Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  Alistair said, "I know you'll survive. I just thought you liked Cord."

  "Of course I like him! I only wonder if I'm, you know, barking up the wrong tree." Before Alistair could say anything, I asked, "What did Alan say when you asked about Cord? You did ask?"

  "I asked, and like Christopher before him, Alan was vague."

  I sighed. I groaned.

  "But neither of them is as cute as you," Alistair quickly said, "and Cord likes you. The only reason he's coming tonight is that I said you'd be here."

  "Saith Alistair Dodge. Matchmaker from Hell," I said.

  What I wanted to say was Why? Why match me up with Cord? Could Alistair merely be trying to cheer me up? That did fit in with what I'd so far seen of the new, improved, post-success Alistair. Why couldn't I believe it? Because, unenlightened me, I still hadn't forgotten the old Alistair, capable of anything.

  No, the real problem was Cord Shay himself. I had to admit to myself

  I wanted him, physically wanted him, and I'd never admitted that about any man or boy before. Sure, I was interested in his mind. Whenever we were together, we'd talk for hours, mostly about politics, and in fact, to show him I wasn't with him merely for his body or in fact myself brain-dead, I'd actually begun to talk back to him, which meant I'd had to actually think about what he was saying, which in turn meant that I was beginning to think radical politics for myself—exactly what Cord wanted me to be doing.

  "Suit yourself," Alistair said. "Don't come. But don't complain to me if after all your softening up of Cord, someone else wangles him between the sheets."

  He'd hit my hope, and fear, with the precision of a Kentucky marksman.

  Maria suddenly appeared in my doorway shaking a piece of paper.

  "I've got to go," I said into the receiver. "Alistair, I'll be there!"

  I hung up as Maria handed me an interoffice memo, and I was so noodled that after reading it twice I still hadn't a clue what it was about. Maria said I had to sign, confirming I'd read it. I was left to stew about Cord Shay.

  For a second, I actually thought of dialing Carl DeHaven in his cubicle on the other side of the twenty-sixth floor and asking if this could possibly be my real life; and if so, what I'd done to deserve it.

  Then I remembered how Carl was acting around me recently, and 1 was dissuaded. We'd briefly, if to me unsatisfactorily, talked about this alteration in his behavior: what it came down to was that Carl thought I'd been deceiving him all these years by not telling him I was gay.

  It didn't matter to Carl that I myself hadn't been at all cognizant of the fact. Nor did it matter that Carl had always thought Debbie and I were an item, and as soon as he found out we weren't, he'd moved in on her so aggressively they were now living together. It didn't even help that Carl considered Julian's band one of the all-time greats. His sense of betrayal remained—"God, the things I must have said about queers! Oops!"—and could not be shaken. We'd never be close again. Nor would Debbie and I, since she'd sworn fealty to Carl.

  Which left me with Maria, dizzier than ever, and Frank Kovacs, more despicable than ever now that he was both fawning and just beginning to suspect the truth: my to-him-magical connection with his rock idol was over.

  Which left me with Alistair, who'd become willy-nilly the somewhat distracted ringmaster of his own nightly circus. There were moments when I suspected that anyone with long hair and a pair of bell-bottoms capable of saying "Groovy!" would be admitted to the place. Little by little, however, the mass in what had become known as "Penthouse Perdu" (named after either the breakfast or Proust's novel; it was never made clear) could be separated more or less into three groups:

  First were the activists, people like Alan and Christopher who were out to do something specifically political by changing the system, and who used Alistair's apartment as a sometime hangout, free all-night restaurant, telephone answering service, recruitment center, planning room, and fund-raising salon. All this, despite the fact that they were probably the most low-key of all Penthouse Perdu's denizens.

  Second were the music people. Or rather, those who did everything but make music. They'd begun to gather with Julian Gwynne's appearance and had never left. A less constant, less fixed, far less quiet, more colorful group, these included Alton, Julian's newly unemployed chauffeur, various record promoters and group agents, out-of-work A & R people, an occasional backup singer, and several well-known Dope-Dealers-to-the-Stars.

