by Gary Indiana
My God, I thought, he’s so diabolical I’ll never know how to explain it to anybody. Don’t . . . start, I said through my teeth.
I can’t believe you, he said, you, who claims to care so much about other people, and supposedly have so much compassion, could humiliate a poor working girl—
Look, I said, I think maybe it would be a great idea if you’d just go home, Gregory. Just go home right now. Because I’m not going to listen to this, and I’m not going to stand still for you telling me how to behave, particularly right after . . . especially not right this moment, okay? Just go home and spend the evening at your own place, and buy yourself something to eat with your own money.
Don’t do this to me, he said. If you want to talk something over, all right. We can talk it over. But don’t turn a conversation into World War III, because I’m telling you something and you ought to be, we ought to be far enough along in this relationship to say things to each other without turning it into some final epic drama . . .
How dare you criticize me, I said. How dare you tell me how to behave.
It went on like that until we got to my apartment. I realized that sending him home would simply involve more unpleasantness over the telephone, and we had already bought dinner. Upstairs, he renewed pleading on behalf of the cashier. I told him he’d behaved like a pig at W.’s opening.
Aha, he said, so that’s what this is all about.
No, I said, that’s not what it’s all about, but while we’re on the subject, how dare you go to somebody’s show and spend the entire time there blabbing about how much you hate his work? You pleaded with me to go there, you weren’t invited or anything.
I was with Pugg, he said evenly, we were in a very discreet part of the gallery, we weren’t talking so anyone else could hear us. Believe it or not, he said, I didn’t go there to make you uncomfortable. Quite the contrary.
It occurred to me then, that as long as I desired him I would never prevail in that kind of confrontation. Because the argument had nothing to do with the strings being pulled. It also dawned on me that Gregory was a complete sociopath. This perception was of no help whatever.
I got him a $500 emergency grant for his medical expenses. I took out a $1,000 interest-free loan from a benevolent organization to pay his back rent. Gregory then applied for a $3,000 grant, from a foundation that supported mid-career artists having temporary setbacks. At first Gregory acknowledged that his chances of getting this money were slender. But as time went by, he developed an irrational, intractable conviction that his application would be approved, and began speaking of the grant as assured money he was waiting for. Before long, this $3,000 replaced all other income-producing plans for his immediate future. If it didn’t come, he said, he would have to pack it in. He didn’t say as much, but that meant returning home to Connecticut and his mother, and starting again from square one.
He just didn’t see any other possibilities, although both of his pictures in Bruno’s group show were sold, and two other galleries had asked him for work. He went through the motions of ordering prints from some of his slides, and got the works fabricated and delivered, but his attitude was lost posthumous, he no longer felt involved with these pictures, or with making art at all. The reception of his work was, as he’d predicted, quite sensational. Enough, at least, to stir interest from three museums and a half dozen collectors. This attention did nothing for him. Or perhaps it did: it scared him, and he was already scared beyond his ability to cope. I later realized that to stand behind something he had made would have forced him to reveal an identity to the world, abandoning the masks that were his only real works of art. He wanted to be seen but he wanted to be invisible. I came to understand that he had only told the truth when he said he wanted everything.
12
He promised at last he’d have the X-rays taken. Maria Lorca phoned the prescription into the lab on Third Avenue, right around the corner. Last night Rainer called from the Gramercy, he’s bringing Willie’s ashes home to Australia. We went there this morning for breakfast. Rainer is going through the worst moment of his life, but he was very patient and nice with Gregory and kept up a stream of absurd chatter, much of it about sex and the things he used to enjoy. I could feel Gregory’s Savonarola complex rising darkly between his ears while Rainer described sex with a rubber queen from New Jersey. We ate in a truly horrible outdoor cafe near the hotel and Gregory left us there, claiming he had some errand. Rainer talked about suicide, not in a depressive way, but lightly, even warmly. No call for help there. I’m certain he’s planning to do it.
