Faggots (22 page)

“You made this, too?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. Most terrific.”

“Want to get fucked?” Dinky asked him.

Fred nodded Yes. Dinky then indicated that he should wait in the back of his handiwork while he went to the end suite, where Billy Boner lived and slept, and, its occupant not home, borrowed some Crisco and some poppers.

While Fred undressed and awaited his long impending ascension unto heaven, inside a truck, the happy face of Winnie Heinz descended and waited, then became the sad and dour face of Winnie Heinz as he realized he’d been stood up, he waited for no Jew, too bad because he seemed like a good walker, your loss, Mister, I am finally going home.

He thus departed safely and only shortly before the famous Everhard fire.

Randy had gone back with Timmy to his room to find it filled with smoke. Randy stifled it as best he could with towels and mattress, it looked benign, get the hell out of here anyway, I’ve got my Timothy, want to enjoy him, down to my locker, collect my clothes, and get us back home to Pierre!

Dinky and Fred shared a joint, then Dinky greased up his cock and Fred’s asshole, then stuffed their four nostrils full of amyl, then proceeded to make entry, whereupon they both discovered that Dinky’s cock would not stay hard. A few body rubbings were then attempted by both hunters, like two woodsmen’s sticks. Ignition did not spark. So much for old tricks from the forest. Finally Dinky rolled off and lay in Fred’s arms, cuddling up close to him, curling up small.

“I just haven’t been into sex lately,” he said.

Hoping this didn’t auger trouble, best skate over this one lightly, it certainly just feels good to feel him again, what a body!, Fred said: “Sinus headaches can be very troublesome. It’s OK. We don’t have to fuck. It’s just nice being with you again. Unh, by the way, who was that fellow I saw you with tonight?”

“Oh, that was Laverne, Jack. I told you all about him. You know, I finally realized tonight I didn’t love him anymore. After six years. That’s what 1 was doing in Savannah. I went away to think. I finally rejected him. It’s a good feeling. I feel…purged. I felt so good I cried.”

Since he himself couldn’t, Fred was impressed with people who could cry. He was also pleased that this cleansing news meant hope for him.

“Yeah,” Dinky continued. “I’m through with Irving, too.”

“Irving?”

“I told you about him. Irving Slough. I answered his ad in the
Avocado
for a lover, no strings attached.”

“Why’d you go and do a crazy thing like that?” You told me?

“I told you. I was trying to think. He insisted on this two-week trial marriage. I had to promise not to see anyone else. I did it as an experiment. To see if I could get into somebody I wasn’t interested in and who didn’t turn me on sexually. I really missed you. He wanted to have sex three times a day.”

“Three times a day!” Fred thought this not excessive. “How often did you have it?”

“Once a day.”

“You did it once a day with Irving Slough!” escaped Fred’s lips.

“You know, you look terrific. Your body is fabulous.”

“I owe it all to you.”

“You owe it to yourself. I liked you chunky. I just told you not to get any fatter.”

“Unh, did saying I loved you have anything to do with your trying on Irving Slough?”

“You didn’t hear me when I said you were going too fast.”

“I thought we were going slow as molasses. I thought we were both big boys and ready to handle it.” No, I didn’t hear you when you said that.

Dinky ducked this one with a kiss on Fred’s cheek.

“Hell, there’s nothing wrong with being nervous,” Fred said, after kissing him back. “Why, I’m nervous, too. Why…that’s one of just many things we have in common. Like both of us having two eggs every morning.”

“No, we’re not the same. You know what you want. I don’t.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Fred found himself saying.

“Of course you do. Look at your life. You have everything you want.”

Fred wanted to say “except you.” Instead be said: “Everybody knows what they want. They just won’t examine their behavior closely enough and see what it means. So that was Laverne? Why did you stick it out with him for six whole years if it wasn’t working from the beginning? I could never figure that out.”

“I wanted sex and love together.”

“So why didn’t you have it?”

Dinky squirmed slightly. “Jack and I never made love like you and I did.”

