Chapter 34
October 1982
“We fall but we keep getting’ up.”
“Over and over and over again …”
It occurred to me after the third time that Everett had pulled this stunt that it was getting kind of old.
If the DJ played the Pretenders song, he’d intentionally spill out of his chair on that line, and plop himself back up on cue, and I’d laugh, because I knew he was going to do it. This time, he managed rather well, considering his legs were wrapped in fins.
Halloween was on Sunday, but all the celebrations were held the night before, including the big gay dance party at Equus that Gerard coaxed us into attending with him.
A hulking football jock, dressed as a hulking football jock, loomed, ready, it seemed, to pound me for laughing at Everett, until I yelled over the blasting music.
“It’s okay!!” I nearly spilled my beer on him, shouting into his shoulder. “He does this all the time!” I didn’t mind spilling it on myself. To match Everett’s merman costume, I was dressed in a bright yellow raincoat as the Gorton’s Fisherman, but my fake beard kept falling off, so I put it in a pocket with the pipe I’d found at a thrift store.
“Oh!” The football jock shouted back, still confused.
“He’s my boyfriend!”
“Oh.” He blinked twice, looked at Everett, then me, then back and forth again. “Oh!”
I saw with that light of understanding in the eyes of the guy, in a gay bar, that silent moment where I could see him constructing the actual possibility that Everett and I had sex, me and that cute guy in a wheelchair, with fins made out of some shiny fabric Gerard had found. Witnessing that realization again, in a stranger’s eyes, turned me on more than the idea of actually sleeping with anyone else, even a big husky drunk football jock.
The music shifted jaggedly from disco songs to recent rock favorites. People would pour onto the dance floor or abandon it with a song’s first chords. The fact that Everett was dancing with Gerard didn’t bother me.
Telling myself that as I sipped my beer, the football jock continued talking to me, and I feigned a fascinated interest in his muddled sympathetic comments, as if being Everett’s boyfriend was some sort of sacrifice.
Nodding my head, sneaking glances at Everett on the dance floor, I hoped he would see me with another guy, and that it would draw him back to me. But he wasn’t even looking.
Gerard flailed around him in a bulky black and white outfit with huge shiny plastic shoulder pads and a cardboard bow tie. He had colored his hair jet black and wore white make-up, saying he was some artsy singer named Klaus Nomi. People either gave him strange stares or rushed up to him with praiseful screams of recognition.
He could have used a few pointers on how to dance with a wheelchair-using partner. I didn’t offer.
And I had a lot of reasons. I finally saw Gerard’s interest in Everett to be sincere, thankfully platonic, and apparently, he was a good enough dancer.
To me, it meant he was just like us, trying to find himself through a series of disguises, the latest of which he brought nearly completed that night when he had come over to help sew up Everett’s fins, and pretty much his entire costume. After attempting to dab some glitter on Everett’s chest, I insisted on taking over, although I did let him give Everett pointers on his turquoise eye make-up.
Gerard had insisted on playing us a few songs by this Klaus Nomi character, which were pretty appropriate for Halloween. Gerard’s face was more round than the gaunt singer depicted on the album cover, but he got the make-up down perfectly.
His being so chummy with us that night made me want to warm up to the football player. Something about those black make-up dashes on his cheeks made him sexier than he already was.
Perhaps Everett would open up to another threeway, if we got drunk enough. But with Gerard having left his regular clothes at our apartment, I knew that would be a problem. Perhaps, as I gulped down my beer, I wanted to make a problem.
But my drunken come-ons fell on drunken ears. The football jock swayed, offered a dopey smile, patted me on the shoulder and said, “You’re really brave.”
“Brave? Why?”
Football jock nodded toward my merman.
Brave? I was scared every day, worried about losing him, losing his interest, being unable to keep up with his ongoing craving for adventures. What was this hulking guy trying to say? I wanted to shout at him, punch him, wake him up, or perhaps lock him in a kiss to make Everett jealous. But he just smiled innocently.
“I’m gonna go dance,” I said as I wobbled myself away.
About an hour later, Gerard sidled up next to me as I bought a third round of drinks at the bar. I had switched to a soda, since I realized I would be the designated driver.
“Everett’s being adored by his fans,” Gerard observed.
I turned back to see a gladiator and his kneeling Cleopatra talking with Everett.
“It’s cool. We have our little signals for escape.”
“Oh, do you?”
“Yes, we do, Gerard. We do a lot of things together.”
“I never took you for the subtle type.”
“So, uh, Gerard. We should be heading out soon.”
“Sure. That fireman’s not coming back.”
“When we get back to our place, you’re…” I pointed west.
“Leaving?” He huffed. “Yes.”
“Sorry. I just want to establish that.”
Gerard had slept on the sofa a few weeks before during a well-timed rainstorm. I told myself that his presence wasn’t what ‘spoiled the mood’ in bed with Everett that night. The next morning, Gerard had whipped up a continental breakfast buffet with “whatever I found in the fridge,” he tossed off, dismissing Everett’s accolades. I tried to ignore having been effetely shown up in the cooking department.
Fortunately, this time, he got my not-subtle message.
“It’s okay,” Gerard said. “I’ll just get a cab or get a ride with some of my
other
friends.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s no bother,” he patted me on the shoulder in a patronizing gesture before fiddling inside his cardboard costume to extract a cigarette and lighter.
“You think that’s a good idea?”
“What?”
I pointed at his costume. “You’re kind of…flammable.”
“Oh, now you care about me?” he snapped before sauntering off.
