How Long Has This Been Going On (72 page)

Evan was great at it. She didn't worry like Larken or talk nonstop sex like Sam. Evan would read the newspaper to Frank—with droll commentary—and thus open the world to him.

"It's funny," Frank told her. "I never bothered with that start-your-day-with-the-paper thing, or reading up on the news after work. I figured, if anything happened, someone would tell me about it. Or... I don't know, maybe it's because I never had a day job like everyone else. I was always on odd hours—bartending, porn, law enforcement..."

"Law enforcement?"

"I was a cop. A long, long time ago."

"Fascinated,"
said Evan, putting down the paper. "Where was this?"

"L.A."

"What were you doing there?"

"I'm from there."

"And here I took you for one of those transplanted New Yorkers who come here because they've had everybody back home."

Frank shook his head. "New York was an excursion on my way to here."

"You know where my excursion was? New Orleans."

Frank smiled. "Where's your accent?"

"Oh, I was raised in Iowa. Mason City. But I always had this dream of living in a wild place, you dig? Like some women do the fantasy of imagining a racy older woman seducing them so they can come out? For me that was a city. But the place is so male-dominated. Like the police spend all their time arresting prostitutes, not the real criminals. And every time you shut the lights to go to sleep, some jackass starts playing a trumpet."

Evan laughed quietly, with a wry thinking-back look that softened her eyes and made her better than hot. Pretty.

"You'll think this is some scream, but I had plans of becoming a real slut. Different date every night, sure. And I
tried.
But I kept getting interested in my partners. I couldn't wait to see them again, check them out to see if they were as beautiful as I remembered. That Alice, now, she's got me
sharing
her with some jill from that play.
Nerve
of her!"

Perhaps feeling that she was becoming too confidential, Evan picked up the paper, opened it—then put it down. "It's so quaint how surprising people can be, isn't it?" she asked. "
Quaint,
I say. I took Alice for a shy little princess, and here she's cracking a whip... and you're a cop."

"Ex-cop. But some of it stays with you, I guess. In the way you see the world."

"Like what?"

"Like... well, every cop knows there are three kinds of people. The first kind is decent and fair. The second kind is basically okay, but can go weak under temptation, or if they've been drinking, or in extreme circumstances. The third kind is born scum, and they will stay scum no matter how many programs you stick them in. Civilians think the really bad crooks must be crazy—guys who pour Drano down someone's throat, or beat children to death. They're not crazy. They're vicious. Vicious isn't crazy. It's just another human quality, right? Some people are generous and some people are garbage. Just because someone will do something you wouldn't doesn't make him crazy. I wouldn't climb Mount McKinley. Does that make the team that summits it crazy?"

Evan was smiling.

"What?" asked Frank.

"You really are a cop," she said. "But aren't you scum in the eyes of the law? You're a pornographer."

Frank shrugged. "Some laws are wrong, that's all. You know, I have a few friends who are cops. I don't see them often, but—"

"Gay cops?"

Frank shook his head.

"Do they know you're gay?"

"I've said as much, but they probably don't believe it. Somewhere in every cop's head is a vision of a guy putting on plays or getting into a state over a flat tire.
That's
the gay, see? Everyone else is straight."

"Can they be that out of touch? In San Francisco?"

"Cops are the same in every city, and it's not out of touch. It's stripping the world to its essentials."

Checking her watch as she nosed around in the paper, Evan said, "Fifteen minutes to Sam. You've got a choice of Herb Caen, sports, or a shoot-out between cops and White Aryans in Walnut Creek."

"Skip the bad news, okay?"

Walt was playing through his piano solo version of Rimsky-Korsakov's
Scheherazade
when the Kid sauntered in, dressed as Bombasta.

"Yikes!" said Walt, cutting off.

"Hey, fullback," the Kid emitted. "You a top or a bottom?"

"I think you scared me."

In his own voice, the Kid said, "You see me in drag every night."

"Not like this. Auntie MacAssar is a caricature. But now you really look like a woman. It's so devilish!"

Bette Davis exhaling smoke: "Thatdt petta pe a complimendt!"

"Surely it is," Walt replied. "Drag is revolutionary."

