How Long Has This Been Going On (61 page)

"A man, I guess."

"Yet you enjoyed your women?"

Tom shrugged: I enjoyed sex. Moreover—he's grouchy and sometimes thoughtless but he does have perspective—he spoke up to add, "They weren't
my
women. They were women who happened to be my friends."

"Coffee's ready!" Walt called, from downstairs.

"Shower first?" said Win.

"I would like to see you with a woman," Tom told him, his arms around him, moving against him, staring at him. "Just sit there and watch you."

"Would you like to see me with Judith?"

Tom slid back as if slapped. "Well, Jesus, what a thing to say!"

Win smiled. "I'm inside you, my friend," he remarked.

It took a bit of a while, but Judith made up with Tom, just friends now; and Walt and Danny "fooled around" (the culture's official term for sexual activity somewhat north of a peck on the cheek and considerably south of screwing with such abandon that the wallpaper peels and the lightbulbs explode); and Tom and Win broke up. It was Judith's observation that she had too much invested in Tom emotionally to cut him out of her life; and Walt and Danny's discovery that once they had sampled each other on the physical level they didn't need any repeats and could return to being sidekicks; and Tom and Win's realization that they were both born tops and thus sexually incompatible. There was little they could do that both enjoyed—one of them was always unsatisfied, even densely vexed. Tom did not want Win inside him, did not want to be possessed, known. He would hardly have uttered an endearment before he regretted having shown himself, and he ceaselessly worried about how fairly Win was coming to perceive him.

For Tom had never wanted to be perceived. Admired, liked, and envied, most certainly. This, after all, was the energy that drove his friendship with Luke and Chris when they were growing up: A relationship so serenely solid made other friendships of the day seem coarse and banal. No doubt Tom's affairs were also predicated upon this need to enhance his legend, for he chose his partners well. They were women of class and style. They reflected glory upon Tom. Even Win, when Tom came out, was of this kind.

Glamorous Tom, the opportunist. But perhaps his character was perverted by the comprehensive subterfuges of the closet. At least he has finally thrown off the most substantial of his masks; that should ease him up somewhat. Certainly, Tom relaxed to the point of allowing Win to lure him into a camping trip in late September, when the blackfly and no-see-um season was over and the cold not yet set in. Win and Tom were friends, like Tom and Judith and Walt and Danny, and now that Win no longer had sexual control of Tom, he was amused at the notion of carting him into the wilderness, where Win would still be master.

Tom felt dared. He wanted to accept the challenge, but only with Walt along—and Walt wouldn't hear of it, even when Win promised not to hunt anything.

"I went camping once," Walt told Tom. "It was terrible. There's no bathrooms or toaster ovens."

"How will you get around while I'm gone, though?"

"Danny will take care of me."

Walt was adamant, so off went Tom and Win on their journey through the wild. Alone in their tent in the northern night, they tried some heavy fooling around—as both had known they were bound to—and it was pleasant enough but no more, a certain sign that their little era of intensity was over. They could now relax into that second stage in the gay social structure, Friends for Life.

Something else occurred as a result of the trip: Walt faded out of this curious triangle, therapy and all, and the two Uhlisson boys broke slightly apart, Tom to pal around with Win, and Walt to grow closer to Danny. The two younger men solidified their bond by putting an act together, Walt on piano and Danny on one of his several instruments, the violin, to offer themselves as a salon duo for work in restaurants and at parties and weddings. The gay population of the Twin Cities still remembers this incomparable team—trim, delighted Walt and lanky, "artistic" Danny—running through medleys of old show tunes, and a miniature version of Gershwin's
Rhapsody in Blue,
and the ragtime pieces that had been popularized in the movie
The Sting
a few years before. Oh, they made wonderful music, the thumping piano and elegantly wailing violin coaching listeners back to ancient times of the Gershwins and Cole Porter. Who dared speak when these two were on? They billed themselves as "Hot Broadway," holding forth at the Magic Parrot's special Sunday brunch, at wealthy Magnus Gleason's sixtieth birthday bash, and at various boîtes of the day. Danny would drive over and pick Walt up. Walt would be waiting in the kitchen, the loose-leaf notebooks of their music piled on the table. Danny would honk and Walt would come running out, and these were some of the happiest times in Danny's short life.

