Faggots (23 page)

The perpetrator of these acts upon young Timothy, our Randy Dildough, was euphoric. What a charge! he’d come in his fucking pants! The hard-on had started in the Everhard itself, with the flames licking and danger lurking and Randy loving every dangerous moment of it all. They’d rushed down and out and, instead of heading home, Randy wanted more. The Pits, he’d heard about the infamous Pits, why end this evening on such a charred note, let’s head for The Pits and more! Pausing only momentarily to purchase some unknown tablets from unknown pushers vending outside of the Everhard’s entrance when business inside had so suddenly gone up in smoke, they’d hopped a cab to take them to the continuation of their evening’s merriment.

And there, in that bowel of darkness, filled with bodies so thick you could cut them with a knife, and somebody probably was, they’d had more pills and a few beers and Timothy had told him about his love for the Winston Man and how his heart was broken and then more visits from unknown pushers and then, and then…pushing young Timothy into black arms and…watching him be strung up in punishment for telling Randy such awful news about his Other Love.

As he stood naked thirty stories up on his Pierre’s carpet, looking in one of the seven full-length mirrors of his suite, his cock got hard in memoriam. The scene! the cheers and catcalls of such an admiring audience! Young Timothy so beautifully displayed! his own new love performing just for him! More pushings! And such a finale! Such a climax! Cops and cops and whistles and chargings and shouts of fear and rushes toward exits and hundreds of frightened faggots, once again, pushing and shoving and belting and screaming and Randy had come in his pants!

As he now again wanted to do, though he didn’t have his pants on, in front of that mirror, looking at himself again and thinking: You’re shriveling Dildough…you’re shrinking back into nothingness.

For Timothy was gone, and so was Slim—no one here beside him, only himself in the mirror—yes, James Dean Purvis was gone, lost in the fracas, while Randy was having too much fun attending to his own escape.

How to get him back and up here, how to get my cock back up here, as Jimmy Dean had got it up there for me in a way no recent escalation had so pleasurably done?

No doubt he’ll be at The Toilet Bowl tonight. I wasn’t planning on going, of course. But now I’ll have to.

What am I saying! I’m a President! I can’t go on like this.

Yes, Timothy’s the one for me. I’ll stop all of my nonsenses and settle down with this one. Enough of snakes and fires and raids.

In this business, you’re only as good as your last movie. Well, Timothy will be my last movie.

He then recalled that he had promised Adriana to have tea with Dordogna del Dongo. Three Valiums were taken to rest up for that.

Back home in Loftsville, Boo Boo Bronstein, too pilled-up to sleep, was feeling most unrefreshed and empty. He tried jerking off thinking of himself as “Rock” and then as “Tab.” But his rose by any other name this early morning was not rising.

He then confronted the four weeks’ supply of Drake’s Ring Dings and Yankee Doodles and Grand Union Small Early June Peas, which he liked to eat straight from the can. He then confronted the reason why he’d bought them. He then decided not to confront the reason why he’d bought them. He then was left to face the only thing left to face: OK, here I am, now what do I do?, time on my bands, I am bored out of my fucking tits,
Yuck!

I’m going to go to Fire Island tomorrow. I’m going to go to Fire Island tomorrow…

I could go to Australia and with very little capital open up a stand on the beach and sell my special tuna-fish salad. I’ll just bet they don’t have tuna-fish salad like mine down there. The secret ingredient is chopped fresh string beans. And Grand Union Small Early June Peas. I’d begin a new and richer, fuller life. A new and poorer life you mean.

There’s only one way you’re going to get your money, Richie. If you’re tired of hand jobs, you’re simply going to have to blow Abe’s safe!

Why am I so scared?

Tuna-fish salad in Australia! You’re a Yale graduate for Christ’s sake. Where’s your courage, man? He owes it to you! He made you what you are today! And now he’s gone and made another one!

He then went out on his fire escape to water his plants. They weren’t doing very well. Neither am I. Then he realized that policemen could climb this fire escape and look in his window and see that beefy, swarthy, dangerous men were not in residence. He would be surrounded by the law and confronted with his hoax and his ineptitude. I think my plan is full of holes. I think I need an alternate plan. I think I should stop thinking.

