Absorbed in the story he was telling, Derek hardly seemed to notice the muffins being constantly slipped onto his plate, or the fact that his wine and water glasses were never empty. Geoffrey attended to him watchfully, but with a certain stealth, as if his wifely purpose were to efface himself as much as possible, to create the illusion that food sprang from Derek’s plate like fruit from a tree.
Derek had lived in Europe for a time, he was saying: in Berlin; in Barcelona; in Paris. He smiled as he told stories of dissolute European homosexuals, dalliances in the Faubourg St.-Germain, transvestite prostitutes who lounged in deck chairs along the big, tree-lined avenues of the Bois-de-Boulogne. “The clubs those days were piss-elegant,” he said. “Not like now. But in the fifties, in Europe, elegance was so important to everyone, and to the homosexuals perhaps most of all. It was a way of propping up a shattered ego. They were always impeccable, those Parisian men I knew—even the cab drivers, even Falasha, sitting on her deck chair in the Bois, drenched in Chanel and drinking champagne from a crystal glass.”
He leaned back in his chair, smiling. There was the famous French photographer, his dear friend, whom he had once accompanied to Tangiers in search of beautiful brown-skinned little boys. “It’s easiest there, you know,” he explained, “because the kids are on their own so early, and the parents, if there are any, aren’t likely to make much of a ruckus. Also, the children are streetwise; they’re sexual from a much earlier age than American or European children because there’s nothing to hold them back. They really like it. So I would wait in a café and eventually Roland would come back with some little Mustapha or Hamid and buy him a Coca-Cola for his trouble—among other things.” Seeing Philip’s stricken face, he added as if in apology: “Of course, Roland never really did anything with the boys. He liked to caress them and sometimes give them baths.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking—”
“Of course. You young men today are so puritanical.”
He laughed. Once again the wine bottle circled the table. Geoffrey spooned potatoes onto Derek’s plate. There was a napkin around his neck, stained various shades of lavender and blue. Everything about Derek was hunched and constricted, even his gesticulations mere jabs at the air, diminished by years of conditioning to a world built simply on the wrong scale. Probably he had once punctuated a remark too emphatically and accidentally hit someone in the face.
Philip was still drinking wine. He was on his fourth glass, and Derek’s lilting voice had long since ceased to have meaning for him, blending as musically as it did with the rhythms of the clocks. The wine had made him feel brave, so he turned intimately to Geoffrey, who was watching Derek, as though somehow still riveted by these stories he had probably heard a hundred times before.
“How did you and Derek meet?” Philip asked him, and felt Eliot’s head turn.
“Meet!” Geoffrey’s mouth opened in surprise, his head lifting from its resting place. “Well, it’s quite a story. You see,” he said, “I was married at the time.”
“They called it Paris bleu,” Derek was saying.
“Married!”
“Strange but true. To my high-school sweetheart, Adele Marie Probst. Morristown High School. Class of 1950. President and vice-president of the Drama Club, respectively. We moved to New York, imagining we’d be Bohemians and get onto the stage, but I ended up working as an accountant and Adele was a waitress at the Proud Peacock. I didn’t know Derek then. He’d just come back from Europe, you see, and was getting work as a commercial artist, and he was in love with a young Spaniard and was trying to earn enough money to bring him over, sending a little every week and all. And Julia—that’s Eliot’s mother, though of course she wasn’t Eliot’s mother then—she was going to marry this Pedro to get him citizenship, then divorce him, and then she and Alan were going to get married—”
“Alan?”
“Eliot’s father. They were going to get married because there was no way this Pedro fellow could have stayed otherwise. It was the sort of thing Julia did. Anyway, that’s how I met Derek. You see, I wanted to be an actor, but all I could get was night work doing the lights for these odd little East Village things, and Julia was a big actress at one of them. We got to be intime. I learned all about Derek and his Spaniard from her, and it was like a radio serial—each night I’d get a chapter. And of course Julia had her own motives for telling me the story. She had—how should I say it?—insight into me. Anyway, eventually she introduced me to this wonderful Derek whom I’d been hearing so much about, and my heart went pitter-patter. I suddenly knew what I wanted. But of course I was married.”
