How Long Has This Been Going On (44 page)

"Groovy and terrifying. It's lovely, really, yet you've got to sign yourself over to this... well, an overwhelming—"

"It sounds like our high-school graduation."

"No,
Luke!
I was so free that day. Free and myself."

"Feel better now?" he asked.

"No. But you talk sense. Give me a few days, because I am New York Woman, and I can take it!"

They each laughed a little, then Luke said, "Chris, I just flashed on the oddest picture of you, with some handsome guy and a cute little boy at a cottage door. And it's as if you were waving good-bye to me."

"Never," said Chris.

One of your closest friends meets a woman and moves in with her, and now you and your lover have to come to dinner. It does not go well. Perhaps the womanly intimacy that you and your lover so obviously share with your old friend threatens the fourth woman; perhaps she's simply a shit no matter who's in the room. In any case, she comes off as contentious, disdainful, and politically superior. You and your lover leave early. Heavy day tomorrow, sinus headache, workplace blues. Reasons and smiles. You and your lover exit the building in silence. On the street, waving at a cab, your lover says, "Loved her,
hated
him."

Auntie MacAssar is telling the audience what's wrong with her life—not only is the sex rotten, but there's so little of it—while Blue, wearing a red waiter's jacket, red shorts, and a collared red bow tie, passes with a tray.

"Another Kool-Aid with a wee spike of gin, young man," Auntie tells him. "And hold the Kool-Aid."

The Kid on stage. The Kid as Bombasta, Ramona Hagmore, the Contessa Dooit. The Kid coming on to Blue, who is now a sailor, now a delivery boy. The Kid singing "Indian Love Call":

When I'm balling you-oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo,

Will you ball me too-oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo?

It is the Act, the Kid, the Green Goddess, unreconstructed. Impervious. Impedient. "Another drink, handsome," he calls out, in spotlight, and slides into "Isn't It Romantic?," no spoof, no puns. That was always one of the Kid's most certain gifts, to blindside his commentary with sheer human feeling. Halfway through the verse, the Kid becomes aware of two women sitting up front, familiar, appreciative. Not till the second chorusdoes he realize that it's Lois and Elaine.
Jesus,
after all this time! He gives them a wink, meaning, Where the hell did you guys spring from?

Quick-change is the magic of the Act: turning upstage in a blackout to switch from Auntie to Bombasta while Blue crosses the stage in the nude as a ruse to catch the audience's eye.

Blue. Should I take him to San? He's heaven in the hay, but isn't he the reason why I never fell in love all these years? Too much risk in those boys, because they're too hot to pour it all into one receptacle.

The Kid is Bombasta now, hectoring, monitoring. "You think you're straight?" she rails at Blue, a lonesome cowboy in Stetson, chaps, and boots. "Who's Barbara Cook?"

Blue amiably retorts, "Say who?"

"Okay, you're straight."

I don't know, have I really been getting away with something all these years? They hounded Lenny Bruce to death but me they ignore. Of course, Brace slashed away at their favorite lies. He was hard-core, religion and sex and the family. Next to that, I'm harmless, some faggot. We aren't real to them.

Now Bombasta is flirting with the cowboy; she is almost mild, yet still political, cultural. "Do you know any homos?" she asks the cowboy.

"Maybe my cousin Ricky Bob," Blue replies. "Because he likes to dress up in his mother's old fashions and parade around to the tune of 'Hello, Dolly!' You think that makes him a homo?"

"It could be a tip-off," Bombasta notes.

So Lois and Elaine are still together. I kind of expected that. Back in the old days, it was only the gay
men
that were out cruising all the time. The women would shack up and vanish together. I always wondered how they managed that.

The Kid has reached the finale, "As Time Goes By," which he sings to a sleeping Blue, stretched out nude on his stomach on a little cot. Toward the end, the Kid pulls a blanket over the man and sits next to him, gazing fondly upon... what? A fantasy? His lover? His son? As the music dies, the lights black out.

Backstage is a circus, as always on closing nights, as techies strike the set and the lights, and well-wishers throng the bitty dressing room. Glancing over at Blue, the Kid sees him doing his sleepy smile-and-nod at an older man in an impressive suit. East Seventies, the Kid guesses, with an ample beach house in—no, probably not the Pines. East Hampton or Montauk. Good enough: Blue deserves a feel of the real velvet after slumming it with the Kid for six weeks. Then Lois and Elaine came forward.

