Faggots (25 page)

As our Saturday-night grand opening comes closer, let us join two distaff members awaiting the arrival of Randy Dildough.

Dordogna del Dongo, a handsome woman, redolent of flaming red: her hair, her dress, her essence (her eyes are black), confides, in her living room, expensive views of Central Park, from the Fifth Avenue side, damask and toile and flimsy nettings of gentle gauze and chiffon and crepe de Chine, billowing o’er furniture gathered from the globe’s four corners, elegant, unusual, original, uncomfortable: tables of tusks, sofas of puffs, side chairs of slats, floors of marble, walls of wool, an impressive decorator’s dream in lemon-green-white-limestone-cement-and-Harris-tweed, to her good friend, Adriana la Chaise: “I am nervous.”

Dordogna is called Dordogna. She does not have a nickname. And, while nervousness can be a touching quality in a woman, Dordogna and nervousness will never be on intimate terms.

While sounding German, her husky accent is not. But she had been educated abroad, on the island of Sylt, where she had met, fallen in love with, and married her first faggot, Helmut del Dongo (who does have a nickname—Mutty), thereby relinquishing her maiden name of Jones.

They were two innocents then, Mutty and Dordogna, she already described, he medium, wiry, pie- and pasty-faced, both only twenty-five, and they played with each other and at life as if the enchanted cottage in which they dallied would never be spooked.

But it was not to be. Dordogna soon discovered that there was more to a man than his providing her with an ancient name, a vast inheritance, a jetting into the society in which she wished to deplane, her own bank account, a skyscraper duplex, and pleasing companionship, including a shared passion for marbles—and that Mutty was simply not providing it. Along about the second year of their blissful, storybook marriage, she began to have dreams about gigantic cocks, often more than one at a time, all somehow protruding from Mutty’s body, she impaling herself on one, on all, on one after the other, and being transported unto a rhapsody thus far unplayed.

Not being an hysterical young woman, she attempted with the suavest of psychological devices to lure her Mutty toward scaling more lascivious heights. At first she would merely play with him, which, since he did a great deal of this by himself, provided scant results. She then reversed her body so that they both might practice mouth-and-mouth resuscitation, also to little avail, beyond a slight proneness on his part toward gagging. Eventually, with the aid of marijuana, scented unguents imported from the East, where they were thought to know about these things, plus a great deal of time and patience and loving words and soft music and the burning of a special incense imported from the West Coast, where they were thought to know about these things, she managed to make him semi-hard.

In despair, she finally asked him directly: “Mutty,
querido,
what would make you nice and hard?”

He paused a long moment before answering. After all, his marriage was at stake, a marriage the del Dongos of Argentina not only sanctioned but thanked their lucky stars the boy has finally stopped his
Selbstbefriedigung
(jerking off) (there is much German feeling in Argentina) and taken a woman, even if she is from Flatbush and common, but who will ever know with that accent and a classy name like Dordogna?

However, Mutty knew he couldn’t keep up the charade forever, that his softness was only going to make Dordogna, an insistent type, try harder, and anyway he had his own realizations (once you have tasted cock, you can never forget it) to contend with. He figured he might as well get it out and over with.

“What would I like?”

“Yes.”

“Anything in the world?”

“Anything! Tell Dordogna.”

“To make me nice and hard, Mutty would like that you would on the wall opposite to this bed of swan project pornographic films of men doing things to each other.” He felt cleaner for his confession.

To her credit, Dordogna took it like a mensch. She lay back on their feathered bed, stuck his rich fingers into her fine Selbst, and had him befriedgte her off. Then, relieved of her tension, she relaxed and tried to think things out.

“You must have what you want, Mutty, without guilt. I could not keep you away from sucking your cocks.”

“Who says you have been keeping me away?”

“You have been leading a double life?”

“Not so double. I thought you knew.”

“I never knew.”

“Now you know. And I am more in love with you than ever.”

“And I with you, Mutty, more than ever.”

So they cuddled together, played a good game of marbles, and then she looked at her bank balance and decided that she would become a successful designer of men’s clothes. That fancy South American name should be so useful.

