Matt didn't even glance her way. "What do you say?" He put a big-hand over mine and looked me directly in the eyes.
"Two Kirs!" I told her, feeling her die inside and need to get away instantly. "So! What do you want to know about Calvin?"
Matt shrugged. "Whatever you want to tell me."
"First, he's my dearest friend. He's from the Midwest. Michigan. His mother was black, from downtown Detroit, his father white, from the mansions. Calvin was the third child. His brother, Dante, was tall, light-skinned, and a three-letter athlete. His sister, Christina, was even prettier than her mother and lighter-skinned than her brother. Calvin came six years after her, unexpectedly. He was sickly, pampered, bright, a fat, dark-skinned little boy who developed instant behavior problems and was a complete sissy by the time he was ten. This," I added, "I have on good faith, not only from Calvin."
"Wow!" was all Matt said.
"We met a week after I arrived here, in the Ritch Street Baths. In a big room that looks like a gymnasium or something. Huge pillows all over the floor. I was resting when two guys came in. Ten minutes later we were in the middle of a three-way. Then some more guys came in and we were in the middle of an orgy."
Our drinks arrived, and I told the waitress we'd wait to order when the rest of our party came. The setting sun was low, out of view, casting a crepuscular scarlet over the Golden Gate Bridge, flecked with spots of hot orange and deep lilac. The sky behind it was a contrasting put-your-teeth-on-edge ultramarine.
"It was all pretty hot and heavy. I happened to look up and see this guy a few feet away, wrapped in a towel, staring. I thought he was, you know, a voyeur. When I really looked, he seemed so sad and out of it. So, I don't know, hungry! I gestured for him to come closer. He hesitated. I gestured again. When he was close enough to reach, I pulled him into the mass of bodies. He resisted. I became occupied myself, and when I came up for air, he was gone. I found him later, when I went up to the roof to sun on the decking there.
"He came over to me and thanked me for trying to involve him in the group. Then he told me he only liked black guys." I suddenly panicked. "It's okay that Calvin's black, isn't it? Well, half black."
Matt seemed surprised. "Okay with me. Why?"
Relief—what if my best friend and Matt didn't get along? "You never know. Especially among kids who grew up ethnic—Italian, for example."
"That wasn't the case with me," Matt said. "I didn't grow up in an Italian neighborhood, and my folks, well, my folks are real special people themselves. They made sure I grew up being tolerant of everyone, no matter who or what they are."
"That's great. They do sound special."
"Yeah," Matt said. "Well, they encountered their own share of prejudice. You know it wasn't the same back then as it is now."
I loved how serious he'd become. This was the first time he'd spoken of his family, and it confirmed that Matt's convictions ran deep. And he was rights inter-ethnic and inter-religious marriages had been a big deal a generation ago. I was glad that Mrs. and Mr. Loguidice had done it. Just look at what their unique gene mixing had made: fjord-white skin, coal-black hair!
"My Grandpa Loguidice's a little old-fashioned," Matt said and laughed. "I've heard him call black people melanzane. You know, eggplant. But I never heard him say it in a disparaging way, only descriptive."
"So to get back to our meeting," I continued, "Calvin thanked me and we said a few more words, then I pulled out my radio headphones and put them on my head. I suddenly felt tapping on my chest. It was Calvin, he wanted to hear. So I let him listen. And he was... ecstatic! I don't know how else to say it. Ecstatic!"
"Schwarzkopf singing Ariadne?" Matt asked.
"Close. Sutherland singing Norma. Well, it turned out he was as crazy about opera as I was, and he worked for this opera magazine, and we talked until the sun went down, and when we left, it was to go to his apartment—he lives near Mission Dolores—to talk more and to listen to more opera. After that, we never stopped talking and listening to opera. Now, of course, we go together. He gets free and cheap tickets through the magazine. We speak twice a day every day. And I guess by now we know absolutely everything about each other."
For example, I knew that Calvin was not happy at work or in his love life; not happy with his body, which remained chubby no matter how much he dieted and exercised; not happy with his face, mostly because his color was too café au lait and his features insufficiently Negroid—or
Caucasoid—although I thought he was both cute and unusual-looking, combining some of the best features of both races; not happy with his position in the opera/music world of the Bay Area, where he was always "token nigger" and yet so obviously gay that he was also "treated like one of the girls," and thus he often didn't feel he stood out enough.
