How Long Has This Been Going On (60 page)

"You say you
do
love me," she says. "I hear this thing that you say, and
yet.
And yet you say that there is a... a man."

"Yes."

"You're tossing this at me, and I... Sorry, but I'm just trying to... This man... You're telling me that you love him, too?"

"No."

"Oh, good. So you're just... toying with him?"

"Well, we toy with each other, really. We don't pretend it's love."

"So you pretended with me?"

"Well, no. No, I—"

"You toyed with me, surely? 'Toyed,' but I just love that word..."

"Judith..."

"Or what
am
I to think? I knew you went from woman to woman. Now it turns out you go from woman to man."

Each one looks away.

"Well, I
wonder
!" Judith says. "And how much does this have to do with Walt?"

"It won't help if you get angry...."

"Nor will it hurt! So just what have you been
doing'?
I... Tell me! Who is real, Judith or this man? Who's real? Is he a... girlish man? Sorry, I don't know the term.... No, don't take my hand and... Just talk to me, please."

"The term is... I think it's 'twinkie.' Walt's friend Danny keeps us up on the lingo."

"Walt's friend Danny. Yes. Now, this man you're seeing—is he a twinkie?"

"He's a man, like any other."

"Like you?"

"Well, you've met him. Win. Remember? The sex therapist who drove Walt home from Danny's party last February."

"Win."

"That's right. Short for Winthrop."

"Classy name. You know, I have to tell you, in all candor, and I hope this won't offend you, but right at the minute I really feel like breaking something. Such as your head."

"If it makes you happier to get mad at me, then—"

"Tom! I'm not
mad
at you! I'm
amazed
at you! All those nights with me—I mean in bed, of course—just what was going through your mind, if I may?"

"Just... what a wonderful time I was having."

"This doesn't make any sense!"

It went on like that, in Judith's living room, for hours, the typical inconclusive (because apparently inconsistent) I'm-sorry-but-I'm-not-heterosexual-after-all announcement with question-and-answer period. The problem, for the woman on the receiving end, is that these scenes burden her with two problems at once: one, she just got jilted; and, two, she has to figure out what it says about
her
that she turned out to be perfect for the man who wasn't really looking for a woman after all.

I'll say this for Judith: Despite her exasperation, she retained her sense of humor and, at length, her generosity, realizing that it simply couldn't be in Tom to hurt her on purpose.

Of course, he had faced her alone, without reinforcements. But I wish he had brought some, for any other gay man—even fledgling Walt—could have done a better job of relieving Judith's concerns. For instance, Win would have said:

All sex is pleasurable, and, for a homosexual male attempting to convince himself that he's heterosexual, physical congress with a woman would be doubly pleasurable—for, besides the sensual stimulation, there's the psychological victory of having "proved" oneself. Now, this partially explains Tom's success with women, and I expect it also tells us why he kept moving from one woman to another—he never connected with any of them emotionally. But give him this—he did not, as many closeted men do, let Judith think he was simply breaking it off. He did not reject her, he disqualified himself. That's gallantry.

Walt would have said:

Cousin Tom didn't know how to be gay, but everyone who grows up in America learns how to be straight, because that's all they'll teach you. So that's what Tom had to be. It's just that now he's changed his mind. Maybe I had something to do with that, because I'm one of the mysterious few who grow up in America but don't know how to be straight. Not if it means being like Thor Lundquist, who captains the football team and calls guys homos when everyone's looking and then lures innocents into bed when no one's around.

Danny, a short, thin, slightly effeminate blond—the kind who always gets harassed in high school for the greater glory of heterosexual virtue—would have said:

Fuck
Tom
and fuck
Judith!
I'm sick forever of these closet cases and the women they fool so, so very easily! Why do all these guys have such a hang-up about what they are? I don't, and I'm no hero. Walt keeps trying to get me to come visit, instead of him having to come to me all the time, but I just won't hang around closet freaks and their girl friends.

Walt says the closet is "a desperate place." You know what I say? They're phonies, and you can't believe a thing about them. Not anything. Straights think the whole world is them, and everything else is unbelievable. They think gays are people you never see, on the fringes of everything, like vampires. Or maybe like me, who was the class fruit, the last guy picked when the captains chose up sides in gym and a big disappointment to my parents, as they never tire of telling me. But maybe my parents are a big disappointment to me, did you ever think of that? How would they like it if everything in society favored gays and they had to pretend to be like us or get bullied and fired and jailed? How about if I told them they
shame
me, just because they're not like me? Boy, if straights knew what we know, they'd realize that this ten percent of the population we supposedly represent is only the totally out gays, like me. There's this huge other group, like Walt's cousin, sneaking off to the bars and clubs and bathhouses and even toilets, leaving their girl friends or wives just so high and dry. That's what happens when you don't let people be what they are. So now Tom's girl friend is going to feel rejected—but how could she ever have felt accepted in the first place? She wasn't accepted. She was used.

To all of which, I believe, Judith might have said:

Sorry, I'm still mystified. If Tom is gay, what on God's earth is he doing dating women and
why the heck is he so good at it?
I suppose this explains his moody nature—being in the wrong place can be distracting, I'm sure. But even with these three, uh, experts affirming Tom's story, I find it hard to reckon. He enjoyed my company—that much I'm certain of—and for over a year. If he was gay then, wouldn't he still enjoy my company
now?
I'm not suggesting that a gay man should marry. But exactly how gay is he if he can be such a... well, such an
intimate
lover? Not that I want to keep seeing Tom. On the contrary, we both need time off now. We'll give it thought. Because I don't get it yet. And what I especially don't get is, How come suddenly half the men you know are gay? Where did they all
come
from?

