Among these she encountered a few partial and cynical homosexuals who apparently enjoyed any travesty on what ought to be a normal coming together of girl and boy. Jane did not know which ones were the homosexuals, scarcely even that there was such a thing as homosexuality, but she sensed under their superficial politeness what seemed like subtle attitudes of defeatism, condescension, and only formality where it is natural to seek warmth. They gently mocked her taste in reading and in music and were politely supercilious about her clothes and about how she rode a horse.
After them is was almost a joy to be with Pete. Her parents, too, found him respectful and a lad of fine, manly qualities. He was obviously intelligent and lightly and unpretentiously he expressed principles of the highest, truest order.
Too much a child still and too backward to seek a mature heterosexual role, too inexperienced to recognize or even to imagine what a genuine lover might offer or seek, Jane found Pete the most acceptable companion available. Unacquainted with the feelings and attitudes of young men in normal love, or even with milder but real interests of this sort, she had no frame of reference in which to evaluate her chief suitor’s monumental inadequacy. She had, in fact, little means even of perceiving it.
Pete himself discussed his girl without the slightest awareness that he lacked any requisite of a romantic lover or of a satisfactory husband. Both of Jane’s parents encouraged his attentions. An impressive mahogany speedboat and a new Cadillac convertible were virtually put at his disposal. He found himself not quite the possessor of these and of many other luxuries but conspicuously in the center of them. It would not be difficult to imagine such a situation turning an ordinary boy’s head, confusing him with grandiose fancies, and, perhaps, initiating a career of delinquency.
Perhaps such an explanation is correct, but I am not convinced. Pete was not dazzled and swept off his feet. He was not, it would seem, particularly excited. He expressed a liking for Jane and her family, and showed evidence of being attracted by the outer appearance of things in this rather glittering world. There was no indication that wild passions for wealth had been aroused and a steady young man lured off toward false goals. Nothing seemed capable of arousing any real drive or passion in Pete, much less a wild one. The pseudo-ideals about wealth and prestige, and the half-hearted impulses of which he spoke had existed long before he knew Jane. They were, however, at best tepid and unsteady aspirations, not strong or really purposeful drives, not constantly beckoning temptations deflecting natural aims. Pete might let himself drift toward a fortune, and even, when caprice stimulated him, paddle a bit toward this goal or effigy of a goal, but he was not the sort of man to swim with frantic vigor toward either positive or negative shores. Fortune hunting might come nearer to arousing him than another aim, but even this did not challenge him to life and human purpose or bring to birth a long-range plan of action. Even in this direction he found nothing to which he could commit himself in actual emotion.
Though his plans were not definite, Pete admitted he felt he would like eventually to marry Jane. He had not weighed his chances to do so very carefully but he felt they were good, “Oh, yes indeed!” he replied, when asked if he were in love with her. As his feelings about her were discussed, it remained impossible to detect any sort of affective content to which those words might refer. The more one investigated Pete’s attitude the more strictly verbal his statement appeared. His reply was a reflex response, the carrying out of a superficially polite routine, a purely formal nod doing justice to vague conventions more or less to the effect that of course one loved a girl if he were seriously considering her for a wife. Pete approved of such conventions. Rather proudly, he denied any outstanding physical passion for her or any specific attraction of this sort. He sometimes held her hand and he kissed her goodnight. These contacts, one would judge, were little more stimulating to him than such doings between brother and sister. The ideas of kissing her as a lover would have seemed to him vaguely repellent, perhaps “common.” He was more neutral, however, than negative toward this as a possibility, and seemed pleased that he could say he had never given such things much thought. He was consecrated to higher and more practical aims.
As the discussion of his attitudes toward his girl developed, it became increasingly apparent that he neither liked nor disliked her. He had not questioned his heart particularly along these lines or so formulated it to himself, but it was plain that she was little more than something incidental in the eventualities toward which he felt himself drifting and was willing to drift. When this was suggested to him he agreed that it was correct, with no shame or sense of having been detected in anything to regret or explain.
“Many people put too much emphasis on love, it seems to me,” Pete said, not argumentatively or even with strong conviction, but somewhat gropingly, as if he were feeling his way toward some position on which he could base his comments. It was not hard to believe he might just as readily have drifted into the opposite position.
“I don’t feel the way so many other people do about love,” he continued. “Other things, it seems to me, are a lot more serious and important.” On being urged to make this point more concrete, he added: “Well, for instance, if a boy and a girl decide to marry and unite two families so they can own a good insurance business or a big pulp-wood mill.”
There was nothing that suggested active cynicism in this young man. He was shaping up something that might pass in his awareness as a sort of goal. In a sense his attitude was idealistic. It was at least the shadow or verbal form of what might be called an idealistic or “higher” type of impulse, but the shadow was, I believe, without substance. Even here one felt an affective hollowness, a lack of the energy that goes into purposive human functioning, and to such a degree as to convince one that this verbal evaluation could never muster sufficient strength, could never matter enough to him, to become a real goal or to make him work toward it consistently or with enthusiasm.
*****
His other activities, convictions, and relations, gave indications of a similar deficit in his functioning. In response to leading questions he mentioned numerous “ambitions.” He was not at all evasive and he seemed entirely unaware that his inmost self might contain anything incomplete, pathologic, or deviate. In fact, one felt that nothing could really embarrass this bright, agreeable, and poised young man.
“Another thing I’d like when I get older is to be a vestryman in the church,” he said, with what looked a bit like enthusiasm. I believe, however, that enthusiasm is a misleading word. His tone of voice, his facial expression, and the myriad other sub threshold details not clearly perceived, in which we feel out our evaluation of a person’s reactions, all suggested affect. But this affect did not, it seems, extend deeply enough into him to constitute enthusiasm or anything else that could move a person very much. Nor do I believe that what affect might have been present will be capable of directing him toward any consistent aim. A well-made cardboard box care-fully gilded could scarcely be distinguished by visual perception from a cubic yard of gold.
I do not think his expressed wish to become a vestryman can be accounted for by a desire on his part to impress people that he was penitent about the forgeries and meant to compensate for them in the future. I think this wish was as real as anything could be real for this person. It had been a feature in his plans over some years.
In discussing his motives he said, “I don’t exactly know why it seems such a good idea to be a vestryman. It just seems to me sort of pleasant and I think I’d like it. It might strike you as a little odd, too,” he continued thoughtfully, “because I’m really not very much interested in religion. Now Jack ——— and Frank ——— are terribly interested in religion. They’re all the time talking about it and bothering themselves. I’m not like that a bit. I can’t see any point in making such a commotion about something of that sort.”
To the next question he replied: “Oh I don’t mean that I don’t absolutely and completely believe every word of the Bible. And I believe everything the church teaches. Of course I believe things like that.” I hardly think he was