Lois says nothing as she shakes the Kid's hand, but she's smiling, and Elaine gives the Kid a kiss. "Johnny," she says, "it's beautiful to hear you sing again."

"We delayed starting our weekend," Lois puts in, "to stick around and catch your act."

"Heaven," the Kid says. "I'm in heaven."

"To see you on stage, Johnny!" Elaine tells him. "Still so young and lyrical! It makes me feel twenty and full of discovery about myself! How on earth do you do it?"

"It's all in the selection of moisturizers, enamels, and condiments specially prepared for me in Switzerland."

"Monkey glands," says Lois, nodding. She has read of the like in the
Reader's Digest.

"Come to dinner," says Elaine. "We have twenty years to catch up on."

The Kid looks at Blue: He and his gentleman appear to have reached the bargaining stage.

"I'm free," says the Kid.

They went to that unmarked place on Bedford Street just below Christopher that, according to legend, was a speakeasy during Prohibition and somehow never got around to raising a signpost even after Franklin Roosevelt dismantled the government's implausible, unenforceable, and socially deconstructive ban on liquor.

"You have weekends, huh?" asked the Kid, savoring his scotch and settling in. "Patchogue? Amagansett?"

"Sea Cliff," said Elaine.

"You're a famous writer," said the Kid. "That's so neat. The noted chronicler of elegance and style. Rich people having fun." The Kid meant it genuinely.

"Except now I'd like to do what you do. Talk about it."

"The gay stuff?"

"Women stuff, more at."

"The Movement?"

"It's about people, not politics. Yet..."

"I say, Do it," Lois put in.

The Kid smiled. "The Mistress of Thriller Jill's."

"The Mistress of Kingdom Come, now."

"The dance palace?"

Lois nodded. "Saturday's gay night."

"Yeah? Men dancing with men?" "Sure."

"Heavy. It's finally happening."

"Don't anyone look, please," said Elaine. "But there's a woman at the table against the wall to the left..."

Blunt Lois looked. "Dark hair, dark blouse?"

"You remember I told you I've seen the same person several times? That's the person."

Lois looked again. "She's just some woman drinking coffee."

"Johnny, come out to the house with us," said Elaine. "Let's have an all-gay weekend."

"Sounds pretty tense," said the Kid. "You have cats, right?"

"We're lesbians, aren't we? What about you, Johnny? Is there someone waiting for you back home?"

The Kid shook his head.

"He does seem young," said Lois, stifling an impulse to reach out and stroke his hair.

"He's the Kid," Elaine rejoined. "Johnny, do come out with us. I long to play hostess."

"Do you have Monopoly out there? I'm in the mood."

"Scrabble, and it's so dead with just two."

Lois put in, "Especially when your opponent keeps making up stupid words."

"And you challenge me every time, don't you?"

"Damn straight."

"Litanesque," the Kid invented. "Congenity. Apotestic."

"Quick," said Elaine, "let's get out of here—she just went to the ladies' room."

"Look, will you please?" said Lois, but Elaine was already heading for the door. "I'm
telling
you," she said, over her shoulder.

As it happened, the Kid's plane reservation left him free till Tuesday afternoon, and he felt confident that Blue had departed for a Major Weekend—last-minute jaunts to fey beaches in the company of a Fashionable Gentlemen were common then as now. So the Kid said yes, and Lois and Elaine dropped him off at his sublet so he could pack, and, though he promised to make it snappy, he turned on the radio to catch a weather reading. Flopping a few T-shirts and a jacket into his duffel, he heard the announcer usher in a musical selection, the instrumental hit of a few years earlier, "Love Is Blue."

The Kid had to laugh at that, for he was wise and love-free. "Yeah," he said aloud, closing up the place and opening the door. "Sure it is."

* * *

In a dingy little cinema on West Fifty-fifth Street, Frank watched the premiere of his debut film,
A Study in Power,
the title billed in the ads in capital letters except for the
y
as a hint to the cognoscenti, along with the helpful identification "all-male cast" and a photograph of shirtless, brooding Frank, a stud in power.

