How Long Has This Been Going On (86 page)

We saw a very rough rehearsal of Johnny's new play,
A Gay Life.
So honest! His director, Chris Henderson, would be in great demand, I should think, but Johnny says she is devoted to her family and rarely works. Even: She used to be Chris Lundquist, but took on her husband's name in midcareer. This is serious marriage. Wary Lois asked me, "Would you have changed your name for me?," and I said, "I'd change my name for a bird on the wing, a newsboy, a stiletto. I
am
change." Normally, my Lois would grunt at such, but this time she brushed my lips with a scavenger's kiss. Oh, what a thought!—Lois as a corsair, her head kerchiefed in vermilion, brandishing a cutlass and ordering prisoners to the plank. A certain lurid cardinal tries to recant. He reveals that he has been gay—in secret!—all this time. "That makes it worse!" Lois thunders. She paddles him along the plank with the flat of her sword, and he plunges. When I think of all the Catholic youth he has urged to go after gays with baseball bats, I wonder why he couldn't have been burned alive instead.

We called Peter Smith, but there was no answer, just a tape of his roommate. This is the fourth or fifth time this month, and we are a little worried.

Walt and Glen were playing their third set in Fluke of the Day, a tony seafood restaurant. At the end of their
Show Boat
medley, a white-haired man tipped them twenty.

"My son is a musician, like you," he explained. "In Berkeley, California. He's studying there, set to be the next Heifetz. But just as yet he's playing weekend brunches in a restaurant. Yes, like you. I'd like to think that someone's appreciating his playing sometime around now, just as I have appreciated you young fellows."

"Thank you," said Walt, and for a minute it looked as if he and the old guy were going to hug.

Three members of Queer Nation march into an Irish bar in deepest Queens on a mission of Cultural Integration. They order beers and talk quietly among themselves, though on this defensively intolerant turf their chatty T-shirts (such as one woman's "I'm not gay but my girl friend is") resound like cannon fire. And when one of the locals gets nosy and stares at them, the gays chant, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!"

The bar resents it but, tonight at least, nobody starts shoving and swinging, either.

Saturday morning, Blue wakes up on a couch. Shower's running, smell of coffee brewing, low table of soft-porn magazines... Where is he? Oh, right. Sam Something. Another of the many men stationed along the informal AIDS network of political activists, P.W.A.s, news reporters, and volunteers who put Blue up in his travels from town to town.

Where was he? Portland, Boston, Hartford, Baltimore, and Hartford again (the hospice director suffered a nervous collapse and Blue was subbing). Where's he off to? Des Moines, Kansas City, then (he hopes) home. He was due in Des Moines last week, but the Hartford emergency perplexed his schedule, so Blue decided to stop over in New York and see the Parade.

Sam comes out in a bathrobe, toweling his hair. "Hey, you're up."

Blue gives him a drowsy smile.

"There's coffee."

"Much obliged. Plain black fer me."

Sam is brisk and friendly, more like a guy hosting a long-lost cousin than a single gay man alone in a room with a glorious hunk. Three months shy of forty now, Blue has topped his Wild Boy and Hot Daddy phases with a unique type unknown to gay taxonomy, something reassuring and fraternal, even clerical, the slit eyes gone kind and the grin tightened up, solemn: a Byronic sandman, perhaps? He is as fair, fit, and loving as ever, but less ready now. In any case, Sam is bound to keep it strictly hands-off, according to an unwritten law along the network that Blue is to be treated with chastity and a little awe.

Blue likes it so. For twenty years, he could rejoice in the knowledge that with the exception of a few fiercely heterosexual men, everyone he met wanted him. It was exhilarating but exhausting, especially when it was coming at him even when he didn't want it, couldn't possibly use it, would rather die than do it. Or: would rather live than risk it. So many men, so much suffering. It was Death by Fucking, and by then Blue's looks seemed irrelevant to him, even shameful at a time when his brothers were being turned into scarecrows. Sometimes he wanted to feel invisible.

"Sleep well?" asked Sam, setting a steaming mug on the table by the couch.

"Okay, I guess. One couch is plumb like another these days. Seems I'm never in bed any more." On anyone else, that might carry a double meaning, but Blue delivers it as lean and true as a CAT scan.

