During dinner he thought of it a second time. Almost from the minute they sat down in the small Italian place she had taken him to, she began to make it known through hints and various subtle allusions that Noel had a reputation among women for being both attractive, mysterious, and aloof. Might it have something to do with his late wife? Mirella said she’d heard that Monica had always seemed deliciously satisfied, enviably so. A woman beautiful as Monica—so charismatic—must have been approached by scores of other men, and yet had never once been even whispered about; that was intriguing. Her absurd “first date” game turned him off, as much as her stockinged foot under the table, rubbing his inner thighs and crotch, turned him on.
After the long, leisurely dinner, they walked a half dozen blocks through the warm June night back to her apartment for an after-dinner drink. Even before they had entered her apartment, Noel began to make love to her.
Stupid. He could have ignored her hints and allusions. Their foolish, rotten relationship was bound to begin again.
But he had to know if Loomis was right.
Stupid, because now he knew. As far as Mirella could tell, Loomis was absolutely wrong. Noel was as healthy and lively and accomplished a heterosexual partner as she or any woman could have wanted. Years of making love to Monica had perfected his techniques, taught him the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities, the various turn-on spots of a woman’s body, and the timing, too. Without giving that much thought to it, he carried out a bravura performance—one that might have been filmed for sex instruction classes.
He kissed her deeply, holding her neck cupped in one hand. From there he moved all over her face with his lips, down to her throat, around to first one ear then the other, then to the nape of her neck, lifting her short, dark hair away, then, around to her throat again, to the cleft where her breastbone began, all the while deftly slipping his hand under garments and through zippers, across her shoulders, down to her lovely breasts, aureoles of mocha outlining the tanned flesh, responding with her erect nipples surrounded by tiny gooseflesh pimples that told him all was just right. Then, the sweater off, the skirt dropping slowly first in front then sliding from in back, he moved down farther, gliding along her creamy skin to her tummy so suddenly soft amid the hardness of her wide, hard-boned hips, down to the tender-as-butter thighs, then up again briefly with his tongue deep into her navel, then down again past the silken frizzy hair to kiss her lower lips, his hands all the while caressing moving stroking fondling breasts buttocks hands thighs feet…
And she so effortlessly finding herself twisting once more with pleasure at the touches of this man she didn’t really like, thought was weak, easy to dominate, too uncertain, too mild-mannered for her really. This man who would not stop even though she asked him, then begged him, then couldn’t any longer stop his compelling wet hunger until he had the very inner webbing of her gyrating with warm and cold and hot and ice, and as he demanded it she gave it, oh, gave it, resisting at first then no longer able to resist. Gave it so gratefully, his film-star face, his sweat-curled, shiny hair, his eyes that rose up to meet her afterward as he mounted her, asking for her to give it yet again, this long-muscled, hard-fleshed semideity, this mystery to her and yes, again she could no longer resist and gave it to him, and once again, too, leaving herself and all qualms to let him enter behind her this time, a new pleasure for her, one she’d only heard of and difficult, constricting at first. Then, as his hands guided by hers moved in front of her, inside her, at the same time, and she relaxed so utterly into his hunger and rhythmic ferocity, she was a queen with her favorite, a whore of Naples with a young GI, a frontier woman in the adobe hut, and he was lovelier than any woman or man or child she’d ever seen before, the exhausting, panting everyman.
As far as Mirella would ever know and tell, Loomis was wrong.
She looked at the clock.
“I can’t believe it! Only midnight. I thought we were together for hours and hours,” she said, then leaned over looking at him, smoking a cigarette. She was afraid to touch him, afraid she would never stop if she did; that having tasted she would have to devour all of him. “Noel?”
“Ummm.”
He seemed off somewhere she couldn’t be.
Then he sat up, went to the bathroom. After a minute or two she heard the toilet flush. He came out, looked at her, then began picking up his clothing.
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer, hastily got dressed. She was disappointed but tried not to show it.
“Will you call me?”
“I don’t think so,” he said tonelessly. Now she began to feel cheated.
