Faggots (21 page)

“Then he spirited you away in his Rolls-Royce,” Slim said, recalling his own earlier experiences.

“No, he then asked if there was anything in the world he could do for me, and I, in return, replied that I had ambitions to become a famous rock-star singer, and happened by chance to have in my pocketbook a demo record of a song I and some of my uptown slag sisters put together one rainy day, and he took same, jotting down my name and mailing address and giving to me fifty dollars.”

“You stoned?” Slim asked.

“Yes, I am stoned. I am stoned and I am happy and I leave you now to pursue more of same.” He tried to stand up, but fell back down, then upped himself again by using Timmy’s shoulder as a ledge. “Come, young beauty, give Yootha a shove back into the world.”

Timmy helped the happy, former scraggy, black cat out into the corridor where they strolled along taking the night air.

“You take that job with R. Allan?” Yootha inquired.

“Yes.”

“Well, then, you be careful. R. Allan is not to be trusted.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t take the job.”

“Honey, it’s a home and we all got to live somewhere. It’s more than I got. Just be careful. We have to look out for ourselves in our little apple jungle.” He then touched Timmy’s face with his thin, dusty hand. “You’re knockout handsome gorgeous. But I hope you got brains. Or can get them fast. Or else you’ll wind up doing stage shows at The Pits, having twenty pounds of chain pumped up your keester.”

And off he waltzed, his sequins twinkling down the corridor like the tacky stars they were, leaving Timmy to stand there at an intersection, holding up traffic, as at least twenty men of differing colors, creeds, ages, and desires, all hoped this beauty might flash a green-light look at him.

One of these twenty was Randy Dildough. He looked at Timmy Purvis and thought that Timmy Purvis was the most perfect speciman of the male sex he had ever seen. His search was ended. There, in one body, was compounded every dream, fantasy of youth, adulthood, too, the ideal speciman he must have for life. Not only would he get this paragon, even, if necessary, and it would be necessary, Slim-ming down his life, but he would turn him into a bigger star than James Dean ever was, thus making it possible to spend every moment with him, taking him out in public, perhaps even acknowledging that male love did exist.

He beckoned to the lad with a crooked finger.

“Come here,” Randy said, never pausing to think if such movie-studio tactics worked in a bathhouse.

Something about the man’s look made Timmy feel cold and frightened and helplessly responsive. He found himself walking over to him and saying as coolly as he could: “What do you want?”

“Do you have a room?”

“Yes. I mean, I’m sharing it with a friend.”

“Could we get rid of him?”

“…yes”

Such tactics worked in a bathhouse.

Timmy led Randy back to home base and in they went and Randy saw his lover, Slim, and the two of them looked at each other suspiciously, wondering what the other had been up to, and Slim decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, because seeing him, just seeing him, the selfish executive prick, made him realize how much he’d missed him.

“You found him,” Slim said to Timmy.

Timmy, knowing as sure as he knew anything that trouble might have been avoided for the moment but not for very long, said “Yep.”

Randy took his lover in his arms. “Happy birthday, baby.”

Fred prowled the corridors looking for the vision who was Randy Dildough. Keep active, keep busy, idle hands ate the devil’s workshop, don’t think of Dinky and your current case of The Why Didn’t I Do Such and So’s and The What Might Have Been’s. I shall corral this new one, somehow summon up witty repartee and dazzling displays of intellect and interject casually that I am responsible for the movie that nine out of ten faggots simply adore and then another dollop of wit and razzle-dazzle and he will point his finger saying “I want You!” and I will come and all my future lifetime problems will be solved. Yeah. Just like Dinky.

He looked into an open door. Inside, the man of his fantasies was sitting talking to two beautiful young boys. Oops, he likes chicken. Forget it, Fred. Forget it! He’s not even a real blond. He’s a reddish. You don’t like reddishes.

But Fred stood there mesmerized. So much beauty, particularly in the Junior Department, in one cubicle. Perhaps the three of them would start doing it together and desire an audience. I shall be an audience.

