Faggots

by Larry Kramer

  The only question that remained was when to purvey the hot potato now residing in his back left Levi pocket to his Pop.

  Dance on, oh Richie, till your fortune comes!, he thought, ungluing his feet and executing his first triple turn of the night, I am the most handsome Number, my workout has worked out!, squinting his eyes open just a crack to see if his gifted choreography might just have drawn an admiring glance or two.

  And so they dance, our friends, in various circlets of together or alone.

  Patty arrived, in white tie and tails, to join Laverne dancing with Maxine, now Elizabeth Taylored from head to toe, batting his eyebrows neath turban, testing: one-two-three-four, wanting to talk but impossible to manage words and maraschino-ed lipstick synch, but watching Patty’s glances dart around and come to rest upon Juanito’s booth. So the rumors Maxine had tried not to hear were true! And yes the moment of doom was near! And here, in our competitor’s space. And can I pull myself up to Catty Tin Roof Heights!

  Laverne looked at his two best friends. Again he suspected there was trouble and he wondered why he couldn’t reach out and offer succor. But to which one? And where was Robbie Swindon who said he’d meet him here? And where was Dinky, whose postcard from Savannah just received this afternoon had said the same? And how would he, Jack Humpstone, handle said convergence? And when would calm come after storm instead of thunder?

  Fred never stopped looking for Dinky to appear, from out of the shadows, across a crowded room, back into his arms, and away we go: into the moonlight, into Life! Around him danced so many chapters of his past. Early tricks, late tricks, so many tricks, No More Tricks!, faces from the streets and tubs and dancings, Mikie III, do three Rolexes make a tradition?, the Coty Hall of Fame, the only major star who’s missing is Feffer, and Dinky, too, of course, hurry up, Dinky!, what’s that crazy song they’re playing?, something about…no!? shit in Alabama?…, have I committed the Cardinal Fairy Sin with Dinky: said I’m hungry, said I love you?, no, he’s too together, why on our first date he said about his parents, “They did the best they could with what they had and at that time,” no, he’s too together, he’ll explain everything, I feel good!

  Fred and his housemates stood by the punch bowl. Frigger, on leave of absence from the streets, but still competitive in such matters indoors, and checking to see that his rock-hard midriff was showing, watched as Fallow, adjusting Korean shorts, walked over to a cutie and began to Make An Impression.

  “My, Fallow certainly moves quickly,” Frigger said.

  Dom Dom agreed. “With a speed approaching Concorde’s boom.”

  “Can true love bloom in the Ghetto?” Josie sighed, wiping his bald head in annoyance that sweat could sweat even here.

  Bilbo lurched and contributed: “My new definition of jaded is when you find a cock that’s too big.”

  “No,” said Frigger. “It’s when conquest is our own reward.”

  “But,” Tarsh, their bellwether reminded them, “conquest is our own reward.”

  The crazy song grew louder as Jacente took over the co-pilot’s seat. Yes, it was about shit in Alabama! “The Alabama Aw Shits—trouble and strife, you got ’em, all of your life, and you pass ’em on to me…”

  The singer was none other than Miss Yootha Truth.

  Fred spied Dinky, sneaked up behind him, put his arms around him from the back, turned him around as romantically as he could, and kissed him on the lips.

  “It’s so good seeing you again!” Cary at last with Irene, or better, Katharine Hepburn!

  “Unh,” said Dinky, disengaging, his eyes upon a coupling just adjacent. “Yes, well, how you been…?”

  Dinky was wearing nice gray flannels and an Italian print shirt plus leather-tasseled moccasins and he looked most handsome and distinctly dressed unlike anyone else. Even his golden earring seemed to twinkle and his black beard seemed more neat.

  “Fine, just fine. And better for seeing you.”

  “Well, that’s good, that’s good. Will you excuse me for a moment?”

  I forgot he doesn’t like displays of affection in public, Fred reminded himself as he watched Dinky walk over to where two men were themselves kissing hello. Fred wondered who they were. Fred also felt a sudden little tidge of hunger.

  “You guys didn’t waste much time,” Fred thought he heard Dinky say.

  “I got your postcard from Savannah,” the one who was Laverne replied. “Who’s the lucky lady in Savannah?”

  “Hi, Dinky,” the other kisser, Robbie Swindon, cheerfully added, his arm still around his Jack.