But back be went to his scrapbook of clippings. And back he went to his flagpole. He perused them both. The former was thick and full of news. “Mobile Home Heiress Buried Alive in Coffin with Straw to Outside World.” That’s me. That’s how I’m living now. He looked at the flagpole. Are you my straw? My Straw to the Outside World? “Many millions and she lived.”

It seems a bit unusual. But it had worked.

Richie, let’s think this one out.

Why are you kidnapping yourself?

So I’ll get my money before he finds out I’m a faggot.

Is that the real reason?

Yes!

Then why not blackmail him? It’s ever so much cleaner.

It just takes a little bit more in the way of guts.

So, feeling very sorry for himself, and for his loneliness and various abandonments, then and now, and for his lack of spunk and future, he pulled out the pen and once again put pique-full thought to prose.

“I love you, I love you,” Wyatt Bronstein continually mumbled, even in his sleep, as he cuddled closer and closer into Anthony’s furry being high up o’er Beckman Place.

Anthony realized it had been a long time since anyone had said that to him. He also realized that it had been a long time, if ever, since anyone had kissed him and kissed him, thus making up for so many years of lack of same. He also realized that he had committed an incomprehensible action, bringing home a fifteen year old. He also realized that he was glad he had.

It had been wonderful. Wyatt, courtesy of Anthony, had come three times, twice from having that ten-inch pipe blown, and once, God have mercy on Anthony’s soul in some future heaven, from being, for the first time, yes, Anthony had been its first violator, the taker of the kid’s hymen, fucked, and not only been fucked but coming simultaneously!, ie., without any stimulation whatsoever applied to his young cock, but only from the pressure of Anthony’s dong against his effervescent prostate, oh God our help in ages past have mercy on this sinning wop Catholic pervert who in all of the above almost came once more, too.

Then Wyatt had bent down to kiss Anthony’s resting organ. “It’s almost as big as mine. That means we’re meant for each other.” And just that kiss, just those words, just that young fellow looking up at him with such uncomplicated affection, made our Anthony spurt quite unexpectedly. Such a premature ejaculation. Most embarrassing.

But the kid paid no attention to such an older man’s problem. He just jumped up seventeen times into the air on Anthony’s Posturepedic, then did a double-twist flip, then fell into Anthony’s arms with a “I love you, I’m sorry I can’t come anymore, I’ll make up for it tomorrow,” then fell asleep, after a few more kisses, in that sweet fetal position which so touches older men’s hearts.

Fred Lemish, our hero, and his still beloved, Dinky Adams, had rushed back to Dinky’s walk-up apartment in a building on West 29th Street, filled by its landlord with faggots, who fixed things up much prettier than straights. Fred loved this apartment, so much of it made by Dinky’s own talented hands. There were built-in banquettes with huge patterned pillows of all colors and friendly Oriental scatter rugs and a tall armoire from Provence and bowls and vases of flowers and corn plants that reached to the ceiling and his bedroom was tiered with shelves of wicker hampers for storage and the bed was high on a pedestal of white, from which the surrounding sky and rooftops could be viewed from this sixth floor, just still within Fred’s safety range.

They lay naked upon this pedestal, the sun now coming up, though not coming up was Dinky’s cock, which Fred had once more rubbed against, just a little, to see if anything might happen down there. It didn’t. Fred’s own, of course, was hard, though he was doing his damndest to will it down lest its pressure embarrass Dinky. Oh, go down, damn you, go down!, he tried to communicate to it. But Dinky now had his hand on it, checking it out, let him hold it a minute, perhaps it will inspire him. It didn’t. Then Dinky took his hand away and it went down.

“Yes, you really look terrific,” Dinky said. ‘We’ll see what happens. I have a friend coming up next week from Savannah. I met him while I was away trying to sort out Jack and trying to sort out what I was going to do with you. He was very sweet. Very noninvolving and no hassles. He’s an architect named George. He doesn’t mean anything to me. I’m sorry now he’s coming. Just a vacation romance. Nothing can come of it. He doesn’t even want to live in New York.”

Why am I being told all this?, Fred paused to wonder. This I didn’t need. What should I say and do? What the fuck is going on here? What the no-fuck is going on here?

