Tales of the City

by Armistead Maupin

  Mona vs. the Pig

  ON THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE MONDAY MORNings, Mona stopped by Mary Ann’s desk en route to a conference with Mr. Siegel, the president of Adorable Pantyhose.

  “What’s the matter with you, Babycakes?”

  “Nothing … everything!”

  “Yeah. The moon’s in ca-ca. Speaking of which, I have a dog-and-pony show for Fartface Siegel this morning. Have you seen Beauchamp?”

  “Nope.”

  “If you see him, he’s got ten minutes to get down there. Hey … are you O.K., Mary Ann?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I have a Valium, if you want one.”

  “No. Thanks. I’m fine.”

  “I probably should have taken it myself.”

  Mona stood next to Beauchamp, her hand clamped rigidly to the storyboard.

  “Our approach should be carefree,” she explained. “We’re not backtracking … we’re simply improving. The old nylon crotch wasn’t unsafe. The new one is simply … better.”

  The client’s expression didn’t change.

  “The youth image is important, of course. The cotton crotch is young, vibrant, hip. The cotton crotch is for with-it women on the go.”

  Buddha would have to forgive her.

  She revealed the first card on the storyboard. It showed a young woman with a Dorothy Hamill haircut hanging off the side of a cable car. The copy read: “Under my clothes, I like to feel Adorable.”

  Mona gestured with a pointer. “Notice we don’t mention the crotch in the headline.”

  “Mmm,” said the client.

  “The idea is there, of course. Hygienic. Safe. Functional. But we don’t come right out and say it. The effect is subtle, low-key, subliminal.”

  “It’s not clear enough,” said the client.

  “The crotch comes in later … down here in the fourth paragraph. We don’t want to hit people over the head with the crotch.”

  Hit people over the head with the crotch? This was the woman who was going to be another Lillian Hellman?

  The client grunted. “We’re not selling subtlety, honey.”

  “Oh? What are we selling … honey?”

  Beauchamp squeezed Mona’s arm. “Mona … Perhaps we could move the crotch up to the first paragraph, Mr. Siegel?”

  “The young lady doesn’t seem to be pleased with that.”

  “Woman, Mr. Siegel. Young woman. Please don’t call me a lady. I wouldn’t dream of calling you a gentleman.”

  Beauchamp was scarlet. “Mona, goddammit … Mr. Siegel, I think I can handle these revisions myself. Mona, I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Don’t you patronize me, you prick! I’m not married to my job.”

  “You’re way out of line, Mona.”

  “Thank God for that! Who the hell wants to be in line with that fat, sexist, capitalist sack of …”

  “Mona!”

  “You want crotch, Mr. Siegel. Is that it? Well, I’ll give you crotch. Crotch, crotch, crotch, crotch, crotch, crotch …”

  She stormed to the door, stopped, and wheeled around to confront Beauchamp. “Your karma is really fucked!”

  That evening, she broke the news to Michael.

  “What are you gonna do, Mona?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Collect unemployment. Join a women’s collective. Shop at the dented-can store. Give up coke. I’ll manage.”

  “Maybe Halcyon would reconsider if you …”

  “Forget it. That was my finest hour. I wouldn’t take it back for nothin’!”

  “Maybe I could get my old job back at the P.S.”

  “We’ll hack it. Mouse. I can free-lance. Mrs. Madrigal will understand.”

  Michael sat down on the floor, slipped off Mona’s Earth Shoes and began massaging her feet. “She’s crazy about you, isn’t she?”

  “Who? Mrs. Madrigal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah … I guess so.”

  “It shows. Have you told her about getting fired yet?”

  “No … I’ll have to, I guess.”

  Where Is Love?

  DESPITE HER DEFIANCE, MONA WAS CLEARLY DEpressed over losing her job. Michael tried his usual ploy for cheering her up: He read her the classified from the “Trader Dick” section of The Advocate.

