Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  "Hypnosis," I said, to distract them and to fend off how much his words had hurt me. "You are falling asleeee...."

  "Sure it isn't drugs?" the Count asked.,

  "Speaking of drags...," Barry Wu began, "weren't we offered some killer Maui-Wowie?"

  "Yeah! Where is that Maui?"

  "I left it outside," Alistair said, and rose. We followed in a group.

  As I passed last through the doorway, Matt stopped me. He kissed me hard, but I kept my mouth closed. He didn't let go of my arm. I couldn't tell if he knew how much he'd hurt me by what he'd said a few moments before.

  "Surprised to see you here," I said.

  "I'm surprised you made it to the Island at all," he accused.

  "I understand you had to be rescued from a mere trick," I sniped back. "Losing the magic touch, are we?"

  "Maybe my emotional needs are growing," he said. "Not that you'd notice."

  We stood there, our faces inches away from each other, out of sound if not out of sight of the others, and I thought he'd never looked so completely appealing as at that moment, wearing those dopey grass-green octagonal glasses with that inane Reggie-from-Archie-comics

  hairstyle, and how totally and stupendously I loved him, so why couldn't I just give in? Just give half an inch and once and for all bridge that narrow yet continent-wide gap, that seemingly gelatinous yet after all adamantine gap between us? What would I lose really? My manhood? My sense of self? My independence? My self-respect? Some or all of them? So what? What did they mean in the long run? At the end of the race? In the cold, black silence of neverending night?

  "Not that you'd deign to notice if I did care," I said back.

  Matt smiled sourly: I'd proven something, or he'd won himself a bet.

  I started to go, but he held me back: "You think you're so smart, because your vision came true!"

  "What vision?" I asked.

  Just then I heard, "Maree-whore-anna." Alistair gyrated in front of us like a cobra, holding out a joint. "Dee killer droag!"

  The two other guests, Bebe and Enrico—at least that's what I thought their names were—emerged from their bedroom, looking neither exhausted nor sheepish. They were treated exactly as though they had come back from attempting, and failing, to obtain for us a not very good dinner of Chinese takeout.

  Matt went to sit where he'd been before. Only now he was closer to Alistair, who, I now noticed, seemed, without ever once making a point of it, to turn half his body and about two-thirds of his attention to Matt.

  At first I thought it was me—me being a bitch for failing once again to break through to Matt, me overnoticing Alistair.

  But as the time passed, I began actually to count how many times Alistair would gloss something someone else at the table had just spoken about and add something like "You know, Matthew, Stiletto is right! Ireland in April is the most magnificent green! Pool tables can't compare. You should see it." Or: "Now, she's someone Matthew would like! Don't you think, Bebe? She's followed poetry since—who was that Spanish writer? Alberti! She translated him. She's so droll. Ugly as a staircase, of course. You'd love each other!" Or: "Vevey! And not just because Nabokov lives there! Personally the man is a complete cipher! But the town! The little chateau! Remember, Princess Wu, when we took the rooms there? The frog concert all night? The stable boys in their union suits hunting mice with maces taken off the walls? Would Matthew love it? You would! Take my word for it!"

  After a while, I thought, no, he's not just being kind, not just being solicitous, not just being enthusiastic. What he's doing is, he's telling Matt, Get wise and ditch this second-rate cousin of mine and come to Europe with me. See the world. Be. Meet. Do. Fulfill yourself!

  Look at him! And look at Matt lap it up! Encourage him—Bastard!

  "...creaking sofa," I heard or thought I heard someone say, and I immediately thought back to when I'd come into the house. I'd heard someone—Bebe and Enrico, it turned out—fucking, and for one horrible moment I'd thought that it was—yes, I could admit now, given all the time I'd heard they spent together, and given Luis and Patrick's meaningfully shared looks—I'd thought it had been Alistair and Matt in that bed. And I'd been fool enough to be relieved when I found out it wasn't them! When all the while they'd been doing this! Not staying discreetly hidden in some room, but out in public for everyone to see, out among all Alistair's friends, passing mimosas and joints and artfully knifed-open tangerines and... '

  It nauseated me. I got up to leave.

