Axenfeld already knew the Leo-McKewens. Mitch Leo had not only attended that Ivy League school along with Axenfeld, but he’d been published in the last few issues of the literary magazine. In the years since school, the two young promising writers had sustained a desultory correspondence. This had become more intense when Mitch wrote about his falling in love with Frankie McKewen, and more intense when Aaron had himself come out of the closet to Mitch. Axenfeld brought the literary duo into the gay lit. set upon the occasion of his book-publication party, an overcrowded fete at the Fifth Avenue apartment of one of the Leo-McKewens’ uptown art cronies. Only Von Slyke remained outside Axenfeld’s ambit. Fleming believed it was Mark Dodge who at last brought the two writers together. But as Cummings and St George both discovered within the voluminous journals at the Timrod Collection, it was actually De Petrie who did so. The circumstance was a ‘morning party’ at the Pines, a private affair, harbinger of, if not officially precursor to, the later, more massive, fund-raising events. The encounter of the two was, according to De Petrie’s chronicle, ‘cordial, at times spirited, even snippy, definitely of two distinct and not easily shaken biases’. But if Axenfeld and Von Slyke kept their association within sharp limits, they did provide the foundation others in the group believed needed to be authoritatively launched.
The first meeting of the Purple Circle took place at Mark Dodge’s capacious new Washington Square North townhouse. At that gathering, four read new work: De Petrie the opening chapter of what would become his novella, A Summer’s Lease; Mitch Leo a central portion of Refitting Tom Devere; Jeff Weber one of the stories from his collection Slights and Offenses; and Aaron Axenfeld a twelve-page section he prefaced by saying, ‘This is all probably worthless but bear with me if you can,’ of his second novel, Different in Kind.
Neither that 1982 publication nor his non-fiction collection of three years later. Envoi to Obscurity, would receive a twentieth of the attention, never mind the glory, lavished upon Second Star from the Right. In fact, looking back on Axenfeld’s subsequent career, Fleming could maintain, ‘None of the others, not even Mark Dodge, could be said to have been so defined by, so described by, and later on so circumscribed by, a single volume as was Axenfeld for two decades.’ In his study of De Petrie, St George wrote, ‘The enormous success of Second Star was nearly transmogrified into a debacle. Not only because anything Axenfeld wrote thereafter was held up to its perfection and found wanting, but because Axenfeld himself came to believe he would never again, could never again achieve the level of artistry and entertainment of his first published novel.’
There would, of course, eventually be more Axenfeld books. Each released following the greatest hesitation, often at the urging of his friends and editor and agent. Neither his 1995 novel, At Imperial Point, nor his 1999 collection of stories, Plaid Flannel, would, naturally enough, repeat the tremendous acclaim that had greeted Second Star. Neither, however, would they be met with the disappointment and left-handed compliments of other volumes. Another factor entered in: time was on Axenfeld’s side. By the time his third novel was published, five of the Purples were dead. By the time his stories came out, only himself, De Petrie and Von Slyke of them had survived; and increasingly they were being recognized as the core of a canon of gay male literature. For the first time, Axenfeld went on a book tour. And he was gratified to find people wanted to meet him, to hear him speak and read, to know his opinions on matters literary or not. That generation of readers he’d first electrified was by now mostly dead as a result of AIDS. This newer age group had read not just Second Star but all of his books, sometimes in reverse order from that in which they’d been written. His newer contemporaries followed his essays, kept track of his stories in anthologies, were often more widely read, if shallower in their understanding of his actual accomplishments.
By then, Axenfeld had at last retired from Turtle Bay Prudential and moved out of New York City. He’d, of course, returned at once to his office position following the ten-month sabbatical caring for his father. The Sanibel Island home had lain vacant over the years, except for his winter vacations and occasional loans of the house to family and friends. Pensioned off, Axenfeld returned to the family place and, as he told De Petrie (and De Petrie retold in his journals), to ‘reading all those books I’ve collected over the years, talking to everyone still alive on the telephone, watching old movies on TV, giving myself melanoma in the sun, gardening lackadaisically, and absolutely, positively, NO writing!’