"Are you always on the road?"

"Pretty much." Idly glancing at his coffee, Blue notices a gay magazine with a famous face on the cover, a showbiz figure once rumored to be gay and now most thoroughly outed. The star, and thus the news, are both so big that the straight media have taken up the story.

Nodding at the magazine, Sam says, "There's one less heterosexual in America this week."

"Funny how there's no privacy nowadays. I mean for anybody."

"Well. Yes. But. If we keep silent about our hypocrites, are we observing their privacy or honoring their shame?"

Blue hesitated. Then: "I don't know about shame er pride, I guess. I'm just tryin' to get from this day to the morrow keepin' sane and doin' what I can to help out. It's like with this Pride Week a ours. Now, isn't pride somethin' yer entitled to when you done somethin' fine? Climbed a mountain, say. Composed a great orchestra symphony. Set a swimmin' record. But why would you be proud a somethin' that's just a matter a chance? Like some guy says he's proud to be Irish, or proud to be from Texas, or even proud to be American. He didn't do anythin' to be those things, did he? I'm not ashamed to be gay, but am I proud? It's not any achievement, just what I am. I'm
proud
of what I
do,
see?"

"You've taken on the system simply by coming out. You fight the bigots just by being what you are. I'd say that's worth being proud of."

"Maybe so." Blue dared a sip of his coffee, still simmering in the mug. "This tastes special."

"I make it with chicory."

"Got a need in me to go out talkin' with folks tonight, hear a few things from the cuttin'-edge crowd. What's a good place to meet them? You know, ACT UP members and the like."

"There's a bar called Eats down on Second Avenue. That's about as edgy as it gets."

"I'll give it a try."

Peter Smith was facing his last day as a person with an address. He had agreed to vacate the apartment by midnight tomorrow; his roommate had already signed up with a share service and was muttering about the registration fee that Peter has cost him.

Peter was undaunted. He had come to New York for liberation from virtually everything that had tried to shape him—religion, sexism, and unquestioning obedience to the patriarchy, the rule of the fathers—and release from such pervasive tyrannies is not bought on the cheap. In fact, Peter was making a game out of his incipient homelessness, preparing a huge cardboard sign he would carry in the Parade. It read:

YOUNG, CUTE, AND HOMELESS

ADOPT ME?

ALL SERIOUS OFFERS CONSIDERED

If worse came to worst, he could always appeal to Lois and Elaine. They wouldn't let him rot in the street; anyway, that sort of thing just didn't happen to middle-class boys like Peter.

* * *

At the Del Vecchios', Andy's mother is washing up in the kitchen, Cecilia drying, while Andy and his wife, Brenda, take turns reading to Bridget, their youngest (of three). The television runs in the background, as it does all day at Mrs. Del Vecchio's, even when she goes to the grocery. As it is just after six, the news is on, and Cecilia occasionally darts into the living room to take in the more arresting stories.

Things have not gone well for Andy's mother. Her husband suffered a stroke in 1982, and though she moved the family-dinner day from Sunday to Saturday to allow everyone more time for propitiating acts of piety on the holy day—time that only Andy's mother put to devotional use—Mr. Del Vecchio died all the same. Worse yet, Andy's mother saw her power structure immediately crumble. Both her sons-in-law announced that they would no longer be attending the weekly dinner, and then Gianna and her children stopped coming. Cecilia's kids had already drifted away from the family rituals—"That's right," Andy's mother had remarked, "send them to a college and what do you get? Disobedience from the children,
that's
what you get!"—and Gianna's son Keith, who had been graduated from Georgetown a year ago, had elected to stay in D.C. and seek a political career.

Andy was trouble, too, with that headstrong wife, a real little know-it-all. Too young for him, too—Andy was thirty-two and Brenda twenty-one when they were married. And not even Italian—
Czech
she is, with a name no one can pronounce and relatives who look like they came out of a cuckoo clock.
Rosponetta
is what Andy's mother called her daughter-in-law, in private, to her confidantes and in prayer: Little Toad. She begged God to whisper enticements into the ear of this Brenda, to lure her into adulteries, to destroy her marriage and take her out of the Del Vecchio world—of course, leaving the three children behind.

