Faggots (20 page)

And Mikie rushed up to join them, banging his tambourine, feeling ever so good, and embraced Fred: “Oh, Fred, is this not a night of nights! It’s the beginning of the summer of our lives!”

…yes, that feels good, oh good, oh god, oh good…Anthony was still in the darkness of Ellie.

Fred Lemish, deciding he was entitled to a bummer, and determined to get the most out of it, walked all the way from Capriccio to the Everhard, hitting on the way four donuterias, two delicatessens, four grocery stores, one late-night A & P, one ice creamery, interlarding these with curses upon his head that he was not getting a good night’s sleep to face a morrow fleshing out some scenes for Abe, you’ll never become a great writer this way, and a few flagellating inquiries into just what Dinky’s words and behavior had meant and could he wait till The Toilet Bowl to find out and was there some sort of game going on here, the rules of which he’d not yet been informed?, no! no games with this one! I am not going to play any more games! and…stop it, Lemish!, the guy was confronting a personal problem of which you were not aware and he said he’d explain everything, he kissed you, twice!, made another date with you, just you soft-peddle that talk about love till…and where are your guts and patience and determination and you’ve waited this long, another twenty-four hours, during which you’ll gain five pounds, can only…make you go crazier!, how can he say I don’t love him?, is that telling me anything?, it ain’t tellin’ you he’s got his finger sticking out ready for the ring, Charlie, did I misread?, I’m such a big reader, all those lovely nights of love, were they a fantasy?, nah, he’s too together, he’ll explain it all to his formerly once-thin Fred…

As he fumed and sent up black smoke, he consumed one package of Wise Ridgies Wavy Potato Chips, still made the original way by Borden, Pareve for Passover; one package of Funyuns Onion Flavored Snack, crispy crunchy, good eating anytime, from Frito-Lay; one package of Old London Cheez Doodles fried for double crunch by Borden, with ferric ortho phosphate, vitamin A palmitate, and mononitrate; one package of Doritos Nacho Cheese Flavor Tortilla Chips, Frito-Lay, with diosodium inosinate, diosodium guanylate, and keep America beautiful, don’t be a litter bug; one package, ubiquitous Frito-Lay, should he write them a letter?, they were drowning the market, also about their spelling: Bakon Snack (he
had
written to First National City Bank when they mutated to Citibank; the stomach and the language were obviously in for hard times) Imitation Bacon Flavored Wheat Chips, with hydrolyzed vegetable protein, destrins, and carboxymethyl cellulose; and several assorted donuts and several assorted ice creams and several assorted diet sodas to wash it all down and on he marched, deep in quandary and deep in burps, feeling rather nasty, rather fat, rather unloved, rather sick of it all, and hoping that this last donut would do the trick and accomplish the deed of rendering him rather fed up.

Several additional chemistry-set derivatives from General Foods and ITT Continental brought him to the tubs. Tonight was obviously going to be, in all ways, a night for shit food.

Rancid and ratty would best describe the atmosphere of the Everhard Baths at this prime hour. In this outpost of civilized behavior and democracy in action, the redolent smell combined the distinct odors of popper, dope, spit, shit, piss, and a bevy of lubricants. Hundreds of assorted bodies paraded through refuse and puddle-spotted floors, barefoot, bare-chested, protected only by sarongs of towel from complete usurpation by passing eyes. Earlier arrivals, the younger ones at any rate, in good physical shape and desirable, would by now have ejaculated in some manner or other, approximately three to six times, while older soldiers, passing thin-walled moans and groans, would by now have received approximately forty-nine rejections as they heaved pasty white frames from cubicle to cubicle, reached out exploratory fingers of hope to inhospitable cocks, listened for anticipated “I don’t think so”s, “Get out”s, or more polite “I’m resting”s, and, eventually, exhaustion being the better part of their valor, settling for one of their own kind, taking ten minutes to get an erection and two seconds to come, then grabbing their clothes and heading for home.

As a shuffling mulatto attendant showed him to his room for the second time this date (Murray recognized the good customers; they never had to wait in line), Fred’s spirits were still low. Here he was in the home of basics. Perhaps the place was a world in microcosm, human life reduced to its most simplistic, that awful moment when a name and an identity were no longer essential. If somebody didn’t want you, forget it, and find somebody who would take the merchandise as is. He could now feel like a Frito-Lay, laid or unlaid, depending on his shelf age, freshness, spoilage retardation, and understand where chemicals might help.