  “Robbie’s love is just the kind I always wanted,” Laverne said. “The kind you never obliged me with. He’s most devoted.”

  Fred looked behind him on the buffet table to see if the donuts were out yet. When in doubt, eat donuts. Don’t look. Don’t listen. Eat donuts.

  And Laverne’s lips reached over and Robbie’s lips obliged them.

  Dinky grabbed them, two bodies, lips and all, and pulled them apart, the lover-who-had-left-him and the Other Woman, and then the three of them became entangled in arms and punches and grunts, bodies and arms and pressures exerted ineffectually in wrong directions, so that Laverne fell to the floor and Robbie bent to pull him up and Fred sighted and reached for and ate in one gulp one glazed-with-honey donut, not his favorite, but no chocolate ones in sight, and Dinky tried to slug, was it Robbie or Laverne or two for the price of one?, and at this perfect moment Patty, black tails flapping in his wake, rushed up, sighted, at last, Laverne, down on the floor, fell to kneel beside him and, oblivious to what he might be interrupting, hissingly whispered: “Listen! I’m sick of it all, so here!” And he pressed some keys into Laverne’s hardly waiting hand.

  “I’m doing it! I’m doing it right now!” Patty continued hissing. “I’ve had enough of Maxine and his Elizabeth Taylor. I want a man! Juanito is waiting for me, we’re going away for a few days, here’s the keys to Balalaika, please mind the store till I get back!”

  And he then jumped up and ran away.

  Dinky had also retreated. Fred pushed through some fellow punch-y donut eaters and caught up with him. “Hey. Er…I guess this isn’t the moment for a romantic reunion.”

  Dinky stopped, looked around at the huge crowds milling all about, many of whom had no doubt witnessed his embarrassing fightlet, then hitched up his Italian print shoulders and faced Fred. “I’ve got this terrible sinus headache. I better go home and inhale some steam.”

  “How about some champagne and your favorite ladyfingers from France? A welcome-home present for you waiting to be claimed on Washington Square.”

  “That’s nice. That’s nice. You going to The Toilet Bowl tomorrow night?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll see you there. We’ll talk there. We’ll have our reunion tomorrow night.”

  “Want to give me a clue what’s bothering you? Ann Landers has a great shoulder.”

  “Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow. Got to go. You’re looking good.” And Dinky pecked Fred’s cheek and would have walked away.

  But Cary had his arms around Kate’s waist again. “Hey, remember…, I wrote you a letter…, and, er, the last thing that I said to you…?”

  “What was that?”

  Fred approached the subject gingerly. “I said, most poetically, after a wonderful night of…I said I’m in love with you.”

  The music seemed momentarily to have stopped its tune. Instead came slowly dragging chugging chordal “jungle music,” Fred liked to call it, impossible to dance to and beloved by those on Downs, Neldies, Paradexes, Ovlomoves, Frankensteinian plodders with heavy-soled feet as sole anchors to earth, “A Down is an Up when you’re dancing,” was Bilbo’s explanation, its insistent whining one-note pounding, as if to say to all: I am alone, I am alone, I am all alone.

  “No, you’re not,” Dinky said, pecking Fred’s cheek a second kiss and smiling merrily and successfully walking away.

  Bo Peep had seen it all. The little blond-haire
d angel, fully understanding, for hadn’t he had it all so many times with Tarsh?, rushed up and embraced his housemate, Fred.

  “Oh, Fred, I understand! It’s the oldest story in the world.”

  “What story is that?” Fred tried to play it cool.

  “Dinky knife you?” Frigger said arriving. “I heard he was here. Well, don’t start playing Philip in Of Human Bondage.”

  “He’s not feeling well…” Fred tried to make excuses.

  “Ah, what happened to courtship?” Josie asked, arriving, too, with Dom Dom, word certainly had spread fast. “You didn’t want to give yourself to just anyone who’d walk out the very next morning.”

  “Who wants to stay past the next morning?” Bilbo asked, arriving next.

  “I’m still here, darling,” Dom Dom said to Josie. “We’ve weathered the worst.”

  “When does the best begin?”

  Fred looked again for donuts, where were the chocolate donuts?, he felt the approaching of an Attack.

  “Anyone got an Up?” asked Bilbo.

