized same-sex relationships shortly after the trial, in light of the public's new feelings towards homosexuality.³⁴ New progressive thought about homosexuality, legal reforms in homosexuals' favor, and the mere existence of Oscar Wilde, gave homosexuals in Europe a new sense of freedom. Certainly, the Wilde trial did not increase the number of homosexuals in the world, but it did paradoxically give some of them more courage to be open about their sexuality.³⁵ This is evident when one looks at the steady increase in the number of openly homosexual people since Oscar Wilde's time. By 1920, Berlin alone was home to 56,000 openly or semi-openly gay people, a number simply inconceivable twenty years earlier.³⁶ What's more, Wilde provided the newly immerging homosexual sub-culture with an ideology for living that would be dominant within the gay community until World War II and which still persists to some degree even today.³⁷

    The Wilde trial had many ramifications for Victorian society. Probably the most important of them was also the most subtle. The Wilde trial provided Victorians with a mirror of sorts to look closer at themselves and their society. The Victorian Age was rife with corruption, perversion, and immorality. However, no one was willing to acknowledge any of these problems truly existed. Oscar Wilde was a famous man; he had contributed greatly to literature and theater during the 1880's and 1890's. Despite all of his accomplishments and contributions, he was ruined over a simple act of "perversion." Wilde's fall allowed people to question whether or not their sexual mores were effective and just. After all, how could a jury made up of men whose favorite hobby was spending time with the streetwalkers in Piccadilly convict Wilde because he enjoyed similar pleasures with young men? Few people in Victorian London were angels. How could they expect Wilde or anybody else to be any more pure than they were? Victorians allowed Wilde to be punished; but they would come to realize punishing Wilde for being "perverse" in a perverse society was ludicrous.

    Though few realized it at the time, the Wilde trial heralded the end of the Victorian Age. The Western World was searching for a new identity and new way of thinking and the Wilde trial helped to give them just that. The trial was a significant turning point in English social life, just like the Dreyfus affair in France.³⁸ (Some people even attribute Dreyfus's eventual release directly to the lessons society learned from the Wilde trial).³⁹ The proceedings that took place at Old Bailey in the spring of 1895 helped to bring about an important shift in English society and Western thought. Decadence would grow in prominence, and by World War I, it would be a permanent fixture of society. The scientific and medical communities of the world would never look at homosexuality the same way, neither would average people or homosexuals themselves for that matter. Most Western countries would make same-sex relationships legal, some in recent years have even gone further by allowing same-sex partners the right to marry. Western sexual mores would be forever altered. Oscar Wilde's mother, Jane Elgee-Wilde once said of her sons, "I am not anxious about Willie.but I expect simply extraordinary things of Oscar."⁴⁰ Certainly, a sodomy trial was not what Lady Wilde had in mind; however, with all certainty one can say that because of that trial simply extraordinary things have occurred.
 
 

¹ Wolf Von Eckardt, Sander Gilman, and J. Edward Chamberlin, Oscar Wilde's London (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 226-227.

² Ibid., 241-243.

³ Ed Cohen, Talk on the Wilde Side: Toward a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male Sexualities (New York: Routledge, 1993), 35.

⁴ Philippe Jullian, Oscar Wilde (New York: Viking, 1969), 11-12.

⁵ Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1916), 1.

⁶ Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde: A Summing-Up (London: Duckworth, 1940) 38-43.

⁷ Jullian, 137-139.

⁸ Ibid., 154-156.

⁹ Ibid., 224-227.

¹⁰ Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde (New York: Random House, 1984), 426-427.

¹¹ H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1975), 217.

¹² Harris, 109-110.

¹³ Von Eckardt et al., 73.

¹⁴ Michael Foldy, The Trials of Oscar Wilde (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 1.

¹⁵ Ibid., 1-5.

¹⁶ Harris, 122.

¹⁷ Foldy, 14.

¹⁸ Ibid., 15-19.

¹⁹ Ibid., 20-21.

