by Will Self
‘Oh, what would that be?’
‘Having to kowtow to Princess Nightingale and her fat Yank friend, or, worse, give her the opportunity to rock me in her arms like that poor fool next door.’
Baz rose up to regard the fool in question, but through the reinforced glass he witnessed only a sight that should have aroused anyone’s pity – let alone that of a fellow sufferer: a man utterly emaciated and completely trussed up in a macramé of life-maintaining medical technology. ‘The poor man’s dying, Henry – surely you wouldn’t deny him whatever comfort she had to give?’
‘It seems a shameful, constipated way to go, if you – as he patently has – have looked at life with your cheeks wide open. Anyway, it’s absurd, the deference that’s paid to Fatty Spencer; after all, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that she’ll ever be a queen, whereas there’re oodles of them in here.’
Baz decided to ignore this badinage; he was here with a purpose. ‘I met Batface in the corridor.’
‘On good form, I trust?’ Wotton might have been speaking of the remotest of acquaintances.
‘She was having to put pressure on the duty nurse to allow a man called Bluejay in to see you.’
This got a rise out of Wotton; he levered himself up on his pillows. ‘And did they accede?’
‘She had to crawl to the nurse, Wotton. He only agreed in order not to make her feel still worse.’
‘Ah well, it doesn’t matter if they’re compelled, as long as they do what I want.’
‘I assume Bluejay is a dealer?’
‘Yes, but in ephemera rather than antiquities.’
‘You don’t seem to be taking any of this seriously, Wotton – Henry. You’ve got AIDS, something your wife seems in total denial about. You’re bullying the medical staff and her into enabling your drug use… Don’t you care about Batface? Don’t you care about yourself?’
Wotton removed the Ray-Bans and began to conduct a tutorial, using one of their arms as a baton. ‘Let’s answer your prosaic questions ordinally – it’s all they deserve. First, I have not, as yet, been diagnosed with AIDS, my symptoms merely describe an arc’ – he described a parabola with his crooked pointer – ‘secondly, the medical staff are adequately recompensed for all of the licence they allow me, and thirdly you do Batface a grave injustice if you imagine she’s one of those women who think they love too much. On the contrary, she’s a woman who loves to think too much, and that is why our marriage has lasted so long.’
Still Baz wouldn’t be drawn. ‘Who’s Phoebe?’
‘Our daughter, of course.’
‘And how old is she?’
‘Six, seven, somewhere in that region.’
‘Don’t you realise, Henry, I’m HIV positive, you’re HIV positive, I’ve heard Alan Campbell is too. I don’t know about Dorian Gray… but I’m almost certain that I know when we were infected and by whom. I know when I seroconverted and I bet you do as well. It all happened on the night of Dorian’s vernissage – don’t you see what that means, Henry? There’s every chance that Batface and your daughter are HIV positive – don’t you think you have a responsibility to at least tell her so she can find out for herself?’
‘Oh Baz, you’re so morally pedantic, but if you will insist on this rote religion I’ll tell you. I’ve had blood taken from both of them – by Campbell, as it happens – on the pretext that they should have a flu jab. He had it tested and they’re negative. If it pleases Batface to think of this’ – he gestured at his etiolated form – ‘as an inconvenient malaise of some sort, then you must allow her that liberty.’
‘And what liberty is that, exactly? Does she have lovers?’
‘Baz!’ he guffawed. ‘Don’t be preposterous!’
‘But I’ll bet you do.’
‘Monogamy is to love as ideology is to thought; both are failures in imagination.’
‘Do you practise safe sex?’
‘Don’t be absurd, Baz – what could that possibly mean? Orgasming under medical supervision?’
‘Jesus, Henry, you’d take the whole fucking world down with you if you could arrange it.’
‘And you, Baz – are the wings of your desire quite so clipped? The last I heard of your’ – he savoured the word – ‘activities, it was back to the same old Baz brown-nosing, putting it about with Bobby Mapplethorpe and Andee and the whole, tedious Manhattan coterie.’ As if to fumigate the thought of such a passé scene Wotton groped for a cigarette, lit it, puffed.
