by Larry Kramer
A moment on the lips. A lifetime on the hips.
Fred’s first fuck of the New Era, A.D., After Dinky, appeared miraculously, under the new moon, same stars, as Fred emerged, phoenix from the ashes, from the ocean, after a dip following the three-mile jog he’d had to take to work off all those calories so recently consumed. Ah, yes, the patterns continue. And there stood the lean and youthful gorgeousness who was—Fred didn’t know his name but knew his face from…somewhere—and under these stars and moon, right now, they just threw themselves at each other, instant attraction, instant moon and romance, instant high, just like the movies, on the beach, from hero to eternity, “let’s go to my place,” “let’s do it right here,” and down they fall, Fred already naked, Mr. Quite Possibly Great Love Number III shortly so, “I knew you’d be sensuous,” this handsome stranger saying, “You’re such a handsome man, I’ve seen you around and hoped we’d fuck, you’re such a handsome man,” yes, here is this handsome man calling Fred a handsome man, when will you start believing it, Fred?, you want Mikie to believe he’s got a brain and Tarsh that he could accomplish great things and Gatsby that he could be a fine writer and Josie and Dom Dom that they could be faithful lovers and Anthony that he could write Academy Award-winning scripts and…Dinky that he could love you, could have loved you, so why can’t you believe that you’re a handsome man? Particularly when such a handsome man is naming you a handsome man. And now the sensuousness of this moment, this night, these two bodies under those heavenly bodies, feeling each other all over, all over, each of you tasting the other, each of you bending to kiss the other hello down there, oh it is so fucking sensuous and wonderful and you are both into that abandonment to pleasure that only fucks like this, could this be love?!, can so inspire, and kiss kiss kiss, it’s so good to be kissed again, Dinky wouldn’t kiss, can this be the last of Dinky?, certainly is one hell of a body this guy’s got, wonder what he does for a living, and oh! what lovely armpits, almost as good as Dinky’s, No!, No More Dinky!, oh, it’s all too much, and we kiss and cuddle and suck and tongue and fuck and rim…Dinky! Get out of my fucking head! I’m fucking!, and kiss and cuddle and tongue and fuck and rim…It’s going to be harder getting rid of you than I thought!…and kiss and cuddle and tongue and suck and fuck each other, using spit and careful to keep the sand away, and back again and suck some more and kiss some more and taste the sweat and glue yourself together at last, together, together, you cling and clamp yourselves together and reach for those stars and for that moon and for those heavenly bodies, I’m coming! Me, too! The two of you together from just the excitement of holding each other each to each come and come and come and yes it was wonderful and is wonderful and this is someone I must see again and again, the Beginning of Love, Wait a minute!!!, I’m falling again, falling into fantasy again, falling for a body again, just like I fell for Dinky’s body, turning a Hot Number into love, I’m making sex into love!, just as Handsome Stranger jumps up, pulls on his jeans, adjusts his silver bracelet, pecks a quick kiss, and says: “I’ve got to rush, I’m meeting my new lover, we’re going to live together, starting tomorrow, so you mustn’t breathe a word of this, but my name is Robbie Swindon, I’m listed, and you sure have a Hot body and I hope that we can do it again.”
Fred lay back naked, all alone again, looking up at all those stars and moon. Then out across the ocean and toward old England. Nothing’s changed. It’s all exactly the same. Noogie & Nagasaki…what did they say? Oh, who gives a fuck. What do I say? I say I know what I want and I ain’t gettin’ it. I say I’m settling for too fucking little. I say the whole set-up I’ve set up is out to sabotage me. I say I’m not going to find love here. And even if I could, how could it survive and grow? I say it’s time to move on. I say I think it has been…is my…fault. But why?
Fred headed for his last dance in The Grove.