“—and he positively insisted, insisted, that he was Linda Darnell—What are you two girls whispering about over there, Geoffrey?” Derek called across the table.
“Oh, never mind,” Geoffrey scolded, “we’re having a nice little private chat.” Turning back to Philip, he lifted his wine glass and winked. “Well anyway,” he said, “Derek’s little Spaniard got into a brawl at the local cantina, and then he went off to jail and that was the last anyone heard of him. Julia and Alan went ahead and got married, and we were both at their wedding. Derek was the best man, but he might as well have been the maid of honor, the way he was dressed. We saw each other all the time after that, because we liked each other—just as friends. He was living on the top floor of a walk-up, and Anaïs Nin of all people lived across the fire escape from him—I could tell you stories about that! But I’m off the point. One thing led to another, and I started —experimenting. Not with Derek, of course; that was too close to home. Just with men I met. And finally there was a Cuban boy named Hector who phoned up Adele in a jealous rage and told her everything.” He sighed. “The next thing I knew she was back in Morristown.”
“What happened after that?”
“Well, I was a free man,” Geoffrey said. “And once Derek knew it—it was only a matter of time. He knew I loved him.”
“How old were you?”
“Oh let’s see. It was ’fifty-five, so I must have been—twenty-three, twenty-four? And Derek was probably twenty-eight.”
“I was twenty-seven, Geoffrey.”
“Forgive me!” Geoffrey cast his eyes at the ceiling.
“That’s an amazing story,” Philip said. “But Eliot never told me his parents had introduced you.” (Once again he felt Eliot’s head turn.)
“Introduced us, nurtured us, carried love notes. Even supported us for a while when Derek was finishing The Frozen Field. That was after Julia came into her inheritance and began to spend it on her artist friends.” Geoffrey laughed. “Their house became a veritable artists’ colony—full of Julia and Alan’s friends. Special, special people. And little Eliot, just two years old, with hair down to his shoulders, brown as a nut, a little Cupid running naked on the beach. Julia was still breast-feeding him, I think.” He took another sip of wine. “Julia,” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Julia. I remember—”
“You know, Derek,” Eliot said loudly, “Jerene’s had a really extraordinary twist in her dissertation. I think it would interest you a lot. She’s come upon this story that could be the plot of one of your novels.”
“Really,” Derek said. “Tell me.”
He told Derek the saga of the twins and their invented language. “Fascinating,” Derek said. “I actually once started a novel on a subject like that—a brother and sister who invent a secret code between themselves and then suddenly start getting messages in the code through their television set. But it never came to pass.” Sighing, he shook his head, and returned to his monologue.
“So how was it when Eliot came to live with you?”
“Oh,” Geoffrey said, “it was very hard. It was terrible. But there it was. They were dead. We were the guardians.” He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms behind his head. “Eliot was such an amazing little boy. Brave, in his own way, when things were scary. It actually helped us. That’s why we bought this house. Because we felt that we owed it to
Julia and Alan to raise him the way they would have, even if we couldn’t really afford it at the time.”
“Geoffrey,” Philip asked quietly, “I hope you don’t mind my asking you this, but—how did they die?”
Geoffrey’s eyes widened. “You don’t know?” he said, and Philip shook his head.
“It’s not very extraordinary,” Geoffrey said. He was looking over Philip’s head at one of the clocks, as if to make sure it was running properly. “After a party,” he said. “They were driving home. Someone was drunk, but it was never clear who, or which car.” He closed his eyes, opened them again. “And then,” he said, “we were parents. I remember when we took Eliot to school the first day, to register him. I’ll never forget the look on that woman’s face when she asked, ‘Father’s name?’ and I said, ‘Which one?’ ”
“You know,” Eliot now called from across the table, “that I just love being talked about as if I wasn’t here.”
