How Long Has This Been Going On (42 page)

"Some stuff, huh?" said Ty, drawing Chris into the room. "Take a look around, my roommate won't mind. He's kind of a show-off about his stuff, you know? Everything's rare in here. Records you can't find in stores, antique books... not to mention the under-the-counter stuff.
Erotica,
he calls it. Pretty word, huh? He's got these magazines that—"

"Are these two men fighting or joking?"

"What, on the wall there?" Ty came over. "Yeah, that's... Who knows? It's some real contest, but they're smiling at the same time. Look at the whoppers on them, though, huh?"

"Pardon my nose, but are many men that... big?"

"Oh, babe, it's a fantasy thing. You're not sore that I kissed you back there, are you?"

"Not sore."

"Come on, we'll have a cup of tea and relax. Herbal tea, to make us all smooth after the excitement today."

Chris was relieved that Ty didn't start in seducing her just then. Five minutes after you've entered the man's apartment is much too soon; it makes the girl feel Easy. Twenty minutes is almost flattering; but, ideally, there should be thirty to forty minutes of humorous socializing during which sex is never alluded to
in any way whatsoever.
Then the man and woman have a chance to establish themselves as intimates. This does nothing for the man, but it does allow the woman to get a grasp on the interaction of personality that is, for her, the reason to have sex in the first place. To put it another way, the man is horny and needs to get off; the woman wants to meet the father of her children.

These are, of course, strictly heterosexual guidelines. Among male homosexuals, it is generally believed that the more you talk first, the less hot you'll prove to be. Frank, a master of style in this age, favored very short conversations at the moment of the pickup and getting right to it upon entering the suite of the act. Many a trick, having taken Frank home, was startled by the grip of Frank's strong hands before the door was closed, or even being grabbed and kissed in the elevator going up. Henry, too, liked to cut the red tape and get physical quite, quite soon. But Luke, we notice, nourished powerful yearnings for a man he had been speaking to all his life; and Larken liked to get acquainted before he buddied up.

Lesbians, when courting, offer even greater variety in the matter of timing. With gay men, there are some rules but many exceptions; with gay women, there are no rules. Lesbians can be great talkers, socially rigid, caperers, on the shy side, all for action, poignant phonies, uncertain navigators, easy riders, truculent Donna Juans, and two-fisted Queen Elizabeths. You never know what you'll get. "Butch in the streets, femme in the sheets," runs the chant. Yet sometimes two women will meet, talk a bit, go to one or the other's home, and mate for life.

In the kitchen, as Ty brewed the tea, Chris decided that she felt very comfortable with him. Bluntly, she asked, "You don't mind having a gay man for a roommate?"

"Why mind it? He's got a right."

"There's no awkwardness?"

"The trick with tea is lemon in the
pot,
so it expands into the tea as it's forming. See? Awkwardness about what?"

Chris shrugged quizzically.

"Like, he'd want to score me?" Ty asked.

Chris nodded.

Now Ty shrugged. "It hasn't come up. Anyway, I like gay guys, I told you. They're show people, like me. And you."

"Arty."

"They know about performance. Life is a craft, darlin', you know it is. It's style. And without style... Well, for instance, how would you like to be your parents? Grossed out by everything that's lively, and disapproving of everyone who's free. Lady, that's
dead."

"I wonder what you'd think of my friend Luke. Because he's... gay. But he's no show people. He's a plain country-town schoolboy, and very, very honest."

"Tea's getting there," said Ty, checking the pot.

"Honesty," said Chris, "can be—"

"Tricky. I prefer style."

"What's your roommate like?"

"He's this sort of lovable sourpuss. Got a weakness for suits."

"Suits?"

"That's what he calls them. Lawyers, bankers. Tie at the throat and carrying a case like the one you've always got. His dream is, some suit takes him to a real luxurious apartment like on Sutton Place and sticks him across the knee for a good old-fashioned spanking."

Teased, startled, Chris roared with laughter.

"No, that's his serious hope," said Ty.

"He told you that?"

"Why shouldn't he?" said Ty, pouring the tea into mugs. "We're pals. I tell him my life, so why wouldn't he tell me his?"

Thinking it over, Chris said, "Valid point."

"The lady agrees."

