Faggots (37 page)

Tarsh rummaged in his Brazilian-Prince sarong and pulled out some further invitations. “There is a party where we must wear high heels. Is anyone interested in a party where we must wear high heels?” He read from the graven invitation to them all: “‘Sling backs, open toes, mules, stilettoes, T-straps, wedgies, spring-a-lators, enna jetticks, but
no
flats.’ They seem to be rather emphatic re: no flats.”

No one wanted to go to this party.

“I can’t even thump my tambourine!” Mikie wailed yet once again.

“Somebody shut her up,” said Fallow.

Tarsh finally went to Mikie and held him in his arms. “Mikie, let go! Lose control! Let your paranoia drip away!”

Mikie felt better in Tarsh’s arms. But still he begged for information from their leader. “How! How do I let go? I’m not the Master of my Life! I promised me the Summer of My Life!”

Tarsh just held Mikie and mumbled: “Let go, Mikie. Let it all go.”

Bilbo said: “I believe there’s a party in honor of the blueberry. Evidently they do interesting things with blueberries. I hear they’re quite good with blueberries.”

No one wanted to go to this party.

So Tarsh momentarily placed Mikie to one side and rummaged again in his folds for yet another card. And he smiled. Of course. How could he have forgotten!

“The Feather Party!”

And they all cheered, fifty of them or so, now running from the beach, taking shortcuts back to houses and to change. Yes, how could they have forgotten! The Party of Parties!

And had not Tarsh officially now proclaimed: “We’re ready for The Feather Party!”

Feathers were about to fly on Sunburst.

Nancellen, ever resourceful, had brought matters to a head. She had carefully dabbed Ephra’s lap, stained with nervously spilled scotch, with a washcloth one-two-three-four. And Ephra had cried out “oh-oh-oh-oh!” with each punch of Martex. Yes, Nancellen had gauged her every shot. She could have been in acupuncture.

She lived in a Bath-owned house, furnished by Wife of Bath in summer-rent shades of warring colors. But Nancellen had chotchkied it up in Early American, with round hooked rugs and several rocking chairs and innumerable hurricane lamps. She had been summering in The Pines for many years. She was one of those dykes who do not like the company of other dykes. And since she certainly wasn’t keen on straight men either, all they wore was old suits, this left only faggots or solitude or…the possibility that someday her Queen would come.

Ephra’s stain did not depart. It restained itself like some contantly blossoming ranunculus, some long-sequestered perennial determined under the most obtuse of growth conditions to sprout and spread.
I shall love at last!
I shall have my first clitoral orgasm! Yes, Ephra had of late been dipping into
Cosmopolitan
and wished to be a Cosmo Girl.

Nancellen at last threw in the washcloth. She could hold it no longer and finally took the armful that was Ephra still in her Lilly Pulitzer into an embrace and, from on high, bent down slowly slowly slowly to kneel, kiss, nibble, blow, and whisper: “Oh, my Mama, oh, my Queen.” It was a touching moment.

Ephra, heretofore not a caster of soft nothings, our Ephra, mumbled back, as best the could midst all that tower’s tonguings: “…daughter…at last I have a daughter…,” and then the two sets of lips met, in vibrant co-mingling hues of Tangerine Temptress and Autumn Rose, meeting and touching and feeling soft and warm, on Sunburst, with the moon so bright outside. Yes, a touching moment.

Nancellen now floated on a wave of Mission Accomplished, clear sailing from here on, was there nothing so perfect as a trick sighted, wooed, captured, won, was this the love she had sought so many years and never found? Thank God Garfield probably got waylaid along the way.

And Ephra, poor Ephra, what-am-I-doing-here-Ephra, was trying hard to loose her moorings, still caught on those confusing thoughts sloshing around her Park Avenue brain. Where was Abe? Who wants Abe? Abe will only find another poopsie. And make another pisher. To add to the two he’s already made who never call and say hello. So, Abe, I am with a poopsie, too. So, Abe, you are not the only one to have a poopsie and a hotsie totsie. And guess what, Abe? My poopsie totsie is taller and bigger and prettier than any of yours! And also guess what, Abe? I think I am becoming a fegalette or whatever is the feminine for fegalim, just like I read about in your bottom drawer.

