Gossip (32 page)

But I didn’t want to talk to Mrs. O’Connor. Her card annoyed me, like a criticism for no longer grieving about her son.

“But
you
went to the funeral?” said Diaz, pressing his finger over his lips again as if to stop a smile. “You’re a surprising fellow, Ralph.”

“Stupid?” I said fiercely.

“No. Just surprising. And possibly useful in court.”

I remained a case in his eyes, just another prolonged event in the cold brain of a lawyer. Which was for the best, I decided.

He kept Mrs. O’Connor’s card both to prove that I’d attended the funeral and, if the prosecution called her as a witness, to impeach her credibility. “I might feel her out as a witness myself. You never know what’s going to alarm the opposition.”

We went over the details of my arrest again, looking for technicalities that made my arrest illegal. Diaz treated the trial as a hypothetical play that might or might not be performed at an undetermined date. Everything was scripted in advance, both sides sketching every possible scene and speech, outlines they later presented to each other, daring their collaborator to stage it. We fought fiction with fiction, but I grew accustomed to the cynicism and proud of my acceptance. It seemed so worldly, so tough.

I remained remarkably cool those first weeks. Sometimes when I woke up in the morning, an old self surfaced who wanted the whole business to have been nothing more than a bad dream. But I had a mind that bounced like a ball when it dropped. Compared to my vague old identity of sympathy and fret, my new toughness was a relief, a simpler, more concentrated self. I actively craved things: to be declared innocent, to do good and, despite Diaz’s warning, to learn what had really happened. I was excited, but kept it buried deep with all my other emotions, like the panic of a tightrope walker who knows not to look down.

“F
REE RALPH ECKHART!” DECLARED
the mock-up of the poster, the implication I remained in jail reinforced by the arrest photo, so familiar now it was no longer a picture, but an ideogram, a trademark. The headline was in magnified typewriter face, the photo pasted at a jaunty angle. The text began:

Ralph Eckhart. Friend. Neighbor. Member of ACT UP. Gay and proud. He could be you. On Monday night, April 18, he was arrested for the murder of a right-wing journalist, on no grounds except that he was a politically aware gay man who once knew the victim. Join us in our fight against homophobia when we …

“I’d cut the exclamation point,” explained James, the designer, a gray-haired boy in a sweatshirt. “Too seventies.”

“What if we drop the Ralph?” Nick suggested. “‘Free Eckhart.’ Make people feel they already know who he is?”

“Still sounds like you’re giving out free samples,” quipped Peter.

“Why not drop my name altogether?” I proposed. “Just say ‘Homophobia’ or ‘Framed’?”

“Too abstract,” said Nick. “We need to keep it personal.”

We stood beside an empty stage, James’s portfolio on the apron, in an empty club called Tarantula in west Chelsea, the new center of gay nightlife after years in the East Village. It was a weeknight; the club didn’t open until ten. All the lights were on, exposing the former warehouse behind the high-tech trappings, while two female electricians replaced bulbs. A multipaneled video monitor hung over the stage like the digitized eye of a fly.

Peter and I had come from the store to meet with Nick, James and the man organizing the fund-raiser, a professional party giver named Veronica, who was late. Maura didn’t join us. A journalist again, she had to keep her distance from the campaign. James was nervous in my presence at first, then treated me as simply a problem in design.

Looking up from his poster to the giant fly eye overhead, I pictured myself as a human billboard. It gave me neither pleasure nor shame, only a calm, cheerless satisfaction. My suggestion that we remove my name had been more habit than a sincere grasp at privacy. I knew now that this campaign did not save me from helplessness but enlarged me into something huge and selfless, vulnerable to others. I wanted to lose myself in their demands.

Veronica arrived, an overaged club kid with a pumped body and, despite the hour, sunglasses. Only his name was drag. Nick introduced me.

“You! You? I was expecting Superqueer.”

With an inch of hair, I looked like a thousand other men.

“You will not do, Eckhart. You will not do at all.” He gave me a high, goofy giggle.

I knew his manic type and was not insulted. Nick maintained a friendly, businesslike tone, but he could still wince at “queer.” He was uncomfortable with this campy schizophrenia.

Veronica was giddy and giggly one moment, deeply solemn the next. “An event to awaken the conscience of a community,” he grandly declared. “With go-go boys and Lypsinka? I doubt we can get RuPaul but do you know anyone who knows Lypsinka? Or if you want politics, Hitler’s Daughter. This guy does a wonderful act in pigtails and lederhosen. Funny yet angry.”

