Faggots

by Larry Kramer

  “I like doing them. If I knew why I did them, I might not like doing them anymore. Come on,” Dinky was now trying to get past Fred in the narrow space, “let’s go to Irving’s party.”

  “Irving’s? What kind of party?”

  “Who knows? If it’s in The Meat Rack, it’s probably the whole lot. Leather. Piss. Shit. Your outfit isn’t right, but no one will notice. We’ll start work on improving your wardrobe next week.” He clapped Fred on the shoulder with his hand, like an officer encouraging the enlisted man out into battle.

  “You into piss?” Fred asked.

  “Sometimes. There’s a guy in Brooklyn. I told you about him. I like his piss.” He started rummaging through his civilian clothes hanging in the plywood wardrobe.

  “Oh, shit,” Fred finally sank down on the now vacated mattress, realizing that once again nothing was being resolved. And trying not to ask himself why he still wanted for a lover/husband-wife someone who liked a guy-in-Brooklyn’s piss. “You can’t give me what I want. And I’m still fucking hooked on you. Why can’t I let go? Why am I still holding on to somebody who can’t give me what I want?” Fred! He’s heard you utter these blasphemous words!

  But the fucker still doesn’t say anything. Where’s your proposal now? Your knees still ready? You still want him? Yes. Then ask him.

  “Why can’t we get it together?” Fred asked softly. “What better trinity for a love affair and a good relationship than two guys who share mutual affection and attraction, mutual interests, and terrific sex? You always said on paper we make so much sense. The fucking with you was always wonderful.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Can’t we do it again?” You’re back to begging. Fred. You shouldn’t have to do that, Fred.

  “Sure. We’ll do it again.” Dinky was still rummaging. but now down on his knees, in his little canvas carry-all on the floor.

  No. There couldn’t be. Fred restrained himself from looking for Dennis under the bed. “How about right now?”

  “No, not right now. I told you I’ve been feeling very nonsexual lately. I also told you we’re going to Irving’s party.”

  “What’s Ike Bulb to you?”

  Dinky found his plastic bag of pills and stood up. “He gets off on watching me do it with other guys.”

  OK, Lemish. Another Dennis isn’t under this bed. He’s in it. How many fucking roles can this Dinky play fucking? All things to all people. Save me. Save himself. And it’s that self I say l want. Is it there? Do l still want it? Do l want to do it with Dinky and have Ike Bulb, whoever he is, get off on watching the two of us doing it? I hate to admit it, but I wouldn’t say No. Oh, Fred. When are you going to say No?

  “Want some drugs?” Dinky offered, selecting several for himself.

  “No.”

  “You never would trip with me.” Dinky swallowed two Desnobarbs. “You and I, we’ll do it together for Ike. We’ll do a scene of our own. Would you like that?”

  “Where’s Cosmo?” Fred asked, looking around suddenly for the cute little white Bedlington terrier who looked just like a lamb and who seemed to Fred at this moment to probably be the only recipient of Dinky’s completely unwavering affection. On their first date, a thousand years ago, was it only last March?, Dinky had come toward Fred (come to think of it, wearing these same leather pants, I didn’t even notice…), holding Cosmo’s leash, Cosmo straining, strutting forth, forward, in front of Dinky, so excited, in anticipation. Such a good omen, Fred had thought.

  “He’s run away out here. But he’ll come back.”

  Fred jumped up and took Dinky in his arms and tried to embrace him and kiss him. But March was a long way away and the room was still too stuffed up and so the bodies and the lips, for both, had trouble connecting.

  “You’ve already fucked half of New York,” Fred said. “I’ve fucked the other half. You told me you were in the bars since you were seventeen, you had your muscles at twenty-three. There isn’t a scene you haven’t seen or done. And you’re only thirty. Why can’t you imagine something better? I dare you to change! And try for something better!”

  “My bulldog Fred,” Dinky managed to mumble as Fred managed to connect with an earlobe. “I told you we’d work on our relationship.” He rubbed his hands up Fred’s new washboard stomach. “You feel good.” He poked his hands in Fred’s crotch to see if it still was deep in admiration. It was. “You still turn me on. We’re not finished yet. I still want to keep seeing you. Let’s go and grab some donuts before Irving’s. I know how you like your donuts.”

  Then Dinky took Fred’s hand and pulled him from Ike Bulb’s, out the front door, down a length of Aeon. “Did I tell you,” he asked Fred half-way to the donuts in the harbor, “I’ve bought myself a motorcycle!”

