How Long Has This Been Going On (71 page)

"Could a man be that amazing?"

"Gay men think so. Women... women want something else—to be held and assured and protected."

"I can do that," he said, and he's right.

"I grew up with two of the most beautiful boys who ever lived. Which did I love? I loved both. Yet neither of them could have assured me. Of what? Protected me? From what?"

"Christine, what are you saying?"

"Women love ideals of men, not men themselves. Gentle Father, Deep Brother, Dangerous Boy from Across the Tracks..."

"So what am I?"

Chris put her arms around him, leaning her head against his shoulder. "I think you're my father with abs and tolerance."

"Okay." David put down the freshly washed head of Boston lettuce he was about to pull apart for the salad and took Chris in his arms, squeezing her right up into him, and he got hard instantly. She sighed.

"So," he said, "are you mine or not?"

Frank had his good days, when he felt as if the whole blame thing had been wondrously siphoned out of him during the previous night and he had become whole again, unhaunted. This could last for four or five days. Then everything would start to break again. He would be visited by terrible headaches. His insides would heave out oceans of bloody shit, vomit back even chicken broth and unbuttered toast.

Larken, tending Frank during the bad days, checking with the doctor and watching the clock for the next pharmaceutical feeding, bore it all as a kid bears homework. But what did Frank hate more than being helpless?

Blue, trying to be sophisticated, pulled a line he had heard one of Mason's friends use, "Everyone can be replaced"—and Walt, thinking of Danny, blew up at him. So they had another fight, a hasty and very nearly perfunctory one, flaring up and dying down inside of a minute.

Blue said they'd better take some fresh air.

It was a beautiful day in June, on the chilly side on Russian Hill and hazy, gusty, in the Mission, but sunny, all jackets off, in Golden Gate Park, where Blue and Walt went for their walk.

After a long silence, Blue said, "You think you like me, I know, but you only like some a me. The parts you don't like you get angry at, so you whip away at me, and that hurts my heart. Now, I got to tell you, youngster, I can't feature goin' through that forever."

Walt, sullenly pulling at tree leaves, said nothing.

"You want me to be different, and care about the things you care about. That's not right. I don't ask you to shift around fer me. Why do I have to fer you? Who'm I hurtin' if I don't run along to your rallies and demonstrations? Okay, I'm not yer avant-garde type. Can't you respect me for what I am? Maybe you should say somethin' now."

Walt was murdering leaves.

"I try to look after you, give you your proper space, understand you..."

"You
don't
understand me," said Walt. "If you did, you would join me at the rallies. You would see how it all connects. Every gay who doesn't work for liberation is as bad as a thousand straights who oppose it."

"Walt, you don't even know a straight!" Blue laughed. "So how can you talk about them? I never been to Paris, now would I try to say what it's like?"

"I was raised by straights!"

"Paid 'em no mind, too, just like me. Didn't you?"

"Oh, is
that
irrelevant."

"Well, now, you got the whole world figured out. Okay. But could you do me one favor and get the fuck off my case? 'Cause, right now, you're sittin' so heavy on me, my hair's kissin' grass."

"I love you, Blue!" Walt replied, as if that explained—or forgave—anything.

"I know that." Blue was amiable, slow to judge. He leaped high to place a slam dunk into the curve of a tree branch. "But you got jealous gods afore me, and they eat away at your love. I swear, sometimes you get so stern with me, Walt, if you were anyone else I'd punch his head off."

The two stopped walking and looked at each other then, a long look. Blue said, "I'm not gettin' through, am I?"

"I hear what you say," Walt grudged out.

"What do you want, Walt? What could I grant to make you happy and stop pickin' on folks?"

"I want Danny free of AIDS."

"No, somethin' I can give you with my mortal powers. Somethin' possible."

"That's all I want on earth."

"Nothin' fer Walt?" Blue asked, starting to move again and drawing Walt along.

Walt thought for a long time as they walked along the paths in the sunlight of this perfect anyone-for-tennis? day. "Yes, there's something. I want to be the top man, for once. I want to be the guy who—No, don't say you can give me that. It's my own failing, and I admit it. I'm the flop man."