Two years later three million men around the globe are wearing her suits and sports coats and slacks and lounging robes and Argyle socks. Her casual style was an instant success, the satisfaction of an unfulfilled international need. She now has a bank balance to rival Mutty’s father and is considering branching into Cologne.

Mutty on his part found bachelor’s digs, kept in daily touch with his still wife, and spent two glorious years sucking cock from city’s bottom to city’s bottom. He is dimly aware that he has yet to find the companionship he enjoyed with Dordogna, she is still my best and only friend, he has thought to himself many times, but then he is now mature enough to realize that one cannot have everything and besides she is now such a success as to frighten even a del Dongo.

Dordogna continued to play nervous. “Adriana, whatever will I say or do?”

“Oh, Dordogna, stop it! You’ll know precisely what to say and do. You always do.”

Adriana the helpful, Adriana the romantic, Adriana the bosom buddy to the current and fair, Adriana the rich, all that English beer, Adriana still looking good for sixty, not so bad for a tired English bohemian leftover from the edge of Edna St. Vincent Millay, now hiding in a sea of faggots, for whom feminine beauty was not the keystone, outrageousness was!, making them tons more fun than straights, Adriana was placing her young pal, Dordogna, in the path of that nice young mate of hers, whom she had run into just this morning at The Pits and warned him: “Darling, if you’re going to be quite so visible, we’d better find you another beard!” Yes, Randy Dildough was due shortly for tea.

“I suppose,” Dordogna said, checking herself in her mirrored wall and ceiling, deciding that she was flamingly beautiful and huskily, muskily so. “I am always having faggots,” she then said. “Why am I always having faggots?”

“Darling, you love faggots. They are a challenge for you. You will not rest until you turn one of them on. I know and respect your chase.”

“I suppose.” And then, after a wave of her long chains of real gold and a swing of her Oriental bracelets, she asked: “Why, do you suppose?”

“Do you wish my best Hampstead Heath interpretation?”

Dordogna nodded and rattled.

“Because you and I, I consider my own problems just as yours, are terrified of real men, mainly because real men are such godawful bores.”

“True. So true. And no challenge whatsoever.”

“And they are not interested in what we are, things which faggots know so well, things of beauty and moment, things of fashion and fun, things of this instant and long ago, they love old things.” Then, pausing to consider that she was an old thing, she added: “The only trouble…one does so want now and then to get laid.”

The meeting was not an instantaneous success. Randy was, naturally, nervous, and Dordogna could find no clue to how to play her hand.

She tried flattery, demureness, an interest in films and other current events. Adriana tried a few off-color jokes and then excused herself to go home and dress.

Alone, Randy was even more nervous with the woman. But then, inadvertently, she hit upon her clue.

“You are such a powerful man,” she said. “You must tell me about power.”

He suddenly found this woman honest and sincere and interesting. He began to relax. He then recalled she had a husband. He relaxed even more.

Well, it’s a start. And, thinks he, she does seem so terribly interested. Perhaps she is. After all, he is important. But then, thinks she, so am I. Two Important People Belong Together think both of them. Could I live with that, thinks he. Could I live with that, thinks she. She has not put a foot wrong. Nor has he. They are dancing well together. She wonders if he is possibly bisexual. That would make things so much easier. He wonders if she is possibly a dyke. That would make things so much easier. He wished he knew a dyke who could tell him if Dordogna was a dyke.

He said: “I am to receive the President’s Medal, given semiannually to that young businessperson who most embodies the ideals of our nation.”

She said: “How wonderful! I am to receive the Man of the Year Award from the International Consortium of Masculine Accessories.”

He said: “How wonderful! It’s nice to know a Man of the Year.”

She said: “It’s nice to know someone who embodies the ideals of our nation.”

Yes, it’s a start indeed.

Finally, after seven cups of Formosa Oolong, he shook her hand and kissed her cheeks and promised to call her early in the week.

She asked him at the door: “Tell me, are you going to this quaint Toilet Bowl I am hearing so much about?”

“Oh no no no no never.”

So she knew where to find him later on.

Did not our Fred have much to analyze! After a return to his Henry James abode for an evacuation, he paced around his premises for approximately ten minutes, querying his inner self for indications on how Cary Grant might conceivably have handled any of these new plot points, coming to no ready conclusions, either as Cary’s scriptwriter or his own, before deciding his castle was more akin to a prison and heading out, for deeper concentration, to the streets. He walked down Christopher, already running over at mid-afternoon, thinking that if he had to parade through this sewer, among these slags (but they’re my friends, I’m a slag, too, I’m in this zoo, too), once more in his lifetime, don’t they know there’s something better? (where!), he’d slit his wrists indeed, Menchitt & Swinger notwithstanding.

So I am on that fence of life I am always condemning Anthony for so straddling. My mind is saying: “Get rid of that loser! Cut your losses before you cut your throat!” And my internal organs residing slightly south of that fine thinking machine are saying: “You ain’t over this one yet, Charlie.”

Should I walk away? This thought came to him as he found himself at Dinky’s building. My goodness, have I journeyed so uptown so quickly? How about a postcard? “Dear Dinky, I was searching in your wastebasket and I found your sweet note to George.” Or a telegram? “I was ransacking your belongings and I found your leather and chains.”

Or a letter of declaration posted, Martin Luther-like, upon your front door: “I love you, you want to love me, you said George doesn’t mean a thing to you, we can work it out, just you wait and see, leave it up to me.”

Then he walked home again to hold telephonic communications concerning Dinky’s own creative letter writings with both Gatsby and Anthony.

Gatsby naturally said: “You must confront him! How can you let the prick get away with it!” He also said that he’d reached Chapter Two of his novel, was considering a move from the city, “too much fucking interference, and what’s happening with your own fine script?”

“Fine, fine, just fine, everything’s coming along just fine,” Fred answered, throwing a guilty look at his unused IBM.

And Anthony had naturally advised: “Why confront him? Maybe he never even sent it. It was in the wastebasket! Forget it. Don’t overreact. You know you tend to overreact. And if he said all those nice things to you in person, give it a try.” He also said that he was personally feeling very warm toward a young trampolinist, “so who am I to give you advice?
I
should slit my wrists. But then I think that if I were my father, I’d probably be doing it with a chorus girl. What do I know, Tante? Why are we persisting with these losers? By the way, he wants to go to Fire Island. Can we come and visit?”

Gatsby had also said: “Lemish, you’re in trouble. You want to love so much you can’t afford not to believe. See it through, see it through. And learn from it. You’re strong enough.”

So, feeling strong enough, Fred walked again, this time uptown to the Y, taking with him some comfort from those important words from Flatchkind & Krasspole: “Human sex obviously reflects human experience for better or for worse. And said human’s human fear is that other humans will find him wanting, thus making it difficult for him to change without patient, beneficial, therapeutic, outside aid.” I shall be his outside aid. Who’s had more beneficial, therapeutic, outside aid than I? I shall help him change. He wants tenderness? Tenderness he will have. I wonder what to call what I gave him before? Do I need a recall to Dr. Dridge? No! I can work this out myself. I must also, among many other items, try not to think that according to Vonce, Noodrick & Pelt there are three roles one can play as a homosexual: one involving being the daddy to someone who is the son, another, therefore, being the sonny to that pop, the third involving looking for yourself in someone approximately identical to you, and that it looks like Adams, D., is an experienced actor of all three. Along with a few others…Well…, Dinky’s searching. Well…, so am I. I shall also try not to think that Dinky is showing distinct Fefferisms. Can I handle same four years later? God knows we all have problems. What’s a little leather? It’s even rather sexy. No, I shall not be self-righteous. And I must not be dismayed by a casual tidbit plucked from the garbage to a person who means absolutely nothing to him.

Feeling ever so much better now that Decision had been reached, he jogged his jog, worked out his workout, and stepped upon the scale to discover he’d made one hundred and fifty again. A good omen.

But, just in case, he also stepped into the punching-bag room and courageously approached three mean-looking blacks.

“Excuse me, but I have never hit anybody in my life and I was wondering if you could give me a few pointers on how, if I had to, I could punch a guy in the face. Without hurting him, of course.”

