by Larry Kramer
And Laverne, who tonight again is having troubles—where was Patty?, Maxine is going crazy, will Dinky appear again and slug my handsome Robbie Swindon?, in whose warm safe arms I’m now dancing in Dixie Disco’s darkness—is suddenly further unsettled as his Robbie breaks the beat, and gets down on his knees in front of him, and proposes.
“Will you, Jack Humpstone, please take me, Robbie Swindon, and come live with me and be my love?”
Fred had not rushed to the movies when everyone else had. He was exploring Behind the Green Door.
How do I feel about the symmetry of two porcelain-filled sister suites? How do I feel about rows of johns lined up in something called the Martha Mitchell Memorial Room? Is there danger lurking? Or is it tame, like a movie set? How do I feel about the sounds of plop plop? Very humanizing. Two thousand years of progress.
Now he stood in front of a jail cell, evidently as yet unchristened.
“Come on, Lemmy, try it just for me,” Feffer had begged him on that cross-country trip, in their pink-and-gray-satin room in the Pontchartrain in the Garden District of New Orleans. “What’s a little long black leather belt?” “You’re kidding! I love you!” “Then try it just for me.” Fred had then allowed himself to be tied up. What’s a little clothesline? With a little knotted sheet thrown in. And there stood above him that blond beloved Mister Right The First. Dangling his little long black leather belt. What’s a little long black leather belt? At first it tickled. Then it whomped. “Yes, it hurts.” And: “No, it doesn’t turn me on.” And then Feffer had patted his head so softly. And he’d never made the suggestion again.
Feffer had been the brightest and would recite verses by Dante in the original Italian as he and Fred cuddled in beds from coast to coast, after days with John Singer Sargent in the Indianapolis Art Gallery and hot fudge over rainbow ice-cream cake in that same Pontchartrain and holding hands on a misty London-fog-type morning under the arch in St. Louis and running barefoot through the sand dunes of Alamogordo and falling down and holding tight and rolling over and laughing and wasn’t this what falling in love was all about? Verses by Dante!
They alighted eventually in Los Angeles where Fred accepted a rather unfelicitous assignment writing a movie about folks from the Outside World who find a heavenly paradise avec singing monks, a job he took to keep those verses beside him. For Feffer now wanted to return to the original Italian, “where two men simply don’t live together, Lemmy, they just don’t.” Desperation always being the better part of screenwriting, Fred also took some of his monk money and hired Feffer to write a script about anything his heart desired. “I’m not about to do this if I didn’t think you could do it. I think you’re a truly gifted writer.”
So they both sat writing their scripts in the yellow-and-white Loretta Young cottage Fred had rented, until came both scripts’ ending, the climactic tremor, the L.A. earthquake finally arriving, the Feffer da Roma Fault: “I…I’m worried I’m not capable of love,” and back went Feffer to Roma and there Fred followed him, what’s a few thousand miles?, to woo again, to fall on bended knee in mèzzo a Piazza Navona, only to be rejected in mid-proposal, causing a Lemish rush into the famous Tre Scalini to consume, no doubt a record, twelve tartufi cioccolati and never see Feffer again.
Fred came back to Now, biting his tongue—was it in memory of the rejection or the overconsumption of tartufi cioccolati?—and he realized he was sitting in the jail cell, on its floor, and that several loitering gentlemen were looking in on him and waiting for his instructions concerning his wants or needs. One of them came closer, out of the darkness. ’Twas Dinky. He was wearing a nice Brooks Brothers pink button-down shirt and those black leather pants and boots.
How do I feel about those black leather pants and boots? At least I feel OK about Brooks Brothers. “I want to talk to you,” Fred said.
“Now why do you want to talk on a nice night like this?” Dinky smiled in answer and as he noted Fred was noting the pants and boots. “You always try to make me think just when I don’t want to. Don’t let’s talk about anything. For I have here in my hand one very ripe banana. Wouldn’t you like to get fucked with a banana?”