That last promise had failed to develop beyond adjuration. By the turn of the millennium, the second volume of Weatherbury’s Reader had been published, as well as Fleming’s and St George’s studies. A year later Cummings’s monumentally influential Nine Lives came out. Suddenly everyone had to have work by surviving Purples. Von Slyke fell to with avidity. De Petrie had turned recluse and couldn’t be bothered. Axenfeld fell somewhere between the two. He gave a few interviews. He sporadically reviewed books for major papers. He now and then allowed a piece of short fiction from work in progress to be published.
Through those years, as Axenfeld’s social circle narrowed through the attrition of illness and death and those moving in search of lucrative employment, he’d managed to retain his privacy to such an extent it had been a stupefaction to many who’d thought better when Cummings’s biography revealed that the author wasn’t the ‘girl about town bachelorette’ he’d insisted upon for so many years, but instead settled into unobtrusive domesticity with a Chilean diplomat, a middle-level functionary at the United Nations, who spent a third of the year out of town on UNESCO business.
It was partly the retirement of this consort, with no alteration of the time he spent in South America, that seemed to allow Axenfeld to relax, sufficiently mollified to allow another novel to be evoked out of him, if with the least amount possible. From the Icelandic wasn’t as snowily despondent as At Imperial Point, not as autum-nally elegiac as the story collection. It was coolly burnished, vigorous yet deepened with maturity, by turns diverting and pensive. Its narrator’s secret beloved, the ‘irresistible Laurence Grace’, was a character unlike any Axenfeld or indeed anyone had up till then delineated. A successful stock broker, a con artist, a renowned heartbreaker, and finally, when a good deed goes awry, a public disgrace, he was not merely a gay Gatsby, he was a portrait of an entirely credible gay man who lived large and high, who elevated then dragged down others alongside himself. Thousands of readers – gay and straight – fell for his considerable charms. Cummings reviewed the book in the London Times, declaring it ‘masterly, a light-hearted yet deeply felt and complexly characterized glance into fin-de-siècle American life’. From the Icelandic had been my own introduction to Axenfeld’s work, and after its gingerly handled multiplex brilliancies, Second Star from the Right seemed a post-adolescent not bad first try. I’d never said that to Axenfeld, but I had certainly implied it more than once. Gaining his regard.
I was torn from my reverie by the ringing of a phone indoors. I got up and looked in through the louvered porch toward the living room, but the phone was closer, on a side table out on the sunporch. I wondered if it was Axenfeld ringing from his neighbor’s saying he’d be late. I’d stepped into the sunporch and headed toward it when an answering machine took over. The caller was someone I didn’t know. I ignored the call, wondered whether I didn’t want to refresh my lemonade now that I was already up.
It was then I realized where I was. The long narrow sunporch appeared to have been built onto this side of the house at some time after the original construction. From indoors, I’d not failed to notice the row of clerestory windows connecting it to the dining room and one side of the parlor, but I’d deemed it utterly accessory. Now that I was on the sunporch, I realized the contrary was true. For it was here, not anywhere else in the house, where Axenfeld’s two-piece Canon SuperStar word processor had been placed, upon a small, stalwart-looking cherrywood table, placed in the deepest, bilaterally louvered corner of the sunporch, accomp
anied by a sturdy matching armchair. Upon the table were magazines, newspapers, and half under one end of the printer/keyboard, a folder which when I riffled it open proved to contain a typed manuscript of twenty pages.
This site, then, with its well-worn, homelike desk and chair, its serene yet complete view of the gulf, its breezes and sunlight, its right-at-hand telephone and answering machine, its commodious canvas-covered armchair and matching ottoman for reading, its low shelves of books and batches of manila envelopes full of what looked to be manuscripts, done or in progress, its various small tables and settees and lounge chairs beneath which many, many other boxes of manuscripts, paper bags full of manuscripts and newspaper-wrapped manuscripts had been shoved and packed, stacked like logs, this was the actual heart of the house, core of Axenfeld’s life, center of his time spent here, the essence. As I realized it, I simultaneously came to grips with the fact that this narrow, airy, unprotected, exposed to the public sunporch must also be his Fibber McGee room.