"That taxi took forever!" Obviously Calvin had arrived. He was brushing off his suede jacket. "The fare cost the same as the gross national product of a medium-sized East African nation, and on top of that, the seats were filthy!"
"You must be What's-his-name," Calvin added, slapping Matt's shoulder coquettishly with a fawn kid glove. "This one's such a pathological liar, I'm sure you've heard nothing but awful things about me." : He sat himself down, endlessly unwrapped a long scarf, which went around his neck several times—July being the closest thing to winter in San Francisco—checked the angle of his tam in a pocket mirror, sighed, and shouted, "Hel-lo!"
The tall dancer serving us knew him. She arrived smiling. "You kids need more." Calvin glanced around him. "I think I'll have a sidecar. Yes, a sidecar. And bring menus. We're starved. Despite ocular evidence to the contrary."
When she was gone, he said to Matt, "We only have cocktails from thirties and forties films. If Bette or Joan didn't order it, we won't dare. Thanks! You and the bartender are total dears!" The waitress dithered. "Hmmmmm!" he added. "Have him make up one more. He has?" Calvin reacted to her. "A bona fide angel that Luis!" He made smoochy-lips at her, and she laughed and left. "Now! Le repas! The Chicken Pot Pie, with peas and French fries, believe it or not, will cause convulsions of plaisir! What do you think of the view, Matt? Look at the colors in the fog swirling about the bridge. One should simply bring Armani here and point them out—there! there! and that one, dear! In a nice houndstooth! The Alaskan king crab is flown in fresh. If you don't mind having to suck something out of a long, hard, tubular object, that is. We are not, I repeat, not going to discuss opera or the magazine or the shop once tonight! Deal? Matthew, is that your name? So biblical! You're to be referee and slap our hands, faces, or fannies—your choice!—if we do. Now... what is it? Have you lost all capacity for conversing? Speak!"
"Give me a crowbar, and I'll try!"
By the time our appetizers arrived—"Oh, I'll just bet you kids need a dozen oysters each!"—Calvin had completely charmed and befuddled Matt. As usual, I was amused. By the time our entrees came—two pot pies; we didn't dare go near those crab legs!—Calvin was talking about his live-in lover, his family and foibles.
"Antria—true name, kids," he turned to Matt, "she's my husband's wife. Is that too confusing? Antria calls the other day. She says she's looking for Bernard. Needs his social security number for the Welfare Department. I told her he's sleeping. Call back. She tells me to go look in his wallet. I say, 'Girl, I don't go looking in his wallet!' And she tells me back, 'Girl, if you don't go looking in his wallet, why's he there in the first place!'"
By the time we were picking over three different desserts placed in the middle of the table, Calvin was flirting shamelessly with Matt.
"Oh, that's what all you men say. But then you go and do something bad. Are you bad, Matt? No, I can see you're not."
"I am," Matt protested. "Very bad."
"Shee-it! I mean 'bad-motha-fucka-bad'! You're not bad like that."
"I have been."
"You're too white to be 'bad motha-fucka bad.' You're not half a looker, either," Calvin said, dismissively, leaning against one of Matt's Michelangelesque sh
oulders, "but you're just too fucking white! I want my men to be dark as tar and have done at least a nickel's experience in the joint. No shee-it!" He enjoyed Matt's reaction to that, then said, "Now, why don't you go to the men's room or make a telephone call or something so we can talk about you behind your back?"
"I really should call in to the base," Matt said.
"What's keeping you?!" Calvin pushed him out of the chair. "Oh, don't be disgusting," he said, as I reached for Matt's hand to touch before he left the room. "He's not going to Zanzibar!"
"Well?" I said, when Matt was gone. "What do you think?"
"Rog, pussikins. You're obviously in love with the man. Why ask? If you were just meeting him or just breaking up with him, I'd be bone-crunchingly honest."
"Meanwhile...?" I prodded.
