Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  "That's what our house was called. Partly because while it wasn't much to look at, it was high on a hill. Partly because of us in the house. Matt, of course, was Heathcliff. I was usually Cathy Earnshaw. Marcy and Luis took turns being Nelly, the maid."

  I explained further:

  "All the houses at the Pines had names in those days. Sometimes the name referred to the building's style—the Kodak Pavilion, because it was shaped like the one at the '64 World's Fair. Or the Ramada Inn, which looked like a motel. Or Lincoln Center. Or the A-House. Sometimes they were named after their owners or whoever lived in them: the

  House Bananas Built, owned by a Central American fruit millionaire, Camp Tommy, Wrangler Ranch, Bus-house. Sometimes people put up their own names—the Ogre, Seven Beauties, Tea and Bigamy, Fire Island School of Design, Surfside Six. Sometimes the house was named despite what the owners wanted. It was a small, homogeneous community. Everyone knew or knew about one another. People received nicknames. Mrs. B. was Trude Heller's girlfriend, sometimes called Isadora for how she'd run naked along the surf trailing a gauze scarf. Or Spare Parts. Or Eisenhower or—"

  "Manifest was the magazine you worked for?" Wally asked.

  "Actually it was MAN-i-fest, until Sydelle arrived. With an accent on 'Man.' You've seen copies. Remember? I took them out when Martin Landesberger was here from upper Michigan."

  Wally recalled. "Did I see him?"

  Meaning Matt.

  "You couldn't help but see him then. He was the model for the most popular commercial popper, and Mr. Leather as well as Mr. Gay Northeast and Mr. Gay America several years in a row. His photos were everywhere."

  "The clone hunk, right? With the black leather vest and curly black hair and beard!"

  "That was Matt."

  "I didn't think he was real. I thought he was like a composite or something."

  "He was real all right."

  Wally was silent for a while. Then he said, "Then you broke up?"

  "Finally," I corrected. "We met in July of 1974. There were plenty of trial breakups before that."

  "Over other guys?"

  "No. Over... I don't know over what. Over Matt being Matt and me being me. I wasn't always like I am now, Wals. I wasn't always cool and laid back and thoughtful and grown-up. I used to be... temperamental... something of a bitch."

  "Used to be?" Then before I could punch his arm, he said, "Tell me about it. Tell me all about it."

  "You sure?"

  "I want to know everything that happened that summer. Everything!"

  "In-suf-fic-i-ent Re-sponse from Con-tes-tant Num-berrr Thu-ree!" Patrick said in a most mechanical tone of voice.

  "Hold your horses!" I replied. "I'm looking."

  "For what?" Luis asked. "The Lindbergh Baby?"

  "For something to discard," I said. There wasn't much of anything in my hand. I'd been dealt garbage this time around, which would probably be the final hand in the game. And so far I'd been unable to pick up anything in the least bit interesting. I was so badly off, I was working on a low club run!

  "Playing the game of 500 Rummy does not require a genius IQ!" Marcy needled me in a put-on snooty tone of voice. "It does, however, require the rudiments of a memory."

  "Oh, pul-eeze! I left the rudiments of my memory on the sidewalk in front of Les Mouches in '76, sometime during my four hundredth tab of acid!... I hate my hand," I concluded, throwing down a five of hearts.

  Naturally Luis picked up the card, shoving it into his hand and speaking as though continuing a conversation, which he had not in fact been having. "So I says to her, so I says, Ceil, Ceil honey, I know you love your husband. I happen to love a good cigar. But I sometimes take it out!" He laid out a low heart flush, four cards long, in front of himself on the table and discarded a club jack. "Knocking!"

  "I'm going to knock you," Patrick declared. But I noticed that he quickly enough snapped up the discarded jack.

  "So when am I going to see the Incredible Hulk?" Marcy asked. She'd lifted one leg up high and was inspecting her mosquito bites. Her leg was shapely, her skin very pale, but the scratched bites were not a pretty sight.

  "You've met him, haven't you?" I asked, using the question to turn the topic back over to Marcy, and thus away from myself temporarily. The last thing I wanted today, the last thing I wanted among these three sharpies, was to give a hint of my currently more than usually addled feelings about my lover.

  "Never met him," Marcy said.

