How Long Has This Been Going On (39 page)

"Why can't he be available and gay? Isn't that more inspiring? Because someday you might actually meet one and—"

"Inspiring!
And
Greek myths!
What do think this is, big stuff? All you're supposed to inspire is a cannonload of jism!"

Frank's eyes got tight and he put the cop shirt down on the couch; but before anything else happened, Bart got to him and was rubbing his back and shoulders and whispering to him. And, though Frank was in a fighting mood, he let Bart subdue him because it felt good, and feeling good was about all that Frank had been working on for the last fifteen years. He'd tell you that himself, straight out. He has lived for pleasure, any way it comes to him. Bart runs his hands up and down the sides of Frank's famous torso, then fiddles with his fly like a pickpocket and tugs down the pants to reveal Frank's shocking erection, a legend of the town.

"See, Frank," Bart whispers to him. "That's all it is here. No story, sport. It's a dream of Frank. That's what this whole fucking thing is about."

How do you forge a long-lasting, meaningful relationship? Easy: You collaborate on a spaghetti carbonara dinner. Henry was the geneticist and Andy the gosling, in Henry's apartment. Henry was teaching life to Andy. Browning the bacon, chopping the cheese, cooking the pasta, readying the egg.

Henry said, "As soon as the pasta is drained, pop it in the pot, beat in the egg, and add the cheese all at once. It happens in a blink, like all the great things in life."

"Yes," said Andy, madly in love with Henry, the first man he'd known who treated him with respect.

"So we have Kingdom Come for the dance," Henry went on, stirring the pasta. "The third Saturday in May. Saturday's the gay night there, anyway." Stirring. "Do you know of an opening somewhere? For a job?"

"Who for?"

"Oh, this kid, one of Frank the Bartender's protectees. Frank's always trying to... No, grate the cheese the long way so it... That's right.... That guy's always got some charity case he... I think the pasta's done."

"How does it come about that a dance hall can be gay on a certain night? Who spreads the word?"

"I always wondered. Now, quick, throw it all back in the pot and I'll do the egg.... Yes...."

"Is Frank Italian?"

"I have no idea. Why do you ask? See how you thrust it all around till it melts all... Looking good, pardner."

"Well, it's sort of Italian to watch out for each other. That's why I thought—"

"Ha! Gays should be like that," said Henry. "Clannish and defensive."

"And do I stir it now?"

"Why can't we... Yes, stir it quickly. It's supposed to fall all over itself and melt into—"

"This total mess?"

"Exactly," said Henry, reaching for the plates. "Keep stirring, it'll come."

The phone rang.

"Oh, hell!" said Henry, struggling to get the dinner onto the plates. "We'll take control and ignore it."

"I'll get it," said Andy, leaving the stove.

"No, just—"

"It's no trouble."

"Leave
it," Henry insisted, grabbing Andy's arm with his free hand.

"Well, it might be... See, I gave my parents this number, in case of an emergency."

Henry put down the plates and stared at Andy.

"What emergency?"
Henry finally said, his voice like nails ready for a crucifixion.

"It's still ringing," said Andy, moving to the phone—but Henry got there first, picked up, and said hello. Two beats. Then he held the receiver against his chest and told Andy, "In this apartment, there are no parents. By which I mean to say, There are no archons of the system that destroys anyone who insists on living his own—"

"Is that my parents?"

Henry said, "I don't let anyone interpose heterosexual biology into my life." Andy could hear a buzzing through the receiver dots; Henry pulled the phone back as Andy tried to grab it. "You really
have
to talk to your parents now?"

"Is it them?"

Into the receiver Henry said, "Your son is a real sweetheart, lady."

Turning the shade of white of the monument to Vittorio Emanuele in Rome, Andy tried to grab the phone, but Henry added, "He's so tasty, I can see why you're after him, too," and, with a wry look, gave Andy the phone. Control.

Andy had the devil of a time placating his mother, while Henry saw to the carbonara. He chuckled as Andy tried to pass off Henry's remarks as the joking of an outrageous friend. Setting down the pepper mill, Henry murmured, "You have ten seconds to get off that phone," and Andy quickly promised to call back the next day, and hung up.

Andy told Henry, "I can't believe you did that." He wasn't angry—just a bit hurt—and he made the best of it because he knew that Henry was his hook shot into a happier life, quick and true. Henry was all set to chide Andy for allowing his parents to encroach upon Henry's existence, but Andy's undemanding charm touched Henry. He said, "I really am sorry, but I've got this thing about parents pushing in where they don't belong."