  The third group was general enough to include myself, Alistair and Kenny the houseboy's tricks, professional connections, recent acquaintances, models of both genders (one—a giant blond Viking—had recently OD'd on acid and howled like a wolf from the terrace most of one night), and friends from the West Coast who happened to be passing through. A group with all sorts of potential, including, as it did, wealthy Third-World Trash such as Nelson Albertavo III, the drop-dead handsome, pistol-toting bisexual tennis-champion nephew of a dictator in Central America; and, even sweeter, Ricardo Melendez, son of the Dominican Republic's consul to the United Nations, a youth with a very long penis and an equally active diplomatic passport, who possessed a propensity for all-night sodomy and for experimenting with new and different drugs he'd smuggle in via his embasssy's confidential pouches—yage, psilocybin, you name it!—and which he was delighted to share with anyone present.

  Then there was Cord Shay, who stood apart in Penthouse Perdu and who became, as Alistair or anyone with eyes could clearly see, more tantalizing to me every time I met him. It was as though, my sexuality finally declared, my newly released psyche were now free to desire without bounds or limitations.

  Tonight, I promised myself, I wouldn't go. Or I'd go and I'd keep away from Cord; Anything to try to forget how much I ached for him.

  I hadn't counted on the Dolomite Dentist being present with a new toy.

  The dentist's name was—improbably—Arthur Dalmatian. Equally improbable, he claimed descent from Slovenian aristocracy, leading us to confer upon him the above-mentioned moniker. Arthur had gained his entree to Penthouse Perdu some months previous by performing first oral surgery then oral sex upon Alistair's person during the same visit to his Gramercy Park office, offering unusual drug combinations for both experiences and no explanations afterward.

  Arthur was rather taller and thinner than seemed absolutely necessary, with a profile closely resembling one of those overstruck coins from the most degenerate era of the Antonines: an enormous hawk nose, piercing, nearly yellow eyes set into overlarge, flared eye sockets, a low, wide brow, out of which grew, as though perpetually slicked back from infancy, oily, thick hair of a peculiarly repellent shade of brown. What there was of Arthur's lower face supported a vulpine mouth and the merest hint of a chin. Nor was his physique prepossessing: his shoulders appeared to have been dislocated in infancy and reset somewhat awry, so his arms couldn't hang quite flat; his sternum was too low and oddly angled; his spine too high and a bit curved. In motion, Arthur half glided, then suddenly broke into a lurch, before seemingly recovering his balance and gliding again; he appeared to be pulled by the specific gravity of his huge proboscis. At rest, Arthur was an aged peregrine constantly scanning local air currents for unwary prey.

  Notwithstanding his appearance, I'd found Arthur to be sweet and funny from the moment I'd met him at Alistair's. Arthur was lovely and kind; Arthur was generous with his time, his laughter, and above all his money (at least one semi-cute catamite lindyed in attendance at all times) and his drugs. Among his drugs this night was a new discovery for us, though not for an orthodontist like Arthur: nitrous oxide, or laughing gas.

  Most of us were already high on postprandial wine and grass when this began, and we did as told.

  Chaos ensued.

  Something like an hour later, I found myself in Alistair's guest bed along with Arthur's boy du jour, Kenny the houseboy, and Cord Shay. When the air more or less cleared, Cord and I were kissing. We parted and looked at the other two, who were wildly, almost violently, sixty
-nining. Cord laughed, clearly embarrassed, if not too much so, and said, "We better give them room."

  We didn't take our eyes off each other until we were out of that bedroom. The living room was dimmed; it seemed covered with writhing bodies. We gingerly stepped over them and went outside, where a light mist had encapsulated the terrace within a network of nebulous light.

  I wanted to kiss Cord again. His breath was so sweet, his mouth so tender.

  Instead he lit cigarettes for us à la Paul Henreid and said, "Alistair said you have an extra room at your place."

  Surprised by this line, I admitted I did.

  "Where I'm staying now has gotten a little chancy." Cord paused until I'd understood the tone of voice he was using. I didn't fully understand his words, but I thought... "Do you think I could use your place a few days?" That same pause, demanding I listen to what was beneath the words. "Alistair offered this, but we think it might already be under surveillance."