Ava Gardner, contralto, oozing through the room: "Yet enticing."

"I know that it is."

Ingrid Bergman in
Casablanca,
approaching the piano, tragic yet visionary: "I begged Paul Henreid not to go to the Underground meeting tonight. But he's so reckless, so noble." Leaning against the piano: "Play it, Sam."

"Play what?"

"All right, let's have a drink," said the Kid, himself again, a man in a getup, leading Walt to the kitchen. "What luck, the bar's still open. What'll it be?"

"I want a tomato cocktail."

"What's in that?"

"Tomato juice, pepper, and sauce of horseradish."

"Look, kid, the Hansel and Gretel Hour's been and gone. We'll have Bloodies and get smashed."

The Kid made strong ones, and, back in the living room, he asked Walt to play "that great old music of Broadway."

Walt started in on "Try to Remember," as the Kid stood, silent and watching. Admiring. Innocent Walt just plays. Finishing the number, he says, "When I was young, I had this ambition to go to New York and accompany
The Fantasticks
right there in the off-Broadway theatre with the harp and percussion. And Brenda Olafson was going to play the girl. She may have done it, for all I can say. She was very talented."

"'When I was young,'" the Kid muttered. Then: "You're neglecting your drink."

As Walt took a sip, the Kid asked, "How would you like to go to New York and play
my
show? After the run here, I'm going to hit the big town. If they want me."

"Will Blue come?"

"Blue hates New York. He'd as soon set foot in Tanganyika."

Walt sighed. "I know he has flaws, but he's terribly kind to me. I just wish he'd stop trying to bring me together with his Republican. Have you met him?"

"I stay out of that side of Blue's life. Drink, boychick."

"Blue even told me—ha!—that this major party the Republican gave was disgustingly dull. But then Blue wants me to have lunch with the Republican—
and
I have to go to his fancy annual New Year's Eve party."

"New Year's Eve with all the guys in suits, imagine."

Walt nodded. "What do they wear where
you
go on New Year's Eve?"

"Chest hair."

"Anyway, this is a..." Walt got the joke and giggled. "This party isn't gay. It's everyone the Republican knows, straights and their wives and such."

"That's not New Year's Eve, that's Arbor Day in Topeka. With ties. Well, let's freshen our drinks."

Following the Kid to the kitchen, Walt said, "Blue told me how important this connection is. The Republican. He says he's just about broke, and this could... You don't give him money?"

"I used to. But only men who fall defenselessly, hopelessly, and utterly in love with the Blues of the world do that forever. No, I just let him live here and eat out the fridge. Otherwise, he's on his own."

"I lent him fifty dollars yesterday."

"Walt!
Don't you realize what a trap that is?"

"Not with Blue, because—"

"Oh, Walt, you
didn't!"'

"No, he's honest and he truly loves me. Besides, think of how I owe him. He made San Francisco the place where I came into my own true time."

"Here," handing Walt his glass. "And let me tell you about San Francisco and its Blue boys."

Back in the living room, next to Walt on the couch, the Kid said, "Historically, this was always a tolerant place, easier to be... oh, let's say
nonconformist
in. That included sexual nonconformists. And, over the years, it developed a unique attraction for gay servicemen who were posted here. Sailors on leave, that kind of thing. The key event was the end of World War Two, when much of the Pacific Fleet was demobilized here. Many men elected to stay in San Francisco, because they could be themselves as they couldn't back home. That's really when the place gets its identity as a gay town."

"Wow."

"But ho. We're not talking about artists, writers, composers, and all the rest of our gifted gay brethren. We're talking
uncomplicated.
Farmers, working-class guys, the unambitious. Plus, this was hardly the cultural capital.
That
was—and is—New York. And New York is where the ambitious gays went—Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Leonard Bernstein, Montgomery Clift, even James Dean, before Hollywood. And it's that assembly of creative genius that electrifies a place. And the money, the power. San Francisco is for men like Blue: free but unimportant—no, don't interrupt with some touchingly loyal defense of your boy friend.

Blue is worthless. He's a dreamboat, but he's a no-account. That's what my mother called it.
No-account,
like my father. Blue is San Francisco without the politics. A lotus-eater. This is where college graduates come to turn into janitors and caterers. New York is the place of ambition, creation, achievement."