“You could call it, ‘Eichmann in Las Vegas,’” Peter snorted.

Nick ignored him, Veronica didn’t get it. Peter looked surprised when I silenced him with a frown.

“No, it needs a serious note,” said Nick. “Music, yes, but I was thinking we ask an important political figure to speak.”

“Do you want people to come or don’t you?” said Veronica. “Okay, okay. We include someone serious, but we need fun too. Do you want to emcee?”

“Not me,” said Nick. “I’m a terrible public speaker.”

“Okay. A fun emcee. A serious guest speaker. How about …”

They discussed who could sell me. Fun figures were no problem, but it was hard coming up with someone who’d give weight to the program without being too heavy. Kramer, Stoddard, Vaid? Veronica groaned at each. Their public appeal had been burned up long ago. Nick grew uncomfortable playing this frivolous name game in front of me. When Veronica suggested we go to the club manager and hear his ideas, Nick told me that I didn’t have to stay. Feeling embarrassed for Nick, I left with Peter.

“Poor old Nicky,” Peter chuckled when we were out on the street. “The club scene. God, is he out of his element.”

“He never guessed his campaign could be a comedy,” I agreed.

“So, why aren’t you laughing?”

He was right. I saw the absurdities but did not find them funny. “‘He who laughs has not yet heard the terrible news.’”

Peter knew the quote; I’d first heard it from him. “Brecht didn’t know what he was talking about. A little humor keeps one sane and human. You can’t let this turn you to stone, Ralph.”

“I’m not stone. I’ve grown a tougher skin. Which I needed. How else am I supposed to behave, up to my neck in this?”

“You need some distance between you and it. You looked so pious back there, so holy.”

I gritted my teeth. “No matter what one does or feels, there’s always somebody to tell you it’s the wrong thing.”

Peter said nothing for a moment, then, “Do you really believe that you’ll go to prison, Ralph?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I try not to think that far ahead.”

“I know the very feeling. But then my odds are higher than yours, aren’t they?”

A judicious slap, but a slap nevertheless. I wanted Peter to see his situation in mine, so that someone might understand. But it wasn’t the same thing, was it?

My guilt kept my anger in check. “You don’t play fair, Peter. You hate it when other people see you as a sick man. But you’re quick to use it yourself whenever it serves you.”

Peter sighed. “It’s my illness. I should be able to use it as I please.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “Sorry,” I said. “I have no business sniping at you.”

He apologized in return by saying, “Don’t take me so seriously, Ralph. What do I know? Nothing.”

I didn’t believe that, yet our crises put us in different spheres, worlds strangely at odds with each other.

We walked down a cross street tented with new foliage to Eighth Avenue. It was a mild May evening and the sidewalks were crowded with men in shirtsleeves and even shorts. Bandanas appeared to be replacing baseball caps as the headwear of choice.

“I have too much energy to go home yet,” said Peter. “Let’s go to a bar. I haven’t been to a bar in ages. Might be your last chance to be Joe Blow in public before Nick finishes with you.”

“You want to make me human?”

“I want both of us to take a brief vacation.”

We went to Juice, where I hadn’t been in months and Peter had never visited, an old bar modernized and renamed to compete with the new industrial bars in the neighborhood. We perched on two stools; I ordered a beer and Peter challenged the bartender to make a sidecar. While old disco throbbed in the sound system, a video projector showed even older porn on a screen fixed like a window in the back wall. Skinny fellows with mustaches and dandelion hair unpeeled bell-bottoms on a blanket in the desert.

“I know, I know,” said Peter as he watched. “To you it looks frumpy, but to me it’s Proust.”

But a few swigs of beer were enough to put me back into my body; I began to find their pastel humping sexy. The bar was cruisy for a weeknight. Guys glanced at me and turned away, smiling to themselves. Two boys in buzz cuts and T-shirts in a corner booth appeared to give me special attention.

Somebody passed through the curtain to the right of the screen. A moment later, a different man hurried out.

“Is that a back room?” said Peter.

“A safe one. You ought to visit. For old time’s sake.”

“Thanks but no thanks. Even if it’s so dark they can’t see how old I am, I’d only embarrass myself. Can’t remember the last time I had a stiffy. No, wait. I had one two weeks ago. While reading
The New Yorker.
A long article about chaos theory. Not remotely erotic, but I suddenly noticed I was hard. And I just lay on the sofa thinking: Hey. I remember you.”