  A putt-putt was heard in the distance. Everybody at the Feather Party at Bay Walk’s end rushed to the water’s edge. In the distance an enormous barge was heaving into view, floating downbay, all lanterns and banners and pennants and actual trumpet voluntaries blown by a corps of six.

  As the barge came closer, figures could be seen waving. Then, from the barge itself, an enormous noise clapped the air and a zooming rocket was set off, accelerating itself up into the sky, its trail of tail all patterned dots of gold and silver. It reached a height, then hovered for that magic moment of graceful Nureyev stop-frame in space, then zoom-zoomed some more, then exploded and went up yet higher and farther and faster and out into a million different Technicolored hues and prisms and palettes and primary colors in speedy space and time, until these exploded yet further up, its exhaust then reforming, regrouping, reuniting, into one gigantic FEATHER! The Crowd on shore went wild!

  And then at the same moment, the very same moment!, as if from out of nowhere, feathers and feathers and feathers, ten thousand million zillion trillion feathers! were released into the air, up into the atmosphere, out into the world, up and over and cascading gently down…

  Yes, The Crowd on shore went wild!

  Then the barge pulled up to dock. Now its occupants could be seen. Visions. Beauties. Silvers and golds. Royalty. Gods. Reigned on by feathers. Oh, what a Night of Nights!

  Then the shoulders of four of the most perfect golden men, all from Laguna, bore, like some potentate of old, or new, a throne. And on this throne, all in gold himself, lacquered and gilded and shiny and beaming, was the King of Beauty himself, Hans Zoroaster.

  And on a second throne, borne also by Lagunans, a tinier crown upon his head, himself in gleaming skin of silver, was that new face of our era in time, the Prince Regent, Timothy Peter Purvis.

  Oh, it was a long way from Essen and a long way from Mt. Rainier for them both!

  And Timmy waved to his new Kingdom, as they waved back to him.

  And grabbing Bo Peep’s hand, a hand happy to be held, a hand happy that Rabbi had disappeared, that had been too close a brush with religion, now there was some hopeful breathing space, Tarsh yelled to him and all: “It’s like living in a movie! Only better! This is our religion!”

  We now come to our Penultimate Climax. It happens in that place of myth and story. The Meat Rack!

  And here the convergence of all ill auguries…never ceases.

  “What do you think of a Nazi party?”

  “Nazi but nice.”

  “Do you think Hitler was gay?”

  “No. His lampshades would have been pleated.”

  “Do we go too far?”

  “Does a nigger carry a radio?’

  There are now 53,492 faggots on the Fire Island Pines-Cherry Grove axis. Contact with the mainland has ceased till dawn. 12,720 are dancing at The Sandpiper, The Botel, or Billy Boner’s premier palais de dance, The Ice Palace. 7,904 are prowling boardwalks and beaches looking for action. 17,904 are already in action. 9,989 inside. 9,989 outside. 57 are sleeping as best they can with such loud music playing all around. Most of the above and any of the rest will, at some time between now and when said dawn will spread its rosy cheeks, hit The Meat Rack
.

  Dr. Irving Slough has been holding his annual party for years, and on this weekend, which also brought the perennial Cycle and Leather Convention to The Grove. Mixed with our local brothers are all those handsome visitors from far across the sea and nation. Fifteen hundred members representing fifty states and forty international delegations adding another fifteen hundred plus two hundred from The Homeland alone. The S.S. Berlin had brought in quite a load. And all in leather, too.

  And since Irving generously held his party in The Meat Rack, receiving the kind permission of the U.S. Parks Department to so do, said party was hardly an exclusively catered affair. Yes, Irving welcomed all. Here he could wear his finery with no fear.

  “Welcome, Hans!” Irving greeted his best friend, still all in gold but burnished with a coat of leather, giving the right tit he’d so recently repierced a tug. “Tonight I pull you into pleasure, no?”

  “Yes!” Hans Zoroaster giggled in anticipation. “A tug into our own special world!”

  So, picture if you will, a particularly scenic nook, slightly off the beaten path, just to one side of the main highway through these woods, in this veil of myth and story, equidistant from The Pines and Grove, an open patch, trod down by years of Indian braves, deer, then men, surrounded by tall evergreens and ringed with low ones. The moon was just able to klieg it into atmospheric confraternal welcomeness. And since ’twas the beginning of the new day, Everyone was or shortly will be here!

