The Legend of the Ditto Twins (60 page)

They
followed The Ditto Twins all over the country for over a year, from Dallas to
Houston to St. Louis to cities I can't even remember. What I do remember is
that we celebrated our nineteenth birthday, just the two of us, in a hotel room
in Atlanta with a cake we bought for ourselves at a local supermarket. For our
twentieth, we bought cupcakes at a bakery in Pittsburgh and ate them on the
street. One hotel room blended into another, and the following autumn, we found
ourselves in Ft. Lauderdale for the second year in a row, where we celebrated
Thanksgiving as headliners for the biggest event of the gay calendar year, The
White Party. We were becoming a tradition.

In every
city, of course, Rev. Flamm monopolized the airways as he became more and more
obsessed with The Ditto Twins' sex life. Over those two years, little by
little, so did the press: at first just an occasional op-ed piece tracing the
history of The Last Taboo; next, feature-length interviews with Rev. Flamm in
local magazines; then front-page articles in the gay press differentiating
between homosexual and heterosexual incest. (Most posed the question: If no
progeny could be produced, what was all the fuss about?) It wasn't long before
the battle went national. Larry King devoted a whole show to the controversy.
So did Oprah.

Sales
went through the roof. We were so busy, we never got around to making the movie
with the Hudson Twins.

By the
time we returned to Ft. Lauderdale the second time, we were accustomed to the
security measures forced upon us. None of the club owners seemed to mind the
extra expense of metal detectors and security guards, and almost all held the
act over for an extra night or two to satisfy the growing crowds. By then,
there were straight men and women waiting in line to get in, too.

Of
course, Clark and I both loved and hated our situation. We were,
simultaneously, the delighted beneficiaries of our one-hit fame and the
miserable prisoners of it. In two short years, The Ditto Twins had become the
phenomenon we'd always hoped to be. Then, on the morning after we closed in Ft.
Lauderdale, the phone call came, and we were on the next plane home.

"What
are you talking about?" Clark stared at his brother in disbelief.

"Just
what I said. I'm never gonna write another word. I mean it. No more memoirs.
That's it."

"Mark,
a real writer doesn't put down just the good times. He has to cover the rough
spots, too."

"You
call this a rough spot?" Mark squeezed his brother's wrist. "It's a
helluva lot more than that."

"I
know, I know." Clark put his other hand on top of Mark's and patted it.
"That's why you've got to remember everything that happens—starting with
the phone call. Someday you're gonna want to write it down."

"Don't
bet on it."

"The
seat belt light just went on. Come on, buckle up. We're about to land. We're
almost home."

Deep
down, Mark knew his brother was right. As usual.

Casa Clay-Jay was
strangely silent, though every light in the place was on. We called out, but no
one answered. Quickly, we began to check out the various rooms of the empty
house until we soon reached the master bedroom. There sat Clay at the foot of
the bed, hunched forward, staring at the blow-up of him and Jay on the red
Corvette.

He looked
up, barely focusing. "What do I do now?"

As one,
we rushed to embrace him.

"No,
don't." He pulled back. "No touching just yet."

We
retreated and sat side by side, cross-legged on the floor at his feet, not
knowing what to do. After a long time—maybe as much as an hour—I fumbled for my
cigarettes, lit Clark's and mine, and offered Clay one.

He nodded
vaguely. "Yeah. I'm all out." He inhaled deeply. "This is what
fuckin killed him, you know. Probably kill me, too. But... that's okay."

"Do
you want to tell us what happened?"

"There's
nothing to tell."

"How
did it happen?"

Clay
shrugged. "Yesterday was just like any other day." He swallowed a sob
with a lungful of smoke and started to cough. It was a good long while before
he got it together enough to continue. "He worked on the Hudson script all
afternoon... It just wasn't coming together... I did the mail order and went to
the bank... We watched 'Jeopardy'... He fixed dinner for the four of us, then
Lily and Phil went out... We started to watch TV and decided we'd rather make
love." He kept trying to strangle the sobs. "And we did." The room
shrank into silence. "Around midnight, we curled up, just like we always
do afterwards, and went to sleep. When I fuckin woke up in the morning... he
wasn't... you know... breathing."

I wanted
to comfort Clay, but at that moment I needed Clark more. I reached for him as
he reached for me.

"What
do I do now?" asked Clay again, more to himself than to us. Then he
chuckled bitterly. "I guess I'll go take a leak. Life goes on, damn
it."

As if
sleepwalking, he wandered into the bathroom. Thank God Lily
and
Phil got home
before he came back.

"How's
he doing?" asked Lily.

"He
hasn't cried yet. Hasn't..."

“...said
much. What can you tell us?"