He approached The Ice Palace. There it was, the premier Island dance hall, a huge clapboard, turreted, magical, old-fashioned, twinkling, indeed palace of a place, just there, coming toward him, in the full moon’s spotlight, coming closer as Fred started running closer, the music growing louder, enticingly louder, as he ran up The Palace steps and paid his entrance fee and pushed his way through and among the many thousands of sweaty, half-naked bodies on the outside deck and into the hot arms of its insides, its chamber of chambers, high inside fingers jutting up to heaven, that elusive heaven. Again wonderful lights that twinkled everywhere. Miles and miles, a million miles of Mylar and mirrors, to reflect and deflect and gleam and smile and wrap them all in such a pretty package of Life. Again the necessary heat that music and energy and dancing and brothers generate so emphatically. Fists pounding up and down to the beat of one of their own disco anthems. Release. So much release. So many dear ones touching. Here to be touched. So close. But not too close. No hassles. No problems. No involvements. Please no hassles and involvements! Just let’s dance. Which Fred proceeded to yet again but for the last time do.
This is one massive cake of solid body, thousands, Hot Men, radiating enough heat to defrost Arctic wastes and I am being pulled into it and I am dancing and dancing, oh we are so many bodies, plowing my way through bodies, bashing and twisting and poppers passed like party favors and seven men now hold me and we swing and sway and sweat becoming One!, and I am dancing with strangers and dancing with friends and we are plucking each other from this vastness and I am a madman and here is Renny Collage Maker and William Distinguished Professor of Literature who keeps him, asks no questions, and looks the other way, and here is Kristos Rosenkavalier who gave his lover a silver rose, only to be left same night by same, and Dick and Dora Dull who’ve been together twelve years and own three houses together and never seem to talk to each other and Matt Desk Clerk who’s so shy and to whom I once said “I want to open you like a can of peas,” but decided not to and Tidgy Schmidge who just likes hairy asses and Terry TWA who flies in dope from Kansas City and sweetness Alex who, with me, is the only D.F.B. on the entire Island, Drug-Free Bodies, our own exclusive club, Alex sure looks lost tonight, and Harvey Pharmaceutical Researcher and Ron Would-Be Artist who’s our clap doctor’s lab boy and B.L.T., for Beautiful Legs and Thighs, who fucked with the entire cast of Grey Gardens one rainy night and Lovely Lee, we dance so lightly, we’re The Old Smoothies, he crying: “Not bad for two old Jews!,” I jumping up in the air to yell: “Call me Mikhail!,” and there is Washington Department of Agriculture Jack, last summer’s notorious cock teaser (though he could take lessons from Dinky) who left me after tongue-kissing me for two hours while Bobby B. showed us slides of the highlights of the summer-before-that, and Kenny Textile Designer who lost seventy-five pounds and is finding them and John Book-Jacket Illustrator who wants to do mine if and when I ever write one, maybe now I’ll write one, and Martin Set Designer who lets us use his set of weights for working out out here and Mark Costumier whose lover left him “for a drag queen! the ultimate insult!,” and dear architect Charlie, we were lovers how many years ago when we were young?, and Milton Hustler who’s writing his memoirs, he’s done it with many of the world’s most famous and finest, and Ronny whose father wouldn’t give him the money to buy the house he wanted so he cried, and Olive, my God, I’ll bet he’s the Olive who was my Dinkied competition, he’s still wearing a costume, some schmata of polyestered silver, it looks like he stole it from his mother, and here’s Gatsby: “I’m moving, Fred, I’m getting the hell out of here, I’m going to Santa Fe, I’ll get a job as a waiter…” No, Gatsby!, you mustn’t give up…I’ll miss you…and there’s that crazy Elizabeth Taylor dancing all in black, he sure is sweating—no, I think they’re tears…and here’s Bella: “Fred, I have momentous news! Billy Boner has just announced that he will open a brand new baths, with three hundred rooms, just like a Grand Hotel, with wall-to-wall carpeting and a Jacuzzi with sitdown service for fifty and a master steam room and five little saunas and home-baked pies and cakes and donuts,” and here is Frigger: “This place tonight is hot as a mother�
��s love,” and here is Fallow: “I’ve danced so much my legs feel amputated,” and here is Bilbo: “You’ll look good shorter,” and here’s tiny Pinky clinking finger cymbalettes: “My cymbalettes! I was invited to seven houses tonight! I feel like I’ve been picked to pledge the best fraternity!” and Mikie, my beloved Mikie…
“Oh, Fred, I was going to go home. But I’m crazed. I can’t go home. I’m just being pulled along. This is my home.”
