Faggots (3 page)

“No, no,
we’re
the evaders. Nothing’s good enough for us. Work is the only thing that matters. Life is a compromise. I’m going to become straight. It’s not possible for two men to get it together.” Anthony pulled his raincoat on and tugged the belt tightly.

And Fred, who would not accept these opinions of his friends, and who, with Anthony, never wished to delve into why they weren’t lovers—Fred told himself Anthony’s hairy body bothered him, and Anthony told himself Fred was too much like Anthony—and who, now, would shortly have his Dinky Adams back and in his arms, said: “No, Tante, it’s definitely time for love!”

Fred was close to coming when he felt the trickle of warm piss. It splashed upon his back. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t do that,” he muttered, now trying to come quickly.

“You like it! You like it!” the Master yelled, his stream now waterfalling.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” Fred felt called on to announce.

“Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” The Slave now uttered at last.

“I’m coming…!”

“Give me all your gism, baby! Pile drive that ramrod cock right through my brain!”

Fred, closer, tried his damnedest to comply.

“I feel that come inside me, baby! I feel it! I feel you! Fill ’er up! Fuck me to the moon!” The Slave had turned most verbal.

He and Fred flapped together in split-splats against the now drenched mattress. Then Fred quickly jumped up, disengaging, grabbed his towel, and tried to leave.

“I haven’t sucked you out yet!” the Master/Pisser pleaded.

Fred ran out of the cubicle, not listening as Master apologized to Slave: “It’s all right, honey, I’ll find you another one.”

Fred headed for the showers below.

Some hero, he thought.

Fred Lemish was thirty-nine years old. He was single, still, though for many years he had claimed to want a lover. He had had one or two before, perhaps nine or ten; he often had trouble defining precisely what constituted a lover and not just a trick he had turned a number of times, even allowing for a tendency toward attempted reconstructions on Just Good Fucks or root-canal work on Vacation Romances Best Left Where Found. But, by any definition, none had lasted beyond a vague introductory offer. He usually blamed it on the other fellow and still maintained that he was alone against his will.

Fred had a hairy chest, wide shoulders, at last a thirty-inch waist, after years of a slight inner tube of fat amidships, “love handles,” where new introductions so annoyingly always placed their hands, casually, in greeting, in reality only prospecting the land beneath the shirt to judge how hard the terrain, and hence how desirable, before walking away, never to be heard from again, if the merchandise was too soft, too excessive, which, in Fred’s case, it had until recently been, plus those sturdy legs, an embarrassing liability as a child (what other kid had fully formed calves like cantaloupes at ten?), now at last accepted for the muscular bonus they were, along with that hairy chest, now also useful as a marketable difference, which the same childhood of being the only King Kong among years of hairless Greek-statued schoolmates had not allowed, plus the requisite mustache, now, alas, mingling black hair with strokes of gray, and, also alas, the small but growing bald spot on the crown of his dark head, which no amount of Head Start Vitamins with the Mysterious Ingredients or Hair Trigger Program Formula 6 available by mail from I. Magnin in Beverly Hills and applied nightly with a hot towel and left steaming on the scalp for twenty minutes followed by a glass of warm milk and two additional capsules of minerals essential to the roots’ natural growth had alleviated. He had briefly attempted to camouflage the mustache and temples with Revlon’s Fabulash—recommended in California by Frigger, he of the rock-hard barrel chest and construction-worker arms and the witty one-liners and the infallible gift of his mouth always winning at “Come Into My Parlor,” a good friend he later discovered to have tricked with Feffer on that very day Feffer had returned to Fred for their second attempt at Togetherness—the aroma from which, not to mention the resultant turgidity, he found sufficiently unpleasant to discontinue the effort.

He belonged to two gyms and attended them regularly, alternating them to avoid monotony. At Sheridan Square (“The Magnificent Obsession”) Health Club, also known as “Bodyworks (but the mind doesn’t),” he could muscle-build close to home with the Village faggots, a serious lot much concerned with hyperbolic results to parade on Christopher Street, though they and their conversations (everyone was “she” or “Mary” and various were the opinions on opera, recipes, and yard goods) were a bit too bitchy-queeny for Fred’s taste; to him they all connoted creeping, crepuscular middle-aged dissatisfaction, on the road to leather and other arcane sexual deviances sacrosanct to the unloved, and he still had hope, if not their over-muscled definition. Most of the time he used the 63rd Street West Side Y, jauntily known as the biggest gay bar in town (and much kickier than the Y’s at 23rd or 47th Streets), and here he joined fellow quipsters, a jolly, congenial lot, many of them now good friends: Frigger, when he was in from L.A.; Gatsby; energetic Tarsh; the Divine Bella; the city’s famous lovers, Josie and Dom Dom; Fallow the dapper; Mikie, the thirty-four-year-old flower child; sweet Bo Peep—for his three-mile jog and his hour of serious weight-lifting.

