He hides who he truly is, lusts for his various loves in secret and agonizes over his unnatural feelings which the school doctor advises must be suppressed by all boys who may be feeling such things. And he could only console himself with his own counsel: Was I the only boy at the all-boys’ school who found that the wrestling matches gave me a homoerotic charge? I doubt it, but boys like me kept their heads down. And it was not my imagination that every other word out of many of the older boys’ mouths was “homo” or “fag” or “queer” these purposefully hurtful words seemed to me to be the worst things you could say about another boy at prep school.īilly didn’t fit the mold – his schoolmates’, his mother’s or his family’s. As a questioning adolescent, 17 years of age in 1959, Billy is alone in world that does not recognize him, has no place for him, desperately wishes he were invisible and mercilessly teases him. And of course, all men and boys are heterosexual and masculine. Good girls “don’t” before they are married and pregnant girls are not really pregnant – they are just on extended visits with their family out of the country for nine months or so. Good people don’t discuss it in pleasant company.
It is the late 1950’s and sex is already a repressed matter. We see Billy’s journey to understanding himself and the people who love and protect and reject him along the way. But Billy loves them all – men, women and those in between. His best friend’s mother, his handsome step-father and drama coach, the beautiful and sadistic champion wrestler at his private high school, and perhaps, most compelling is the small town librarian who for all her good manners, skirts and projected femininity is still oddly masculine in stature with her large hands. We witness the internal agony of Billy, an awkward teenage boy with a mysterious and virtually unknown father coming of age as he struggles with his romantic crushes on all the wrong people. Juxtaposed with our current Proposition 8, gay marriage-equality world, it seems to be set in a time long ago a time when even our closets were closeted. And my, how much we’ve learned and grown. John Irving’s In One Person is not just a window into the soul – revealing the core of the main character Billy Abbott, but it shines a light on all of us society as a whole, by showing us where we have been and casting the hope of understanding for our futures. CLR Īn adult’s retrospective view on a consciousness evolved.
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