At two o’clock, Gregory showed up at the magazine office. I hadn’t quite finished writing and he stood at the entrance of my cubicle, leaning against the slatted glass with his upper lip stretched out against his hands, which were clasped on the top of the divider: the picture of despond. His entire body whined. When I finished we went to the accounting office for my check. The checks hadn’t been signed. We had to sit there. Gregory’s impatience sucked all the air from the room. I have never seen anyone suffer so insistently. He makes Camille look like Esther Williams. Next we walked to the bank, another martyrdom of waiting for him. Finally I handed him the money and told him, Just take this and go over there, okay? I can’t eat lunch with you, I just can’t take being with you right now.
That’s so unfair, he cried. You promised to have lunch with me. How can you be so selfish, you know how upsetting this is.
He’s become such a sodden bag of cringing need. I desperately wanted some oxygen, to walk alone in the streets, to look at the sky and think about anything except him. We went to a coffee shop on Broadway. He ordered a cheeseburger. I said: It’s you that’s unfair. You know your fucking horrible behavior is making me sick, why can’t you leave me in peace for one bloody minute.
He calmly consumed every morsel of food on his plate, then pushed it away and became indignant. He stood up and walked out of the place. I took the check to the register, paid it, and found him outside, loitering near a trash basket at the corner. Are you getting these X-rays or what, I said. He looked at the money I’d given him. I need more than this, he said. They’re $75.
No, I said, they’re $50, I asked them.
Maria ordered a second set, Gregory said. The duplicates are $25.
I dug out $25 and slapped it into his hand.
Are you gonna walk me over there?
All right, I said, thinking that he was probably frightened out of his wits.
At the door of the lab I said, I’ll come in and wait for you.
It’s all right, he said. Don’t bother. I’ll be fine.
Are you sure, I said.
I love you, he said.
He went in. When I got to my apartment, lay down for a minute, and smoked a cigarette, I pictured two things. One was Gregory pressing his chest to the cold rectangle of an X-ray plate. The other was Gregory walking into the lab, sitting down in the waiting room, watching three minutes pass on the wall clock, and promptly walking out.
He brought me a bunch of jonquils this afternoon. He said he’d traded a picture with Bruno’s friend Roger, and Roger had insisted on giving him some money as well, even though Roger’s piece is a painting and worth more. He did the shopping too, which left the afternoon free. Pugg is back in the picture. Gregory thinks it’s only a matter of days before he’ll have to get a job, hepatitis or no hepatitis. Pugg wants them to start a loft-cleaning service. This seems impractical to me, first of all because Pugg’s an obvious dope, but also, Gregory’s still sick. Maria Lorca says he shouldn’t do anything whatsoever for two months. We would both be better off in the Soviet Union, at least he wouldn’t risk losing his apartment because he’s sick.
Gregory decided he was well again, if only because he felt poisonously bored. One morning he announced his recovery and said he would spend the day looking for a job. Some hours later he called me from a pay phone, in tears, and said he’d spent his last dollar getting uptown, and had gone to the wrong addre
ss and missed the appointment he’d made, now he was stuck at Fifty-ninth Street and feeling sick. I told him to take a cab to the house. As I paid the cab I saw the stricken, humiliated look on his face, and knew he was lapsing back into the bleary hopelessness he’d lost during his illness.
Look, I said, I’m not your enemy, I’m not trying to add to your frustrations. I’m helping you, I’ve given you every spare penny I have. This isn’t a reproach, I’m glad to give it to you. But you can not mope and complain all the time because it’s bringing me down. You can’t tell me every time a problem gets solved that you suddenly have ten more that are too much for you to deal with. If I get any more depressed I’m not going to function anymore and then we’ll both be in deep trouble because I won’t get any work done and there won’t be any more money coming in. Can’t you at least see that?
I knew you’d eventually throw the money thing back in my face, he said.
