How Long Has This Been Going On (43 page)

"Now, here's a man," Lester cried, "who knows how to spread his charm."

Louis, a shortish, stocky, bearded black man in his late twenties, was the bridge between Jezebel and Lester—indeed, between any two gay people, of whatever race or class. To Louis, it was simply: us against them. Us was all the gay world and them was everyone else. The trouble with Jezebel, Louis thought, was that he was too judgmental, and Louis said so now. "You always harp on a person's less good qualities," he observed, after Jezebel had let loose another barb at Lester. "You ignore the better sides."

"Is
this
got a better side?" Jezebel snarled, indicating Lester.

"He's a tasty fuck, for starters. Can't have tops without bottoms." Louis put an arm around Lester's torso and winked at him. "Right, honey cake?"

"Oh, my man," sighed Lester, his head dropping onto Louis's shoulder.

"See the harmony?" Louis asked Jezebel. "That's what I call gay-style living. All the different kinds in harmony together. Look at us, how each is different. Besides being gay, all we have in common is that we're black."

"Some of us," said Jezebel, with a beady eye on Lester, "ain't even got
that
in common."

"Jez—" "Man, we have major things to deal with. Oppression, waste, discompassion. I can't be troubled by these Miss Dainties and their uptown ways."

"If tolerance doesn't start with us," Lester reasoned, "where's it ever to come from?"

Jim had been sitting at the bar, meanwhile, talking to Frank.

"Something funny happened," said Frank, cracking open a can of Bud for a man to Jim's left and parking the money in the cash drawer. "That kid whose family threw him out? Eric? I've been trying to find him a place to stay and a job, and what do you know but Paul took him in. You know, the fat old guy from Before."

"Before what?"

Frank shrugged. "Before us. Before Hero's."

"Isn't Paul a little difficult, though?"

"I figure it's safe and secure compared to the street, and old Paul's kind of tickled to have a cute kid living in. Makes him feel like he's part of the scene, right?"

Jim nodded again, the very picture of an attorney considering a case, examining it from root to branch—the homeless boy, the frustrated senior citizen, the confrontation of youth's spark and age's ashen languor. Inside, however, Jim was simply being dazzled. God, this man is hot, he was thinking. He's...
powerful.
It isn't just the opulent sturdiness, the devil's eyes. It's his personality, the strength of his belief in himself. He's so fucking
man.
What kind of life, Jim wondered, has this chap enjoyed?

"Of course, Eric is straight, more or less," Frank went on, after pouring Vodka Collinses for a trendy-looking couple, East Side gays going Village. "But he seems to like putting out, for some reason."

"I never know how to take that—straight boys having gay sex. Doesn't that make them gay boys doing what they secretly want to do?"

Frank shrugged. "Who knows with kids? There's probably a streak of hustler in Eric. He gets off on being desired."

Henry joined them.

"Andy's attending his nephew's birthday party," he said. "So I've got the night off."

"Eric's moving in with Paul," said Jim.

"With strict instructions," Frank put in, "not to fuck up."

"Paul's the one who'll fuck up," Henry replied.

"Let's hear the trial before we slap down a verdict, okay?" said Frank.

Henry said, "What we could do is, once the summer gets going someone should take Eric out to the Pines and set him up with one of the money gays. I mean, if he's cute enough, he could be houseboy-for-life."

"He's a stunner," said Frank, "if you like street meat with his shirt hanging out and holes in his jeans. You know that type?"

"Terribly well," said Henry.

"Two aging dykes, two male cats, and a charge account at the local knitting boutique," said Lois. "Chick," she told Elaine, "we've become a cliché."

"What if I changed the title of my book to
A Psychotic Episode Called H
e
r Life?"

The two were relaxing at their little "weekend place" in Sea Cliff, Long Island. Lois's dance club, Kingdom Come, was closed Sundays and Mondays, so the couple could take off late Saturday night and enjoy the country through Tuesday afternoon. Monday, today, was usually the nicest, for some reason.

"What psychotic episode?" Lois challenged.