Fred did not catch the squirm. But he did catch the past tense. And he also now caught another curling up closeness. Dinky was patting his cheek. Tenderness. Ah, tenderness. Did he have an elusive angel in his arms, frightened, needing care and nurturing and nonthreatening evidence that my love is good? You got it, kid. All of the above. Column A and Column B. He reached over and kissed Dinky’s forehead and patted his cheek right back.

Very softly, Dinky said: “Sometimes I think I’ve never really been in love. Sometimes I think I’m not capable of it.”

Ohmigod. What is he saying? What have I got here? A case of rotten apples or a case in need of help? Do I love him? Yes! Is this a challenge? You bet your sweet ass. His, too.

“Maybe you’ll be the first,” Dinky said.

There! You see! Hope! Fred, his role as the true teacher—he would bring knowledge and insight to this pupil in need of both—now quite clearly chosen for him, happily answered in his best new pedagogic manner: “Everyone is capable of it. You’re born with the need.”

What Fred thought to be this shattering fact of life elicited no response. So, feeling suddenly like he might be trying on some straight jacket, in which he would not be free to say just anything, as he’d been doing in all these recent post-Cult days, he reached into his mind for a tranquilizer. Had not Tishbar & Goober written: “True love necessitates the ability to accept another person in all his moods and guises.” Was here the clue to how he must proceed? Patience. Understanding. Tolerance. So he said nothing. It was very hard for Fred Lemish to say nothing. But it was not so hard to say nothing with Dinky Adams in his arms.

“You’re really terrific,” Dinky softly said a few moments in time later.

“So are you. You’re terrific, too.”

Dinky looked up at the top of his truck and its row of tiny bulbs stretching out toward some horizon. “We’ll really have a nice time tomorrow night. I promise you. And we’ll go back to Southampton again. And then there’s Fire Island for the whole summer.”

Fred had entered Meltsville. Did not this moment of tenderness and closeness mean that under this newly appearing cautious Adams exterior a heart beat for Fred!? That wonderful inner Dinky, potentially so fine, so truly truly fine, forget any disappearances and rejections, we’ll both learn, we’ll strip away exterior geegaws and unkind fripperies, we’ll peel them away and find the true, true You. And us.

Dinky bolted up suddenly. “Do you smell smoke!”

They grabbed their clothes and ran, out of the truck, past the fantasy rooms, through the door, down to the third floor, into a nightmare, joining hundreds of other running bodies, naked, Dorothy Lamour-clad, or in part attire, cocks swinging out in fear, or shriveled up in same, or still erected from interrupted orgasms and pointing the way down, joining hundreds more on the second floor, where were the fucking sprinklers?!!, the one stairway now almost impenetrable with smoke and brothers climbing over brothers, bodies that only moments before were touching in more passionate ways, trampling over older ones not able to push and shove as once they could, this place was meant to be safe!!, the stream now feeding into the vestibule, where flames could now be seen grabbing toward the stairwell and the further fuel of naked men, all tackling fate like football players in a game they’d never played, pushing and shoving and kicking and elbowing and biting from backfield positions to gain that extra yard.

Fred and Dinky, holding hands, made it to the street, then to across the street, joining the lucky ones waiting, watching, crying from the safety of the fifty-yard line, to view the blaze scimmage to the sky, carrying with it the smell of flesh, like some incredible pot of Grandma’s chicken soup, a blazing cauldron of somebody’s bubbalahs, a potent portion of rear ends, as was the team of jumping bodies, hurling out from windows into nets that weren’t yet there, the friendly benevolent firemen still unarrived, some stalwart fellows trying to catch the falling players and breaking arms instead…and everyone wondering who was left inside.

Seven brothers perished in the famous Everhard fire. They included our Patty and his Juanito, who had elected to come here to spend their wedding night.

But it would be several days before the bodies, any bodies, could be identified.

Two other discos opened tonight. Dracula and Destiny One. The former opened to a crowd of only seventy-five, no one knew quite why, something had gone wrong, word hadn’t been sufficiently passed or else mysterious leaders elected not to go, the place and all its money down the drain, no hope for saddened Mervie, Doug, and Si, two leather queens and a black, who’d begged and borrowed and fucked for every dime. So much for Dracula. “And what a terrible name!” Bella proclaimed.

