How Long Has This Been Going On (77 page)

Walt did indeed pack up and leave San Francisco for the East in the company of the Kid, though both diplomatically avoided trying to verbalize exactly how their relationship would work. The love-struck Kid was of course eager to make Walt his lover, but Walt was sore and tender just now, furious at Blue yet terrified of the determination with which he had tossed Blue out of his life and cut himself off from his home and family. The house of Tom and Luke had been Walt's sanctuary, the two men Walt's protectors. To flee was dangerous, serious, grown-up. Oh, Walt was curious about New York, full of wonder at the career he might forge in the nation's cultural capital. But he was afraid of the touchy people of the town, afraid of the unknown, and afraid, even, of the Kid.

Should Walt be leaving Tom just when he, too, had come down with It? Oddly, both Tom and Luke supported Walt's move, on the grounds that he ought to see what he could make of his music. Unspoken was their hope that a stay of a few months away from Blue would finish off that disagreeable episode; and their fear, too, that if Tom had It, Luke must have It as well. That was the way now, often: One man would care for his lover through his death, then follow him, cared for in turn by others.

"I should stay by their side," Walt had told the Kid.

"But this is your chance, young Walt," the Kid insisted. "Your
break.
If they have to die, won't it ease their pain if they can see you on the rise as a composer?"

"They do encourage my music," Walt conceded.

"There!"

Walt wanted to get away, and I know why: Blue. What a cinch it is to be hurt and angry at your lover for six or seven days. Then we think, Maybe I was wrong. Two weeks, three, and it's How do I clean up the mess I made? By then, however, Walt would be on the other side of the continent from Blue and redemption.

Redemption. Some of us fear it, you know. Loveless and inattentive parents can create deep inside us the belief that we are unworthy, and when someone inadvertently tries to reeducate us, we feel denuded and we balk. So Walt went with the Kid to New York. He went, poof! When

Blue rang Tom and Luke's to talk to Walt, Tom abruptly told him that Walt was out of his life, that's all she wrote, good-bye. Of course, the Kid checked in with his tenant Blue by phone from the East, as one does, and Blue asked where Walt might be.

"Oh, the young man's back in Minnesota. Something about a nice, long family visit."

"Why'd he do a thing like that?"

"You know these midwesterners, never happy if they're more than a mile from the haymow."

This is tricky. What if Blue called the Kid in New York and Walt answered? The two had settled into a tight little furnished two-bedroom walk-up on East Twenty-fifth Street, the best they could do in a squeezed market. Sooner or later, surely, Blue would have reason to call the Kid—some plumbing problem, some legal matter with the city. Then, too, over the months of their friendship, Blue and Walt had unveiled themselves to each other in detail, and Blue knew that Walt had no desire to see his Minnesota relations again. Many a time, Walt had said that Tom and Luke—and Blue—were all the family he cared to count. Besides, for how long would Blue be unaware that Walt was playing the Kid's show in New York? True, Blue didn't hobnob with the Kid's theatre crowd; nor did he follow the Kid's career. He's doin' the show in New York? Okay, that's fine, don't tell me more. Still,
eventually,
wouldn't someone, somehow, let it slip that Walt and the Kid were together in the East?

It almost happened, three weeks after Walt and the Kid had left San Francisco. Aching to speak to Walt, Blue rang Tom and Luke again, and this time he got Luke, a guilty man, uncomfortable about his and Tom's manipulation of Walt's love life. "Tom, it's got to be
his
decision, doesn't it?" he had said. Tom answered, "Well, it
is
his decision, anyway. He moved thousands of miles to get away from that jerk. If that's not a decision, tell me what is!"

Now, talking to Blue on the kitchen phone, Luke wondered if he should tell Blue the truth, even give him Walt's phone number in New York and let the two of them shape their relationship free of interference. I think Luke might well have done so—but Tom was in the room, dark-eyed, watchful behind the newspaper. Floundering, Tom turned to him. "Tom?" he pleaded.

"Hang up on him," Tom ordered.

A two-bedroom walk-up on East Twenty-fifth Street. Dirty city, callous folk, rowdies and zanies and thugs cascading through the streets.

"I'll probably never get used to life here," says Walt, idly looking out the windows, first one, then another, as if each glass might present a different Walt, all of them secure that no one would ever be certain who he was. "In this place, everyone wants something from you."

