Like People in History

by Felice Picano

"My treat!" Alistair insisted, as I knew he would. "I did invite you. I come here all the time."

  For one of the waiters rather more than the others, it turned out.

  "Demetrio," Alistair whispered, as we entered the white-tablecloth-and-dried-flower-arrangement ambience and were greeted by an old oak bar, several facing booths in oxblood leather, and beyond, a room of tables sparsely settled at this predinner hour. Half-standing, half-leaning over the bar, talking to the barkeep, were three slender, attractive, olive-skinned young men in dazzling white shirts and tuxedo slacks. One, handsomer and more whiplash than the others, glanced at us and smiled a knife-cut of lips and teeth, a glitter of mica-gray eyes. "Demetrio,"

  Alistair repeated as, graciousness itself, Demetrio met us, guided us to a booth, snapped it free of demons with a napkin, and bid us be seated, all the time flirting back at Alistair.

  When the waiter had left—with a sincerely taken vow to mix our negronis himself—Alistair looked across at me from the steeple of his folded hands upon the tabletop and sighed. "To think, those buttocks, and that secret place they close upon, have never ever felt the total onslaught of a ravaging tongue. It makes one sad, Cuz! Sad! But," he recovered quickly, "I content myself with believing that with a name like his, there must be prevalent Grecophilia in his lineage, and who knows but also an inbred openness to that glorious civilization's sexual preferences!"

  The negronis arrived perfect. Alistair was coy as a schoolgirl as Demetrio hovered about him, explaining the night's specials and hinting at how he would personally improve them, concluding with a demonstration in mime of the Caesar salad he would toss at the table.

  When he was gone, Alistair sighed theatrically, and I said, "I must admit your taste is consistent over the years."

  "I never dated anyone who in the least resembled him."

  "What about Dario? The Sicilian gardener you got deported!"

  Alistair dismissed the idea. "Superficial similarities! Totally different gestalt!"

  I toyed with saying it, then decided to go ahead: "I visited him in jail the night before they flew him put of the country."

  "Dario? Why?"

  "He asked for his things. Your mother's second—or was it third?— husband brought them, and he made me take them inside to Dario."

  Alistair could have cared less, so I went on.

  "I didn't understand it until years later."

  "You weren't that dense, dear. You knew we were screwing."

  "I knew that. I saw you. What I meant was, I didn't understand until much later why it was he made me do it."

  "Take the stuff in to Dario?"

  "No. Show him my ass."

  "My mother's second husband asked you to show him your ass?"

  "Dario asked me."

  "Right there in the jail-house visiting room?"

  "Some room in the courthouse area. We were alone."

  "You are full of surprises, Cuz."

  "You see what that meant," I went on. "It wasn't you specifically he was obsessed by. It was... He could barely bring himself to ask me."

  "And...?" Alistair asked.

  "What it meant was that he didn't blame you for what happened." I spelled it out. "He blamed it on his taste; his misfortune, he called it."

  In response, Alistair shrugged and went on to butter lightly what seemed to be a homemade breadstick. I found myself wondering how much Alistair actually did remember of the past. I didn't remember everything, naturally, but what I did recall I recalled vividly, in fullest detail. From discussions over the years, I knew others' memories were less vivid. But surely not Alistair's. Not with a bear-trap mind like that.

  "Forget old beaux, Cuz! Tell me about yourself. Not that I'm totally ignorant of your doings, even from afar. For example, I know that you've been teaching at one of the local universities... and that you wrote and published a book! In fact, lately, I can't go anywhere without people asking if I'm related to you. It's terribly ego-deflating."

  "Very funny," I commented. But just to keep the subject going a bit longer, I added, "The book did get around a bit. And I've actually allowed myself to be talked into writing a play based on it. In fact, I came here, to the memorial, directly from rehearsal." Having gone that far and watched Alistair's eyes widen and perhaps also harden a tiny bit in envy, I immediately qualified what I'd said. "A small gay company, naturally. The tiniest theater. Stage is so small, we've had to write in a part for the assistant stage manager so people won't be too disturbed when he changes the scenery."

  As I'd thought, Alistair hadn't lost an iota of teenage stagestruckness. "Cuz, you really never do cease to amaze!"