²⁰ Ibid., 31-36.

²¹ Ibid., 37-39.

²² Ibid., 39-41

²³ Harris, 186.

²⁴ Foldy, 60.

²⁵ H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde: The Aftermath (London: Methuen, 1963), 22-46.

²⁶ Douglas, 131.

²⁷ Jullian, 368-380.

²⁸ Ibid., 389-398.

²⁹ London Times, 1 December 1900.

³⁰ Foldy, 80.

³¹ Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand (New York: Arcade, 1998), 32.

³² Ibid., 10-13.

³³ Foldy, 83.

³⁴ Cohen, 9.

³⁵ Douglas, 17.

³⁶ Cohen, 97.

³⁷ Hoare, 56.

³⁸ Alan Sinfield, The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde, and the Queer Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 191.

³⁹ Jullian, 324.

⁴⁰ J. Robert Maguire, "Oscar Wilde and the Dreyfus Affair," Victorian Studies 41, no. 1 (1997): 1.

⁴¹ Jullian, 13.
 
 

    In fifth grade, I had a teacher called Mrs. Irwin. She had a large brown mole on her neck with a tarantula of black hairs crawling from it. I was mesmerized by the mole every time I approached her desk. I could not believe a woman could neglect such a horrifying appendage. My fear was that I could become old and forgetful, empty of vanity, and get ogled by horrible young girls.

My fear was understandable. At one time my own mother looked and dressed like a supermodel. She had since digressed to a murky state of sweatpants and bad permanent wave. She compared brands of maxi-pads for price and function in front of the entire supermarket shopping world. Slumping into mid-life, she neglected her bikini line and had a permanent underarm shadow. I cringed at the adventuresome forests and vowed to never have unwanted hair.

    My moustache started as a single hair protruding from a dark black mole. My mother told me that the mole was a beauty mark, like Marilyn Monroe's. The mark really might have been beautiful, except for one straight blonde hair that perched on the end of it. In seventh grade, as the locomotive of vanity began building momentum, I plucked it out.

    I remarked upon the removal to my friend Suzie's mother, hoping for approval. Suzie's mother was a master of cosmetic arts; covered in Mary Kay concealer and powder base, spattered with hairspray spittle. She knew all the ugly secrets of feminine hygiene; she owned a beauty salon. My mother and I furtively referred to her place as the "Redneck Beauty Parlor." It was like a plastic covered, sparkle-seated bar-room where salon lushes bought hair tonics and specialty shampoos like martinis. They went in for their weekly nail art fix, and at the end of the day stylists swept up all the unwanted trimmed bits that were left over.

    Suzie's mother looked at me very seriously after I told her about the uprooting of the virgin hair. "You know" she said, widening her butterfly-feeler eyelashes, "if you pull them out they grow back twice as dark." I refused to believe her. Suzie's mother was always trying to sabotage me. I was sure she gave me bad advice in order to ruin me and make her own daughter look better. I made it a point to pay more attention to my facial hair than ever.

    For my thirteen birthday, my Grandmother sent me a package of girl supplies. It was stuffed with choking bottles of "Love's Baby Soft" perfume, Dep Hair Gel, and disposable razors. Hidden in the pile like a hand grenade was a yellow plastic container of Nair Hair Remover for legs. I quickly skipped over it so that nobody would think I had hair to remove. To deflect attention, I made fun of my sister's hair instead. "Maybe you should use it, gorilla girl." She was even hairier than I was.

    Later that night, I fondled the bottle alone in the bathroom. I read and re-read the directions. "Test on small area of skin before applying to larger area. For use on legs only. May cause redness or rash on other skin surfaces." No matter how many times I read the instructions, the underlined message remained: "For use on legs only".

    Overrun with self-deception, I smeared Nair Hair remover everywhere..my legs, my bikini line, and even my upper lip. The harmless blond hair "simply melted away." It was gone! I admired my hairless lip in the mirror and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, I was greeted with tragedy. Overnight, my missing moustache had swollen and puffed into a bright pink rash. It was in the shape of my Nair application the night before.

