How Long Has This Been Going On (57 page)

And there was this scene where the businessman comes home and unlocks his desk to open a secret drawer filled with porn. Straight porn. A secret drawer like Tom's; a diary, pictures, thinking. You see someone, and your hand moves to your cock. Now, what is sex—merging with someone you're fond of, or beating off to a fantasy?

This scene in the porn. This guy is paging through his magazine, but all the women are turning into the hunk in the leather jacket. Different views of him. Now his shirt's off, now the pants. He's standing, watching, looming. Help. Because then comes this trick shot where the guy seems to walk right out of the magazine into the businessman's room. One second it's your real life and the next second it's
suddenly.
The leather hunk isn't wearing leather any more, or anything, and he's taking hold of the businessman and feeling him up, right through his clothes. You can see the leather guy talking, but the sound track is just music.
What is he saying?

They're getting down to business. The hunk takes forever stripping the businessman, as if he's observing a ritual procedure, maybe establishing one. It's Frank, of course; you knew that, though he's a stranger to Tom. The stranger dogging a guy with questions he not only has to answer but
ask.
The hunk has the businessman real close now, stroking his hair and whispering. A jump cut, and the businessman's stretched out on his stomach with the hunk on top of him, the two of them bucking away like tomorrow won't matter. But then the businessman happens to glance down at the open magazine, and the camera quickly closes in again on the woman porn. Camera pulls back: The hunk is gone, and the businessman, apparently hearing something, is hiking up his pants. The door opens, and a woman walks in, radiant, youthful, desirable. A smooth case. She says, "How was your day, honey?"

Tom scrambled up and out of there, away from the stranger; but where do you go? Who do you explain what to?

Walt said, "You should come to the group, Cousin Tom. You can really speak about things."

That sounded far too dangerous for prudent Tom. Speak about things to strangers?

But Walt said, "It's easier to talk deep to people who don't know you. Because they are not the true people in your life."

Tom brushed this away. But Walt kept hymning the joys of the group, and after a few weeks he actually got our Tom to give it a shot. It was a stormy session: The group members ganged up on Tom as a wolf pack trails a stray house pet. They knew what they were up to, all right.

One said, "You and this Judith are playing out some game."

Another, a little jerk with a scraggly beard, said, "It's a cop-out."

Tom turned to Allen Taylor and asked, "Are they allowed to do this to me?"

"How do you feel about what they're doing?" Allen replied.

"Well, so you're on their side?"

The bearded jerk said, "What a cop-out."

Tom looked at Walt. "Is this some initiating thing, pal? They always treat new guys this way?"

"The group can be rough on newcomers," said Allen. "Not least if they sense dishonesty."

"They don't know me," said Tom.

"The new guy is handsome," said an older black man who had been silent till now. "He's young, too, yet he has the mature and successful man's self-confidence. I think everyone in the room is threatened by that."

"George?" said Allen, to one of the others. "How do you react to what Jeff just said?"

George stirred unhappily.

"Ollie?"

This was the bearded jerk. "Who says he's handsome?" said Ollie. "He doesn't do anything for me."

"Look who's talking," said Tom. "Guy goes around with dogpatch all over his chin."

"That's a cop-out!"

"Walt, you ready to go?" said Tom.

"Now, you haven't said anything yet, Walt," Allen observed.

"And I won't."

Allen turned to Tom. "Why doesn't Walt want to talk about you, Tom? Could he be protecting your resistance to selfness? It was a breakthrough for you to join us, I know, a breakthrough to selfness. Yet as soon as you arrived, you fought and closed up."

Tom got up and went for his coat. "Your ride's leaving, Walt," he said.

As Walt got up, Ollie said, "Next time, bring your diary. You can read us from the hot parts."

Tom stepped menacingly toward Ollie, but Walt got in the way, flailing around as he wrestled with his coat. "We better go now, Cousin Tom," he said.

In the car, Tom said, "How much did you tell them, buddy?" "I'm real sorry, Cousin Tom."

"Look, drop the 'Cousin' thing, will you?"