"We have to talk, my young friend," says the Kid. "I've made some coffee."

"I should have brought along my mug collection," says Walt as he joins the Kid at the miniature table in the kitchen. "My favorite had Prince Charles and Princess Di on it."

"You needn't be nervous, Walt. We'll be honest with each other, but we'll do it in a kindly manner."

"Okay."

"I'm fifty-five years old. I've kept trim and I still have my hair. Still, I'm no Blue. What I am is, one, good company, two, smart, funny, and rather well heeled, and, three, crazy about you. Maybe in... in 1. with you—it's hard to say, you see? Hard to hear, too, I expect. But you're taking it well."

The Kid looked at Walt, fighting the urge to touch him, to personalize this almost businesslike appeal.

"It was a ghastly thing I did to you that night I dressed you up. I passed it off as mischief, but it was more or less a rape, because I deliberately got you wet in order to seduce you."

Walt pensively sipped his coffee.

"The only thing that stopped me from taking you to bed that night was... well, I must have had some seizure of guilt. But, mainly, you had got so sozzled that I was afraid I had poisoned you."

"I know I'm not one of your sturdy drinking-man types."

"You dear, dear boy. Is that well-meaning innocence and trust utterly natural?"

"Partly utterly."

"Well. Since that fateful night, I've kept my hands off you. I've
respected
you, is what it is. But you must understand that I'm out of my mind with longing for you. You see that, surely?"

Walt nodded.

"This is what I propose. A trial period, like taking a show out of town. This is our shakeout week in Boston. One week—during which you will allow me to assume a lover's rights. You needn't treat me with false enthusiasm, but you will let me... have you. When I was young, I enjoyed letting my partners run riot over me, especially what we called 'rough trade.' It was... I don't know, there wasn't all the choice of partners we have today, and it was smart, at times, to let it happen to you, come who may. Now I like to be in charge. So. We'll try that for a week, and, at the end of it, you will tell me how much of me you can handle, and I feel it best to warn you straight out that even if you don't ultimately want a physical relationship with me on any level—if you should tell me, in fact, that the very sight of me nauseates you beyond Thackerayan description—I'll still want you near me. That's... love? Just give me a week, Walt. Who knows? Maybe seven days of pleasuring myself with you will be all I'll ever require."

"Is this how you worked it out with Blue, when he moved in with you?" Walt asked.

The Kid sighed. "Blue is a sex machine. When he isn't fucking, he's cruising. And he's not all that fastidious about whom he fucks, either. Note my grammar,
whom."

"I feel he loved me, though."

After a moment, the Kid gently said, "I know he did."

"Do you suppose he still does?"

Tell him the truth,
said a piece of the Kid, his better side; but he feared losing Walt to the first plane heading west unless the boy was, uh, assisted in putting that business behind him.

That
business
!—a love so needful that each half of the couple felt ennobled by the other? A love so intense yet so bashful that Walt would weep with the force of their yearning? That
business!

The Kid pulled his chair closer to Walt and put an arm around his shoulder.

"Say to me one thing," the Kid said. "If you could be back with Blue now—"

"No," said Walt firmly. "We are wrong for each other. We would just quarrel and shout." The Kid patted Walt's back sympathetically, but Walt said, "I'm not always this helpless little boy. You think I got swept up in your gala romantic gesture, running off with you to see the world or so, and now I'm supposedly having worries about it." Walt shook his head. "The truth is, I thought it over very strong, and I have no worries now. I feel as adventurous as you, and I put my past in a coffin."

Walt raised his mug, and the Kid joined him in toast.

"Now we just need to find a bigger place," Walt concluded.

"That's possible. I'm thinking of selling the house. Or perhaps renting it to a family."

"Golly."

"The more I've visited New York, the more I've longed to move here. If the play is a hit... Well, who knows?"

"Blue will have to move out, then, won't he?"

"So you
are
worried about him."

Walt shrugged.

"Listen to the Green Goddess. Blue has only to walk down Castro Street to shop his pick of the available talent—some lawyer, belike, with a spare room and a needy heart. The Blues of the world never end up on the street."

Walt nodded.