I’m not throwing it in your face, I’m telling you something. I’ve been supporting you to relieve some of this anxiety of yours, but the more I do for you, the less you seem willing to do the one thing I need, which is, Gregory, for you to at least pretend you have a positive attitude, and stop whining about how persecuted you are.
In other words, he said, you want me to lie, and pretend I’m happy, when I’m crumbling apart right in front of you. You know, I’m not the kind of person who can scream and jump out the window, but in fact I’m cracking into pieces.
That’s what I don’t understand, I said, for six weeks you’ve been in a really good mental state, you’ve been able to rest and not worry about your bills or anything, and now you’re acting the way you did before. I mean I thought we’d worked some of this out with each other.
Do you realize what it’s like, he said, pounding the sidewalks for hours and hours and going through these job interviews, being interrogated by these hideous people?
Yes, I do, I said, and when I did it I didn’t have anyone waiting at home to see that I got enough to eat and that my rent was taken care of, but you do. I just don’t see why that doesn’t take the edge off for you.
Surely, Gregory said, you understand how mortifying it is for me that you have to take care of me.
I don’t have to, I said. I’ve been doing it because I wanted to. So why turn it into some sick guilty thing.
I can see, he said, that you’re not interested in how I feel. You know how you want me to be, and if I don’t coincide with that, you get pissed off.
Gregory . . . I’m not asking you to be cheerful, I’m not asking you to pretend everything in your life is wonderful. I’m not asking you to be anything. I’m just asking you to . . . lighten up a little bit. Before I murder you.
At the very moment when I thought we had come to trust each other, old complaints resumed, with renewed malignity. I asked Martha to hire Gregory, as she needed an assistant; he returned from the first afternoon’s work in a bitter mood, lamenting that she’d gone out for a sandwich and coffee without offering him anything, that her photographs were corny, that looking at them all day had had a really negative effect on his brain. Another day, when he’d helped fetch a bookcase from Libby’s apartment, he noted that one of Libby’s cats smelled, as if this plainly reflected something terrible about Libby’s whole way of life. His second day of employment with Martha ended even before Martha arrived at her spare apartment in the East Seventies: once again he phoned from somewhere uptown with his last quarter, speechless with horror, and while I waited for the cab to arrive Martha called asking where he was. She had been delayed fifteen minutes in traffic. Do you know what I felt like, Gregory asked insanely, sitting there on her stoop, with everybody who walked by staring at me as if I was some kind of criminal?
Nothing suited him. A mutual friend hired him to wait tables in a small restaurant on First Avenue. Gregory resigned himself to it with poor grace, and warned me that I’d now be seeing much less of him than before. For two weeks he made himself scarce. On the phone he dissected his co-workers. They were stupid and frivolous and amoral and all taking drugs. It was now summer and business was falling off, he said, so he was making practically nothing.
Richard’s rented this house in Sag Harbor, and he pestered me for weeks to come out, so I did. I realized if I listened to Gregory whining for another second I would strangle him. His new enemy is Kenneth, who used to be his friend years ago and now runs this restaurant, Kenneth went back to Gregory’s place one night after work and they got stoned, according to Gregory Kenneth said a lot of nasty things about me. Kenneth is something of an airhead, but I recognize Gregory’s technique of keeping people he knows alienated from each other. He complained so much about Bruno that I stopped speaking to Bruno for a while, he didn’t want me and Bruno exchanging notes about him. And it turned out that he and Bruno had remained friendly the whole time. Now it’s Kenneth persecuting him. Kenneth made him work an extra hour one night when some friends of the restaurant wanted a table. Kenneth made remarks about Gregory’s bad character. Kenneth told Gregory that Gregory was losing his looks.
I’ve called him every day. Every day he tells me things are fine, he misses me, and so forth. His voice has the same incredible power over me it’s always had. Soft and cuddly like a child’s voice, a caress. He says his days are really flat without me. He’s having dinner tonight with Pugg. Pugg is still on about the cleaning service. Gregory’s making nothing at the restaurant, et cetera.