Calvin shook his head. "Miss What's-Her-Name-in-the-Sky sure can get it together every once in a while for the looks department."
"Next time bring Bernard."
"They wouldn't let him through that door. And / wouldn't blame them."
"You and Antria becoming sisters?"
"She'd like exactly that, but..."
Calvin stopped and stared ahead. "Well, you weren't pulling your old Aunt Calvina's tail after all."
I turned to follow his gaze—to Alistair, with a tall, slender, really quite lovely young woman. She had that long, straight, five-alternating-shades-of-natural-blond English hair that just drops in sheets, and a perfect oval face with huge blue eyes, button nose, and pouty mouth. Her clothing was so very simple you might almost have believed it hadn't cost a fortune. They were shown to a table across the largish room. He sat, and she excused herself to go powder her nose.
"Doriot Spearington," I said.
"My dear! Your cousin doesn't fool around when he decides to become a breeder, does he? But then he never did fool around, did he?"
"What are you talking about?"
"He's spotted us. He's coming over."
"Calvin, what do you know about Alistair?"
Alistair arrived at that minute, ending any possible explanation. I had to 1 admit he dressed the part. He was wearing gray slacks with knife-edged creases, penny loafers, tan socks, a blue blazer with fawn leather buttons, and to my utter astonishment, a pale-blue mock turtle-neck. One could only wonder—had he all that preppy drag in his closets at home, or did he rush out to Bashford and buy it especially for the occasion?
"I might have known you two would not only know about this place but know it so well you get the best table," Alistair said, genially. "May I?" he asked, seating himself in Matt's chair. "Now, this is the advertised view!"
"Baseball! Beer in a can! Pussy!" Calvin said in his gruffest voice.
I wanted to slap him.
Alistair ignored him. "Too bad you didn't join the three of us last night. We ended up taking the Spearingtons' sailboat out from the yacht club." He pointed to it as though we didn't know where it was.
"All the way out under the bridge. Turns out all of us are pretty good sailors. We sailed all evening in the most tremendous easterly."
"RBI's. ERA's. Vaginal douche!" Calvin went on.
Just then Matt arrived back at the table. There was a bit of awkwardness as Alistair noticed him arrive, got up, and shook hands. "I believe we've met."
Matt made me love him even more: "Sorry, I don't recall."
Matt sat down and Alistair stayed up.
"White Sox! Chicago Bears! Muff diving!" Calvin said.
"The Bears are a football team!" Alistair corrected. "Keep away from the cocktails here," he warned me and Matt, "or you'll all end up babbling like him. Come meet Doriot," he said, pulling me up by the shoulder.
As we crossed the room, he said, "Your new friend sort, of reminds me of my mother's gardener. Remember him?"
"Matt does? Really?"
"Same color eyes!" Alistair said. "Same... Ah, she's back. Doriot Spearington! My second cousin and childhood friend Roger Sansarc! Sit a second." He offered me his chair and searched out another.
Doriot had a model's face, also a kind and intelligent face.
"Sorry you couldn't come last night. We had a great time on the boat,"
"I'm not a great sailor," I said. "The mind says yes, the tummy no."
"Well, maybe it's better," she said. "It was a bit rough."
"Roger manages Pozzuoli!" Alistair told her, then explained, "Except for the gallery. Doriot's agreed to help us put together the little do for Wunderlich! Don't tell me Pierluigi didn't tell you about our coup! Wunderlich has agreed to let us do his first exhibit outside Europe. You're coming, of course," he said to me. "Bring Matt, if he's still around. Calvin, too. In fact, why not let me have his work address? I'd like his employer to come."
As he spoke, I found myself alternately watching him and Doriot and trying to put my finger on something that seemed the tiniest bit off-kilter. She watched him and reacted as folly and intently to what he was saying as any young woman interested in a man: looking surprised, making a moue, all of it completely natural. And he played to her—and a bit to me. No surprise, really. I'd never really gotten over how in love with him Judy had been, how much he'd counted on that love, and what a price in integrity Judy had paid for it at that charade of a trial.
It was something Alistair was doing—No!—saying.
