I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore (3 page)

“You liked him,” I put in. “That’s what it is.”

“Well, I told him maybe he should try making such photographs. And he laughed and said, ‘Would you make them with me?’ I guessed he was joking. But he kept talking about it. He told me Karen doesn’t really know him. And how I’m so much nicer to him. And how … how we should make those pictures. And … out of nowhere … he said, ‘I sure would like to ream you.’ Just like that. I was so startled I couldn’t speak. I thought I’d misheard him. But he went on. ‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said. ‘I just want to put my cock in you and see what you’re like. We can be buddies, okay?’” He turned back to us. “Come and see. He’s standing in the window.”

We got there so fast we almost crashed through the glass. There he was, looking at us. Alex smiled and waved, and Joe wiggled his index finger at him in that “Come here” gesture that kids use.

“So you’re buddies,” Dennis Savage said as Alex got his coat on.

“One catch,” Alex replied. “We can’t call it by name. It’s okay only if you don’t admit you’re doing it. The day I say ‘gay’ he’ll drop me.”

“Or kill you.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me. He only gets mad at strangers.”

*   *   *

I don’t know whether Alex thought of Dennis Savage and me as the natural strangers of Joe Dolan, but he kept the man to himself. Perhaps he thought exposure to outright gays might threaten their touchy diplomacy. A lover who won’t bear the word
gay
obviously won’t be comfortable around practitioners of the style.

So we all left it thus. From my desk, spotting Joe watching at his window, I gave him no more than a glance. And the days stole by me; and I wrote; and it was with some shock that I noticed one time that Joe the Straight had cut his hair and grown a clone moustache. Alex tried to shrug it away when I ran into him in Sloan’s. “I don’t know,” he said. “He just … he decided…” He faked an elaborate pantomime with the tuna cans, apparently dismissing me.

“I’m not moving,” I told him.

He wouldn’t look up. “He joined a gym, too. He’s really gotten into it. He’s quite … different…”

“Are you disappointed? Or Columbus sighting America?”

He grew fierce. “I wish you’d stop.”

“I’m too curious to stop. Is he gay or isn’t he?”

“Is it always war or peace? Comic or tragic?”

“If you’re fighting, it’s war; if you’re not, it’s peace. If it’s about courtship, it’s comic; if it’s about honor, it’s tragic. And if it makes love to men, it’s gay.”

He stared at me for a spell, said, “I can remember when I thought you might be my best friend,” and walked out.

*   *   *

What had got into me? It’s none of my business whether Alex plays comedy or tragedy. Two days later he called, apologized, and invited me to dinner.

So I officially met Joe, who couldn’t have looked gayer in his white T-shirt, Levi’s, and Frye boots. He didn’t
seem
gay, lacking both self-willing sensuality and self-spoofing satire. But he also lacked the self-righteous coarseness of proletarian straight culture. He was placeless, a man without a side in the war. He seemed unaware of Alex unless directly addressing him, yet I felt a marvelous tension in the averting of their eyes. While we were clearing the table, I caught him watching Alex, who was at the sink. Joe picked up a glass, took it to Alex, pressed it into his grasp, and gently rubbed his fingers. “Yeah,” he said. Then he put his hand on Alex’s neck and traced a finger along his eyebrows, shifting weight from foot to foot as if dancing. “Oh yeah,” he went on, nabbing Alex’s eyes with his own, and he purred a little, then concluded, “Oh, that’s real nice.” It was the most pornographic act I’d ever witnessed.

*   *   *

“Well?” Dennis Savage asked later. “Is he or isn’t he? And if you don’t tell me, I’ll make you rim the Roach Motel.”

“Let me point out that there is an incredibly vicious dish-queen in this room and it isn’t me. Can I tell who it is?”

“Can we please stop with this and tell me if Joe Dolan is gay!”

“I don’t know what he is. He doesn’t seem straight and he doesn’t seem gay.”

“Is he still a big dull lump? Sexually?”

“Well … no.”

“You mean he’s hot?”

“It depends on … actually—”

Dennis Savage closed in. “You wake up and he’s in your bed. Either you say, ‘Get out of this bed’ or you say ‘Help me make it through the night.’ Which? Pick one only.” I just looked at him. “He’s hot, isn’t he? He has the look, doesn’t he? He knows how to do it, right?
Right?
”

“Maybe.”

“I hope you never join the CIA. Because if we’re West Berlin, and the KGB is East Berlin, where would you be?
Middle
Berlin, right?”