  Dom Dom said to Josie: “Excuse me, but I want to check out a number.” He patted Josie’s head. Then Fred’s.

  “You see?” said Josie, gazing after him. “True love can bloom in the Ghetto.”

  A new voice was heard: “How are you all, my dearies! Are we having a good time?”

  It was the Divine Bella, Bertram Bellberg, tall and stocky, grinning face and expectant eyes, his enormous chest and back Brillo-ed with hair curlicuing out of his workman’s overalls and with a huge felt sunflower smiling from his cleavage. “Fred Lemish, are you having a good time?”

  “I don’t think so, Bella.”

  “Well, you simply must, you absolutely must. Life is passing us by. Don’t go and fall in love. Bella warned you. Everyone warned you. You just won’t listen. Bela believes that what we most want out of life is our good times. As Richard Burton said to Deborah Kerr in Night of the Iguana, there are two levels where we can lead our lives. The real and the fantastic. We have to disco and drug and fuck if we want to live fantastic! Come, my dearies, let’s dance!”

  And Mikie rushed up to join them, banging his tambourine, feeling ever so good, and embraced Fred: “Oh, Fred, is this not a night of nights! It’s the beginning of the summer of our lives!”

  …yes, that feels good, oh good, oh god, oh good…Anthony was still in the darkness of Ellie.

  Fred Lemish, deciding he was entitled to a bummer, and determined to get the most out of it, walked all the way from Capriccio to the Everhard, hitting on the way four donuterias, two delicatessens, four grocery stores, one late-night A & P, one ice creamery, interlarding these with curses upon his head that he was not getting a good night’s sleep to face a morrow fleshing out some scenes for Abe, you’ll never become a great writer this way, and a few flagellating inquiries into just what Dinky’s words and behavior had meant and could he wait till The Toilet Bowl to find out and was there some sort of game going on here, the rules of which he’d not yet been informed?, no! no games with this one! I am not going to play any more games! and…stop it, Lemish!, the guy was confronting a personal problem of which you were not aware and he said he’d explain everything, he kissed you, twice!, made another date with you, just you soft-peddle that talk about love till…and where are your guts and patience and determination and you’ve waited this long, another twenty-four hours, during which you’ll gain five pounds, can only…make you go crazier!, how can he say I don’t love him?, is that telling me anything?, it ain’t tellin’ you he’s got his finger sticking out ready for the ring, Charlie, did I misread?, I’m such a big reader, all those lovely nights of love, were they a fantasy?, nah, he’s too together, he’ll explain it all to his formerly once-thin Fred…

  As he fumed and sent up black smoke, he consumed one package of Wise Ridgies Wavy Potato Chips, still made the original way by Borden, Pareve for Passover; one package of Funyuns Onion Flavored Snack, crispy crunchy, good eating anytime, from Frito-Lay; one package of Old London Cheez Doodles fried for double crunch by Borden, with ferric ortho phosphate, vitamin A palmitate, and mononitrate; one package of Doritos Nacho Cheese Flavor Tortilla Chips, Frito-Lay, with diosodium inosinate, diosodium guanylate, and keep America beautiful, don’t be a litter bug; one package, ubiquitous Frito-Lay, should he write them a letter?, they were drowning the market, also about their spelling: Bakon Snack (he had written to First National City Bank when they mutated to Citibank; the stomach and the language were obviously in for hard times) Imitation Bacon Flavored Wheat Chips, with hydrolyzed vegetable protein, destrins, and carboxymethyl cellulose; and several assorted donuts and several assorted ice creams and several assorted diet sodas to wash it all down and on he marched, deep in quandary and deep in burps, feeling rather nasty, rather fat, rather unloved, rather sick of it all, and hoping that this last donut would do the trick and accomplish the deed of rendering him rather fed up.

  Several additional chemistry-set derivatives from General Foods and ITT Continental brought him to the tubs. Tonight was obviously going to be, in all ways, a night for shit food.

