How Long Has This Been Going On (10 page)

"It's kind of fallen out of use, though, hasn't it?" asked Larken. "The only time you hear it nowadays is when the Civic revives an operetta."

Jake nodded. "I hear the word 'homophile' more and more now," he said.

"Yes," Alfred agreed.

"Who cares
what we
call it?"
cried Paul, his patience, as usual, quite run out.

"I care," Larken answered. "Because we'll never have rights in this world till the straights know about us. And they can't know us till they know what to call us. Besides derogatory slang words, I mean. As long as we're homos or faggots we'll never be anything legitimate. We'll be like... highbrows. Even Communists. Nothing but a mystery and a threat and a disgrace."

Paul clapped sarcastically, but Alfred told Larken, "I agree with you there."

They all did, except Paul—and Frank, of course, who was utterly bewildered when Larken told him about the Meetings the following Saturday after lunch. What are you going to do, change the language around because you don't like the words we already have? What do you have those Meetings for, anyway?

"What
for?"
Larken asked him, readying the percolator for coffee. "What for do you keep coming over here to see me?"

"That's different," Frank replied, leaning on the refrigerator door. "We're not planning anything."

"Those Meetings aren't about planning, really, though Paul thinks they are. And that's only because he likes to think he's in charge of some great movement and everything. The real reason we go there is to talk to other men who will understand us, sympathize with our problems the way no one else ever will. Isn't that why you and I are friends, Frank?"

"You and I? That's because... I don't know. Because I'm a homo. I'm Frank the homo cop."

"You're whipping yourself. Don't—"

"Could you do me a favor?" said Frank, taking Larken's arm and pulling him into the living room. "Come here with me, okay?"

"No, first tell me what you—"

"I just want to... Just sit with me, Lark."

They were on the couch, not facing each other. Frank was tense, so Larken got tense, too.

Suddenly, Frank stood up. "Forgot about the blinds." Drawing them to, he sat down again. Then he said, "I want to put my arm around you, okay?"

"Yes."

"You can look at me, all right?"

Larken did; and Frank took his hand.

"This is going to sound funny," said Frank. "I would like to do it with you, but I don't know what to do."

"The first time I did it—back in Salt Lake—I didn't know anything about it, either. The other man was much older, and—"

"Who was he? How did you meet him?"

"Oh, he was a Church elder. They generally take you out to dinner for a special treat on your eighteenth birthday. Just hamburgers and everything, but still it's... Anyway, this man was... Somehow he had managed to stay a bachelor all that time, which is not easy if you're a Mormon Church elder. As you've probably heard, we marry early and often."

"So he... what?"

"So instead of taking me out to dinner, he invited me to his house for a cookout. And later, inside, he..."

Larken looked at Frank.

"It feels naked telling you this."

"Do I have to call you Lark? Don't you have another nickname?"

"Just Lark."

Frank rubbed the back of Larken's neck. "Okay, it's Lark, it's Lark. So what did this guy do to you?"

"Well, I was very shy and totally inexperienced. I knew some of the kids in the house fooled around—kind of, oh, jacking off and everything. But I had never taken part. And this man saw that somehow, so he eased me into it."

"How?"

"He stretched out with me on the bed, both of us still dressed. And he talked to me. He held me, stroked my hair. You know. Getting acquainted. Then we got undressed and he gave me a massage. To relax me, I guess."

Larken paused.

"You don't want me to keep going on about the details, do you?" he asked.

Frank said, "Yes, okay, I do."

"Look, how about if you just lie full-length on the couch, and I'll lie on top of you? We can get used to each other, and then..."

Frank was already moving, and Larken flowed along with him till they were head to head and toe to toe, holding on to each other. It was like Larken's pillow game, only now he was grasping Frank.

"Are you okay?" Larken asked.

"Fine. Once I get the sex part of it down, I can be a juicy homo like everyone else."

"Do you have to use that word?"

"'Homo'? Why? Is there some secret club term you can teach me? Because, while you're at it, there's the walk and the wrist thing...."

Thinking of the Meeting, and deciding that it has to start somewhere, Larken said, "We call it 'gay.'"

"You call
what
gay?"