Tom was out and dating all this while. It was nothing much. Nobody he found was as hot as Win—including, at this point, Win himself. Sometimes Tom called Chris and poured himself into her ear; and she loved that. Her Tom, at last coming out. Her poignant boy, tender and defiant and crestfallen, trying to pull himself into one sensible piece with her help.

Chris had moved to San Francisco, somewhat because she had won a director-in-residence job with the major repertory company there but mainly, I believe, because a city full of gay men deserved to be a city fall of Chris. She already knew the style, the feelings, and even the politics. Lesbians baffled her, because they didn't care much about clothes or show music—but, you know, most gay men don't, either. Tom and Luke, for instance, wore whatever their right hand connected with in the drawer, and they could sing their way through
Oklahoma!
about as well as the average American can sing through the third verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

But the gay men whom Chris knew were what she termed "cabaret gays"—generally somewhat knowledgeable about but in any case vastly interested in music and theatre and Hollywood. Some of them would, upon occasion, produce boy friends who were utterly at sea in conversations about Renata Scotto, or would tease men who didn't know Maria Callas from Maria Montez—and, Chris sensed, adore them for it. There seemed to be a belief that the less one knew about showbiz and art, the more virile one was: the more powerful, wonderful, straight.

Chris construed this as a form of gay self-hatred, and she would reproach those of her friends who traded in it. She would tell them of Tom and Luke, of their love for each other, shattered by Tom's self-hatred. But all these friends would say in reply was "Oo, set me up with the rough one!" or "Is either of them free this Saturday?" Then they'd realize that the Luke of the tale was their own Luke Van Bruenninger, and they'd laugh and dismiss the whole thing with "Oh, she's just another queen," or some such.

Chris would tell Tom of all this, and Tom was utterly bewildered, much as Frank was, some pages ago, when Todd explained to him the Science of Types.

"It's almost like jobs," said Tom. "You know, where there are plumbers, or waiters, or lawyers. So the gay world has your cabaret gays, or..."

"Rough trade, or actor-models, or... It's a little nutty, isn't it?"

"So what's Luke's job?"

"Oh, he's a cabaret boy, I guess."

"And what's my job?"

Chris laughed. "We'd have to invent one for you, my Tom. You'd be something new here."

"Wouldn't fit in, huh?"

"Oh, Tom, that's just my crowd and their jokes. Everyone fits in. The gay world has probably the most heterogeneous population there is. It's like a million refugees, starting out from scratch in a new place."

"Well, refugees from what, anyhow?"

"From the job of being a fake straight, you might say."

How very different San Francisco must be from Minneapolis!, Tom thought. "She's just another queen" haunted him as he tried to picture what Luke's life was like. Luke as a queen? Luke, who loved the respect of his peers almost as much as Tom had?

How about Tom as a queen? He had been dropping in on the gay porn theatre again, but, as with that first time some months before, the art excited terrible visions in him. He didn't know where to station himself.

One film in particular caught Tom's eye:
The Night Town.
It started with this ordinary guy, nice-looking but unassuming, totally unlike the smoldering beefcake you usually got in gay porn. There he was in his office, obviously ending his day, packing up, saying good-bye to his secretary, doing that pointless elevator chatter with another woman, marching briskly out into the street, where a long shot caught him and a hundred other professional types stepping high in the sun. It was a bemusing start for a porn film; most of them were nothing but Guys Doing It from opening to close.

Now the guy takes a shortcut through an alley, and he comes upon a place called Club Night Town. He looks surprised, and quizzically examines the signs out front. "Featuring the musico-comic sensation, Bombasta," the hoardings read. The man is thinking this over. There is a photograph of Bombasta, and it winks at him. Charmed and uncertain, he enters the club.

