How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle (18 page)

“I wish you could have seen Slim and me years ago,” Evan told me, locking the door behind us as we got inside. “We were so sure of each other, and so much alike.”

I did see you years ago, you alone. And of course we were unalike, you and I; and have remained so. I admire what you admire, Evan: I simply don’t believe it can be found. Rather, I imagine, it finds you.

Moony in his nostalgic haze, Evan approached the puppet theatre. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, Slim and I used to put on shows with his sister back then. She was the perfect fairy princess.”

“Is that when you went chasing through the bathhouse?” the lumberjack puppet asked, leaning forward to peer at Evan.

Startled as if by a shaking of the earth, Evan took a step back and looked sharply at me. I heard running footsteps somewhere as the fairy princess flew down to the stage with “Evan pays for it, and all is revealed in the exciting conclusion.”

The steps must have been Slim’s, because now he came roaring down at us to throw himself at the little playhouse, ripping away the curtain and breaking off the top and sides with his hands. “Were we waiting for
this?
” he shouted, grabbing at the very walls of the house of stories with a determination one sees only in the devotees of disreputable gods. “For
this,
I ask you?” he added, with a frustrated wrenching that finally flung everything everywhere to reveal Cosgrove, still holding the puppets as he backed away. Panting, Slim lifted the stage itself and threw it across the room to cartwheel along the floor and fall at the wall. And so Slim tore his theatre down.

No one moved or spoke.

Still panting, Slim went over to the couch and sat. Evan, gazing upon his man with faith unshaken—faith, even, dismissive of more enjoyable religions—joined Slim. Slim took Evan’s hand, and Cosgrove laid the two puppets on the couch with them. Dennis Savage was standing in the doorway; I don’t know how much he had seen. The three of us went upstairs, packed, and drove off without saying anything to our hosts. I suppose we’d already said it.

The ride was silent till we got back to the highway, when Cosgrove suddenly piped up with “If I would have a puppet show of my own, I will present ‘Little Red Ridinghood,’ based on a cartoon I once saw. The cops will release the wolf if he leaves Little Red and Grandma alone and goes straight. So the wolf agrees. Then he gets to the door, and just before he runs out, he says, “I’ll go straight—straight to Grandma’s house!”

I laughed involuntarily: a reflective chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” said Cosgrove. “Because I know you’re laughing at something else.”

“I’m laughing at the alarmed expression on your face when Slim wrecked the theatre. And what did it mean that ‘all is revealed in the exciting conclusion’?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s art.”

We drove on in silence till Cosgrove asked if we could have the interior lights on so he could practice alarmed expressions in the rearview mirror. Dennis Savage and I got into a refreshing dispute about how many exits we had to count off till the next turning, and about who had more fun in high school, and about the appeal of the handlebar mustache.

And Cosgrove, celebrating with a resplendent yawn, said, “Isn’t it time for the first rest stop?”

5

A D
EATH
T
HREAT FROM
M
Y
F
ATHER

K
EN NO LONGER BUYS
classical CDs; he likes to come over and listen to mine. Short bursts work best—tone poems, overtures, the occasional aria. At first, Cosgrove joined us, to feed Ken historical background and critiques of the available performances. But Ken was mystified by all those words about music. Music is music. One doesn’t talk about it. One listens to it.

Cosgrove threw up his hands and withdrew from the concerts. “That cousin of yours lacks collecto,” he told me.

“He doesn’t lack collecto in Chelsea,” I said. “They call his dick ‘Titanic’ because thousands went down on it.”

“Dennis Savage is right. You like anybody cute.”

“One has to be nice to gay relations.”

This last remark was so patently hypocritical that Cosgrove enacted that sarcastic old mime of feeling my forehead for a sign of fever to explain my deranged condition. With a mid-October Indian summer working, he went off for what he calls a “look-see walk” with Nesto; and Ken enters.

“The problem with family,” Ken says, “is that they can drive you crazy yet you have to go on knowing them. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

“I can live without them,” I said, raking through a pile of CDs I had set aside for Ken’s visits.

“I sort of have similar troubles with the guys.”

Meaning his Chelsea coterie.

“Do I love them and all? Of course. But the focus is that I’m very tired of that little apartment and extremely bored with my work.” Ken has one of those sophisticated computer jobs that people like me can’t remember the name for and can barely describe. It treats the situation of a small business going into expansion mode and requiring more infrastructure on the screens. Ken talks to senior staff, designs a new program, then teaches it to the company. It pays well, at least.

“So,” he goes on, looking over my shoulder at the discs, “I reach that place where I need different, and it makes my friends tiresome, because they’re just more of … who carries the football this week. Whereas I might want to be in Wonderland, where you meet a guy you have to start from scratch with and you can be surprised. My friends so far? I knew them before I met them. And the guys you pick up are the Undergear catalog, only talking. Sebastian’s ambition is to make some guy’s wildest dreams come true. I need a guy who doesn’t have dreams. Play some music, okay?”

I put on Richard Strauss’
Don Juan.

“Which is this?” Ken asks.

“It’s about a search for the ideal partner.”

He nods and, after the music ends, tells me, “He was seeing The One, but he gave up and died. I heard that.”

I nod.

“But couldn’t
I
find him,” he goes on, “in the world today? I know exactly what I want.” He warns me with a look: “Yes, I’ve given you his measurements. The colors of him. But I don’t want him knowing he’s hot, you know? Bartholomew’s set himself up as a cruising teacher on the Net. Like those guys coaching chess fiends, only about tricking. Even shy Tom-Tom goes up to guys on the street without knowing if they’re gay. Guess what his line is?”

“‘Hi, fullback. Live with your folks?’”

“No. He says, ‘Were you in that Brad Pitt movie? The scene where…’ Come again?”

I repeat the fullback bit.

“That’s a tricking line?” he says, going deadpan. “A
real
one?”

“A spoof one.”

“What’s the point of a spoof tricking line?” he asks in a tone mixed of grief and incredulity. “That’s like spoof underpants. Spoof orange juice.” Going into the kitchen for some sparkling water, he concludes, “Isn’t that the problem with you Stonewalls—that everything has to be a riff? Some things should be real.”

“The bigots think nothing about us is real. Absolutely nothing at all.”

Ice plopping into bubbles. “What do they think we are, then?”

“Bad children. They want the English Nanny to shake-and-bake us into cookies.”

“It is so way not enjoyable when you get abstract on me.” He returns with his glass and one for me. As I take it, he gets even more serious, as if he’d been planning something for a while and just now decided it’s time.

“I have confided a lot in you,” he says. “Because if I tell one of the guys, then they
all
hear it. Do you confide in return?”

I shrug. “My blameless life.”

“It would be best if you shared something dangerous with me. Something personal and … What?”

“Ken, you grew up seeing me in the family context. That’s as unprotected as—”

“That’s
company.
Like Davey-Boy and Sebastian and the guys. I want you to show yourself alone.”

I could have said no. But Dennis Savage is right: I like anybody cute. Including relatives.

“Want to see the last letter my father wrote me?”

“Hand it over, cousin.”

I’ve a cache of Special Mail: Ayn Rand’s refusal, when I was at
Opera News,
to discuss Wagner’s idea of heroism; Tommy Tune’s note after a newspaper piece on
Grand Hotel;
poison-pen sends; and so on. This particular letter came to me ten years after I terminated my relationship with my parents.

As Ken reads, let me explain, boys and girls. When I started this series, I wanted to concentrate on gay men doing gay things. I presumed that a difficult family background would distract from this drive-line, and I decided to demote my parents to walk-on parts. Okay; though this does omit a lot of drama and thus cuts holes in one’s story. And now Ken looks up from my father’s letter.

“Uncle Edgar wrote this?”

I nod.

“To you, right? Because there’s no salutation.”

“He wasn’t in a saluting mood.”

“It’s outstandingly barfy where he says he’s ‘willing to meet you anywhere anytime.’ He underlines that as if making some great concession. And where he says you won’t meet him because you’re not a man. Is that how he’ll win your heart and mind?”

“He’s trying to manipulate me by threatening me with a low opinion. But you know what I think is the first manly virtue? Independence. Real men aren’t afraid of other people’s opinions.”

“He must be crazy,” says Ken. “He begs you and threatens you. He’s on his knees to kill you.”