  "Where is that husband of yours, Rog?" Patrick asked. "It's what? Seven-thirty? Tea Dance must be over! Especially in this weather!"

  "You know how Matt is at Tea," I said, hiding my irritation under an overacted moan. "And afterward!"

  "Hanging out at Hard-Wear," Luis said, "unable to tear himself away from his large, admiring public."

  "More like upstairs at the Crow's Nest trying to get Ralph to slash prices," I said.

  "Up there, trying on body-fitting T's." Patrick shivered at the image. "Allowing himself to be ogled by the hoi polloi."

  "Well, he'd better, manage to find his way to the Pantry," Luis said, "and buy some food. You guys promised to make dinner tonight."

  "I know. I know."

  It had been raining since dawn that Saturday—which was why, instead of getting dressed, getting a little high, and going to Tea Dance along with Matt and four hundred other queers at the Pines, as we usually did, Luis Narvaez, Patrick Norwood, and I decided to remain at Withering Heights for the afternoon and early evening, watching the varieties of rainfall and hoping it would stop.

  Once Marcy Lorimer arrived at the house—she'd been staying at Davis Park and had come over by water taxi—it became another thing altogether: an afternoon party! We'd all laughed and kissed and put mint julep facial masks on one another. We'd twisted on various shmattes as kerchiefs until—with those pale green faces!—we looked like characters out of a Kabuki play.

  We'd sat around the dining room catching up and listening to tapes Ray Yeates had put together for Halston's most recent fashion show. We drank beer and old-fashioneds (Patrick made them). We went through our own and each other's wardrobes, picking out ensembles to wear that night: one for the Ice Palace if the rain ever let up, a completely other outfit for the Sandpiper if it didn't let up and we remained here in the Pines instead of trekking over to Cherry Grove for the night. We snacked on Nacho Chips and Entenmann's coffee rings. And we played cards.

  "Patricia, are you ever going to discard?" I asked. "We all know you have those jacks lined up ready to march."

  "I do not!" Patrick protested. "And as you well know, my drag name is Isadora. Not Patricia." He then laid out three jacks on the table and dropped an ace on the discard deck.

  "I'll take that, thank you!" Marcy said, sitting up very straight. She proceeded to lay out three aces and a club flush, queen to ace, very businesslike indeed. "Eat that!" she said to me with mock sweetness.

  "Fla-ming twat!" I mock-cursed her in return. But in fact I liked the queen she'd discarded and picked it up, dropping the now useless four of hearts.

  "God, this looks awful!" After that flurry of card-playing activity, Marcy had gone back to inspecting her calves.

  "You said it. Not me."

  "And I spent hours yesterday on my legs," she moaned, "foolishly thinking there might be a hint of sun to tan them this weekend."

  "Did you hear about that Bowery bum they found?" Luis asked. "He said he'd drunk everything with any alcoholic content at all. Including Nair."

  "Ooooooh! Disgusting!" Marcy squirmed.

  "Reminds me of that Gene Wilder sketch in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" Patrick said. "You know, the one—'What is Bestiality?'—where Gene falls for this sheep who throws him over for some other guy. Gene ends up on skid row. But when the camera does a close-up on him, we see the bottle is marked 'Woolite'!"

  "I loved that movie. Remember the gay commercial? The guys in the locker room making out like crazy while the
voice-over tells you to buy the hair product?"

  "So, you were out west," Marcy said to me. "For the magazine?"

  "An article on homosexual writers. Most of them in their senility."

  "I thought all the gay writers are young?" Marcy asked.

  "You're talking about Andrew Holleran, Edmund White, and that gang? Well, yes, they're all in their thirties. But everyone's writing about them. I thought I'd write about some of their forebears," I said. "You know, the less famous gay writers."

  "Forebears is such a strange word," Marcy mused. "The bears that came before us?"

  "Patrick love, go. already!" Luis urged. Patrick took his sweet time.

  "Like who?" Marcy asked.

  "John Rechy was the youngest. Although it's obviously all relative. He was sweet really. He's got these wall-sized photos of James-Dean and Marilyn Monroe in his dining room. Very, very H-Wood, if you ask me. He was so nervous at first he was stammering. I thought, you know, maybe he wanted..."

  "A piece of your prize ass!" Luis said.

  "In short!" I admitted. "I mean, after all, the man does teach at the university there. It may be L.A., but that does presuppose some basic poise in front of strangers."