“Only one-night stands,” she asked, meaning to be sarcastic. “Or only one time per customer to spread the wealth around?”
“I’m seeing someone,” he said, leaning over to pull on his shoes. “A guy.” He looked up for her reaction, then tied the shoes.
“That’s the worst line I ever heard, Noel.”
“It’s true.”
Perplexed, she let him go, saw him to the door, and stood there—wearing only the top of her pajamas as he waited for the elevator only a few feet away, expecting something more; she felt she deserved more.
“I really don’t believe you, Noel.”
He looked toward her as though to say something very important that would explain everything, then he turned to face the elevator doors that had just begun to open.
“I don’t believe you!” she shouted once more, enough for him to hear it echoing inside the overilluminated elevator car hurtling down.
21
Noel missed his transfer point on the subway. When he looked up, Forty-second Street was long gone. The train was just pulling into Fourteenth Street. He got out of the car with the intention of trying the Canarsie Line across town, then going up again nearer to where he lived, via the Lexington Avenue Line; or taking this train back uptown to Forty-second Street and the crosstown shuttle.
“Lost in Greenwich Village. That’s what you look like.”
The familiar drawl drew Noel long before he located its source—then there he was, Little Larry, arms akimbo, a smile on his face, leaning against a subway steel girder. “What’s up?” Then, as Noel didn’t answer, “Where you going, man?”
“Who knows.”
“Oh-oh. We don’t sound happy tonight, no, sir. Hey, how come you’re not with your new friends tonight?”
“It’s my night off.”
“Me, too. Take the local. We’ll go raise hell in the Village.”
“I don’t know. I think it would just depress me.”
“Get high. Get laid. That’s the way to come up again.”
“I just did. That’s the problem.”
“Oh, yeah. Do tell. But over a drink at the Grip,” Larry said, closer now, moving away from the platform edge as the local pulled into the station.
Noel stepped in with Larry and out again a minute or two later on Christopher Street, beginning to tell Larry what had just happened with Mirella.
Vitale was sympathetic and Noel was too full of it to keep it to himself, so he let Little Larry worm the whole business out of him as they walked the half dozen blocks to the Grip.
There they ordered drinks and found a fairly quiet spot.
“It’s clear to me what your problem is,” Larry said, leaning cockily against the bar, and looking over the crowd. “Jesus! What a shitty crowd tonight. Trolls. Dragons. Lizards. Things that go squish in the night. Ecch! Hiya, Tom! Casper.”
“They’re playing One Night Affair, ” Noel said, realizing the song was on again, as if in mockery. “Well? What’s your great elucidation?”
“Strange as it may sound, I think you are a true bisexual. Like Buddy here. Hey, Bud, help me pick up Noel’s spirits. He’s in the dumps ’cause he just balled some chick to the moon, and never came himself.”
“Stop using so much coke,” Vega said, leaning over the bar. “It numbs up everything.”
“I didn’t use any coke,
” Noel said, half bothered by the sudden exposure of his private life.
“But you have been using it. Up at…well, you know where.”
“That’s not the problem!” Larry interrupted. “Are you going to listen? As I said before, here you are this exotic breed, the true bisexual. And you made a simple error tonight of getting pussy when you wanted cock. That’s all.”
“Whaaat?” Noel wouldn’t buy it.
“Speaking of which,” Vega said, “Randy was in looking for you tonight.”
“Christ! That’s all I need,” Noel said.
“Let me put it this way,” Larry went on. “Let’s say you’re in the mood for Chinese food tonight, right? But the only Chinese restaurant is closed. The only place that’s open serves pizza. Now pizza is fine, wonderful, right? But when you order the pizza and eat it, it just isn’t as good as it usually is. Why? Because you wanted Chinese food! Very simple! You have to get laid the right way tonight. You’ll rebalance your moods and your desires and feel terrific!”
“You’re so full of shit I can’t stand it,” Noel said. But he felt better for having talked about it, and amused by Larry’s advice.
Little Larry seemed about to be taking his own advice. He turned to a tousle-haired, farm-boy type next to him, and began a very heavy come-on. Noel was surprised when Vega leaned over the bar and whispered:
“He might be right. At any rate, it’s nothing to get hysterical over.”