"This. You and me, now. And everything between us that could possibly come out of our being together." Larken shifted his grip and moved his head, brushing Frank's hair with his own.

"Let me see how this works," said Frank. "You're not a homo, you're gay, right?" "Right."

"And getting arrested and losing your job and everybody spitting on you all the time is gay, too, right?"

"Frank," said Larken, using the name as a caress. "You hurt my feelings when you talk as if all we do is cruise Griffith Park. There's a lot more to it than that."

Frank was silent, drawing his hands slowly across Larken's back, running them up and down his sides, sifting his hair with Frank's upraised cheek. Frank was hard, and Larken started to get hard, too.

After a long while, Frank said, "Tell me what more there is to it than that. Tell me, Larken, okay?"

"It's hard to explain. It's something you just know about, like... these unusual aptitudes we have. A collection of exciting and colorful things in our lives, like music and the theatre and the movies...."

"That's a real World Series you have there. Who wins the pennant, the Rockettes?"

All this while feeling each other, rubbing cheeks against each other, moaning between the lines.

"You should see something of our gay life," Larken said. "You should get a better idea about it."

"No, I have an idea about you, Larken boy."

Larken sat up next to Frank, taking Frank's hand in both his own. "Listen. There's this place I can take you to, and I don't mean Griffith Park. But you can't go around arresting everyone in sight."

"What would I arrest them for?" asked Frank, smiling, reaching up to Larken's face with his free hand.

"Everything. Because everything we do has been outlawed by the people you work for.
Everything
we do."

Frank sat up, taking Larken by the shoulders. "All right, don't get sore. I didn't make the laws and I hate working Vice. And I'll go anyplace you point me at. But right now we both have hard-ons and where we're going is the bedroom. Right?"

"Are you nervous?"

"Hell, yes. I don't even know what we're going to do in there."

"We'll take it slow. We can leave out any parts you don't like."

"No kissing," said Frank. "Okay?"

"Okay."

"Let's go." Frank was on his feet and moving. Larken followed slowly, and paused at the bedroom door.

"Frank?" he said. "I really like you."

The Kid, Jo-Jo, and even Desmond had been
begging
Lois to throw a real New Year's bash in Jill's at the end of 1949, just like the fancy restaurants along the Strip.

"Come on, Lois," the Kid urged her. "You'll make a mint. A five-dollar door fee will cover food, drink, and funny hats."

"Five bucks for food, party favors, and one glass of champagne," said Lois, considering the deal. "Drink is extra and the bar cleans up." "Is that a yes?"

"I could fashion duotone crepe-paper streamers," said Desmond, a handsome offer.

"We should hold a raffle," said Jo-Jo, "and the winner gets Desmond and the streamers."

"That's second prize," said the Kid. "First prize is the streamers alone."

"I'll leave you boys to plan it," said Lois.

The three men cheered.

"You've got a budget of exactly twenty-five dollars."

So that was a yes, though Lois didn't quite see it until she told Elaine.

"It's just another chore for me, is how I work it out," Lois groused. "They're the ones who hang the streamers—I'm the one who has to weigh in the champagne, and coax that mutt of a cook into coming up with the food, and tip the cops... for what? A New Year's party, for junk's sake?"

"First of all, stop complaining," said Elaine, straddling Lois as she massaged her neck and shoulder muscles. "Your whole body tenses up."

"Chick, that feels so good you have
no
idea."

"I love to make you sigh with pleasure. It's the first positive act I've committed since I quit the Santa Ana High School Pep Squad."

After some silence of massage and no more sighing from Lois—she was withholding the reward for a prank—Elaine said, "Second of all, I think it would be nice to have a party. Why don't you let me help, with my housewife skills?"

"I wasn't thinking of serving rib roast."

"I meant my
festivity
skills, my dear."

"I love when you talk dirty. It's like Eleanor Roosevelt leading a conga line."

"How about those dainty little open-faced sandwiches? The kind where extraordinarily antagonistic ingredients are mixed in a blender, spread upon innocent bits of white bread, and served as a breathtaking novelty surprise?" Elaine got up, giving Lois a sharp pat on the butt.

"Like what foods?" asked Lois, turning over.