  And was there not much finery everywhere! Iron crosses and swastikas and military marching boots with soles like heavy slabs of darkest bread. Visors and helmets and caps and hoods and bayonets and swords and rifles and holsters and bullet belts plugged full with poppers. And on Irving’s belt, the smart executioner’s mask he’d borrowed from Hans to later case his head. Very smart. Very sinister. As Irving wished for it to be.

  Other guests, of course, were down to basics. Not every one was into leather. Jeans and work boots. T-shirts tucked into jeans’ back pockets. Skin. Flesh. Cocks out naked or encased in mini-leather cases all their own. Ready. Everyone and everything ready. To be put to use. Ready for the sounds and acts of slurpings in the night. No music. No music for this Meat Rack party. Puerto Ricand. j.’s were not welcome here.

  And off to vale right was a coffin. Billy Boner certainly knew how to set the scene to receive R. Allan’s present of beyond-the-pale Paulie. With candles!

  “Hi, there, Irving!”

  “Hello, Ike!” The two men in their heavy outfits of hides and metals embraced as best they could, without emitting static. Dr. Ike Bulb was a short and compact, middle-aged man, with a black goatee and a bald head, tonight looking like a small cowboy in spiked Eulailia boots and waving black chaps branded with the sign of the Double X Ranch.

  “I notice some of our boys over there are contemplating playing with their feces,” Ike happily observed. “Nice to see it. Think I’ll go and join them. Nice to see the boys dealing with ambivalent areas of experience. Nothing to fear but fear itself. Dinky here yet? I just got off the last boat.”

  “Not yet, not yet,” said Irving, rubbing his palms together in anticipation. “You know Dinky, too?”

  “Of course. I thought he told you. He told me all about you.”

  Irving’s palms ceased their happy rubbing and commenced a not so happy rubbing. Fred Lemish and Ike Bulb and me?!

  And near that coffin swung a swing.

  Oh, not your common, ordinary, everyday garden-variety swing. This swing looked like the soft saddle for a horse, but stretched out by four tight ropes of chain that wrapped around four sturdy pines for strength. Yes, Irving had thoughtfully, very thoughtfully, bought this swing and swung this swing, and upon this horseless saddle Dinky would be taught his riding lesson!

  Boo Boo Bronstein had just finished digging an enormous hole the size of him, beneath some trees in what he hoped would be a secluded-enough glade, Wyatt hadn’t told him there’d be so many nightcrawlers in the distance, with the shovel he’d borrowed from somebody’s garden, and dangled into it the long watering hose necessary for breathing from the Underworld that he’d derived from somebody else’s, and lined it with the poncho he’d adopted from yet a third’s. Wyatt also hadn’t told him there’d be a real coffin here already up the path a piece. Was that a good omen, like his lucky penny, or just one of those dramatic scenes he’d been told by Wyatt to expect? All of his exertions had left him more than tired and he looked down into his excavation, he preferred not to think of it as his grave, imagine digging your own grave, no, don’t imagine it, I’m not crazy, I’m courageous and confident, about to become the conniver Pop always wanted me to be, a Cake-and-Cookie Heiress With a Straw To the Outside World. I wish I had more Certyn and some Drayl.

  The famous kidnapping case to which his own paid homage was perpetrated by two crazies who had whisked a rich young heiress from a Georgia motel away to Florida, where she was then buried deep beneath some palms. She was given the nourishment of both food and drugs. She remained underground until her Pop had forked over the cash to the two crazies. Which he did. An assignation in the mootlight. In an old suitcase. And then her Pop dug and dug and dug until he found her. And then her Pop held her in his arms and told her how much he loved her. And had missed her. And had worried about her. And prayed for her. And promised that if she were safely in his arms ever again, then everything, anything, she wanted would be hers. The dummy only asked for a new wrist watch. Her own had gone on the fritz under all that dirt. But they lived happily ever after.

  Was it too naïve to think that such a simple plan could work a second time? Of course the two crazies were caught and punished, sent to jail. But since, in his case, the two crazies were mishbocha, this knobby problem was solved in advance.

