How Long Has This Been Going On (88 page)

The man smiled as the Kid approached.

"Desmond?" said the Kid, incredulously.

"Hello, Johnny."

"My God, what in the
hellness
of
ever
are you
doing
here?"

"Oh, Johnny, I live here now. An
affaire d'amour
went bad for me back home some years ago, and, somehow, everywhere I went reminded me of... him. The Pizza Hut on Coronado, where we met that first unforgettable night. The gas station at La Cienega and Evans where, bowing to an uncontrollable impulse and noting the absence of the service personnel, I stole my first kiss from—"

"Desmond!" cried Johnny, grabbing him, charmed and in marvel. "You're just the same! You're—"

"This year we're marching with the Gay Writers," said Walt, "because they have photos of great novelists on poles and they said I could carry one."

"Walt, this is Desmond, the deaf pianist of Thriller Jill's."

"I'm a pianist, too," said Walt, as they shook hands.

"Is this your young protégé, Johnny? I know you're a celebrity now, perhaps with an entourage."

"No, it's just Walt and me. Desmond, it's
fine
to see you again! You know, I still see Lois and Elaine. They'll probably be somewhere in the crowd."

"Oh, Johnny, those great old times and our sweet music!"

"Desmond, Desmond," the Kid cried, pulling him close. "You're the most adorable square! Just hearing your rap again..." Releasing him, the Kid said, "This is going to be one of those
wonderful
parades! It's a sign, I know it!"

"Johnny, the famous Jerrett Troy! I always tell them, I knew him when!"

"Oh, Desmond. Were even
we
young once?"

"Oh, surely. At least, you were."

Chaos, skin, music, were all about them. Signs—"I Love My Gay Father!," "Free Burt Reynolds," "It's Not Sexual Preference, It's Sexual Orientation: I Don't
Prefer
Women, I
Only
Like Women, and That's Why God Made Lesbians!"—were being hefted. Groups were swelling, monitors waving people from there to here, pennants were getting a last-minute shaking out, late arrivals were breathlessly pulling in.

"It's Parade time," said Walt, with a gulp.

"Desmond."

"Johnny."

They kept looking at each other and smiling and waving as Walt pulled the Kid halfway down Sixty-second Street. A band struck up and whistles went off. Walt grabbed the Kid's hand, and, up ahead, the first groups lurched into step and the Parade took off. Bob and Greg had lost their fellows in the confusion of lineup, so they had simply taken position at the head of the show, just to see what that might feel like. At the cheers that greeted them as they turned onto Central Park South, Bob leaned over to Greg and said, with a sigh, "We're here, we're queer, they're used to it."

Glen Adelson was at Fifty-sixth Street as the Parade swung onto Fifth Avenue. He was thinking that all his friends were so far downtown that they couldn't help him now. Walt could, but Walt was not unlike a spelling test when you were eleven and could hardly get through "diamond," much less "aerial."

Walt, Glen thought, please be proud of me.

* * *

Paul was in his element, chatting up the boys on the Parade's many pauses. He was marching with ACT UP, apparently without embarrassment, though almost all of them were twentysomething and Paul was seventy-one. It was exhilarating to be with the most popular group in the whole Parade, cheered to the tens at every intersection. True, Paul was aware of his disadvantages. Gay life—even on Parade Day, even in the thick of a political organization—has to do with how you look, so many of Paul's companions would nod absently at his sallies and move off to the side. But some—blackmailed by their politically correct disdain for "ageism"—attended to his aperçus. All that Paul wanted was: a little attention.

"Now, in the old days," he was telling some trim, dark-haired youth in a razor cut, "if you saw someone you knew and he wasn't alone, it was
absolutely understood
that you were to pass him by as if you were strangers."

At Paul's weighty vocal pause, the young man looked inquiringly at him.

"Well, to protect his
cover,
you see."

"Wow."

"Pass him by, even if he was your best friend. Just
pass
him right
by.
Oh, you can't imagine what is was like then. Why, if you simply wore a black leather jacket, the cops would nab you on some unheard-of law or other."

"Like what?"

"Loitering. Jaywalking. Inciting to riot. Obstructing an officer. Oh, and if you didn't give them the humble
sir
routine... well, they'd beat you bloody and call it 'resisting arrest.'"

