by John Rowell
“Duh!” he says.
“Duffy,” Perry says, suddenly grabbing a chance to navigate the car into the faster-moving lane, “adults address other adults by their first names. I realize you probably haven’t gotten to that lesson yet in kindergarten this year, but since you’re in the accelerated section, I think you can handle it.”
Duffy glares. If he were a dragon, steam would be coming out of his nostrils. I’m thrilled; it’s like being plunked into a virtual reality production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with an all-male cast.
“Now try it again,” Perry says.
Duffy snaps his head back to me. “JACKSON,” he says, speaking phonetically. “DO YOU KNOW WHO RUFUS WAINWRIGHT IS?”
“Oh, you were talking to me. Yes, I do.”
“You do?” Perry asks, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
“I read Entertainment Weekly,” I say. I must choose my words carefully, since it’s in my best interests to offend neither Senior nor Junior. It’s only Friday, after all, and I am invited up to Connecticut for the entire weekend. Perry has a new country house in Claxton (courtesy of his recently acquired executive status at Salomon Smith Barney) and this is my first visit. And even though their little front-seat drama is fun for the moment, I’d just as soon not have to listen to George and Martha bray at each other for three whole days. Of course, it does occur to me, young Duffy has probably never heard of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, so I must resist future references.
“Rufus Wainwright it is, then,” says Duffy, and he inserts the disc into the dashboard’s CD player, which sucks it quietly, but immediately, into its insides. Because of my own current state of Intimacy Deficit Syndrome, I can’t help but muse upon this as a visual metaphor for a popular sex act.
“Besides,” Duffy says, “Rufus is gay. And out. Gay boys should support gay musicians!”
“Liberace was gay,” I say, “but we’re not playing him.”
“Touché!” says Perry. Traffic is moving along better now; his shoulders aren’t arching up to his ears with tension the way they were a minute ago.
Duffy turns around sharply in his seat, glaring at me with a deliberately overdone “scorned diva” face.
“Whose side are you on, Bernadette Arnold?” he hisses.
“Just call me Switzerland.”
“Duff, please be nice,” says Perry. “Don’t alienate the guest before we even get to the house.”
Duffy puckers up his lips and kisses the air in my direction.
“Oh, Jackson loves me,” he says. “Don’t you, Jackson?”
“Isn’t that Perry’s job?” I offer.
Perry snorts, and Duffy just stares at me, uncomprehending.
“What-ever!” he says, running his elegant fingers through his perfectly tousled, drenched-in-highlights blond hair. His tanning-bed tan and his Chelsea-boy hothouse muscles, all courtesy of the same magic emporium on Eighth Avenue, gleam in the late afternoon summer sun; exactly, I’m sure, in the way he knows they do. I look down at my own biceps, the equivalent of deflated tires, not straining in the least the armband fabric of my polo shirt. Just the sight of Duffy, even from the backseat, causes me instinctively to suck in my stomach; though it’s not unflat, it is far from meeting the standards of the nightly Abs Parade down Chelsea’s Homo Highway. In my own defense, I never aspired to those standards, though that doesn’t necessarily prevent one from being intimidated by them. I also try running my fingers through my own hair, but I touch more forehead than boyish locks.
Perry continues to drive in broody silence while Duffy sings along to the Rufus Wainwright. He stops singing for a moment only to ask this question to the car at large: “Hey, who the fuck is Liberace?”
Closer to cocktail time—Perry says the sun goes over the yardarm a lot earlier in Connecticut than it does in New York—he and I are standing side by side at the faux-marble island in his spacious kitchen, arranging cheese and crackers onto serving trays and slicing up limes for drinks, while Duffy is upstairs “beautifying” and “maintaining.”
“He’s driving me crazy, Jackson,” says Perry, unwrapping a gourmet Gouda. “And yet I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
“But you’ve only been dating him for five months.”
“Four and a half months. It just seems longer.”
“Oh. Well, in hetero terms, that’s the equivalent of three years. Besides, after four and a half months, shouldn’t you be more like, ‘It’s as if we only met an hour ago,’ followed by copious blushing?”
“No, it’s like I’ve known him all of my life! Jesus, listen to me. I sound like a Harlequin romance.”
“Or a penny dreadful. Oh God, there we go again, speaking in antiquities.”
Duffy calls from somewhere upstairs. “I feel that I’m being talked about!” he sings out.