But Baz, not to be ruffled so easily, maintained his inquisitorial role: ‘I suppose this came from Dorian?’
‘Well, he has rather been the goer between us, wouldn’t you say? I’ve witnessed some of his activities on this side of the Atlantic, but as I understand it you were privy to his entry into New York society.’
‘For a while, I s’pose – I was useful to him in the early eighties. His looks and his money opened every door, but first he had to find them, and for that he needed me.’
‘Well, Baz’ – Wotton leaned towards him – ‘we no longer have time to kill, but there are still a few minutes to while away before Bluejay arrives. Wouldn’t you agree that one of the most useful by-products of the increased commercialism of the past decade has been the “we deliver” ethos among drug dealers? I understand the practice originated in Manhattan. Tell me about it – and incidentally you can tell me about Dorian. But before you do either, pour me a glass of that flat ’poo.’
7
‘Yeah – Manhattan, Henry. Yeah, y’know – no. You can be dismissive – you do that very well. You think you have all the angles on dissolution, don’t you? Now you’re dying I guess that’s true, but New York in the early eighties was at the very peak of a great mountain of depravity. It was so extreme, Henry, so totally unconstrained, that it almost had an aura of innocence about it.
‘Not that I was innocent of anything. I had to be insane going back there, but the shit I’d got myself into in London was worse than the shit I’d got myself into over there in the late seventies. I’d fucked up all my connections in NYC before I left to come back to London. Story of my life – shifting from one city to the next with no money and a roaring smack habit. Now I was back in NYC with no one to… ahem… assist me, it was a habit I couldn’t sustain, so I kicked, painfully and messily, in a roach hotel I shared with three not-so-gorgeous she-males off Avenue B.
‘Once I could stand without shitting myself, it was payback time, and I became one of the lowest fucking gophers ever seen. I swear, Henry, if I’d known how low I could go… ah well, perhaps it was the only way. Still, at least I had a proper routine: up at two in the afternoon and out to the grocery store for Pop Tarts and grass. Yeah, everyone delivered in the East Village, Henry – they still do – but my she-males didn’t need a delivery boy; they had me to fetch for them instead.
‘Bangles, the guy who served up in the grocery store, thought I was hilarious. I remember him, playing Grandmaster-fucking-Flash on his boom-box and pushing me closer and closer to the edge. He’d dole out his dime baggies of weed and wheedle me at the same time. He couldn’t believe this dumb honky junky limey fag fallen from another planet. Flicking his fucking jeri curls and jangling his wrist-wear and giving me this jive. Almost every day I’d tell him: I’ve pulled myself out of worse holes than this one, Bangles; and he’d say, yeah, but they had Crisco round them. Because that’s what they’d use, Henry, the Stateside heavy-hitters, not Vaseline – fucking lard.
‘It was eleven flights up to the pad I shared with the three graces, and even if the lift was working it wasn’t too safe a bet to use it. I didn’t care, I was on a health kick, and like the involuntary monk I’d become I was also cultivating a fucking tonsure. As for the scene, for the time being the only door in Manhattan that would open for me required about eleven fucking keys.
‘My patrons were Désirée, Little Rhea and Lady Di, respectively a rangy Southerner, a Brooklyn Jew and a black kid from the Chicago projects. Not that you’d know them as
such when they were dolled up for their act at the drag club in the meat-packing district. No, they were a class act, these girls, and they took plenty of time getting ready every day until they looked just like dolls. I learned the secrets of assembling a Blanche Dubois doll, a Barbra Streisand doll and a negative of our very own Princess of Wales. Not that this Lady Di had ever even heard of Wales; all she knew was the schtick worked, make ’em laugh – wouldn’t you agree, Henry?
‘You think you know about messiness, you think you do squalor? You know nothing, Henry, even at your worst all you do is toy with disorder and affect a little dishabille, whereas these three revelled in filth. Every day when I got back to the apartment I was overwhelmed again by the great sea of discarded pizza boxes, crushed soda cans and filthy fucking underwear in which the three of them lay – buck-naked and sweat-shiny in the summer fug, like great beached seals, two white and one black, with grimy mattresses in place of granite rocks.