“This is where I paint a telephone on your face and dial you with ice-cube tongs.”

“Does he have feelings?”

That halted me. “Who doesn’t?”

“Most straights don’t. Or no one knows for sure. Only a straight could tell us, and no straight is sensitive enough to know what feelings are.”

“Are you saying that straights are androids?”

“No, I’m saying that straights are video games.”

“You know,” I said, “it’s just possible that he is straight. That, in fact, he took Alex to bed because after a lifetime of failing to get women to regard him as anything but an ork, he decided to go with someone who admired him. Or … I don’t know. Maybe he’s just another nerd exploding out of his closet.”

“Does he, I repeat, have feelings?”

“Did gays have feelings in the 1940s, when no one tolerated their feelings? Joe Dolan may simply be an uninformed homosexual.”

“That’s gay.”

“Stop playing king of the Circuit and look at it from someone else’s point of view, all right? He comes from some small town where everything is
Father Knows Best.
He has no access to all the media snitching. He never reads a book, much less hangs out at the opera or blunders into a gay bar. He could miss the whole thing. And he grows up thinking he’d better hide his sexuality, because he thinks he’s the only one—or, who knows?, maybe everyone hides it. But it’s hard to be selective in such matters, so he hides
everything.
Including his feelings. That, my friend, is what gay life was like in the old days. One man befriends another, opportunity strikes, they become buddies. And only the other buddies know what they are. Do you like that story?”

“He’s hot, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he’s hot.”

“Not handsome or charming.”

“No.”

“Not even fun.”

“Not yet.”

“But strong and loyal. Am I correct?”

“You are smug, but correct.”

“When will he reveal his feelings?”

“When Alex hurts him, and he weeps in despair.”

Dennis Savage exhaled with contentment and went into the kitchen to refill the glasses. “I didn’t care for this adventure before, but now I love it. Except you’re wrong about one piece. Alex will not hurt Joe Dolan. He’s been left out of too much to blow something this good.”

“You don’t know Alex.”

Dennis Savage handed me wine. “Did he hurt you?”

I raised my glass. “To new friends,” I said.

*   *   *

Our new friend was Joe, because Alex was now bringing him out. Joe still thought of movies as something you see rather than discuss, had no use for cabaret, and didn’t know how to dance: there was nothing to bring. But his months at the gym had styled him smartly, and he could pass. He had lost his nondescript straight’s fleshiness; he was cut and basted. His pants were tight, his hands heavy, his nipples offensive. At the Tenth Floor one night, Dennis Savage and I overheard two kids discussing some avatar when suddenly we realized that they were referring to Joe, dancing shirtless with Alex. We watched the crowd watching them, knew that Joe was crossing over, wondered how it felt to him, took in the music and the crowd and the hunger, and joined Joe and Alex on the floor.

It was a gala last night before the summer break, and the room was packed. How amazing to think back and realize that the scene that would eventually fill and jade The Saint had started out in that undecorated little den of innocence. It was hard to dance without jostling one’s neighbors, yet someone behind Joe was taking up far too much room, throwing his arms around, clapping and posing. He was knocking into everyone around him, and finally Joe told him, in a neutral tone, “Look, would you mind keeping your hands to yourself?”

“Why don’t you fuck your panties, you frump?” said the stranger, a high-voltage little queen with the voice of transvestite Brillo.

“Okay,” said Joe, still evenly. “Now you can move out of our part of the floor, or you’re going to wish you did.”

“Says who, you bitch?” With that the stranger shoved Joe at the rest of us, a foolish act given their respective sizes. Joe hauled back and, with a hoarse cry, felled his foe.

“Oh shit!” the queen screamed, feeling blood at his nose, as his friends whimpered and giggled. “Oh, help me!”

“You asked for it,” Joe told him.

Alex was furious. “Did you have to fight?” he whispered through his teeth. “What is this, a circus? A SWAT encounter?” He stormed off the floor. The rest of us followed, while Joe’s opponent, his coterie, and thrilled bystanders played out The Theatre of the Punched-Out Queen.

*   *   *

Had we been smart, we would have called it a night. But no, we went on to Dennis Savage’s place, with Alex seething and Joe bewildered. I knew there was more to come, and, yes, no sooner did our host pour out the wine than Joe gave Alex his opening by rehearsing the episode.