Perry and I freeze a glance at each other.
“Gee,” I whisper. “Little pitchers have big ears.”
Perry rolls his eyes. “That’s not the only big thing little pitchers have.”
“Too much information,” I say. “And yet not enough. Continue.”
“You’re a writer. Use your imagination. And make yourself a drink.”
We move out onto his terrace, cheese trays and drinks in hand. We’re waiting for my old friend Thomas to arrive; he has his own weekend house in Briar Hill, one town over from Claxton. This summer, he’s working in a local stock theater, playing one of the leads in a production of 1776, for which Perry, Duffy, and I have tickets tonight. Thomas called to say he’d swing by Perry’s house on his way to the theater.
“Have more, darling,” Perry says, tipping the Absolut bottle into my glass. “You must be exhausted from your long journey from town.”
“Yes. How divine to finally be in the country with the landed gentry.”
Perry looks around at his terrace and garden, which overflows with brightly colored summer flowers: petunias, geraniums, salvia, marigolds, impatiens … the colors blow together in the afternoon breeze; if you squint, it’s like looking in a kaleidoscope. Beyond the grounds, at the far end of the yard, is a calm, silvery lake; an old brown canoe, tied with a rope to a tree stump, bobs gently at the water’s edge.
“It really is lovely here, Perry,” I tell him, suddenly realizing, in my rush to get a drink, that I hadn’t paid the proper weekend guest homage to his new digs. “Your place, I mean. Very Merchant Ivory.”
“Do you like it? I hope so. It’s only taken me forty-nine years to get a house of my own.”
“Worth the wait. It’s beautiful.”
At this moment, Duffy, another specimen of beauty, appears in the doorway. He strikes an open-armed, welcome-to-my-home hostess pose; very Loretta Young, but that’s another reference I resist making. Which is just as well; I wouldn’t be able to stand hearing him say: “Hey, who the fuck is Loretta Young?” I probably shouldn’t even know myself.
Suddenly he turns surly. “Where’s my cocktail?” he brays; he’s gone from Loretta to Bette Davis in the bat of one elegant eyelash.
“Just sit down, sweetness, and I’ll mix it for you,” Perry says.
“Thank you. Now Jackson,” he says, turning to me, “who is this friend who’s coming to visit?”
“Thomas.”
“And who is Thomas?”
“He’s my oldest friend, actually.”
“As old as Perry?”
“Jesus,” Perry moans. He hands Duffy a Cosmopolitan. “Drink this. It’s a potion to turn you back into a human being.”
“What I meant,” I say, “is he’s been my friend for the longest period of time. We’re the same age. Twenty-eight.”
Perry does a double take worthy of Jack Benny.
“Oh. And he works with you at the magazine?”
“Duffy,” Perry says. “I’ve told you all this. Thomas is an actor. He’s in the show we’re seeing tonight. Don’t you retain any information that’s not about you?”
“In a word, no,
” Duffy says, but then he winks at me, which makes his remark only a tad less obnoxious. “Continue.”
“I’ve known Thomas for … I forget. We met doing summer stock when we were eighteen.”
“Twenty-one years ago, for the record,” Perry says, under his breath and over the rim of the wide-brimmed glass.
“Ah …” Duffy says. “So Thomas is still an actor, and you’re not.”
“Something like that.”
“You gave up the business too, like Perry did,” Duffy says. He reaches out to stroke Perry’s cheek and flick his fingers through Perry’s thinning, brush-cut gray hair.
“Don’t remind me of my actor days,” says Perry. “I’ve blocked them.”
“I wish I had known you when you were an actor, Perry,” he says. “I wish you were still in the business. Then we could go on auditions together.”
“As what?” Perry says. “A father-son act?”
“Ooh. Don’t let Jackson know all our secrets.”
“I don’t miss auditioning,” Perry says.
“Nor do I,” I say.
“Oh, I love it!” Duffy exclaims, setting his drink down. He stands and thrusts his arms up into what I recognize as the patented, internationally known Evita pose. “I absolutely love auditioning. You should see the faces behind the table when I go into ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.’”
And before anyone can suggest otherwise, he begins to sing it, full-voiced, just as I glimpse Thomas coming around the corner from the driveway. Instantly, Thomas freezes in place as soon as he catches sight of Duffy in mid-performance; he stands at the edge of the house and waits. Thomas is far too polite to interrupt another actor’s audition.