  Under surveillance? By the FBI?

  Cord didn't elaborate, and his matter-of-fact, almost perfunctory way made it seem uncool, if not downright dangerous I thought, for me to ask details. I have to admit, the memory of my last guest and of our brief sexual liaison was unavoidable: I told him sure, he could use my extra room. We made plans: he'd pick up the extra keys at my office the following afternoon. Oh, and Cord promised not to bring or store dangerous materiel—that was the very word—in my apartment.

  Given the tone of our conversation and the weather, an entire nexus of unspoken intrigue suddenly surrounded me. I felt I was playing the Alida Valli role in some forties black-and-white movie I'd never read the script for and somehow or other missed at our local revival house. Especially when someone peeked out the French doors onto the terrace, instantly vanished, and as though by pre-agreed signal Cord said, '"I'd better go. See you tomorrow."

  He was gone when a few minutes later I went back inside. I did find Alistair, alone in his bedroom, speaking as deliberately as he could into the telephone receiver, from which I guessed he was talking transatlantic. He hung up when he spotted me in the doorway.

  "Hamburg!" As I'd already supposed, he'd been talking to Julian.

  I resisted the impulse to ask how often they spoke and if Julian had asked about me.

  "The show went well," Alistair offered. "But he wasn't able to get to sleep tonight."

  "Tossing and turning all night?" I demanded, all innocence.

  "Now, don't be cruel," Alistair replied tartly.

  I picked up on it: "Tears on his pillow?" I asked sarcastically.

  "Nothing but heartaches," Alistair assured me.

  "Ain't that a shame!"

  "Only you!" he scoffed.

  "Oh, yes," I sneered, "he's the great pretender!"

  "He holds his own," Alistair defended.

  "Ask any girl!" I shrugged. Smartly adding, "Crying in the chapel."

  "Why do fools fall in love?" Alistair wanted to know.

  "Smoke gets in your eyes?" I suggested.

  "Love potion number nine?" he wondered. Then, "Green onions?"

  "That'll be the day." Philosophically adding, "Heartaches don't always last." Capping it off with, "See you in September."

  "Party doll!" Alistair accused.

  We fell on each other's shoulders whooping with laughter.

  "Seventeen," I finally said, when I could talk again.

  "Time out! I don't get that," Alistair said.

  "I was counting the song titles we'd used," I said. "Seventeen."

  "You're kidding! That's got to be a world record!"

  "Eighteen if you count 'Seventeen,'" I said. "Or, rather, 'She's seventeen, she's beautiful, and she's mine!'"

  More laughter.

  We found Arthur in the kitchen, seated on a three-legged stool, eating ice cream out of a pint container. He offered us a taste, and I took it off his spoon and jumped a foot when the frozen metal hit the back of my mouth.

  "Trrrroubbbble with your bicuspids, my deaaah?" Arthur asked in a Bela Lugosi accent.

  "Wisdom teeth," I tried to say. "Three have attempted to come in, and not one has made it so far."

  "Oh, yes, Alistair did say something about that. Let's see!" Arthur handed the ice cream to Alistair and grabbed my chin to look into my mouth. "Open wider, darrrrling," he said, back in the Lugosi mode. "Prrrretend it's Moby's dick! That's better!"

  "The last one gave Rog a terrible time," Alistair said, happily scooping away at the ice cream now barred to me. "Pain for weeks in advance."

  "No room!" the Dolomite Dentist declared and shut my mouth firmly. "One of the least discussed aspects of continuing human evolution I've noted," he went on, "is that thirty percent of the generation of Americans born since around 1940 will, for one reason or another, end up not with thirty-two, but only thirty, perhaps only twenty-eight, teeth in their mouths. Jawbones are getting smaller. I'll bet by the year 2000 it's a hundred percent of the world population."

  He explained with little diagrams drawn on paper towels, and concluded, "I suggest you come to my office and I'll dig out either that wisdom tooth or the adjoining molar before one or both of them become badly impacted."

  "Arthur will drown you in nitrous oxide, affection, and painlessness," Alistair said. All of which I suspected was true.