‘On the windowsill the air-con unit gargled and spat out tubercu-lous air, while the roaches looked up quizzically from their lunch. They always do that, New York City roaches – look up quizzically. It’s as if they’re constantly being reminded by each human arrival of the injustice of their position, caught with their mandibles rasping the cardboard trash, instead of ordering their own fucking pizza on the phone. These three gouache trannies, last night’s slap all smeared about on their flaccid faces, Henry, they were something else. I’d step into the desperate cubbyhole of a kitchen and roll their get-up joints on the fly-infested worktop…’
He didn’t do a bad job of evocation, our Baz; besides being a Grand Inquisitor he’d also become a bit of an Ancient Mariner. Henry Wotton thought so, as he drifted into an unpleasant reverie, compounded in equal parts of mild heroin withdrawal, low fever, and flat ’poo. He could well imagine the festering pad and the slumbering female impersonators, Baz shaking their shoulders, their pachyderm eyelids ungumming, their thick mitts reaching out for Styrofoam coffee cups and ready-lit joints.
All at once they were upright and babbling.
—I swear that’s the last time him treat me like that, Little Rhea said; no fuckin’ class, that man.
—Did he –? Désirée put in.
—No way – came backstage after the second set, stuck his hand upside my fuckin’ butt, tried dry-humpin’ me in the dressin’ room like I’m some grimy fuckin’ hooker. More coffee please, Basil.
—I think he’s just a fag stag, Rhea – leastways he’s never come on to me.
—And why should he, sweetie?
—I don’t know –
—No, you don’t. You lit out quick – where to?
—The Eagle’s Nest. I had a date.
—A date! Who with, the entire friggin’ Marine Corps?!
—No, jus’ a few of ’em.
There was general merriment at this quip; even Baz joined in. Lady Di, who’d been in the can, reappeared with a Ziploc bag of cosmetics. He sat back down on his mattress, took out cleanser and cotton wool and began removing his make-up.
—How ’bout you, honey? said Little Rhea.
—I ain’t doin’ no bath-house scenes no more, replied the big black Sloane Ranger; you know that.
—Well yes, but you might be feeling better.
—I ain’t. If anythin’ I feel worse, don’ feel like eatin’, don’ feel like drinkin’, sure as hell don’ feel like makin’ no bath-house scene. An’ I got these. He indicated a scatter of angry red pimples that zigzagged between his nipples, marking his shaven chest as if he’d encountered Zorro’s sword tipped with infective matter.
—Oh honey! Désirée went over and gave him a hug. It’ll clear up. You put that stuff on like I told you?
—Yeah, I dunnit, but that ain’t gonna do nothin’. I know what this is about.
There was a strained silence for half a beat – then it snapped. Basil, babe, get me my duds, willya? said one; then the other two chimed in as well: Me too! Yeah – and me.
‘At times, Henry, living with these three, I thought of William Buckley Junior’s characterisation of gay men as “the sex that will not shut up”, but that was just the you in me, because the truth was that Di, Rhea and Désirée pulled me out of the fucking gutter. They let me cluck on their floor, they fed me, and so what if I had to run errands for them and act as their dresser? The truth was that they showed me a little love, which was a lot more than anyone else had for a very long time.’
—I think the halter neck today, Basil.
—My falsies and bra please, Basil.
—Be so good as to pass over that slip, Basil. Baz brought razors and foam and hot water. Cocks and balls and legs were shaved, then sheathed in satin and fish-net. Wigs were donned, gowns and blouses and skirts brushed down. Baz proved a most efficient and capable dresser, smoothly assisting them to assume their mantles of exaggerated femininity: the gold-lamé-dusted vamp, the chiffon-muffled Southern belle, and the blonde-wigged, piecrust-collar-bloused über-nanny.
There was a banging at the door.
—Didja order pizza, Basil?
—No, you girls have got a matinée, I didn’t think you’d have time –’ The banging continued.
—You better check it out, Basil, said Lady Di.
He undid bolts and slid the door open with three chains on it. Outside there was a strip of leather cowboy boot, blue denim, white cotton and blond hair. A strip of Dorian.