"So how come you're here?"

"You want truth?"

"Probably not."

"I left New York because I wasn't big enough to handle the competition. Besides, I couldn't compromise my... my craft. There was no way for me to become major on my terms—and no way I was willing to do it on theirs. Oh, I have regrets. That's why I want to take the show to New York. It could be my last chance."

"Let's freshen our drinks," Walt suggested.

"My, you're starting to inhale them, aren't you?" In the kitchen, the Kid said, "I love a man who knows his liquor."

"It's so way out, hearing gay history from a man in a crazy spangled dress with a turban on his head."

"Someday I'll show you my closet," as the Kid handed Walt his drink. "In fact... why not now?"

They went upstairs. It was Walt's first visit to the Kid's suite—a sitting room, bath, and dressing area, besides the bedroom.

Walt was impressed. "All this space!" he said.

"Now see!" cried the Kid, as he threw open the doors of the dressing room.

"It's so big you could go in there and no one would know!" Walt observed. "What a place for hide-and-seek!"

"Yes, but admire the
clothes.
A tradition stands before us." The Kid grabbed Walt. "Stay—wouldst thou not like to try crossing over thyself?"

"What?"

"Aren't you tempted to try something on?"

"You mean... go
transvesto?"

"Don't play shocked, if ever you so please. Anyway, it's just a prank. A mind fuck. We must live up to the revolution, hmm?"

"Yes. Spider says—"

"Spider's here, darling," the Kid's hands on Walt's waist, "and you're Fly. Let's decide. Maiden, whore, grande dame... oh, yes, the schoolgirl! Sneaking a bit of Tangee onto her lips in the girls' lavatory, I imagine. And I bet we're the same size, what fun!"

"I don't want to, Mr. Troy."

"Johnny,
you bossy little toy—and doing what we don't want is what wonderful adventures are all about. Imagine sex with Blue doing only what you want. That's not how he works, is it? He's surprise."

"He's very gentle when I'm fearful."

"Dear one, when boys like you are fearful, cocks get hard, not gentle."

Well, the Kid prodded and teased and soothed the sozzled Walt till Walt said okay, he'd try a taste of drag. Then the Kid brought out a two-tone green finishing-school outfit and helped Walt strip.

"Right down to the skin, now," said the Kid, reaching for the matching panties and stockings. "Legs a little wider," he urged, stroking the befuddled boy's thighs, feeding him the costume piece by piece, positioning him before the mirror, holding him, feeling him. The Kid was ruthless; but the Kid was desperate, for he had fallen for Walt as Jericho fell for Joshua. How could this have happened?, one asks. The Kid, we know, has had his passing passions, but he has never suffered the tormenting penetration of emotional need. Sex and friendship were always within his control. Now
he
is controlled: by a desire for sex and friendship with Walt so potent, so stirring, that it is consuming him. He cannot sleep, cannot eat, wanders lonely as a clod. For the first time in his life, the Kid is defenselessly, hopelessly, and utterly in love.

Across town, in an old walk-up just off Mission Street, Blue was visiting a colleague, Eddie Swindon, celebrated under his nom de porn of Drew Stoker and, like Blue, one of Frank's most constant video stars in the late 1970s and early '80s. You remember him—the big, ardent corn-fed boy with the chestnut hair and the green eyes who always came on smiling? Eddie hadn't made a film in... well, it could have been years by now; and whenever Blue asked about him he heard conflicting rumors. So one day—this day, while the Kid was making his move on Walt—Blue dropped in on Eddie.

One of the rumors was true: Eddie was ill. When he opened the door, he seemed so thin and desolate, so
robbed
of life, that Blue was startled, and his face, for a moment, must have reflected a certain horror.

Because Eddie nodded, as if confirming Blue's opinion. "That's what happens," Eddie said, inviting Blue in. "I guess someone told you."

"How... how long have you known?"

"It's been a year now, officially. But I knew long before I went to the doctor. I kept waking up at night so sweated that the bed was like a swimming pool. Headaches all the time. Yeah, I kept thinking, if I resist hard enough, it'll go away."