Faggots (42 page)

“I hurt!
I
hurt! What do you know of hurt!”

“My million, Pop! Mine!”

Ah, the age-old conflict. Splat. Splat.
Splat.

“You get what I give you! You get when I die or you reach fifty! Whichever event comes first!” Oh, they come closer and closer to punish me! They come closer and closer to kill! “Or you marry that
mieskeit
Marci Tisch!”

“But she’s so ugly!”

“Millions of my dollars are not so ugly!” Splat!

“But that’s blackmail!”

“I teach you how the world is run!” Splat. “I teach you how to blackmail properly!” Splat! Oi,
more
Nazis?!

“First I’ll tell the world.”

“First I give you this!”
Splat!
Oh, this one comes closer! In black boots and with rifle and swastika and whip and…

Abe lets go of his son. Richie slips away. The Nazis and the piss have saved his Richie. Abe falls back in the end zone. His penalty kick has lost.

Richie yells back at his Pop: “Hey, Pop! You never really loved me at all!”

“Do you think that ugly really is his father?…”

The crowd immediately grows nervous. Starts to back away. “This is pretty heavy.”

“Yes, I love you, yes, I love you, but it is now too late.”

But who has heard him say these famous words? The pop has said I love you to the son. The scene and dream of every son who’s backed away beneath these sheltering trees. He’s said he loves me. He’s said he loves me. The sheltering veil now shelters. God has forbidden a fantasy might come true! That would be too scary!

Boo Boo zips away, past a few departing theater-lovers.

“Who
was
that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Some silly queen.”

“I’m sorry, Abe.” Fred bends to kneel, then sit, beside his Abe. Then rock him back and forth within his arms. Such a weekend, such a Mission, such an old suit caked with mud and piss and Richie.

“I’m sorry, Abe-chen.”

Abe refocuses. Looks at Fred. No words. No smile. No return of affection to his movie helpmate. He plucks Fred’s arms from his dirtied suit like poopsies from his past. He heaves his white-haired bulk from mud to standing tall. As he’s done many times before, he now does once again. Then, with anger, hate, and vengeance, the Big Three, he utters these ringing words: “It’s your fault! It’s all because of you! The Fall of the House of Bronstein! And all because of you!”

Then stomps and chomps away our Abe. And lights up a cigar. And then sees Wyatt’s kleine not so kleine. Being tended to by a lady dressed like an English Queen. Well, at least my Wyatt’s found a lady. No, it’s probably a man. Wyatt! Where did you get
that
! Freaks! Everyone in this place is freaks! I must go back into the world! I’m free. I’m free! I find another poopsie! And take her to Florida. For what is a Palm Beach doing in these pines!

He turns to Fred to yell his final curtain speech. His final fadeout Ode. His epilogue. And truly bringing down the house.

“No movie!”

For what world wants to know of this!

Fred sits in the mud alone. His empty arms still feel the warmth where Abe had briefly rested. I loved you, Abe. I loved you…Lester…

Yootha Truth is crying. He’s been watching his Guardian Angel, his Handsome Stranger, His Doubleday Deliverance, the hovering presence who is the shadow that is Billy Boner, sitting in love and admiration, satisfaction and completion, of dead Paulie in his coffin.

“He doesn’t love
me,
Rolla!”

“We must go on, dear,” Rolla answers, trying his best to skate off in the mud. “We must not let ourselves sink into soap opera.”

And Gatsby has finally tackled Lance Heather under some farthest, furthest pines. And peeled away the layers and layers of leather. And how they tossed and turned and clutched each other dearly in the poison ivy. And kissed and cuddled and touched and kissed and embraced and kissed…until…until…
until!…my God!

Gatsby looked down at the cock that once had been Lance Heather’s. He didn’t have any. Just a piece of skin. “I…I…had an accident…a party…we played a stupid game…Russian Guillotine…I lost…I’m lucky I’ve got this much left…would you fuck me please?”

Yes, such a night of nights. In our Meat Rack. That place of myth and story. Yes, such a night of nights.

