Faggots (15 page)

“You know Ephra?”

“No, I do not know Ephra!, now please get the fuck out of my office, ah, room, ah suite! I have tried to be polite and now I am going to be not so polite. Scram!”

Abe finally stood up, shook his head unhappily, looked at the young man. “How sad,” he said. “I think out loud, how sad! Now I see what problems I and you must now go through. The world must know!”

“Get out!”

“No prophet ever found it easy.”

“Immediately!”

“From Abraham, Isaiah, Moses even.”

“Out!”

“I get the picture.”

“You do not get the picture!”

“I go. With sorrow and sadness that you deny your heritage. You do not like yourself very much.”

“I do not like you.”

“You are a sad person, and miss the great chance to be a great leader.” Abe did not offer to shake his hand. He took his topcoat and left. I will be the leader. My Mission now comes clearer. I will help these boys!

And Randy? In his Tower pad, behind his closed cell door, leaning against it just like they do at the end of melodramatic scenes in his bad movies, clenched fist stuck to damp brow, chest heaving, all-over trembles turning into jerks, oh why am I punishing myself for handling this one so badly!

What to do what to do? If there were a hooker on his fluffed-up sofa at this moment, he might be fucked to death. Obviously better, if his new James Dean had only been discovered, they’d be flying down to Rio. He rushed into his towel-filled bathroom and tried to jerk off. But he caught his short hairs in his zipper and his Sulka underpants got in the way. Should he call R. Allan for a hustler? No, tonight’s the night he’d promised to meet Slim. Can I come twice? I’ll be lucky if I can come once. It was still too early to head for their rendezvous. He popped three Valiums and tried to take a rest.

And Abe descended, wondering why he was thinking of his Richie and where he was on the long lone road of life.

The aforementioned Boo Boo was at this moment walking the long lone road of his favorite fantasy, having awakened from the nap in his high bed, smelled the sheets, pretending someone else’s nice smell was in there, too, then journeying, courtesy of his legacy from Dr. Rivtov, into his free associations, running start to finish, something like this:

No, I will not go and work in the Bakery’s executive training program. No, I will not marry Marci Tisch. No, I will not do anything my Pop wants me to do. No, I will not do anything at all as long as I continue to receive my five hundred dollars a week allowance. Which will not be nearly enough to last me until I am thirty-five. At which time my first trust fund, left me by my bubba Nellie, and netting me sixty-five thousand dollars per year for life, falls due. Until I reach forty-five, when my second trust fund, left me by my Grandma Lopp, and netting me an additional one hundred thousand dollars per year for life, falls due. Until I reach fifty, when that prick, my Pop, slices me my first million. Fifty! I won’t be a Catch until I’m fifty! I’ll be an old man! I want it now! Now! NOW! While I’m still young and wreckless, devil-may-care!…

…these thoughts then metamorphosing easily (with diplomas from Choate and Yale, where he’d been Phi Beta Kappa and had done his honors thesis on Horror Films, Richard was no slouch) into thoughts of older gentlemen tying him up and restraining him from action, thus forcing up his flagpole, not letting him fight back, the flag now flying, as he, imprisoned in his own room, is not allowed the free expression to even piss and shit, Old Glory now furling in the breeze…such thoughts now splintering like those early devices in German expressionist films—shadows, masks, wipes, bleeds, super-impositions—into even more vivid fantasies of said older gentlemen holding him and embracing him and kissing him all over…and still not letting him arise to piss and shit…
No, no! My God what am I thinking!
…I won’t let myself go any further, I won’t,
I won’t…
and by now he was deep in sweats, reaching for his first identity support of the weekend, a tab of Dringe, lying on his high balcony bed still, he hadn’t rolled off and fallen six feet into the orchestra, but almost, oh God almost, he’d almost fallen off and down into those pits!

Then, the Dringe now perking, he continued jerking off, with eyes closed, and summoned presences of his favorites: Wallace Beery, Charles Laughton, Eugene Pallette, Sidney Greenstreet, Charles Coburn, all heavy older men rolling on top of him, their pressures all too pleasurable to bear, squeezing the life and breath and air out of him, until, until…he would come, his tentative little spurtlets causing him additional angst, why spurted he not in huge white fountains like geysered from all the dudes in all the fuck films he snuck in to watch, should he be taking more vitamin E?, he’d read in the
Avocado
that vitamin E made more spurt, and whiter, too, as against his own rather clear viscosity, but if he took any more vitamin E than he was already taking, he worried his insides might slip to his outsides. Mustn’t over do the lube job. All would turn white and plentiful in time.

But when!?

Soon…

After going through all of this, the now exhausted son and heir took a capsule of Certyn to meld with his tab of Dringe and climbed down from the balcony, down the spiral staircase, and into the pristine and expensively appointed lower spaciousness, done in the current black-and-white fashion that had so appealed to Mrs. Bronstein Number Four, upon whose embarkation the premises had been bequeathed by Abe to his second son “as a retarded graduation present,” and plopped his young and firm but pliant tush into the soft coffee-brown leather of the Giorgio Dong chair and pulled out from the left-hand drawer of the Arbeit & Minusculie stainless-steel-and-rosewood desk the folders and scrapbooks that contained all of his dreams.