  Yes, Richie, Boo Boo said to himself, I know you’re scared. I am, too. But you’ve come this far. Why not go all the way? Play your thing out, Richie. Don’t think that Dr. Rivtov would hardly approve of any of this. Even if it is your Rites of Manhood. I’m going to lie down now, Richie, in my hole, and rest. All those Ups and all I feel is down. When Wyatt comes back from getting his sweater and finding me more drugs, hell wake you up and slip you your hose and I’ll wrap myself up in my poncho, just like overnights at Kamp Kedgeree, and hell shovel the dirt carefully over me and my Drake’s Devil Dogs and then he’ll go and get Abe, or does he get Abe before he shovels?, no that doesn’t make sense, I’m just so fucking tired I can’t think.

  I’ll pretend I’m Boris Karloff in The Mummy’s Tomb, Boo Boo Bronstein thought before he drifted off to the first real sleep he’d had in several days. Well, maybe it’s more Buñuel than Boris Karloff…

  And Randy Dildough, too, was ildly drifting underneath these trees. He had excused himself from Dordogna with “I’m going to catch a nice whiff of the night air before we hit the sack,” and had strolled down that boardwalk and into The Rack instead, following naturally, the crowd.

  Now he stood in front of a group of Nazis. They were having a circle jerk. Just like boys’ camp, school dorm, or army barracks.

  “Won’t you stain your leather?” he heard one of them ask.

  “I Scotchgarded.”

  Randy walked on.

  Jack Humpstone walked beneath these trees as well. Our Laverne. Shirtless. He still was looking for his answers. He didn’t know how or why, but his feet had pulled him once again to Dinky’s directions. He’d find that Dinky and somehow excise him from a system still begging to be purged. He realized that he was watching the two rival journalists who were Bella and Blaze engaging in a chug-a-lug contest. They drank from pitchers replenished by the kindness of relieving strangers. Leather Louie was the judge. The Leather Louie who had given Patty that tour of the Dakota territory a hundred years ago. “Pushed to a greater connection to the ultimate to find out who and what we truly are.” Patty. Word had just leaked out about Patty. Now dead Patty. Our triumvirate now destroyed by fire. How to tell Maxine? How to cope with all myself? How to an
swer Robbie? Where is Dinky? Yes, so many problems for our Laverne.

  Bella finished first. And Blaze gagged midway through his fifteenth pitcher and thus was ruled a “Tilt.” Fifteen pitchers! A new record!? Hardly. But the evening was still young.

  Blaze modestly, if less charitably than he could, embraced his competition. “Women’s Wear über alles again!”

  “Well, my dear,” Bella said, “like the late, great Duchess of Windsor, the heart has its reasons.” Then, flicking a few drops from Dale Evans now not so Oxydol white, he politely inquired of his rival Fourth Estater: “What are you working on now, dear? I so enjoyed your last Avocado piece on all our famous brothers.”

  “Thank you, Bella. Coming from you, that’s praise. ‘New Frontiers,’ I call it. I’m including force-feeding, baby talk, nipple teasing, black-sock fetishes, smoke, enforced dress codes, enemas, catheters, foreskin stretching, boot licking, rubber wear, diapers, dungeon discipline, entertaining the handicapped, and how to build your very own indoor ranch for Western activities. I think it’s so important that we more and more get in touch with our inner and formerly so repressed selves. And my publication is backing me to the hindmost.”

  “Gorgeous. You must tell it all.”

  Leather Louie agreed. With his hand on the rubied swastika so smartly medallioned over his black leather chest, he intoned in the original Italian: “Non ha l’abito interno, prima alcun, c’ha l’estremo dell’ arte e della vita!”

  And both Bela and Blaze begged for a translation: “What does it all mean?”

  Leather Louis kindly obliged: “‘One doesn’t achieve inner discipline until one reaches the extremes of art and life.’ It’s Michelangelo.”

  Jack Humpstone nodded, and set forth again to find his own extremes in art and life and Dinky Adams. And to find out who and what Jack Humpstone truly was.

  On the outskirts of Irving’s multifaceted party, Fred was just behind Dinky, who was running interference and pushing through and into the heavy leathered throngs. Fred felt rather silly in his Harvard sweat shirt. He’d been to Meat Rack parties before. But he’d not been to them when he’d been in love with one of the guests. He saw Dinky nodding to familiar faces, shaking a hand or two, exchanging looks of secret pastimes shared with others, occasionally a disdainful rejection to an inquirer’s eyes, plus not a few nods of Maybe, You Look Interesting, Let’s See What Happens Later. Yes, Fred noted all the variations. Dinky certainly knew his audience and how to handle his crowd.