  “God! Listen to this one! ‘Clean-cut, straight-looking court reporter, 32, sick to death of bars, baths and bitchiness, seeks a permanent relationship with a real man who’s into whitewater rafting, classical music and gardening. No fats, fems or dopers, please. I’m sincere. Ron.’”

  Mona laughed. “Are you sincere?”

  “Who the hell isn’t?”

  “You’d leave me in a second, wouldn’t you?”

  Michael thought for a moment. “Only if he had a cottage on Potrero Hill with a butcher-block kitchen, a functioning fireplace and … a golden retriever in the small but tastefully designed garden.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  “You know … when I moved here three years ago, I had never seen so many faggots in my whole goddamned life! I didn’t know there were that many faggots in the world! Jesus! I thought all I had to do was go to a party and pick somebody out. Everybody wants a lover, right?”

  “Wrong.”

  “O.K…. So almost everybody. Anyway, I thought I’d be snapped up in six months. At the very most!”

  “You were. Hundreds of times.”

  “Not funny.”

  “What about Robert?”

  “Affairettes don’t count.”

  “What if I grew a mustache?”

  Michael grinned and tossed a paisley pillow at her. “C’mon. Let’s go to a movie or something.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “There’s a Fellini double bill at the Surf.”

  “Downer.”

  “Nah. Lotsa big tits and pretty boys and dwarfs. Very up.”

  “You go ahead. Take the car, if you want.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  Mona shrugged. “Curl up with Anaïs Nin, take a Quaalude. I don’t know.”

  “Is my MDA still in your stash box?”

  “Yeah. Christ, you don’t need that for a movie!”

  “I might not see a movie, Mother!”

  “Ah.”

  “I hate movies when I’m alone.”

  “Michael, I just don’t feel like …”

  “I hear you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Here and there.”

  “Trashing, huh?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Be careful, will you?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t do anything risky.”

  “You read the papers too much.”

  “Just be careful … and cheer up. Someday your prince will come.”

  Michael blew a kiss to her from the door. “Same to you, fella.”

  She rattled around the apartment for half an hour, talking to her rosy fishhooks cactus and fiddling with her I Ching coins.

  She decided against a Quaalude. Quaaludes made her feel sleazy. What was the point in feeling sleazy if you had no one to sleaze with?

  Could you conjugate that? To sleaze. I sleaze. You sleaze. We all have sleazen.

  Words constantly annoyed her like that, reminding her of the gulf between Art and Making a Living. “Mona’s good with words,” her mother used to say matter-of-factly, “if she can just learn to Make a Living at it.”

  Her mother Made a Living in real estate.

  Mona hadn’t spoken to her in eight months, not since mother had joined the Reagan campaign in Minneapolis and daughter had written home breezily about her Sexual Awareness Retreat at the Cosmic Light Fellowship.

  It didn’t matter.

  More and more it seemed that Mona’s real mother was a woman so in tune with creation that even her marijuana plants had names.

  So Mona trudged downstairs to tell Mrs. Madrigal the news.

  If the Shoe
Fits

  MICHAEL DECIDED AGAINST THE MDA. THERE WERE rumors afoot that someone on MDA had dropped dead at The Barracks the week before. It probably wasn’t true, but what point was there in pressing your luck?

  Actually, there were lots of murky legends like that among gay people in San Francisco. God only knew where they originated!

  There was the Doodler, a sinister black man who sat at the bar and sketched your face … before taking you home to murder you.

  Not to mention the Man in the White Van, a faceless fiend whose unwitting passengers never found their way home again.

  And the Dempster Dumpster Killer, whose S & M fantasies knew no limit.

  It was almost enough to make you stick with Mary Tyler Moore.

  Once again, he ended up in the Castro. True, he badmouthed the gay ghetto at least twice a day, but there was a lot to be said for sheer numbers when you were looking for company.