I give him a tiny, surreptitious wave just as Duffy goes into the second verse, and he gives a little one back to me too, while he leans against the house, watching. I watch Perry watching Duffy; he is transfixed. Duffy, oblivious to everyone but himself and his voice, continues his number. I notice from the corner of my eye that a lone deer has wandered into the far end of the yard. It too stares at Duffy with an incredulous expression.
As Duffy wails a line—something about Evita being immortal—I discreetly pour more vodka into my glass, and sip, and wait. Many musical minutes pass. Finally as Duffy descends into the third verse, I can’t help it, I put my drink down and call out, “Thank you. NEXT!”
Duffy stops suddenly. Still holding his dictatress pose, he snaps his head around at me, glaring; Perry’s eyes go wide, then he reflexively checks in with the bottom of his empty martini glass. Thomas, still waiting politely at the corner of the house, seizes the moment with his infallible actor’s timing.
“Well, hello everybody,” he says cheerfully, and saunters up to the patio.
“Ode to Beauty,” by Jackson Williford Cooper:
Everywhere I look in Connecticut, I see beauty. Beauty, beauty everywhere! Perry’s new house (his new old house), a white, 1885 Victorian two-story with a wraparound porch and a red front door, is beautiful. The sloping driveway that winds between two large framing oak trees beside a yard bursting with red, yellow, and white summer flowers and bright green grass is beautiful. Perry, a few weeks away from turning fifty, trim and energetic, a newly bleached white-toothed smile, and a high forehead under a short shock of blondish-gray hair, watery blue eyes behind white-gold wire-rim glasses, is beautiful. Duffy, Paragon of Chelsea Youth, with his bleached-blond hair and sharp, kelly green eyes, a gold earring in not one but both ears, a lean, taut body created by God but improved upon at 23rd Street Fitness, is … yes, the sweet little jerk is beautiful. And Thomas … well, Thomas has physical attributes, too: he’s tall and trim, with dark, Apollo-like curly hair, which once hung shoulder-length during his Les Miserables days on Broadway. It’s shorter now, and the newly-appearing flecks of gray only add to his allure. But for me Thomas’s beauty lies in the fact that he’s been my friend for almost twenty years. And that’s beautiful. Of course the vodka tonic in the frosted tumbler that I’m currently clutching in my right hand as I sit parked in an Adirondack chair on Perry’s terrace—well that, too, is beautiful. Beauty all around me! Beauty, beauty everywhere, and lots of drops to drink!
“Isn’t there just so much beauty in the world?” I say, after a while, to the three of them—Perry, Duffy, and Thomas—who are also slouched in big Adirondacks but who suddenly seem to be facing me in a circle of … what? Is that Judgment? They’re looking more like … jurors than equally inebriated drinking companions. “Isn’t everything beautiful?” I say again, getting nervous. “Aren’t we? Isn’t the world beautiful? Isn’t love beautiful? And friendship? Isn’t friendship beautiful?”
And then my Ode to Beauty is silenced.
“You’re drunk,” Thomas says, in a dry, measured tone, a tone of pronouncement, of finality, as if he were issuing a sentence. He’s drinking club soda, since he performs tonight.
“No, I’m not, I’m just … beautiful!” I say, but already his tone of voice, the judgey edge of it, the sharply aimed sliver of criticism—You’re drunk—these are enough to make me start losing my considerable buzz. After all these years, my neurons and synapses know instinctively how to respond when they hear that familiar Thomas tone. Thomas is deeply in touch with his inner schoolmarm.
“Yes, Precious, you are,” he says. “But more beautiful when sober.”
“Thank you. And fuck you.”
“Thomas seems to think you’re an alcoholic, Jackson,” says Duffy, breezily. “Is that right, Tom-Tom? Is he?”
“Duffy,” Perry says. “That’s rude.”
“Yes, don’t put words in my mouth,” Thomas says. “I never said—”
“Oh, please,” I say. “Sticks and stones. Besides, you know I’m much too fond of drinking to ever let myself become an alcoholic.”
