by Larry Kramer
Around them, pairings and groupings and bend-overs and lean-tos and reach-ups and suck-anywheres and hand-me-downs and Nazis and international fellows and local boys are going crazy. Fist-fucking’s such a turn-on! Under this moon and stars. Under these sheltering trees. In these shadowy shadows. Our own special world. Cocks and mouths and lips and tongues and assholes all are meeting, greeting each other, joining the fun of this party, making one of their own, our very first mixer of the season, having ourselves a ball! Or two.
And down on his knees, Hans is having two as well. At last he has his Irving, plus an Ike, two cocks with big heads in his very own mouth, which is known as Giving a Remington, immissio penis in os, in os.
“Terrific party, Irving!” Ike happily thanks his host
“That Dinky, he is all yours, Ike?” asks back Irving, still laced up like a Kislav phantom.
“What’s that you’re saying?” Ike begs for a translation.
“Dinky! Yours?!” Irving spits the words most clearly through his mask of slits.
“As much as he’s anybody’s. I don’t expect anything from him and I never tell him I love him, though of course I do, but he knows I don’t expect him to love me back…”
Hey, Lemish! Do you hear that, buddy?
“…oh that feels good!…” Ike is pleased with Hans.
Irving unbuckles his belt. His leather gear now sags down to his ankles. His sagging tits now showing, his crossover bucklings unbuckled, yes, his gear now down on the ground and showing all. It’s never going to happen, it’s never going to happen, my Faustian bargain comes now to haunt me when it’s too late for anyone to come…
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” The sounds of Dinky’s feeling coming to fruit.
Irving grabs that Hans away from shaving two, and sticks that Hans in front of his own crotch. And tugs him now toward pleasure. “I tie you up and gag you up and stick my filthy jockstrap in your mouth and fuck your asshole while I fuck your head, and force my cock into your mouth while shoving dildoes up your ass, and then sit on your face, while I work your tits, tug your tits and stuff my big balls in your mouth, and jack off on your tits, and fuck you like a dog, with my jockstrap in your mouth, yes I fuck you Well!, both mouth and ass and head!…”
Hans is now in heaven, too. At last he has his Irving all alone. He’s been tugged into his pleasure. His connection to the ultimate. To find out who and what he truly is. I love it!
And lean-tos and hold-ons and I’m comings and groupings and pairings and boots off and boots licked and Nazis kneeled before and under and Fred wonders what would happen if all their toys and all their costumes were taken away? They might be forced…to love.
He looks at Dinky and Laverne. One Revenge Fuck pummeling One Punishment Gratefully Received. Jack, are you what will happen to me?
Then he looks at the Three-Ring Circus ringling all around him. Thinks of Feffer on his cross. Looks at Dinky in his swing. What else is there…? Is this my competition? Is this my Age that’s rapidly approaching? Yes, Fred looks at all and thinks immortal thoughts, not of Adams, Dinky, for a change, but of Miller, Henry: “We are no longer animals but we are certainly not yet men.” Which happily at last gives him a tidge of courage to think heroic thoughts of Lemish, Fred: “The fucking we’re getting’s not worth the fucking we’re getting,” and it’s time to go…
So, feeling that the now discovered smithy of his sex appears no longer worth the foraging, he bends to kiss his Dinky “’Bye” and he turns to leave.
He couldn’t go very far. He walks into the trees and bumps into a group of fellows all relieving themselves in a hole. Holes are quite popular this evening with some of the boys.
And said baptismal by golden showers has awakened our sleeping prince, our Boo Boo Bronstein, from his nap. He thinks some coffin thoughts. Am I buried? Am I dead? Is this Heaven? It’s raining in Heaven. What’s happening? It’s happening! All those gorgeous handsome men up there are looking at me! I like it. I like it! I’m a Number! It feels so warm and good. It feels like Candlewood Lake. It doesn’t hurt at all! He stretches. He opens his mouth to taste. Am I dreaming? No…I’m tripping! My mouth tastes bitter. Wyatt’s…somebody’s come and put some drugs into my mouth! I’m tripping. I feel wonderful. I’m in the Pits of Sexuality at last!