  Toad Hall and The Midnight Sun were wall-to-wall flannel, as usual. He passed them up for The Twin Peaks, where his crew-neck sweater and corduroy trousers would seem less alien to the environment.

  Cruising, he had long ago decided, was a lot like hitchhiking.

  It was best to dress like the people you wanted to pick you up.

  “Crowded, huh?” The man at the bar was wearing Levi’s, a rugby shirt and red-white-and-blue Tigers. He had a pleasant, square-jawed face that reminded Michael of people he had once known in the Campus Crusade for Christ.

  “What is it?” asked Michael. “A full moon or something?”

  “Got me. I don’t keep up with that crap.”

  Point One in his favor. Despite Mona’s proselytizing, Michael was not big on astrology freaks. He grinned. “Don’t tell anybody, but the moon’s in Uranus.”

  The man stared dumbly, then got it. “The moon’s in your anus. That’s a riot!”

  Go ahead, Michael told himself. Ply him with cheap jokes. Have no shame.

  The man obviously liked him. “What are you drinking?”

  “Calistoga water.”

  “I figured that.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You’re … healthy-looking.”

  “Thanks.”

  The man extended his hand. “I’m Chuck.”

  “Michael.”

  “Hi, Mike.”

  “Michael.”

  “Oh … You know what, man? I gotta tell you the truth. I scoped you out when you walked in here … and I said, ‘That’s the one, Chuck.’ I swear to God!”

  What was it with this butch number? “Keep it up,” Michael grinned. “I can use the strokes.”

  “You know what it was, man?”

  “No.”

  The man smiled self-assuredly, then pointed to Michael’s shoes. “Them.”

  “My shoes?”

  He nodded. “Weejuns.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And white socks.”

  “I see.”

  “They new?”

  “The Weejuns?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No. I just had them half-soled.”

  The man shook his head reverentially, still staring at the loafers. “Half-soled. Far fucking out!”

  “Excuse me, are you …?”

  “How many pairs you got?”

  “Just these.”

  “I have six pairs. Black, brown, scotch grain …”

  “You like ‘em, huh?”

  “You seen my ad in The Advocate?”

  “No.”

  “It says …” He held his hand up to make it graphic for Michael. “ ‘Bass Weejuns.’ Big capital letters, like.”

  “Catchy wording.”

  “I get a lotta calls. Collegiate types. Lotta guys get sick of the glitter fairies in this town.”

  “I can imagine.”

  The man moved closer, lowering his voice. “You ever … done it in ‘em.”

  “Not to my recollection. Look … if you’ve got six pairs, how come you’re not wearing any tonight?”

  The man was aghast at his faux pas. “I always wear my Tigers with my rugby shirt!”

  “Right.”

  He held his foot up for examination. “They’re just like Billy

  Sive’s. In The Front Runner.“

  Sherry and Sympathy

  MRS. MADRIGAL SEEMED ODDLY SUBDUED WHEN she opened the door.

  “Mona, dear …”

  “Hi. I thought you might like company.”

  “Certainly.”

  “That’s a lie, actually. I thought I might like company.”

  “Well, it works both ways, doesn’t it? Come in.”

  The landlady poured a glass of sherry for her tenant. “Is Michael out?”

  Mona nodded. “Taking the vapors, I think.”

  “I see.”

  “God knows when he’ll be back.”

  “He’s a sweet boy, Mona. I approve of him wholeheartedly.”

  Mona sniffed. “You make it sound like we’re married or something.”

  “There are all kinds of marriages, dear.”

  “I don’t think you understand the trip with me and Michael.”

  “Mona … lots of things are more binding than sex. They last longer too. When I was … little, my mother once told me that if a married couple puts a penny in a pot for every time they make love in the first year, and takes a penny out every time after that, they’ll never get all the pennies out of the pot…. Damn! I haven’t thought of that in years.”

  “That’s a trip.”

  Mrs. Madrigal smiled. “It’s also a comfort to those of us who never put in too many pennies in the first place.”