Frank didn't know what to expect from the audience, but was annoyed that so many of them were over-the-hill guys, totally unlike Frank's lean-and-mean coevals. Somehow he had thought the theatre might be filled with Henrys and Andys, as Hero's was; all Frank could see was Paul after Paul—and most of them weren't even looking at the screen. They spent the time seat-hopping and wandering the aisles. Probably covering the men's room, too, if Frank knew anything about these older gay characters.

One of them suddenly popped into Frank's row, two seats away, and started whispering to Frank. "Shitting, fucking," he said. "Piss and come. Hot licking all over you." After a few seconds' intermission, the man started it all over, so Frank got up, faced the guy, and said, "Get moving or I'll shove your head up your behind, right?" The guy got moving.

Slouching back into his seat, Frank felt really irritated. Why go to the movies except to
see
one?
A Study in Power
was no
Rio Bravo,
okay. The lighting was so haphazard that, even though it had been filmed entirely in one section of one loft, some of it was almost blindingly overbright and some of it was near black. Then, too, the sex itself seemed almost perfunctory, nothing like the expertly steamy combinations that Frank recalled from his week of filming. Was it because the story line was so phony? Because the whole thing lacked a structure?

I can do better than this, Frank was thinking. If there are going to be gay fuck movies, why can't they deal with gay life, fit the sex scenes into a statement? Like, maybe, what does
A Study in Power
really mean? What power does the stud have? Who responds to it? What's the stud like when he isn't having sex?

Frank groaned aloud when the painter came in and the camera veered toward him so sharply that it caught a glimpse of some of the lighting cables and a corner of the umbrella. Jumping up, Frank dodged a couple of importunate losers in the aisles and headed home for some heavy sulking and pondering.

Eric was sitting on Frank's stoop, glum as The Little Engine That Couldn't.

"Now what?" said Frank. "Paul throw you out, too?"

"I couldn't hack it any more. Sometimes he's nice, but mostly he just screams at me. Like I bought the wrong kind of carrots or something."

"Come on inside."

Upstairs, Eric immediately brightened. He did the boogaloo, then dropped onto the couch, mock-winded.

"Don't you ever pack up when you change addresses?" Frank asked, amused.

Eric shrugged. "What do I have to pack? Hey, can I come with you to the bar tonight? Maybe there's some job I can do."

"You aren't of age to enter a bar, short stuff. I don't know, maybe Henry's boy friend can use a stock boy in his store."

"Yeah!"

"Where do we put you meanwhile, though?"

"Can't I stay with you?"

"In this closet?" said Frank, pulling off his clothes for a shower. "You'd be on my nerves in two minutes. I'll give Henry a call, maybe he'll think of someone. Help yourself to the fridge."

Under the water, Frank ruminated over the movie and its lack of point. The director was all set to film another one, and he promised to build it around Frank. Frank wondered if the guy would let Frank put the show together, plot and cast it. Maybe do a version of Eric's life—the homeless kid knocking about the city, trying to find a place he belonged in.

Toweling off as he came out of the bathroom, Frank said, "Hey, you ever figure out whether you're a homo or a joe?"

Eric had taken off his shoes and thrown himself front-down on the bed with a smile of eerie contentment, like the model for a mattress ad.

"Who's Joe?"

"Straight, I mean."

Eric flipped over, his eyes on a tour of Frank's body. "Search me," he said.

"Who do you want to go out with, Faye Dunaway or Kirk Douglas?"

"I'll go out with you if you let me stay here."

"The hell you say." Frank sat in the armchair, the towel around his neck.

"Please, Frank." Eric got up and came over. "Come on, I'll give you a blowjob."

"Fuck."

"That, too," said Eric, trying to join Frank in the chair.

"Quit it," said Frank, taking hold of the boy. "There isn't room for two in this... Eric, you're too..." "I'll tuck myself right in and you won't hardly know I'm even here," said the lad, ooching into Frank's lap and putting his arms around him. "We can just rest like this."

Frank stroked Eric's hair, and the boy purred.

"Tell me," said Frank. "What did you and Paul do for sex?"

"He'd just lick me up and down and blow me." Eric purred again. "Then he'd be nice to me for a whole fifteen minutes."

Frank liked the feel of the boy's body through his shirt, trim and trusting. It didn't arouse him; it calmed him, the touch of something innocent in Frank's restless, greedy life.