I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore (8 page)

“But since you brought it up, you can make the arrangements.”

“My pleasure.”

“It’ll be grand showing Little Kiwi all the places. Like revisiting our youth. There are three memories that every gay lives on—the first Gay Pride March, the first sight of the Saint, and the first trip to the Pines.”

“Aren’t you afraid of losing Little Kiwi out there?” I asked. “It’s been known to happen.”

He nodded, smiling vaguely, nodded again. “I’ve got Little Kiwi all wired down.”

“You didn’t seem to think so a minute ago. You came rocketing out of the kitchen like a husband.”

“I just didn’t want to miss anything,” he said airily. “You put on such an amusing act. Yea, if I’m the husband, what are you—the iceman?”

“Maybe.”

“Make sure you set us up in a real
bijou
of a house, now. We want to do the Island in top style.”

“Shall we say the weekend after Memorial Day?”

“I can’t wait to see Little Kiwi on the ferry—the wind in his hair and such. We could arrive just in time for tea and step right off the boat into the throng, Little Kiwi a sensation in lederhosen and I, Lord Mayor of the Circuit, greeting my fans.” He regarded me with something like scorn. “Do you suppose you could, just for once, try to look famous? Nothing spoils an entrance like one of the party clomping in like somebody’s uncle.”

As he reached the door I said, “Please, don’t worry about Little Kiwi and me.”

“Was I planning to?”

“You know what they say about the iceman.”

“What do they say, you bum sheik?”

“He cometh.”

*   *   *

It went off like a dream. We claimed the hospitality of a wealthy friend of mine with a house on the surf, two decks, a pool, endless room, and the honest generosity of a golden-age host. We caught the Islanders’ bus at Fifty-third and Second, Bauhaus and all, and Dennis Savage planted Little Kiwi across the aisle from us on his own. “He has to get out in the world,” said Dennis Savage. There Little Kiwi entranced an elderly man with Wacko the Puppet, a character Little Kiwi creates by smushing his hand into a paper envelope to form a mouth. Wacko speaks in a crackly voice suggestive of Wheat Chex coughing and hasn’t a shred of wit; his charm lies not in what he says but in the fact that Little Kiwi gets such a kick out of him. It’s like Joan Crawford’s acting: you don’t admire the talent; you admire the commitment.

“I have a beautiful home on the bay,” the old man was saying. “I’m looking for a houseboy. Would you like the job?”

“Don’t do windows!” Wacko warned Little Kiwi.

“The duties are light,” the man went on.

“That lets Little Kiwi out,” Wacko observed. “He likes a lot of structure in his life.”

“The salary is very negotiable.”

“Now, Wacko,” said Little Kiwi, “tell the folks that story about the Polish elephant.”

“Please,” the man pleaded. “Please.”

“Why don’t you trade seats with Little Kiwi?” I asked Dennis Savage. “He’s shattering the social contract.”

“He has to see life and learn. He’s been very sheltered till now.”

“He’s about to give that old man a heart attack.”

“That is the role that old men play in the gay world. If you haven’t accepted that by now, you’ll never know anything.”

As we disembarked at Sayville, Dennis Savage got teary. “Remember?” he kept saying. “Remember? The magic of the Island!” As the boat pulled out of the slip, he gripped Little Kiwi’s shoulders and promised him the most spectacular experience of his life. Wacko immediately bit his nose and he calmed down; but, true enough, the spell of the Pines came upon us as we cut through the bay.

“There is a tale,” I began. “In ancient days, when the Pines consisted of a few cottages and the ferries stopped once a week, a collection of very special people sped over the water to the Star Party. Everyone would come as a Hollywood personality, full kit. The food! The prizes! The guests! This was a festival to redeem an era!”

Mention elitism and all gays are transfixed. “When was this?” Dennis Savage asked. “Was Wacko there?” said Little Kiwi. “The puppet?”

“With so many stupendous guests, it was agreed that all would enter at the same moment. Consider them boarding the ferry, each thinking of his personal
grandezza,
retouching his
toilette,
planning his
mots.
Each had a secret dream of who he might be, could he but
become.
”

“The magic of the Island!” Dennis Savage breathed.

