by Larry Kramer
Well, it was difficult to relax when he still had that stone mountain ahead of him, that mountain with a surface of glass, so that he could grab no purchase, how to purchase?, he’d always been able to buy anything his heart desired, now, how, could he fuck her?!, be Sir Edmund Hillary, properly, without visions of Purvises dancing in his head?
Not that she pushed. Or was in the least insistent. Not at all. Dordogna was patience. Had she not had much experience with faggots? The one thing she knew was not to push.
“I am going to be on the cover of Gentlemen’s Quarterly,” she said demurely.
“That’s wonderful,” Randy said, appreciating the importance of the press. He then made himself do it. He bent to kiss her nose. She remained demure. He appreciated the gesture. Her lips tasted faintly of strawberries. Was it strawberries or raspberries that gave him a rash?
“They want to photograph me with a man,” she then said, holding his hands and playing with his fingers. “Would you like that?”
“Yes, I would like that,” he answered. Yes, I would like that fine. Good publicity for the Musselman cause. He removed his fingers. He did not like it when she played with his fingers.
Dordogna pretended not to notice the rejection. Calm, patience, they were like little children who must be led unobtrusively but deftly to the pond.
“You like Dordy’s outfit?”
“Yes.” He did not like her nickname.
“Did you know I made it myself?”
“Where do you find the time?”
“I have time.”
Randy caught the implication. Dordy bit her lower strawberry. Oh, sometimes it was so difficult, one had to watch every word and syllable, lest innuendo slip in. Everything could go awry with unpropitious meaning. It was all so…so subterfugitive. One could not even say “how are you today?” without worrying. Oh, why was there no front door? Why was one always forced to use the back one, to tread like hired help?
“Dordogna…?”
“Yes, Rancé?” She had decided she liked his full name better. He was trying to tell her something. Good! He was attempting to communicate.
“Please call me Randy.”
“Yes, of course, Randy…?” She was back to demureness again. Demureness was safe. “Tell Dordy…”
“Dordogna…”
“Yes…?”
“I…”
“Yes…?”
“I’ve had a simply terrible weekend.” There. He had said it. It had not been difficult.
“Tell Dordogna.” He seemed to prefer Dordogna. What is this telling me?
Now he realized it would become more difficult. He wished to confide in her, but how could he talk about those things with…with the woman he would sooner or later have to fuck? How could he tell her about intimate inner voices (I’m afraid, I’m afraid) she would be able to use against him, like ammunition stolen by the enemy and bombarded volte-face?
“Oh, Randy-ran, you are such a closed book. I am not your enemy.”
How was she reading his mind so?
“However are we to know each other, from deep within me to deep within you?” She wondered if this might not be too pungent.
It was. He perceptively cringed.
Oh, well, I have started. “How are we to share? We must share, or we shall become selfish old people, crotchety and spiteful.” I am only speaking the truth. How hard it is to make them see the truth.
“My goodness.” He was aware of the inadequacy of his response.
“So tell me about your weekend and why it was so terrible.”
He couldn’t do it. Not this weekend anyway. Perhaps another weekend.
Dordogna, with her impeccable timing, she had not built up her international men’s wear consortium without impeccable timing, sensed the time was Now. In the darkness, though there was a lambent, blessedly complimentary glow of just visible light from…somewhere where the God who looks after moments like these was so looking after…, she slipped out of her soft white knickers and soft white tank-top and soft white knee-length stockings and soft white sneakers, revealing Lo!, a body more akin to a soft white little boy’s than to the female Randy has so feared.
Though there is that patch to which he is accustomed to seeing a handle, now no handle, how to handle?!
She stood up over him, stretched out over him, upward, sinuously, running her hands over her body and trying her best to act as little-boy-like as she knew how, and she knew how, trying to transmit to him vibrations and fantasies of boys’ camps or school dorms or swimming holes or army barracks or wherever the fuck and whatever the fuck he would get off on fantasizing, she didn’t care what he dreamed of so long as he got it up and in and she would take over from there, wherever it was, she’d ride him to the moon and stars, oh if only she could do it, bring it off, add another faggot to her bracelet of charm, she wanted this one badly, he was so famous, and powerful, an association of equals, we could rule the world!, she wanted Cunard Rancé Evin Dildough, she wanted the world to know that she had turned this man on, had turned on the man whom no other woman had turned on (little realizing that no one would believe it when and if she did, it not being in the nature of people to believe that which they do not wish to believe, and they wish to believe “Once a Faggot Always a Faggot,” an old saw of a song with certain truthful teeth)…
“You like what you see, Randy?”