Since, with his other hand, he was poking at Fred’s own banana, not so soft and just as ripe, Fred decided talk could wait. What’s a little talk? Yes, talk was inopportune at moments like these. No! Have the confrontation! I found your Inter-Chains! I found your letter to that midnight train in Georgia! But Dinky had helped him up and they were hobbling to one of the more private rooms, evidently dotted round this part of the bowl like the Thousand Islands. And here they were disrobing and here Dinky broke off a tiny bit of squooshy banana and gently poked it up Fred’s ass.
Hoping his years of atheism wouldn’t be held against him, Fred prayed that bananas would do the trick and make Dinky’s cock hard at last. He tried to peek. So much for God. So much for Chiquita Banana. Perhaps I’ll play with it. Which he did. And it got hard. Thank you, Chiquita.
“But you’re hard!” Fred inadvertently exclaimed as Dinky moved away.
“I guess I just don’t feel like sex,” Dinky said, lying back and putting his head on Fred’s stomach and looking up from the gray-carpeted floor at the gray-carpeted walls.
“We don’t have to. I’m…unh, just glad that me and a banana can still turn you on.”
“I guess I get overwhelmed with your expectations.”
“No expectations! Absolutely none! No commitments! I just want to get fucked!” Lies, Lemish! All lies! “…Er,” he ventured, “…what’s wrong with expectations?” Were bananas and fuckings mushing away?
Dinky shook his head. “Jack always said I intimidated him.”
“I don’t think Jack ever understood you at all. We’re both strong. We can handle each other.”
“Can we?”
“Sure. Sure.”
“That’s good. That’s nice. Sure.” Dinky pulled out two cigarettes from those pants, which he noted Fred was still noting, and lit them up and handed one to Fred and then proceeded to tell him the story of the dolls.
“I guess I was eight years old. My grandfather took me to F. A. O. Schwarz. I really loved my grandfather. He wanted me to choose trains. They had these elaborate trains. For my birthday. I looked at them for about ten minutes to please him. I wasn’t very interested in trains. Then I took him by the hand into the next room. That’s where they had these dolls. Really beautiful dolls. All dressed up in pretty clothes with elaborate and intricate detailings and stitchings and fine fabrics and pearl buttons. Just like real ladies. I looked at them for a long time. They were so beautiful! They were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. And I wanted them. Two weeks later on my birthday a big load of trains arrived. I went up to my grandfather and I said ‘I have to tell you something. I know you’re very generous but I didn’t want the trains. You want to give me what I want, don’t you? You love me and want to give me what I want? Well, I don’t want the trains. I want the dolls.’ And the following week, I got three dolls. With a big collection of clothes. They were terrific. I dressed them up differently on different days and I sat them down at the dinner table to serve them meals and had them talk to each other and on the extra chairs I put some of my mother’s clothes so they’d have grown-ups to talk to. They were beautiful. That’s why I liked them. And I had got what I wanted. And that’s all I’ve ever been interested in. I mean…beautiful things.”
“That’s…beautiful. We’re really peeling away the layers of the old onion, opening up, getting to know each other. How many people can you talk to this way?”
“No one. Don’t know what made me think of it. Yes. It’s nice.”
Fred inhaled deeply. They were on their way back on the track. Check off Stage l. Stage 2, here we come.
“Come on,” Dinky said, patting both Fred’s upper and lower cheeks. “Let’s get dressed and have a dance.”
“What about the banana? I’m currently very into bananas.”
“Well save it
for breakfast. I always like a banana before breakfast.”
“We going to spend the night?”
“Sure.”
Stage 2 manuevered! Stage 3, here we come!
On the parapets above Dixie Disco Dancehall, Winnie bobbed and swayed. He looked down at the tiny ants. He looked out at the twinkling columns and moons and stars. He was in heaven. He loved it. It felt wonderful.
