How Long Has This Been Going On (56 page)

"Well, you can't just... I mean—"

"You want to know what I did so far?"

Tom nodded.

"First, I made out with Peter Njelsted in ninth grade, in his basement. He talked me into it—he said we had to practice so girls wouldn't laugh at us."

"Well, how was that?"

"Sort of gooey. Then I did something with Thor Lundquist under the covers in his bed, when I had to sleep over during a snowstorm."

"Chris's little cousin?"

"He's not so little now. He's this well-known hero athlete and Student Government president, so of course he's always getting little guys like me into his bed where no one suspects a thing. Because suddenly I began to notice that every time a storm was coming, Thor would invite someone over for a study session."

"What exactly did you do?"

"I'm not sure. I had my eyes shut the entire time."

Tom smiled, then shook his head. "What are we going to do with you, pal?"

"Cousin Tom, are you mad at me for being gay?"

"Jesus, no! Do I look mad?"

"But you can't be happy about it—or you'd be dating a man yourself. Wouldn't you?"

"These thorny questions, Walt! I... Maybe everyone has secret longings for... you know, both men and women."

"I don't. I only long for men. I just don't know what to do about it."

"Have you ever been to a bar?"

"A gay bar?"

Tom nodded.

"Well... they don't have too many of those in Gotburg, you know."

Laughing, Tom said, "Well, they've got a few here. I'll take you, if you like."

Walt's eyes were wide. "You
would?"

"Why not?"

"Do they have porn movies here, too?"

"Sure."

"Maybe that's where I should go—to find out what to do on a date."

"Maybe, if you met the right guy, he'd show you himself."

"Wouldn't he just get impatient with me for being a dookie about sex?"

"Well, not if he liked you, I guess." Tom glanced at his watch. "Golly, it's late anyhow. Come on, we'll finish talking about this tomorrow. Sack time."

As they left the kitchen, Walt said, "You know, it was really nice to discuss this, Cousin Tom. It feels very adult to me. Now I think I'll take Claude to bed and practice a few maneuvers on him."

They parted on the second-floor landing. Walt's light went out in minutes, but Tom didn't go right to bed. First he went back to the kitchen to retrieve his diary. Then he took it to the living room and read it from cover to cover, skipping some of the technical data but, in essence, reviewing the last eight years of his life. Here were men he had glimpsed, spoken to, somewhat known. Here were houses: resurfacing, extensions, estimates. You examine the structure, envision its potential, superintend its growth. Love could be like that, couldn't it? You sight, think about, develop someone. Chris made me cry. She lured me back into the old days. Of course, she thinks it was this great romantic trio we had, when the main thing was that they went off to college and left me behind. Now I'm as independent as they are, and I created that independence myself. When I build, I build sturdy. I make decisions to last, too. I am what I do.

Such belief in the course that he had chosen no doubt chaperoned Tom when he took Walt to the Magic Parrot on the first evening when the thermometer rose above ten degrees. "It's summer in the Twin Cities!" the Channel Four weatherman chortled. Low wind and a warm front. So Tom and Walt drove downtown and walked into a world. Those of my readers who savored the heady atmosphere of Thriller Jill's and Hero's might resent the plain-Jane air of the Magic Parrot: but this is the Midwest. We do things
basic
here, with none of your trendy angst, your East-versus-West-Coast anti-fashions. Instead of the Magic Parrot, they might have named this bar "A Night with the Guys."

Tom bought Walt a drink, then urged him to scout the place for a buddy. Walt mostly hung in the shadows, watching and trying to decide about things. But other customers noticed him and came up to talk. Moving to the rhythm of the jukebox and keeping an eye on Walt, Tom played the loner till he was surprised by a tall and very friendly fellow who came up out of nowhere and said, "What's cooking?"

Tom shrugged. Shrugging is the
nicheuo,
the
shalom,
perhaps even the Esperanto of the Midwest; it can mean a thousand things, depending on the set of facial features, the motion of hands, the placement of legs. Tom's shrug said, Nothing's cooking, because I'm just here with a friend. He's gay and I'm his cousin.

