Between Men

by Richard Canning

  There was a table free, but the headwaiter glanced at the manager —but he couldn’t stop us. We headed right for the table, which was near Siberia close to the swinging kitchen doors. I placed my frail burden in a chair and, just to bluff my way out of being intimidated, I snapped my fingers and ordered some hot soup and a cup of tea. The headwaiter played with his huge menus like a fan dancer before he finally acquiesced and extended them to us. Slowly the businessmen at the other tables gave up gawking and returned to their conversations. Maybe that is why I was so sympathetic to Elliott, as I soon learned was his name. I’d had to carry him through a sea of disapproval.

  Now that I looked at his painted face I feared I might vomit. Huneker was studying me and smiling almost satirically, as if he knew my discomfort might make a good story that very evening, when Josephine, she of the V-shaped corsage, held court. “Stephen pretends to be so worldly,” I imagined he’d soon be saying, “but he is the son of a Methodist minister and a temperance worker mother and he did grow up in darkest New Jersey, and though he’s fraternized with hordes of daughters of joy he’d never seen a little Ganymede butt-boy buggaree before and poor Stephen—you should’ve seen his face, he nearly vomited just as the headwaiter was confiding, ‘The joint won’t be served till five.’”

  It sickened Elliott even to look at it, but I ordered him a plate of white meat of chicken, no skin and no sauce, as well as a dish of mashed potatoes, no butter. He was so weak I had to feed him myself.

  “Are you ill, Elliott?” I asked him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You don’t need to ‘sir’ me. I’m Stevie.”

  Elliott’s eyes swam up through milky seas of incomprehension—this man with the jaunty hat and scuffed shoes and big brown overcoat wanted to be called Stevie! Elliott whispered the name as if trying out a blasphemy.

  “Tell me, Elliott—what’s wrong with you? Do you think you have consumption?”

  Elliott blinked, “Pardon?”

  “Phthisis? Tuberculosis?”

  More blinking.

  Huneker butted in and said, “Good God, boy, bad lungs? Are you a lunger?”

  Elliott (in a small voice): “I don’t think so, sir.”

  Me: “Fever in the afternoon? Persistent cough? Sudden weight loss? Blood in the sputum?”

  I laughed. “You can see I know all the symptoms. If you are in the incipient stage, you must live mostly outdoors, no matter what the season, eat at least five times a day, drink milk but not from tubercular cows—”

  Huneker: “Are you mad? The boy is a beggar so of course he lives outdoors but not in nature but in this filthy metropolis! And he’d be lucky to eat a single meal a day.

  Tell me, boy—”

  Me: “His name is Elliott.”

  Huneker: “Far too grand a name for a street arab, I’d say. Tell me, Elliott, when did you eat last?”

  Elliott: “Yesterday I had a cup of coffee and a biscuit.”

  Huneker (scorning him): “That a nice, generous man gave you, upon arising?”

  Elliott (simply): “Yes.”

  After Huneker rushed off babbling about his usual cultural schedule, all Huysmans and Wagner, a silence settled over the boy and me. We were between shifts of waiters and diners and the windows were already dark though it was only 5:15 on a cold, rainy Thursday night in November. We breathed deep. The warmth of the hotel’s luxurious heating had finally reached Elliott. He relaxed and let his coat fall open. He was wearing a girl’s silk shirt, dirty pink ruffles under his blue-hued whiskerless chin.

  He smiled and closed his coat again. We chitchatted about one thing and another and I told him a few new jokes and he laughed. He even tried to tell me a joke but it was pathetic, a little kid’s joke. It was obvious that he’d been too weak even to talk but now, with some food in his stomach, he became voluble. He told me he hadn’t spoken in his normal boy’s voice for weeks and weeks. “Usually we’re all shrieking and hissing like whores.”

  Me: “And saying what?”

  He: “If you want to say someone is like that you say, at least we say, ‘she’—and of course we really mean ‘he’—‘she’s un peu Marjorie.’”

  I laughed so hard he didn’t know whether to be pleased or offended, since laughing at someone’s joke turned him into a performer, a figure of fun, and Elliott didn’t see himself that way.