  "Going so soon? Oh, is it Tea time now?" Alistair asked. Explaining to Brecker, "You'll see plenty of other healthy and nearly jay naked men at Tea. We'll go. We'll all go! Is this the best time, Cuz? Cuz knows the exact times to make one's appearance anywhere out here. It's all very exact, you know. The times. The places. I suppose because it's otherwise so unstructured. Tell them Herve— Wait up, Cuz! It can't be that exact, can it? Don't we have to change outfits? Are we all right, dressed like this?"

  Tea Dance with Alistair's group might have been amusing—if I'd been more stoned. At first, I attempted to make the most of my undressed condition by placing myself where I'd overexcite poor Horace Brecker, whom I guessed from his earlier outburst to be confused and probably just horny. About the same time that my tasteless act was getting fairly old—Jeffrey Roth, my dance buddy, passed by and loudly asked, "Posing for animal crackers?"—several attractive females came out of the Blue Whale and Horace excused himself to head toward them. Seconds later, I found my own salvation with the appearance on the dance floor of Pensacola Rick and his pals.

  That wasn't his real name, but it pretty much described him. Rick was one of those loose, wiry Southern ash-blonds whose faces are far too pretty for any living male and thus have to be covered over with scars from drunken fights outside of backwoods bars by the time they are sixteen, a lad with velvet skin still not ruined despite years of solar abuse and bad weather, whose luxuriant dark lashes and bruised-looking cheeks held an houri's almond-shaped eyes of the palest, the most hypnotic, green.

  Obviously one of my physical types, I'd encountered variations of Pensacola Rick over the past decade, at times in the oddest places (the last had been a Con Ed worker right outside our building; I still treasured the plastic yellow helmet he'd given me), and I'd always been impressed by his sweetness, oversized genitals, omnivorous appetite for drink and drugs of all colors and effects, as well as his propensity for doing just about anything in bed, if it "feels good and don't cost neither money nor blood."

  I'd come upon this latest avatar a month previous at Sunday Tea: we'd flirted at the urinal before his pals had dragged him away.

  I should note here that Sunday Tea at the Pines had become the most "mixed" dance of the weekend, having for some unknown reason come to attract not only couples from the other, allegedly straighter Fire Island communities of Water Island, Davis Park, and as far away as Ocean Beach, who arrived via water taxi beginning at four in the afternoon, but also pulling in less tony types from towns across the Great South Bay— Sayville, Patchogue, and Islip—who ferried over, partied till sunset, then ferried back.

  That first brush with Pensacola Rick hadn't been lost on Matt. He'd noticed me gawking at the boy dancing—wildly, naturally, two girls for the four boys—and with some sixth sense, Matt had remained annoyingly at my side until they'd all left.

  This however was a Saturday Tea, and Matt was disarmed, unalert, busily being literary with Shillito and Barry Wu and company, so I was free to throw myself onto the dance floor and with the appropriate rhythm and energy manage to land within the orb of Pensacola Rick's little coterie in minutes. He remembered me instantly, sweet lad that he was, and introduced his cohort Bobby (whom I recalled from the first time) and their date, DeeDee, a woman closer to my age (mid-thirties) than to theirs (early twenties).

  My poppers were a big hit with them and the music was good, and the place was crowded enough that we could remain hidden from those I'd come with, who seemed content to remain
out on the deck anyway. During a break we all took to get fresh drinks at the inside bar, Pensacola Rick made a very public announcement that he had to take a leak. I followed him into the john, fought my way to the urinal next to his, and played with his dick while he pissed—pretending nothing at all was going on.

  We found Bobby and DeeDee dancing, and rejoined them. Ten minutes later, I recognized from Tommy DJ's selections that Tea was about to end, and I managed to make this fact understood over the music and disco whistles and tambourines, asking Rick if he and his pals were going back on the next ferry.

  "We're on a boat," he said, nodding back to where they must have parked it. When I told him this party was over, he asked, "Want to come with us?"

  Did I? By now I was completely taken with Rick, more than a little excited by Bobby, who, though jet-haired and blue-eyed, was about ninety-eight percent as cute, and I was even intrigued by DeeDee, who struck me as both attractive and extremely cool about my edging in on her boys. From my college days, I knew that girls with sleepy eyes like hers were capable of all sorts of surprises and indulgences. So I wangled all four of us out the side exit of the Blue Whale seconds before Tea officially ended, without attracting the attention of Matt, or any of Alistair's gang who might alert him.