I hadn’t even masturbated since jail, but couldn’t tell Peter that.

“Hello there! What’re
you
doing out?”

I turned around. Ned Wing stood at the bar, grinning like a gargoyle, thinking I should be overjoyed to see him. I’d pursued Ned for a split second two years ago. High cheekbones, flirty black eyes and a crow’s flap of silky hair, he’d seemed so open and available. He had only wanted me to want him. When I did, he told me I wasn’t successful enough to be boyfriend material.

“Peter? This is Ned Wing. My friend, Peter.”

Ned nodded and promptly ignored Peter. “Haven’t seen you in ages. But hey. I’ve read about you.”

Now I understood what tonight’s glances were all about. The general public forgot, but acquaintances remembered, and acquaintances of acquaintances—a widening circle of rumor.

“This your incognito?” said Ned, an excuse to stroke my bristly hair. “You didn’t escape, did you?”

“That’s between me and my probation officer,” I weakly joked. I enjoyed the graze of his fingers, the glimpse of collarbone in his shirt. His physical appeal annoyed me.

“I had no idea,” he said. “I always thought you were Mr. Sweet. But it’s the nice guys you have to watch out for. You still live in the East Village?”

“Yeah.”

“I live in Chelsea but have a boyfriend now.”

“Good for you.”

“Yeah. Well.” He shrugged. “I was going to check out the back, then mosey on home.”

He’d been a prudish pricktease when I pursued him; married life apparently liberated a trash side. “Have fun,” I said. “Maybe see you around.”

He sidled backward with a blatantly telegraphic grin. He turned and his kiltlike baggies danced over twin globes with no trace of underpants. He disappeared through the curtain.

“A butt you could quote Shakespeare off of,” said Peter. “It might be what you need.”

“Like a hole in the head,” I said, and drained my beer. “Hold this.” I gave him my wallet. I trusted Ned but you never knew who else might grope you in the dark. A quick feel, a bit of tongue, I thought. Better late than never. I’d show Peter that I hadn’t turned into a pious prig.

The narrow space behind the curtain was lit by a wash of light from the translucent screen set high in the wall. Two solitary figures hovered in a dark corner, but Ned stood up front in the blur of color like a milky glow of sun through animated stained glass. He grinned when I came over to him. With the music loudly pounding, we were in a movie where you didn’t have to speak or even think. I touched his shoulder, his back. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed. This is what I need, I thought, a three-dimensional body and mouth. But Ned’s body was slight and weightless, his mouth too shallow. His shorts slipped against a meaningless ass. When I wrestled him down to the bench built in the wall, straining to find something to excite me, he whispered, “Oh yeah, you
are
dangerous.”

Below the water level of light, I got my hand up a leg of the baggy shorts, which seemed designed for back rooms. I found balls in mussed mink, then a stubby satin bone. Having a bare cock in my hand wasn’t as golden as I’d expected.

The vultures came out of their corner to watch. The curtain blinked and another shadow joined them. Men often swarmed like bees around necking couples here, coming in to look and even touch. I assumed they’d touch Ned, but someone eased down behind me, peering around as if reading over my shoulder. His hand brushed my hip, then brushed deeper when I didn’t push it away. He pressed against my back, a compact bull in a T-shirt. It was one of the buzz cuts who’d been checking me out at the bar, now undoing my belt, unzipping my fly. “Yay,” he whispered when he pulled at the waistband and I sprang into the open air. Ned purred in my mouth, excited to share. When one of the kibitzers tried to squeeze in behind him, however, he blocked the man with his knee and shooed him away.

The hand I had up Ned’s pants became the hand that clutched me, a mirror of sex, a genital Mobius strip, except Ned and the bull never touched each other, only me, their four hands feeling like a dozen. Suddenly I knew that they didn’t want me but the rumor of me, the name in the newspaper, the accused murderer. Why else would Ned finally give in? What else could make a baby bull want to frig an older guy? I resented their fantasy, yet my body was so keyed up that even resentment became erotic. I bit at Ned’s mouth with my lips; I broke off the kisses to bite his shoulder. But no matter how much I did, I remained the object under the mob of hands. With the woof side of old porn playing overhead, I felt I was being gently raped inside a TV set.