  He said the perverse youngsters he knew called themselves Nancy Boys or Mary Anns. Automatically I pulled out my little black reporter’s notebook and moved the elastic to one side and began to take notes. The boys would accost men at a big rowdy saloon on the Bowery they called Paresis Hall and ask, in shrill feminine voices, “Would you like a nice man, my love? I can be rough or I can be bitch. Want a rollantino up your bottom? Is that what you are, a brownie queen? Want me to brown you? Or do you want to be the man? Ooh la la, she thinks she’s a man—well, she could die with the secret!”

  As for his health, I divined from all the symptoms he was describing that he had syphilis and the next day I arranged for him to see a specialist and follow a cure (I had to borrow the money—fifty dollars, a minor fortune). I had to convince him that he needed to take care or he’d be dead by thirty. Though that threat frightened him no more than it did me. I expected to be dead by thirty or thirty-two—maybe that was why I was so fearless in battle. He seemed as weary of life as I was; we both imagined we’d been alive for a century already and we laughed over it.

  I said, “Isn’t it strange? How grown-ups are always talking about how life speeds by but it doesn’t? In fact it just lumbers along so slowly.” I realized that by referring to grown-ups I was turning myself into a big kid for his benefit.

  He said, “Maybe time seems so slow to you because you look so young and people go on and on treating you in the same way.”

  I was astounded by this curiously mature observation—and chagrined by the first hint of flirtation. He was flirting with me.

  I told him that I’d lost five brothers and sisters before I’d been born, which left me just eight. That made Elliott laugh, which he did behind his hand, as if he were ashamed of his smile.

  “I’m the youngest of four, all brothers,” he said. “My mama died when I was three—she and the baby both. We lived on a farm fifty miles beyond Utica. When I was just a little thing my Daddy started using me like I was a girl.”

  “He did?” I asked. I didn’t want my startled question to scare him off his story. “Tell me more.”

  “And then my brothers—well, two of the three—joined in, especially when they’d all been drinking, jumping me not in front of each other but secretly in the barn after their chores or in the room I shared with my next older brother, the one who let me be. My daddy had been the county amateur boxing champion thirty years ago and he was still real rough. Almost anything could make him mad.”

  “Give me an example,” I said.

  “Well, if the bread box warn’t closed proper and the outer slice had turned hard—don’t you know, he’d start kicking furniture around. We didn’t have two sticks stuck together because the two oldest boys took after him, and they’d flash out and swear something powerful and start kicking and throwing things. The only dishes we kept after Mama died were the tin ones and they were badly dented. Things sorta held together when Mama was around and we sat down to meals, at least to dinner at noon, and she made us boys go to church with her though Daddy would never go. Then when she died, we stopped seeing other folks except at school, but us kids missed two days out of three. Daddy could write enough to sign his name and saw he said no rhyme nor reason in book-larning for a field hand. I liked school and if I coulda went more regular I might’ve made a scholar, but Daddy liked us home, close to him, specially me since I fed the chickens and milked all four cows and tried to keep the house straight and a soup on the boil but Daddy always found fault with me, in particklar late at night when he’d been drinking and then he’d strap my bottom and use me like a girl and some days my ass, begging you
r pardon, hurt so much I couldn’t sit still at school without crying. The teacher, Miss Stephens, thought something might be wrong, ’cause I had a black eye, sometime, or a split lip, and once she pushed my sleeve back and saw the burns where Daddy had played with me.”

  By this point we were walking up Broadway toward Thirtieth Street where I lived with five other male friends in a chaotic but amusing bear’s den of bohemian camaraderie. I hoped none of them would see me with the painted boy. The rain was beginning to freeze and the pavement was treacherous. I steered Elliott into a hat shop and bought him a newspaper boy’s cap, which he held in his hands and looked at so long that I had to order him to put it on.

  The more Elliott talked the sadder I felt. His voice, which had at first been either embarrassed or hushed or suddenly strident with a whore’s hard shriek, now had wandered back into something as flat as a farmer’s fields. He was eager to tell me everything, and that I was taking notes, far from making him self-conscious, pleased him. He counted for something and his story as well. I sensed that he’d guessed his young life might make a good story but he hadn’t told it yet. There was nothing rehearsed about his tale, but if he hesitated now he didn’t pause from fear of shocking me but only because till now he’d never turned so many details into a plot. He had to convert all those separate instances and events into habits (“My Daddy would get drunk and beat me”). He had to supply motives (“He never had no way of holding his anger in”) and paradoxes (“I guess I loved him, yeah, I guess I did and still do but I don’t rightly know why”).