So logical and illogical thoughts now vanished for them both as they surrendered. Ephra, that something warm now running down the inside of her legs, striking out on its own, forming its own tributary, this way to freedom, this way!, this way to new discoveries, she had never been an explorer in her entire life, was beginning to cry softly, the tears now mingling into tangerine roses and autumn temptresses and Nancellen was tasting the wonderful salt that, when mixed with love, becomes nonfattening sugar, yes, Nancellen now has tears of her own, do you see me, Mama?, do you see me all you men and faggots?, dykes are not the same as faggots, we can love!, we can make commitments!, pulls and clutches her new Mama and they fall on the wide expanse of Early American quilted living-room daybed, tearing off items of imprisonment, outer garments, rolling over and over and round and down and about, making up for all those years of menly incarceration, menly games, menly demands, menly men, and Ephra found herself feeling Free, and found herself sucking those lovely fingers, “You could have played the piano,” and found herself enjoying kissing and being kissed and nurtured, her breasts caressed and loved for what they were, not for what they gave or stood for.

“My dearest Nancellen, can you hear me…?” she now spoke in a voice modulated with a never-before-heard tone of love and affection and caring, not even her own children had heard this tone, “…is this please love?”

Abraham Bronstein, was it not ever thus?, stood on that outside deck on Sunburst plotzing to keep his philosophic stance. He had walked around and around this Island and now he had to walk around and into this! He had seen men kissing on the ocean as they watched the moonrise. He had seen male bodies holding, coupling, even making love. Two-men fuckings for the world to see! He had seen and he had thought: Here is The Toilet Bowl outdoors! This is worse than Berlin both before and after the troubles! Worse than Nazis! Are my Richie and my Wyatt doing this!?

And now he had seen Ephra Bronstein doing this too.

Yes, Abe was plotzing hard to keep his philosophic stance. What is she doing? I know what she is doing, but what is she doing! How do I feel about hearing such inner sounds as: “Oh, my Mama Ephra, my Q.M., you are so good, you feel so good!,” and watch the ex-wife of years and years go crazy, letting herself go unto mashugadom, not knowing that she’s thinking: Abe, you pisher, you were a lousy lay, you never made me feel this good, good-bye, Abe, good-bye plastic covers on furniture and blue poison in bowls, you may now, Abe, piss wherever you want to piss, as long as it’s not on me, I am now Living!, and he watches her go bonkers before his very eyes, throwing up stockings and garter belt and panties, undergarments, years of impedimenta to the path of pleasure.

Yes, Abe was plotzing hardest to keep his philosophic stance. On the one hand, here was a long drink of poopsie who might once and for all take an ex-wife off his hands. On the other hand, what did I do to make this ex-wife stick her hands in that! One wife, two
kinder,
no, three
kinder,
no, three ex-wives, almost four, and three
kinder,
how many suits of guilt can one man wear! Richie blackmails me, Wyatt helps him, Peetra kid-males me, and now even Ephra, too! On the one hand, what kind of Abraham gave birth to all of this? On the other hand, what kind of Abraham must put up with any of that! If I throw away all old suits, can’t I then be Free?

He didn’t know which hand to hold. Where were his answers? God, you are not giving me my answers. God, you are only giving me more problems. Is this my Mission? Please to give me a remission. Missions are for goyim. Priests and monks and men who went into the jungle.

Exhausted, he looked at his watch. He bent over to pick up his old suitcase. Soon it would be time to go into the jungle.

Tarsh stood on the roof of the Feather Party, an enormous compound at Bay Walk’s end, from which he could view the world. He laughed and laughed. Laughing gas made him laugh. It was another Hollywood premiere! Dueling searchlights once again were stabbing the sky. And down below, 456 simply gorgeous men were all in feathers! Completely, partially, symbolically, elaborately, tastefully, gaudily, repulsively, humorously, expensively, all in feathers! MGM in its hey-day could not have improved on this!

The host, Montoya, a Venezuelan painter of horse canvasses, had done it again. Last year he’d decreed they come in Red. The year before that was Roaring Twenties. The year before was Pink. The year before…oh who could remember, but it had been Fun!

Bilbo yelled up at him: “Do you know how fucking expensive fucking feathers are on the open market and how fucking expensive it is to be a fucking Philippino fairy bluebird!” Then he just as quickly flew away, crowing: “Cock-a-doodle-do! Any cock will do!”

Frigger, in a huge pumpkin, which covered him from shoulder to crotch, orange-feathered, waved up and yelled: “I’m Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Peter Eater!”

And Fallow, who had outdone himself, in St. Laurent blazer, navy with maroon piping, from which the sleeves had been removed and replaced with ostrich feathers of a length suitable for Sally Rand, yelled up as well: “If you snooze you lose!”

