We all sounded off so thoroughly that we thrilled ourselves, and fell into silence, abashed at our exploits. Even Bauhaus was awed—quiet, anyway. We began to walk, though it was too cold and we should have gone back. And then Dave set in.
“During rush period, when the houses single out certain freshmen and make a play for them, we held weekly meetings, where we would discuss the possibilities. And Seth … Virgil’s daddy … was on top of everyone’s list. He was a very … attractive young man then. Attractive young man? Do you say that?”
“We say, a beautiful boy,” I told him.
“A beautiful boy. Just like Virgil now.”
Little Kiwi, still learning to endure these effusions, tightened his grip on Dennis Savage’s hand.
“He was an outstanding character, too, on campus, because he went around in tweed suits all the time, and solid ties, and we all thought he was from the east. Like the Great Gatsby.”
“Gatsby was from the midwest,” I said. “He dazzled the east.”
“He dazzled us, anyway. The girls were crazy for him. He really had to fight them off. That was part of his importance to the house, because most of the brothers were in the business school, and they didn’t get to know many girls that way. I think they thought Seth might be able to set them up. Just walking around the campus with him you’d meet girls. But there was something else, too. Some of the brothers … no. No. It’s just that he was very attractive. Beautiful. And everyone responds to that. So he was the first man keyed. And he accepted it, and he fell right in with everything—the brothers, the politics, the code. All the things you take for granted in a fraternity. That was what we called a ‘solid man.’ At the meetings, the question was always, ‘Is he solid?’ And Seth was. He was a little reserved, but underneath it he was very sure about things. Sure of himself. And that can be galling to men who aren’t all that solid. They’re going to go after it, test it, shove it up against a wall and see how solid it really is. The trouble with pledging is the hazing. That’s when all the worst guys in the house come out of the woodwork. We tried to make sure we didn’t have any worst guys, but somehow they get in. You know—impressive during rushing when they turn on their fireworks, then they get gloomy and solitary.”
“Sounds like Dennis Savage’s lovers,” I would have joked at any other time; but this was a serious night in our lives. We walked along, listening. The wind was bitter, but the house lights cheered us.
“The worst of it is, those guys always take positions of command during hazing. They dream up the programs, administer the disciplines, run the sweat sessions. You can imagine what goes on. And they really went after Seth. It happened in other houses, too. Not to the big handsome guys, but the slight handsome guys. They get victimized. Even tormented. Well, I was Seth’s paddle brother, so I could talk to them about it, throw some weight in his corner. They’d ease up on him for two or three days. It’d start in again. And I’d … I’d look up from my desk, you know, with your marketing data and your actuarial tables, and the books piled up, and your notes, and the papers of something like a hundred brothers before me. In a T-shirt and shorts, with the fire in the grate. The day was dying down. I’d look up at this … beautiful boy in one of his suits, looking so bright and so … dismal all at once. And he would ask for my help. And I just wanted to sweep him up and … and what? What would I have done after that?”
“My pop was like that?” asked Little Kiwi.
“Didn’t he seem like that to you, ever?”
“I always loved him,” said Little Kiwi. “I didn’t know he was tormented.”
“Well, I took care of that, finally. It really created a problem in the house, to interfere with the hazing command. That’s not how it works. You’re supposed to let them…”
“Give attitude,” said Dennis Savage.
“Give what?”
“You’ll find out.”
“Anyway, I got the pledge masters to write what we in my business call letters of assurance to just about everyone in the house. It really put a damper on hell night—not that we had all that terrible a hell night in the first place. Some houses … well, you were lucky to get out in one piece.”
“The olive race,” I murmured.
Dave asked me, “What house did you pledge?”
I shook my head. “We didn’t have anything like that. But the Betas and the Dekes…”
Dave nodded.
“What olives?” asked Little Kiwi.
“The race ran up the back stairs,” I explained. “Five flights. Every pledge in the nude, with an olive in his behind. The loser had to eat the olives.”
Even Bauhaus shuddered.
“Each club has its style,” I said. “You find the club that suits your style.”
“That’s what I don’t have, right?” said Dave. “The gay club style?”
“Stick with us, kid,” I said, “and you’ll be wearing leather.”
“When my pop came into your room,” said Little Kiwi, “was he sad? To ask for your help? Was he afraid?”