  He slipped on the ice at one point and he grabbed my arm but after another block I realized he was still clinging to me and walking as a woman would beside her man and I shook him off. As I did it I made a point of saying something especially friendly to him; I wanted him to recognize I was his friend but not his man. I felt he was a wonderful new source of information about the city and its lower depths, but I drew back with a powerful instinct toward health away from his frail, diseased frame. I couldn’t rid myself of the idea that he wasn’t just another boy but somehow a she-male, a member of the third sex, and that he’d never pitch a ball in the open field or with a lazy wave hail a friend fishing on the other shore. The whole sweet insouciance of a natural boy’s mindless summer was irrevocably lost to him.

  About the Contributors

  Bruce Benderson is currently best known for his seventh book, a memoir called The Romanian: Story of an Obsession (2006). In 2004, Benderson won France’s Prix de Flore for the translated version of this work. His monograph on the filmmaker James Bidgood was published in 1999, and his 1997 essay on urban culture, “Toward the New Degeneracy,” was chosen by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the 100 most remarkable creative works of that year. “Mouth of the River” is taken from the forthcoming novel Pacific Agony, to be published in 2007 by Clear Cut Press in the United States, and also in France.

  Mack Friedman is author of the novel Setting the Lawn on Fire (2005), winner of the first Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction from the Publishing Triangle. His first book, Strapped for Cash: A History of American Hustler Culture (2003), was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in GLBT Studies.

  Robert Glück has written nine books of poetry and fiction. His latest—a book of stories—was entitled Denny Smith (2004). Other publications include the novels Jack the Modernist (1985) and Margery Kempe (1994), another book of stories, Elements of a Coffee Service (1983), and Reader (1989), a book of poems and short prose. Along with Camille Roy, Mary Burger, and Gail Scott, Glück edits Narrativity, a Web site on narrative theory. An anthology based on the Web site, Biting the Error: Writers on Narrative, was published in 2005. “Bisexual Pussy Boy” is taken from a forthcoming novel, About Ed.

  Andrew Holleran is author of the novels Dancer from the Dance (1978), Nights in Aruba (1983), The Beauty of Men (1996), and Grief (2006). He has also published a short story collection, In September, the Light Changes (1999), and a book of essays, Ground Zero (1988).

  Tennessee Jones has published a short story collection, Deliver Me from Nowhere (2005). He is also author of the long-running zine Teenage Death Songs.

  Kevin Killian has written two novels, Shy (1989) and Arctic Summer (1997); a book of memoirs, Bedrooms Have Windows (1990); two books of stories, Little Men (1996) and I Cry Like a Baby (2001); as well as a collection of poems, Argento Series (2001). With Lewis Ellingham, he has written a biography of the poet Jack Spicer, Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance (1998). Killian’s latest book is Selected Amazon Reviews (2006). “Greensleeves” was first published in Roughed Up: More Tales of Gay Men, Sex, and Power (Alyson Books, 2003), edited by Simon Sheppard and M. Christian.

  Wayne Koestenbaum has published one novel, Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes (2004), five books of poetry, and five books of nonfiction prose. His next book, Hotel Theory, will be published in 2007.

  Shaun Levin’s most recent book is a collection of stories, A Year of Two Summers (2005). He has also published a novella, Seven Sweet Things (2003), and is editor of Chroma: A Queer Literary Journal. “The Big Fry Up at the Crazy Horse Café” first appeared in The Del Sol Review (Winter 2006).

  Michael Lowenthal is author of the novels The Same Embrace (1998), Avoidance (2002), and Charity Girl (2007). The recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan writers’ conferences, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Lowenthal teaches creative writing at Boston College and in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University. He also serves on the executive board of PEN New England. He can be reached via his Web site: www.michaellowenthal.com. “Marge” was first published in Post Road, no. 14 (Spring 2007).

  Alistair McCartney has published one novel, The End of the World Book (2007).

  David McConnell wrote the novel The Firebrat (2003). “Rivals” is taken from a forthcoming novel, The Beads.