Since it is late, let us tarry no longer with descriptions of this temple of sex. Suffice it to say that Fred:

a) walked around for twenty minutes getting the lay of the land and deciding that there might be a few possibilities he would return to check out;

b) rejected the advances of a midget in a jockstrap, as well as several Orientals, to whom—he could never figure out why, was it his hairy chest?—he was always so attractive;

c) ran into, then beat a hasty path away from, his suck-Master/fuck-Slave felching acquaintances of…was it only this afternoon?;

d) grimly shat again, the Everhard toilets enough to keep one constipated for days, as his eyes focused on the graffitied door before him, with its prize-winning: “Fernando sucks Clive Barnes”;

e) returned to his cell, sat on the bed leaning against the wall, trying to look casual, seductive to strangers, and not consider this whole ambient scene as true inspiration for a Kafka (who would certainly be at home in Prague writing about it) and, from this uncomfortable position, rejected the advances of three men who courageously entered, each long past thirty-nine, one drunk, one rotunda, and the third with a limp; tried to encourage, sort of, but not overdoing it, that scares them away, seven faces who appeared in the dim light worth encouraging to enter for a closer-see, but who evidently declined the honor because they passed on. How could that fucker say that I don’t love him!

The closest he came to, is the word contact?, was a pleasant-enough-looking young man, by name Harold, who jumped up on Fred’s cot with one of Fred’s leather-thonged work shoes, which he then proceeded to tie around his balls, creating a somewhat pendulum effect.

“Does this turn you on?” Harold asked.

Fred looked up and tried to think. Does that turn me on? He came to no ready answer.

“Do you think I’m kinky?” Harold persevered.

“Nah,” Fred replied, knowing this to be not the desired response, though it certainly was for him.

“I do.”

Fred nodded the nod of the acquiescent. He was tired. He didn’t need the paraphernalia. The guy had a nice body. Why couldn’t they just kiss and fuck?

“Couldn’t we just kiss and fuck?” Fred looked up at the boy and his boot.

“Don’t you know anything kinky?” Harold, the clock having stopped, started the shoe up again. Fred wondered if it hurt. He thought that the old adage “if the shoe fits” now took on new subtleties.

“Tell me what you want,” Fred said, wearily making an effort.

“You tell me. I’m shy.”

“So am I.”

Harold allowed a long pause. Obviously lack of the necessary tension and excitement was deflating his game. But he tried: “Last week a guy twisted his balls so they stood straight up. That drove me crazy.” He looked down on Fred. Obviously it did not drive Fred crazy. Fred recalled the piss-and-suck twins. Harold needed lessons. Harold seemed disappointed and untied Fred’s shoe from his pouch, now, Fred noticed, somewhat lengthened, were longer scrotums coming into fashion, the next kick…?

“What’s the matter?” Harold asked, annoyed, jumping down to the floor and opening the door. “You got a lover?” With a note of petulance and wonder he made his curtain speech: “There’s a whole world going crazy out there and you won’t do anything your mother wouldn’t do.” He threw in the boot and left. Exit childe Harold.

Fred tried to jerk off so he could leave. His heart and his hand weren’t in it. He then endeavored to make one final round of the wards, giving himself the old American locker-room pep talk: yeah, Coach, I’ll go out there and fight and rush rush rush and look look look for any,
any,
half-way decent assbole or mouth to take me before jerking myself off in the old locker room before finally, sorry Coach, guess it wasn’t my game, my day, my year, my lifetime, hitting the showers.

He hit the showers. He washed his body for the second time this date beneath this stream, wondering how the two pieces of shit lying on the shower-room floor had appeared, plus the adjoining cockroach, up-ended, probably fucked to death, glad somebody got something, he thought, looking down at it, then drying off and heading back upstairs toward his room. Some days you just can’t get arrested.

And then he saw one! A perfect specimen of what he’d best start looking for again if Dinky was going to play Nervous: early thirties, blond and handsome, an obviously intelligent face, yes, a definite possibility to take his mind off his present Dinkylessness.

He jumped into action, feeling a sudden surge of love for the old tubs, the whole scene, this is what it’s all about, the chance of life!, a fondness for storms weathered together and a harbor in view, for happy moments after miserable ones, for HOPE.