Fred holds Mikie close, then Mikie breaks away and twirls and throws up his arms to wave at bodies swinging, yes actually swinging, out and back, over and out, like monkeys, from the rafters, those old beams, out and over the crowd, the dancing hordes reaching up to grab their feet.
“Oh, Fred, is it not a transcendent evening!” Mikie yells. “The quintessential Fire Island experience! Everything is in balance! My dancing has at last found a new center of gravity! I am dancing with my own true self! At last! I have never danced like this in my life! I have turned myself on at last! I love you, Fred!”
“I love you, Mikie.”
“God must be trying to tell us something, Fred. There are too many of us. We must not be bugs. And Fred, look! I have a new crystal for our Rolex. I can see the time again!”
“That’s nice, Mikie.”
And Mikie rushes off to dance. Please Fred, don’t let me love another Mikie. Or another Dinky. “Josie!”
Fred rushes to Josie’s side. He is standing on the cavern’s mirrored edge. He wears a New York Yankee’s uniform. His balded head now shows a shadow. Is it five o’clock already? He’s crying.
“Oh, Fred! So much energy! So much!”
Fred now holds this dear friend close, too.
“Oh, Fred. Summer after summer. Another repetition of a repetition. Weekends without number. All the same thing. Starting up all over again. Do I have the courage to leave it? Go somewhere? Go to where? To do what? So much energy. So much. Why leave it? Why stay? So much. Toward what end?”
But then he suddenly smiles at Fred, mumbles: “I’m sorry. Excuse me. Don’t know what came over me. I’m fine,” and extricates himself from Fred’s concern, and rushes back into the pack to pull his Dom Dom, who’s a New York Giant, away from another body, reclaim him for his own, at least for now, at least for now, and start to dance.
Fred watches Anthony standing on the dance floor’s edge alone. Anthony is unhappy. Anthony has seen his lover, Sprinkle, his kissless lover, Sprinkle, whom Fred has found so wanting, home from Mom in North Dakota, dancing in a tight circle of handsome young men, his own age, he hadn’t even called to say “hello, I’m back,” what kind of lover is that?, all these young men now kissing each other and feeling each other, naked bodies and hands into crotches and what kind of lover is that? Anthony then sees his best friend, Fred, standing on the other side alone. Over heads and bodies and years, the two friends smile at each other and walk to meet by the door.
“You OK, Tante?”
“As well as can be expected,” Fred replies. “How about you?”
“The same.”
“That good?” they both joke simultaneously, as they smile and hug. “Where’s Dinky?” Anthony asks.
“I think he’s lost out here. Where’s Wyatt?” Fred asks.
“I think the same.”
Anthony looks out at the crowd. He looks at Sprinkle. He looks around for Wyatt. “One of these days I’ll find somebody. And I’ll teach him to sing all Dick Powell’s songs. And all about Ruby and Fred and Ginger and days of long ago. I’m tired. I’ll see you tomorrow. And come Tuesday, Tante Fred, your Anthony launches another Winston Man unto this world.”
Fred watches Anthony plow his way through bodies on his way out. Then he feels a tap on his shoulder. Dinky stands there beside him, adjusting Fred’s Harvard sweat shirt. Fred blinks. How can Dinky be standing? In one piece? Not cleft unto twain? As was Fred.
“You OK?” Fred asks.
“Sure. Why shouldn’t I be?” Dinky answers, still adjusting. “Your outfit still isn’t right.”
“No, it isn’t right,” Fred agrees.
Dinky follows Fred’s eyes after Anthony. “He’s a nice man, a Hot Man,” Dinky says. “But he’s given up. He’s admitted defeat. Why do you always get so upset and run away? What I did doesn’t mean anything.”
Why don’t you say it, Fred? Yes, it does. To me. It’s the deeds that talk and count. Action is character, old F. Scott said. Yes, it does. To me. But what’s the point, Dinky? What’s the point?
Dinky takes Fred’s hand and pulls him out of The Palace and across its deck and down its stairs, like crossing the moat and back to life, and they start running, Fred wondering how Dinky can run, Fred wondering how Fred can run, down a boardwalk, past little bungalows, “Love’s New Sweet Song,” “Love Is Here On Bay,” “Over the Rainbow,” then down another boardwalk, and back to Aeon and Ike Bulb’s.