  "Off-off-off-off Broadway," I said. "In the far West Twenties. Virtually in the Hudson River!"

  "An author of a critically acclaimed book now to be a hit play and soon after to be a motion picture! I'm green with envy. Nile green, I believe, is the exact shade." He pretended to check his arm. "Or is it Russian green?"

  "Motion picture, my ass! Starring who? Rock Hudson and Liberace?"

  "Both bankable," Alistair chided. "However, one hears," Alistair leaned over the table to confide, "that poor Roy has but days, at most weeks, to live!"

  "Roy who? Rogers?"

  "Hudson! That's his real name."

  The same pretentious Alistair. I enjoyed the bitter sweetness of the Campari, the chill of ice against my front teeth. Why didn't I order negronis more often? Probably for the same reason that I was liking Alistair tonight, but wouldn't dream of looking him up.

  "Is it too late to ask if the play is cast?"

  "We're in rehearsal, Alistair. We open in two weeks!"

  "Ah, well! But if your male ingénue has an unfortunate accident... Who is your male ingénue, anyway?" He mimed writing down the name on his shirt cuff. "But seriously, Cuz, it's too exciting. I'll come, of course! I'll come opening night. I'll bring and send everyone I know!"

  "Given the size of the theater, if you send half of who you know, we'll ran a year."

  Our gladiator namesake from Ravenna reappeared, with giant wooden bowl, dishes, cruets, utensils, and comestibles, and before our eyes turned mime into reality—and into Caesar salad. My cousin watched so closely, it gave me a chance to inspect Alistair. He didn't look bad, despite what he'd always said about blonds falling apart after thirty. His skin was taut, with the shadow of a winter vacation tan. His hair was thinner on top, and rising atop the brow so his widow's peak was more pronounced. The streaks of color were perhaps artificial. A mole on Alistair's neck I remembered him complaining about and demanding to have cosmetically covered for the Jungle Red party was gone, doubtless surgically removed, and possibly some light surgery had! been done under his eyes, where sagging had threatened for years.

  The salad made, Alistair tasted; I tasted; we approved. Demetrio served, bowed, and vanished.

  "He looks exactly like Dario," I insisted. "I'll bet you already know the size and shape of his dick."

  "I wish! But as you've no doubt correctly guessed, I am single again, and very much in the market. And yourself? You're not getting into the greasepaint by any chance?"

  "There are a few guys in the cast.... But I've been single pretty much ever since..." Rather than continue and have to say since Matt and I broke up, which was pretty much true but would implicate Alistair and thus seem to be critical and open a can of worms we'd tacitly agreed to keep unopened, I decided instead to be grown-up. "...for a few years." I added, "By choice! Anyway, with people dying like flies around us, it's not exactly the best time to be diving headlong into romance."

  "All the more reason to keep some glimmer of romance alive."

  "Speaking of mothers' husbands," I changed the subject as Alistair might have, "how is your mother?"

  "Fine. Boring. Married again. In fact, I've come to believe she knows how boring she is, that's why she marries more and more interesting husbands. This one's a Danish Jew. Handsome in a throwaway way. A bit zaftig for my taste. But he likes me. And he's easy to get al
ong with. He's in Fine Stones, by which I do not mean granite and mica." Alistair displayed his right hand, upon which a double helix of gold was linked by a setting holding yellow diamonds. "Daniel Henriques is husband number six. I think six. That's right, she's taken to saying she's one husband and fifty pounds behind Liz Taylor. She doesn't mention the few million she's also behind. Your parents?"

  "Retired. Bought a sixty-foot ketch. They dock in Key Largo, motor and sail around the Caribbean. My father's taken up snorkeling, believe it or not, at the age of sixty-six, and my mother has become the Fisher Queen of the Gulf of Mexico. They're perpetually tan and fit."

  "How disconcerting!"

  "It gets worse. I flew down for Christmas. They picked me up at Mallory Pier and we cruised around. One morning, my dad takes me out swimming to some nearby atoll. Once there, he begins talking. Serious talk. At first I thought it was about my book being so gay and me being so publicly out with the MLA and all."

  Alistair acted as though he were hanging on every word.

  "Instead, well, I swear he was trying to tell me about some gay affair in his own past."