"They still do that."

"Oh, they couldn't possibly," Paul replied. The kid stared darkly at him, and Paul knew that he'd once again inefficiently crashed the generation gap.

Henry ran into Jezebel at Forty-fifth Street just as the Parade began to trundle past them. They were grabbing each other and what all.

"Henry, you fiend!"

"Jez, it's our day!"

"It's
everyone's
day, man. This the day of the civil rights for all the chillun of
God.
You know what I'm saying here? It ain't gays versus straights, it's the free peoples of
all
kinds against the church Nazis. It's the
do it
sort versus the
you can't
police."

"Jez, talk plain English, I beg of you. I'm nursing the hangover of the age."

"Sex last night?" Jezebel as Anne Baxter's confidante in
All About Eve.

"I wish. No, just all keyed up about this." Henry extended an arm at the marchers. "Drag queens and politics," he remarked.

"Drag queens
is
politics," said Jezebel, spotting friends in the Parade and moving out to join them. Henry watched. Directly behind Jezebel's group was a convertible surmounted by Sybil Bruncheon, the drag persona of a handsome and extremely well built young man whose low-cut gown emphasized his powerful arms and shoulders. As he passed, waving and thrilling and blowing kisses, two cops looked at each other in amazement: Why would a good-looking guy
do
that?

Blue was surprised that the 'zine editor was skipping the Parade. "Isn't this the major event in gay life?" Blue asked. "Don't you need to cover it? History and such? Community?"

"Define 'community.'"

So Blue walked uptown alone, taking in the people already crowding the sidewalks, though the Parade was not even in sight yet. The enthusiasm, nonetheless, was overpowering. Are
all
these folks gay?, Blue wondered.

Glen, waiting for Walt to show up, was fascinated by a dance float bearing gorgeous, prancing boys wearing only white shorts, white socks, and white sneakers.

Oh, my heaven, Glen thought, staring at one boy in particular: straight red hair, easy smile, slim with one of those really long waists tightening down to a pinprick navel. Twirling and bumping about, the boy smiled at Glen. It was a siren's smile, for Glen immediately began walking south along with the float, keeping the boy in view.

So Glen missed Walt and the Kid, who curled onto Fifth Avenue just eleven minutes later, as a Tinker Bell-ish drag queen on roller skates rolled by, blessing the cheering crowd with her fairy wand.

Peter Smith was heading toward the Parade from the east, in the Thirties. He had his "Young, Cute, and Homeless" sign and high hopes. This day, he decided to imagine, would change his life. Who knew whom he might meet? Whom; it's classy. Some millionaire dealer in antiques. A suave movie producer. Maybe some easygoing older guy with a spare room and a wondering heart.

Coming at you!,
Peter thought.

I say the great moment of the Parade is when ACT UP reaches Saint Patrick's Cathedral and the Hasidic Jews and other professional bigots behind police barriers, waving signs reading, "AIDS for Gays," and "God Made Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve." There is something inspiring in the way the mighty activist host, lean and dauntless in black T-shirts and jeans, turns to confront the enemy with a mass kiss-in. Paul suffers a pang at this; he feels obliterated by this act of self-empowering boys and girls who feel free to make their own history. In Paul's day, history did all the making.

There is a lot of stop-and-start in the Parade. Whenever the disco floats have to wait while automobile traffic crosses Fifth Avenue, everyone goes into his or her dance; but Glen just stood and stared at his redhead.

How bold am I allowed to be?, Glen worried—that eternal question—but the redhead grinned at him, and, thus encouraged, Glen stepped closer. Now the redhead was whirling, throwing his arms out and pulling them in as if summoning some demon power. The Parade picked up again, and the redhead froze as the float heaved into motion. He gave Glen a shrug and a smile.

I don't have to have sex with him, Glen was thinking, hurrying along, staring at the boy. I just want him to like me.

Henry, rummaging through the banks of spectators looking for old and perhaps new friends, paused to groan as a bisexual group paraded by. There were many groans from the crowd, even boos. Gays find it hard enough to fight for their rights without having to carry these freeloaders on their backs as well.

"You're just trying to
in
yourselves!" shouted a woman, from the sidewalk.