"They pried it out of me! That's how it works, you know. They keep accusing you until you tell them a story. Maybe I should just have made one up. It's a good thing Harvey Oefnerling wasn't there—I gave away plenty of his secrets, too." After a bit, Walt added, "Allen says it's very hard to be honest, but then you feel better, because it hurts to keep secret."

"Well, it doesn't hurt me."

"Allen says it does, but you don't know it."

"Who made him God?"

They were silent for a long time. Then Tom said, "Well, I don't think you should go to that group any more. You can go to the bar instead."

"Okay."

Catching Walt's miserable tone, Tom said, "Unless you really want to."

"I won't do anything that makes you mad at me."

"I just can't understand... Why is everyone always trying to figure me out? What happened to Live and Let Live? These nosy critics, always! If their lives are in such good shape, how come they all look like a bunch of losers?"

Walt giggled. "That was funny, what you said about Ollie's beard."

"Well, that is one fucking mess, I can say."

"He's always telling us about his lover Peter, who is very beautiful and kind and all those things. And how they have the perfect relationship and never fight and make love every night like two porn stars."

"Bullshit."

"Last week, everybody started turning on him, and he must be exaggerating, and Peter's not so hot as that. And Allen was questioning Ollie and Ollie was getting his answers crossed. You know, like one thing he said contradicted another thing. So finally Ollie said he had made the whole thing up. There was no Peter. And then he cried in front of us."

Tom was pulling into the driveway, enjoying a silent chuckle, as he always did, at the sight of Walt's snow fort, a little sickly but still standing.

Walt said, "When I first started going, I didn't like Ollie, either. But after I saw him crying I couldn't hate him any more, no matter what he said to me."

"Because he showed what a zero he is."

"No. Because the group took away the one thing he had that made him feel good, this magical story about a wonderful man who loved him. It was a lie, but he liked it and now he has nothing. It's funny how a fake story could be so important to you, isn't it, Tom?" "Come on, we're home."

The phone was ringing when they got inside, and Tom picked it up in the kitchen.

"It's for you," he told Walt. "Who's Danny?"

"Oh!"
Walt cried, running to the phone.

Danny, the blond from the bar, was inviting Walt to a party, and Tom, heating up some cocoa for them both, listened approvingly to Walt's enthusiasm. It was good for him to get out and make friends of his own kind, Tom thought.

Hanging up, Walt said, "Danny told me I have to bring my lover to the party."

"Well, maybe it's time to tell him the truth about that."

"Okay. Can I have two marshmallows in mine?" Spooning his cocoa around and dunking the marshmallows, Walt observed, "Of course, your parents and various grown-ups are always telling you to tell the truth. But there are times when it is necessary to fib."

"Do you need to let Danny think that I'm your boy friend? What if you called me Cousin Tom in front of him?"

"I don't violently need to. But it would ease it up for him and me to become friends, wouldn't it? Otherwise, he'll think I don't like him the way he wants me to."

"I remember him from the bar. He's a good-looking sort of guy, in his way. Maybe he'd be a good boy friend for you."

"Cousin Tom, the lonely-hearts expert."

"Walt, you're nineteen. You can't carry Claude around forever."

"Claude's retired. He hardly ever comes out of his room now."

"You know what I mean."

"Will you come to Danny's party?"

"I'd be out of place there, pal."

"Danny said it'll be a very mixed crowd."

"Yeah—blonds and brunets. Look, this is
your
party, Walt, not mine."

Tom promised to drive Walt over on the night and to pick him up if he couldn't cadge a ride. "Maybe we should fix you up with some party togs."

"We already did that, for Judith's Christmas party. Remember?"

"Well, this is a different kind of party."

Walt gave Tom a funny look. "How come you're so big on what to wear, all of a sudden? Danny says the worst people in the gay world are the ones who are always fussing around with their wardrobe."

"Well, clothes are important when you want to make an impression."

"I thought I would make an impression with my fine manners," said Walt, opening his mouth to show Tom a mush of cocoa and marshmallow.