"And there's a parade in town," said the television news reader, perking up after a sordid report on White Aryan activities in the Northwest. "Lauren has the story."

"That's right, Bill. This is Gay Pride Week, and, as always, the week will climax with the Gay Pride Parade tomorrow, as gay groups from all over the eastern half of the country gather to march down Fifth—"

"Turn it off!" Andy's mother shouted, coming into the living room as she dried her hands in a dish towel. "Bridget shouldn't know about such filth!" "It isn't filth," said Brenda. "We're taking Bridget to see the Parade for herself."

Andy's mother gasped in horror.

"...and only the Saint Patrick's and Thanksgiving Day parades attract more—"

"Turn the television off, Cecilia!"

"If anyone touches the set," said Brenda quietly, "we're leaving."

Andy's mother stared not at Brenda but at Andy. Useless. Her power had lost its tang long before, when her Carlone passed on; and when Andy's mother went to the mat on the naming of Andy's third baby, insisting on "Elvira" (after her own mother), and Brenda pinned her for the count with this stupid "Bridget," like some Irish slime from Hell's Kitchen; and when Andy informed his mother that if she told Brenda to shut up once more, they would never set foot in her house again.

Weeping didn't help. Screaming didn't help. Dying in agony was tempting as sheer revenge, because it would scar Andy for life; but then she wouldn't be around to enjoy it. Without a word, Andy's mother went back into the kitchen.

"What's going on in this room?" Bridget asked her mother, as a commercial came on.

"Not a thing, darling," said Brenda, and she shrugged out a smile at Andy.

The doings at Eats get going early for a gay bar, but then it is as much a social club as a cruise parlor, and they flip a good burger there.

Seven-forty or so, and the gang is in gear: booth-hopping, digging the jukebox, hanging out on the sidewalk to check out the fashions. A boy named C.J., shirtless in suspendered jeans, is voguing to Elton John's "Crocodile Rock," mouthing the words and raising his chin whenever John reaches for a high note. Blue's at a table with the 'zine editor.

"Tell me your life story," the editor says, pulling out his notebook. "The next issue's short a column."

"This an interview?" asks Blue, amused. "Here?"

"What's your favorite pie? How do you spend Christmas? How big is your dick?"

Blue pensively strokes the editor's hair and says, "I once knew someone who looked like you."

"Did you like him?"

"I surely loved him." "Def. Totally def, here."

A man and woman join them, both young, vital, and dressed for the
quartier
in oversized Ts and bandannas around the neck. It isn't clear whether or not they know the 'zine editor—they certainly don't know Blue—yet they plop down like a comic duo in a movie who have the director's confidence.

"We have decided," says the male, "that my boy friend is the second biggest slut in the world."

"I'm the first," says the editor, looking at Blue.

"No, my girl friend," says the female. "Open her purse, and what do you find?"

"Lovely new mittens?" says the editor, as Blue takes his hand.

"Disgusting sex toys and slips of paper—
Linda
and a phone number,
Claire
and a phone number,
Maddy
and a—"

"I thought only aging straight men on the Upper West Side carried purses. That seventies look, for making a hip entrance into Zabar's."

"Love is such a bitch," says the male. "Because men are too easy."

"I'd say men are hard," Blue offers, yanking his attention away from the 'zine editor. "They're perfectionists. Sure, they're quick to buddy up. But the second you fall short a their demands, yer out in the hall, sayin', What happened?"

"I bet you don't fall short," says the 'zine editor. "Hot stuff."

"Now, women," Blue goes on, taking the editor's hand again. "Women are more patient. Once they like you, you don't have to be so marvelous every second."

"Shit, another bisexual," says the female.

"They're better than sheep," the editor points out.

The jukebox has switched to the Clash: "Career Opportunities." C.J. is still voguing.

"Never been with a woman, actually," Blue admits. "I just know how they are, somehow."

Jezebel pulls up, trying to figure out where he knows Blue from. Blue doesn't recall him.

"Well, anyway," says Jezebel. "This joke. A black guy wants to visit the African homeland, travel agent quotes the fare at a thousand even. Black guy goes out and mugs everyone in sight, comes back and dumps his haul on the travel agent, who counts it and says, 'You're five cents short.'