And how his muscles had appeared! His body reacted, his pecs and lats and delts took form, his love handles diminished (Frigger’s suggestion of the Waist Sweat-er had worked!), his stomach tightened, he even had obliques! He’d now entered that fatless state of being in Great Shape, certainly better shape than any of his straight friends (how many of them worked out seven days a week?), and all was now obviously ready at last to lead on to consummation with Mr. Right. All those years of chunkery—was it to keep love away? For, if a faggot bartered with his body, hadn’t he best get his wampum in order?

Feffer had told him four years ago to make his body over. If he had, would he still have Feffer? He didn’t want him now. But he sure as shit had then. And now here was Dinky, arousing within him the exact pain, anguish, hope, love, and terror he’d not felt since Feffer. Ah, romance!

Yes, the way he’d looked at it, this was the last chance. Harden up now, slim down now, grab your man now—because, over forty, it wasn’t going to be easy to accomplish any of these things. And, if he had wasted the years leading up to this moment in sloth and avarice and self-pity and chocolate and rejection and schlumpery and Algonqua and Lester and Harvard and bachelorhood and being the cruiser more than the cruised, the left-dangling more than the dangler, it was still not too late to yield and desist. And if the rest of his country desired to be thin and gorgeous and remained pretty much as they were, then he would not be like the rest of his country. And what better motivation for becoming a thing of beauty than being in love?

Fred was also rather concerned with the specific. When he was feeling poorly, if a malaise should suddenly sweep over him, he wanted to know why, what to attribute it to: had he moved his bowels sufficiently, did he have to do so again, had he eaten properly, was his protein intake for the day large enough, had he slept enough last night, or too much, did his body require some food with sugar, was he finally becoming hypoglycemic?—all of these possibilities had to be adjudged and discounted. Ordinary, plain, everyday, nonspecific anxiety could not be tolerated. If checking all of the above produced no answer, and anxiety was all that remained, then Fred had recourse to thoughts of knives and wrist slashings (“Application of the knife blade to the wrist,” he would try to cheer himself with some snappy recollections from the seminal volume of Menchitt & Swinger, “indicates a perverse determination to sever the umbilical cord of some earlier trauma”) and pill overdoses and jumping from heights. He was afraid of heights. He did tend to overreact. He didn’t, naturally, do any of these awful things; they were just torture thoughts to ruin a nice day.

Fred was—in short—your average, standard, New York faggot obsessive kvetch. Nice though. And with smiling, dark-brown eyes. But perhaps a bit too therapeutically prepared. And trying not to ponder if what he has spent all those years and dollars and pounds (sterling, not avoirdupois, though certainly that as well) to reach is quite possibly not there to be reached, but that the True End of not only therapy but Maturity is to learn to live with the inescapable fact that 97% of all human beings are getting fucked and 97% of all faggots are, too.

He had recently studied his last year’s Seven Star Mini Diary, and this had revealed:

Dates leading to orgasm: 87 (not counting street tricks, the tubs, or Fire Island; definitely not counting The Meat Rack).

Dates interesting enough to want to see again: 2.

Dates seen again: 23.

Refusals: 23.

Tubs attended how many times: 34.

Discos danced at how many nights: 47 (not counting Fire Island).