  "No!"

  "I just managed to stop him."

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm not sure. But that's where it all seemed headed. Some affair he'd had in college or in the service. Before he met Mother. Believe me, I did not want to know."

  "They've been supportive?" Alistair asked.

  "You know Mother: practical in all! My father never threw the expected fit. He said he was proud the book was reviewed in the Times"

  "My father threw a fit," Alistair said.

  "Your real father?"

  "He had to bail me out of jail. A jail, I might add, located in a suburb of Detroit, to quote the Reverend Foot. And I don't mean Gross Paint."

  "Buying or selling?" I couldn't help but ask the old joke.

  "Neither, I thought. Which turned out to be the problem. A knife was drawn, and Cuz, you know how paranoid I get around knives. So the number ended up at the emergency room and myself in stir. He wasn't hurt badly. Good thing he realized that and checked himself out," Alistair said primly. "Meanwhile, however, they'd contacted Mr. Dodge senior, who came down on me like a collapsed parachute. Called me a godless pervert, if you can credit it. Moi? Blamed Mother, natch. Said I was worse than godless, because I should know that I was leading my a-hem inferiors into crime and perversion."

  If he only knew half of what Alistair had gotten into, I mused. "Sounds like he's born again."

  "He can manage to offend several races and religions in one pithy phrase. But he was pissed. For the first time I saw the word 'livid' illustrated. He was white and yet purplish at the same time. Like a dead tuna."

  "When was this?"

  "Few years ago. After I got back from Europe. His fault really. Only reason I was in that dump was some scam connected with a dummy corporation he'd set up. Four times a year I go there to sign their manufactured lies."

  It had been cleverly done, I had to admit, this little reminder of how dysfunctional Alistair's family was, how screwed up, and by extension how little he should be blamed for all the wrong he'd done.

  "The entrees!" Alistair announced. Then to the waiter, "I hope you did terribly personal things to mine as you were bringing it out of the kitchen."

  In reply, Demetrio displayed a flicker of his very pointed tongue.

  We played "catch-up" for the next half hour. Alistair seemed to edit far less than he'd been given to in the past. Because he no longer had pretensions to be anything other than gay? Because he no longer had anything left to hide? Or was it even more subtle? To let me think he no longer had anything left to hide? Whatever the reason, the precis of his recent past was virtually seamless: events he'd attended (mostly "charity do's") thumbnail, totally Alisterine sketches of new people he thought might intrigue or charm me; unsuspected connections among acquaintances we knew. Demetrio would sail past and be snagged by the silk running up one trouser leg as Alistair made yet another slightly unreasonable yet easily accomplished demand upon him.

  "Tell me," I suddenly said, "whatever did you do to Calvin Ritchie that he hated you so much?"

  "Calvin hate me?" Alistair vamped.

  "Alistair," I warned.

  "Actually, it wasn't anything really bad at all, considering. Remember Tony Bishop with the scrumptious body, enormous nipples, and not terribly big wee-wee for a person of the colored persuasion? No? Well, he was a sweet and pretty lad, and I was in my Third-World Phase, so when we began screwing, he invited me up to Russian River to share in his share in a group house there. Calvin was the only other homme nègre there, and I thought by far the most intelligent among the eight. But it turned out he had a tiny little thing for Miss Bishop, who anyway wasn't his type at all, since his taste ran to fantasies in which he'd put on an old A-shirt and old jockeys and pretend he was a plantation-slave house beauty who gets her clothing ripped off before being soundly sodomized by the white Mastuh of the Big House. Well, anyway, sometime between the third and fourth weekend we shared at Guerneville, Calvin cottons on to our scene and becomes quite bitchy. The way he did this was by insisting that everyone do his share of work around the cottage."

  Alistair paused.

  "Not precisely my style. And anyway I was paying for both Tony and myself. So he'd do the dishes or the food shopping or whatever for both of us. Miss Ritchie began commenting on this, and commenting and commenting, and commenting. Anyone else might have become embarrassed."

  Alistair giggled.