“He sounds nice,” Fred heard himself, like some generous saint, reply. “If you had such nice feelings, then perhaps he might be something serious and you should go with it, fall in love, let it happen.”

Dinky’s toe gently poked over to touch Fred’s toe. “But he doesn’t mean a thing to me.” The toe moved away. “He’s an architect. He asked me to help him with a big assignment.”

A hassle appeared in the Lemish interior. George was throwing Dinky big bones. Big bones that could take Dinky away for long periods of Savannah. Savannah was a long meal away. Were George’s bones as big as Lemish’s bones? Let’s see.

“You know…I forgot to tell you…I’ve found some men, it all happened so suddenly, while you were away…who want to finance our gay hotel.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. They think it’s a fabulous idea. I told them there are fifteen million faggots in the United States without a nice place to stay in New York, which is the gay capital of the world, plus God knows how many millions from everywhere else and all the ships at sea and…and…and they think it’s a…terrific idea. They’re straight. But they sense our time is near.”

“Do you really think it could happen?”

Fred put his own foot over and back to undertoe his offer more forcefully. “It’ll happen if we want it to happen.”

Then our hero wished he hadn’t done it.

Yet he foundered on. “We can use it as an experiment to spend time with each other, get to know each other, I’ve truly missed you, I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t truly think you have the talent to handle it, and see where it takes us.” Why couldn’t he take the risk of Dinky taking him for himself alone? That would be a better building. Without any sagging piles. Or a sinking foundation of insecure, heartful muck.

Dinky’s toe and Fred’s toe said hello to each other.

“It’s you and me we’ll work on after George leaves,” Dinky said. “Work on what?”

“Our relationship.”

“Our relationship?”

“Well, our romance.”

“Our romance?”

“Well, our getting to know each other.”

“Well, how about that?” You see, Fred, how patience and tenderness and hope and playing footsie can all work out just fine? “He doesn’t mean a thing to you, you say?”

“After he leaves, we’ll see each other every night.”

“Terrific!”

“Seven nights a week.”

Then they cuddled into each other’s arms, each somehow satisfied for the moment and rather tired from their strenuous exertions to erect such a defended splendid hotel. Dinky mumbled in Fred’s ear: “My bulldog, Fred, who takes his two eggs soft while mine are in an omelet,” and the sun was bright outside as they, too, fell asleep in each other’s arms, warmed by the fulfillment of their mutual needs and the shining late May beauty.

In his apartment in the eaves of the Dakota, with a handsome view of Central Park, if you poked your head out of the window and looked left, Leather Louie was resting while Lance Heather continued to administer to a rather mauled, blood-patterned, lanky blond hanging happily from the gallows by his wrists. His name was Feffer.

Yes, their successful cruise on the waterfront had netted Fred Lemish’s First Great Love and led to his current standing, or lack of it.

After two scenes, there was still a smile on Feffer’s face. He thought it amusing, back in America only hours after four years, not even having checked in with Fred or Anthony, and already strung up. He also thought it funny that back home in the country from whence he’d fled now found him the whipped and not the whipper he’d been when he ran away from it. No doubt about it, this land of overachievers certainly did things to him. As did the thought of his forthcoming journey to Wisconsin, back to Pa, back to having to gently, cogently, successfully, extricate from Pa, nice Pa, who never told me what to do, wish you had, Pa, what can I do, Pa?, the necessary funds to live a few more years abroad. Yep, I’ll punish myself in advance for all that, too.

So, as the tensions and the tinglings once again began to exert their pull, Feffer’s truly lovely American cock began another welcome home, which made it all right for its owner, whose mind was now filling with fantasies of religious martyrs and thorn-crowned heads and heavy dragging crosses and son’s sufferings beyond the ken of Pa’s. Oh, Mary Baker Eddy, please forgive me for taking a few tiny pills.

Louie lipped a cigarette, the smoke curling up from his really pussycat lips, in sinister fashion, and watched with admiration the neatness, the economy, the fair-haired and smooth-skinned simplicity that
was
Southern California, the surfer rampant, and Lance Heather and his tricks upon the dangling man. There were no wasted motions, no hoopla or showy overexertions; Lance was a Klemperer as against a Lenny Bernstein.