Of the 2,639,857 faggots in the New York City area, 2,639,857 think primarily with their cocks.

You didn’t know the cock was a thinking organ?

Well, by this time, you should know that it is.

Fred jumped off of his fence and into The Toilet Bowl.

Its street, West 14th, by that sparkling Hudson, was mobbed with many thousands strong, waving tickets in the air, pushing toward that tiny door, let me in, oh let me in, while searchlights dueled with their outstretched arms and with the sky and with the neighboring ancient warehouses used by the day for meat. Mounted policemen were trying their proudly perched best to keep the streets clear, their horses not obliging, so that arriving glitter queens, descending from rented pumpkins, flaunted hauteur that far-from-red-carpets were deposited for their welcome, they’d go home, but rushed to queue instead, joining beauties of both sexes caught in the eternal conflict of which to maintain: their finery or their place in line. “Darling, we’re living
Day of the Locust,”
was the constant cry.

Fred greeted Frigger at the door. “You have obviously done your usual superb p.r. job,” Fred said, waving his v.i.p. ticket as Frigger ushered him in past glaring, jealous, waiting eyes.

“Come right in, come right in,” Frigger invited him, and in Fred walked and up Fred was lifted, to a tenth floor, and into the newest of New York’s mammoth caverns of mirrored heavens, another city happening, vistas, roads leading this way and that, balloons and buntings and flowers and lights and trees and fountains and sparklers and music wrapping it all in a Tiffany blue box of life. Billy Boner certainly knew how to spare no expense and set the scene so his guests could party.

And were they not all here! The Beautiful People all in force. Models and beauties and heirs and heiresses, from museums and magazines and foundations and organizations, charitable, tax-exempt, international, department stores, frockeries, Sotheby’s, embassies, hot-dog kings and TV stars and rock faces and physical culturists, a legion of decorators, a score of Wall Streeters, designers of tablecloths and designers of lives, harlots and humpies, Godivas and Casque d’Ors, shrinks and shirkers, conversationalists and cruisers, gaggles of gossamer ladies and gents, sports heroes, pitchmen, newscasters and weathermen, real estate and art and craft and camping and display and publishing and all continents and all major cities and all leading countries, rivers, streams, creeks, crannies, a slummer or three from Washington, the Mayor, the Chief of Police, rival Families, and the press, thank God, the press.
Women’s Wear
could be truly pleased!

“It’s gorgeous!” The Divine Bella, their correspondent on the spot, gushed up to Fred, in hostess white, a huge orchid pinned to his neatly starched and Oxydol-clean Exxon uniform. “You must see it! You simply must see it all! Every taste has been catered to and I for one wish to live within these walls forever!” And he rushed his big self off to gather more names and items for the several pages his publication had promised him for this important, newsworthy opening night.

Fred stood by the main entrance, where the checkroom indicated that an entire wardrobe could be left for the same fee as a coat, and studied the signposts. Lusitania Lounge. Rancho Notorious. Dixie Disco Dancehall. Martha Mitchell Memorial. Jackie O. The Radziwill Annex. Crabb and Weissmuller. The Fucketeria. Where to begin? What does it all mean? I’d rather not think about what it all means. How to use it all in my script? Where’s Abe? Where’s Dinky?

“Ladies and Gentlemen!…The Toilet Bowl is proud to present its first main event of this proud evening, the one, the only, Guestess of Honor, our First and Foremost Very Own First Lady of Song, Our Very Own New Disco Queen…
Miss Yootha Truth!…”

Miss Yootha Truth? The crowd didn’t have the vaguest. Who the fuck was she? But then that song started, the song that last night, was it only last night?, everyone had been asking about, “The Alabama Aw Shits,” so everyone immediately knew who was Miss Yootha Truth, and they rushed into the gargantuan Roseland that was the Dixie Disco Dancehall, all flickering light bulbs and real fake moons and stars, and plopped themselves down on the virgin floor and sniffed their ethyled wristbands in readiness, and Miss Rollarette skated among them with his wand, creating the proper mood and atmosphere and entrance for his star. And out he came.