  Rancid and ratty would best describe the atmosphere of the Everhard Baths at this prime hour. In this outpost of civilized behavior and democracy in action, the redolent smell combined the distinct odors of popper, dope, spit, shit, piss, and a bevy of lubricants. Hundreds of assorted bodies paraded through refuse and puddle-spotted floors, barefoot, bare-chested, protected only by sarongs of towel from complete usurpation by passing eyes. Earlier arrivals, the younger ones at any rate, in good physical shape and desirable, would by now have ejaculated in some manner or other, approximately three to six times, while older soldiers, passing thin-walled moans and groans, would by now have received approximately forty-nine rejections as they heaved pasty white frames from cubicle to cubicle, reached out exploratory fingers of hope to inhospitable cocks, listened for anticipated “I don’t think so”s, “Get out”s, or more polite “I’m resting”s, and, eventually, exhaustion being the better part of their valor, settling for one of their own kind, taking ten minutes to get an erection and two seconds to come, then grabbing their clothes and heading for home.

  As a shuffling mulatto attendant showed him to his room for the second time this date (Murray recognized the good customers; they never had to wait in line), Fred’s spirits were still low. Here he was in the home of basics. Perhaps the place was a world in microcosm, human life reduced to its most simplistic, that awful moment when a name and an identity were no longer essential. If somebody didn’t want you, forget it, and find somebody who would take the merchandise as is. He could now feel like a Frito-Lay, laid or unlaid, depending on his shelf age, freshness, spoilage retardation, and understand where chemicals might help.

  Since it is late, let us tarry no longer with descriptions of this temple of sex. Suffice it to say that Fred:

  a) walked around for twenty minutes getting the lay of the land and deciding that there might be a few possibilities he would return to check out;

  b) rejected the advances of a midget in a jockstrap, as well as several Orientals, to whom—he could never figure out why, was it his hairy chest?—he was always so attractive;

  c) ran into, then beat a hasty path away from, his suck-Master/fuck-Slave felching acquaintances of…was it only this afternoon?;

  d) grimly shat again, the Everhard toilets enough to keep one constipated for days, as his eyes focused on the graffitied door before him, with its prize-winning: “Fernando sucks Clive Barnes”;

  e) returned to his cell, sat on the bed leaning against the wall, trying to look casual, seductive to strangers, and not consider this whole ambient scene as true inspiration for a Kafka (who would certainly be at home in Prague writing about it) and, from this uncomfortable position, rejected the advances of three men who courageously entered, each long past thirty-nine, one drunk, one rotunda, and the third with a limp; tried to encourage, sort of, but not overdoing it, that scares them away, seven faces who a
ppeared in the dim light worth encouraging to enter for a closer-see, but who evidently declined the honor because they passed on. How could that fucker say that I don’t love him!

  The closest he came to, is the word contact?, was a pleasant-enough-looking young man, by name Harold, who jumped up on Fred’s cot with one of Fred’s leather-thonged work shoes, which he then proceeded to tie around his balls, creating a somewhat pendulum effect.

  “Does this turn you on?” Harold asked.

  Fred looked up and tried to think. Does that turn me on? He came to no ready answer.

  “Do you think I’m kinky?” Harold persevered.

  “Nah,” Fred replied, knowing this to be not the desired response, though it certainly was for him.

  “I do.”

  Fred nodded the nod of the acquiescent. He was tired. He didn’t need the paraphernalia. The guy had a nice body. Why couldn’t they just kiss and fuck?

  “Couldn’t we just kiss and fuck?” Fred looked up at the boy and his boot.

  “Don’t you know anything kinky?” Harold, the clock having stopped, started the shoe up again. Fred wondered if it hurt. He thought that the old adage “if the shoe fits” now took on new subtleties.

  “Tell me what you want,” Fred said, wearily making an effort.

  “You tell me. I’m shy.”

  “So am I.”

  Harold allowed a long pause. Obviously lack of the necessary tension and excitement was deflating his game. But he tried: “Last week a guy twisted his balls so they stood straight up. That drove me crazy.” He looked down on Fred. Obviously it did not drive Fred crazy. Fred recalled the piss-and-suck twins. Harold needed lessons. Harold seemed disappointed and untied Fred’s shoe from his pouch, now, Fred noticed, somewhat lengthened, were longer scrotums coming into fashion, the next kick…?

  “What’s the matter?” Harold asked, annoyed, jumping down to the floor and opening the door. “You got a lover?” With a note of petulance and wonder he made his curtain speech: “There’s a whole world going crazy out there and you won’t do anything your mother wouldn’t do.” He threw in the boot and left. Exit childe Harold.