Seconds later, I heard Axenfeld. I met him between the foyer and the carport. He was shaking what appeared to be cement off a trowel. He looked up at me, and his eyes from under the beaked painter’s hat widened as though he’d seen a ghost. I recognized this as one of his social gambits – along with his long silences – for obtaining and retaining attention.
Axenfeld looked away and said in tones of such complete intricacy that I didn’t know how to untangle them all, never mind interpret the results, ‘He used to wear a navy blue Speedo too.’
‘Len Spurgeon?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. Then, ‘You got a phone call. The machine took it.’
‘He’s invited us to dinner. My neighbor. Partly to thank me for putting up with him. Partly to slaver over you. He’s not an old letch and he’s awfully amusing on his topics. The food will be better than my cooking. Is that all right? Can you be ready by seven? Do you want to nap?’
I said yes three times. He smiled lopsidedly and said, ‘There’s an alarm clock at the bed-table.’
‘What was Len Spurgeon doing here those months in 1981, staying with you and your father?’ I asked outright.
It was no longer inappropriate to do so. Our dinner, at a local cafeteria-style restaurant – part of a still-extant traditional-meal homecooking Southern chain, where I was delighted to be able to get cholesterol-defying dishes like frothy succotash and thickly batter-fried chicken and coconut cream pie – had been easygoing fun. Rather than ogling me, throughout the meal the neighbor had defused the situation entirely by treating me as though I were a contemporary, with his own peculiar proclivities. At first I was apprehensive at his loud, easily overheard speech, especially when he’d say things like, ‘Look at the biceps on that feller. Jeez, I’d like to see them ripplin’ close by as he held me down and reamed my sorry ass.’ Or, ‘Lordy, that boy’s hair is yellow as new-churned butter. Bet it ain’t a sight darker where it warms his pecker.’ Or, ‘Look at the hose on that un’ Christmas! He must have ter wrap it halfway round hisself when he draws on his jeans!’ Either the folks who frequented the place already knew and were accustomed to him and therefore ignored him, or, more likely, they politely accepted his comments as praise. Axenfeld laughed quietly into his hands as comment.
‘What was Len Spurgeon doing here?’ Axenfeld asked me back. ‘He was waiting for wood.’
‘Excuse me.’
‘Waiting for wood. That’s the term that’s used in the pornographic film business for getting and keeping an erection.’
‘Len was making a porno film here?’
‘Six. Eight. I’m not certain exactly how many. He had a good-sized contract. He’d been a Colt model in the late ’70s, you know. So popular a Colt model with his lean, tanned athletic body and pageboy-length golden hair and tanned face and strawberry-blond facial hair that he’d been given his own magazine. Two issues. He went by the name of Chad Elkins. Then he’d done soft-core photos with another Colt model and that went over so big they convinced him to do a film cameo. Oddly enough it was about baseball, titled something like Hard Sluggers and in his portion, after a long late-night extra practice, he retires to two adoring male fans who catch him in the changing room and eat him front and back over ten minutes. After that, everyone wanted him. He signed up with the studio and they decided to shoot on a former alligator ranch near North Fort Myers. I can’t recall how he got my phone number. Maybe from Mitch Leo. He phoned a day after he arrived, drove over, and had dinner with my father and me. They got along instantly; after all, Len was the son my dad wanted, that every red-blooded all-American father wanted. So when he complained about where he was staying, the noise and drinking and partying, my dad invited him here. What’s the TV room was a guest bedroom at the time. Next day, Len moved in. He remained eight months. Earned I don’t know how many thousands of dollars. He was as highly paid as Casey Donovan, which for those days was high. Whenever anyone asked what he was doing hanging out on Sanibel Island, he’d always look them in the eye and say, “Waiting for wood, man. Best place in the world for waiting for wood”.’
