Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock(45)

I think about it and say, “In the future I man a lighthouse with my wife, daughter, and father-in-law. We send out a great beam of light every night even though no one ever sees it.”

“That’s beautiful,” he says. “You see?”

But I don’t see, so I say, “Writing those letters made me feel even more f*cked up.”

“Why?”

“I got to thinking that I wanted to live in that fictional world now—that the better world in the letters made me want to exit this world. That’s probably what led to me being here with a gun in my hand.”

Herr Silverman winces almost unnoticeably, but I see it. Then he says, “You ever feel like you’re sending out a light but no one sees it?”

I look at the lights of the skyline reflected in the water and think about how they are always here—every night—whether people look or not.

And mostly, people don’t look.

It doesn’t matter what I do.

It really doesn’t.

Herr Silverman steps closer, and I don’t back away. He takes off his coat, puts it between his knees, and starts to roll up his right sleeve, which makes my heart pound again, because I’ve wanted to know what the hell is under his sleeves for so long now.

When he gets the cuff up around his elbow, he uses his cell phone to light his wrist. “Take a look.”

I don’t see scars or needle marks or an abundance of hair or an unsightly burn or anything like that.

It’s a tattoo of a pink triangle—what the Nazis used to label homosexuals in the concentration camps; I know because Herr Silverman taught us that.

“Who did that to you?” I ask, thinking that maybe he had his own version of Asher Beal.

“I did it to myself. Well, I hired a tattoo artist to do it.”

“Oh,” I say.

It takes a moment, but finally, I realize what he’s telling me.

“I don’t care that you’re gay. It doesn’t bother me,” I say, because I feel like I should.

I never really thought about Herr Silverman being gay before, but it sort of makes sense in retrospect. He never wore a wedding ring, nor did he ever talk about his wife—and he’s a good-looking, well-dressed, middle-aged, steadily employed man who would make someone a great husband.

He smiles at me. “Thanks.”

“Why did you tattoo your wrist like that?”

“I tried to be who I thought the world wanted me to be all through high school. Always trying to please everyone else—keeping my true self invisible. It took me nineteen years to figure out who I was and another twelve or so months to admit it. I didn’t want to ever forget again. I tattooed my wrist with a symbol. So the answer would always be there.”

“Why that symbol?” I say.

“I think you know why, Leonard. It’s probably the same reason you have a Nazi gun in your hand. I was trying to prove something to myself. I was trying to take control.”

“So why don’t you show your students your tattoo?”

“Because it might hinder my ability to get an important message to people who need it.”

“What’s the message?”

“It’s the message of my classes—especially my Holocaust class.”

“Yeah, but what is it?”

“What do you think it is?”

“That it’s okay to be different? We should be tolerant.”

“That’s part of it.”

“So why not be different and promote tolerance by showing everyone your pink triangle?”

“Because that might make it difficult for some of your classmates to take me and my message seriously. It’s sort of don’t ask, don’t tell for gay high school teachers—especially those of us who teach controversial Holocaust classes,” Herr Silverman says, and then starts rolling up his other sleeve almost all the way to his armpit. “Here—use my phone to read this.”

I transfer the P-38 to my left hand and take hold of his cell phone.

I run the light up the inside of his entire arm.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.



The words are printed in navy blue—just simple block letters stacked in two rows. Nothing like the fancy-word tattoos you see sprawled in cursive or Old English across the chests of rappers and famous movie stars. I get the sense that this tattoo is more about the message than the image—the message to himself and no one else, which is probably one of the reasons he keeps it hidden under his shirtsleeve.

“It’s often attributed to Gandhi,” he says. “But I didn’t care who said it when I came across it. I only knew that it made me feel strong. Gave me hope. Kept me going.”

“But why did you tattoo that up your arm?”

“So I wouldn’t forget that I win in the end.”

“How do you know you win?”

“Because I keep fighting.”

I think about what he means, about the message he sends out every day in the classroom, why he’s telling me this, and say, “I’m not like you.”

“Why do you have to be like me? You should be like you.”

I raise the P-38 to my head and say, “This is me. Right here. Right now.”

“No, it’s not you at all.”