And he jumps up and rips off his clothes. And stands tall neath the showers. And holds up his arms like a winning player after the winning game. And his fellow players, fellow teammates, fellow helpmates, help him from his whole. Fanny Brice in the single spot about to become a star. Twenty stage-door Johnnies here to claim all starring parts of him! He’s pulled up and out and into these many many many arms of many many men and many mouths. Much love. He lies back into arms. Many arms. Much love. He’s passed around like the football in a secret and intricate play. He yells out to all as he’s shouldered and hipped and handled. He yells out to all as he displays his hardly earned perfections, one by one. “Take my big delts! Take my big lats! Take my obliques! Take my rippling stomach! Take my fatless calves! Suck my tits! Suck my medium-sized cock! Take my medium-sized cock! Take all of me! My name is Richie Bronstein! At last I’m a Fire Island Star!”
And again crowds cheer! Irving’s party runneth over into this! And Boo Boo’s cheering, too. He’s a crazy kid in a candy store with unlimited choice. All fantasies are here to suck, and suck and suck and suck. He throws himself further and farther in and among, letting arms cradle him, letting arms hold him, letting arms love him, and he feels their stomachs, their big round stomachs, so full of much experience and life. And thanking God that he likes older men. There’s lots and lots and lots of older men. And he loves these older hands on his young cock. And loves them feeling his fine hard youthful body, all over, all over, yes definitely all over, as he rushes now into another fat man’s arms. A fat man standing by his graveside’s edge. With an old suitcase. Oh, this one feels good, too. This one feels so good. “Hey, Mister, I’m yours, I’m all yours, you feel good, hey, Mister, can I come and live with you?, would you please get down and suck my cock!”
“Oh, my Richie!”
“Oh, my God!”
Was it not ever thus? Well, not quite ever thus. Yes, watching on the one hand and dropping his son’s cock with the other, Abe Bronstein now wonders if this is finally his last plotz. What more is there to take? My kleine Wyatt leads me into this! My kleine Richie in a pit of piss! The only thing that’s missing is Wyatt’s kleine cockalah as well! Oh, God, you are being naughty to your Abe tonight! Please tell me what to do! Or else these Nazi natives in the jungle kill! These Nazis come too close!
Richie’s trying to run but Abe is holding him tight.
And Richie, the son, the heir, what thinks he of this moment in time and space? Do I: wish I were dead? or…
“Pop, just give me a wrist watch and we’ll call it even-Stephen!”
“Oh, my Richie, you make for yourself a world more awful than the one you try so hard to escape!”
Richie is bawling, heaving heavy tears. I’m tripping, yes, I’m tripping, this isn’t really real!
“No, Pop, it’s your world! I’m just living in it. In the suburbs.”
Ah, the age-old conflict.
As the Nazis move in closer for a better view…
“Richie! Please to come home with your Pop! Look, I bring you money!” Maybe I don’t show him. These Nazis will steal it away!
“One million bucks!?” Richie knows now that he’s really tripping.
“Only now ten thousand,” Abe tries his best to whisper. “A holiday weekend. The bank was undercashed.”
“What do you mean only ten thousand! I didn’t go through all this shit for only ten thousand! I want my one million dollars! I want my one million dollars!” Richie’s still trying to run, but Abe’s still holding him tight.
“That’s it, Cutie, hold out for the one million!”
The simply riveted audience roars and cheers! What an act! Irving, can you throw a party! Importi
ng live actors for such a scene as this! Though why didn’t he hire two pretties? That old one’s pretty ugly. But the young one!…The crowd moves closer in to get a better look.
“I want my one million smackarolas!”
“I give you smackarolas on your tush!”
“Mary, you better be rich because you ain’t pretty enough to go home to on your own!”
“Richie…,” Abe tries to whisper softly again, “we are perhaps in some concentration camp?…”
“It sure as hell ain’t Australia! Let me go! Let me go!”
“I promise you to make me like you better!”
“You promise! You promise! Who can believe your promise!”
“Sweetie, that’s telling her exactly how it is!”
Richie’s still trying to run and Abe’s still trying to hold. Storm Troopers, S. S., Gestapo, Himmler, Goering, Ilse Koch are all just over there!
“You will believe me! You must believe me!” Forgive me God my Father for I have sinned!
