Like People in History (34 page)

I stared at that scar until I began to really shiver. Then I covered it up—no kiss, it frightened me too much—with the quilt and got back under the blankets.

Matt rolled open a space for me and enclosed me within it.

"Why're you so cold?" he asked, nine-tenths asleep.

"Had to pee," I replied.

"Hmmmmm. Stay in bed."

"Okay, Lucia," Calvin said, "I've done a complete scan of the gang here at the magazine, and I'll tell you what I found out if you tell me what you've found out."

"I only talked to two people," I replied. "Estelle and Jeffrey. Listen, Calvin, I'm head over heels in love."

"We all know where your heels were last night, honey. What did Miss Madness recommend?" he asked, ignoring the second and for me only crucially important part of my answer.

Jeffrey Teller and Mrs. Estelle Lambert-Duchesne were the other most frequently appearing free-lance writers in the magazine. I should add that I wrote articles under the sobriquet "Henrici," the name of J. S. Bach's most often used librettist for cantatas and passions.

"Jeffrey's aiming for Paer or Mayr. Ever hear of them?"

"Of course," Calvin answered. "Early nineteenth-century—wrote Italian opera. Paer's
Leonora
is allegedly a forerunner of Beethoven's
Fidelia."

Calvin had been raised from being her assistant to taking over from

Estelle at the magazine when she was fired for incompetence—read: alcoholism. Cherkin, his boss, who published six other trade magazines— mostly about ball bearings and fish packing and suchlike unglamorous stuff—sometimes treated Calvin like "the house darky" and sometimes as though he were H. L. Mencken. According to Calvin, it varied, and could not be predicted—which drove Calvin crazy, given the iffiness of his own self-esteem. Moreover, in Calvin's psychic life, his boss often became Calvin's father—and that invariably meant trouble.

"You're not listening," I said. "I just told you I'm in love. Any self-respecting homosexual would drop the topic, drop the dishes, drop the fucking Waterford crystal to discuss this."

"Well, this self-respecting homosexual has things to do. A magazine to get out. Trouble to make."

"Like hell!"

I suspected that his own love life—never very good—was particularly bad or, worse, nonexistent lately, which might explain his hesitancy now. So I resorted to my last weapon.

"If we don't talk about this now, Calvin, I will never, never, never, never listen to you when Harold or Bernard or Rastus or whomever the hell you are seeing does something terrible, awful, beyond words."

This I knew would be difficult for him to resist. Although Calvin had grown up in the black (and—let's face it, since it was Grosse Pointe— white) upper middle class and had gone to cream-puffy Berkeley, he'd fallen not for some nice white boy, not even for an Oreo like himself, but instead for a black heroin dealer in Oakland, a guy who'd swung both ways—when, that is, he wasn't swinging at Calvin. A year-long on-again, off-again relationship ensued, in which Calvin had lost, some of his baby fat and all of his remaining innocence about—as he put it— "The Joys of Ghetto Negritude." He'd never become hooked on drugs or in any way involved with them, but Calvin had gotten emotionally hooked on butch African-American bisexuals whose beautifully modeled bodies were covered with knife scars, and whose large, vulnerable brown eyes lied without blinking, men who spent half their relationship in a jail cell and would as easily beat him unconscious for ten dollars as make love to him for hours at a time. All this I knew in the kind of detail only a best gay friend and Sistuh could know.

"Okay, Miss Borgia, you win." Calvin had thought over my ultimatum. "Tell me all about the eleven hundred and sixty-sixth alleged 'love of your life.'"

"I'll do even better. I will actually allow you to see and speak to this paragon of beauty—not to mention good taste—in person. Brunch tomorrow. Your choice of dive."

"Chile! This must be serious if you want Semiramide herself in all her gold lame garments to meet, greet, and you know, pass judgment!"

"I have no fears," I replied grandly.

So he let me talk about Matt for about twenty minutes, then he got in a few horrible stories about how awful Cherkin had been to him at the magazine. We were saying good-bye for the tenth time when he finally said, "By the way. Did I tell you what Miss Thing at the Opera did? He called up yesterday using this all-too-recognizable voice, and he asked if I needed the name of an opera."

"Does bread need honey? Does... What did he recommend?" I asked.

"Guess," Calvin said. "Go on and guess."

"Don't tell me. Ummm... I know!
Dildo in Anus!"

"Then it's true," Calvin marveled. "All small minds
do
think alike."

Calvin must have known die owner. Pleasant as the restaurant was, it had three tables in the picture window and we got the middle one. The view was reason enough for the place's existence: it looked north, straight down Divisadero to the Marina and the bay. The yacht club, the Presidio, the park, and of course the bridge dominated the view to the left. To the right were Russian and Telegraph hills, with Coit Tower just within view.

"This
is
something!" Matt enthused as a tall young woman seated us. I wanted to tell her to put her eyes back in her head. The place was crowded, but she remained at our table, fussing with our silverware and napery, trying to catch Matt's eye, until she was forced to break her cool with "Cocktails?"

Matt didn't even glance her way. "What do you say?" He put a big-hand over mine and looked me directly in the eyes.

"Two Kirs!" I told her, feeling her die inside and need to get away instantly. "So! What do you want to know about Calvin?"

Matt shrugged. "Whatever you want to tell me."

"First, he's my dearest friend. He's from the Midwest. Michigan. His mother was black, from downtown Detroit, his father white, from the mansions. Calvin was the third child. His brother, Dante, was tall, light-skinned, and a three-letter athlete. His sister, Christina, was even prettier than her mother and lighter-skinned than her brother. Calvin came six years after her, unexpectedly. He was sickly, pampered, bright, a fat, dark-skinned little boy who developed instant behavior problems and was a complete sissy by the time he was ten. This," I added, "I have on good faith, not only from Calvin."

"Wow!" was all Matt said.

"We met a week after I arrived here, in the Ritch Street Baths. In a big room that looks like a gymnasium or something. Huge pillows all over the floor. I was resting when two guys came in. Ten minutes later we were in the middle of a three-way. Then some more guys came in and we were in the middle of an orgy."

Our drinks arrived, and I told the waitress we'd wait to order when the rest of our party came. The setting sun was low, out of view, casting a crepuscular scarlet over the Golden Gate Bridge, flecked with spots of hot orange and deep lilac. The sky behind it was a contrasting put-your-teeth-on-edge ultramarine.

"It was all pretty hot and heavy. I happened to look up and see this guy a few feet away, wrapped in a towel, staring. I thought he was, you know, a voyeur. When I really looked, he seemed so sad and out of it. So, I don't know, hungry! I gestured for him to come closer. He hesitated. I gestured again. When he was close enough to reach, I pulled him into the mass of bodies. He resisted. I became occupied myself, and when I came up for air, he was gone. I found him later, when I went up to the roof to sun on the decking there.

"He came over to me and thanked me for trying to involve him in the group. Then he told me he only liked black guys." I suddenly panicked. "It's okay that Calvin's black, isn't it? Well, half black."

Matt seemed surprised. "Okay with me. Why?"

Relief—what if my best friend and Matt didn't get along? "You never know. Especially among kids who grew up ethnic—Italian, for example."

"That wasn't the case with me," Matt said. "I didn't grow up in an Italian neighborhood, and my folks, well, my folks are real special people themselves. They made sure I grew up being tolerant of everyone, no matter who or what they are."

"That's great. They do sound special."

"Yeah," Matt said. "Well, they encountered their own share of prejudice. You know it wasn't the same back then as it is now."

I loved how serious he'd become. This was the first time he'd spoken of his family, and it confirmed that Matt's convictions ran deep. And he was rights inter-ethnic and inter-religious marriages
had been
a big deal a generation ago. I was glad that Mrs. and Mr. Loguidice had done it. Just look at what their unique gene mixing had made: fjord-white skin, coal-black hair!

"My Grandpa Loguidice's a little old-fashioned," Matt said and laughed. "I've heard him call black people
melanzane.
You know, eggplant. But I never heard him say it in a disparaging way, only descriptive."

"So to get back to our meeting," I continued, "Calvin thanked me and we said a few more words, then I pulled out my radio headphones and put them on my head. I suddenly felt tapping on my chest. It was Calvin, he wanted to hear. So I let him listen. And he was... ecstatic! I don't know how else to say it. Ecstatic!"

"Schwarzkopf singing
Ariadne?"
Matt asked.