She had bent back down to see-level and put her finger in his mouth, so that he could not answer, and another finger in her cunt, so that he certainly could not answer, circling this latter round and around so that, with the tricks imagination and lighting could play in such dimly lit environs, all of them being invoked by her and prayed for by him, he, he really did, now, once and for all, want to fuck a lady, get it over with, be able to boast I HAVE FUCKED COOZE, be able to join the ranks of MEN, all his films’ producers with their broads, and with these tricks of imagination, it was just possible in this dim light to conjure, also dimly, that what was sticking out of her privates was not her gyrating finger and fist but a prick and balls, that’s it fella, think Fella, think prick and balls and dong and schlong and willy and rodney and unit and snake and joint and Mr. Wigglestick and Willy the one-armed trouser worm, think every name from every stage of your educational development!, think banana and bird and bone and ding-dong, dingus, dink, dork, flute, front porch, gadget, hammer, hang-down, honker, hose, hot dog, joy stick, kidney wiper, knitting needle, lance!, lollipop, longfellow, muscle, nightcrawler, pecker, pee pee, peter, piccolo, piston, poker, pole, pork, prong, pud, roger, rupert, sausage, scepter, schmuck!, think schnitzel, schwantz, sewing machine, slug, spout, sword, tom-tom, wand, wang, water pistol, weener, wienie!, wheezer!, wishbone!, worm!, Ying-Yang!, and yes, Yes, YES, her upper torso certainly looks like a lithe young boy, think Purvis!, Think Timothy!, think that beautiful young boy who is here, now, in your arms, at last, forever, She is turning him on!, her secret, she thinks (she’s not aware of his vocabulary), is obviously her patience and persistence (Adriana had told her of her own younger days: I would come to Fire Island and when the little fairies came home from their flittings and they had not been successful, then I would act like a little boy, and become subtly aggressive and then quickly suck their little cockies and tell them how strong they were and how attractive and masculine and soon I had them hard and ever so quickly so that they knew not what was happening I would pop them into me and they are fucking me and they are so excited and together we are so excited…ah memories…), yes her patience and her persistence, and his vocabulary, and her young boy’s body, that helps, too, of course, and now Dordogna has Randy in her mouth, yes, it is growing, is Randy in Dordogna’s mouth, yes, he is leaning back and growing and keeping his eyes closed and thinking of Timothy and he is all right as long as he thinks of Timothy and keeps away from those breastlets, thinking this is not half so bad, this is feeling good, Please God let my cock stay hard, yes, it is hard, it is harder, it is hard enough, yes, it’s certainly hard
enough, thank you God, prayers offered up by both communicants…and Dordogna is slurping away, she is smelling good, perhaps a bit too good, Randy only knows from sweat and armpits, butch, masculine smells, Dordogna might consider this, leave a used jockstrap around, perhaps wear it herself, now she’s got him hard, she is ready to legerdemainize the moment, make history, effect her switcheroo, now in the darkness she does it! He does it!, an exchange of orifices has been made, one for another, he is placed inside her, once more returned unto woman, she is managing to sit on his still hard, Still Hard, cock, and feel him in her, yes, Hooray!, she has managed Another!, she has succeeded in seducing another faggot, another faggot has entered her, she is riding her cock horse to Banbury Cross, except that Randy is not President of Marathon Leisure Time for nothing, he knows something is afoot, or is it amouth, one mouth does not feel like another, there’s been a double cross, he opens his eyes a slit, fearing the worst, then seeing it, He is fucking a Woman, his prick is in her slit, oh Randy Ran, such revolting words, such a turnoff, words like slit and cunt and cooze and pussy and muff, she is riding high but you are beginning to slowly sink in the West, dead sails in her red sunset, until she sails that mite too high and out you flop and dribble, Apollo splashdown, soft and slippery and desiring liberty, and you fear that there is one thing a woman frowns upon and this is a slippery flopdown, but no!, Dordogna is a gentleman: “Ah, that was nice, Randy, so nice, you make love so nicely…,” who is this woman kidding?, it’s time to take my pickle and get out of this pickle, she, sensing that Act Three is yet to come, speaks softly, very softly: “We must dine tomorrow, I am having your conglomerated President, Mr. Musselmen, my good friend, Pip Musselman, you will come about nine…,” and how can he turn down such an offer?, how can he turn down this woman who tells him he fucks her so nicely?, oh confusion, oh tempera, oh mores, no, lesses, again, at this moment, definitely lesses, and he helps her back into her sporting attire, and he reenters his canary yellow, and they stand up, and retrace their pathway back to the empty living room, the Island’s noises, rumblings, becks-and-calls, just out there, I’m coming, I’m coming, and Randy knows that, like one of his many movies, he wishes to, in the tradition of the Great Western Heros, Get Outta Town.