“What a tension there was as each came unto the ferry, the many dog-pets—impressed by the crush of celebrity—barking and whining.” Little Kiwi patted Bauhaus’ head; Bauhaus growled. “As the ferry neared the Island, the company tensed, wondered, thrilled. Consider their state.” We too were nearing port, cutting by the ambiguous coast. All you see is greenery broken by roofs, but you sense the extraordinary. You have heard amazing stories; you look at the place where they happen.

“Just as the boat sighted dock,” I went on, “disaster struck. The ferry lurched, struck bottom, and sank. Everyone drowned!”

“No,” said Little Kiwi. “Wait—”

“Ridiculous,” cried Dennis Savage. “The bay is four feet deep.”

“It sank. Yes. Horrible and true. They held no party that night.”

“No
party!
” Little Kiwi repeated, with a miserable groan, as if I had told him that the world’s supply of grilled cheese had been exhausted.

“And, so they say, when the moon is full and the Island humming, that ferry rises, a ghost. As midnight strikes, if you approach the harbor, you can hear …
the ghastly yapping of a hundred poodles!
”

“Satirist!”
Dennis Savage hissed, as we pulled in. It was just after lunch. We turned south on the boardwalk to check in with our host, Wacko commenting avidly on the passing scene, and the passing scene, in whispers, commenting avidly on Little Kiwi. About halfway there I looked back and saw that the old man from the bus was following us.

“Maybe he lives in this direction,” Dennis Savage said.

“No, he looks guilty. He’s
lurking.
” We had stopped, and so had he.

“I’ll take care of this,” Dennis Savage snapped, starting back.

I grabbed his arm. “Let me talk to him. You’re not gentle enough.”

“You? You’ll throw a drink in his face!”

“That’s telling him!” cried Wacko. “Put him in the blender and dial puree!”

Dennis Savage sent the man away, weeping; and Little Kiwi went on snagging hearts. Our host had been having drinks with a friend, who greeted Dennis Savage and me with vacant politesse. But when the friend’s eyes lit on Little Kiwi, he turned vivacious. We dropped our luggage at the door and plopped down with dim smiles and nothing to say in the Pines manner. But the man went on and on, addressing himself to Little Kiwi, going for broke. He hung around so long he practically had to be asked to leave. Of course he insisted on kissing us all good-bye. Our host endured it, Dennis Savage made his usual lateral cheek-to-cheek bypass, and I simply picked up some luggage and carried it into a room. But Little Kiwi, the real object of this exercise, wailed, “It’s the kiss of death!” and backed away.

I returned to a room made of embarrassment and horror. Apparently this was an Influential Man. Our host turned to me and whispered, “Get him out of here!” through his teeth. I grabbed the man by the collar and was about to swing him toward the door when our host restrained me. “Not him!” he cried. “The
kid!
”

“Come, Little Kiwi, we’ll view the ocean.”

“He has boils on his nose,” Little Kiwi screamed as we left, Bauhaus staggering after us. “He has liver lips!”

“Hush.”

“Meet us at tea,” Dennis Savage called out at the door. “And do me a favor—lose the puppet.”

That part was a cinch: Wacko fell in the water and drowned, and, Bauhaus barking at every wave, Little Kiwi and I walked west along the water’s edge. I never know what to say to him, so we moved in silence all the way to the Grove, which Little Kiwi wanted to explore. “This one looks different,” he noted—from the Pines, and indeed it is; cramped, campy, and heedless of fashion where the Pines is expansively tense with it. The Grove is like a stomach that has sagged atrociously for twenty years; the Pines is abdominals perfectly turned.

“Why are we here?” Little Kiwi suddenly asked.

“We walked here.”

“On Fire Island, I mean. Us three.”

“For fun.”

“No.”

“For adventure.”

He shook his head.

“Okay, you tell me.”

“No, it was your idea to come out here. What are you two planning?”

I said nothing. We were walking back along the beach, admiring the sunset. The sand was nearly deserted, though here and there solos and small groups were playing out the day’s concerto of desire and regret. Ahead of us we saw a tall, dark-haired, very well-built, and extremely handsome man of about thirty-five stalk down the beach toward a young, fair man in the surf up to his thighs. As the older man neared him he turned and they stared at each other for a long moment. Everything else around us seemed to stop, too. The older man very gently stroked the youth’s chest. The youth returned the gesture, but not willingly—uneasily, maybe, in a beautiful alarm, never taking his eyes from the man’s own. They went on trading these compliments in a kind of reverie, hypnotized by the setting, by their utter disregard for the received inhibitions of Western civilization, and perhaps by their own grandeur as archetypes, like unto like. It was awesome: turbulent and still. So open, so secret. It was the magic of the Island. Oblivious of the rest of us, the two finally stopped touching and just looked. Then the man put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and together they walked out of the water and across the sand to the boardwalk.