Weeeee…I am in love with life and me and my angel’s dust and I am the golden boy and I thank my angel’s dust because it’s the most wonderful wonder in the world it helps me makes me want to flyyyyyyyyyy!…
Boo Boo was having trouble standing up. The news that his father was on the premises had naturally been upsetting. He had not known his Pop to be such an attender of events. Good old Pop. What if he finds me here? He wouldn’t come back here! But what if he did? Then I’d have to give him the note! Richie, Jesus Christ what have you been planning for all these years? Boo fell down again. But Wyatt helped him up again. Good old Wyatt. Good old Wyatt with the ten-inch cock who called me a mess. Yes, Wyatt’s knowledgeable proficiency as a tour guide through all these inland waterways had been upsetting, too. “Why are the urinals lying down?” “So you can lie down, too.” Of course. How logical. Very sensible. I’ve never traveled anywhere. Oh, I want to travel! Yes, this kid has been around. Good old Wyatt. When Boo stumbled and fell yet again, and Wyatt had righted him yet again, Richard Bronstein knew he’d found his help.
No, I couldn’t! Why not? Who better to trust than ten inches of your own blood? Ten inches!
And what better time than now! Pop’s out there just ready for the plucking! And if he can have another Bronstein, so can I!
“Now listen, Wyatt,” Richie said decisively as he let his frame sink down on to the more or less dry floor in an alcove outside of Martha Mitchell. “How would you like it if I could fix it so we could be very rich and live together and you’d never have to go home again ever ever? I mean really, really rich. Really rich!” He laughed out loud, not because he’d had the guts to expose his gutsy plans, but because he sounded just like Ed Sullivan. Boy, am I drugged, he thought.
“Uncle Richie and Wyatt Bronstein At Home,” Wyatt said, thinking of his mom’s nice engraved cards from Cartier and then thinking, boy, his Uncle certainly was drugged.
Then Richie pulled out of his back pocket a rather crumpled and soggy note, which he proceeded to recite aloud. “Abraham Bronstein, come to your son’s loft with one million dollars or else swarthy and dangerous faggots will bury Richard with Barbara Walters. And Walter Cronkite.”
Wyatt, who was having difficulty shooing off a rather strange Marine with a high-pitched voice who kept offering seven dollars and fifty cents for his legendary product and pulling coins and bills out of a big satchel bag “to show you I’m serious,” answered: “That’s not enough.”
“Two million, do you think?”
“No, no, one million’s fine. I mean…you planning a kidnapping?”
“Yeah, but shhhh…”
“In your own loft?”
“Ten dollars and I have a very nice apartment on East Seventy-second Street…” The Marine was back again.
Wyatt, an experienced television viewer, realized he was confronted on both sides by rather peculiar primetime dramas. He turned to tune-in his Uncle. “That’s pretty stupid.”
“You’re right. You’re right. Son of a gun, just what I’ve been thinking recently. It should be some place more exotic than the loft, but not too far-fetched. Boy, it’s going to be good doing it with you.”
“Eleven seventy-five.” The Marine seemed rather upset that Wyatt was negotiating on both sides. “But you have to do it with me.”
“Where we going to do this, Wyatt?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to Fire Island tomorrow anyway.”
“You’ve been to Fire Island!”
“Tons.”
“You been to The Meat Rack?”
“Tons.”
Son of a bitch, fifteen years old and he’s been there tons. “Gee…well, maybe we could do it at Fire Island.”
“Twelve dollars and we have to do it right here!” the Marine insisted.
“Will you please go away!,” Wyatt hissed at him. Then he turned back to Richie. “You mean you’ve never been there?”
“I’m going to go tomorrow, too. Unh…tell me about this Meat Rack place.”
Wyatt didn’t know which side to appease. It was just like when his Mom was on one side of him wanting something and pulling one of his arms and his Dad was on the other side pulling for another. He thought he’d be torn in two. How to keep peace in the family? “Let’s see. It’s a big forest at the end of the boardwalk which is very spooky and full of dramatic scenes. Go away I told you!” he hissed once again at the Marine who had evidently come up with fifteen bucks “and that’s my final dramatic offer!”
“How dramatic?” Boo Boo liked the sound of this. “Do they have coffins and bury people?”
“Well, it is very dark…”
“You know, Wyatt, I can see you’ve got a true Bronstein imagination. Boy, are you really a helpmate. It’s going to be great living with you.”
“Isn’t that incense?” Wyatt had been reconsidering all offers.
