How Long Has This Been Going On (37 page)

"Dorothy," Henry began.

She held up a hand as Cora and mute Tatiana, already in their coats, awaited her at the door. "One thing I know," she said, "is that before there can be homosexual liberation, there must be feminism. And the more of these meetings I attend, the more I believe that I cannot make feminism with men."

Dorothy joined her friends, and the three of them walked out of Café Tremendo.

"Damn," said Henry. "God
damn."

"Cheer up," said the Kid, fussing with some music sheets at the piano.

"Thirty years from now you can invite them back and give it another shot."

Jezebel said, "Trouble is, you white honky-tonks always seeing things from your side, never recollect that there's anyone else around. Basketball? Sure! Kingdom Come? That my usual place! Funny hair on a lady? That gotta be
aberrant!"

"So how would you handle it?" the Kid asked.

"Jerrett, my man of stage and screen, I would stop thinking that what I'm used to is all there is. Basketball? Women don't feature that—plenty men, too. Kingdom? Some people do not
care
to dance. Funny hair? Well, maybe you light skin look funny to me."

"Jez, you are raising my consciousness."

"No, I ain't, and that's the pity of it. Because you the most forward person of us here. You do your stuff even on television, 'cause I saw! And movies. You the famous queen of the time. And even
you
don't stop to consider what's being ignored or deliberately left out by 'stablishment masters of the realm."

The Kid sang, "I'm in the nude for love..."

Dropping his black voice, Jezebel turned back to the group at the table. "Look, a dance is probably best, since those who don't actually dance at least would have a place to socialize in. But it really has to be coed. It has to. Now, the police have their wives, don't they? We have our boy friends, or some trick of the evening. Is that the whole world? What about our sisters-in-arms?"

"That's a good point," said Andy.

"Anybody know of a very young, very hot man who wouldn't be afraid to play a nude scene?" the Kid asked. "I've got to come up with one in three weeks."

"Go on, Andy," Henry urged him.

"It's just... I know the girls come on pretty strong when they get political, but that's just to make you take them as seriously as you take other men. And the dance probably
will
be all-male, won't it?"

"High-school dances aren't," said Jim.

"Yes, but high schools are boy-girl, boy-girl in just about everything except sports. When you go beyond that time in our lives, people start to break up into... you know... closed groups...."

"Cliques," said Martin.

"And we're just as bad, aren't we?" Andy went on. "That's what the girls are pointing out. Look at us. We're almost all young, white, middleclass...."

Henry liked this bold, sound criticism from quiet little Andy. Jim caught Henry's eye and winked. But Paul, the only older person in the group, stared at his hands; and Jezebel went back into his ghetto tones. "Who say the police gone even
attend
a gay dance?" he asked.

"We've got to start somewhere," said Paul, who had been saying that for over twenty years.

So they pushed and pulled at it as one molds warm taffy, and at length they settled on scheduling a dance at Kingdom Come, the men of the police precinct house on West Tenth Street to be their guests and a genuine effort to be made to welcome lesbians. Henry said he'd serve as liaison with the dance hall and the police, and Andy said he'd help Henry and make it a committee; and Jim gave Henry another meaningful look.

"I'm still looking for a sexy guy for my new act," said the Kid as the meeting broke up. "If anybody's got a name and number..."

"What exactly is the role that you're casting?" Jim asked.

"A combination cowboy, sailor, and Mountie. I do almost all the talking, so no experience required. The whole thing is looks."

"Is this, like, for a play?" Andy asked.

The Kid looked at him for a bit. "Who's cute but dumb?" the Kid finally said, and Andy blushed again.

"Come on, Committee," said Henry, putting an arm around Andy's shoulder. "I'll walk you home."

"If you think of anyone, gents," said the Kid. "Someone hot who'll do anything for money. Remember, not nice-looking.
Explosive."

"Oh," said Henry, stopping. "I know someone."