Little Kiwi looked at me. “Do they know each other?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“They just … met? Like that?”

“It happens.”

“Is it going to happen to me?”

“Do you want it to?”

He was silent. Then: “What is it
for?
”

“What’s an orange for? Or shoes?”

“I
ate
an orange,” he replied. “I
wore
a shoe.”

We reflected, looking out upon the sea. Bauhaus, whose existence is an endless chain of wrong choices, rushed sneezing out of the surf, wrestled frantically in the sand, gobbled seaweed, and threw up.

“That dog of yours,” I said, “is going to make a big hit at tea.”

We arrived late and put in the worst sort of entrance: moodily pensive. Dennis Savage’s eyes narrowed as we joined him. Our host was high, however, and forgave me five or six times for our faux pas with the Influential Man. “Well, he really is a troll,” our host admitted. “He has everything but the bridge. Dear me, that little boy has a nice frown. Where did Dennis Savage find him, do you suppose?”

We gazed dotingly upon Little Kiwi. A huge weightlifter in silk pajama bottoms also took note of him, moved near, and smiled down like a rainbow as Little Kiwi slowly looked up at him.

“You’re the sweetest little thing on the Island,” said the weightlifter, “and that’s a fact.” He ran a finger down the front of Little Kiwi’s shirt and hooked it on his belt, pulling him closer. “Think we could arrange something, babe?”

Little Kiwi dropped his eyes; his fingers rustled as if Wacko the Puppet were turning over in his grave. Then he looked at the man and said, “Little Kiwi is afraid of you.”

The weightlifter laughed, patted Little Kiwi’s head, and moved off as Dennis Savage glared daggers in my direction.

“Don’t look at me,” I told him. “I’m not in this scene.”

Oh yes, I was. As our host and Little Kiwi collaborated on dinner in the kitchen, Dennis Savage laid me out to filth in the living room.

“What have you done to him? What did you say? Where did you take him? I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s …
crestfallen.
”

“He saw the magic of the Island.”

“I’ll just bet he did! When he left this house today he was a Pan of the Circuit. He had presto, mistos, contempo.”

“Sounds like a new series of designer bank checks.”

“This always happens when I let him alone with you!” Dennis Savage raged. “That time I had flu and he had dinner at your place, he came back saying the world was going to end. He was afraid of the dark for weeks!”

“He asked about Spengler’s theories because he saw—”

“Spengler!
Spengler?
Little Kiwi wouldn’t know Spengler if he caught him rimming Hegel in Xenon!”

“The book happened to be lying open on the ottoman of my armchair and he asked me—”

“I suppose you and he discussed Kant this afternoon and that’s why he showed up at tea in such a merry mood!”

“Oh, Christ! What should I have done, then—taken him to the meat rack? What do you think the magic of the Island is, pray?”

“It’s ever such delicious quiche, of course!” cried our host, sweeping in with a hot one. “And salad!
Vino!
” Trivets and flatware erupted and settled. “Now, get set for, yes, the
pêche de résistance!
Okay, Little Kiwi!”

Out came Little Kiwi, solemnly bearing a bowl of fruit.

“Look,” declaimed our host, “at what Little Kiwi made!”

“Grapes and a peach?” I asked.

“He made
fruit selection!
”

“By myself,” Little Kiwi added.

We tried to make dinner festive, but Little Kiwi’s funk seemed to have deepened. Every innocent gambit of conversation I played somehow kept coming around to Heavy Topic, Dennis Savage could utter nothing but insults (directed at me), and our host became so dizzy trying to enliven us that the table might have been flying through the air at a drag ball. Even Bauhaus picked up on our troubles; he was whining so, we had to tie him up out on the deck. Finally, in desperation, we tried eating in silence, whereupon poor Little Kiwi put his head down and wept.

We were too shocked to do anything. Or no: we did that stupid, helpless, wasteful thing—we sat and watched.

“I don’t want to,” Little Kiwi told us. “I don’t like it.”