  Mona sipped her sherry, embarrassed.

  “Have you and Michael talked, dear?”

  “About you?”

  The landlady nodded.

  “I … no. I think that’s up to you.”

  “You’re very close. He must have asked you questions.”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “I don’t mind, you know … with him.”

  “I understand … but I think it’s up to you.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “I lost my job,” Mona said at last.

  “What?”

  “The old son-of-a-bitch fired me.”

  “Who?”

  “Edgar Halcyon. His son-in-law put the badmouth on me, and the old man tossed me out on my can.”

  “Mona … why on earth would he …?”

  Mona snorted. “You don’t know Edgar Halcyon. He’s the biggest asshole on the Barbary Coast.”

  “Mona!”

  “Well, he is. It was a relief, actually. I loathed that job … all that crap about demographics and consumer profiles and …”

  “Did you … do something, Mona?”

  “I was honest with a client. The Ultimate No-No.”

  “What did you say?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Mona! It matters to me!”

  “Jesus! What’s with you?”

  “I … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … Are you all right, Mona? Financially, I mean?”

  “Yeah, sure. I can pay the rent.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I’m fine, Mrs. Madrigal. Really.”

  She wasn’t fine. She left ten minutes later, returned to her apartment and took the Quaalude. It put her to sleep.

  Michael was back at one-thirty. He woke her on the couch. “You O.K., Babycakes? Don’t you wanna go to bed?”

  “No. This is O.K.”

  “This is Chuck, Mona.”

  “Hi, Chuck.”

  “Hi, Mona.”

  “Sleep tight, Babycakes.”

  “You too.”

  The two men went into Michael’s bedroom and closed the door.

  The Rap about Rape

  DEDE FOUND HER MOTHER ON THE TERRACE AT HALcyon Hill, aghast over the 1976 San Francisco Social Register.

  “I don’t believe it! I don’
t believe it!”

  “Mother, will you put that down for a …”

  “They are listed. They are actually listed.”

  “Who?”

  “Those dreadful people who bought the old Feeney place on Broadway. Viola told me they were listed, but I simply couldn’t …”

  “He speaks seven languages, Mother.”

  “I don’t care if he tap-dances. They used to live in the Castro, DeDe … and now they’re living with his boyfriend … or is it hers?”

  “Binky says it’s both of theirs.”

  “No! Do you think? Of course, they never take him anywhere … and he’s even got a side entrance, so his address is different….”

  “Mother, I need to talk to you.”

  “Viola says they even have different zip codes!”

  “Mother!”

  “What, darling?”

  “I think Beauchamp has a mistress.” Silence.

  “I’m sure of it, in fact.”

  “Darling, are you …? You poor baby! How did you …? Are you …? Hand me that pitcher, will you, darling?”

  DeDe dug into her Obiko shoulder bag and produced the offending scarf. Frannie studied it at arm’s length, sipping her Mai Tai all the time.

  “You found it in his car?”

  DeDe nodded. “He walked to work on Monday. Binky and I drove the Porsche to Mr. Lee’s at noon, and I found it then. I tried to act like nothing was …” Her voice cracked. She began to cry. “Mother … I’m sure this time.”

  “You’re sure it’s hers?”

  “I’ve seen her wearing it.”

  “He could have given her a ride home, DeDe. Anyway … don’t you think your father would have noticed, if she was … carrying on with …”

  “Mother! I know!”

  Frannie began to sniffle. “The party was going to be so lovely.”

  DeDe went to lunch at Prue Giroux’s townhouse on Nob Hill.

  Under the circumstances, she might have canceled, but this wasn’t just any lunch.

  This was The Forum, a rarefied gathering of concerned matrons who met monthly to discuss topics of Major Social Significance.

  In previous months, the topics had been alcoholism, lesbianism and the plight of female grape-pickers. Today the ladies would discuss rape.

  Prue’s cook had whipped up a divine crab quiche.