  As promised, on the little sailboat with its spartanly furnished bunk, we found a mostly filled bottle of Black Label, several joints, and a well-stocked eight-track deck. After some body dancing in the cramped space, Bobby and DeeDee began necking on the bed. She took off her bathing suit, and suddenly all three of us guys were on the bed, kneeling naked around her, while she stroked and sucked us. Bobby began going down on her, so I decided there was no time like the present. Remaining poised over her mouth, I pulled Rick around and began to blow him. Ten minutes later, DeeDee and I were side by side on the bed, face-to-face, kissing, with Bobby fucking her and Rick fucking me. "This is fun!" Bobby allowed. He and Rick climaxed, and Rick suggested they switch places. Whenever one of them came, they both would whoop like cowboys in a rodeo.

  As DeeDee and I had dared to hope, given enough grass and poppers and dirty talk and sexual byplay, the lads were virtually indefatigable. After a while, out of boredom with the missionary position, she and I decided to add some spice by turning ourselves around and making it orally with each other while the unceasing needles of the two lads' automatic Singers continued to sew away at us from opposite sides—a pleasant change.

  "What say, Bob? Is this real perverted?" Rick suddenly asked his buddy. He'd just moved away from helping DeeDee tongue my genitals and now lifted Bobby's mouth away from where he'd been tonguing away at DeeDee's clitoris.

  "Yeah, real perverted!" Bobby agreed, rolling his eyes. At which, Pensacola Rick amazed Bobby by grabbing and soundly French-kissing him. Bobby pulled away suddenly, red-faced, and said, "Hey! Stop! That's queer!" At which all of us laughed.

  Around eleven-thirty, the two of them finally ran out of vinegar. I extricated myself from the other twelve limbs to go urinate. When I returned, they'd formed a sort of knot and were all snoring away. I covered them with a blanket, dressed, and staggered all the way home to Sky Walk.

  Our house was quiet; only a single bulb over the kitchen sink was still on. I knew that after their week-long vacation, Luis and Patrick were napping, preparatory to a long, late Saturday-night party at the Ice Palace.

  Not a clue to where Matt might be. I vaguely recalled Alistair and his group attempting to make dinner plans before I'd been driven to distraction by the appearance of Pensacola Rick. Maybe I should call and let them know I hadn't drowned. On second thought, maybe not. In truth, I had barely enough energy left to eat a blueberry yogurt, brush my teeth, and fling my abused body upon the mattress.

  Which I did.

  I slept twelve hours. Awakened, I was still groggy after two cups of French roast coffee at one-thirty Sunday afternoon, when Luis and Patrick sat me down to an enormous brunch. Present also were Matt, who'd awakened next to me, and Alistair, who'd arrived ten minutes before, looking as though he'd been up and personally written, edited, printed, and thrown together the three thick Sunday newspapers he proceeded to toss onto the deck table for our perusal.

  "We're not going to even ask what happened to my dear cousin yesterday evening!" Alistair began, speaking across me—and plates of the most enormous blackberry-speckled buckwheat pancakes I'd ever seen, freshly concocted by Luis and Patrick.

  I was barely awake. I'd not thought I'd have to jump into the fray quite so early. So I filled my mouth with pancake, washed it down with coffee, and stuffed it again with pancake.

  "Your dear cousin spent yesterday evening in the company of White Trash," Matt told Alistair, casually leafing through the Times Travel Section. So he had seen Pensacola Rick—or me leaving with him—after all! "I hope you've de-loused?" he addressed me.

  "Zeese nnnccaakes rrr gdd!" I enthused at Luis, and gobbled more.

  "Roger won't even consider drag for Jungle Red," Luis pouted.

  "I don't know why not," Alistair said.

  "It's not as if he can claim having a single shred of ethics left," Matt added darkly.

  "Mrr ccffeee!" I held out my cup to Patrick, who'd arrived with a fresh Chemex-full.

  "Well, that's too bad," Alistair said, "because I've had Bebe pick out the most exquisite gowns at the Astoria Studios." He turned to me. "You know, that place in Long Island City where all those films were made in the twenties and thirties? Bebe's got entrée to the costume rooms there."

  "I'd kill for one of those," Patrick said in a tight voice.