"Oh, peanut butter, tuna, cling peaches..."

Lois got up, took Elaine in her arms, tickled her ear, and predicted, "Suburbia is doomed."

Actually, this New Year's Eve wasn't like any night of the year, or even like any other New Year's Eve, for the country had reached a new decade, and its midcentury point, and a marking of sorts in what was for many the first Era of Good Feelings after an age of Depression and Wartime. It promised to be one of the great New Years, and, as Jo-Jo assured the Jill's crowd, night after night, this club was certain to give one of the great New Year's celebrations. People were actually buying tickets in advance, Jo-Jo had wheedled an actor friend into lending him a dinner jacket, the Kid was putting in new songs and comic business complete with lines for Desmond (from the piano), and Desmond had learned, or at any rate was using, a new word: "festooned."

As befits a gala, Jill's didn't open till nine o'clock that evening, staying shuttered as the bartenders readied the fizz and the new glasses; Elaine assisted the chef; Jo-Jo, the Kid, and Desmond polished the act; and Lois stormed around, crabby and content. By nine-thirty, a few johns and two or three of the more diffident queens had taken positions at the back and sides. By ten-thirty or so, the showier queens were sweeping in in groups of three and four and nabbing the tables of prominence, and the bouncer was deciding which of the hustlers to let in for free. By eleven, the place was packed, the bar was doing land-office business in extra glasses of champagne, and Desmond had ruined his tie with one of Elaine's finger sandwiches. The joint was jumping.

"Who's the new boy?" asked a thin, dyed blond queen named Donny, indicating to his party one of the hustlers lined up at the bar.

"They call him Trey," said a queen named Lanning, holding his cigarette way out and blowing his smoke. "They say he's from Georgia and talks like
thee-yuss."

"He looks sharp," said Otis, the fat queen of the group, big fat ugly Otis, and he knows it. "A very, very sharp-looking boy."

"Carlotta took him home," said Lanning, his voice low and his grin sly. The others glanced over at Carlotta—Carl—and his friends, at a neighboring table. "Trey plays it very slow and quiet, so the story runs. You know trade—don't want to spoil their possibilities. Comes on real
man.
Well... they get to it, and Carlotta's all set to go into her dance. Suddenly"—Lanning stubs out the cigarette in one quick gesture and leans in to the others, sudden himself—"Miss Trey flops on his back and his Georgia legs go sky-high!"

Donny giggles; Otis is silent with hunger.

"Fluttering," Lanning concludes, "like flags in the breeze. Poor Carlotta. Thought she'd cut herself a real hunk of jam and all she gets to eat is another flimsy like the rest of us!"

Lighting up another, Lanning says, "There's more. At the moment of beauty, Georgia Trey breathes out, 'I'm fixin' to come.'"

Gales of laughter from Donny and Lanning as a john comes up to Trey and offers to buy him a drink.

Trey takes a beer, the john nursing his champagne. Of course, they look odd together—the tall, sullen, restless-calm youth in jeans and white T leaning down to hear the anxious prattle of a bald little pear of a man in a suit. Of course: because this is the land of odd, so secret and tactless, so needful and denied. For some reason, the man never gets down to business. After launching a number of conversational tacks he more or less subsides, just stands there now, next to but remote from Trey.

Trey decides to make the move himself. "Well, now," he says, turning to the guy, "What exactly do you got in mind, Saul?," thinking, What kind of name is that,
Saul?

"I just never know somehow," says Saul, not daring to look at Trey. "I
thought
I knew earlier tonight. I
thought
I did."

The queens at Lanning's table are watching this, and as Saul stumbles away and Trey shrugs, Donny comments, "No sale."

A big-shouldered, veteran hustler in a black turtleneck leans over to Trey and says, "It takes practice."

"Huh?"

"How to handle these fags. You're new here, ain't you?"

"I'm new everywhere," says Trey, glancing around, seeing what's up, looking available. He has a habit sometimes of breaking into a smile just before he speaks, and there are more than a few men who find this infinitely fetching. It is not clear whether Trey is aware of this habit.

"Keep on pitching," the older hustler advises him. "You'll get there." Two beats, then: "My name's Cord."