Fred now succumbed at last to his case of the shivering crazies. He ran and ran. Back to The Pines, back past costumed cruisers, men with TV camera heads and glowing penises lit up inside lamé pants and much regal tribute to the British Empire, feathered Orientals, high-heeled Brazilian blueberries, twinkling twinkies. The Grove might be all in basic leather, but The Pines continued on its froufroued way. Yes, he ran and ran. My fault? This weekend I have lost a Dinky, lost a Feffer, lost an Abe. My fault? My
fault?!
But have I found myself?

He was right back where he started from. He rushed into a house in which he dimly recollected dining well once, many years ago. It was empty and he hit the refrigerator and some Royal chocolate pudding. In the cupboard he found a box of Kensington Gardens chocolate-covered oatmeal cookies from our northern neighbors in Canada. Canadian cookies were evidently as bad as American. When he died, he used to fondly quip, his autopsy would reveal one part Nabisco, one part Keebler, one part Horowitz Margareten, one part Bronstein, no, no more Bronstein, and all the rest chocolate. He departed this way station of sustenance and went next door, also presently uninhabited, and there, there!—God was finally giving him something good this night, this weekend, this Memorial Day weekend—was a box from the most perfectly perfect Dumas Pâtisserie. One cheese Danish and one raisin Danish and one brioche. A threesome. He would splurge lightly. And it was Heaven! Did no one know what they were missing to eat any other Danish but a Dumas Danish! He recognized the distinct familiar co-mingling tastes of butter and sugar and cheese and soft raisins, actually plump, which he would soon again be if he did not this instant cease. And the brioche was all his trips to Paris with Mikie II and others. He ran out of this kind stranger’s residence and down some blocks on a sugar high. At another obviously emptied house on Coast Guard, on the uncleared dining-room table—cleaning up is left till morning—was one box of Bloomingdale’s Corné de la Toison d’Or. These he would not buy in Bloomingdale’s because the rude salesladies refused to sell them by the piece. Only the half-pound. Unfair! These chocolates are sold by the piece in their native Belgium. And wasn’t buying a half-pound…well, poor Gamesmanship? He bit into one, two, three, four, five, six, no wonder he preferred not to buy a whole half-pound, eating only half of each. They were not his favorites. Though better than Godiva’s, once also Belgian, now American-made by Campbell’s Soup, and robbed of their once distinctive flair, particularly when their saleslady on Fifth Avenue transfers them from ugly New Jersey cartons of brown to low, enticing trays of gilt at the same time as she passes her crimson nails through her greasy hair. No, he was not a Godiva fan. He preferred above all others the miraculous Teuscher’s, from Zurich, here perfection had been achieved, the perfect chocolate, it was possible!, now returned to New York, which he had written Mimi Sheraton about and she had written in the
Times:
“these mellow milk chocolates that many connoisseurs consider to be the world’s finest…” Oh, Dinky. I’m a connoisseur. Out of Coast Guard. To another dark house, on Driftwood. A further fix. On the icebox he found half a bar of that new chocolate from Cadbury’s, from his beloved England. Milk Chocolate Filled With Fudge. The perfect combination. On paper it made so much sense. He’d been wanting to try it for quite some time, always avoiding the temptation. Now here it was in some strange house on Driftwood. So he finally bit into it. This most anticipated sensible combination from Mother England, Filled With Fudge. Oh sadness of sadnesses. Grotesquerie. It was revolting. Watery fudge obliterating their distinctive milk chocolate’s taste. Was everything passing into second-ratedness? The goodies now baddies? In chocolate as in life? Including self? My
fault?!
He wondered if someday, should he ever write anything else again, some graduate student somewhere would do a dissertation on the sweet symbolism in the life of Fred Lemish.

A moment on the lips. A lifetime on the hips.