“Well, I’m drunk and high,” says Duffy. “And I highly recommend it.” He has changed his clothes once again, this time into spandex shorts, a muscle shirt, and Tevas. On his biceps, he has a caduceus tattoo, the international medical sign of two snakes wrapped around a winged staff, and on his ankle, a tiny red rose over which is painted a small “D.” He is puffing on a joint now, having traded in the evil potato for the evil weed.
Perry sips his usual martini—extra dry, two olives. It’s his third since five-thirty, but who’s counting? Thomas maybe, but not I. Besides, Perry never shows his drunkenness; he just chain smokes Marlboro Lights and grows progressively meaner. Me, I’m a cheerful inebriate. Perry throws a withering glance at Thomas’s drink.
“Is that club soda?” he says. “Jeez, Thomas, aren’t you the Good Baptist.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that, Tom-Tom?” Duffy asks, narrowing his eyes while sucking the joint. He is sitting on the railing of the patio fence, swinging his tan muscular legs back and forth. “Are you, like, twelve-step or something?”
Thomas looks at him in the most condescending way possible; warmth and disgust flow in equal measure from his large brown eyes.
“I’m performing tonight,” he says, as evenly as he can muster. He exchanges a quick glance with me, which I return. Suddenly, we’re like canasta partners; our exchanged glances make me feel we’re in sync again. “I’m working at the Briar Hill Playhouse for the summer.”
“Duffy,” Perry says, clearly embarrassed. “We’re going to see Thomas’s show tonight. You know that. We told you that. Christ.” He lights up another cigarette, and drains the rest of his drink.
“Hey, I just met the guy, I can’t remember everything I’m told, right? Right, Jacko?”
Duffy seems to be under the impression that I’m on his side.
“Right, Duffo.”
“Cool,” he says. “And what show is it?” he asks in Thomas’s general direction.
“1776,” Thomas answers politely, but I can see his patience is on the wane: with Duffy’s thoughtlessness, with Perry’s smoking, with my intoxication. I try to mentally slap my cheeks to get unlooped, just to make him happier. As soon as Thom
as announced to the beautiful Connecticut air that I was drunk, I surreptitiously dumped my vodka on the ground, feeling like a fourteen-year-old whose dad has caught him in the liquor cabinet.
Duffy continues: “And what is that show about, dude?”
Thomas starts to tell him, starts to talk about the Revolution and the Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence, but Duffy isn’t really listening, and his attention is diverted by the neighbor’s Jack Russell terrier that has just wandered into our circle, sniffing around. “Oh, looky this! Here, poochy,” he says. “Wanna try a martini?”
It’s hard to ignore Duffy’s combined ignorance and rudeness; I mean, 1776 is a good musical! And he’s an actor; why wouldn’t he be more interested? At his age, I gobbled up theatrical shoptalk like candy.
“I should get going,” Thomas says, giving up on Duffy’s dramatic edification.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” I say, pulling myself out of the low chair.
Perry is up, too. “So we’ll see you tonight after the show, then,” he says.
“Yes. Come backstage, then we can head over to my house after that, for a nightcap.”
“Oh, nightcap. I love that word.” Perry moves to hug Thomas good-bye. “Break a leg,” he says, as they embrace. “Do theater people still say that? God, it’s been so long since I was in a show, I don’t even know the lingo anymore.”
“They still say it. Thank you.” They kiss good-bye, perfunctorily, and Thomas and I walk toward the driveway, rounding the corner of the house.
When we’re out of earshot of Perry and Duffy, he says, “Welllll … Half-Pint’s a piece of work.”
“Oh yes, he’s a regular Dorothy Parker. The wit and intellect just flow out of him. Like juice from a blood orange.”
“So what’s the attraction then?”
“Do you mean for Perry or for Duffy?”
“Either. Both.”
“Ah … well, that’s easy. Duffy wants a father figure, or is it ‘needs’? I never know the difference. Anyway. A father figure, and preferably one with a little bit of money. Ka-ching. Perry needs—or is it ‘wants’?—a hunky young stud, preferably one who’ll appreciate all the attention, and gifts, he lavishes on him, but appreciation, as we know, would always count as a bonus. So … Duffy gets to remain beautiful and well taken care of, but is obliged to put out; Perry has to do the taking care of, but gets to remain culturally and intellectually superior, not to mention one hundred percent sexually gratified. Duffy gets new clothes and CDs and Perry gets a beautiful little trophy boy to carry around all over Manhattan. And, on weekends, all over the wilds of Connecticut.”