“Oh dear, I’m sorry, Eliot,” Geoffrey said. “Philip’s just curious, and it is quite a story. So many things,” he went on, ignoring Eliot’s stare from the other end of the table, “were easier in the Village. We had quite a house in those days. People in and out all the time, sleeping on the living room couch. Never any shortage of friends for Eliot. Why, Anaïs Nin bounced him on her knee, Djuna Barnes read him bedtime stories, e. e. cummings played trucks with him. Even Mr. Malcolmson here. He used to babysit for Eliot all the time, stay with him when Derek and I were away.” He wagged his wine glass across the table at John, who smiled, and Philip felt his mouth go dry.
“Yes,” John said, leaning back in his chair and looking up at the chandelier, “Eliot and I did have fun.”
The night before, Philip had conceived, in advance, a vision of this evening at Derek and Geoffrey’s. In this vision of the dinner, the party engaged in dialogue so graceful it seemed to have been choreographed or scripted; food appeared in silver dishes, and was eaten delicately; and afterwards—Derek and Geoffrey having shown Philip their world, and Philip having drunk his fill of it —Philip showed them his world, took them out to a bar, or dancing. At first, of course, they were resistant to the glittering splendors of New York nightlife; but soon enough they lost their inhibitions and had a wonderful time, and were grateful to him.
Now they sat in Derek Moulthrop’s living room, drinking coffee, and John Malcolmson, whom Philip had not counted on, explained why in his opinion Philip’s was a generation of greedy cowards, without principle, and why, for him, the world had practically ended in 1977. And Philip, in response, recounted how, coming back, the gay alumni at his college were moved to tears by the sight of a thousand pink balloons released into the sky, and all the eager-eyed young people cheering loudly in pink triangle T-shirts. “Balloons,” John Malcolmson said, sinking resignedly into the velvet couch, “what are balloons? I’m talking about revolution—real revolution. We gave you the chance to take over, and look what you did instead—just slid right inside the status quo.”
That was Philip’s opportunity. “I don’t think that’s entirely fair, John,” he said. “Because in certain ways, things have changed—for the better. For instance, there’s a bar in the East Village, called Boy Bar, that Eliot and I like a lot, and I think if you went there it would change your mind. It’s a friendly place, very social, a place where people go who really are comfortable with being gay, and know it’s a lot more than a matter of who you sleep with. In fact—well, I’d like to take you there, to show you gay men my age who are actually very decent and principled, and who I think you’d approve of.”
“A bar!” John said. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been to a bar?” He laughed, and leaned closer to Philip. “In my day, we had bars compared to which—but never mind.” He took another gulp from his coffee mug. “For three years I’ve been completely celibate, not even a kiss,” he said, “and so far—God willing—no symptoms. But the other day, I was out for dinner with my friend Jake, and I ran out of water, and when he offered me some of his, I said, ‘Jake, you think after three years of celibacy I’m going to risk getting AIDS from a water glass?’ Me, I said that. Me.” He looked away.
“Well, John,” Philip said, “it seems to me the time has come for you to take a look at the world. Right, Eliot?”
Eliot, standing at the other side of the room, was suspiciously attentive. “Boy Bar?” he said. “Philip, I really don’t think—”
“And maybe Derek and Geoffrey as well?”
Hearing his name, Derek turned warily. “What?” he said. “What’s Boy Bar?”
“I don’t think you’d like it,” Eliot said.
But Geoffrey said, “I think it would be fun. I’ll tell you what, John—I’ll go if you go.”
John looked skeptical. Derek shook his head no.
“Come on, you old lug,” Geoffrey said, kicking him. “You have to get out sometime. We’ll go,” he said to Philip.
Clearly miserable at the prospect, Derek stirred his coffee. Finally he sighed defeat. “I’ll just go change my shoes,” he said and disappeared up the stairs. When he returned, he was wearing green high-top sneakers. His feet looked about size thirteen.