But they don’t go inside. They go around to the back. A back that Fred hadn’t seen. He blinks his eyes. He’s in the most beautiful garden, Fairyland. Here, among some sand and scrub pines, nestles, is growing, a huge symphony of flowers and planters and weeping tubs of willows and man-made stars of light and cupolas and gazebos and cozy swings for two and tiny benches for intimate picnics and breezy lanterns swinging out to say Hello.
“It’s the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen.”
“Ike let me make it for him.”
There is even a big soft Indian blanket all laid out. Has Dinky come to get him? Or was he looking for just a someone, anyone, else? Is Dinky now back in reality, or was he still Desnobarbed out there where Fred, anyone, could not reach him or touch him? Has he got Laverne and All Others out of his system and is he now ready for my dare of Love?
What am I doing?
For Dinky has pulled Fred down to blanket level and now once more is commencing a playing with the Lemish cock. In and under the hunter-green-satin Champion boxer shorts goes that Adams hand. And up and under the hunger-green Champion boxer shorts goes that Lemish cock.
What am I doing?
I’m falling for the bait again. My fantasies are overdriving into No Control again. Put on the brakes, Lemish. Screech this tin dinky to a halt.
Fred removes Dinky’s hand. Echoing’s of Lester’s “You are Unwanted, I reject you through and through.”
Dinky lies back on the blanket, then to sleep. Echoings of Lester’s “You are Unwanted, I reject you through and through.”
Fred leans back, too, and lies down beside that Dinky, and closes his eyes, and sees that Dinky standing over him. Dangling his long black leather belt upon Fred’s stomach. What’s a little dangling long black leather belt? Fred sees Feffer. Fred sees Abe. Fred sees Lester. He waits for it to happen. Whomp. Whomp. Whomp. No, it doesn’t turn me on. Whomp. Whomp. Whomp. Yes, it hurts. The whomps turn into thumps. The thump-whomps turn into splats and the splats turn into slashes and the slashes turn into beatings and the beatings turn into…tears. Yes, Fred Lemish is finally crying. As the last piece of his puzzle falls finally in his face…
His arms still feel the empty warmth of Abe and Lester. He takes the sleeping Dinky in his arms. They’re still empty.
…I’ve been looking, seeking, demanding, the love of Lester all my life. As if…as if…as if a dinky Lester’s love would make me whole and everything all right. As if wrestling Lester’s love from Dinky’s stone would make everything all right. Lester would have loved me. I chose another Lester and tried to make him love me. So I could be lovable.
But Algonqua’s “Love” would send a strong man under. Her “Love” would bury any man alive.
What a double-edged fence.
No wonder it’s been so hard for me to have just the one thing I’ve wanted the most. Love.
And no wonder I’ve never had it.
I wanted a fantasy and that’s what I got. If I’d chosen a real person, I would have had to face up to a real relationship. Too scary. Too full of Mom and Pop.
But that’s exactly w
hat I chose.
What a double-edged fence.
The smoke screens now are clearing.
A guy who wanted to love too much chose to fall in love with someone who didn’t want to love at all.
Yes, that says something about The Wanter—and His World.
OK, Lemish. Your journey now begins. Your work is now cut out for you. Your hard work. From this moment not one other opinion matters but your own. There will always be enemies. Time to stop being your own.
So long, Dinky. Good-bye. You’re just not right for me. I want some pleasure and joy from my feeling. I must have the strength and courage not to let you or this scene dictate my emotions. It’s hard to say good-bye to you. But I must have the strength and courage to say No.
At this point tears turn to anger. Anger finally arrives. How dare we have treated ourselves and each other so badly? Anger. For love unrealized. For settling for so little. For humiliation and its pleasure. For foolishness revealed. For having loved half a person. And therefore having hoped only half fully. For being putty. For cowardice and being Lester’s sissy. For selfishness. For playing the petty game of dangler and danglee. For life still undefined. For lies. To self and others. For the lack of courage to be faithful. To self and love. You and Me, Dinky. We’ve been both the same. I fell in love with a role player, not a role model, and I’ve been just the same. It was my fault.