Ken takes a swig of water. He’s thoughtful now, a man of business and science.

“You have to destroy this letter,” he tells me. “You can’t let anyone find this after your death. It would be a very bad career move.”

So we burned it alive in the kitchen sink.

“Okay. And now there’s this other thing,” says Ken. “We’re going to make porn movies, and Davey-Boy wants your input on the plots. It’s a sandwich brunch. Is Sunday good for you?”

*   *   *

A
SANDWICH BRUNCH IS
typical of Ken’s group; they rarely cook in any real sense. There is a huge ice bucket of bottled beer, usually Beck’s or Tsingtao, and a platter of cold cuts on fancy bread in quarters. Turkey with Russian dressing, Boar’s Head chicken, and cheese combo are most common: for those of you who want to keep up with the younger generation.

We met at Roland’s, though Davey-Boy presided. He delayed his talk till the very end, however, after we’d done the usual round-the-table on a pertinent question of the day—which was, this evening, Which gets you further socially, a very long but skinny dick or a beer can?

Finally, Davey-Boy outlined the project: a cooperative venture into porn videomaking, with the Kens as stock company and back-of-camera staff. There were two partners outside the group who were supplying the start-up capital and equipment. Some strategic factors had yet to be considered, such as where exactly they would be taping—in various apartments? On the Island? And what kind of porn was this to be? Pure Eros, or story lines? The balletic kind of sex, on the hood of a coupé, or moving up a staircase, propelled by abandon?

Then I piped up: “You have to decide whether the sex should be stage-managed around kiss panels and come shots and so on, or whether you simply fix your lens on two guys who know the ropes and tie them true in real time. High-tech porn directors can spend two days getting down one little date. It can seem surgical in its precision, like Kristen Bjorn designer sex. Shouldn’t sex be raw and messy?”

Wilkie said, “I’d like to hear some red-hot talk instead of—”

“But what stories?” Crispin put in. “The Shoemaker and His Apprentice? Or—”

“It should be about our lives,” Wilkie told him.

I asked, “Isn’t porn a mad excursion? It’s wish fulfillment.”

Everyone answered at once, and Davey-Boy, clearly relishing the activity, quieted them down for “We must emphasize a trademark and sell an entire line of product, not just a title here and there. They must hit our dot.com and long to follow the careers of our showcase personalities.”

Well, the room just glowed at that, even when I mildly said, “This isn’t Shakespearean rep, now. What career do you mean? Fucking?”

Davey-Boy would only smile.

“Yes, an established top finally makes his debut as a bottom,” I went on. “It’s hardly Laurence Olivier playing Oedipus and Mr. Puff in the same evening.”

“I have vintage titles for us to screen,” said Davey-Boy, with the seductive yet reassuring tone of the con man who never gets home from his day job. “Here is where we start, gentlemen.”

Roland’s apartment consists of one long room, so we had to reimpose the furnishing arrangements for home theatre. Ken went off to the belasco, and when he emerged—just when two mechanics had turned from a Chrysler to work on each other—I went up for a chat.

“Is this serious?” I asked him.

“You don’t approve, I guess.”

“Am I a puritan?” I asked, truly wondering.

He touched my arm. “It’s okay. Your generation is pretentious. It’s lovable.”

I took refuge in an old joke. “Pretentious?
Moi?
”

“Well, like you aren’t tattooed or pierced.”

“Nor are you.”

“I will be.”

That shocked me, and I forgot to hide it.

He smiled. “I like you best when you don’t know what’s happening.”

A quick look at the television revealed a change in program, to vanilla prancing by the Athletic Model Guild: an Ancient Roman theme. Ellroy called to us to join in the screening, while Davey-Boy paused to expatiate on some nicety of porn etiquette. But Ken just said he could see from where he was and, turning back to me, went on with “You’re old-fashioned, and it’s your best quality. Drugs? Never touch them. Unsafe? Pin the Scarlet Letter on. Booze? Never before midnight. Cruising pose?” Here he heroically extended his arms in what he felt was an old-fashioned come-on, though it looked more like Marivaux rehearsing at the Comédie-Française. Or no: Mr. Puff.

I said, “I’m just asking if you want to take such an irrevocable step.”