Mikie’s drugs were heading him the wrong way. He couldn’t even bang his tambourine. Even the hood on his sweat shirt seemed to be pulling him down. Finally he wailed out loud: “How can I throb in full communion to this Island’s beat! How can I transcend my unsuccessful identity!”
For his beloved friend, Tarsh, and he were still not talking. But Tarsh’s Rabbi had disappeared.
“My drug salad with dust is not taking me toward passionate abandonment and why am I the only one who has such paranoia with my chemicals!”
They were on the beach. The moon was beautiful. The sand was white and soft. Distant music wafted from both The Pines and Grove. Yes, they were on the beach. Thirty or so. From Adriana’s they’d dressed as Orientals. The Oriental Party had been nice, the opium most mellow, though such a chore to smoke, paper hangers and glass plates required an adeptness not readily available, and all that clink chink music grated on the nerves.
Then they’d changed for Tad’s Brazilian Party. Lots of Carmen Mirandas. Beer imported from Rio. Parrots, too. And, well, who needed parrots. Tad’s had failed to hold. Where next? Whose party next? Yes, they were on the beach. Forty of them or so.
“I want to demonstrate and receive all joys!” Mikie continued to wail. “I wish to be a beautiful living organism and have shattering disco and dancing experiences and travel into places beyond time and be triumphant over the flat emptiness of modern life!” And I love Tarsh more than life itself and now I want to die.
Tarsh rummaged in his Brazilian-Prince sarong and pulled out some further invitations. “There is a party where we must wear high heels. Is anyone interested in a party where we must wear high heels?” He read from the graven invitation to them all: “‘Sling backs, open toes, mules, stilettoes, T-straps, wedgies, spring-a-lators, enna jetticks, but no flats.’ They seem to be rather emphatic re: no flats.”
No one wanted to go to this party.
“I can’t even thump my tambourine!” Mikie wailed yet once again.
“Somebody shut her up,” said Fallow.
Tarsh finally went to Mikie and held him in his arms. “Mikie, let go! Lose control! Let your paranoia drip away!”
Mikie felt better in Tarsh’s arms. But still he begged for information from their leader. “How! How do I let go? I’m not the Master of my Life! I promised me the Summer of My Life!”
Tarsh just held Mikie and mumbled: “Let go, Mikie. Let it all go.”
Bilbo said: “I believe there’s a party in honor of the blueberry. Evidently they do interesting things with blueberries. I hear they’re quite good with blueberries.”
No one wanted to go to this party.
So Tarsh momentarily placed Mikie to one side and rummaged again in his folds for yet another card. And he smiled. Of course. How could he have forgotten!
“The Feather Party!”
And they all cheered, fifty of them or so, now running from the beach, taking shortcuts back to houses and to change. Yes, how could they have forgotten! The Party of Parties!
And had not Tarsh officially now proclaimed: “We’re ready for The Feather Party!”
Feathers were about to fly on Sunburst.
Nancellen, ever resourceful, had brought matters to a head. She had carefully dabbed Ephra’s lap, stained with nervously spilled scotch, with a washcloth one-two-three-four. And Ephra had cried out “oh-oh-oh-oh!” with each punch of Martex. Yes, Nancellen had gauged her every shot. She could have been in acupuncture.