  Now I spoke up. "I don't hear anyone insisting Matt wear drag."

  "You ever hear of a smart little bolero in a size-sixty shoulder?"

  "Not to mention the shape of the high heels I'd need," Matt added.

  They had a point.

  "Bebe's got a summer tux Johnny Weissmuller wore to the '37 Oscars for you, Matt," Alistair said. "Adrian made it for him out of Italian silk. The color allegedly matched Weissmuller's semen."

  "Stop or I'll faint!" Luis warned.

  "For me," Alistair went on, "a gown made for Norma Shearer. Eleven hundred rhinestones sewn on a field of samite! And for you, Cuz, one made for Stanwyck. Chinese watered silk in Breton blue with embroidered pearls!"

  "It's not that I don't appreciate it...," I began.

  "What is it, then?" Alistair asked.

  "He's afraid of being called a girl," Luis said.

  "No! That's not it. But isn't men wearing drag demeaning to women?"

  "Look who's talking," Patrick said. "Mr. Abuse My Female Help!"

  "Sydelle and I see eye to eye. Lately," I defended myself.

  Alistair ignored that. "If one's making fun of women, then yes, I suppose it is demeaning. Not if one's honoring them. It is a great queer tradition, you know."

  "Acceptable even among the most macho of today's gays!" Matt said.

  "How many high-heels parties were there this summer here at the Pines at which body builders with mustaches showed?" Patrick asked.

  "It still seems... what do the French say?" I asked. "Travesti!"

  "En travesti!" Alistair corrected. "Anyway, what we're doing is not just throwing on a dress and going to some party, Cuz. Not you and I. No, we shall begin by going into Manhattan and spending Friday afternoon with full treatments at Georgette Klinger's, where I've already made appointments. From mud baths to facials to shampoo and cut. Falls will be woven into our hair, all of it tinted and styled. Then we'll cab over to Bebe's place, where he'll lightly cosmetize us and give us tips on how to emphasize our best facial points. We'll then put on a complete undergarment foundation from Enrico's own collection, bought over the years from Bendel's lingerie counters. We'll be stockinged, shod, and dressed in women's casual wear, sweaters, and slacks. Dressed thus, we'll enplane back out here the afternoon of the party. We'll not only dress, but also walk, talk, act, and think like women equal to wear those gowns. That night, Bebe and Enrico will fly out w
ith our outfits, make us up, dress us, and only when they are satisfied that we are masterpieces will they send us off to the party. Others at Jungle Red will be drags, Cuz, but you and I will be goddesses; others will be fit only to be our servants, ladies in waiting. Matt, of course, will be our escort, our very own Apollo."

  "I can't stand it!" Luis promptly fell over in his chair.

  "Say no to that!" Patrick said. "If you dare!"

  I sighed deeply. Outvoted, I looked to see what Matt wanted.

  "And you?" I asked.

  "I'll go in that Weissmuller tux," he said, throwing down the Travel and beginning to look through the Book Review.

  He meant with me or without me. He meant without me but with Alistair. Alistair done up as a movie star—beautifully, tastefully done up. No way I'd allow that after having Thad out of the way so recently!

  "I guess I can be a sport!" I said.

  Alistair hooted. Luis applauded. Patrick oohed and aahed. Matt sort of quietly looked at me, slightly surprised.

  For the next ten minutes, they wouldn't let me alone. Luis said he'd get four-inch wedgies to my apartment for me to wear at home and get used to. They were so full of it all I almost changed my mind and said no again. What made me clamp my lips tight was that at one point while the others were all busily gabbing inside, Matt quietly said, "See if you can't find some of that Mitsuoko perfume.... The one woman I ever made it with was wearing it."

  I almost forgave Matt everything in that moment. But it passed, and we went out to the beach and the day continued and it was just like the day before: Alistair seducing, Matt accepting—all very public.

  I couldn't stand it. At the same time, I knew I wouldn't make a scene. All that counted in the world's eye was that Matt and I ended up in the same bedroom at night. I concentrated upon that, even though there were moments I would have gleefully speared my cousin on a shish kebab skewer.

  I didn't because I knew that in less than one week's time I was going to be new and exciting to Matt: female yet male, familiar yet different; an entire intriguing package wrapped in watered silk, liberally doused with Mitsuoko.