And God gives now his answer to his Abe, who takes his younger son and hurls him to the ground. And pins him under his girth of years of living and food and knowledge. And the son knees back in protest and suffocation and not quite so experienced heft. And together they toss and they turn, like some biblical nightmare brought up to date. Over and over and side to side and up and down and round and about. “Richie, come back!” “Pop, let me go!” “Richie, listen to your Father!” “Pop, you don’t understand!” And now the Pop starts swatting pop flies at the fence. Finding the tuchas and hitting to right field, hitting to left, splaying his mitts. Splat and splat and Splat! Take that and that and That! And oh the crowd is cheering! Spanking’s such a turn-on! Such a pretty ass is showing! “Pop, you hurt!” “Richie, you hurt!” And Richie and Abe are intertwined as ne’er before. Or as e’er before. Hitting and elbowing and kneeing and scratching and off sides and on sides and slugging it out and who’s got the penis, who’s got the testicles, where is the rectum, where is the scrotum, who is the Master, who is the Slave, which one the Top Man, which one the Bottom, who the Dominant, who the Submissive, who the S and who the M, and which one’s got the BALLS!?
Abe is spanking his Richie and Fred is watching his Abe.
Echoings…of Lester…
“Pop, you’re too heavy! Get off of me! I’m shitting in my pants!” Yes, where now were Sidney Greenstreet, Coburn, Laughton, and Eugene Pallette? On top of him. “You hurt!”
“I hurt! I hurt! What do you know of hurt!”
“My million, Pop! Mine!”
Ah, the age-old conflict. Splat. Splat. Splat.
“You get what I give you! You get when I die or you reach fifty! Whichever event comes first!” Oh, they come closer and closer to punish me! They come closer and closer to kill! “Or you marry that mieskeit Marci Tisch!”
“But she’s so ugly!”
“Millions of my dollars are not so ugly!” Splat!
“But that’s blackmail!”
“I teach you how the world is run!” Splat. “I teach you how to blackmail properly!” Splat! Oi, more Nazis?!
“First I’ll tell the world.”
“First I give you this!” Splat! Oh, this one comes closer! In black boots and with rifle and swastika and whip and…
Abe lets go of his son. Richie slips away. The Nazis and the piss have saved his Richie. Abe falls back in the end zone. His penalty kick has lost.
Richie yells back at his Pop: “Hey, Pop! You never really loved me at all!”
“Do you think that ugly really is his father?…”
The crowd immediately grows nervous. Starts to back away. “This is pretty heavy.”
“Yes, I love you, yes, I love you, but it is now too late.”
But who has heard him say these famous words? The pop has said I love you to the son. The scene and dream of every son who’s backed away beneath these sheltering trees. He’s said he loves me. He’s said he loves me. The sheltering veil now shelters. God has forbidden a fantasy might come true! That would be too scary!
Boo Boo zips away, past a few departing theater-lovers.
“Who was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Some silly queen.”
“I’m sorry, Abe.” Fred bends to kneel, then sit, beside his Abe. Then rock him back and forth within his arms. Such a weekend, such a Mission, such an old suit caked with mud and piss and Richie.
“I’m sorry, Abe-chen.”
Abe refocuses. Looks at Fred. No words. No smile. No return of affection to his movie helpmate. He plucks Fred’s arms from his dirtied suit like poopsies from his past. He heaves his white-haired bulk from mud to standing tall. As he’s done many times before, he now does once again. Then, with anger, hate, and vengeance, the Big Three, he utters these ringing words: “It’s your fault! It’s all because of you! The Fall of the House of Bronstein! And all because of you!”
Then stomps and chomps away our Abe. And lights up a cigar. And then sees Wyatt’s kleine not so kleine. Being tended to by a lady dressed like an English Queen. Well, at least my Wyatt’s found a lady. No, it’s probably a man. Wyatt! Where did you get that! Freaks! Everyone in this place is freaks! I must go back into the world! I’m free. I’m free! I find another poopsie! And take her to Florida. For what is a Palm Beach doing in these pines!
He turns to Fred to yell his final curtain speech. His final fadeout Ode. His epilogue. And truly bringing down the house.
“No movie!”
For what world wants to know of this!
Fred sits in the mud alone. His empty arms still feel the warmth where Abe had briefly rested. I loved you, Abe. I loved you…Lester…
Yootha Truth is crying. He’s been watching his Guardian Angel, his Handsome Stranger, His Doubleday Deliverance, the hovering presence who is the shadow that is Billy Boner, sitting in love and admiration, satisfaction and completion, of dead Paulie in his coffin.
“He doesn’t love me, Rolla!”
“We must go on, dear,” Rolla answers, trying his best to skate off in the mud. “We must not let ourselves sink into soap opera.”