"It's so peaceful out here," said Elaine. "That's what I love, after the eternally imploding city, and talking too fast, and double vision. Do you know, I think I'm starting to see the same people over and over? The same
exact
people, as if they were models issuing out of... I don't know, duplicating pipes in some factory. There's one—I swear I've seen her five or six times now. Sometimes she strides past me as if she couldn't care less. But
sometimes
she's staring at me, very seriously, as if she... I don't know. It's such a
bamboozling
city."

"Maybe she recognizes you. It's the price of fame, chick."

"This isn't recognition. It's... hunger."

"Should I make a fire?"

"Yes, please."

Elaine, watching Lois build the woodpile, said, "Everything's so simple out here. What if we moved to Sea Cliff for good?"

"Who'd run my dance hall?"

"Ah." After a bit, Elaine said, "A lot of money's coming in. From my books. We could... relax?"

"No one's putting money in my pocket, chum. Except me." Lois sparked the blaze. "You talk as if my dance hall didn't matter like your books."

"Truth to tell, I thought you might be tired of it."

"Can't be," said Lois, rising and dusting her hands on her knees. "Because it's necessary. It's a needed thing." She sat again, in the armchair that faced Elaine's armchair. "I used to see Thriller Jill's as a gig. My job, that's all. Yeah, there was some family attachment in the building, maybe. But the club itself was a club, period. People told me different, I said,
Huh.
That joint? With Tiger and Biff guzzling beer-in-the-can on one side of the room and Alistair and Marshall quaintily sipping their Pink Ladies on the other side?"

Elaine sat there listening to Lois. The cats, who as a rule amused her with their strolling and lunging, their ferocious battles with croissants they had raped off the kitchen table, or their attempts to hitch a ride on the stereo turntable, could not distract her now. For Lois to analyze her past—to analyze anything—was rare, cherishable. Elaine was thinking, You fascinate me as much today as you did back then. How could I possibly have dwelt in carnal treaty with a man, when you I love forever?

Lois had grown wonderingly silent, so Elaine prodded her. "What changed your mind? The shows?"

Lois snorted. "Took the
dancing
for me to see homo clubs in a new way. All the wild energy these young boys spend on it, that pack of them pulling off their shirts and pounding the floor like a tribe in some ceremony, discovering an identity in that... shared thing. The straight boys' energy is put into throwing things out of cars at bike riders or looking for a black kid to harm. Or one of ours. And the girl dykes, the way they go for a slow dance! The boys only like a heavy beat. Put on a fox-trot, they'll clear the floor. The d.j.'s so used to it, when he spins a slow tune he'll say, 'Now here's one for the ladies.' And out they come, taking each other by the hand, and the heads go together and the cheeks touch. It's so romantic."

"I never thought I'd hear you praise anything with that word," said Elaine.

"Anyway, it taught me that we need our own place, even if we only use it one night a week."

"Do you think Kingdom Come will be all-gay every night someday?"

Lois shook her head. "Dance halls are permanently temporary. Transitory. None of them's ever lasted more than a few years. Hate to say it, but I could be out of business before long."

"Transitory," said Elaine, teasing Lois to make her blush a little. "I'm feeling somewhat transitory myself."

"Why, babe?"

"It's my book."

One of the cats, annoyed at the lack of attention, did a samba around the couch. The other cat turned its back in disgust.

"I'm rather in a quandary," Elaine went on. "I want to... take a step forward. Join the dancing, you might say. My editor opposes me."

"Get a new editor."

"It doesn't work that way, and, anyway, her reasoning is sound. She says, Why trade away a prepared readership for a readership that may not even exist? My book could fail."

"Why?"

"It's... very woman."

"Fem-lib stuff?"

"In a way. There's a feminist viewpoint, at least."

Lois looked skeptical. "Should a story be feminist? A story is a story."

"A story should be what its author needs it to be, whatever that ultimately is." Elaine sighed. "It may be that my editor simply isn't in touch with the women's movement. She's very apolitical."

"Why don't you invite her to the dance?"

"The dance?"

"The big one, in May. Down at the hall. The fund-raiser for the gay political group. Let her see for herself, your editor."

"See... what?"

"What I was speaking of. The wonderful spirit of this new world that is beginning to come into the open. Remember when we called it the Other Side? Have you noticed that we gave that up years ago? Because it isn't..."

"Applicable."

"Right, any more. Thank you, Miss."