There was a hurried gathering of coats, a few last-minute expressions of doubt from Derek—“I’m not sure about this. I think I’m too old, and anyway I never did like bars. Boy Bar! We’re not boys. What if they won’t let us in?” Eliot, meanwhile, would not look at Philip, seemed to be simmering in silent rage.
“Don’t worry,” Philip said. “Allen Ginsberg goes there all the time.”
“Allen Ginsberg!” Derek huffed.
They were out the door now, on Thirteenth Street, heading east. The night was brisker than earlier, but even in the windy weather a lot of people were out in the world, walking fast, grabbing the last hours of fall. Soon enough Philip and Eliot, quicker in their stride than the others, were half a block ahead. “That was a wonderful evening,” Philip said.
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.”
“Thank you for inviting me. Eliot?” Philip asked. “Have you ever been to a gay place, a bar or anything like that, with Derek and Geoffrey before?”
“Not in New York. In Provincetown once.”
“Then I guess this is a first for you too.”
“Yes.” He did not sound happy about it.
They turned downtown, then east again, onto St. Mark’s Place, where a teenage girl in serious punk garb said, “Excuse me, can you give me some money to buy drugs?” Philip looked blithely over her head and walked on. “Faggots,” she shouted, spitting out the word, and he visibly flinched. “Hey, you faggots, you want to suck my cock?”
“Shut up, bitch!” John Malcolmson shouted, turning around, and the girl’s arms dropped to her sides. She looked suddenly like what she was—a fourteen-year-old girl—and seemed about to cry. Then she raised her fist. “Yeah?” she shouted. “Yeah?”
Ignoring her, John turned and walked, along with the others, through the glass-doored entrance of Boy Bar. The door swung shut behind them, blocking out street noise, engulfing them in the gentle monotones of Philip Glass. “Hello, Eliot,” the shellacked-haired bouncer said. He smiled vacantly. “Fancy running into you at a place like this.”
“Hi,” Eliot said. “Jesus Christ, John,” he murmured as they traversed the long corridor into the bar, “she was just a kid!”
“So this is Boy Bar,” Derek said, and gave the room a critical sweep. In the bar’s dark interior stood clusters of young, young men, some with carefully manicured, dyed, trimmed hair, some in yellow shirts patterned with Art Deco–style toothpaste ads, white socks, and slinky patent-leather shoes, some in gray T-shirts and sweatpants. All small, streamlined, tidy. Derek stood a head taller than most of the crowd. He slouched more than ever, his huge hands hanging by his sides.
“I’d like to show you upstairs,” Philip said.
“What?” Derek said, bending down farther. “I can’t hear you up here.”
&nb
sp; “I said, I’d like to show you the room upstairs. Eliot, why don’t we go upstairs?”
But Eliot had wandered away and was talking to some people Philip didn’t recognize.
“Maybe we should wait for Eliot and then go upstairs,” Philip said.
“I feel extremely old,” John said. He pulled the collar of his jacket up over his jowls.
“Me too,” Derek said.
“Me three,” Geoffrey said.
“Oh, don’t be silly.”
“Is there a back room in this place?” John asked.
“Here? Oh no, nothing like that!”
“Well, times have changed,” John said, and he and Derek and Geoffrey harrumphed with laughter. Again Philip looked over his shoulder. Now Eliot was talking to just one man—a tall blond with a braided ponytail snaking down his neck. Philip searched the room for familiar faces, someone to whom he might introduce Derek, but although it seemed to him that any of the young men in the room could have been his friends, none of them were, and so he turned once again to Derek, John, and Geoffrey, who stood in a judgmental triumvirate against the wall, and asked them, “Well, what do you think?”
“Fun,” Derek said. “Definitely fun.”
“Oh yes, I agree.”
“Fine. Fine.”
“Different from what you expected, John, isn’t it?” Philip said, but John had gone off to get a drink.
Across the room Eliot was still in the throes of conversation, and Philip tried to think of a way of insinuating himself into his little group. Then, just as he was about to excuse himself, a voice behind him said, “Philip?”
The Lost Language of Cranes Page 16