The house is so peaceful I could settle in here and forget everything. I cooked dinner, which took hours because I kept having little drinks with Richard. The evening was full of sexual innuendos and jokes, and it didn’t surprise me later that Richard slipped into bed with me, declaring that he wanted to try a new condom brand. I felt weird about it at first, but life is short and lately not so wonderful, after all. I doubt if we’ll ever do it again, anyway.
It would really destroy Victor if he ever found out about this, Richard assured me. Not because I did it with somebody but because it was you.
So he’s betrayed Victor and I’ve betrayed Gregory. Is that really true? Or do people like to poison themselves and each other with morality when the slightest pleasure makes it possible to breathe for a change? Richard says both partners in every gay couple he knows cheat. Most of them stay together out of fear and then desire bursts out in these odd moments. Let’s face it, he says, being scared about this disease, after a while, it’s like we’re in prison. Worse than prison because even really disgusting mass murderers who are in prison are allowed to fuck their wives and create children, when they ought to be electrocuted. When you think your peak years of sexuality have to go by with no action, Richard says, it’s really fucked. I’m sure, he says, all this frustration is building up everywhere like an H-bomb, all this energy seething away inside people. It makes you sick in your mind, he says, thinking you fuck somebody so you die. Its sick.
I wondered if Gregory happened to be screwing Pugg at the same moment Richard was screwing me. I can picture it easily. Maybe those two really love each other, but Gregory can’t live off Pugg. Who knows what tiresome drama I’ve been cast in. But he sounds so sincere on the telephone. Misses me, and all that. He’s probably feeling the pinch. But what if it’s real, and he does love me, and he’s just too crazy to cope? Don’t I have an obligation to him? I’ve made him rely on me, now he needs me. Maybe he’s trying his best, and everything does go wrong for him, as soon as he sees a chance of having a real life, something comes up, he gets sick, he gets stopped by his money problems. . . .
But then again, he got that $500 from the grant, and the $1000 I borrowed for him, and I’m always shelling out tens or twenties nearly every day, where does it disappear? Life’s expensive, but I take care of his meals, his transportation, I paid for his work to get made up, it’s a pretty good deal for him, really.
The night I got back to the city I phoned Kenneth’s restaurant. He’s not here, Kenneth said, I’ve had to let him go. But why, I asked. Wel
l, look, Kenneth said, I’m running a restaurant, I’m not a psychiatrist. You know, every time I talk to him he tells me how degrading it is for him to wait tables, how much he hates this work, he says this to the waitresses and they think it’s a big drag having to hear that all the time. He’s really fucked up. He owes the waitresses a lot of money and he owes me $40, too.
Libby called and said Gregory had phoned her and said I’d left money for him for the week but he’d somehow lost it, and then she lent him $50. He just came over, she said, looking terrible, I invited him in for a cup of coffee but he acted jumpy and just grabbed the money and left. He’d also hit up Jane for cash, and Roger, the painter, said Gregory had showed up at his door asking for $10. I gave him the ten, Roger told me, but the creepy thing was, he’d gotten into the building without buzzing my apartment, it’s a security building, you know? Gave me the creeps, there he was right outside my door.
I couldn’t locate Gregory. He wasn’t at his place. I didn’t have a number for Pugg. I phoned anyone who might have seen him. Bruno said Gregory had come to the gallery looking like shit, and begged him for money. Then Doris told me he’d visited her and wheedled $100 out of her. He told her he was losing his mind. He didn’t know if he could continue living in the city. Everything was driving him nuts. Next, it turned out he’d sold Roger’s painting to a collector I knew, for $400. She gave him the $400 outright, but two days later he phoned up and asked to borrow an additional $100. So there has been quite a volume of financial activity going on in my absence. No word from him whatsoever.
