Faggots

by Larry Kramer

  And now he had seen Ephra Bronstein doing this too.

  Yes, Abe was plotzing hard to keep his philosophic stance. What is she doing? I know what she is doing, but what is she doing! How do I feel about hearing such inner sounds as: “Oh, my Mama Ephra, my Q.M., you are so good, you feel so good!,” and watch the ex-wife of years and years go crazy, letting herself go unto mashugadom, not knowing that she’s thinking: Abe, you pisher, you were a lousy lay, you never made me feel this good, good-bye, Abe, good-bye plastic covers on furniture and blue poison in bowls, you may now, Abe, piss wherever you want to piss, as long as it’s not on me, I am now Living!, and he watches her go bonkers before his very eyes, throwing up stockings and garter belt and panties, undergarments, years of impedimenta to the path of pleasure.

  Yes, Abe was plotzing hardest to keep his philosophic stance. On the one hand, here was a long drink of poopsie who might once and for all take an ex-wife off his hands. On the other hand, what did I do to make this ex-wife stick her hands in that! One wife, two kinder, no, three kinder, no, three ex-wives, almost four, and three kinder, how many suits of guilt can one man wear! Richie blackmails me, Wyatt helps him, Peetra kid-males me, and now even Ephra, too! On the one hand, what kind of Abraham gave birth to all of this? On the other hand, what kind of Abraham must put up with any of that! If I throw away all old suits, can’t I then be Free?

  He didn’t know which hand to hold. Where were his answers? God, you are not giving me my answers. God, you are only giving me more problems. Is this my Mission? Please to give me a remission. Missions are for goyim. Priests and monks and men who went into the jungle.

  Exhausted, he looked at his watch. He bent over to pick up his old suitcase. Soon it would be time to go into the jungle.

  Tarsh stood on the roof of the Feather Party, an enormous compound at Bay Walk’s end, from which he could view the world. He laughed and laughed. Laughing gas made him laugh. It was another Hollywood premiere! Dueling searchlights once again were stabbing the sky. And down below, 456 simply gorgeous men were all in feathers! Completely, partially, symbolically, elaborately, tastefully, gaudily, repulsively, humorously, expensively, all in feathers! MGM in its hey-day could not have improved on this!

  The host, Montoya, a Venezuelan painter of horse canvasses, had done it again. Last year he’d decreed they come in Red. The year before that was Roaring Twenties. The year before was Pink. The year before…oh who could remember, but it had been Fun!

  Bilbo yelled up at him: “Do you know how fucking expensive fucking feathers are on the open market and how fucking expensive it is to be a fucking Philippino fairy bluebird!” Then he just as quickly flew away, crowing: “Cock-a-doodle-do! Any cock will do!”

  Frigger, in a huge pumpkin, which covered him from shoulder to crotch, orange-feathered, waved up and yelled: “I’m Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Peter Eater!”

  And Fallow, who had outdone himself, in St. Laurent blazer, navy with maroon piping, from which the sleeves had been removed and replaced with ostrich feathers of a length suitable for Sally Rand, yelled up as well: “If you snooze you lose!”

  And both he and Frigger, arm in arm, as best they could, walked off for cruising closer to shore.

  There were balloons and streamers and miles of carnation leis and twenty huge coconut palms flown in from Hawaii and a group of feathered yodelers from the Bernese Oberland and lanterns by the yard and mountains of fruit and cauldrons of pure and impure punch and the loudest of Esquino’s music and much kissing and holding and smiling and happiness and cares begone! We are here at Fire Island Pines to start the summer of our lives and the city and the world and our jobs and our hassles are far away, far, far away, again, again, again we reach for fun, who needs that world?, over the harbor and far away, we’re here, we’re here, and let them, over there, say about us what they will, who cares, who fucking cares!

  A tired Anthony yelled up: “Have you seen Fred? Have you seen Wyatt?” Anthony carried only a token chicken feather, not being one for costumes,

  “I haven’t seen them!” Tarsh yelled down. “Isn’t this wonderful!” Then he wondered where his humpy Rabbi had disappeared to. He’d been nice. No religion wants us. We’re going to have to invent our own.