Fred’s first fuck of the New Era,
A.D
., After Dinky, appeared miraculously, under the new moon, same stars, as Fred emerged, phoenix from the ashes, from the ocean, after a dip following the three-mile jog he’d had to take to work off all those calories so recently consumed. Ah, yes, the patterns continue. And there stood the lean and youthful gorgeousness who was—Fred didn’t know his name but knew his face from…somewhere—and under these stars and moon, right now, they just threw themselves at each other, instant attraction, instant moon and romance, instant high, just like the movies, on the beach, from hero to eternity, “let’s go to my place,” “let’s do it right here,” and down they fall, Fred already naked, Mr. Quite Possibly Great Love Number III shortly so, “I knew you’d be sensuous,” this handsome stranger saying, “You’re such a handsome man, I’ve seen you around and hoped we’d fuck, you’re such a handsome man,” yes, here is this handsome man calling Fred a handsome man, when will you start believing it, Fred?, you want Mikie to believe he’s got a brain and Tarsh that he could accomplish great things and Gatsby that he could be a fine writer and Josie and Dom Dom that they could be faithful lovers and Anthony that he could write Academy Award-winning scripts and…Dinky that he could love you, could have loved you, so why can’t you believe that you’re a handsome man? Particularly when such a handsome man is naming you a handsome man. And now the sensuousness of this moment, this night, these two bodies under those heavenly bodies, feeling each other all over, all over, each of you tasting the other, each of you bending to kiss the other hello down there, oh it is so fucking sensuous and wonderful and you are both into that abandonment to pleasure that only fucks like this, could this be love?!, can so inspire, and kiss kiss kiss, it’s so good to be kissed again, Dinky wouldn’t kiss, can this be the last of Dinky?, certainly is one hell of a body this guy’s got, wonder what he does for a living, and oh! what lovely armpits, almost as good as Dinky’s,
No!,
No More Dinky!, oh, it’s all too much, and we kiss and cuddle and suck and tongue and fuck and rim…Dinky! Get out of my fucking head! I’m fucking!, and kiss and cuddle and tongue and fuck and rim…It’s going to be harder getting rid of you than I thought!…and kiss and cuddle and tongue and suck and fuck each other, using spit and careful to keep the sand away, and back again and suck some more and kiss some more and taste the sweat and glue yourself together at last, together, together, you cling and clamp yourselves together and reach for those stars and for that moon and for those heavenly bodies, I’m coming! Me, too! The two of you together from just the excitement of holding each other each to each come and come and come and yes it was wonderful and is wonderful and this is someone I must see again and again, the Beginning of Love,
Wait a minute!!!,
I’m falling again, falling into fantasy again, falling for a body again, just like I fell for Dinky’s body, turning a Hot Number into love, I’m making sex into love!, just as Handsome Stranger jumps up, pulls on his jeans, adjusts his silver bracelet, pecks a quick kiss, and says: “I’ve got to rush, I’m meeting my new lover, we’re going to live together, starting tomorrow, so you mustn’t breathe a word of this, but my name is Robbie Swindon, I’m listed, and you sure have a Hot body and I hope that we can do it again.”

Fred lay back naked, all alone again, looking up at all those stars and moon. Then out across the ocean and toward old England. Nothing’s changed. It’s all exactly the same. Noogie & Nagasaki…what did they say? Oh, who gives a fuck. What do I say? I say I know what I want and I ain’t gettin’ it. I say I’m settling for too fucking little. I say the whole set-up I’ve set up is out to sabotage me. I say I’m not going to find love here. And even if I could, how could it survive and grow? I say it’s time to move on. I say I think it has been…is my…fault. But why?

Fred headed for his last dance in The Grove.