—Who is it, honey? called Rhea.
—It’s… it’s…
—A friend, Dorian mouthed.
—A friend.
—Now Basil, said Désirée, you know you don’t have no friends no more besides us three queen bees.
—No really, it is a friend – a guy from London.
—Oh ferchrissakes, Rhea bawled, let the guy in, let’s get a look at him.
‘And in came Dorian, right over the threshold and bounding into the false bosom of the family. The great thing about Dorian is that he can always assume this air of puppyish good nature. He also looked the same age as a puppy, which the Avenue B trio thought was just too peachy. He stepped over their trash as if it wasn’t there. I guess it was hanging round with you, Henry, that gave him the idea of incorporating camp courtliness into his act; well, it went down a scream with the she-males, the hand-kissing and the “Charmed to meet you, ladies”.
‘Even so, they were suspicious – God bless them – they knew what I’d been through. They knew that no one who’d been as down as me had any friends left worth the name. Still, they ran with Dorian’s formal act and questioned him as if he were a suitor and they three maiden aunts guarding my virtue. Eventually they had to go, but they made me promise to be back the next day. I wasn’t. Nor the one after.
‘I was powerless to resist Dorian, Henry, I always have been, and anyway, I didn’t want to resist him – I simply wanted him again. As long as I didn’t go back on the fucking gear I thought everything would be OK; it was that – as far as I saw it – that was the problem. Not Dorian. So, that day in the summer of ’82, he picked me up, he dusted me down and he took me shopping.
‘We zoomed uptown, leaping from cab to cab, in and out of stores. It was like a parody of every naïve-hick-comes-to-New York movie you’ve ever seen, Henry. Dorian wanted to take Manhattan by storm; I was to provide his entrée, and for that I needed clothes and grooming, I needed what Dorian freely gave. I did feel a genuine gratitude to him. I still do, despite everything that came afterwards. He plucked me from Avenue Β and set me down fifty blocks north in the Palm Court of the Waldorf Astoria. You know how good that kind of transition can feel, Henry, don’t you?’
Indeed.
In the Palm Court of the Waldorf Astoria, a string quartet whittled away at the afternoon, paring off shavings of time. At round, glass-topped tables women with big hair and egregiously padded shoulders were sipping tea or martinis. The mismatched duo – one a gilded youth, the other a sweaty wreck – were ushered by a white-jacketed waiter into the presenc
e of a little old man in a tiny contemporary suit. The collar points of his seersucker jacket rose almost to his pixie ears, and his lined pinhead was liver-spotted. He wore an obvious toupee. It was the Ferret. But Baz wasn’t remotely surprised to see him; he merely acknowledged the way the titchy world spun thus:
—Fergus.
—Ah, Baz, my young friend here has managed to locate you – we had only the most oriental of whispers as to where you might be. Bob had told Doug, Doug had vouchsafed it to Steve, Steve passed it on to Captain America, and so on, and so forth… so fatiguing. The Ferret sniffed noisily and dabbed at his dribbling nose with a square foot of silk.
—He was way downtown, Dorian put in, on the Lower East Side. He’s become a kind of ladies’ maid, Fergus!
—Confirm, Baz?
—It’s true enough. These three drag queens took me in and looked after me – they’ve helped me kick the smack.
—Oh jolly good, such a bore, smack. Or rather, that kind of it.
The waiter reappeared and asked Dorian and Baz if they’d like anything. Dorian confined himself to a glass of Badoit, but Baz began as shamelessly as he intended to go on, requesting a quantity of sandwiches that amounted to a meal.
—In New York for any special reason, Fergus? Baz asked, when the waiter had clicked off across the tiles.
—No, no, usual shopping expedition. It may be hot at this time of year, but it’s quiet. Naturally I shall take Dorian out to the Hamptons to meet a few people, but I shan’t be able to truly launch him until the season begins.
—So where do I fit into this picture?
—Well, his dear parents having abandoned him so woefully in this regard, I shall have to take care of his uptown début, but we rather felt that in the meantime you could facilitate his entry into the downtown milieu.