"Close. Sutherland singing
Norma.
Well, it turned out he was as crazy about opera as I was, and he worked for this opera magazine, and we talked until the sun went down, and when we left, it was to go to his apartment—he lives near Mission Dolores—to talk more and to listen to more opera. After that, we never stopped talking and listening to opera. Now, of course, we go together. He gets free and cheap tickets through the magazine. We speak twice a day every day. And I guess by now we know absolutely everything about each other."

For example, I knew that Calvin was not happy at work or in his love life; not happy with his body, which remained chubby no matter how much he dieted and exercised; not happy with his face, mostly because his color was too café au lait and his features insufficiently Negroid—or

Caucasoid—although I thought he was both cute and unusual-looking, combining some of the best features of both races; not happy with his position in the opera/music world of the Bay Area, where he was always "token nigger" and yet so obviously gay that he was also "treated like one of the girls," and thus he often didn't feel he stood out enough.

"That taxi took forever!" Obviously Calvin had arrived. He was brushing off his suede jacket. "The fare cost the same as the gross national product of a medium-sized East African nation, and on top of that, the seats were filthy!"

"You must be What's-his-name," Calvin added, slapping Matt's shoulder coquettishly with a fawn kid glove. "This one's such a pathological liar, I'm sure you've heard nothing but awful things about me." : He sat himself down, endlessly unwrapped a long scarf, which went around his neck several times—July being the closest thing to winter in San Francisco—checked the angle of his tam in a pocket mirror, sighed, and shouted, "
Hel-lo!"

The tall dancer serving us knew him. She arrived smiling. "You kids need more." Calvin glanced around him. "I think I'll have a sidecar. Yes, a sidecar. And bring menus. We're starved. Despite ocular evidence to the contrary."

When she was gone, he said to Matt, "We
only
have cocktails from thirties and forties films. If Bette or Joan didn't order it, we won't dare. Thanks! You and the bartender are total dears!" The waitress dithered. "Hmmmmm!" he added. "Have him make up one more. He has?" Calvin reacted to her. "A bona fide angel that Luis!" He made smoochy-lips at her, and she laughed and left. "Now!
Le repas!
The Chicken Pot Pie, with peas and French fries, believe it or not, will cause convulsions of
plaisir!
What do you think of the view, Matt? Look at the colors in the fog swirling about the bridge. One should simply bring Armani here and point them out—there! there! and that one, dear! In a nice houndstooth! The Alaskan king crab is flown in fresh. If you don't mind having to suck something out of a long, hard, tubular object, that is. We are not, I repeat,
not
going to discuss opera or the magazine or the shop once tonight! Deal? Matthew, is that your name? So biblical! You're to be referee and slap our hands, faces, or fannies—your choice!—if we do. Now... what is it? Have you lost all capacity for conversing? Speak!"

"Give me a crowbar, and I'll try!"

By the time our appetizers arrived—"Oh, I'll just
bet
you kids need a dozen oysters each!"—Calvin had completely charmed and befuddled Matt. As usual, I was amused. By the time our entrees came—two pot pies; we didn't
dare
go near those crab legs!—Calvin was talking about his live-in lover, his family and foibles.

"Antria—true name, kids," he turned to Matt, "she's my husband's wife. Is that too confusing? Antria calls the other day. She says she's looking for Bernard. Needs his social security number for the Welfare Department. I told her he's sleeping. Call back. She tells me to go look in his wallet. I say, 'Girl, I don't go looking in his wallet!' And she tells me back, 'Girl, if you don't go looking in his wallet, why's he there in the first place!'"

By the time we were picking over three different desserts placed in the middle of the table, Calvin was flirting shamelessly with Matt.

"Oh, that's what all you
men
say. But then you go and do something bad. Are you bad, Matt? No, I can see you're not."

"I am," Matt protested. "Very bad."

"Shee-it! I mean 'bad-motha-fucka-bad'! You're not bad like that."

"I have been."

"You're too white to be 'bad motha-fucka bad.' You're not half a looker, either," Calvin said, dismissively, leaning against one of Matt's Michelangelesque shoulders, "but you're just too fucking white! I want my men to be dark as tar and have done at least a nickel's experience in the joint. No shee-it!" He enjoyed Matt's reaction to that, then said, "Now, why don't you go to the men's room or make a telephone call or something so we can talk about you behind your back?"