He had been dismayed at how many of the names he no longer remembered. Who were Bat, Ivan, Tommy, Sam Jellu, Beautiful Henry, Kelly Hurt (or Kelly hurt?), Joe Johns, François, Watson Datson, too many of the 23, not to mention the 87, were now unrecognizable and obviously equally as unmemorable as the how many—? 100? 200? 50? 23? orgasms he had probably forgotten to tally. He had had sex, with somebody or other, one or two, maybe three times a week for an entire year, including religious holidays, but not counting, hopefully, illnesses. He had spent a whole year (not to mention all the preceding ones!) with a faceless group of sex objects. Talk about sexist! Talk about using the body as a thing! And who the hell was Tiddy Squire? Or was it Ditty Squirt? Even his handwriting was not helpful. He recalled no Tiddy Ditty, nor what they did, nor how it felt, nor where they did it, though his notation exclaimed: “really Hot, must do it again!” Checking his address book, on those rear pages reserved for faggots, because he was certain never to recognize their names if filed alphabetically, there it was: Derry Spire, March 14th—only several months ago. How could he not remember? How could he have made love with another human being and not remember? The face? The body? Something? Anything? A wart? A smell? B.O.?

Fred then thought of the long line of architects, gardeners, art directors, copywriters, dilettantes, drop-outs, unemployeds, unemployables, would-be’s, waiters, actors, students, dancers, which had graced his life, wondering why he fell for some of the Great Non-Givers of the World, the Invulnerables, the Defensives, the Ones in Need of Help, whom he, great Red Crosser, was there to ferry through sleet and shit like the schleppy Saint Bernard. And did. He had carted the body-builder/sociologist to Paris to seduce him, only to discover he was a lousy lay. (Anthony had to summon him home with an urgent telegram signed “Barbra Streisand” to get him out of that one.) He had ported the weaver/macraméist to Marrakech to hear his vow of love, only to have anxiety attacks in the Casbah. (Said attacks obviously necessitating an urgent recall to then Dr. Cult.) They had both been called Mikie. Mikies I and II were both, somewhere, wearing Rolex Submariners, which Fred had bought them at the ending. Mikie III, the thirty-four-year-old flower child, half-architect, now truck driver, still good friend, also wore his Rolex, after their affair-let on a Caribbean Firefly Cruise.

There had also been Feffer. Great Love Number One.

And now there was Dinky Adams. Great Love Number Two.

Fred had been amazed as well to discover in his address book’s rear that he and Dinky had met and tricked seven years ago, a one-nighter; Fred vaguely remembered fucking him, when Fred was visiting from London and they’d cruised each other in front of a Goya Duchess on loan to the Metropolitan Museum. Dinky was then in architecture school, too, and was filled with plans for building a more beautiful world. He’d only finished a year and a half. He’d never made it. Ah, the potential! Is this what made him so very dear?

Feffer had been tall, blond, incredibly bright, gorgeous, his own age, a Wisconsin Phi Bete, who’d been wonderful until Fred unfortunately discovered he wanted to tie Fred up and beat him.

Dinky was tall, dark, bright, gorgeous, with honors from Georgetown, and Fred could hardly wait for his return. He was wonderful. Again and at last.

Fred had, at thirty-nine, hoped love would come by forty.

He had only four days to go.

Forty years old!

And beloved Dinky would soon be coming back!

And beloved Abe would produce Fred’s screenplay!

And Life would at last be in order! Love and work co-joined!

He soaped his tarnished, yellowed, peed-upon body in the showers. Ah, did he not hate that word “gay”? He thought it a strange categorizer of a life style with many elements far from zippy. No, he would de-kike the word “faggot,” which had punch, bite, a no-nonsense, chin-out assertiveness, and which, at present, was no more self-deprecatory than, say, “American.”

Dinky Adams’s ass was the first ass Fred had ever rimmed.

He had, of course, heard about rimming. It was quite popular with some of the boys. But Fred had never wanted to so taste anyone before.

It happened almost eight weeks ago, at the end of Week 4 of their “relationship,” after Dinky had given Fred his first douche, really a harmless affair (and not nearly so frightening as Tarsh and Mikie, both clinical experts, had always made it sound), (“You mean you’ve never douched?,” “You mean you’ve never rimmed?” Dinky had asked later, incredulous over what he considered Fred’s naive sex life. “What have you been doing all these years?”): a bulbous squeezing of a couple of cups of warm water up Fred’s rectum, into which Dinky would shortly stick his nice-sized, not-too-big, not-too-small cock, while they were standing in Fred’s kitchen on Washington Square, Dinky having just sterilized the douche’s doucher in hot water on the stove. As Dinky had squeezed it in, Fred realized, horror of horrors, that he was getting turned on. He liked this Dinky! He liked that he was having his first douche with someone he liked. He liked that he was evidently likeable enough for Dinky to get such a nice big hard-on over him. He liked it all. Yes, he did.