    My sister was bursting with cruelty. For a week she made fun of my lip rash in front of family and friends. I was an outcast. Karma played its own trick the same week when my stupid sister made the same error. She snuck into the bathroom and stole my bottle of Nair. Hadn't she made the connection? I might have been temporarily injured by vanity, but she had been marred for life with stupidity.

When the hair grew back, it was a tiny bit darker. I plucked again. Once I'd grasped the parasite in between my stainless steel tweezers, I'd look away guiltily and emancipate the thing in one quick tug. When the hair grew back, it was a tiny bit darker. I plucked again...again, again.. But now in addition to evicting the single ogre that resided on the mountain of my beauty mark, I started evacuating the friends that surrounded it. Pretty soon I realized that Suzie's mother had been right.they were growing back twice as dark. The hair protruding from my mole had become black and thick.like the whiskers on my ape-haired father.

    I plucked and plucked. I couldn't stop. I told myself every time that it would be the last.I would start saving for electrolysis. Having a burning needle inserted into my hair follicle would be nothing compared to the emotional pain this defect was causing me. I imagined the sparks that would fly when they electrocuted the malicious hair follicles. It would be like the fourth of July. But I didn't stop.it was like a disease.an addiction to self-grooming. My mother claimed she couldn't see anything at all. So did my friends. But I knew that true woman friends lie when it comes to beauty. And I also knew that if this malady had affected one of my friends instead of me, I'd be helpless against the urge of secret gossip and pity. I continued to pluck.

    I struggled with the persistent moustache until I went to college. I would douse my lip with peroxide and rubbing alcohol until the tender hairs broke off or bleached white. An amateur, I soaked my lip awkwardly in lemon juice, tore hairs off with masking tape..face peels.you name it. Nothing worked. Dark red shame kept me from getting a professional job at the Redneck Beauty Salon. A moustache invisible to others haunted me on a daily basis.

    In college, my roommate suggested I buy some "moustache bleach." I had never heard of it! I went to Walgreen's to investigate. Right next to the Nair Hair Remover was my new miracle product.crème hair bleach. No wonder I had never seen it.nightmares of misused Nair still haunted me. My savior was in a turquoise box, but I was too ashamed to purchase it. I thumbed through magazines, greeting cards, and pain relievers, always keeping a secret eye on what I really wanted. I couldn't do it alone. I had the guts to buy condoms and my Aunt Marge's enemas, but I had to get a friend to buy my moustache bleach. I stood in line along side her humiliated, with a tell-tale blush as bad as the 12 year old who's gone to get her first bra. My red face, lack of eye contact with the product, and chronic moustache guarding pronounced me GUILTY.

    Once I had finally obtained the concoction, I carefully followed the directions. "On plastic tray, measure out two spatulas full of facial hair crème. Wipe off spatula. Next, measure out one spatula full of bleach activator powder onto tray. Mix together well. Using spatula, spread on unsightly hair. For interest of economy, use a two part crème to one part activator for large bleaching jobs." I mixed up a large batch. I tested it first on my belly and toe hair.

    It worked! I was saved. My posture improved. My social life skyrocketed. Men followed me around like hungry kittens and begged for dates. I was even nominated for President of my dormitory..well, not really. But I felt a lot better about myself. My blonde moustache made my life easier. No more daily examinations in well-lit mirrors, no more compulsive plucking before job interviews or romantic interludes. Confidence! I smiled big smiles, shame free. Passing myself in the mirror, giving myself a victory grin, I suddenly noticed how yellow my teeth were. Had they always been that yellow?
 
 

    Everybody loves David. The People love him. Yahweh loves him. The Ladies love him. Long after his death, popular culture still loves him. So why does everybody love David? He's a sinner, he's a saint.Donny and Marie would say, "He's a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll." He's a hero with sex appeal, political savvy, and a good heart. But he's also a thief, murderer, and adulterer. He's even got his own baseball team! (See below). David is valuable to a contemporary audience not only because he is as glamorous as a rock star, but because of the lesson he can teach us about faith. Ironically, in David we have a king renowned for a scandalous affair who becomes a model for fidelity.

    David's duality is present when we first meet him, that is, when we meet him for the first time twice. The two introductions take place in I Samuel 16:14-23 and 17:12-30. (Harrington 110). In the first meeting, David comes to Saul's aid to play the lyre and soothe him from the "evil spirit" that is tormenting him (I Sam 16:15). The first thing we hear about the young man is that he "is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a warrior, prudent in speech and a man of good presence; and the Lord is with him" (I Sam 16:18). Saul loves him and makes him his armor bearer; David calms him when the evil spirit takes him (I Sam 16:21-23).

    The second time we are "introduced to David, it is at the great battle scene with Goliath, a giant of a man. While David is bringing some cheese and bread to the soldiers and stops off to see his brothers, the monstrous Goliath bellows out again that he will "defy Israel." David puts his faith in God, and without a sword cuts Goliath down so that "all the Earth shall know there is a God in Israel" (I Sam. 17:46). The sling shot rock finds its way into the giant's head. Goliath very well may have been a literal giant felled by the young boy R. K. Harrison suggests that there were men in Canaan known for their huge size, possibly due to hyperostosis-a condition resulting from inbreeding (Harrison 717). Whether Goliath is really a man or a monster is unimportant. What the second introduction tells us about David is that he is fearless because Yahweh is on his side.

    Another nice benefit of the Goliath story is that David becomes a model for the underdog.and everybody loves an underdog. Well, almost everybody, except King Saul. Harrison uses current medical knowledge once again to post-diagnose Saul as a paranoid schizophrenic (Harrison 715). Regardless of what caused his insane rage, it is clear that David is not just an underdog against the giant Goliath, but against the powerful king Saul. And once again, it will be the love of Yahweh that slings him forward.

    David is called "one of the greatest military commanders and statesmen of history" (Anderson 176). He has been called "the architect of the nation and the royal champion of Israel's faith" (Anderson 176). Boadt offers that David's diplomatic skills are even greater than his military ones-as evidenced by the fact that the North and South were joined not out of force, but also out of free choice (Boadt 231). The decision to move the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem in order to create a unified theocratic state is considered brilliant (Boadt 231). It doesn't take paranoid schizophrenia to feel the sharp sting of a hurt ego-Saul envied David's savvy.

    Another reason everybody loves David more than Saul is because of his sex appeal. Sure, Saul's warrior status and power make him handsome in a raw, animal way.but he doesn't stack up against David's "prudent speech," "presence", and "talent" mentioned in I Sam. 16:18. When David is anointed by Jesse as a young boy, he is described as "ruddy" with "beautiful eyes;" "handsome" (I Samuel 16:12). When Saul and David return home from battle against the Philistines, the women greet their king by singing "Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands." It is a harsh slap in the face for Saul (I Samuel 18:7). Guess who has a crush on David?

  The ladies of Israel. And its hard not to. After Saul has died and David is anointed King, he gives them a show they won't soon forget. In a religious ceremony bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, David displays his religious sincerity by dancing in front of it. The Bible says, "David danced before the Lord with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet" (II Sam. 6:14-15). The New Oxford Annotated Bible defines the "linen ephod" as follows: "a light ceremonial garment covering only the front of the body; it is sometimes referred to as an apron" (Metzger/Murphy 344). One envisions the luscious David as a B. C. Elvis, gyrating in a crowd of screaming Israelite women. The showing off gets a little old for his wife Michal--she becomes an irritated Priscilla with all his "dancing" and "leaping" and carrying on (II Sam. 6:16).

  Perhaps instead of focusing on David's earthly admirers, we should turn to his number one fan.Yahweh. In the covenant with David in II Samuel, Chapter 7, Nathan tells David about the four promises Yahweh has made to him. In this speech, God promises David a lineage, a dynasty that will last forever, and an intimate father/son relationship. Finally, he promises that he will never remove his love from David (Hagstrom).

  Indeed, Yahweh's special son's name is not soon wiped out of the text. The rulers that follow David are measured up against his fidelity towards Yahweh (Boadt 233). Asa, Amaziah, Ahaz, Hezekiah.all are commended or reprimanded depending on their relation to the faith of David: "Asa did what was right in the eyes of Yahweh, as David his father had done" (I Kings 15:11). "Ahaz did not do what was right in the eyes of Yahweh, as his father David had done" (II Kings 16:2).

  David, David, David! I'm sick of hearing about David! Doesn't this guy do anything wrong? You betcha, says a pre-Brady Bunch Jan who is sick of hearing her older sibling's name mentioned one too many times. Which leads us to the Bathsheba incident.

  Moshe Garsiel attempts to take a different approach to the story of David and Bathsheba, dissecting the story by pieces and explaining the socio-historical basis behind each part of the puzzle (Garsiel 247). The first discoloration of David begins in II Saul 11:1, when he is seen "lounging around" and taking naps in the palace while the rest of his soldiers are out fighting for the country (Hagstom). Garsiel argues that in lesser battles, it was perfectly acceptable for kings to stay at home instead of go to battle. However, while he is protective of David regarding accusations of cowardice or laziness, he lets him have the blame he is worthy of regarding the actual adultery and murder (Garsiel 249).

  Garsiel supports Bathsheba wholeheartedly and absolves her of all guilt regarding the seduction. The author cites Bathsheba's general lack of guile and naïve stumblings in other passages as proof that the affair was not planned by the bathing beauty (Garsiel 254). Indeed, if we accept Nathan's allegory about the poor man who loses his little ewe lamb, Bathsheba represents the lamb described: "it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him" (II Samuel 12:3). The lamb that symbolizes Bathsheba is a tender, trusting creature. She shows real grief for her husband Uriah's death. Garsiel cites the verbs used regarding Bathsheba's ordeal.she came to the palace when the Kings servants "took" her, as would have been characteristic of any loyal servant, but she "returns" to her own house out of her own initiative; she is not one "sent away" (Garsiel 256).

  Thus the blame is entirely David's possession. In two short chapters, David commits four dark sins; he covets another's wife, commits adultery, murders Uriah, and steals another man's wife (Hagstrom). Garsiel reminds us that in the course of killing Uriah, David has exposed other soldiers to death (Garsiel 261). The casualties incurred in this battle would normally result in a scathing for Joab, but because the sinister end of murdering Uriah has been achieved (II Kings 11:25), David says "Do not let this thing be evil in your eyes, for the sword devours now one and now another" (Garsiel 261).

  William O'Brien would chastise all the focus on sex and de-emphasis on military losses that stem from cover-up. He challenges the contemporary comparisons of President Clinton to King David. In his recent article The Things Kings Do, he says:

"To reduce the David and Bathsheba story to one of sexual transgressions is to grossly truncate a powerful biblical teaching. To obsess on the sexual escapades of the president is to be distracted from the far more serious crises infecting our national political culture." (O'Brien 16).

David can offer contemporary students of the Bible.

    David is important theologically because he shows that the King is not above the Mosaic law. He loses his child with Bathsheba, and experiences turmoil in his house and his family. His sons fight viciously over his throne while he lies dying, and Sheba plots to rebel in the North (Hagstrom). The Lord has punished David for his sins "with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings" as promised (II Sam. 7:14).

  To theologians, David is considered "a man after God's own heart" (Anderson 176). David gets a positive evaluation because although he has committed terrible crimes, he has never broken the first commandment (Hagstrom). His feverish dancing is not merely a display of feathers.it is a demonstration of his passion to Yahweh (II Sam. 7:14-15). His bravery against Goliath is that of a son who trusts entirely in his father. Sometimes the story of David is even paralleled to that of Jesus (Boadt 235).