Outlanders are entirely blind to this body language, but then midwesterners are constantly amazed at how many words they have to put together to express themselves in other sections of the land, even to say Nice evening, or Don't put cream in my tea. When Luke's parents took a trip to the East, Mrs. Van Bruenninger couldn't wait to get back and tell her friends how exhausting it was, trying to communicate. "Those New Yorkers," she told all and sundry, "don't hear anything that you say. You have to chew your cabbage twice in New York."

Reading Tom's shrug, the tall, friendly fellow looked around the room, checked Tom's gaze, and followed it to gaze at Walt, who was sipping his Kahlua with milk as if it were the most intoxicating potion to be had in the land.

"Your brother?"

"Cousin."

"Cute boy."

"Well, he's a firm young man," and that doesn't make too much sense, but Tom was a little flustered. The bar and all: the dense gayness of it. He's right there in the center, more uncomfortable than intrigued. The jukebox rang its music through the great open room. It was "Indian Giver," the month's top single, by Tommy Woods. Remember?:

You gave all your heart to me,

Couldn't have been bolder.

And I'll admit I took you at your word.

Now you're going out with guys,

Giving me the shoulder.

And who thought it could ever have occurred?

"He's a little young," said the tall fellow to Tom. Then he said, "You, uh, do threesomes?"

"Huh?"

"You and the cousin. You take a guy home all together, you?"

"A... threesome? Well,
no,
I mean, we don't even... We're not..."

"I like a threesome. There's so much more you can do."

No, Tom's shrug said, I do twosomes with a woman named Judith; and the tall fellow shook hands and said so long.

Tom glanced over at Walt. He was talking to two right-looking young men. Fine boys, like Walt. Boy friends, Tom imagined. They come here to hang out.

In the corner near the jukebox there was this guy. He was smiling at Tom. Just standing there, smiling.

Someone bumped Tom from behind, he turned, and the man who had bumped him said, "Sorry," belligerently. Then he caught a look at Tom and brightened.

"So, hey, man!" he said. "Let me buy you a beer."

"Got one."

"So you'll got two." Turning to the bar, this guy called out, "Hey, George!"

"I don't want a beer," Tom told him.

"No problem, man. It's no
problem."

"Yes, it is," said Tom quietly. "Because I am extremely happy with the beer I have and I don't want any other beer. Got me?"

Shrugging to say, Well, excuse
me,
the guy sauntered off.

The smiling man at the jukebox nodded as if supporting Tom and defending Tom's space. He was a big guy, ruggedly handsome, black hair going gray, poised and very easygoing in his dark cords and Irish fisherman's sweater. Tom liked the look.

Walt was talking to a blond kid.

A nondescript guy, older than seemed to be usual for this place, was staring intently at Tom, and Tom stared back, out of curiosity and irritation rather than welcome. Still, the guy came up and said hello.

"Hello, yourself," Tom answered.

"You're new here, aren't you?"

"First time."

The man nodded. "I know all the faces here. Perhaps you're new in the Twin Cities as well?"

Tom said, "Nope."

"Ah. Yes. Then either you just broke up with your lover, or you only just came out."

"You know a lot," said Tom. "Is that it?" "Yes, you may be offended. That's your feeling, and it's healthy for us to show our feelings."

Walt and the blond are at the jukebox, discussing the selections, as the Eagles' "One of These Nights" comes on. The smiling man in the Irish fisherman's sweater has vanished.

"Can I give you my card?"

Tom wanted to say, What for?, but in his business, people were always trading cards and he reached for it automatically. All the card said was

The Gay Discussion Group

Allen Taylor

660-8931

and Tom quickly handed it back to the man.

"Don't you want to think about it?" Allen Taylor asked. "We are all in search of the life-affirming experience. We have hurdles to leap, goals to reach. But the question I always ask is, Are we maintaining our
selfness?
The men in my group use the discussions to open up the doors to selfness."

Walt was shaking hands with the blond.