  In great excitement, Bella rushed up to Anthony. “Can you believe it! Bruce Sex-toys is rumored to have spent twenty-three hundred dollars of his very own money on his Roman centurion outfit with its flowing cape of cascading tiny tuftings falling down six heavenly feet plus two inches to his gorgeous booted garnished toes!”

  “Who are you supposed to be?” Anthony studied Bella’s vaguely cowboy outfit.

  “I’m Roy Rogers!”

  “You look more Dale Evans to me.” Oi, Anthony, even your jokes are old and tired. Forget that child and go get some sleep.

  They were joined by a young man with a snake in a feather boa coiled round his naked body, its head peeking over his own shaved dome.

  “Hello, Sanford,” Bella said, stepping back a bit. “How are you tonight? How’s…Abner?”

  “I’m a work of art,” Sanford said.

  “We can see that,” Bella agreed, stepping just another step away, for safety’s sake.

  “Everyone is worshipping me. They are watching me and worshipping me. I am beautiful and desirable and completely unobtainable.”

  Anthony agreed. “The snake gets in the way.”

  Up on the roof, Tarsh decided ’twas time now to descend.

  Fred found Ike Bulb’s on Aeon. The television was still on in the bedroom as Fred slipped in, the Home Team now playing the Padres, and he turned it off and smiled down upon the resplendent naked figure of his awakening Dinky, or his ex-Dinky, or his soon-to-be again Dinky, I must be stronger now than ever before, this is our last act, kid, I have to have some answers Now, yes, his Dinky resplendently displayed upon the knobby bumps of Ike’s ancient chenille spread. “Hi, there, sport’s fan. Let’s talk. Where shall we begin?”

  As the recipient of both a nasty letter and a right to the jaw, Dinky did not smile back. “You’ve said it all,” he said. And since his nakedness was now rather obvious and now obviously rather appealing to Fred, who was looking at him with those 17-page-Ode-to Potential-and-Possibility eyes, Dinky reached over speedily to the camp chair on his left and extracted a black leather g-string from the pile of his coming evening’s more formal attire. “I framed your letter and hung it on my wall. I’ve never been called a loser before.” He quickly slipped into the g-string and zinged it into place.

  Ah, yes, Fred noted the stack of After Six, Wardrobe from the Wicker Collection. Let’s talk about that. He had noted, too, the Vaselined cock’s glinting. I wonder who the lucky recipient was. Let’s talk about that. And who’s he leathering up for? Let’s talk about that, too. So talk, Freddie, Fred-chen, talk. You’re here. God damn it, talk! That g-string is very sexy. It carries his cock and balls nicely. It fits around his waist nicely. It fits into the crack in his ass nicely. I am shivering nicely. I think I am getting off my course. “Where’d you buy that? The g-string.”

  “I had it made in Florence.”

  “I never knew you’d been to Florence.” I always wanted to go to Florence. I was saving Florence and Venice. For me and Mr. Right. Fred felt his tongue go dry, in need of some Vaseline itself perhaps, and desire a life of its own perhaps, and commence a circumnavigation up that crack perhaps, yep, I am definitely getting off my course…just as my arms want to throw a quick tackle and just as my mind fears that all any of this would accomplish beyond a scrimmage would be yet another incomplete forward pass. And all of me again penalized for being off sides. Please note that at this stage of “our romance” and “our relationship” you are so intimidated and off-balance that you are afraid to touch him. Another Dennis might jump out from under the bed. “Listen…” Fred tried again.

  “I’m listening.” Dinky was looking at Fred while now entering his epauletted leather shirt, slipping into it sinuously and snapping it closed slowly
, first all the snaps up the front, and then the cuffs. He fit inside it snugly and handsomely, like Yul Brynner in a sinister Western. More shivers from Fred.

  “Shirt from Florence, too? I never knew the Italians were so into leather.”

  “Ike bought it for me in Hong Kong.”

  “It fits you very nicely.”

  “He knows my measurements.”

  “I guess I didn’t want to know about Dennis or Irving or Savannah George who doesn’t mean anything to you, or Ike. Unh, who exactly is Ike?”