It turned out Axenfeld considered Len so far beyond his ambit he didn’t at all mind him around the place while recharging his sexual batteries. Indeed, he told me he came to like the man, to relish his peculiar dry wit and point of view, as well as to appreciate how much he helped with Axenfeld Senior. The two would discuss sports, hunting, guns, weaponry – the allegedly manly pursuits. His father had been a difficult patient, having trouble recovering from his multi-coronal bypass and tamping down his natural activities and high spirits. With Len around, he began taking it easy and this relaxation, Axenfeld felt, may have added a year to his life. This extra time gave father and son more time to get to know each other as adults, as people. This aided Axenfeld when his father eventually did pass away. In addition, the new friendship considerably helped Len, who confided he’d gotten along miserably with his own father, the two at loggerheads since Len had been ten years old. ‘He appreciates me!’ Len had said more than once. ‘I’m okay. I’m an all right guy. He says so all the time.’
A further benefit of the three residing together became apparent only after Len had reluctantly moved back to New York, when Axenfeld Senior’s health seriously deteriorated. Aaron asked if he wanted Len back; he might be able to get him if he tried hard enough. His father said not to bother, then added, ‘Having him around made me see what a good boy you are. What a good son you’ve been to take care of me as you’ve done. If you’d been more like him, which is the way I’d always wanted, I’d have been dead a helluva long time ago.’
‘And your father had no idea where Len was going every day?’ I asked. ‘What he was doing?’
‘Not a bit,’ Axenfeld replied. ‘I know you’ll think me extraordinarily perverse for not telling him. I mean, he understood Len’s character well enough after a while to presume he was up to something not completely salubrious. Whether he thought that was gun-running for some covert, patriotic organization or fencing stolen goods or what, he never admitted. I hope you won’t judge me too harshly if I confess that I received the most titillation whenever Len would come or go. After only a few weeks, they’d begun to kiss each other’s cheeks as though they were father and son. I never ceased to speculate what exactly my father would say, what he would think, had he fathomed that those lips that caressed his cheek so fondly had an hour before been employed in, or were about to be employed in, avidly rimming the anus of or conscientiously fellating the penis of some marine lieutenant from Pensacola named Hank.’
We laughed. ‘But Len never told you anything about why he and his father didn’t get along?’ I was trying to find out if the car story was true.
‘No. I could never bring myself to pry. You know whom he might have told? You’re going to him tomorrow, aren’t you? Dominic! I’m exhausted.’ Axenfeld had been heating milk in a saucepan. He poured it into a mug, added a spoonful of honey and sipped. ‘I can fall asleep. But I wake in a few hours. This will keep me out long
er. Has your fax arrived yet? Do you need to be up at a certain hour? Is one blanket enough? Will the bed be comfortable?’
I responded no, no, yes, and yes.
That night I lay in the master bed pondering what Len Spurgeon was really doing here those months, twenty-five years ago.
Axenfeld was apparently awake long before I got up at nine. He was out in the front garden, beaked painter’s cap and industrial gloves on, trowel in hand, repotting some otherworldly plant when I wandered out into the dining room, found a place setting for me, and poured myself coffee. He came in a few minutes later, asked if I wanted breakfast, and put it together for me, despite my protests.
‘You’re off to Truro then?’ he said, sitting cattycorner to me and sipping heavily sugared coffee. ‘You shouldn’t worry. If Dom invited you, he likes you.’
‘I’m still afraid,’ I said. ‘Were Len and he very close?’
‘You’ll have to ask him yourself … I have to confess something, especially after yesterday … But first, you don’t write yourself? Stories? Poems? Novels?’
‘No. A few essays, you know, for literary journals.’
‘You don’t aspire to write the Great American Novel of the twenty-first century?’
‘I’ll leave that to you, Mr Von Slyke, and Mr De Petrie.’
‘The reason I ask is, I find I admire you where I thought I wouldn’t,’ Axenfeld said. ‘It speaks of a humility, a true modesty that none of us can even pretend to possess. Not that the others do pretend, but … There is still one thing that I’m not entirely clear about. What is it that you want? I don’t mean regarding the Purples. I mean in your life? For yourself?’
The Book of Lies Page 39