Club Night Town. It is all men, sitting stonily at their tables. They could be statues, puppets. They
are
puppets!: When they clap for Bombasta's entrance, you can see the strings. The hero of the piece is looking around, wondering about this. A drink materializes at his table. Bombasta performs. She is one of those drag queens, and she pitches her act entirely at the hero guy. She even comes down off the stage and tries to kiss him, and he is so shocked he runs out of the club as the puppet audience slaps out an emotionless ovation.

Outside the club, the terrain has changed. Black night, a maze of paths, men lurking, watching, kissing, feeling each other. The hero rounds a corner: A teenager fucks a eunuch, who grins at the hero. Panicked, the hero starts running, but at every turning he encounters more drag queens or sex men, grabbing at him. Two men capture him and force him to his knees. For all his struggles, he is forced to blow them. Now Bombasta appears, to apply makeup to the poor guy's face and fit her turban onto his head. He is screaming for help, and everyone is laughing at him. Bombasta performs a Charleston in time to the hero's cries.

Suddenly, this mighty new character appears out of nowhere: tall, straight dark hair and bushy mustache, so gymmed up his skin's like armor. He pulls the hero inside somewhere and comforts him, holds him. The guy is actually crying.

Tom wonders if this is acting.

The dark-haired man starts stripping the hero, who keeps saying no while the dark-haired man says
yes.
Over and over. Over and over again in this film of gay porn. No: as he's greasing him up.
Yes.
No: as he's grabbing his legs by the ankles and shoving them back and up.
Yes. Yes.
Please: as he slides in deep and solid, and of course it's that same porn actor from
The Stranger,
our own Frank, forty-seven and two months the week he made this film but, thanks to opulent genetics, a never-say-die fitness schedule, and gigantic aplomb, still formidable.
Yes,
Frank insists, moving to the beat of You Have To as the guy weeps and groans and the camera, which has been studying the two men's interlocking as a medical intern peruses a triple bypass, pulls back, so far back that we see that the two men are on some kind of stage, and the puppet audience is clapping, and Bombasta has reappeared to sing an old favorite:

Mister Sandman!

Please make me cream!

That was when Tom left the theatre, somewhat shaken—as Frank, artist of the erotic puzzle, meant him to be. I am in that film, Tom was thinking.

That's about me and my many ghosts. He started the car in the direction of Win's house, then thought, No, and headed for Judith's place.

It was late on a Sunday evening, and Judith was home, working on her lists for the coming week, and the month in general, and the rest of her life. In her mind, as she let him in, was Ask Tom what?

"I'm getting lost," he said.

She nodded, leading the way to the kitchen—the patio, coffeehouse, and Vatican City of midwestern life.

"Where to, now?" she asked.

He couldn't say. Didn't know.

"My poor Tom," she called him. "Would you ever have wanted to marry me?"

"You were the closest. The nearest thing to it."

"But you don't want that."

He said, "The first time I laid eyes on Win, I said, that's for me. Not that I made any attempt to speak to him. But when he turned up in my life anyway, I let it happen. I
helped
it to happen. I thought it would solve everything. Just to be..." He watched her, but he said, straight out, "To be held by him. So tight I'd never break free. Lend me that
passion,
I thought."

"What are you planning on, Tom? The same thing as marriage, but with a man? Domicile, friends of the same type, dogs instead of children, an all-gay Christmas party?"

"I don't know if that's how it works out. Danny... Walt's friend... Well, he's sort of the policy maker for this... kind of life...."

Bringing over the reheated coffee, she tilted her head wryly. "Oh, there's a policy?" she asked.

"Danny thinks so. He lectures Walt, and Walt reports back to me."

"So. What's the policy?"

"Well, according to Danny, gay life isn't supposed to mirror the rest of the world. They invent their own social customs."

"They."

"It's just..." he began. "It's... Where do I go to find out who I am?"

"Now, that's simple," she said. "You go back to where it started."

"Where's that on earth?"

"It's where you were before you started renovating."

"Selfness,"
he muttered.

"Luke,"
she said. "That boy back in... back in your life somewhere. Ask him. He'll know."

So it wasn't Ask Tom. It was Tell him.

* * *

Tom tried staying away from the porn theatre and talking to Danny, but Danny exasperated easily, especially at men who Didn't Know What They Wanted.