A while later, I had finally coaxed Everett into leaving, despite his popularity.
“But where’s Klaus?”
“Who?”
“Gerard, silly.”
Everett wheeled beside me, or tried.
“Gerard-een! Where are you?”
I’d rarely seen him push his chair while drunk, and his weaving pattern down a side street induced a few giggles from me, until he ran over my foot. He hadn’t even wanted to put a T-shirt and jacket over his chest, whose green glitter he’d sweated off, until I insisted.
“He took off with some of his Transylvanian pals.”
“Oh, well.” He zoomed ahead of me, until he noticed I had stopped.
“The van’s this way.”
“Well, alrighty then.” Another strong push, and he caught up, then passed me along the sidewalk. Other costumed revelers giggled and hooted down the street. I was about to warn him of a curb he didn’t seem to notice, but then his fins got caught in the spokes. He attempted a wheelie to back up from being tangled, and instead crashed backwards onto the sidewalk.
“Jeez, Ev!”
I bent over to help him. He instead pushed up on one arm, then flopped back down, grabbing my arm and pulling me down with him.
“You’re drunk.”
“You’re ubz-observant.” He tried to focus on me. “Wherezure mustache, sailor?”
“Lost at sea. Will you get up?”
“It was sexy. Come ‘ere. Just lay here with me.”
I sat beside him, amused by the green make-up smudges around his eyes.
“Aw, somebody’s angry.”
“I’m just tired. It’s late.”
Then he sang, softly, “We are all of us in the gut-tah. But some of us are looking at the stars.”
“Very good.”
“Did you know?”
“Ev, not now.”
“Did. You. Know.” He scooted himself, as if for emphasis, making his fins flop.
I sighed. “What?”
“That’s actually Oscar Wilde’s line. Famous deceased homosexual. Sent to prison.”
“Which we’ll be, too, if we don’t get out of this gutter.” I forced his chair up, shoved his fins in place, and pushed his chair from behind.
“Stop that.” He swatted behind himself.
Somehow, I managed to pour him into the van and drive us home, where, after stripping him down to his shorts, then disconnecting Mr. Pee Buddy and pouring it out in the toilet and rinsing it out, I returned to the bedroom.
Already half asleep, his eyes closed, he muttered, “You love your little crip, doncha?”
Standing over him, I tried to ignore his remark and pulled the covers up over him. But he yanked them back, exposing his naked body, teasing. He looked up, tried to focus on me. “Come on. Gimme that big dick.” He lolled his tongue out in mock hunger.
“You’re too drunk.”
“What would you do without me?” He sighed, rolled over, his back to me.
In the bathroom, I brushed my teeth, then grabbed a towel, thinking he’d refuse my help in reattaching his catheter. But by the time I returned to the bed, he was asleep. I lay the towel over his waist, and slumped into the bed next to my catch of the day.
Everett’s rumpled fins and my raincoat greeted me from the floor the next morning as I tripped over them.
In the kitchen, I noticed a plate of toast and scrambled eggs that seemed to have hardened, wolfed them down as I warily eyed Everett, who sat on the sofa in the living room, his chair nearby.
He was reading a newspaper, actually one in a stack of newspapers. He didn’t even greet me a good morning. What had I done, other than flirt with that football player and try to present him as a tribute?
After gulping down half a glass of orange juice, I sat down beside him.
“You’re looking studious.”
“We’re definitely done with fooling around.”
“What? Um, good morning?”
“No more messing around, sex-wise.”
“Somebody’s sobered up. Why are you deciding this now?”
“Read this.”
He got the local newspaper along with the campus weekly. Along with his subscriptions to the gay newspapers, Mrs. Kukka had the Sunday
The New York Times
sent weekly. But it was the article in
Philadelphia Gay News
that had a more expansive article.
“And this.”
I don’t know why I snapped at him that day. Perhaps it was a late case of prescience, along with a mild hangover. Actually, I was relieved to hear him declare our exclusivity, assert his alpha status. The sex with Chuck the volleyball coach and Nick the paramedic had been great. I just felt more advanced with Everett, in tune.
Actually, it was the hangover that made me snap.
I read the article. Some scientists had finally figured out more information about the disease that seemed to be infecting gay men like Wesley.
I worried about him so often. He had fallen from his pull-up bars, slid out on ice patches, and crashed out on the basketball court countless times. But he wouldn’t stop. It was as if he thought he could force healing down through his body one bruise at a time.
And then there was his eccentric, if not pleasurable course of study in anal stimulation as a nerve-stimulating and possibly regenerative remedy; my fucking him, slowly, carefully, and, over time, with more than a few thrusts. Knowing he couldn’t completely feel it made me wary, move slowly as he quivered from some other touch; my lick inside his armpit or down across his chest. More often it had been merely us lying side by side, jerking each other off like teenagers.
That seemed to be our limited sexual future, since the news articles pretty much confirmed that we could be killing one another through sex.
“I don’t even know if we should be having sex at all,” he said.
“But we’re–”
“We don’t know what we are. But we know what I did, with Wesley.”
“But that was years ago.”
“They don’t know what the length of–”
“You’re overreacting. This is guys like him, bath houses and orgies.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Well, what do we know?”
“What they know,” he almost stabbed the newspaper with a finger, “is that it’s about sex, or blood, or sex and blood.”
“Okay, so avoid sharp knives.”
Everett tossed the newspaper aside. “You’re gonna make jokes? Really? Wesley is dying back in New York, and probably a lot of over guys; thousands, maybe.”
“I’m sorry. I just–”
“I’m just saying we have to be careful.”