Blue put an arm around Walt. "I know some sly ways," Blue told him, "where we might arrange this. Course, I never wanted to be the bottom, but I could make an exception fer you."

Walt shook his head. "I know I can't do it. I don't have the power."

"You come on back with me, now."

We have to remember that Blue had seen quite a variety of sexual accommodations in his career. He'd been with royalty and the handicapped, randy intellectuals and impotent athletes, the savage, the exhausted, the

true, and the experimenting. So Blue was well trained, not only in the artillery of lovemaking but in its many several field expedients, the emergency measures some of us need if we are to take the hill. Here is what Blue did: He stretched Walt out on his stomach and gave him a long and intricate massage. Then he blew Walt till the boy was throbbing hard. Then Blue lay down and had Walt grease him up, urging Walt to take his time and "let the feelin' run all through you." But Walt wailed that he had gone down.

"I
told
you I can't," he said.

Blue turned over. "That ain't no problem," he whispered, "so will you come on and trust me, now?" Holding Walt, kissing him, taking his time now. "I'm gonna show you," he says, getting Walt to he down on his stomach again and beat off while rocking to and fro along the length of the bed, right hand stroking his member and left hand running over his skin. "This is the most successful way," Blue assures Walt. That it proves to be: Walt gets heavy hard, his cock bouncing around as he gets the condom on, and he stays hard even as he makes his first wondering entry into his boy friend.

"Blue!" Walt cries. "This is
me
now!"

Blue, on all fours, says, "Just go easy on me, youngster. It's my first time since I was a yearlin'."

"Wow," says Walt. It's his first time ever. He feels he should patter a bit, the way Blue can, the hot stuff; but he fears he will make himself a fool.

"Whoa, don't bang me, pardner," Blue suggests. "Take it sure and slow."

"Blue, I want to turn you over. I want to have you the way you have me."

Blue is afraid that Walt might drop his erection if he loses a single stroke, so he says, "Just stay with it, youngster."

Now Walt is silent, building his load; and Blue braces himself at the crescendo of Walt's panting; and Walt gasps and thrusts forth his essence with a rush of power so pure that if Blue had not already been the love of his life, he must become so now.

In fact, when the exhausted, ecstatic Walt tumbled off Blue onto his back, he said, "At last I'm a man." Perhaps some of you find these strange words. What defines a man? But Blue understood Walt—could not, perhaps, have articulated precisely what Walt meant by equating virility with the top man's sense of command, but did at any rate feel a kinship with

Walt's feelings without actually sharing them. And Walt, I assure you, was wildly grateful for Blue's understanding. This is what love is, boys and girls: succor.

These two had the habit of watching television after making love, on Blue's secondhand black-and-white. It was news time, and they were treated to a feature on the White Aryans, who had burned a cross on some black family's yard and had been shot at. No one was hurt, and no arrests had yet been made. On any other night, Blue might have let drop some less than compassionate remark to which Walt might have responded in a somewhat apocalyptic manner. But this night the feature passed in silence, for our couple were contemplating each other on a spiritual plane. They were too thoughtful to fight.

Next time.

Four days later, the Kid's play opened; and our Blue was so proud of Walt that he invited Mason Crocker to help fill out his complimentary pair. Blue kept opening his program to the credits to pleasure himself in reading "Music by Walt Uhlisson" and running his finger over the line of type as if sealing a little package with Walt inside; and he openly doted upon Walt's bio, which, because of a lack of professional credentials, concentrated on a list of Walt's "extended family,": including not only Tom and Luke (and one Blue Gadsden) but Danny and Claude. It ended, "With warmest thanks to Jerrett Troy for liking me."

Neville Ironword, as always Chris's designer, joined Philip in the audience after a last-minute backstage visit, ignoring the empty third seat where Lonnie should have been. Philip did not ignore it. "What do you bet he won't show up?" he said.

"All right, he can be a few minutes late."

"Late? Your son is boycotting your premiere."

Neville decided to become fascinated with the program. "They misspelled Aeschylus," she observed.

"That boy," said Philip, "has had much liberty and little responsibility."

"Another line like that and I'll have to rent you out to a sitcom."