She lived in a Bath-owned house, furnished by Wife of Bath in summer-rent shades of warring colors. But Nancellen had chotchkied it up in Early American, with round hooked rugs and several rocking chairs and innumerable hurricane lamps. She had been summering in The Pines for many years. She was one of those dykes who do not like the company of other dykes. And since she certainly wasn’t keen on straight men either, all they wore was old suits, this left only faggots or solitude or…the possibility that someday her Queen would come.
Ephra’s stain did not depart. It restained itself like some contantly blossoming ranunculus, some long-sequestered perennial determined under the most obtuse of growth conditions to sprout and spread. I shall love at last! I shall have my first clitoral orgasm! Yes, Ephra had of late been dipping into Cosmopolitan and wished to be a Cosmo Girl.
Nancellen at last threw in the washcloth. She could hold it no longer and finally took the armful that was Ephra still in her Lilly Pulitzer into an embrace and, from on high, bent down slowly slowly slowly to kneel, kiss, nibble, blow, and whisper: “Oh, my Mama, oh, my Queen.” It was a touching moment.
Ephra, heretofore not a caster of soft nothings, our Ephra, mumbled back, as best the could midst all that tower’s tonguings: “…daughter…at last I have a daughter…,” and then the two sets of lips met, in vibrant comingling hues of Tangerine Temptress and Autumn Rose, meeting and touching and feeling soft and warm, on Sunburst, with the moon so bright outside. Yes, a touching moment.
Nancellen now floated on a wave of Mission Accomplished, clear sailing from here on, was there nothing so perfect as a trick sighted, wooed, captured, won, was this the love she had sought so many years and never found? Thank God Garfield probably got waylaid along the way.
And Ephra, poor Ephra, what-am-I-doing-here-Ephra, was trying hard to loose her moorings, still caught on those confusing thoughts sloshing around her Park Avenue brain. Where was Abe? Who wants Abe? Abe will only find another poopsie. And make another pisher. To add to the two he’s already made who never call and say hello. So, Abe, I am with a poopsie, too. So, Abe, you are not the only one to have a poopsie and a hotsie totsie. And guess what, Abe? My poopsie totsie is taller and bigger and prettier than any of yours! And also guess what, Abe? I think I am becoming a fegalette or
whatever is the feminine for fegalim, just like I read about in your bottom drawer.
So logical and illogical thoughts now vanished for them both as they surrendered. Ephra, that something warm now running down the inside of her legs, striking out on its own, forming its own tributary, this way to freedom, this way!, this way to new discoveries, she had never been an explorer in her entire life, was beginning to cry softly, the tears now mingling into tangerine roses and autumn temptresses and Nancellen was tasting the wonderful salt that, when mixed with love, becomes nonfattening sugar, yes, Nancellen now has tears of her own, do you see me, Mama?, do you see me all you men and faggots?, dykes are not the same as faggots, we can love!, we can make commitments!, pulls and clutches her new Mama and they fall on the wide expanse of Early American quilted living-room daybed, tearing off items of imprisonment, outer garments, rolling over and over and round and down and about, making up for all those years of menly incarceration, menly games, menly demands, menly men, and Ephra found herself feeling Free, and found herself sucking those lovely fingers, “You could have played the piano,” and found herself enjoying kissing and being kissed and nurtured, her breasts caressed and loved for what they were, not for what they gave or stood for.
“My dearest Nancellen, can you hear me…?” she now spoke in a voice modulated with a never-before-heard tone of love and affection and caring, not even her own children had heard this tone, “…is this please love?”
Abraham Bronstein, was it not ever thus?, stood on that outside deck on Sunburst plotzing to keep his philosophic stance. He had walked around and around this Island and now he had to walk around and into this! He had seen men kissing on the ocean as they watched the moonrise. He had seen male bodies holding, coupling, even making love. Two-men fuckings for the world to see! He had seen and he had thought: Here is The Toilet Bowl outdoors! This is worse than Berlin both before and after the troubles! Worse than Nazis! Are my Richie and my Wyatt doing this!?