His speech was a little less colorful than usual, but not by much. He'd never been as openly queenie as, say, Calvin could be, or for that matter, as I myself could be talking back to Calvin. Camp had never been Alistair's métier: he'd gone in for a higher-handed wit spiced with irony, and based on sarcasm. But it was more than cleverness. Alistair had always possessed a uniquely slanted view of life and, more important, a well-justified view of himself as someone so beyond normal conventions that he couldn't help but let that come through in his conversation. In recent years, however, he'd come more to control his speech, relentlessly eliminating the wild arrogations and pretensions of his youth. At first, I'd thought that a sign of his maturity. But that business with the Selective Service several years before had taught me otherwise. No, Alistair remained as egotistical and arrogant as ever: he'd just learned to hide it better. In the months since I'd re-encountered him here in California, he'd become noticeably more reserved in his speech, almost taciturn. As though if he did let go and begin to say what he really meant, he'd unloose some demonic, unstoppable logorrhea. Yet here he was, with me and Doriot, being what I'd never dreamed he could be—a little ironic, a bit funny, desirous of pleasing, wanting to push his little projects but not that much, unwilling to offend. In short, just like anyone else!
With this realization, a dull horror gripped me, although I smiled and half laughed, and made all the appropriate responses.
By the time I finally felt free to get away, Calvin had dragged Matt over to the bar to meet the bartender, and I sat alone at our table, staring out at the l'heure bleue view, sipping tepid coffee, and wondering how someone as remarkable as Alistair could have become so drearily normal. Or was I being oversensitive?
"Well! It's official!" Calvin said, as he returned. He was attempting to enfold his sweatered pulchritude within Matt's longer, leaner expanse. "You're dumped and we're the item!"
I was checking out Matt's eyes, which I thought I knew pretty well by now. They didn't at all resemble the gardener's. Those had been gray with darker streaks in them, almost green. Flatter. These...
"Bad joke, huh?" Calvin said, noticing my distraction and misinterpreting it. He quickly sat down. "C'mon! It wasn't that bad."
"It's not the joke, Calvin. Why does Alistair hate you?"
"He doesn't. I hate him."
"Why? What did he do to you?"
"Nothing to me. To a friend. A once dear friend. But this is hardly the time or place for that discussion."
"We're going to have it sometime."
"Nag. Nag. You're worse than Bernard's wife," Calvin said. "This is on me," he said, reaching for the check. "I insist. Expecially as I get a
substantial discount. Drinks free. I think that bartender is interested. He's a bit paleface. But sweet. Named Luis. Reads the mag cover to cover. Knows the libretti to all of Mozart's operas, including L'Oca del Cairo! You know, of course, the game being played in every gay bar in town?" Calvin looked at me.
"How old's your Kotex?"
"How vee rude!"
"Hepatitis A or B? Which do I have?" I tried.
"Aren't we being Mr. Mean-Jeans tonight? Give up? Which Nixon asshole would you do it with? You know, Ehrlichman, Haldeman, et cetera."
"And I thought Polish jokes were bad."
"Brownie's honor." Calvin did something with his fingers supposedly indicative of swearing. "You know what Bernard said when I asked him? Charles Colson! Isn't it perfect?"
"Isn't he in jail?" Matt asked.
"Didn't he find Jesus?" I asked.
"I don't see where either would automatically disqualify him," Calvin said. "Well, come on. You choose."
"Does Sam Ervin count?" Matt asked.
"The rules are clear: only those under indictment or about to be. By the way, you are one sick bunny. Sam Ervin!"
"How about Stu Erwin?" Matt tried.
"They're all so slimy," I protested. "Obviously the gung-ho break-in guys are out. Haldeman is the one with the square head and crew cut, right? Oh, I don't know! John Dean? But it would have to be S and M. With me as master and him dressed like Ronnie Spector. You know, that quilted black leather skirt she wore with a slit up to her waist."
"Bangle earrings the size of coffee cups!" Calvin put in.
"And boots made for walking that'll walk all over you!" Matt added.
"Perfect!" we agreed.
"For makeup... Mary Quant white lipstick and enormous fake lashes," Calvin suggested.
"With his hair grown out, swept up, and shellacked into a Lynda Bird special," I put in.
Like People in History Page 26
