The Way You Destroy Evidence

“Craig, enough!” bursts out before thought, and for a second Jacob is a defender. Then Priscilla’s fingers on his elbow and her genuine confusion: “Since when are you defending that freak?” He sees himself through her eyes, through the eyes of everyone who turned around — and the rage has to be strangled, “fast, with his own hands, the way you destroy evidence.” The impulse itself he honestly describes as dirty: “someone else’s shoe was standing on his thing.” He was defending not a person but property (see “Mine. Don’t Touch.”).

Two truths at once here. First: Jacob’s motive is an owner’s jealousy, and he knows it. Second: even that motive the hallway does not allow him, because standing up for the “freak” means falling out of the hierarchy. Internalized homophobia works exactly like this — not as a belief but as an instant recalculation of the social price, after which “I’m not defending him” comes out by itself. The more status a person has, the more one honest movement costs him.