And Gatsby has finally tackled Lance Heather under some farthest, furthest pines. And peeled away the layers and layers of leather. And how they tossed and turned and clutched each other dearly in the poison ivy. And kissed and cuddled and touched and kissed and embraced and kissed…until…until…until!…my God!
Gatsby looked down at the cock that once had been Lance Heather’s. He didn’t have any. Just a piece of skin. “I…I…had an accident…a party…we played a stupid game…Russian Guillotine…I lost…I’m lucky I’ve got this much left…would you fuck me please?”
Yes, such a night of nights. In our Meat Rack. That place of myth and story. Yes, such a night of nights.
Fred now succumbed at last to his case of the shivering crazies. He ran and ran. Back to The Pines, back past costumed cruisers, men with TV camera heads and glowing penises lit up inside lamé pants and much regal tribute to the British Empire, feathered Orientals, high-heeled Brazilian blueberries, twinkling twinkies. The Grove might be all in basic leather, but The Pines continued on its froufroued way. Yes, he ran and ran. My fault? This weekend I have lost a Dinky, lost a Feffer, lost an Abe. My fault? My fault?! But have I found myself?
He was right back where he started from. He rushed into a house in which he dimly recollected dining well once, many years ago. It was empty and he hit the refrigerator and some Royal chocolate pudding. In the cupboard he found a box of Kensington Gardens chocolate-covered oatmeal cookies from our northern neighbors in Canada. Canadian cookies were evidently as bad as American. When he died, he used to fondly quip, his autopsy would reveal one part Nabisco, one part Keebler, one part Horowitz Margareten, one part Bronstein, no, no more Bronstein, and all the rest chocolate. He departed this way station of sustenance and went next door, also presently uninhabited, and there, there!—God was finally giving him something good this night, this weekend, t
his Memorial Day weekend—was a box from the most perfectly perfect Dumas Pâtisserie. One cheese Danish and one raisin Danish and one brioche. A threesome. He would splurge lightly. And it was Heaven! Did no one know what they were missing to eat any other Danish but a Dumas Danish! He recognized the distinct familiar comingling tastes of butter and sugar and cheese and soft raisins, actually plump, which he would soon again be if he did not this instant cease. And the brioche was all his trips to Paris with Mikie II and others. He ran out of this kind stranger’s residence and down some blocks on a sugar high. At another obviously emptied house on Coast Guard, on the uncleared dining-room table—cleaning up is left till morning—was one box of Bloomingdale’s Corné de la Toison d’Or. These he would not buy in Bloomingdale’s because the rude salesladies refused to sell them by the piece. Only the half-pound. Unfair! These chocolates are sold by the piece in their native Belgium. And wasn’t buying a half-pound…well, poor Gamesmanship? He bit into one, two, three, four, five, six, no wonder he preferred not to buy a whole half-pound, eating only half of each. They were not his favorites. Though better than Godiva’s, once also Belgian, now American-made by Campbell’s Soup, and robbed of their once distinctive flair, particularly when their saleslady on Fifth Avenue transfers them from ugly New Jersey cartons of brown to low, enticing trays of gilt at the same time as she passes her crimson nails through her greasy hair. No, he was not a Godiva fan. He preferred above all others the miraculous Teuscher’s, from Zurich, here perfection had been achieved, the perfect chocolate, it was possible!, now returned to New York, which he had written Mimi Sheraton about and she had written in the Times: “these mellow milk chocolates that many connoisseurs consider to be the world’s finest…” Oh, Dinky. I’m a connoisseur. Out of Coast Guard. To another dark house, on Driftwood. A further fix. On the icebox he found half a bar of that new chocolate from Cadbury’s, from his beloved England. Milk Chocolate Filled With Fudge. The perfect combination. On paper it made so much sense. He’d been wanting to try it for quite some time, always avoiding the temptation. Now here it was in some strange house on Driftwood. So he finally bit into it. This most anticipated sensible combination from Mother England, Filled With Fudge. Oh sadness of sadnesses. Grotesquerie. It was revolting. Watery fudge obliterating their distinctive milk chocolate’s taste. Was everything passing into second-ratedness? The goodies now baddies? In chocolate as in life? Including self? My fault?! He wondered if someday, should he ever write anything else again, some graduate student somewhere would do a dissertation on the sweet symbolism in the life of Fred Lemish.