He hastened after Mr. Perfect. Where was he? Where the fuck had he disappeared to among these crowded corridors of towel-clad parading flesh?

There he was! Fred gulped. Not bad, though perhaps a bit too stern. And, as occasionally happened when Possibility reared its impossible head, Fred became a slightly helpless, slightly speechless, bordering on the ditzy, futile wreck.

Randy Dildough, for it was he whom Fred was approaching, saw that he was being cruised by a nervous man who was definitely not his type, this immediately conveyed to the suitor by an avoided eye contact and an ongoing journey. Randy, not a top executive for nothing, recognized the nevertheless note of persistence and hoped he would not have trouble ditching this one.

Why did I let Slim talk me into it? What the fuck am I doing here? And without even a pair of dark glasses. What if I run into somebody I know? Or there might be a fire! Or a raid!

Randy shivered as these dark thoughts and questions tingled his handsome sturdy body, fully knowing the answers: the joy of playing with fire! and terror!, a drug habit that couldn’t be licked. Well, it’s better than shoplifting, he thought, recalling an earlier turn-on he’d reluctantly put back on the shelf when executive duties increased.

Walking around and viewing all the potential, Randy wished that Slim would not be here. It had all seemed a cute, if conciliatory, idea, when, after a particularly annoying disagreement over the WATS line to Los Angeles concerning his lack of return for Slim’s birthday, Randy had accepted the compromise of Slim’s: “I’ll come to New York for the holiday weekend and meet you at the Everhard at four in the morning, so you have plenty of time for dinner with some big shot…and anything else, and then we’ll find a big black stud and have a threesome. You always enjoy seeing me get fucked by a big black horse and you asked me what I want for a present, that’s what I want.”

So Randy continued to poke along the hallways and into the cubbyholes, wishing he’d convinced the kid to take a Cartier tank watch instead.

Timmy and Slim sat in a cubicle waiting for Randy to show himself.

They had left Garfield’s with Hubie and Morry, all flying high on whatever pink-and-white pills Hubie was popping generously in all directions when a decline in spirit warranted and, at Slim’s request, had headed for the tubs.

“He’s medium height, reddish-blond, very handsome, and I wish to fuck he would hurry up,” Slim said to Timmy, wondering if he should go out himself and look for his lover, if lover he was, always in New York when home was in Los Angeles, if lover he was, when all Slim seemed to do was cook and clean and be there on the several nights a month Randy wasn’t out dining with the stars, if lover he was, who had sex with him rarely and much preferred getting off on watching Slim get fucked by someone else. It’s too bad Hubie and Morry had left in self-disgust—the drugs too much to allow their black Colossi to colossize—, and shame for letting down their brothers everywhere.

At this point, a familiar face stuck in his head.

“Hey, there, gorgeous, remember Yootha?”

Yootha Truth plopped down on the bed with the two of them, causing Slim, as yet unintroduced to this foreign element, to move away a bit. Yootha wore, in addition to his towel, a smart little sleeveless jacket of sequins appliquéd on see-through net. “I am exhausted. I have been humped by twelve different white gentlemen. I have, however, not found love.”

“Where did you get the money?” asked Timmy, recalling Yootha’s condition earlier this evening.

“Honey, Dame Fortune has finally smiled on this swishy schvartza. I was cruising the Doubleday Book Store at Fifty-seventh and Fifth when I am seeing a portly gentleman of approximately sixty-three years of age and impeccably dressed in gabardine military twill and broadcloth shirt give me the eye in Non-Fiction. I immediately walked past him with a smile and toward the staff men’s room, which only I know is rarely used save by our loitering sisters, to whom I am saying ‘shoo shoo,’ and in moments in walks my prince who looks side to side and, seeing a clear coast, enters my stall. He immediately inquires ‘how much?’ I, not expecting such bountiful tidings, because I would have done him for free, I mean who wears broadcloth shirts anymore, also undershorts made from pongee silk, a forgotten quantity, silk, also undershorts…I am saying ‘My pleasure,’ and he is saying ‘No, no, you must be paid,’ so I am saying ‘No, no, my pleasure,’ and he is saying, ‘No, no,’ so I am letting this problem hang in the air while I am doing on him an extra special good and fine and satisfying job, hoping all the time he will whisk me off forever to his triplex overlooking Central Park from the Fifth Avenue side, though his thing was not so large as I would have liked or expected from such an imposing gentleman…”