"Look, I'm not saying that Blue has no feelings. But they
are
pretty fluid. He could fall in love on a dare."

Walt stared into his coffee.

"Never fret. He'll land right side up."

On the contrary, Blue was in torment. He could not understand why Walt hadn't called by now—relationships as deep as theirs just don't end like this. Did they? Could Walt so... so happily... walk away? No letter or phone just to ask how Blue was? To say Walt was fine, in case Blue was wondering? Just to talk? Where, even, was he?

When the Kid called to give Blue notice that he was handing the house over to a realtor for commercial reassignment—Blue had a month to find other lodgings, two months if necessary, no reason to be unfeeling, is there?—Blue said, "Johnny, in all our years I've never pushed at you or lied er done anythin' vicious, have I?"

"No, of—"

"I've been a straight fellow with you."

"A fiasco of a word, but yes."

"So now I'm askin' you one question, and I'd like a straight answer back."

"He's with me. He wanted it that way."

"Can I speak to him?"

"Surely you realize that would make it difficult for him as well as me. He wants it quits with you."

"If he wants that, he can have it. But can't I just talk to him? Is that so wrong?"

"I think it is," the Kid lied. "He's hurt and angry and determined. You know what an obstinate little cuss he can be."

"It's not like him not to—"

"Has he called you? He may, in time. I place no ban on that. But right now, you really must leave him alone."

The phone would ring and ring and ring, and Walt never answered. He loved Blue still, but he resented Blue and hated himself for resenting him. Face it, the boy is a mess of injured feelings and conflicted wishes. He's raw. He's hurt. He's launching an affair with a man nearly twice his age whom he admires and likes but does not love and never will. He's in a new world, cut off from his family, scarred by all the death around him. His last act before leaving San Francisco was to go into the yard behind the house and bury Claude, bury him alive—just as, years before, he had carted Dexter into the little woods to kill him. Walt is one of those people who cannot enjoy what they want and end up having what they cannot use.

Blue kept ringing the Kid's New York number, hoping for Walt and getting the Kid or nothing. He was stonewalled. Then he was angry. Then he was considering flying to New York. Then he was picturing himself knocking on their door, and Walt not opening up, just leaving him out in the hall like that. Then Blue was very outraged. At length, he gave up, found a new boy friend, and moved out of the Kid's house. Blue traveled from man to man, lining up the next stay just as the present one was ending. He hustled some, took on the odd job of a physical kind, usually freelancing for moving companies. He gave his Republican suit away. He opened a savings account. One day, he ran into an ex-lover who was heading for his night job at an AIDS hospice, and Blue let this man take him along. "We can use an extra hand," the man said. He was amazed that Blue didn't know what "P.W.A." meant. "Person with AIDS," the man told him gently. Blue nodded. He followed the man on his rounds, holding things, conversing, being patient, listening. He was good at this work. "Beats haulin'," Blue explained.

"They're looking for new people all the time, okay," said the man. "Yes, because there's a lot of burnout around here. You have that fresh approach."

"It's not for me," said Blue.

"Yes, well," said the man, a former icon of the bars and baths who was now H.I.V.-positive, chaste, and given to prayer and good works. "Keep it in mind, perhaps. Because you're what they need."

Blue had to laugh at that. "Nobody needs me," he explained.

What Blue had been keeping in mind was Walt, to a painful degree. We all know that exquisitely hollow ache. Thinking it vain and girlish to succumb to it, Blue decided to keep busy with distractions, and he asked his friend if he could work at the AIDS hospice on an improvised schedule, without signing up big-time. "That's possible," said his friend. Blue showed up the next day, the day after. Long days, too—but Blue buried himself in them, smothered his loss in the soothing of other people's greater loss. Listening to them, he heard himself large.

Walt did call. The Kid's play had opened to reasonably good reviews and was doing nice business in the modest off-Broadway manner, the Kid and Walt had found a nicer apartment in the East Eighties, and he and Walt had settled into a pleasantly manageable relationship as vaguely erotic exes, past the heavy stuff and now into light make-out-and-blowjob sessions. Okay. Now Walt felt it time to reposition himself emotionally in his San Francisco family. He planned a late-summer visit and launched a search for Blue, calling Blue's friends to follow a trail from one boy friend to the next. One day in late June, Walt finally connected.