Clippings and clippings and clippings. Scrapbooks of his childhood hobby, now his grown-up fantasy. Peer’s heir snatched. Notes under stones. Messages delivered by strangers. Midnight meetings under moonlight. Secret pick-ups in the woods. Ransom notes in test tubes. Graveyard assignations in the gloom. Lost ears of grandsons. Brooklyn man chained in closet; wrists and ankles bound with rope; three-quarter million demanded for release. Baker’s, no, banker’s son kidnapped by fake electrician. Nun used in whisking of Cadillac distributor’s son. Mobile Home Heiress buried alive in coffin with straw to Outside World. Hearst kidnappers demand two million dollars for free food. The Masticator kidnapping in distant Baghdad, wherein five bearded, burly men held the rich young scion for five million. The De Grungie (Swiss chocolate and ball bearings) child…seven burlies…hefty…swarthy…ooh the flagpole…four million and one half…the Lindbergh job, no, that had been a fuck-up…so many kidnappings all over the world…57 jobs in Italy last week alone…why kidnapping was positively fashionable…the obviously In Thing to do…Momma can read about me in
Women’s Wear
…play your thing out, Richie, play it out!…and then his favorite, the recent Bronfman job, right here in his hometown.

Then Richie would lean back even further into the Dong’s glove leather, still playing out his thing, and look at all the Bronfman clippings, that face not unlike his own, that father not unlike his own, and wonder how he, Boo Boo Bronstein, could use the same floor plans and bring about a better built house?!

To calm his overactive imaginings now getting so rapidly into hand, you can’t jerk off all the time, Richie, save something for the streets, the Outside World, for Fire Island!, he turned on the television, conveniently tabled on a plinth of white beside his arm. His drugs were perking, his mind was running free. He’d let his eyes stare upon the pictures, enjoy their patterns, as his new self and image and strength of mind began to tingle and to grow. Certyn and Dringe, and shortly, Festinate and a snort of Orange Fluff. And Millions! Such a lovely potion.

But there was a disturbing announcement from the Outside World to penetrate his pleasure. In Paris, the announcer of the news reported, Mrs. Bronstein Number Four had gone and done it. She had popped another son and heir! Another Bronstein boy to share the booty!

So, filled with courage and revenge, that old pal, Pop, has fucked me once again!, Boo Boo pulled out paper and picked up pen and pique and pitiless passion, and began to write.

The day of reckoning had come!

Timmy knew right away that he would not be satisfied for long with the likes of R. Allan Pooker.

“Room and board and twenty-five dollars a week. I get to photograph you for five hours each day without your clothes on.”

R. Allan ran both Stud Studios and One Touch of Penis Modeling Agency. He looked as expected for this dual role: fifty, seedy, nicotined, with sparse hair, bushy eyebrows, and a drool that increased in lubricity when it liked what it saw. Which it now did. He had never, in his entire lifetime, by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, been attractive, handsome, even personable, and hence his mission to bring beauty to the world was set young. He drooled early.

Timmy was standing naked, calmer than he thought he’d be with so many witnessing eyes—R. Allan, Durwood, Paulie, a few slags who appeared from the studio’s salacious shadows, the hustlers on call tonight: Vladek, Cully, Midnight Cowboy—looking at him. Timmy sensed that they would not be looking at him in the way they were if he were just some average-looking kid. Too, he had looked at R. Allan’s portfolio before disrobing and considered himself to be of a higher caliber. When R. Allan had said: “All right, son, let’s have a look at
you,”
Timmy had dropped his fears and dropped his drawers and yanked off his “Washington D.C. is for Lovers” T-shirt and kicked off his Keds and socks and stood there, proudly, knowing that he was better than everybody around him. And the others just stood there, gaping and letting him so be.

Durwood proudly bobbed his head paternally and sent additional nodding looks in the direction of R. Allan, who nodded back and at one point, when Timmy successfully complied with a request to strike a particularly seductive pose, R. Allan even blew Durwood a kiss along with mumblings of: “Good job, good job.” Durwood used this moment to sidle over and request a bonus.

It was at this moment that Timmy made his demand: “I won’t allow my face to be seen. The back of my head is OK.”

There was silence. Durwood kissed the bonus good-bye. Stud Studios was not known for backs of heads.

But R. Allan, his eyes never leaving the sight of young Timmy’s young crotch, replied: “OK. No recognizable face. I understand, son. But you’ll have to trust me when I shoot you in front. You will trust me, won’t you?”

“Until I learn otherwise.”

Durwood couldn’t believe it. He also couldn’t believe it, later, when R Allan slipped him fifty dollars extra.