“I’m not hysterical.”
“You were when you walked in. Calm down, will you.”
Noel stared at Vega until Buddy moved away to serve a customer. It’s easy enough for you to say, Noel wanted to shout. You’ve been sleeping with guys since you were fourteen. You found out early. Like Larry, who’d told Noel he’d found out when he was twelve. But at twenty-eight! Twenty-eight, damn it, never once suspecting, this of all possible futures lay ahead.
It was easy enough for Vega with his easygoing Caribbean upbringing, playing with other boys in the mangrove patches, then going for a dive in some clear pool or tropical beach. That at least was natural, meaningful. It was not like seven years of being with Monica, after a childhood and adolescence where everyone agreed you could be crippled, aphasiac, mentally retarded, and you were still better off than being—queer. The stupid jokes in locker rooms, the epithets—“faggot, girly, fag, queer, queen, cocksucked”—aimed to sting worse then any others. The occasional glimpses of real queers at a bowling alley or movie theater—limp-wristed, swaying, slim, lisping, effeminate-acting, garishly dressed fifties queens. And only one glimpse was necessary to see they were a breed apart, to be shunned, despised, as though they carried a terrifying disease.
Of course one or two of his high school classmates turned out to be homosexual. But he’d been so attached to Monica and so distant from anyone but her and her friends that when those old friends were thought of at all, it was as people who’d selected an unconventional way of life that barred them from the real felicities: marrying, having babies, being with other couples, and having good times.
Then he’d begun to teach in the Village and that attitude, and the terminology, changed. “Gay” was the term—gay clubs, gay dances, gay demonstrations, gay this and gay that.
Faggot! You can’t whistle you know, if you’re a queer. Wear green on Thursdays; it’s a symbol, it’s a sign. Hanging out in showers, looking at another guy, or worse touching him even by accident, and you’re queer, a fairy. Don’t brag about the girls you made it with—faggot! Hey, man, let’s go knock down some fags, beat the shit out of them. Yeah! Or better still, let’s not! Comment ça. The Third Sex. The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. Urnings. Perverts. Queer as a three-dollar hill. I don’t want my son to grow up to be a sissy! Isn’t my boy a real little man? You don’t mean you’re one of them!
“Twenty-eight fucking years of programming. And today I am the victim of my own damn acquiescence in it.”
“What’s that, Mac?” Someone next to Noel asked
“Nothing.”
“Well?” Larry said, turning to Noel. “Are we going?”
“Where?”
“Uptown. To trash.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Vega said.
“Who asked you?” Larry shot back.
“Look at him! He’s in no condition…”
“He’ll never be in a better condition. You got a customer, Mr. Vega,” Larry added, and watched satisfied as Buddy moved off.
“I thought you were working on someone,” Noel said to Larry. He half resented Vega’s interference.
“Later for him. I’m hungry for Chinese food, baby. Pizza won’t do. Let’s go.”
“I don’t know.”
“Here, take this, it’ll put you in a sleazy mood.”
Noel looked at the big, flat, white tablet Larry handed him. It was scored on one side, marked on the other 704.
“You’re kidding. A Quaalude will put me to sleep.”
“A half won’t. Take half now, the other when we get there. Go on,” he commanded, “do it. It’ll put you in a sleazy mood.”
Larry almost did it for Noel, but finally Noel took half the pill and washed it down with a slug of beer. Larry disappeared into the increasingly crowded barroom, and Noel hung out at the bar, finishing the beer, until he could no longer clearly revolve in his mind his own despair as the Quaalude began to take effect, relaxing him, making him begin to forget his despondency. Soon the rhythms of the music from the Wurlitzer seemed all pervading.
“Let’s go,” Larry said, suddenly at his side. He steered Noel out the door, and they began walking uptown along West Street.