“What’s a little incense after you’ve burned your bridges? Let’s work this out. Give me a pencil and paper.”
“I haven’t got one. Wait a minute.” He conversed with the Marine who rummaged in that satchel and came up with a Cross pencil and a piece of paper from a Hermes diary.
Boo began to write. Always a dangerous act.
“You really are on a trip, Uncle Richie.”
“Why I’m having a wonderful trip. I’m in Australia.”
“Uncle Richie…?”
“With one million bucks.”
The Marine, at this point, dropped out of the negotiations.
“Uncle Richie…?”
“Don’t interrupt my creative flow.”
“Uncle Richie…?”
“What!”
“Are you serious?!”
Timmy still waited in the thinned-down Dixie Disco, his eyes still nervously on heaven. He’d tried to get up to those flies where the columns were presumably resting. But he couldn’t find the way. And no one had been able to help him.
People, now pretty much exclusively male, were still rushing back and forth, cascading from one playground to the next. He noticed the group of models from Garfield’s orgy last night looking at him critically. So he stood tall and cool and proud and stared right back. He somehow thought this was how Winnie would play it.
Then he saw Randy Dildough coming toward him, hand outstretched, a beaming and welcoming smile again upon that face.
“A very fine performance, Timothy! My congratulations. I certainly know how to pick them.”
Timmy looked him right in the eye and decided to play this one as Winnie would, too. “Go away, Crud Man!” he said, and walked away to further make his point. That should show him. Leave Tim Purvis hanging indeed!
Boo Boo finished writing. And then, pausing only to let his mind, or what is currently left of it, caress the loving thoughts: sexual proficiency, orgiastic participation, and money here I come! Soon they’ll all be saying: “There goes Richard Abraham Bronstein! You know who he is!,” he grabbed his new helpmate Wyatt by the hand and confided to him: “I think this should do it. Let’s go and burn our incense!”
Fred and Dinky, hand in hand as well, had exited Behind the Green Door and bumped right into Abe.
“Fred-chen, where have you been? This place is not for me. I want to go home. Tell me, how do you meet people when no one talks? Even a hooker on the street, I’d go up to her, say hello, what’s your name, where are you from, how much do you charge?”
Fred and Dinky both laughed, Fred, feeling so good, kissed Abe and introduced Dinky, and then Dinky said: “You don’t talk to people when you cruise. The secret is to just look mean.”
&nbs
p; “What please is a cruise?”
Fred answered, waving his hands about in his best screenwriter’s descriptive way: “Think of this place as a great big store, with lots of merchandise on display. But you don’t really look at it too closely, because you don’t feel like shopping today. You look at it…obliquely. You give it a little look, pretending not to look, but being able to see, out of the corner of your eye only, if anyone else is pretending not to look back at you. If you see someone else pretending not to look, you look the other way. Only after a few moments do you look back, to see if he’s still looking. And if your eyes look, at the same moment, you’ll only let it happen for a second, and then you’ll look away again.”
“It’s very complicated. You want to write a movie about this? The pace will be very deadly.”
“…hi Gramps…”
Abe looked, and there was his grandson.
“Meine kleine Wyatt!”
“…Gramps, I got this note for you…”
And kleine Wyatt, pushed from out of nowhere into prominence by a helpful Uncle no longer there, plopped the piece of Hermes paper into his Grampa’s hand and then tore off like hell.
“Who was that, Abe?”
“But wait! My Wyatt!”
Dinky looked and saw Irving Slough coming toward him all in black.
Abe had read the note.
“Abe! What’s wrong!” Fred looked upon an Abe now all in white.
“I…I…I…speak to you later.” And Abe rushed off and into the crowd as well.
Fred turned to Dinky beside him. Dinky wasn’t beside him. Dinky was talking to a stranger.
And Irving Slough saw Dinky talking to a stranger.
“Gentlemen and Gentlemen! Men and Men!, our final attraction of this momentous evening, rush rush rush back to The Fucketeria, for our grand and climactic event!, you ain’t seen nothin’ till you’ve seen our grand and climactic event!…”