Instead, the just-deposed prince of his dreams looked up at him, grimaced and uttered in distinct tones of unmistakable discouragement: “Get lost, you crud!,” thus causing “one of America’s finest, most talented screenwriters, why doesn’t he work more often?” (Albert Surge, San Antonio
Alamo Torch
) to once again, would his losing streak never end?!, fall into disrepute.

But if he was hurt, wounded, now that the blow had fallen, had he not almost expected it, and what was the pain of being called a crud by a stranger compared to the stomach ache of Dinky preferring an evening sucking steam?

So on he marched, attempting to pick himself up, dust himself off, and, as the song goes, start all over again.

“I guess I’ll take another walk,” Timmy said.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Randy asked, reaching into Slim’s jeans and pulling out a cigarette, which Slim knew Randy only did when he was working something out.

“Timothy Purvis.”

“Well, Timothy, I’m Randy Dildough. Where are you going?”

“I’ll let you guys fuck.”

“Want to watch?”

“I don’t want anyone to watch,” Slim answered, looking at Timmy with not the friendliest of eyes.

“Come back later,” Randy said. “We’ll all go out for breakfast together.” And then, noting that Timmy’s clothes were hooked up there as well, so that he’d have to come back sooner or later, he threw his cigarette on the floor and began to wish his lover additional birthday greetings.

Timmy walked the corridors. Life was becoming complicated. Something in that Randy’s eyes had bored inside of him and touched something. But what? And wasn’t he still in love with the Winston Man? Yes, I am. Honestly and truly.

So in his red-white-and blue-pilled way, he prowled back and forth, slowly, methodically, one floor after the other, looking for the Winston Man. Everyone else seemed to be here tonight; perhaps Winnie would be, too. Passing doors and throngs and orgies and twosomes, threesomes, solos, barging into rooms to study faces, hoping, behaving like an old-timer, fearless, drug-courageous, he was in love with Winnie and Winnie he would find. He pushed away all grabbers, ignored smiles and hellos, thinking only of that moment earlier this evening when perfect bliss and harmony were experienced and exchanged like vows. He, Timothy Peter Purvis, would be faithful to those vows. Wasn’t that what love was all about?, this fine thought now guiding his feet faster and faster, now through the first-floor maze of lockers, past the long line of impatients waiting to get in, down to the showers, by that first heated swimming pool in New York, into the sauna, now into the steam room, wading through the mist and fog and impenetrable atmosphere, bumping into bodies doing things with bodies, in corners, on slabs of concrete, neath jets of drizzly steam, all rained upon by drops of scalding trickle from the ceiling, baptizing all, and on the very stone-hard floor itself.

And there, as luck would have it, was Winnie. With the guy Randy had called a crud.

Winnie was down on his famous knees, sucking off the Jewish cock of Fred Lemish, a little older than he liked them, but young Jews tonight seemed hard to find. Fred, of course, could not believe his good fortune, this, again, was why he loved the baths, for the jackpot nights, like riding the subway and knowing you’re better than somebody, this gorgeous beauty certainly thought so, where had he seen that face?

Timmy watched Winnie and Winnie looked up and saw Timmy watching and this apparently made Winnie go crazy, now demanding something of his partner, Fred could not quite understand what.

“What?”

“Walk on me! Walk on me! Walk all over me!”

Well, it was an unusual request, and while he preferred to have a continuation of the cock suck, still it was a day of new attempts, breaking the sex barrier, so Fred found himself looking down upon the now supine body of this beauty, it certainly was a gorgeous face and body, now, gingerly at first, be careful not to slip, I wonder just what kind of kick can come from this, for either of us, what the hell…New Thing Number III!

Timmy didn’t know what to make of it. But if what he was witnessing was all new to him, he responded to it nevertheless in time-honored fashion by becoming jealous and furious and pushing the Crud Person off of his Winnie, and he bent down to kiss his man all over, his man who evidently didn’t want to be kissed, this kid was beginning to be a pain, he’s not even put off by my most perverse acts, Timmy not believing it as his Winnie threw him off and back against that concrete wall, hurting his head against its curve, not believing that his Winnie could have done that, thrown him such a curve, not believing that his Winnie is now walking away from him, leaving him!, and all alone in this steamy circle of hell.