"Look, just how cool are you with homosexuality? Can I ask that? Because that's a rare tolerance."

"I'm a rare guy. No, don't drink it yet, it needs to relax."

"Would you... have sex with a man?"

"That's not my bag. I dig a true babe, roger and out."

"Golly, what if... There's this major part on Broadway. The director likes your reading. Callback. He likes you even better. Your chances look good. Then he says he'd like to..."

Ty chuckled. "Get to know me real close."

"Okay. What would you do?"

"First, it's this: I'd say no. Don't want to do it and don't need to, because there's other parts for our boy Ty. But let's just say. It's years later. Ty needs that big jump. Now comes a part and it's the
one.
Gay director makes his offer.... Well, that one I'd have to think about. That's a definite maybe, because the stakes would be too high to scorn. But this year I am still my own man, playing as I prefer. Try the tea."

"Lovely."

"Yeah, lovely." He grinned at her over the cups. "Now, tell me how much you like me—a little this-and-that or stay-the-night?"

"Wow. You don't fail on the big scene, do you?"

"Come on, anyway, and see my room. Take your tea along."

Fine and dandy. Ty's room is the living end, painted black from ceiling to floor and marked only by careless piles of books in one corner, an open trunk of clothes with a laundry bag leaning against it in another corner, and, at stage center, a mattress dressed with a colorful Amish coverlet and two pillows encased in fire-engine red. Balancing their mugs, the two perched cross-legged on the edge of the mattress, Chris quietly laughing at the ease with which she was taking this major step.

"Most girls would feel funny at this moment," she blurted out.

"Now, wait a bit here, since I just want to make you happy," said Ty, flashing a million dollars' worth of little-boyness at her as he took her mug and set it down with his. "Maybe do a little coaxing. Do you like to be coaxed? Huh?" His face close to hers. "'Cause I love to do coaxing."

He started kissing her puppy-style, steady, rhythmic, in an upward motion, no hands. He kissed her deep, hands on. He bent her to him. He nuzzled her, nibbled her ears, slithered along her neck, whimpered into her hair, brought her chin up in his hand, smiled at her, and started in again.

She was wondering if his roommate kissed like this, or Luke, or Tom.

He said, "Is there anything you don't like, darlin'?"

"Uh-oh," Chris replied. "Why?"

"Oh, 'cause I do it all."

"Well, I haven't done all that much of any of it, actually, so take a free hand."

"Lovely," he said, starting to undress her. He did this idiosyncratically, undoing a button up here and then taking off a shoe, darting to another button and then loosening her blouse. He looked at her, as if he were an artist studying his canvas.

"This will take forever," said Chris.

"What do you want, now, a dog race?"

"I want you," she said, thinking of Luke and Tom running through the woods. Are they sorrowful or glad?

"No,
I
want
you,"
Ty corrected her. "It starts with me, and begs foryour sweet attention. I would quote Shakespeare now, but I don't recall the fitting lines."

Now he moved quickly, separating her from her clothes and somehow finding the odd second in which to strip off his own things. He took quite some time examining her breasts, plumping and very, very gently licking at the tips of them with an expression of the utmost seriousness. Chris was concerned. Doesn't he like me?, she thought. But now he was smiling, running his hands down her arms, and sighing.

"Oh, darlin'," he murmured, burying his head between her breasts, smooching the sides of them, then up and around the nipples, first one, then the other, back and forth, his eyes half-closed, intoxicating himself as Chris arched her back and moved with the pull of his lips and tongue. She imagined Tom doing this to Luke, and when her head tilted and she felt for his neck, she was Luke knowing Tom, although she called Ty's name.