"Very funny," said Tom; and the next day he took Walt to the store right after work. The boy sustained not the slightest reaction to anything Tom pointed out. To Walt, clothes existed for decency's sake and to keep warm in. So Tom made an executive decision: dark wool pleated slacks and an Irish fisherman's sweater. It was, of course, the same sweater that had hung so definitively on the shoulders of the big smiling man in the bar, and Tom really liked that style. He said, "Walt, you're going to make out like a bandit."

"Every time, you make this big deal about how I'm going to do. Why don't
you
go to parties and
you
make out like a bandit?"

"Because I already did that, pal. We all go through that... that social thing of—"

"We all do that?" said Walt. "Do you think Ollie does it?"

Tom made a noise. "He doesn't count."

"Oh, Tom," said Walt. "Everybody counts."

Riding with Tom to Danny's party, Walt became a little apprehensive at being a stranger in a crowd of friends, but, some hours later when he called Tom to say that he had a ride home with someone named Winthrop, he sounded chipper.

"Okeydokes," said Tom, picturing Winthrop as an amiable pixie who dresses in Necco wafer colors. When Tom heard a car arrive outside some forty minutes later, he went to the kitchen to turn on the outside light, and looked out of the window to see a tall man in a down coat helping Walt drag the garbage into the street for the next morning's pickup. As they came back up the driveway, Tom saw the man's face: It was the guy from the Magic Parrot, the smiler in the sweater!

"Was that Walt?" asked Judith, joining Tom in the kitchen.

"Someone's with him," said Tom.

Judith went to the window even as the door opened and Walt came in. Throwing off his coat, he cried, "That was a dandy party, and this is Winthrop."

"Win," said the man, smiling as he extended his hand.

Well, just don't you be knowing, now; don't think you've figured me out, rough-and-ready Tom was thinking as they shook hands. I've got my woman here, anyhow.

"And that's Judith," said Walt, in his curious habit of giving only first names in a culture whose every social act was predicated upon a very complete knowledge of one's family background. The only places in the Midwest where you don't use last names are kindergarten and prison.

"I promised Win some cocoa for taking me home," said Walt, crossing the room.

Win smiled and said, "Walt really took over at Danny's. The two of them played piano duets and everyone sang."

"You
didn't," Walt noted, as he heated the milk.

"I guess I don't recall the words to anything. How come everybody else can sing right through
Oklahoma!
word by word? You guys just appear in the show or something?"

"Let me take your coat, Win," said Tom. And of course there was the sweater, and Walt was wearing his sweater, too, and as she sat at the kitchen table Judith commented on how nicely Win and Walt looked as a set. •

"You could be father and son," she said.

That stopped Walt, who turned to them from the kitchen range, a mug in each hand. "How old are you?" he asked Win.

"Thirty-eight."

"Golly!" Walt looked at Tom, then Judith, as if taking age into account for the first time in his life. "Boy, I'm really young here," he said.

"Who's Danny?" asked Judith—but Tom didn't relish hearing Walt and Win chatting away about a gay party, so Tom said, "Danny's a friend of Walt's," and immediately followed it up with "What do you do, Win?"

"I'm a sex therapist."

Silence.

"Yes, that usually stops traffic," he went on. "Some people are curious about it, but they're afraid of being forward. Some people are plain shocked. I guess most of them never guessed there even was such a person.

"Well,
I'm
curious," said Judith.

"It's like many other things," said Win. "People have a problem and need the expert to help them solve it."

"You're the expert," said Judith, clearly fascinated. "But what are... well, the credentials, after all?"

Win smiled and said, "I don't supply a hot time—I help my patients conquer the emotional tangles that interfere with a sane sex life. I'm not a boy friend for hire. I'm an adviser."

"But do you..." Judith began. "I mean..." "Serve as a sexual partner?"

Judith nodded.

"Yes."

Walt brought over a tray of four mugs of cocoa and a plate of cookies.

Tom said, "Walt's the only guy I know who comes home from a party and starts eating."

"I was so busy making music and meeting people that I didn't have time to eat. Besides, all Danny served was green peppers and hay."

"Hay?" said Judith.

"That California stuff."

"Sprouts?"

"Danny's a vegetarian," said Win. "He's always trying to get me to give up hunting."