Blue, wearing the sweater he had bought that afternoon in a thrift shop, was idly looking out the window of his tiny fourth-floor walk-up in the East Village, thinking about Henry. Sometimes, as you're leaving a trick's apartment, you say to yourself, Well, that was nice and okay; but later you start to feel that it was considerably better than that, and you get to wondering what else there might be in it.

"Let me grind the beans here," Andy was telling Henry, "and heat the milk. It'll take just a second."

Henry said, "Relax."

"The secret to having a good day is a perfect cup of coffee whenever you want it. That's why I'm so careful about it."

"It's because you're Italian, probably. Italians are very aware of good food and the like."

Andy looked at Henry like a kindergarten child trying to decide whether the teacher was admiring or reproaching.

"I'm not all that Italian, actually," said Andy, over the electric grinding of the beans. "I'm rebellious. So they tell me."

"Stifling family?"

"Well, not
stifling.
But they're a little..."

"Yeah, I have one of those myself."

As Andy opened the coffee grinder, Henry grabbed it, his hand over Andy's hand, and pulled the machine close to sniff the beans. They smiled at each other.

"Yeah," said Henry. "I haven't spoken to my parents for four years now."

Blue loved watching the streets of New York. You could see more in an hour than in all of Blue's hometown on all your birthdays stuffed together. It was like the movies—people kissing, people fighting, people cutting capers. It was the whole world, and a new one to Blue.

He was wondering just now if maybe he should have taken Henry's phone number, instead of just giving his to Henry. He could call and say, What about getting a bite of something in some New York place a yers? I want to hear more a yer talk.

Trouble is, once you're on the footing of buyer and seller, everything you try to do is going to look monetary. Calling up this guy for a meet like that—even a young guy like this Henry—is going to get translated into, You can treat me to dinner and then give me work right after, for the usual fee.

Blue has pride and he does not like to be misperceived.

Blue says, aloud, "I got the lonely boy blues," as he stares down at the street.

Andy whimpers like a puppy when you kiss him. He's in very nice shape, full and round, and Henry is where he wants to be, in command. It's so easy to fall in love, Henry tells himself. But he knows he's performing for the boy. He's not intoxicated: He's expert.

Still, there's nothing like being on top and feeling the rise of the sap inside you, flying straight on high to that
clongg
of delivery, and thenHenry's all over Andy, kissing him and thanking him and holding him and trying not to realize that a man who has just come would be as grateful to Whistler's Mother as to his real object of desire. "A hard cock has no conscience" was a favorite intelligence of this era—but, more nearly correct, it would have run, A freshly exploded cock loves whomever it's lying next to.

Then ask the guy to take you out next Thursday, and see how far you get.

Johnna's boy friend is on the phone, saying, "Lady, why do you not trust me?"

"Because you're young, gorgeous, and a devastating lay. And you know it, unfortunately."

"So you bewitch me, what can I tell you?"

"Cut the bullshit!"

"You
taunt
me."

"Am I seeing you tonight or not?"

"As soon as the rehearsal's over, darlin'."

Nothing on Johnna's end.

"Anybody home?" he asks.

"I'm here," she says, grimly. "I'm trying to recall how many times I've heard you play that as-soon-as-something's-over jazz."

"Aw, don't go schoolteacher on me. You know I'm a crazy man on fire when it comes to you. Thinking about you? I burn."

Silence.

"Break out the sirens, and the spotted white dog."

"All right," she says.

"Forgive me, lady?"

"Only since I have to."

"An apple for the teacher."

A voice calls out, "Ty! Get your butt over here and stop holding up the show!"

"Got to go," he says, hanging up.

As he joins the group, Chris is getting everyone spread out into the improv circle, to put them through games and enactments designed to loosen them up yet make them edgy as well, like horses about to race. Chris knows that improvs make her look a bit faddish, but faddish behavior can be endearing in a twenty-year-old bumpkin who is transforming herself into a sophisticate. Besides, the improvs encourage her troupe toexperiment. She keeps telling them she wants everything "weirder, bolder, sillier." It suits
The Elephant Calf's
dourly comic tone, and its theme, which states, You can prove anything with an argument.
Anything.