Andy said, "That's because you're not Italian."

"That's because I'm not taking orders from anyone. Anyway, let's eat." It was plates on laps, and Henry said, "Was your mother terribly shocked at what I said? I guess I really went overboard, Andy." Henry got up and moved the plates out of the way and pulled Andy up and held him. That's sweet: their first little quarrel-and-make-up.

"Actually," said Andy, as they broke, "she doesn't know what anything you said means. She thought you were one of my rougher friends from high school—they were always using sex talk that way. Like, it wasn't I'll beat your brains in but I'll ream your ass out."

As they sat back down to eat, Andy said, "You know, this pasta is
wonderful
"; and they went on to other things. But I'm worrying, because Henry does not realize how tightly Andy's parents have bound him to them, and Andy does not understand how profoundly Henry mistrusts the motivation of parents. I hope these two will talk it out and work up a game plan before there is another incident. But I also think Andy is old enough not to have to leave a number Where He Can Be Reached every time he leaves a six-block radius surrounding his place of birth, nurture, religious instruction, and high-school graduation. Everyone, at some point in her or his life, has to tell the monitors,
Hold it!

Pulling up the blanket and folding his arms behind his head, the Kid said, "There was no one like you in the old days."

"Like me?" Blue asked him.

"Generally, when you paid for it—even, I have to say, very often when you didn't—you got a straight or some facsimile. They'd just stand there with you on your knees sucking their insides out. As if, if you got enough of them, you'd turn straight, too. There wasn't that much fucking then, and even guys who were out didn't like to screw. Of course, almost no one
was
out, except me."

"Boy, I hear that."

"Let me show you something," said the Kid, scrambling over Blue to get to the little leather writing case he always took when traveling. There he kept essential documents, and perhaps most essential of all was a photograph that he now handed to Blue, of the Kid at nineteen in a bathing suit standing on a lawn somewhere.

"That's you, huh?"

"That's me."

"Jailbait," said Blue, with the smile of the ace meeting the spade. They were in the Kid's temporary Village sublet after Blue's first rehearsal as the... well, the straight man, really, of the Kid's act: in which the Contessa Dooit, Bombasta, and some newer of the Kid's inventions enjoyed characteristic encounters with Blue, whose attire gradually grew skimpier as the Kid's grew more baroque. The Kid invited Blue out for a bite, and halfway through the food Blue said, "I want to date you." He didn't mean malteds at the soda fountain, and the Kid took him home and they got right to it. Blue said it was on the house, but the Kid insisted on paying him something. "Never ask a pro to work for free," he said.

Now they were resting and talking, grinning and caressing each other during lulls. The Kid snapped on the radio, and they listened to a few cuts of Bob Dylan's
John Wesley Harding
till the Kid shut the music off.

"Maybe I'm getting old—no, I'll never be old, for I am the Green Goddess," said the Kid. "But I won't listen to it if Jo Stafford wouldn't sing it."

"Who's he?"

The Kid laughed.

"How old are you, anyway, come to that?" Blue asked.

"Guess."

"Thirty and a piece, I'd say. Thirty-two?"

The Kid was glad. "Pushing thirty-eight, and nobody knows but us."

"You're real trim, though. Young skin, like me. I like to date you, you know that? But how come a nice-looking guy like you dresses up to be a woman on the stage like so?"

The Kid sighed, stroking Blue's corn-silk hair, tracing the lines in hisface. The Kid thinks, There's nothing like young, and he says, "You'd think I'd have an answer to the Drag Question after all these years. Something keen that slashes right out when they ask me why I want to play a woman."

"Leave me be," said Blue, shaking off the Kid's touch; unperturbed, honoring the request, the Kid went on, "See it this way—there are two fundamental characters in gay art, the raving diva and the gleaming stud. Like
A Streetcar Named Desire,
or Mae West and the musclemen."

Blue smiled. "Don't know what that all stuff is."

"That's partly what makes you so attractive, unfortunately."

"Is one of those two characters you're talking about like the funny ladies you were playing tonight? The Duchess that does it—"

"The Contessa Dooit."

"I was scared a her."

"It's just an act, handsome."

"And what's that other character again? The man?"

"You. And you're pretty scary yourself."

"No, I ain't."