Lily
pulled Phil's arm tightly around her. "Clay woke us up about six. In a
panic. Said Jay wasn't breathing. To call 911. The paramedics were here within
minutes. That's when I called you guys. Sorry I was so abrupt, but things were
crazed. Clay rode in the ambulance. Kept saying, 'He can't leave me again.' How
can Jay be gone? We just had dinner with him last night."

That's
about the time Clay returned from the john.

"Dad,
your fly's still unzipped," said Lily.

Clay
nodded vaguely but did nothing. "Where is he?"

"Uh...
he's been moved from the hospital to the funeral home," Phil replied.
"That's where we've been, taking care of the arrangements."

"Jay
wanted to be cremated, you know. Did I tell you?"

"Dad,"
said Lily. "You told us. It's all taken care of."

"And
no fuckin' funeral. Jay hated funerals. It's all in his will. Did you find it,
the
will?"

"Yes,
Clay. Right where you said it was."

"But,
by God, we're going to throw him a memorial service. He deserves a memorial
service, the best fuckin' memorial service in history."

I guess
people deal with death differently. During the next week, Clay coped with his
grief by immersing himself in planning "the best fuckin memorial service
in history." It became a twenty-four-hour-a-day job.

He wrote
the obituary himself, and it was published in all the local papers. As word got
around, the death of this internationally known photographer, our uncle, was
picked up by national news services, and he even got five column inches, but no
photo in
The New York Times,
only one sentence of which was devoted to
his career in smut.

Clay was
on the phone night and day, but he never called Mom, and he told us not to
either.

He hardly
slept at all, and never once in the bed he had shared with Jay. When he did
doze, it was always in the chair at the foot of the bed, and he would often
awake with a start to gaze at the Corvette blow-up for hours at a time. Once
when we peeked in, he turned to us and raised his forefinger,
tutorially
, as Jay had so often done.

"Trust
me, guys, dying is easy, compared to surviving." He slapped the air.
"I always thought we'd go on the same fuckin day. What went wrong?"

He rented
the grand ballroom of the biggest hotel in town for the service and seemed
almost functional as the day of the event approached. My brother and I had no
idea how renowned Jay was until we walked into that ballroom two short weeks
after his death. It was packed with people who had flown in from all over. A
couple of them, we even recognized.

Outside,
of course, there were dozens of uninvited guests, all of whom were jabbing
posters into the air and shouting abuse at every single individual who arrived
to pay his respects. Clay ignored the din simply by
amping
up the music, recordings from Jay's beloved musicals. Listening to Barbara Cook
sing "Glitter and Be Gay" against the ugly blasts of hate from the
other side of the street is something I'll never forget. Ever.

And then
Mom walked in. Well, actually, she snuck in—through a side door—just as the
service began. Hovering uncertainly, she looked around in disbelief at the
packed house. I felt Clark clutching my arm. He'd seen her, too.

Neither of
us paid much attention to the words of the many testimonials to Jay's life, so
intent were we on watching Mom. But we heard the laughter. The air was filled
again and again with titters, guffaws, cheers, and applause as one off-the-wall
memory after another was shared, relived, treasured. Ed Riggs was particularly
hilarious, doing a ten-minute riff on Jay's "I am immune to
flattery!" line. It brought down the house.

Through
it all, Mom just stood there, somber and motionless. She might as well have
been at a funeral. Clark and I leaned forward to get a better look, and that's
when we saw the one single tear. She was almost crying.

After the
service, we struggled through the crowd to get to her, but she saw us coming
and escaped through the side door. As the mourners spilled out into the street,
Clark and I moved quickly, searching the throng for her.

"What's
your hurry?"

We spun
around. There stood Riggs, and right beside him were Pavol and Libor.

"What're
you doing here?" we asked.

"We
are going Hollywood," explained Libor.

"They're
booked at Limbo next week," explained Riggs. "It seemed appropriate
to piggy-back that trip with the memorial service."

"Sorry,
Ed, but can we talk later?" In unison.

"What's
wrong?" asked Riggs.

"We
can't seem to find our mother."

"Can
we help?" Libor and Pavol, in unison.

"Doubt
it. Shit. She's probably..."

“...halfway
home by now."

Riggs
raised an eyebrow. "She wasn't expected?"

"She
wasn't invited."

"Oh,
I see." A long pause; he turned to study the protestors. "Big
turnout. Both indoors and out."

"Who
are they?" asked Libor.

"The
enemy."

"Then
why does sign say 'God Is Love'?"

"Read
the small print in parentheses..."

“...where
it says 'But not your kind!'"

Pavol
shook his head. "Americans worry too much about where to put their pricks.
Am I correct?"

We
nodded. Ed shook his head.

"Rev.
Flamm's
been riding your ass, I hear."

"Ed,
you've no... Oh, my God! There she is. Mom!"

"Where?"
Libor and Pavol in unison.