"W
IN IS LIKE the oldest brother," Walt was telling Danny, "who is a little fearsome but secretly you adore him. And Tom is the middle brother, who sees your side of it and makes up alibis for you and things."

"They're not that cute together," said Danny.

"You thought so last month."

"They're just another selfish half-closeted couple who think they're so straight-looking that they can get away with it, so all the poor faggots like me can screw themselves. I'm so sick of that, Walty!"

Danny had a second-floor rear near the famous conjunction of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer streets, with a little porch overlooking a garden, and now that spring was almost here he was always dragging Walt out there. Walt didn't dare say no. Danny would make them coffee—instead of the cocoa that for those raised in Gotburg was second only to water as the liquor of life—and out the two of them would go, Walt freezing in his coat and Danny making airy jokes one minute and fulminating the next.

"Those right-wing gays!" Danny went on. "Don't you so
love
that? Win even reads
National Review!"

"I can't believe it!" cried Walt, wondering what
National Review
was.

"I'll bet your cousin's a Republican, too!" Danny pursued. "Maybe even you are. Who were you for in the last election—Nixon?"

"I favored Claude on a write-in ticket, though I knew it was virtually hopeless."

Danny hunched his shoulders tensely at this irrelevant whimsy. Real life is about real things. "How are we ever to achieve gay liberation," he asked, "if people like Win keep thinking they don't need it? Do you realize we have no political cohesion in any way, not even as a voting bloc? If some Ku Klux guy ran for office, you can bet your sweet bippy the blacks would know how to stop him. But people like Win actually vote
for
bigots. Even the anti-gay men."

"But you
like
Win. This here is where I met him—at your party."

"I like him as a
man,
Walty. Because he's so big and sexy and I'm crazy about that type. I get all warped inside me just standing near him, so how could I not like him? I just hate him as a person. I hate what he believes in."

"Well, what's that?"

"What do you
think?"
Danny snapped, irritated at Walt's high level of tolerance. "He believes in playing straight, and identifying with straights, and collaborating with them in their plot to rule the world. And this bisexual crap! Oh, ho! That's like the guns he collects—it's to remind you how virile he is, just in case the
gay
thing makes him seem a little nelly."

"Nelly?"

"Minty."

"Minty?"

"Oh, for Judas' Shame, Walty! Don't you know anything?"

"Danny, please don't be frustrated with me. I'm learning as fast as—"

"I'm sorry," said Danny angrily. "I could never be mad at you. I'm just venting my rage at Win and everything he represents."

"This coffee is nice."

"The
women
have a movement going, don't they? They're coming to an understanding of how they've been forced into a servile position. They're
organizing."

"Fem lib?"

Danny made a face. "The
women's movement,
Walty. Oh, you're such a pre-political!"

"That's because I'm a small-town boy."

"Actually, it's small-town women who are building the movement, because they've the most limited lives of all. All they do is pay dues.
Kirche, Ktiche, Kinder.
That's how my grandmother described it. You go to church, you cook the refreshments, you breed and nurture. Ha!"

"What dues?" asked Walt.

"Gender dues. Power dues. When a straight man says, I want to fuck you, you have to say yes. When a straight man says, I want a ham sandwich, you make it. When a straight man says, You can't have an abortion, because I will not let you nullify my seed, you say, Hallelujah. So he'll let you take the Pill sometimes, sure. Of course they don't publicize the medical risks involved in taking it, because guess who controls the mediums of—"

"But, Danny, why are you so busy with the problems of women?"

"Oh, Walt, don't you see they're our most obvious allies? The straight man is the ultimate partner-oppressor of women, right?"

Walt just blinked at Danny. Partner-oppressor?

"Look," said Danny. "He's the partner in his indicated role as boy friend, husband, and so on. But the system is designed to exploit her in order to exalt him. See?"

"No."

"I'll ignore that. And who's the partner of the gay man?"

"His boy friend."

"No, Walty, that's later.
If
he comes out at all. No, the gay man's partner is the straight man he
pretends
to be
like.
His father. His brothers. His schoolmates—and none of them know about him, right? His business associates. Yet who keeps us down, tells us what we can and can't do, smacks us when we're out of line?"

"Uncle Gustav."

After a long moment, Danny sadly said, "Walty, we're talking about people's lives here."

"I'm sorry, Danny."

"Do you know what they used to do to women who refused to participate in the straight man's society? Refused to accept the role he assigned her? Do you? They'd call them witches and burn them alive. Just because they refused to be used and fucked."

"Golly."

"I'm telling you, women are our allies. We should be building our politics with them."

"Okay. But how come you don't know any lesbians?"

"Tell me who you'd rather be with," said Tom to Win, "a man or a woman."

"I'd rather be with you."

"Come on and answer the question!"

It was quite early on a morning after; Win and Tom were stirring in bed, still in the stage of getting used to each other, both wondering if Walt had started the coffee.

"'Who would you rather be with?,'" Win offered, "is not the right question. Because maybe you'd always rather be with someone else. Who would
you
rather be with, since you're asking?"