And both he and Frigger, arm in arm, as best they could, walked off for cruising closer to shore.

There were balloons and streamers and miles of carnation leis and twenty huge coconut palms flown in from Hawaii and a group of feathered yodelers from the Bernese Oberland and lanterns by the yard and mountains of fruit and cauldrons of pure and impure punch and the loudest of Esquino’s music and much kissing and holding and smiling and happiness and cares begone! We are here at Fire Island Pines to start the summer of our lives and the city and the world and our jobs and our hassles are far away, far, far away, again, again, again we reach for fun, who needs that world?, over the harbor and far away, we’re here, we’re here, and let them, over there, say about us what they will, who cares, who fucking cares!

A tired Anthony yelled up: “Have you seen Fred? Have you seen Wyatt?” Anthony carried only a token chicken feather, not being one for costumes,

“I haven’t seen them!” Tarsh yelled down. “Isn’t this wonderful!” Then he wondered where his humpy Rabbi had disappeared to. He’d been nice. No religion wants us. We’re going to have to invent our own.

In great excitement, Bella rushed up to Anthony. “Can you believe it! Bruce Sex-toys is rumored to have spent twenty-three hundred dollars of his very own money on his Roman centurion outfit with its flowing cape of cascading tiny tuftings falling down six heavenly feet plus two inches to his gorgeous booted garnished toes!”

“Who are you supposed to be?” Anthony studied Bella’s vaguely cowboy outfit.

“I’m Roy Rogers!”

“You look more Dale Evans to me.”
Oi,
Anthony, even your jokes are old and tired. Forget that child and go get some sleep.

They were joined by a young man with a snake in a feather boa coiled round his naked body, its head peeking over his own shaved dome.

“Hello, Sanford,” Bella said, stepping back a bit. “How are you tonight? How’s…Abner?”

“I’m a work of art,” Sanford said.

“We can see that,” Bella agreed, stepping just another step away, for safety’s sake.

“Everyone is worshipping me. They are watching me and worshipping me. I am beautiful and desirable and completely unobtainable.”

Anthony agreed. “The snake gets in the way.”

Up on the roof, Tarsh decided ’twas time now to descend.

Fred found Ike Bulb’s on Aeon. The television was still on in the bedroom as Fred slipped in, the Home Team now playing the Padres, and he turned it off and smiled down upon the resplendent naked figure of his awakening Dinky, or his ex-Dinky, or his soon-to-be again Dinky, I must be stronger now than ever before, this is our last act, kid, I have to have some answers Now, yes, his Dinky resplendently displayed upon the knobby bumps of Ike’s ancient chenille spread. “Hi, there, sport’s fan. Let’s talk. Where shall we begin?”

As the recipient of both a nasty letter and a right to the jaw, Dinky did not smile back. “You’ve said it all,” he said. And since his nakedness was now rather obvious and now obviously rather appealing to Fred, who was looking at him with those 17-page-Ode-to Potential-and-Possibility eyes, Dinky reached over speedily to the camp chair on his left and extracted a black leather g-string from the pile of his coming evening’s more formal attire. “I framed your letter and hung it on my wall. I’ve never been called a loser before.” He quickly slipped into the g-string and zinged it into place.

Ah, yes, Fred noted the stack of After Six, Wardrobe from the Wicker Collection. Let’s talk about that. He had noted, too, the Vaselined cock’s glinting. I wonder who the lucky recipient was. Let’s talk about that. And who’s he leathering up for? Let’s talk about that, too. So talk, Freddie, Fred-chen, talk. You’re here. God damn it, talk! That g-string is very sexy. It carries his cock and balls nicely. It fits around his waist nicely. It fits into the crack in his ass nicely. I am shivering nicely. I think I am getting off my course. “Where’d you buy that? The g-string.”

“I had it made in Florence.”

“I never knew you’d been to Florence.” I always wanted to go to Florence. I was saving Florence and Venice. For me and Mr. Right. Fred felt his tongue go dry, in need of some Vaseline itself perhaps, and desire a life of its own perhaps, and commence a circumnavigation up that crack perhaps, yep, I am definitely getting off my course…just as my arms want to throw a quick tackle and just as my mind fears that all any of this would accomplish beyond a scrimmage would be yet another incomplete forward pass. And all of me again penalized for being off sides. Please note that at this stage of “our romance” and “our relationship” you are so intimidated and off-balance that you are afraid to touch him. Another Dennis might jump out from under the bed. “Listen…” Fred tried again.