  “I was just being honest. I always like to tell everyone the whole story. I know someone who’ll make you a shirt in New York. You’d look good in leather.”

  Hmmm. The whole story. Stories from the Wicker Library. That I read without a library card. Talk about a Pandora’s Box. How do we talk about those? “You made some incredible promises this weekend.”

  “You shouldn’t have run away. You didn’t have to slug me. You could have come back with us. We could have hidden you in the closet and you could have watched.” Dinky had now reached for two cock rings, black leather bands, one inch wide, studded with silver knobs, with snaps. One by one, he applied these to his wrists. “Think you could have got off on that?”

  Fred watched the application. Fred listened to the missed opportunity. Fred fantasized the missed opportunity. Fred’s crotch was sorry it had missed opportunity. Fred saw Dinky, in shirt and g-string and cock-ringed wrists only, tilt his head to one side and smile up at Fred.

  But Fred said: “OK, buddy. You’re very beautiful to me. If you can’t handle that, if you can only do it with strangers and everybody else but me, I’m sorry.”

  Dinky suddenly reached for his pants. He stood up and he started pulling them on. He did it sensuously, with punctuated looks at Fred, first one leg inserted in the supple, clinging cowhide, then the other, then bending to smooth and form the surface to the contours of his thighs and calves, like a lady with her nylons, then standing tall for a squeeze-in of and a pull-up over that perfect palazzo of a tush Fred had tasted how many aeons ago, then a front tug-up, until his g-stringed balls and cock bulged out, Hello!, before he pushed them down and in, good-bye, then a suck-in of his stomach and a zip-up of the fly and a snap-closed to the package very firmly at the top.

  Fred had watched it all. Fred was going crazy. Dinky relaxed. He sat down on the bed and he said: “Sex doesn’t mean a fucking thing. You just don’t understand that. It’s just a sensation. Stick a popper up your nose and you might just as well have a dildo up your ass as me.”

  Yes, Fred had watched it all. His case of the Shivering Nicelies might just be on the brink of No Control. Oh, what fucking Holy Grail resided in those leather pants?

  Don’t you know, Fred? Can’t you see?

  He fervently attempted to return his argument to its course. “I’m going nuts seeing you with everyone else! Sex and love are different and any faggot given half a choice will take the former. And probably fucked with Adolf Hitler if he’d been cute!” Oops, he’s pulled on some athletic socks and here comes the first boot. “And after all those incredible promises, I’m wondering just when you’re scheduling us in for a serious try at the latter.”

  Yes, ongoing was boot one. Dinky was tugging it on. It was a most handsome black boot, military-style and polished to a mirror, and he placed his pant’s leg inside of it, and began a meticulous lacing up the front. Fred had admired them before and Fred was admiring them now. Fred’s crotch was deep in admiration. “You know, I really want to be friends with you,” Dinky said. “Friendship is better. I like being friends with you.”

  Holy shit. That’s what Feffer said, too. Feffer who also made me feel so wonderful. Feffer who also wasn’t so keen on talk of love. Feffer who so recently made his debut into the Big Top. I certainly do pick them. Why, Fred? Why! “I don’t want a friendship with you! That’s something else entirely. You don’t fuck with your friends. And every faggot couple I know is deep into friendship and deep into fucking with everyone else but each other and any minute any bump appears in their commitment to infinitesimally obstruct their view, out they zip like petulant kids to suck someone else’s lollipop instead of trying to work things out, instead of trying not to hide, and…unh…why do faggots have to fuck so fucking much?!…it’s as if we don’t have anything else to do…all we do is live in our Ghetto and dance and drug and fuck…there’s a whole world out there!…as much ours as theirs…I’m tired of being a New York City-Fire Island faggot, I’m tired of using my body as a faceless thing to lure another faceless thing, I want to love a Person!, I want to go out and live in that world with that Person, a Person who loves me, we shouldn’t have to be faithful, we should want to be faithful!, love grows, sex gets better, if you don’t drain all your fucking energy off somewhere else, no I don’t want you to neutralize us into a friendship!, for all of the above!”

  Dinky had reached over for boot two. Ongoing was boot two. Very quickly!