The latter, owned by Italian fellows with connections in high places, opened to two thousand strong, humpies who danced till dawn amidst neon profusely used in intricate designs one watched recede into infinity, one’s destiny, in the mirrored walls, and thought it only so-so and wouldn’t catch fire at all. “And they have a bar!,” Blaze cried; “what drug addict drinks?” And really Capriccio is still our favorite very own, so why to join another?

Anthony was still waiting to come.

He had ingested yet another joint of serious smoke and was yet again struck down. He awakened just as the sun might be coming up in the East, but Ellie is still pitch dark. He has awakened because, though he is prone, he is prone on his side and someone is sucking him off and someone is rimming his ass.

…here we go again. Feels like two of them down there. How jaded can I get? Do I mind that one of them is licking my ass? Oi, do I have to come to this cesspool and pass out every time I want to get it up? Why have I been so impotent? I used to love to play with myself. It’s been through a bad period, a period of warts and bumps and rashes and itches and various impedimenta to sexual exposure, Dr. Blue could not proscribe, nor could Drs. Portnoy, Himmel, Svell, Mnish, mumblers, fumblers all: “nervousness,” “change of life,” “will go away,” “leave it alone,” “don’t think about it,” “keep your hands on top of the covers,” wonderful medical advice this day and age, what are we coming to?, when am I coming?, wish the guy in front would be replaced, how do you get rid of a second-rate cock sucker working in tandem with a first-rate ass licker?, oops almost tripped over my pants, “Do you want to be circumcised?,”
“No, I do not want
to be circumcised!,” “Keep the noise down over there!,” get away from this one fast!, Sprinkle you look good at moments like this, who is this?, the ass licker back again, guess he must have liked my taste,
Oi, what am I doing here doing these things?,
assholes are un-Godly, used for shit, not miraculous channels for the birthing of babies like the ladies have, hey somebody wanting to get fucked, sticking his ass on my…he’s all greased up already, wonder how many have been up here before me, come on Anthony,
stay hard,
fuck this gorgeous number, oh shit why can’t I get it over with and come!, come back good cock sucker wherever you are, at least that’s safe, can’t catch anything from another guy’s mouth, or can you?, fuck I’m going to jerk off in a corner, how do you find a corner in the dark?, what’s this?, oh my god feel the size of this one, “Hey, Mister, five bucks and I’m yours,” “You the friend of Frigger’s?,” “Guess so, who’s Frigger?,” what are you holding a friendship conversation for, for christ sake?, he’s put a forty-three-inch cock in your hand what are you going to do with it what do you want to do with it it’s a freak!, “Hey, Mister, you’ve got a big one too,” pat him on the head, only fifteen eh?, tell him to go home, where was I when I was fifteen?, I sure wasn’t in a cesspool of an abandoned dock beside a polluted river playing with yardage, “Hey, Mister, you got a hairy chest too,” what am I supposed to say to this child?, he’s playing with me and I’m getting hard, “My dad has a really hairy chest,” “Unh, that’s nice,” “Wanna take me home?, I’ll come for free,” Jesus fifteen-year-old kid is kissing me all over and he feels nice. No. No. Mustn’t feel nice. No more children. Already have Sprinkle. Must have a one-to-one adult mature relationship, not being momma, not being poppa, oh he feels good I think I’m going to come I think I’m going to come I think…

…I came. Anthony Montano, his life at forty-three totally wasted, the great talent that might have been, the writer of blissful Hollywood romantic comedies who instead is pimping for cancer sticks, must now go home. Become impotent again. Forget semen. I’ll never see semen again. Get out of here, Anthony, push your way through the blackness, sun coming out, Moses Heston parting the Red Sea, cockless in Gaza, Fred says I’m on the fence of life, won’t fall in either direction, whatever that means…

“Hey, Mister. I’m coming home with you whether you want me to or not. I really like you and I don’t want to lose you. My name is Wyatt and I’m going to be a famous trampolinist.”

The early edition of the afternoon
Post,
on an inner page, carried the one and only mention of the news: