FINGER,' he told me. 'LOOK RIGHT AT ME.' I shut my eyes when he put the safety goggles in place. 'DON'T SHUT YOUR EYES-THAT MIGHT MAKE YOU DIZZY,' he said. 'KEEP LOOKING AT ME. THE ONLY THING YOU SHOULD BE AFRAID OF IS MOVING-JUST DON'T MOVE,' he said. 'BY THE TIME YOU FEEL ANYTHING, IT WILL BE OVER.'
'I can't do it,' I said.
'DON'T BE AFRAID,' Owen told me. 'YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT TO DO-IF YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN DO IT.'
The lenses of the safety goggles were very clean; his eyes were very clear.
'I LOVE YOU,' Owen told me. 'NOTHING BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU-TRUST ME,' he said. As he lowered the diamond wheel in the gantry, I tried to put the sound of it out of my mind. Before I felt anything, I saw the blood spatter the lenses of the safety goggles, through which his eyes never blinked-he was such an expert with that thing. 'JUST THINK OF THIS AS MY LITTLE GIFT TO YOU,' said Owen Meany.
THE SHOT
WHENEVER I HEAR someone generalizing favorably about 'the sixties,' I feel like Hester, I feel like throwing up. I remember those ardent simpletons who said-and this was after the massacre of those , civilians in Hue, in '-that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese were our moral superiors. I remember a contemporary of mine asking me- with a killing lack of humor-if didn't sometimes think that our whole generation took itself too seriously; and didn't sometimes wonder if it was only the marijuana that made us more aware?
'MORE AWARE OF WHAT?' Owen Meany would have asked. I remember the aggressiveness of the so-called flower children-yes, righteousness in the cause of peace, or in any other cause, is aggressive. And the mystical muddiness of so much of the thinking-I remember that, too; and talking to plants. And, with the exception of Owen Meany and the Beatles, I remember that there was precious little irony. That's why Hester failed as a singer and as a songwriter-a deadly absence of irony. Perhaps this is also why she's so successful now: with the direction her music traveled, from folk to rock, and with the visual aid of those appalling rock videos-those lazy-minded, sleazy associations of 'images'
that pass for narrative on all the rock-video television channels around the world-irony is no longer necessary. Only the name that Hester took for herself reflects the irony with which she was once so familiar-in her relationship with Owen Meany. As a folksinger, she was Hester Eastman-an earnest nobody, a flop. But as an aging hard-rock star, a fading queen of the grittiest and randiest sort of rock 'n' roll, she is Hester the Molesterl
'Who would have believed it?' Simon says. ' 'Hester the Molester' is a fucking household word. The bitch should pay me a commission-it was my name for her!'' That I am the first cousin of Hester the Molester distinguishes me among my Bishop Strachan students, who are otherwise inclined to view me as fussy and curmudgeonly-a cranky, short-haired type in his corduroys and tweeds, eccentric only in his political tempers and in his nasty habit of tamping the bowl of his pipe with the stump of his amputated index finger. And why not? My finger is a perfect fit; we handicapped people must learn to make the best of our mutilations and disfigurements. When Hester has a concert in Toronto, my students who number themselves among her adoring fans always approach me for tickets; they know I'm good for a dozen or so. And that I attend Hester's occasional concerts here in the company of such attractive young girls allows me to infiltrate the crowd of raving-maniac rowdies unnoticed; that I come to her concerts as the escort of these young girls also makes me almost' 'cool'' in Hester's eyes.
'There's hope for you yet,' my cousin invariably says to me, while my students are crowding into her messy, backstage dressing room-naturally, speechless with awe at the sight of Hester in her typically lewd dishevelment.
'They're my students,' I remind Hester.
'Don't let that stop you,' Hester tells me. And to one or more of my students, Hester always says: 'If you're worried about 'safe sex,' you ought to try it with him-' and she then lays her heavy paw upon my shoulder. 'He's a virgin, you know,' she tells my students. 'There's no one safer!'
And they titter and giggle at her joke-they think it is a joke. It's precisely the outrageous sort of joke that they would expect from Hester the Molester. I can tell: they don't even consider that Hester's claim-that I'm a virgin-might be true]
Hester knows it's true. I don't know why she finds my
position offensive. After so many humiliating years of trying to lose my virginity, which no one but myself appeared even slightly interested in-hardly anyone has wanted to take it from me-I decided that, in the long run, my virginity was valuable only if I kept it. I don't think I'm a 'nonpracticing homosexual,' whatever that means. What has happened to me has simply neutered me. I just don't feel like 'practicing.'
Hester, in her own fashion, has remained a kind of virgin, too.