"Yes," he answered, "in the rhythm of love. Like that, now." His hands guided her, at the hips, on the ass, stealing back up to her breasts, his head moving down to her clit as his arms held and lovingly forced her backward. She watched in some alarm as his mouth drew toward her insides; she hadn't realized that the foreplay was going to last so long, and she was afraid she might climax too early in the fucking section. She grabbed for him, caught his arm, a shoulder, but he was oblivious, gone from her head and heart to her flesh, licking at the folds of her cunt with a systematic abandon. His deep, really rather rapturous moaning flattered her, and she was charmed by his habit of glancing upward at her face without moving his head as he lapped away. He was simply lovable; she had known he would be. A New York Woman chooses carefully. But he was more than lovable, she began to feel, as he slowly worked his way up her torso to her breasts again, to the part of a woman's body that men most delight to savor. Chris had forgotten about Tom and Luke. Watching Ty, letting Ty, having Ty, had powerfully focused her interests. No one should be this good at it, she thought, mesmerized, desperate, as he nibbled on her neck while stroking her hair and emitting little humming notes of almost unendurable pleasure. "Coaxing you, darlin'," he whispered, lifting her legs, and she was alert now, wary. How much will it hurt, and is he going to say something skeptical when he realizes how brand-new she is?

Trust Ty, that master. He was exceedingly gentle, and seemed quite palpably honored that he was the first to break in. He had scarcely begun when Chris rose to her pinnacle, her head thrust back and her legs straining to take him, more of him, all. She gasped. "Oh, my certain darlin'," he called her, moving, smiling, "you're sure getting there now." They were kissing, her hands mauling his neck, his hair, and she watched in wonder as he blasted off, head high and eyes sheer slits through which power radiated like the aura of an enchanted gem.

He fell on her, sighed, suddenly slid away to lie on his back staring upward, turned to her, then away again. They reached for each other, held on as the panting subsided, and Chris idly fancied herself as Wendy flying to Never Land with Luke and Tom. But then she saw herself tumbling, and wanted Ty to save her. That's why they call it "falling" in love.

Jezebel says nothing when Lester joins him at a booth in the back of Hero's. Jezebel doesn't like Lester, a very fair-skinned, effeminate young black man with Caucasian features who—Jezebel has decided—suffers from a lack of Race Commitment. Lester is a clerk in a law firm, an opera queen, a circuit socialite, a conservative dancer—things that Jezebel associates with Going Uptown and Leaving That Other Trash Behind.

"Everybody's buzzing about the dance you're giving, you and your political coterie," says Lester. "Buzzing like bees in a praline factory, yes, indeed. Has a name been chosen yet? For the dance?"

Jezebel just stares across the table at Lester.

"And May, too, such a perfect month for it," Lester goes on. "I already know what I'm wearing, but I'll never tell. And the dance is called?"

Jezebel fakes a look behind him, as if wondering whom Lester might be addressing. Then Jezebel says, "You must be at the wrong place, Miss Mayonnaise Wish-I-Was. This ain't no opera box. We got no bankers and heirs and such. So why you want to pick on me?"

"You have me so wrong," says Lester, touching Jezebel's hand; Jezebel eyes this maneuver with loathing. "I would even help you with the dance. Organization and so on?"

"I'll speak to the Crepe-Paper Committee."

"Always so hard with me, you luscious big meany. Won't even whisper me the name of the dance."

"Ain't it enough we
giving
a dance? Gotta have a
name
for it, too?"

"All the truly top dances have titles now, oh yes," says Lester, gently pulling the bottom of his right ear between thumb and forefinger, a habit Jezebel despises. "Last year there was 'Smiles of a Summer Night,' remember? And 'Angel Skin'?"

Jezebel snorts.

"Have you seen Henry?" asks Jim, suddenly looming over them.

"Not yet," Jezebel replies, glad about anything that puts Lester at a distance. "Anything major?"

"The police have, uh, declined our invitation to the dance. They didn't even bother fabricating an excuse. It's basically just, Fuck you."

"I hope you're not surprised."

"Well—"

"It was a drippy idea from the start. Can you imagine this cop coming home and telling his wife, Circle May seventeenth in your date book, honey, because that's the night we're going to a faggot dance?"

Jim thought it over. "Well. When you put it like that..."

"What we need to mix in with the police for? How many times do you have to learn that the police are the enemy? How many times are they going to whop a fag or laugh when we report a bashing before you white boys learn
what is the truth on this earth?"

"That's because we've been demonized by the culture they're raised in. The idea was to show them that we're human beings just like—"

"Jezebel, introduce me to your handsome friend here," said Lester.

"Oh, shut your hole, white bread."

Jim gave a smiling little shrug on Lester's behalf, told Jezebel, "Later on," and skedaddled as Louis joined the table, sitting next to Lester.