“What’s this? A fifty? Jesus, Mr. Pooker. Jesus, holy hell.”

“You’ve done very good, Durwood. He’s the most beautiful young man I have ever seen. His beauty is such that I shall be inspired to do great work. Michelangelo, you know, was also concerned with beauty. I consider my mission similar to his.”

“Right! Great work! I just know you can do it, sir. I think I’ll go out and buy a few things. Maybe show Timmy the town. You don’t mind that, do you?”

R. Allan nodded his permission, lost in thoughts of Timmy’s perfectly clean planes and lines. He felt inferior in the presence of even just the thought of such sculpture. He knew that few had ever been so beautiful in youth as Timmy Purvis. Therefore his new star would make him a great deal of money and bring pleasure and not a few jerks off to clamoring customers around this huge and hungry world. He would feed this world. He would launch this rocket. He would be as Stiller to Garbo, Milton Greene to Monroe, Ron Gallela to Jackie Kennedy. He would write him a grand scene for tomorrow’s shooting with Paulie.

In the dormitory-style bedroom, two double-deckers, a window overlooking Bedford Street, the noise from the Christopher Street spillover traffic filtering up, the bedspreads brown-and-white checkered and not unlike the one he’d left behind, Timmy watched Durwood stare at the fifty-dollar bill as he held it in front of him and marched around the room quietly following it. Then he silently took Timmy in his arms and kissed him gently. Timmy allowed it, almost languidly. He knew it meant nothing to either of them.

Paulie looked troubled. “Durwood, you always told me we would never be bringing anyone out. People got to come out of their own free will. I ain’t having any of that on my conscience.”

“That’s what I’m attempting to ascertain, dummy. I am attempting to ascertain if we would be bringing him out or if he is already out or if maybe we would be, like, doing him a favor by showing him how.”

Timmy spoke: “Please don’t worry. I feel like stars are watching over me. I don’t think they’ll let me do what I don’t want to do. Now Durwood, now Paulie, what’s in this town for me to see?”

Durwood was suddenly intimidated and, without his lead, so was Paulie. And at this moment R. Allan summoned them to the phone.

Anthony Montano lay flat on his back in the darkness of the Erie and Lackawanna terminal and wondered why. He then recollected that those three joints had been of Mantanuska Thunderfuck and had been ingested to courageously propel him inwards and had done just that. So, while he might in a few moments just be able to pull himself up and climb those stairs and begin his search, he would, for the nonce, and to better ward off thoughts of imminent, surrounding dangers, or wretched concern over how to break the news to Winnie Heinz, compose an Ode again until strength, health, and muscular agility returned.

Ah, home away from home, ah black hole of Calcutta, ah windswept, storm toss’d, fire-ravaged skeleton of former grandeurs! That you are still standing!, with your three stories gutted yet still here. Holes in you for entrance, holes within your stockings, fetid waters underneath, your bottom twisted and rippling like wooden waves,
You Are a Woman!
Our Ellie, Barbra, Kate, Bette, Diana, Marlene, Tallulah,
Judy
! Survivor, standing after all these ravages upon your face and body, from users and abusers of your finery, but still submitting, still bearing outrage, how many pints, quarts, gallons of semen spilled into your pock-marked skin?…now, now…into your tent creep this warm night, creep any night, crawling in and into this biggest womb and void of spacious blackness, total darkness, tread carefully, don’t trip, holes are many, beams are loose, floorboards missing, and oh the river is wide, and cold, and schmutzig, and beneath me, oi, also this building has no back, this lady wears a strapless, feel movement around me, who knows how many?, two thousand?, two hundred?, two?, me and my murderer?, me and my next beloved?, what a fantasy trip, I don’t have to see you and you don’t have to see me, you are John Wayne with real hair, and so up up up, I am now getting up, ignore handpainted fluorescent warning:
LAST JULY A GUY WAS MURDERED HERE AND ROBBED OF HIS CARTIER WATCH AND STABBED IN THE GUTS
with under-scrawling: “Glad to hear someone’s got guts,” up up up and…as I grow more bold, does not a proud woman inspire a return of strength, she’s made it, I Can, Too, sing it, Barbra: “He’s my man and I love him, no matter that he’s left me,” sing it, Greta:
“Mein Mann ist mein Herz und meine Liebe und mein Leben,”
sing it Vera: “There’ll be birds of love and laughter, when you come back after,” sing it, Edith:
“Mon homme, mon homme, mon homme, mon hoooommmmmeee,”
and Barbara, fat Barbara, our new cookie, sing the anthem: “Who’s going to make me gay now?,” yeah, girls, you made it, so can I, my heart’s still beating, my tits aren’t sagging, my pecker’s hopefully still pecking, I’ve made it through another winter, now I deserve a break today, go out, go up, go show them that I’m still Alive! Show them that I’m still gorgeous and still gutsy and desirable, and while I may be going down the tubes, I’ll go down getting my cock sucked as I start another year of life!