  "He was probably putting you on!" Patrick said. "Didn't you say he still hustles Santa Monica Boulevard?"

  "Marce, you wouldn't believe it! Ten at night, I'm driving around West Hollywood looking for this place where the local queens do country-western dancing, you know do-si-do and all that shit, and I almost dropped my teeth. There was Rechy on a street corner near this porno theater, wearing boots, tight jeans, no shirt, dark glasses. Upper torso naked, but all oiled up. He was standing indirectly under this streetlight so you couldn't see his face."

  "But he was sweet," Marcy said.

  "They were all sweet. You know, big gay New York mag sends its editor out there to interview them in depth. What's not to be sweet about?"

  Finally Patrick discarded. We applauded.

  "That's not the card I wanted, darlinggggg!" Luis trilled, pretending to backhand Patrick. He picked up a card and discarded. "Still knocking."

  "Suck my six-inch wedgies!" Patrick said, then turned to me and Marcy. "So, now, how is it again that you two kids know each other?"

  "Kindergarten Brownie troop," Luis said.

  "We used to work in the same office in the late sixties," Marcy said, distracted enough to drop another queen on the deck.

  "As textbook editors," I said. "Quel dreary place! We didn't really know each other then," I added. "Marcy was much above me in position."

  Quietly, I picked up the queen. That meant three of them.

  "Banana oil!" Marcy declared. "But it's true we didn't know each other. Rog hung around with the smart set. He was straight then."

  "Our little Rogina? Straight? Hush your mouf, girl," Luis joshed. He picked up, looked at the card, and discarded, filled with ennui. "Better yet, wash it out!"

  "With Nair!" Patrick added, taking his turn, which left a six of clubs, which I was sure Marcy needed. Would she notice?

  "Well, he was always with these two very hot girls," Marcy defended herself, "so naturally I thought he was straight. Everyone thought so!"

  "Including himself," I admitted. She hadn't taken the six, too bad for her. "Marce, whatever happened to my supervisor there?" I asked, partly to keep her distracted. "What was his name? Kovacs?"

  Marcy almost dropped her cards. "You mean you don't know?" Her lovely, guileless brown eyes were huge now. "You're going to die!" she said, her voice rising. "Just die, when you hear!"

  "Spit it out, girl!" Luis demanded. "Don't hesitate!" He'd picked up, looked, and discarded in one movement, almost automatically.

  Marcy looked like the teenager she'd once been as she began to dish. "Kovacs was slipped LSD at some weekend party or other in I think '71, and he went completely gaga. I don't mean he freaked out. In fact, he didn't. He returned to work, and then little by little people began to notice changes. Tom McQuill, remember him? Well, Tom swore he walked into the men's john one day and caught Kovacs in—I love it!— pink silk undies."

  "Whooo-whoo!" Luis and Patrick intoned together.

  "Then we began to notice him wearing makeup. First it was only a touch of rouge. Then eyeliner. Well, he went on vacation, and when he returned, he wasn't Frank anymore, he was—"

  "Fran-cine!" we all shouted.

  Her face fell. "You knew?"

  "Guessed," I said. "And?"

  Marcy was no longer so forthcoming. She was studying her cards.

  She'd noticed the six she'd failed to pick up before. I saw her lips make the word "Shit!" as she began to shift around the cards in her hand.

  "And? Did he go all the way? Get the operation? Snip-snip!"

  "I guess. I left to go work at the Book Club and lost track of him." She looked in front of her. "Whose turn is it?"

  "Yours!" we all said at once.

  "It's spectacular dish," I declared, tapping her wrist with my folded-up hand. "Simply spectacular!"

  Marcy looked at me slyly, then winked. Then she picked up a card from the deck that she could use, and cheerfully dropped another three-card straight on the table. "Were you alone out west? Or did you take Matt?"

  "Matt took him!" Luis said.

  "It's true," I admitted. "Drummer flew him out for a shoot: cover, full spread inside with a fold-out centerfold. I just tagged along. Then I managed to get Harte to agree to the interviews with the writers, so I'd be able to pay a few bills and not feel like a complete hooker."

  "Matt's the one who earns all the money," Patrick said.

  "Matt's the one who gets all the attention," Luis said.