“He shoved me, didn’t he?” he asked. “What was I supposed to do, thank him?”

“You don’t fight,” Alex spit at him, “at the Tenth Floor.”

“It’s not my fault where it happened.”

“
Your
behavior is
your
fault!”

Joe turned away, struggling to control his anger.

“How about some music?” I asked. “Some Nino Rota?”

“Otto e Mezzo!”
cried Dennis Savage.

“Giulietta degli Spiriti!”

Alex viewed us as if we were the Barry Sisters making a comeback singing “Que Sera, Sera” in his bathroom, and returned to Joe.

“You’re like something just off the bus from Akron. You’re not ready for the social life. You’re a pushy clod.”

“I never said I wasn’t. And why do we have to go dancing? Or out to dinner with your ooh-la-la friends?” He turned to us. “I don’t mean you two.” We felt like the Barry Sisters, barred from presenting an Academy Award backstage at the last minute on account of deficient ooh-la-la. “But some of your friends treat me as if—”

“And they’re
right!
”

“I don’t want to go to these places. Why can’t we just be together? That’s all I want.” He went to Alex, held him by the waist, and saw him so acutely all three of us were transfixed. Looked and
saw.
“Just to be with you. To pump you and cream you.”

“You beggar!” Alex shouted. “You
filth!
You dare say this in front of them?”

We seemed to be the Barry Sisters, stumbling onstage during a performance of
Private Lives.

“Why shouldn’t I? They know we’re buddies.”

“We’re
not
buddies!
We are not!
” Dennis Savage had never seen Alex like this; I had. “We’re
lovers.
We’re men who fuck together. Your cock in my ass. Lovers, Joe. Say the word ‘gay.’ Say ‘lovers’!”

“That’s
enough!
”

“Gay is the word, Joe. That lovers use, you know? Gay means you’re a beautiful muscle dude who rides me out of my mind. Tell them how your body moves. We’re filth. We’ll tell them together. Then you can sock me, too.”

Joe grabbed Alex, to hold or to hurt him, but he kept changing his grip and finally he put his hand over Alex’s mouth. “I know what we are,” he said. “I know about love and things. I’m not a beast. I’m
not
a beast. I just don’t want to be pushed around. That guy at the dancing was asking for it. He started it.” He let go of Alex and faced us. “He says I’m filth and then he says I’m beautiful. What am I supposed to think?”

“You’re supposed to think you’re gay,” Alex told him. “Say it: say ‘Joe Dolan is gay.’ Say ‘Joe Dolan is a beast.’”

Joe hesitated, shook his head, then tried to grab Alex again.

“A beast,” Alex pursued, pushing Joe away. “How can you love men when you fight them? You have no smarts. You have no patience. You have no ambition. You have no sensitivity. You’re a stupid hunk with thighs of death, that’s all. And when I tire of you or you tire of me, you’ll be nothing but Karen’s castoff memory. How do you like it, beast? So you punched a pantywaist in a dance hall. Wow! Nice job, Thighs. Inside of three minutes, you can alienate everyone in a room. You’ve got the touch, Thighs!”

And Joe was weeping. “I did the right thing,” he said. He wiped his eyes, but the tears kept coming. “How can you say that to me, Alex?”

“How beautiful,” said Alex, “to see you cry.”

“Would someone like a toasted bagel?” Dennis Savage asked.

“I’m not a beast,” Joe insisted. “I’m your buddy.”

“You’re human garbage,” Alex replied.

“Leave him alone, Alex,” I said.

“He’s a bully.”

“He’s had a good teacher.”

“I did the right thing!” Joe grabbed Alex, spun him around, pushed him, held him, stroked his hair. Dennis Savage and I might have been the Barry Sisters screening
Psycho,
or perhaps
She Married Her Boss.
“Okay?” Joe went on. “Please! Okay?”

“Only if you call it by its name,” said Alex. We could see his cock stirring at Joe’s touch.

“Take me how I am.”

“How you are,” Alex persisted, “is a lewd queen.”

“I’m a
man.
”

“We’re all lewd queens,” Dennis Savage observed.

“Dennis Savage is a lewd queen,” I explained. “I’m a man.”

“Excuse me, but you’re a princess.”

“And you’re the pea.”

“Will you shut up?” Alex screamed. “How can we quarrel with you two playing fag vaudeville?”

“I love him,” Joe told us. “I truly do. To hold him and talk with him and … the rest. Is that enough? I am saying that I love him.”