Michael Malone - Weebly

That mess in the bowl did make rather "close" (as
Saar heard his mother saying) the little cubicle in which
he now stood, jostled with the train's movement, to
drink his Michelob. He preferred not to think about
what his mother (home alone in Concord) would have
thought could she see her only son—her bright, shining
Wally—hiding in a train john, guzzling a can of
lukewarm beer, on his way to go stare at (if not worse)
whichever male whores the city happened to throw out
upon its dirty streets. Her sole creation, her
valedictorian, her concert companion, driven into the
streets of Manhattan by the Furies of what a college
psychiatrist had called his deep-seated masochism and
deeper-seated hatred of his mother. Poor Mrs. Saar—
had she known what sins a series of counselors had
ascribed to her while her son protested in vain, had she
heard her psyche bandied about through rings of pipe
smoke, had she learned she was frigid, castrating,
passive-aggressive, and schizophrenogenic! She didn't
even know that Walter was a homosexual, much less
that it was her fault. She didn't even know that Walter
had seen psychiatrists, much less that her second