  David is also remembered because of the hope provided by the royal theology resulting from the Davidic covenant and messianic expectation (Hagstrom). Because of David, Yahweh has promised that a descendent of David will always be around and that Yahweh will never take his love away from the people. Even when the kingdom is lost, the messianic expectation that an "anointed one" will come to reunite the tribes and lead the people towards the New Jerusalem is formed from the David legacy. These theological perspectives are important to a student of the Bible, but is there anything that David can teach to the secular world? Come on, David, everybody loves you.even us sinners. What can you give us?

    Ironically, David can be fashioned into a shining role model for loyalty and fidelity. There are several instances where despite David's downfall regarding Uriah, we have to give Yahweh's favorite son a little pat on the back. We see a part of David's loyalty to friends in a touching scene with Jonathan. The men make touching oaths of friendly love towards each other, both before (I Samuel 20:17) and after (Samuel 20:41) Saul threatens David's life.

    Like the two introductions to David in I Samuel 16/17, there are also two traditions to an incident where David shows his loyalty to his king, Saul (Harrington 697). In II Samuel Chapters 24 and 26, David spares Saul's life despite his chance to murder him and obtain the throne. Saul has forced David into exile because of his mad rages, and has made attempts on David's life. In the first tradition, David is hiding inside a cave from Saul and his army. Saul comes into the cave (I Samuel 24:3) to "relieve himself," and David is close enough to touch him. The Lord has fulfilled his promise to deliver Saul into David's hand to "do to him as it seems good to you." So the choice to kill Saul or spare him is up to David, and Yahweh lets him decide without threat of retribution. David chooses not to kill his king and master. Instead, David cuts off a piece of Saul's cloak. He is immediately ashamed, and rushes out of the cave after Saul to apologize--and ask that he stop trying to kill him. Although David's savvy probably guides him in showing the king just how close he really was, it seems to be love and not vengeance he seeks from Saul. Saul weeps, he realizes that David is the better man; David is the better friend.

  The scene unfolds in a second tradition in I Samuel 26. However, this time David takes a water jar and a spear as proof of his proximity to the king while he is sleeping. Once again Saul apologizes, however, in his madness the resolution does not last long. But before he can cause more harm to David, Saul dies. His death gives us another opportunity to see David's loyalty. Instead of cheering about Saul's demise, David fasts, mourns, and tears his clothes over the news regarding his King. He also weeps for his friend, Jonathon (II Samuel 1:12).

  Likewise, David shows us his loyalty and sincerity towards his own children. He is devastated over the death of Bathsheba's child (II Samuel 12:17), as well as the disturbances between his sons Absalom and Amnon. Even when Absalom kills his brother, David is heartsick for both of them.the one that is dead, and one that has fled from him (II Samuel 13). Although David forgives his son, Absalom later attempts to overthrow David. In battle, the young man is symbolically "left hanging between heaven and Earth" from the branches of an oak tree (II Samuel 18:9). Joab kills him. But even after Absalom has let his father down, threatened him, and been horribly disloyal, David's grief is admirable: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" (II Samuel 18:33). So this is what all the talk is about-loyalty, and not holding a grudge. Not just with Yaweh, but to friends and family.

  King David is one of the most colorful figures in the Bible (Hagstrom). He is smart, strong, and heroic; good-looking, a great dancer, and an all-star rock slinger. The story of sex, lies, and bullae is sometimes the most memorable thing about him (Garsiel 259). More than that, he gave theological meaning, hope, and solidarity to a nation, and still provides the messianic tradition to Jews of this age. He is a symbol for Jews and Christians around the world. And for those of unsure or suffocated faith, David can show us not only a good story, but how to be a great friend. No wonder everybody loves David.
 
 

Anderson, Bernhard. Understanding the Old Testament. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1975.

Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament.