The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered (4 page)

Beginning that first time, shivering in my arms from nerves and the February cold, he gave himself away. Some nights he would lie on his belly, legs slightly spread, and turn his face toward me, expectant. I could lower myself on top of him, chest to back, could whisper to him any words I wanted. But even buried inside him, my teeth on the back of his neck, I still wanted more, to thrust deeper, for his flesh and my flesh to meld. This did not even have to be during sex, a touch of the hand, an embrace would find me desperate to take his body with me right down into the deep, under the earth, to drag his body beneath the sea, the heavy waves. Of course none of this made sense, I could not tell him how I felt, this desire for union, this desire to be inside his bones.

He didn’t even have to say those words “Do
anything. Do anything you want to me, you can do anything you want, I give you entire permission over me”
for I knew I could take him, I could fuck him any way I could imagine, I could take all of him. But no, I never lost that feeling of strangeness, of wanting more, and no, of course, I never could get far enough inside.

VI.
From the early days of the courtship of Boy and O

“Their daily, repeated intimacy at this time was astonishing for Boy because it had never happened to him before. And it was astonishing for O, because he did not really think that this was ever going to happen to him again. When O was in the bath, he would call out to Boy,
put that record on again will you?
or
Put some music on, whatever you like
, and then he’d leave the bathroom door open while he toweled himself dry. This was so that he could hear the music, but also so that Boy could see him naked if he wanted to, just as he was, just naturally naked from the bath, not for some pornographic scenario this time. In fact both of them found that sort of scene extraordinary, though in a way of course these were the most ordinary moments of their intimacy.”

Within six months, we were living together, our own apartment, a ten-minute walk from campus along the tree-lined road. Just to be able to sit at my desk, writing, to be able to then look over and see him reading on the couch, his legs curled beneath him, to be able to pick up a book of my own and, running a hand through his spiky black hair, kiss him and sit down beside him to read, this was wonderful. It is a true wonder at any age, but particularly as young as we both were. To be able to hold his hand as we sat before the television in the evenings, to be able to buy food at the market and, shoulder to shoulder, cook our dinner together, to wake beside him in the morning and, rolling over, to stretch an arm along his stomach, my hand resting at his heart, if you cannot imagine how this would feel, if you do not understand how extraordinary these things are, then you know nothing, nothing, nothing.

VII.
In which the Narrator describes the marriage of Boy and O, their ceremony having been arranged by Madame — I’m sorry, arranged by
Mother

“It was complicated enough. Some people were not comfortable with the ceremony and half left, ending up in the kitchen while they exchanged the rings and made the actual vows, which was all done in the living room.

The vows were read very slowly, as if there could be time enough in these pauses for us all to think about what those famous and infamous words might actually mean on this particular occasion, and how you could make them mean what you wanted them to mean with regard to this person who you wished to spend time with and honour in some way, to cherish, to care for in some real way for whatever time. I do understand why they said all that out loud.”

He was formally dressed in the black suit I loved to see him wear, and he stood quietly near his sister as she prepared to say the vows. Were it not for him, I would not have been there— not at his sister's wedding, of course, not in this far corner of Virginia, but also not at any wedding. Too awkward, too religious. Too painful, perhaps, to know I could not speak those vows to him.

But when I gazed at him, when I saw him look at her with such pride,
bursting with pride
, that’s the phrase they use, when I heard his sister and her new husband recite these words, I began to understand. Not only to know these things to be true, this
have
and this
hold
, this
care for
and this
honor
, but to speak these things aloud, to declare them in front of the world, yes, I understand.

These words were still hard to hear, they were still complicated, but they were, for once, also mine. I gazed at him, and my lips moved with the cadence of the vows, saying them aloud and meaning every one.

VIII.
After letters Boy receives from ‘Father’

“This letter made Boy so angry that he stayed silent all day after reading it. Since Boy never replied to these letters, he had no real reason to expect that they would ever refer to O or congratulate him on his new life with O, or even mention it, how could they; the man who wrote them knew nothing of all that, nothing. But still Boy was angry, white with anger.”