“He wasn’t sad, but he was afraid. And that’s the corn on the cob. Because he came to my room on a night in February, very late. I closed my books and we talked for a while. It had been snowing that day, a real blizzard on. I said he’d better stay over at the house. No point in getting wrecked in the snow.”
“How far did he live from the house?” Little Kiwi asked.
“Three blocks. Four. But distance wasn’t … what was happening then. I wanted to put him in my bed, because he was so vulnerable that minute, and that’s why he was afraid—he knew what I was doing. I wanted to get him out of those suits. The ties. He even wore hats. He had a little line of hair that ran down his belly from his navel, and it was as if I could see it right through his clothes. I wanted to trace my finger along it. I wanted to hold his body. I knew that. No rationalizing. I wanted to touch him.”
“My pop was afraid?” asked Little Kiwi.
“I believe so. But he didn’t seem afraid, really. I turned out the lights and we got undressed … talking the whole time, you know. I was cool. I just smiled. And Seth smiled, too. But once I put him in that bed I got my hands on him, and I wasn’t confused anymore. I was hard, and he knew it, because we were edged up together, spoon-style. I wanted to squeeze him to death, to have him. But I didn’t know how to have him. I wanted to love him. And I told him that. Just those words. Because if I didn’t say it, no one would ever know I felt that way, including me. And he turned around to face me, and he had his arms around me. But he wouldn’t say anything. I knew what I wanted to hear, but I didn’t know how to make him say it. So I felt down for that line of hair, and I stroked it. I said, ‘How does that feel?’ and I heard him gasp, but he didn’t say anything. And, well, we kept on like that. And we started to kiss each other. All over. And we were juicing like crazy. But I might have been dreaming. I might well have been dreaming, I can guess. I’ve thought about it so often, I honestly don’t know what happened by now. Virgil.”
He reached for Little Kiwi, and we all stopped walking.
“Seeing you grow up. You’re so much like him. Even Anne is like him. Your whole family is like your father. Whenever I look at you, I see him in my room, asking for help.”
“I see him decking my allowance and such,” said Little Kiwi.
“You should have been there when you were born, Virgil,” said Dave. “That boy loved you as he loved nothing else on earth.”
We walked in silence for a time.
“Let’s start back,” Dennis Savage said.
“Is that all the story?” asked Little Kiwi.
“I guess it is,” said Dave. “I never got him into bed again. We were still friends, and when he moved into the house the next year we were almost inseparable. We even had the same major, accounting. I guess that doesn’t matter. But sometimes we would talk real straight to each other, and once I referred to that night in the blizzard, and Seth denied it ever happened.”
“How could he?” asked Dennis Savage.
“Press him,” I urged, two decades late.
“He denied it,” said Dave. “He looked me in the eye and said no. He seemed a little surprised that I would suggest that we could even … and he didn’t get stiff on me or back away. He was very calm about it. So we stayed friends. But it had never happened. There was nothing between us except … except…”
I thought that if that
except
could be explained to the world, George Will would be out of business.
“My pop,” said Little Kiwi, moving up to Dave with something on his mind. Dennis Savage and I hung back, allowing Bauhaus to lead us into the driftwood to reflect and comment.
“Aren’t you going to rush up and eavesdrop?” Dennis Savage asked me. “Invade our privacy for some putrid story?”
“Putrid is right,” I replied. “There is no story. Nothing has happened.”
“We learned something, didn’t we?”
“We learned that entering into any group will afford one assistants and imposters. Who doesn’t know that already? Every club has someone at the door with a list.”
A shadow moved at our house as we approached.
“What the hell was that?” asked Dennis Savage.
It moved again. We had left the lights on, and saw with reasonable clarity. Someone was on our porch. Someone waved something in the air.
As we moved up from the water, Dennis Savage tensed, Bauhaus began to bark, Dave looked from one of us to another, and Little Kiwi tore away to run up to the house. I heard him screaming but the wind was wrong and I couldn’t hear the words. No matter. I got there soon enough. Bauhaus was leaping about and Little Kiwi had his arms around Carlo, who had been waving at us with a cowboy hat. Carlo threw his arms around us all, and when he got to Dave, he said, “Where’d you come from?” holding him by the shoulders. Dave looked like a character in a Robert Ludlam novel who gets the chance to slip into something by Richard Price.