"We meet every Monday night, and I'm just about to start a second group on Wednesday, because of the raging demand, ha-ha. Why don't you consider it, and perhaps drop in on a Monday just for a look-see? A quick phone call, over before you know it, will advise you on the convenient place and time."

Walt was coming over.

"I think a man like you would benefit from our—"

Tom said, "You don't know me from a Clark bar."

"Yet I see that you are closed off from your selfness, by the tension with which you—"

"That was Danny, Cousin Tom. He's a pianist, too. We traded phone numbers."

Like business cards, Tom was thinking. He said, "Ready to split, pal?"

"Sure," said Walt, accepting the card that Allen Taylor offered him. "What's this about?"

"Cousin Tom will explain it to you."

"Like fish," said Tom.

Allen Taylor's little shrug, as Tom and Walt turned to go, said, See you Monday. Tom felt a little disgusted with the place and he was really ready to get through that door, but he gave a start when he saw the smiling man in the sweater leaning against the wall near the door. Walt was studying the card and didn't notice Tom nod at the man as they walked out into the frozen city night.

In the car, Walt announced that he had had a great social success at the Magic Parrot.

"Did anyone ask you home?" Tom asked.

"Danny did, but I told him you were my lover."

"Wow."

"Do you mind?"

"Well... it's fanny..."

"About this discussion group..."

"No."

"No?"

"That guy is phonus balonus. You pay money for the right to open up your most painful thoughts to people you don't even know, then they all pick you apart and make you feel even worse." "How do you know about it?"

Tom laughed grimly. "That's not the first time someone tried to get me to go to one of those things." And
"Selfness!"
he added, with a snort of contempt.

They drove a few blocks. Then Walt asked, "Is there an age thing that you have to be for this group?"

"I think he said fifty."

"Ha."

"Look, it's only for—"

"I want to try it, Cousin Tom."

Tom wrote in his diary about the smiling man in the bar:

Very tall and in charge and watching me as if he knew some joke about me I'm not supposed to get. I don't know whether he would be the great guy kind of friend, the kind who's there for you no matter what. Or he could be the tricks up the sleeve kind that always tests you. Women are easier to get along with than men, because they're honest about what they want from you. With men, there's always some angle.

Tom told Judith about Walt's being gay.

"Well," she said, "I think I always thought so."

"Really?" Tom was surprised. "He's such an outgoing kind of guy, though."

Judith was at the piano, playing Chopin's E Major Prelude. Tom was hovering over her.

"Somebody wrote words to this," said Judith. "It's supposed to be atmosphere, but they made it a love song." She broke off. "Pianists like this piece because the main theme is very easy to get through."

Tom took her hands in his, stroked them. He was smiling and concerned. "You don't seem to care about what I just said. About Walt."

"What should I care?"

"Well, you accept it, then?"

"It's not up to me. God must accept it. All I have to do is live with it."

"Would that be a problem for you?"

Judith examined the music in front of her, pulled out this piece and that. "Tom, I like Walt. Are you asking me anything else?"

Tom was taken aback. He said, "No, I... Play some more."

Judith played "Serenade for the Doll," another piece from
Children's Corner,
and, around the middle of it, Tom said, "I'm not asking you anything."

Walt enrolled in Allen Taylor's discussion group and Tom visited a gay porn theatre, a run-down antique that had known mild glory as host to plays on national tour in the 1920s and then became a cinema during the Depression, a big-band dance hall during the war, and a movie house thereafter, including a season or two of "art" revival bookings before declining into its present state. Tom found a seat in an empty section and locked eyes with the screen. A feckless short entitled
The Merry Baker
inspired his contempt; but this was followed by a strangely compelling film called
The Stranger.
It proposed a businessman of some sort, all vested up in his suit and armed with his square-cut attaché, who is haunted by sightings of this really sexy older guy in T-shirt, jeans, and black leather jacket.
Really
sexy guy, with shoulders too wide for a doorway and arms out of some cartoon. Scary, serious, staring guy, this is, following the businessman on the street or just appearing in rooms, in and out of his clothes. The businessman is pretty okay-looking himself; you can see that they picked a guy who shows off well in a suit. It doesn't hide the build; it outlines it.