And after Boy and O have taken 'Father,' now ill and infirm, into their flat:

“Why he had to prove himself like this wasn’t entirely clear. Sometimes his eagerness to do everything properly, to get it right, was so constant that it seemed fierce; his way of caring for the old man seemed as close to anger as it was to care somehow, and the silences in the flat seemed almost like the intervals in a long and violent argument. . . . All O could think of doing was to support Boy in this task or effort. . . . But he was determined never to be defeated by this man, O could see that.”

Dear Boy,

I am at the window on the second floor, the top floor, and you stand in the wet grass at the very edge of the street, head down. Mostly you listen to the man who stands at his car door, the door open, the door in hand, leaving. If there is conversation, there is little of it, or maybe you respond with your head still down, barely ever meeting this man’s eyes. Maybe you are, after all, still a boy sometimes.

I have met this man. When it became clear what I am, who I am to you, that was all. He would not look me in the eye again, he would not ask you about me. After each phone call, you are tense with the energy required to speak without saying.

I want to ask, “What did he do to you?” What did he do to turn you, so alive, into this shell I see standing in the grass?

You have not lived in this man’s house for years. I do not understand why you continue to see him. He is everything you do not want to be: rough, brutal, silent. He works the farm you will never return to, that you will remember so strongly, that you may visit, but that you will never return to. You owe him nothing.

But I also know you cannot choose whether you owe him anything. You cannot put 19 years of knowing him away, as though they never were.

When he slams the car’s door and drives away, you turn toward our building. I meet you on the stairs, halfway up and halfway down, and follow you into our apartment. There is silence that I cannot interpret: sadness? anger? Or are you simply, profoundly tired? I turn you toward me, place my arms around you. I will stay near, near for as long as you need me, ready to catch you should you fall.

IX.
From the aria O sings for Boy

“
I can’t see you weep except through tears of my own,

And when I can’t see you, I worry about you; take good care of yourself.”

Larry Duplechan

When I began writing my first novel back in 1984, it was largely in reaction to the near absence of black characters to be found in gay-themed fiction up to that time. Harvey Fierstein has said, “There are lots of needs for art. The greatest one is the mirror of our own lives and our own existence.” (
The Celluloid Closet
(film), 1995) And as a young black gay man in the 1970s and 80s, I was painfully aware of a lack of fictional characters that reflected me. Weary of waiting to read a story about a man like me, I wrote
Eight Days A Week
, a story about a man almost
exactly
like me. It was, after all,
my
mirror.

In 1972, during my Sophomore year in high school (Westchester High in Los Angeles), I happened upon a public library copy of Mort Crowley's Broadway play,
The Boys in the Band
(which I had heard of but not yet read or seen). I checked the book out, read it, renewed it several times, committed much of it to memory, and quoted from it extensively in schoolyard conversation (imagine if you will a small 15-year-old black boy referring to a classmate as a “
sunt
– that's French, with a cedilla”). In retrospect, it seems the virulent self-hatred of Crowley's group of gay friends circa 1968 escaped me all but completely. What struck me most about this, the very first piece of gay popular art ever to make its way into my young hands, was that I now had written evidence that there were other gay people (to my knowledge, I had yet to meet one in the flesh), and that they had friends, lovers, birthday parties, and lightning wit. Not only did other gay men actually exist (in New York City, anyway), but there were other
black
gay men. I wasn't the only one.

True, Crowley's one black character, Bernard, was a pathetic mess (I could see that, even at 15). But as Harvey Fierstein has said regarding the portrayal of gays in Hollywood movies, “visibility at any cost. I'd rather have negative than nothing.” (
The Celluloid Closet
(film), 1995
)
(Last Harvey Fierstein quote, I promise!)

Around 1975, a college friend lent me his copy of Gordon Merrick's 1970 man-on-man bodice-ripper,
The Lord Won't Mind
. Aside from our shared appreciation for man-meat, I could not have had less in common with Merrick's protagonists, Peter and Charlie, a pair of tall, handsome, hyper-masculine donkey-dicked Aryan
über-menchen
who not only fucked one another, but women, as well, the obvious message being that Peter and Charlie were in love with one another, but they were no girly-men. The only black character in
The Lord Won't Mind
was the maid, an old-Hollywood mammy stereotype who overcomes her religious convictions enough to allow that if Peter and Charlie truly loved one another, then “the Lord won't mind.”

In 1976 – America's Bicentennial year, my sophomore year in college, and 10 years after the publication of
A Queer Kind of Death
– Patricia Nell Warren's
The Front Runner
was published. Like so many of my friends from UCLA's recently-founded Gay Students Union, I read, re-read and re-re-read Ms. Warren's debut novel, discussed it
ad nauseum
, carried it and quoted from it like the kids in Jews for Jesus did the New Testament. In its own way,
The Front Runner
(the story of a young gay track star and his somewhat older track coach lover) was as much a romance novel as
The Lord Won't Mind
, and as old-school as
The City and the Pillar
or
Giovanni's Room
– its beautiful gay male protagonist is killed at the end. But for me and my colleagues, Ms. Warren's portrayal of gay male life and lovemaking seemed so true to life (she seemed to know so much about how we mid-70s gay men dressed, how we cruised one another, even how we dirty-danced) that it was rumored that Patricia Nell Warren was really a gay man writing under a
nom de plume
.

Still, the only black character in
The Front Runner
’s world of muscular, masculine “macho gays”“ (a term I'm pretty sure was a Warren original – certainly, my friends and I never used it) was Delphine de Sevigny, a middle-aged femme queen who wore diaphanous caftans and called everyone “
chérie
” in a voice borrowed from Marilyn Monroe. Now, I wasn't the world's most masculine man, but I was no Delphine, and I recall being a tiny bit miffed that Patricia Nell (as my friends and I called her, as if she were an old pal) had not seen fit to write a black “macho gay.”

It may well have been in the midst of one of my diatribes about the dearth of black gay characters in gay fiction when someone (I don't remember who, but God bless whoever it was) handed me a copy of
A Queer Kind of Death
, very possibly with the announcement that the protagonist of the book was a black gay man, a police officer, didn't die at the end, and wasn't a drag queen. While I don't recall the cover art (and a bit more about cover art later), it was very likely the initial trade paperback edition. I do recall being pleasantly surprised that someone had finally written a black gay character with which I might be able to identify (that is, not crazy, not wearing a frock, and not dead), and just plain surprised at the publication date of the book: 1966.

When
A Queer Kind of Death
was first published, Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States. The Beatles released the
Revolver
album, then retreated into the studio to record
Sgt. Pepper
. Nancy Sinatra's knee-high white vinyl go-go boots were made for walking.
The Sound of Music
, released in 1965, was still the box office champ and won an armload of Oscars.
Peyton Place
and
The Dick Van Dyke Show
were among the most popular television shows, with Emmy awards to prove it; and
Star Trek
made its debut (I missed it and cared not – I was a
Patty Duke Show
fan, and
Star Trek
was on at the same time).

Notwithstanding the much-touted “sexual revolution” of the time (by 1965, an estimated 6.5 million women were on The Pill), the mid-1960s was a difficult and dangerous time for gay people, even in New York City, where
A Queer Kind of Death
is set. The Stonewall riots were still three years in the future, and the notion of homosexuals as a downtrodden minority and/or a political force was all but unknown in America. Early homosexual apologetics groups The Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis existed, but were small, underground, and little known outside their own memberships. New York's sodomy laws were very much in force (and ultimately would not be repealed until the year 2000). New York City gay bars were Mob-owned, and often run without benefit of a liquor license, as the State Liquor Authority had free reign to refuse them; and despite the bribes to local police necessary to keep them open, they were routinely raided, and their clientele jailed (and their names and home addresses listed in the newspapers, often resulting in loss of jobs, family shame, and sometimes suicide).