  "But, Doctor," I quoted from a recent British comic film, "I'd rather have a baby!"

  "Make up your mind, miss," Arthur replied without dropping a beat, "before I arrange the chair."

  "I trust you suffered no discomfort," the Dolomite Dentist oozed.

  I was slowly coming back to reality from my nitrous trip; the mask was removed from my nose; the air molecules in front of me had stopped dancing the Mashed Potato and were beginning to settle down.

  Most of the equipment that had been in my mouth moments before had now been placed upon the tiny mobile table he pushed aside, as he shooed out his assistant and sat down.

  I tried moving my mouth parts into speech. "Is it over?"

  "In fact, I haven't really begun."

  I stared at the glittering little instruments—weren't some of them bloodstained? Perhaps not.

  "The problem is a bit more serious than I thought," Arthur said. "Oh, don't worry. Nothing I can't handle."

  He went on to explain that my lower left wisdom tooth was coming in not straight but at an angle, pushing the last molar down, right into the jawbone. Naturally one or the other would have to come out. But despite X rays and much probing about the area, he wasn't completely certain if an infection had formed between the two. Just to make sure, he was putting off surgery for a few days, and prescribing large amounts of penicillin.

  "I don't want any unpleasant surprises when I finally cut," Arthur said, without explaining what he meant: could Godzilla be lurking in there? Herbert Hoover, Jr.? The ghost of Che Guevara?

  He also prescribed a painkiller I'd never had before: codeine, trying me with a pill while I was still in the chair. It hit by the time I left his office, just off Gramercy Park. Walking home down Park and along Fourteenth Street, I felt the soles of my boots floating a good quarter inch off the sidewalk.

  Cord Shay wasn't there when I got home. To my lack of surprise: he'd moved in three days before and I'd barely seen him since. He wasn't there when I got home from work, and he was usually dead asleep in my guest bedroom when I left to go to work. He'd not been to Alistair's once since he'd gotten the keys from me, and the one time I point-blank asked Alistair what was going on, Alistair replied, "Some operation in progress. At least that's what Alan intimated."

  I'd wait until the "operation" was over with before making my move.

  That night I ate tepid chicken soup and yogurt and a few more codeine pills while watching television. I was just carefully brushing my teeth preparatory to going to bed when Cord came in with Alan and three guys I'd never seen before. He didn't introduce me to them but led them directly into his room and came into the bathroom and asked if they could have a little "privacy
." Cord was looking great: he smelled like freshly pressed clothes.

  "Thing is," he explained, "I wouldn't want you knowing anything you needn't know."

  "In case they torture me?" I asked.

  "Something like that," he said with a little smile.

  He asked how my appointment with Arthur had gone, and when I told him I'd have to wait for the wisdom tooth to be pulled, he responded, "Tough luck!"

  It was then, as I was thinking—Rog honey, you are completely incorrect and furthermore out of your mind about this totally straight boy!— that Cord did something: he patted my behind through my underwear and mumbled "Mmmm." In the mirror I could see his eyes watching his hands. He looked up suddenly, his usually hard-as-anthracite eyes gone suddenly soft, then he bussed my nape. A second later he backed out of the bathroom, leaving behind what I thought was a sign of clear interest if not an outright promise of lechery to come.

  I listened to their voices—low and conspiratorial—until I fell asleep.

  The next day at work, Arthur called to ask how I was doing. Not bad, I told him, but I was only eating soft food, and when I'd awakened in the morning, I'd felt enough discomfort to continue using the codeine.

  He said to use as much as I needed: he'd boost the script at my pharmacy if needed. Meanwhile I was to fight off infection.

  That day at the office seemed to pass by in an even more dreamlike fashion than usual. Ditto, the evening. I'd by now doubled my codeine intake, and spread out on my sofa, smoking grass, I enjoyed as never before Mahler's Resurrection Symphony on my stereo. I'd just gotten up to change the mood by putting the Stones' Beggar's Banquet album on my turntable when C6rd came in.

  "Feelin' no pain," I assured him.

  Amazingly, he had nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to telephone, and could think of nothing more pleasant than joining me on the sofa smoking grass and listening to Jagger & Co.