  James McCourt is author of three novels—Mawrdew Czgowchwz (1975), Time Remaining (1993), and Delancey’s Way (2000)—and two story collections, Kaye Wayfaring in “Avenged” (1984) and Wayfaring at Waverly in Silver Lake (2002). His most recent publication is Queer Street: The Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985 (2004). McCourt has contributed to The Yale Review, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. “Thermopylae” is taken from a forthcoming novel, Now Voyagers, due in late 2007 from Turtle Point Press.

  Vestal McIntyre’s first book is the story collection You Are Not the One (2005), published in the United States and the UK.

  Ethan Mordden’s fiction includes the “Buddies” cycle on life and love in gay Manhattan and a novel about Maria Callas, The Venice Adriana (1998). He has published both fiction and criticism in The New Yorker, and is currently researching a biography of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.

  Dale Peck has published three novels, Martin and John (1993), The Law of Enclosures (1996), and Now It’s Time to Say Goodbye (1998); a nonfiction book about his father, What We Lost (2003); a collection of book reviews, Hatchet Jobs (2005); and a novel for children, The Drift House: The First Voyage (2005). “The Piers” is taken from his novel The Garden of Lost and Found, published by Carroll and Graf in 2007.

  Patrick Ryan’s first book was Send Me (2006). He is a recipient of a 2006 National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Fiction, and his young adult novel Saints of Augustine will come out in 2007.

  John Weir is author of the novels The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket (1989) and What I Did Wrong (2006). “Neorealism at the Infiniplex” first appeared in the literary journal Gulf Coast (Winter/Spring 2006).

  Edmund White has written some twenty books, including the autobiographical novels A Boy’s Own Story (1982), The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988), and The Farewell Symphony (1997). He won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for his 1993 biography of Jean Genet. White’s most recent books are the novel Fanny: A Fiction (2003) and a memoir, My Lives (2006). “The Painted Boy” is excerpted from his novel Hotel de Dream
, published in 2007 by Bloomsbury (UK) and Ecco/HarperCollins (USA).

  About the Editor

  Richard Canning has published Gay Fiction Speaks: Conversations with Gay Novelists (2001) and Hear Us Out: Conversations with Gay Novelists (2004), which won the 2005 Editors’ Choice Lambda Literary Award. He is preparing an anthology of AIDS writing, Vital Signs, for publication by Carroll & Graf, and is coediting—with Dale Peck—a series of reissues of AIDS literary texts. He is also writing a short life of Oscar Wilde, as well as a long, critical life of the English novelist Ronald Firbank. Based in London, England, he teaches at the University of Sheffield, where he may be contacted.

  1 Finnish for “Woman Comrade.” It was the sister newspaper of Toveri, or Comrade.

  2 Slang term for deliberate sacrificing of an intelligence agent, usually a newbie.

  BETWEEN MEN

  Original Fiction by Today’s Best Gay Writers

  Carroll & Graf Publishers

  An Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.

  245 West 17th Street, 11th Floor

  New York, NY 10011

  Copyright © 2007 by Richard Canning

  Introduction copyright Richard Canning 2007. “Hello, Young Lovers” copyright Andrew Holleran 2007. “Greensleeves” copyright Kevin Killian 2007. “A Joint and a Nice Piece of Ass” copyright Mack Friedman 2007. “Pretend I’m Here” copyright Patrick Ryan 2007. “The Ballad of Jimmy Pie” copyright Ethan Mordden 2007. “The Big Fry-Up at the Crazy Horse Café” copyright Shaun Levin 2007. “Thermopylae” copyright James McCourt 2007. “Bisexual Pussy Boy” copyright Robert Glück 2007. “The Piers” copyright Dale Peck 2007. “Neorealism at the Infiniplex” copyright John Weir 2007. “Rivals” copyright David McConnell 2007. “Crayons” copyright Alistair McCartney 2007. “Mouth of the River” copyright Bruce Benderson 2007. “Pennsylvania Story” copyright Tennessee Jones 2007. “Marge” copyright Michael Lowenthal 2007. “A Good Squeeze” copyright Vestal McIntyre 2007. “Diary of a Quack” copyright Wayne Koestenbaum 2007. “The Painted Boy” copyright Edmund White 2007.