The hard yellow glare of the streetlights reflected off the metal buttressing of the closed-to-traffic West Side Highway. Little Larry talked dirty from the moment they left the Grip, wrapping one of Noel’s arms over his shoulder, half dancing along on the sidewalk. Noel didn’t mind. For the first time today he felt okay, the half Quaalude took off all the edges, softened everything, making walking effortless, as though he were on a moving sidewalk.
After a few blocks, Larry lighted up a joint, and they took turns smoking it. “You’re going to like this place.”
The grass added a slight twist to every one of Noel’s perceptions—still peaceful, but a bit off center, like going down what seemed a really high curbstone across acres of street, and up again, climbing a hill to the other curbstone.
This intersection looked familiar. Why?
He stopped and looked around. Then he saw it—the abandoned Federal House of Detention. Its grilled-over windows, the garbage thrown against its walls, broken glass on the sidewalk, the big front doors solidly locked against junkies and kids. Noel hadn’t been there since that dread March morning. Now he looked away. It was just an old building, after all.
But he had to check across the street, too, under the highway. Sure enough, there it was, the warehouse where it had all begun. Even it had lost its foreboding and mystery. Even it was ridiculous. He began to laugh at how ridiculous, laughing so hard he couldn’t get the words out to explain to Larry, and so he contented himself laughing as they walked past it, until Larry hushed him, whispering that they were at Le Pissoir.
Membership was required to get in, but the doorman knew Larry, and somehow knew that Noel was part of the “family” as he said, waving them inside.
In the big, red-painted elevator, Larry began to play with Noel, who didn’t bother to resist, nor even much care, even though two other hot-looking dudes also in the elevator couldn’t take their eyes off what Larrry was doing.
The doors opened to a burst of funky music and deep red lighting. It took Noel a minute to see a large loft room with bare walls, plank floors, to the left a simple stand-up bar, a bit brighter, with a few guys standing, drinking. Other rooms were visible beyond this one in both directions, shadowy figures stalking through them. Aside from the music, which wasn’t even as loud as in the Grip, there was no noise, except for what once or
twice sounded like a gruff command from a room behind the bar.
Noel immediately ordered a beer and dropped the second half of the Quaalude without being told to. Larry began talking to the bartender and Noel leaned against the bar and tried to get his bearings in the darkness.
Before he had, a man came out of one of the rooms and stood in front of him, saying something that Noel didn’t understand. Tall and fair-haired, he was naked except for a double-wrapped chain around his waist, and a leather bracelet on each wrist. He was well muscled, his body oiled to gleam in the red lights. Two little metal rods had been stuck through his nipples. As Noel watched, the man flexed his pectoral muscles and the little rods jumped. He began to laugh. The man reached out and took Noel’s hand and showed him how to twist the rods sideways. Noel pulled his hand back and turned around to the bar. Behind him, the man whispered something; Noel turned around and threw his beer at the guy: a thin curtain of it flew out, covering the man from head to toe. He stood still, then fell on his knees and began kissing Noel’s shoes until, disgusted, Noel kicked him away. He backed off saying what sounded like, “Thank you, master, thank you,” until Noel turned back to the bar and Little Larry.
“Looks like you made a friend.”
“What a creep.”
“You’ll find more like that in there,” Larry pointed behind the bar. “That’s for the pros: S and M, water sports, scat, fists, pain, the works. I think you’d better check the other one. People are apt to be a bit more affectionate.”
“How can you see anyone?”
“You can. Don’t worry. Have a good time.”
“Where are you going?” Noel asked, aware that his words were coming out slowly, slurred.
“Into the romper room.”
Noel remained at the bar watching shadows pass and suddenly coalesce in doorways. Two guys next to him progressed from necking to heavy petting into full sex, their shirts came off, their pants dropped. Noel made room for them. Someone else nearby ordered a beer, and began rubbing his crotch, while staring at Noel. Others gathered to watch the two men make love. Noel moved again. The bartender, an attractive bearded fellow Noel had seen before in the Grip, was having his nipples bitten by a patron leaning over the bar. Over the speaker system Noel heard words that he first thought were song lyrics. It was repeated, clearly a man’s voice saying, “Back bar, got a guy here who’ll take care of that bloated kidney for you.”
The Lure Page 22
