Chapter 2: Flashback: Dan and Renny (1)

Renny. Renukadevi Viswanathan from Trivandrum. His first great love and lost wife. Anita’s mother. She was 19 and Dan 21 when they met.

Dan’s parents had come to the USA from County Kerry in Ireland. He was born in Holyoke in Massachusetts, but they brought him back to Ireland when he was two years old and he grew up there. He had just finished secondary school and had been accepted into the national art college when they, and his younger brother Jack and sister Patricia, were all killed in a car crash, leaving him completely alone at age eighteen. His uncle, his mother’s brother, lived with his wife and family in Queens, New York City, and very generously offered him a home while he went to art school there. He sold the house to fund his tuition, and came to NYC.

His aunt and uncle had three children, Dan’s cousins. Patricia, the eldest, was four years older than Dan and in her senior year at NYU. Kevin was Dan’s age, and Charlie was the baby of the family, being ten years old. Dan was given Charlie’s room, and Charlie was banished to a shakedown in the attic¸ to his annoyance. However, Dan made a special effort to be nice to Charlie, taking him to movies and baseball games, and listening intently to his explanations of the game, and his enthusiasm for the Yankees and disdain for the Mets. Soon they were on the best of terms.

Kevin and Dan were great friends and went everywhere together. Kevin was a bit of a harum-scarum and he and Dan went on roistering expeditions, getting drunk and playing pranks on innocent victims. They spent a lot of time in the frat house of Patricia’s college boyfriend, until he graduated and went to travel around Europe. He did not ask Patricia to join him and she was very sore about that.

They also spent a lot of time in various gay hangouts, because Kevin himself was gay. Dan, urged on by Kevin and his friends, tried his sexuality with them, but found that receiving oral sex from a man was OK, but he could take or leave it; giving it did nothing for him, and he only did it for politeness, and he found anal sex was painful to receive and unpleasant to give. He often looked at a woman to lust after her; but never at a man. He decided that he was definitely a “breeder” as his gay friends called it.

The problem was then, to get a girl. He had been brought up in a strict Catholic regime, and being both shy and clueless about women, had never had a girlfriend. His clumsy advances to his classmates and their friends were unsuccessful.

One evening he and Patricia were alone in the house together, shortly after her (ex-) boyfriend had gone to Europe without her.

“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” she asked. “Are you gay like Kevin?”

“No, I’m not gay,” he said. “I’d like to have one, but I don’t seem to click with anyone I have tried with. I don’t know what to do, and I am starting to lose confidence. You’re a woman—tell me what I am doing wrong.”

“I don’t think you are doing anything wrong. You should just be yourself, and the right woman will find you. But you should make an effort to be on their wavelength. You should learn to talk to them honestly about your feelings, not hide behind macho maleness, pretending not to have any. That may work for jocks, but it won’t work for you. You’re not like that.”