He approached The Ice Palace. There it was, the premier Island dance hall, a huge clapboard, turreted, magical, old-fashioned, twinkling, indeed palace of a place, just there, coming toward him, in the full moon’s spotlight, coming closer as Fred started running closer, the music growing louder, enticingly louder, as he ran up The Palace steps and paid his entrance fee and pushed his way through and among the many thousands of sweaty, half-naked bodies on the outside deck and into the hot arms of its insides, its chamber of chambers, high inside fingers jutting up to heaven, that elusive heaven. Again wonderful lights that twinkled everywhere. Miles and miles, a million miles of Mylar and mirrors, to reflect and deflect and gleam and smile and wrap them all in such a pretty package of Life. Again the necessary heat that music and energy and dancing and brothers generate so emphatically. Fists pounding up and down to the beat of one of their own disco anthems. Release. So much release. So many dear ones touching. Here to be touched. So close. But not too close. No hassles. No problems. No involvements. Please no hassles and involvements! Just let’s dance. Which Fred proceeded to yet again but for the last time do.

This is one massive cake of solid body, thousands, Hot Men, radiating enough heat to defrost Arctic wastes and I am being pulled into it and I am dancing and dancing, oh we are so many bodies, plowing my way through bodies, bashing and twisting and poppers passed like party favors and seven men now hold me and we swing and sway and sweat becoming One!, and I am dancing with strangers and dancing with friends and we are plucking each other from this vastness and I am a madman and here is Renny Collage Maker and William Distinguished Professor of Literature who keeps him, asks no questions, and looks the other way, and here is Kristos Rosenkavalier who gave his lover a silver rose, only to be left same night by same, and Dick and Dora Dull who’ve been together twelve years and own three houses together and never seem to talk to each other and Matt Desk Clerk who’s so shy and to whom I once said “I want to open you like a can of peas,” but decided not to and Tidgy Schmidge who just likes hairy asses and Terry TWA who flies in dope from Kansas City and sweetness Alex who, with me, is the only D.F.B. on the entire Island, Drug-Free Bodies, our own exclusive club, Alex sure looks lost tonight, and Harvey Pharmaceutical Researcher and Ron Would-Be Artist who’s our clap doctor’s lab boy and B.L.T., for Beautiful Legs and Thighs, who fucked with the entire cast of Grey Gardens one rainy night and Lovely Lee, we dance so lightly, we’re The Old Smoothies, he crying: “Not bad for two old Jews!,” I jumping up in the air to yell: “Call me Mikhail!,” and there is Washington Department of Agriculture Jack, last summer’s notorious cock teaser (though he could take lessons from Dinky) who left me after tongue-kissing me for two hours while Bobby B. showed us slides of the highlights of the summer-before-that, and Kenny Textile Designer who lost seventy-five pounds and is finding them and John Book-Jacket Illustrator who wants to do mine if and when I ever write one, maybe now I’ll write one, and Martin Set Designer who lets us use his set of weights for working out out here and Mark Costumier whose lover left him “for a drag queen! the ultimate insult!,” and dear architect Charlie, we were lovers how many years ago when we were young?, and Milton Hustler who’s writing his memoirs, he’s done it with many of the world’s most famous and finest, and Ronny whose father wouldn’t give him the money to buy the house he wanted so he cried, and Olive, my God, I’ll bet he’s the Olive who was my Dinkied competition, he’s still wearing a costume, some schmata of polyestered silver, it looks like he stole it from his mother, and here’s Gatsby: “I’m moving, Fred, I’m getting the hell out of here, I’m going to Santa Fe, I’ll get a job as a waiter…” No, Gatsby!, you mustn’t give up…I’ll miss you…and there’s that crazy Elizabeth Taylor dancing all in black, he sure is sweating—no, I think they’re tears…and here’s Bella: “Fred, I have momentous news! Billy Boner has just announced that he will open a brand new baths, with three hundred rooms, just like a Grand Hotel, with wall-to-wall carpeting and a Jacuzzi with sitdown service for fifty and a master steam room and five little saunas and home-baked pies and cakes and donuts,” and here is Frigger: “This place tonight is hot as a mother’s love,” and here is Fallow: “I’ve danced so much my legs feel amputated,” and here is Bilbo: “You’ll look good shorter,” and here’s tiny Pinky clinking finger cymbalettes: “My cymbalettes! I was invited to seven houses tonight! I feel like I’ve been picked to pledge the best fraternity!” and Mikie, my beloved Mikie…