  "This went on for several weeks, then Tony's grandmother back in Winston-Salem died and he went to North Carolina for the funeral. I went up to the Russian River house alone. All weekend Calvin needled me about doing my share around the house, feeling he'd got me now. I put it off and put it off and finally said I'd do the last, Sunday evening dinner dishes. Well, Sunday evening dinner arrives, is eaten, and the dishes placed in the sink. I vanish up to my room, change, and descend just as my ride arrives outside the deck, blowing the horn. The others are all sitting around. As I rush out with my weekend bag, Miss Ritchie is furious and screams, 'What about the dishes? You're supposed to do the dishes!'"

  "What did you do?" I asked Alistair.

  "I stopped, looked abashed, said, 'Silly me. I forgot. Why not just send them to me via Federal Express!'"

  "He should have," I said, when I was done laughing.

  "You would have," Alistair agreed, standing up suddenly. "Which reminds me, I have to call my friend in L.A. and tell him about Bernard Dixon."

  "Everything good?" Demetrio stopped by the table to ask once I was alone. A nice touch, I thought, since he must know Alistair was tipping.

  He'd no sooner gone than someone else hove into view: a rather large, all but bald man in a stylish linen suit, who'd entered the place not five minutes before in trio with two slender women, all of them obviously very "Design and Decoration."

  "Jerry Barstow," he now said, approaching the table rather shyly yet intently. "I used to see you in the Pines."

  He had seemed somewhat familiar. I wondered whether to stand up, invite him to sit, or what. His hesitation was understood.

  "I've got to get back to my table," Barstow explained. "Clients." (So he was a decorator!) "I really just wanted to ask about his condition."

  Complete confusion—for a second I thought Barstow meant Alistair—when Barstow said, "Matt Loguidice, I mean. Scott Rubin told me— Oh God! I've said something wrong, haven't I?"

  I was aware that I'd automatically begun to stand up. Then all strength left my legs and I had to hold onto the table.

  "I thought you knew," Barstow defended himself. "I thought if anyone knew..."

  "We've been out of touch," my mouth said. "What hospital?"

  Barstow named a local hospital. "Look, I'm sorry." He backed away. Was back at the table with his clients.

  I tried to push out the single image that leapt into my mind: Matt's face pasted over Calvin's, in those
last awful moments at the hospice.

  Alistair was back at the table, sitting down, saying something. "...left a detailed message on his machine. You would have been proud of it. You okay, Cuz?"

  Matt's dying and Alistair doesn't know, I thought. Matt's dying. I can't let Alistair find out. He can't already know or he'd have told me! Or would he, like Barstow, assume I already knew? It was all too complex.

  I panicked.

  "It must be the play and all...," I muttered. Standing up, I felt steadier. Alistair was staring at me.

  "Why not wait a sec. I'll pay and see you ho—"

  Alistair didn't know. Or he did know and was specifically not telling me. Perhaps the entire dinner had been designed to hide the single, awful fact.

  "No! No," I said. "I'll get a cab. I'll be okay."

  "Why not wait a sec. I'll pay and step out with you."

  Why? Did he now realize that I knew? Had he seen Barstow at the table? Did he suspect Barstow had told me? Would he deny knowing it or...? It was all too complex and difficult. And Alistair was complicating it more.

  I just want out of here, I thought. Away from this!

  "I'll be okay. Really."

  As I reached the door, I wasn't so lost in thought that I didn't hear Alistair say, "I'll call you tomorrow."

  "That's a pretty sick-looking boycott!" I moaned. Either this play was going to kill me or I was going to kill it.

  Onstage, Eric, David M., Sherman, Big Janet, Sal, and David B. marched in a tight oval, necessarily even tighter because of the narrow stage. All of them wore Ray-Ban sunglasses and were carrying picket signs. Three of the men were clad in light-hued polyester suits, cut close at the chest and shoulders, with narrow lapels. Sal alone sported a pale purple turtleneck and a glen-plaid jacket. His olive slacks were more peg-legged than the others', aspiring to pedal-pushers. Socks were visible through his open-toed leather shoes. David B. and Big Janet had pale pastel kerchiefs wrapped around their heads with Helen Gurley Brown "working girl" A-line skirts and "sensible" shoes. All six carried protest signs with tame sentiments like "End Official Persecution of Homosexuals!" and "First Amendment Rights—No More Postal Discrimination!"