  "No!" loyal Marcy protested.

  "It's true, Marce. I could commit murder in a crowd standing next to Matt, and there wouldn't be a single witness. That's how little they see me."

  "Poor Roger!" she cooed, "I think you're handsome. Don't you guys?"

  "Too old for me," Luis said, sneering.

  "Too young for me," Patrick said, scowling.

  "He's just right for me!" Marcy laughed and half hugged me. "But I thought Matt was a poet. A serious poet."

  "Well, he's that too!" I admitted, with a groan. "And therein lies... the nub of it, my dear!" I affected a British accent so as to avoid having to discuss anything else concerning Matt, who had chosen for the past month to stay out at the Pines during the week, while I returned to town.

  Marcy took my hint. She usually did. "Who else did you meet out west?"

  "He did not meet Patricia Nell Warren!" Patrick said and sulked.

  "Patrick may be pretty," Luis said to Marcy, "but he has the literary taste of a housewife. I've tried to learn him, Lord knows, I've tried!"

  "Samuel Steward in San Francisco," I said. "He was interesting." "Who?"

  "Phil Andros! Well, that's the name he wrote under. Before that, in the thirties and forties he was palsy with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. in Paris, when he was a mere youth. He's going to write about them."

  "Speaking of dykes, Marcy," Patrick said, "did Rog tell you about the new dyke who's come to work for the magazine?"

  "Marcy knows her," I warned.

  "Marcy recommended her. to Harte," Marcy said, "and God help Marcy if she doesn't work out."

  "She seems okay," I said, noncommittally. After all, Sydelle Auslander had been at the magazine only a few weeks. And in that time she'd made an "interesting" impression: thin, nervous, elegant, attractive in that gaunt way that modern dancers have; aware that she was new and even that she was out of place, yet determined not to let that deter her; all too conscious but ironical about it too, which was sort of endearing.

  "I don't get it." Patrick had to, as usual, say the obvious. "What's a lezzie doing at a men's magazine?"

  "The idea," I said, "is that Harte would like it if Manifest weren't only a men's magazine, but a magazine for all gays and lesbians."

  "You're kidding, right? With all that male flesh in it?"
/>   "I'm just repeating what Harte told me."

  "You mean you're repeating what Mr. Millions told Harte," Patrick said, using his and Luis's pet satirical name for the money man behind our publisher, known by other names in the city, including "cheapest faggot breathing."

  "Luis?" I said, reminding him. "Go! Will you!"

  "It's your turn!" Luis said.

  "Really?" I'd gotten lost in the conversation. What did my hand need? Rather, what didn't my hand need!

  "Wake up!" Patrick tapped my forehead with the flyswatter.

  "Try to use that on the flying variety of pests!" Marcy directed him.

  "Sorry!" I apologized and went to the deck and picked up another queen. That would go onto the straight. And the three queens. And the three sixes. And the king would fit on Patrick's flush and... Gee, I might be developing something. Cautiously I dropped a low three, Luis didn't seem interested in picking it up. Hmmn! How amusing!

  "I also met Isherwood. He was the nicest."

  "Tell her about Phil Andros's tattoo," Patrick said.

  "I will not! You know, Marce, Isherwood is about seventy-five these days, and ill."

  "She does know who he is?" Patrick asked.

  "Christ, Pat! She's editor in chief of a university press!"

  "Sor-ry!"

  "I've got to do it!" Luis suddenly declared with utter Cuban passion, apropos of what, none of us could guess.

  "He's picking up all the cards!" Patrick shouted with the intuition of a lover.

  "If I don't, I'll die of boredom!" Luis said and picked up all but two we'd discarded. "I hate waiting around." He promptly set to work arranging the cards as a hand.

  "Don Bachardy is Isherwood's lover," I continued to Marcy. "A fine artist. Well, he phoned and said he'd drive and pick me up because I might not be able to find my way to their house. They live in Pacific Palisades. Which is way down by the ocean."

  "And not," Luis said, "to be confused with Pacific Heights in San Fancisco."

  "Pronounce the r, Luis," Patrick nudged.

  "He never did pronounce it, even when he was living there," I said, which necessitated explaining to Marcy that that was how Luis and I knew each other. "He was a bartender. A friend of my friend Calvin Ritchie. Did I ever tell you about Calvin?"