Improvs. Chris has them do goblins, then fat bankers eating themselves to death, then casts half the gang as elephants and the other half as mice. She has them mime their worst fears, their happiest memories; but these aren't effective.

"We're getting far from Brecht," she tells them. "It's a little too Living Theatre."

Someone makes a face, but Ty says, "Hey! Let's do a nude improv."

"That was last year," says the actor playing the Moon. "Every show we put on, there were nude improvs before each performance."

"No kidding."

"It kind of helped with
The Bacchae,
but it was distracting on
Carousel."

"Let's get our books," said Chris briskly, pleased that she could handle them with finesse.

As a director, Chris was more concerned with understanding the play than with creating pretty pictures. She was not a dedicated blocker, for instance. She concentrated on readings, talking character with the actors, then letting them try their own moves when they put a scene on stage and simply cleaning up what looked sloppy. Student-directed plays were the pumping blood of the undergraduate drama club, the evenings of three or four one-acts exciting more interest—because of the unconventional repertory and performance style—than did the major productions, such as the drearily sock-and-buskin
Bacchae
(for all the nude improvs before the performances, once the lights came up everyone was standing under a ton of mask) or the ruthlessly leaden
Carousel.
Chris had fallen into the drama club with her typical energy and patience, working her way in by handling props on
The School for Scandal,
running publicity on the winter evening of one-acts, and emerging in the spring of her freshman year as the Widow Quin in a student-directed
The Playboy of the Western World.
Chris's subtext was that she was Mrs. Bjorlind (her sixth-grade teacher) and that the Christy Mahon, the Playboy himself, was Tom (who, everyone knew, was teacher's pet). Chris was a sensation, and she consolidated her rep the following autumn as a daringly campy Gwendolen in
The Importance of Being Earnest.
Chris became a Person of the Campus, at least among the drama students. She was now Heard Of. To Luke she wrote:

Looking back on our youth, I am amazed to see how different my life and society and interests are at this point. Was I ever that moony little

Bobbie Sox who stopped the prom cold simply by dancing with two boys at once? Though it was lovely, the three of us. (Remember?) It was easy to stand out in Minnesota, not so easy here! Wait till summer, dearie—in my short hair, clutching my Greek bag, exploiting an ethnic demeanor—well, you won't recognize me.

Luke responded:

Oh, I'll recognize you, kid. They have short hair on girls and Greek bags in Berkeley, too, you know. Though—what's an ethnic demeanor? Never mind, you'll teach me. How's Tom? Any news?

That was my past, she reflected: the odd sister of two beautiful boys. The one holding the camera for their pictures. Chris was glad to notice that she had departed their story and was developing her own. With her testy, loving, desperate Widow Quin, her intrepidly facetious Gwendolen, and now her direction of
The Elephant Calf,
Chris was on her way to stardom as the American university knows it. In her mind, the immediate future held three things that she must accomplish: to fulfill the science requirement, join her militant friends on the demonstration lines, and lose her virginity.

The rehearsal went well. The play is short, fleet, and picturesque, and cagey Chris had brought a pianist into the company, encouraging him to work out the score through improvs with the singers. "Brecht always plays better with music," Chris, the compleat thespian, assured her cast. Her lighting man—man! a myopic seventeen-year-old who went everywhere in the same hooded red sweatshirt, jeans, and saddle shoes—was a genius, and the costume people were combing the flea markets.

"It's going to be splendid, my dears," Chris told them all, and she was right. What makes a director? A keen understanding of the human character, a sense of structure, and an appetite for the sheer sensuality of theatre, of voices and faces and pageantry. "Think 'Pomp and Circumstance,'" Chris told the actors playing British soldiers, when arranging their entrance. "You're merry kids trying to look solemn!" Or "Watch your timing, everyone," she told them. "Some of you are dragging your lines and some of you are rushing. Keep it crisp and even,
almost
as if you were declaiming—except the Banana Tree.
You
are the center of the show, so you can vary your delivery." And Chris's freezes, four of them at surprising moments, immobilizing the entire cast for five seconds each time, were going to be the talk of the campus.