It had been Chris's idea that Walt play the show not in the pit but at an elegant console at the side of the stage, in front of the curtain. As Walt serenely took his place at the keyboard, Blue told Mason, "That's my boy, right there."

"Handsome," said Mason. "Authoritative."

"He's from the Midwest," Blue helpfully added.

Luke and Tom shared the glow of two parents at the first-grade Christmas pageant, one of those "It was all worth it for this" looks that explains why happy families are all alike. Luke even grabbed Tom's arm, as one catches one's breath. See! Our miniature human has become a young man, sterling in a suit.

"Boy, I love this," Tom agreed.

The houselights dimmed as Chris slipped into a seat at the rear and Philip stared first at Lonnie's empty place and then at Neville.

"Okay, okay," she whispered, as the curtain rose:

T
ABITHA,
J
ENNIFER, AND
S
USPICIA (
P
USHMORE) DISCOVERED
.

T
ABITHA
: But, Suspicia, what do
you
think of that
dangerous
eyeful, St. John Lord Ramsbottom, so comely yet so rugged, so ruthless yet debonair, who has come to our own town of Riverrun on mysterious business that has yet to be disclosed?

I most proudly admit that the audience was warm and the applause was thunderous, almost from that first line. They loved the jokes, the score, the Kid. The curtain fell on an ovation, and everybody crowded backstage to fawn and rave, a good sign. They don't crowd for a flop. There was Walt, beaming in his blue serge, and Philip Ironword, very possessive of and sticking close to his Neville, both hoping no one would ask where Lonnie was. There was Tom and Luke, comprehending for the first time that their boy had talent, and Blue with Mason Crocker, who was pleased to meet Walt but troubled to say that he found some of the material "on the lurid side." Walt took it calmly. Then came the cast party, at Chez Panisse—the Kid sprang for it—so most of the backstage had decamped by the time that Evan dropped in on Alice.

"I'd like to have you back with me," Evan told her, neither apologetic nor commanding. It's what she wants, that simple.

"There's Fay to consider," said Alice, mooching around with her makeup.

"Serious, huh? I don't blame you, she's stacked."

"Though I'd love to come back. It isn't fan, living with my parents. Fay's place is just—Oh, Fay, here's Evan, at last you two meet! Dear me"—as Fay pulls back a step—"it's daggers at Evan. So deserved, too."

Evan extends her hand to Fay. "Totally bummed out, but hanging in there."

Fay takes the hand, sorry to have seemed unsporting.

"The rivals at bay," Alice captions it.

"She wants to make us enemies," Evan tells Fay. "We won't let her."

"I have to say," Fay puts in, "that my loyalty is to Alice."

"Will she come home? To me, I mean?"

Evan and Fay look at Alice.

"I'll have to ponder, won't I?" as she shifts from costume to party clothes. Oh—Evan thinks—that unbearably white skin, so cool to my touch till I reach the C-thing, when Alice girl goes crazy. "It's so troublesome... decisions, decisions," Alice goes on, enjoying the scene, the two damsels who want her. "Grandmother Lee had a phrase, 'Pressing the orange peel against the lichee nut.' Yes, Fay's place
is
too small for two. And Evan has all those wonderful clothes I occasionally borrow."

Alice turned to Fay and said, "Evan's offer is so very tempting, you see."

Returning home, the Ironwords found a message from Lonnie on the machine: Sorry he missed Neville's opening night, but Dana's car broke down, so Lonnie was going to overnight it in Daly City and hitch back to town tomorrow.

Neville looked at Philip.

"I'm grounding him when he turns up," said Philip. "And don't tell me not to."

"He's already passive-aggressing because of our reaction to his girl friend. You'll only—"

"He's out of control."

"He has been a sharp, affectionate, and generous boy all his life, Philip. Don't we owe him something for that?"

"What do you suggest?"

"Patience."

Larken, Larken's friend Sam Weaver, Evan, and Neville took turns keeping Frank company, for now that he was a Person with AIDS something could go wrong at any moment and render him helpless. Frank bristled at the fuss, but he liked the company. He had never been much for reading or listening to music or watching television. He wasn't "an apartment type of guy," as he always put it. He had lived his life
outside,
on the job or cruising or playing ball, whatever. Now that he was often homebound, companions at least helped pass the time.