"Lois, it sounds ingenious and strange, a combination I've always doted on. But will it appeal to Johnna Roberts? Ah."

"Don't give me ah. Invite her up and let her see how we are."

"Yet this isn't a book about gay life. Most of the characters are joes. Johnna could easily say, Lovely dance but what has it to do with selling your book?"

Lois shrugged.

"Of course," Elaine reckoned, "it is a way of proving to her that new cultures are evolving."

"And new readerships for the new cultures, no?"

"The dance has color, range, and my characters—"

"Call the fucking editor!"
Lois ordered, as she went off to snoop around the kitchen and plan dinner.

Checking her watch, Elaine calculated that Johnna would probably have just returned from lunch, a good time to try her. Johnna's assistant said the editor was on another line, so Elaine asked for a callback, grabbed a sweater, and walked outside to think some more. What if Elaine refused to revise her book and peddled it elsewhere? What if every other editor felt as Johnna did? But then, how will Elaine feel if she pulls all the truth out of her book and—

"Hey, you!" called Lois, at the door. "It's Johnna Roberts!"

As Elaine approached, Lois asked, "And who the hell is Alicia, huh?"

Johnna was leery of the dance, but Elaine made it sound glamorous, stimulating, and illustrative, and Johnna said yes at last.

Elaine told her, "Bring your wild boy friend."

"Now, Ty," said Johnna, "is always a maybe."

Hanging up, Elaine announced, "The editor will come."

"'Alicia,' she called me. Can't you come up with something that fits?"

"Like what?"

"Hank."

Elaine laughed.

"I'm just getting tired of all that fancying up of what's real," said Lois, taking Elaine in her arms. "You know?"

"Yes," said Elaine, head to head with her lover, sister, ally. "The funny part of it is, I am, too."

"Oh, don't ask me about the play," Chris told Luke on an emergency phone call a few hours after the opening night of
The Elephant Calf.
"My life is rags."

"Talk."

"Ty finked out on me, the cad. For the last week I've virtually been living with him, and right in the middle of the cast party he just slips out with Ta-ta and It's been a learning experience and... No, he didn't
slip out,
what am I trying to get away with here? I ran after him and practically made him fight his way out. You would have liked me, though—very Barbara Stanwyck, you know? With just a
hint,
the slightest sachet whiff, of Susan Hayward."

"All right, let's reality-test. Perhaps he's just—"

"No, no, no, you gentle boy. I know the fuck-'em-and-forget-'em type when I have one."

"You've had so many."

"Very funny. The tragic side of it is, at first I thought I was using him. You know, to, uh, forfeit my pathetic virginal state."

"Yikes."

"Well, I swore I could protect myself from getting involved. And now look!" "At?"

"I'm in love with him!"

"Really?"

"Or at least in crush. I know I feel terribly let down. Terribly... Oh, gee, I'm
not
going to cry, oh, please, am I? No. No, I'm not. Okay."

"Now,
that's
my New York Woman."

"Quite so. La, my first love affair, gone with the wind."

"Tell me something. What's it like?"

"What's
what—"

"Getting... possessed."

"You mean, How does it feel to get fucked?"

"She's tender, she's direct, she's our Chris."

"Our Chris—that's what I mean. Like, the only men I can stay solid with are..."

"Homosexuals like me and Tom."

Chris sighed. "Just what do I do now? Take an oath of spinsterhood and get out the chic yet strangely dowdy outfits that I'll wear to countless gay brunches and Oscar parties?"

"Is that what the gay boys do in New York? They have a party and watch the—"

"In the presence of certain ladies who, I believe, are known as 'fag hags.'"

"Wow."

"Brother, we're talking about
doom
here."

"Boy. A guy stands you up and suddenly... You were always talking about the exciting life you'd create.
Destiny,
you said. We make our own, you said.
One bad date
and you're going to give all that up?"

"Thanks for the pep talk."

"So we'll all be unmarried, one way or another," Luke went on. "We'll all be disappointed. My parents sent me this
incredible
brown suede jacket last month, and I looked so neat in it, then I left it somewhere. Well, I tore the campus apart but it's gone, and I felt just... so... sick. Then, three days later, I thought, Fuck, it's just clothes. I'm still here and that's what matters." Two beats, then: "So what's it like to get fucked?"