“Can I get some of that?” said Dave, and Carlo embraced him, too. “Some more,” Dave added, taking hold of Carlo as if to kiss his mouth, and Carlo pulled back; but I said, “He’s been living in Cleveland,” and Carlo grabbed Dave and took him so fervently Little Kiwi asked Dennis Savage if he ought to take Bauhaus for a walk.
“He just
got
walked.”
“Who are you?” Carlo asked Dave.
“Carlo’s back!” cried Little Kiwi.
“Is this permanent?” asked Dennis Savage, somewhat dangerously.
“We should drink on this,” I said. “One gringo custom I’ve always been comfortable with.”
“Who are you?” Carlo asked Dave again. “Why were you in Cleveland?”
“Why were you in South Dakota?” I muttered, heading inside with Dennis Savage to get liquor. We were too full up from dinner to contemplate any serious intake, and decided to ransack the liquor closet for brandy: a toast and a swallow. Carlo’s “Who are you?” danced in my head, and as Dennis Savage rummaged I tried to imagine defining who Dave is to Carlo, and who Carlo is to Dave: explaining, in other words—to a man so imbued with the liberty of the sexy brotherhood that he offered to give it up rather than see it dully survive—how another man might be born to it yet try not to need it. Or explaining—to the man who went gringo simply because the world plays by gringo rules—that another man would make the informal challenging of those rules his life’s work.
Heck, come to that, could I even explain Carlo to Carlo? I have tried to set him forth in these pages so others may comprehend, but Carlo believes a poem should not mean but be.
“Look at that,” said Dennis Savage, coming up for air with a bottle of Grand Marnier, the label so faded it might have been older than we are. “It’s funny about New York,” he said. “You never see anybody buy this stuff. No one I know drinks it. Yet when you need a bottle there’s always one there, way at the back.”
“Pour,” I said.
Little Kiwi came in wearing Carlo’s cowboy hat. “There are two men making out on our deck,” he said.
“Could it be love at last?” Dennis Savage asked, setting the glasses on a tray.
“Too early to say,” Carlo replied as he brought Dave in by the arm.
“So,” said Dennis Savage, passing the tray.
We all looked at Dave; it seemed his toast to offer. “Confusion to our enemies,” he proposed.
“My mother would like you,” I told him. “That’s her favorite toast.”
Then we all sat and talked—about Dave’s new apartment (on Second and Fifty-sixth), about how best to enjoy one’s first New York autumn, about whether or not it’s fair to continue calling Virgil by a childhood nickname (it isn’t, but we will), and about how long Carlo had returned for. He was evasive, but it was clear this was no mere trip. He was even planning to resecure his old place on East Third Street, a ghastly third-floor walkup he only uses when he’s between engagements. It has been sublet so often over the years that the door has given up on keys; when it hears footsteps, it opens.
Some music was played, a late-night pizza snack was served (my famous Tree Tavern recipe), and at length the parties dispersed. Dennis Savage and Little Kiwi went to bed, Carlo, stretched out in Dave’s arms for the previous half-hour, fell asleep, and I went up to my room to start this story—because, in the end, something had happened.
I put the lamp on the bed, lay on my stomach, and began to write; and I’ve taken it down pretty much as it happened. I’ve registered doubt, earlier in this book, about writing about everyone but myself; but when I put myself into a lead role I feel co-opted, disarmed, uncouth. Writing autobiographically should enhance one’s image with dear lies; but a voice inside me warns that clones are invalid, kids are their own tragedy, that a drag queen should not tell but show.
Ontology, huh? That means I need a drink. I slipped downstairs to mix a double vodka—scotch doesn’t suit The Pines somehow; it’s a metropolitan liquor—and there I found Carlo and Dave still on the couch, asleep. I went into a vacant bedroom, copped a blanket, and covered them. Dave stirred awake.
He yawned. “Is it always so easy as this? To get a man?”
“Oh no. Some never get a man at all. And to come out, move to Manhattan, and get Carlo on a couch … that’s a feat.”
A Delilah is vodka on ice with crushed pepper, a Samson takes lemon peel, and a Samson and Delilah gets both. As I collected the makings of a both, Dave asked, “Why is he called Carlo? He doesn’t look Spanish, except his hair and cheekbones.”