"Yes. Yes, because you've got it all and you pay no penalty."

"What about all the regular people? Like Henry—he's not one of your two characters, is he? So where does he fit in?"

"In the audience. This is gay art I'm talking about, not gay life."

"Shouldn't the art be about the life?"

The Kid was looking at Blue. "Well," he said at last, "if you want to get serious about it. Yes, the art should describe the life. But who knows what the life is like, since it's all underground? Where did Henry meet you—on Third Avenue, right?"

Blue nodded.

"So someone's going to write a story or a play about a magazine editor picking up a prostitute? Who'd read it? Who'd put it on? I get around the whole thing by treating the myths of the homosexual rather than the everyday. Because we all know what the myths are. One is the camp queen, beautiful in her rage—what we
are.
The other is the redeeming hero—what we
want."

"All you're talking about is a good-looking guy, and he won't necessarily be any kind of hero. Heroes is hard to come by."

Suddenly, Blue grinned and shrugged, as if embarrassed at venturing an opinion on something so irrelevant. He said, "You really do this for a living, huh?"

"More or less," the Kid replied. "Someone left me money a long time ago, some crazy investment he had made before he died. So when I moved to San Francisco, I liquidated the assets and bought a house. I occupy part of it, and rent out the rest, and that's what I live on. Nobody earns much doing gay cabaret."

"Could you act, maybe? In a movie?"

"Oh, I've done Hollywood. They still call me from time to time, but only to play fag roles so all the joes in the house can feel superior to gays, which is about the only thing they're good at, besides embezzling from banks and declaring wars and having faces only a mother could sit on. No thanks. I'll stick with my kind, on the margins of the known world, and that is my honesty and my choice."

"Politics," said Blue, dismissing this.

"No," the Kid told him. "My life."

"You want to give me a bit of a rub?" asked Blue. "My back is sore or somethin'."

"Turn over, you heavenly thing."

The Kid worked in silence for a while, enjoying the contact with Blue's heavy shoulders and the sloping V of his torso.

"Feels real good," Blue murmured.

"You heartbreaker. I can see you driving a hell of a lot of men out of the closet. Or maybe back into it."

The Kid gave up the massage and lay prone atop Blue, letting the boy fold his hands around the Kid's.

"Lovely," the Kid breathed out. "I'll have quite a case on you before the ran of the show is over."

"You like me that much, maybe you'll take me back to Frisco with you, let me live on the high in your house there."

"Would you really like that?"

"Sure."

"You take it easy, don't you? No passions is the style."

"I'll bet
you
got passions, huh?"

The Kid rolled off Blue's back, rose, and pulled on a T-shirt and shorts.

"What's wrong?" Blue asked, lazily turning over.

The Kid shook his head.

"I meant it about goin' with you, if you'd have me. This place is too cold by far."

The Kid shrugged.

"Now you're real silent. You sore at me?"

The Kid turned on the radio again, fishing the stations till he found one for "easy listening." There was a snatch of Nat King Cole in somethingthe Kid couldn't place, then Doris Day came in with "Papa, Won't You Dance with Me?" The Kid turned the radio off.

"Don't like that one, huh?" said Blue.

"Have you ever loved anyone, Blue, young as you are?"

"Guess not."

"I've never loved anyone, me. It was not my choice. Some people don't, and that may be their loss but it's not their fault."

The Kid sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at Blue.

"But there's this one thing. Many years ago, before you were even old enough to swim bare-ass in the crick or rape a cow or whatever southern adolescents do for a hobby—before you were born, maybe—I knew a somewhat older man who paid me for sex and took me to fancy parties and... well, sort of liked me and regarded me as his friend. He was a phony and a jerk and a loser, and though I liked him I couldn't respect him, so we were never... Anyway. He died—died horribly, in fact—and it turned out that he had left everything to me. He didn't have much, just this little interest in a firm that built pizza parlors all over Los Angeles. That's the investment that enabled me to buy my house. So I felt really lucky, and very grateful to this man, even though I didn't think much of him. But, you know, as the years passed I began to miss him. I wanted him to see me breaking through in this absurd and glorious, however tiny, career I've invented. I was the first to do what I do and I'm still the best, even if showbiz in general couldn't care less about a man who performs in drag in seedy clubs in the Tenderloins and West Hollywoods and Villages of America. I was the first, and he would have been impressed, and I really miss that man now."