"Into the closets and off of the streets!" cried another woman, revising the famous gay war cry.

"Henry?" came a voice behind him.

Henry turned.

"It's Bobby."

Henry gaped.

"Hey, it's been years, hasn't it, pal?" said Bobby. Beaming, he held out a hand, but, as Henry took it, Bobby pulled him close, held him tight, and whispered, "I love you, guy."

Henry was so confused that he struggled to free himself. "Bobby..." he began. "Wait—"

"No, listen," said Bobby, still beaming. Proudly, he introduced Henry to "the new guy in my life." Jed? Jeff? Henry didn't catch it, for his hearing was blurred and his eyes were all on Bobby.

"What... what
happened
to you?" Henry finally got out. "You're a poster or something!"

Bobby had gone the route from top to toe. When Henry had known him, he was a mall jock, an oversized sweatshirt in a Kmart haircut. Now he looked like something in a catalogue that shatters your week: fifty-dollar hairstyle, giant bite-me teeth, ruthless mesh T, and just-barely running shorts.

"I know what it is," Henry went on. "You finally figured out that you're beautiful."

"Henry," said Bobby, touched but trying to bluff his way past it, "you always saw the best in me, pal."

"I'm seeing it now. Didn't you move to L.A.?"

"Yeah. But Jerr"—here a doting look at the New Guy in My Life—"got transferred and I've got a shot at starting a catering business."

"Bobby says you taught him everything he knows," said Jerr: who, now that Henry was focusing, seemed a second Bobby, big and dumb and so wonderful that you fear to come too close.

"Catering?"

"Yeah. I have this deal where I can specialize in Polish weddings. 'Cause I know that scene, but I give them a little extra style. Like canapés, French, you know? For dessert, tiramisù. Word gets around. You know, all the girls talking among themselves, who had the best wedding. 'Well, Marta had this really classy affair.'" (Imitating a woman, Bobby spoke her words in his voice; Henry thought,
this
is New Gay.) "Marta's friends ask, 'Who catered?' Answer—Bobby Koscievsky." Bobby laughed, then he took Henry in his arms.
"Mój dobry pan,
eh?"

Henry was shaking.

* * *

Peter Smith was walking along Thirty-sixth Street just west of Third Avenue. Five hetero-jocko thugs were walking east on the same block, all wearing gas masks. You know, to protect them from the Parade's AIDS fumes. Like all of Murray Hill, Thirty-sixth Street takes a dip on its eastern limits, putting much of it out of the sight of the many policemen o'er-watching Fifth Avenue—which is exactly what the gas masks were counting on. They went for Peter as Cardinal O'Connor goes after used condoms left on his one-holy-mother-church-except-excuse-me-Father-but-all-your-priests-are-child-molesters altar.

Peter sensed that the gas masks were trouble, and he tried to innocent his way past them: You look terribly harmless and move real fast. But one of them grabbed Peter's cardboard sign—grabbed it in a highly jocular manner, as if wishing to read and digest its message. Peter was trapped, because the sign was around his neck and the gas mask was holding on to it. The mask said, "Excuse me, do you know what time it is?," but he was already pulling back for a heavy right cross. Peter went down, and they all crowded in for a major stomp, about thirty-five seconds' worth, extra-heavy on the kicks to the sides of the midsection, because you can do truly lasting damage that way, and avoiding the head, because that way you kill: Whereas if you only injure a faggot, no matter how badly, and if you are convicted, they tend to let you off easy. Whereas if you kill, you might have to do a few months in jail.

As the dance float approached Forty-second Street, Glen's redhead borrowed a pair of castanets from a buddy and played them as he moved, played them—Glen was certain—about Glen and himself, enticingly, hypnotically.

Directly in front of the Library is the reviewing stand, where local celebs wave and survey, where the watching crowd is at its thickest, where the networks plant their cameras. And it was here that Glen, inching along with his redhead, staring and hoping and falling in love with him, finally made his move. Well, no: The redhead did the moving, luring Glen closer and closer with his capering exhibition. Finally, almost in tears, Glen was standing just below the redhead, looking up at him; and the boy in the shorts and sneakers put down the castanets, inclined toward Glen, and slowly extended a hand to him, saying. "Well, come on up, boy toy."