  “Unh, Dinky…do you think you could stop dressing for a moment and…unh, stop running away from me and yourself and answer me…and…unh…where did you say you bought the boots?” Fred, forget about the fucking boots! He may not be answering you, he may not be hearing a thing you’re saying, you may be firing dying shots at the Alamo, but listen to yourself! You’re getting back some of your old zip! Now what about your proposal? Not that there’s room to kneel down. But you still haven’t asked him. Do you love me, Dinky, at least enough to try?

  “Paris. I bought them in Paris. But I know a place where we can get you a Hot pair in New York.”

  “I never knew you’d been to Paris.” Which Rolex did I take on that trip to Paris?

  Up-lacing was boot two. Dinky suddenly yelled out: “What you want is a heterosexual marriage! But the straights don’t have it any better!”

  “Funny you should bring that up…” Fred now looked at the ceiling, out into the dim living room of Salvation Army overstuffeds, at the plywood wardrobe. Anywhere but at Dinky. Now’s your moment, Fred. Afraid of the rejection? No! Want to be fucked by him in all that leather? Yes. I also want a marriage. A commitment to play house. So what? What’s wrong with that? Why am I letting him intimidate me out of my fantasy. No, it doesn’t have to be a fantasy. I’m beginning to think that the only fantasy is Dinky. Has been Dinky. He’s beginning to look less and less like a housewife. Or a husband. But carry on, Fred. You’ve come this far. It’s sales-pitch time again. The coach pep-talking the team in the locker room at half time, no I guess this is the third quarter and I’m behind 103 to Nothing, no it’s probably five minutes till the final pistol, no it’s probably all over already and I don’t know it. Sure wish I could sit down on the bench. But with all of Dinky’s dressings and all of Ike Bulb’s ancient items, there’s precious little room to sit down…“Oh, that’s a tiresome subject! Heterosexual comparison! Why do all faggots dredge that one up? Straights don’t compare themselves to us! We’re all the same anyway. We’ve just got an added dose of the clap.” Fred tried to pace in mini-steps. Too bad Ike doesn’t have a bigger bedroom. Maybe one of these days Dinky will break down the walls. “I’ve lived all over the world and I haven’t seen more than half a dozen couples who have what I want.”

  Dinky’s voice chirped up in relief: “Then that should tell you something!” Then he broke the lace and cursed and set to work reknotting it with speed. “That’s why my friendship is better. For all of the above.”

  “Yeah. It tells me something. It tells me no relationship in the world could survive the shit we lay on it. It tells me we’re not looking at the reasons why we’re doing the things we’re doing. It tells me we’ve got a lot of work to do. A lot of looking to do. It tells me that, if those happy couples are there, they better come out of the woodwork fast and show themselves pronto so we can have a few examples for unbelieving heathens like you that it’s possible. Before you fuck yourself to death.” That should do it. Send him right out into the arms of the world. “Hey, Dinky…
, sooner or later you’re going to have to make a commitment to someone. Which means making a commitment to yourself. And a commitment to the notion that our shitty beginnings don’t have to cripple us for life.” Ouch. Fred felt a growl of reproach from his stomach. “You know something? I’m beginning to think that that’s all we allow ourselves to feel. Shitty.” Another retort from the interior. And still no room to sit down. Or kneel.

  And still not much help from Dinky.

  But then Dinky looked up from his successful knotting with a very big smile. “I like myself fine.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if you do. And I’m having a tough time with myself. And you’re not helping me any.” So why are you here, Fred? It’s got to be more than Algonqua’s Commitment. Algonqua’s Red Crossing.

  Dinky finally finished with the boots. They looked good. He looked at Fred. Fred wasn’t looking so good. “You know, you analyze too much. You want to know too much. I don’t want to know.”

  OK, Lemish. You hear that? You want somebody who doesn’t want to know? All your life has been a journey to find an identity. Why are you letting this loser help you lose one? He sure is a vision, standing up in all that leather. Your crotch, please note, has not ceased its admiration. He thought you were a vision once, too. For a couple of weeks. Your crotch, please note, wants a return engagement of that admiration. “You don’t want to know why you do the things you do?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “So you might stop doing them.”