Furthermore, Winnie was walking away from him with his arm around the Crud Man’s waist, they’re going off together, oh who will I hold on to for dear life?, in this, his moment of his second greatest abandonment, not noticing that his earlier worshipper, the man who is now about to become so very important in his young, impressionable, malleable life under the Big Top, the specter lurking in said steamy shadows who is Cunard Rancé Evin Dildough, is now watching him, still wanting him.

Timmy looked up and saw Randy and immediately felt relief. I want, I need, somebody’s arms around me right this very minute, and to these waiting arms he goes. Disbelief on both sets of arms is rampant, on the part of young Timmy’s that they feel so good, and on the part of our Randy’s that at last they hold his sought-for conquest, something so perfect that nought else compares, do I really, actually, maybe, have a heart in working order that can make me feel so warm and good?

Whatever hidden fantasies are coming true, the two of them stand there tied up in minglings of passion, need, affection, desperation, sweat, hard-ons, or is it hards-on?, neither could, in a steam room, distinguish which from which. But holding each other they definitely are.

And watching this, was it not ever thus?, and hurt in a way that the biggest prick in the world could always do, about-to-be-ex-lover Slim, now tapping hand to forehead to signal “So long, Randy,” then walking off into the mist of morn, and from our story, going…going…quick, Randy, lest it be too late…Gone, unnoticed by the loser, from his Randy’s life…so ends one near climax to our evening? morning? who can be quite certain which?

“Come along, young Timothy. Do you know who I am?”

“No. Who?”

“I’m your new lover. I’m going to make you a star.”

And Anthony? Anthony was preparing to come.

…oh that feels good, this one’s even better, this one’s a real find, make it last, don’t come, Anthony, don’t come, make it last….

Well, perhaps not. Perhaps he’s not ready.

Fred is now with Winnie, Winnie is now with Fred, Randy is with Timmy and Timmy with Randy, Boo still twists and kicks alone on the thronged Capriccio dance floor, Laverne is asleep with Robbie after having successfully used his mushroom, Patty and Juanito are honeymooning, Irving slumbers, dreaming about “Dinky, my Dinky, wherever you are….,” and isn’t it wonderful that at last it looks like a few of our boys might be bedding down for a rest?

However, while getting dressed in his room, Fred panicked. Who was this strange man with the perverted tastes he was going home with? Recalling a night in London when a handsome Frenchman he’d picked up in Piccadilly Circus had threatened him with knives, recalling how First Love Feffer had one mysterious evening in New Orleans tried to tie him up and whip him with a belt, recalling how Feffer ever thereafter claimed Fred to be a true masochist, sending vibrations out to all the world’s true sadists that he was just begging to be punished—all of these nocturnal emissions prompted Fred to immediately jump into his clothes, leave this one at the tubs, you’ve been laid enough for one day, go home, get some sleep, you’ve got a date with Dinky to rest up for, run into the hall, and go check out before Mr. Strangeness can get dressed.

He ran right into the arms of Dinky Adams.

“Unh, hi,” Fred said, not knowing what to say.

“I was just thinking about you,” Dinky said, knotting his towel more tightly round his waist. “I was hoping you might be here.”

“We do have this telepathic relationship,” Fred answered, opting to play this unscheduled reunion with Calm. Sucking steam, eh? Well, there is that steam room down stairs.

“I have something to show you. Come on.”

Dinky led Fred down the third-floor corridor and up a back and cordoned-off stairway to a fourth-floor addition, as yet unopened to the public. Here, Dinky had been contracted to decorate all the cubicles into smart designer rooms, like Bloomingdale’s. He led Fred on a decorator’s tour from one to another, each different, brown for those who thought in tones of brown, yellow for the yellow, lion stripes, army barrack, Joan-Crawford-hatbox black and white, even one papered in Piranesi prints.

“You did all of this?” Fred asked, attempting to be suitably impressed.

“Yes.”

“Terrific. Most imaginative.”

Taking Fred’s hand again, Dinky then led him beyond the special suites and to a huge black open void and there, miraculously, mysteriously lit, appeared a gigantic, bigger and longer and chromeier than any Mack, truck stretching the width of the building, a fantasy tunnel the guys would go crazy screwing in, built with his very own hands, certainly a wizard bit of carpentry.