Baby Be-Bop (7 page)

O
ne night when he was little Dirk McDonald woke to the sound of the telephone and his Grandma Fifi’s voice,” Dirk began.

“He had never heard a voice sound like that. Dirk looked up at the glow-in-the-dark stars Grandma Fifi had pasted on the ceiling for Dirk’s father when he was a little boy. She had told Dirk they would keep nightmares away. But that night Dirk thought nothing would ever keep him safe from nightmares.

“Grandma Fifi ran into the bedroom and took Dirk in her arms. Her bones felt as light as the birdcage that hung in her kitchen. She wrapped him in a coat that smelled sour from mothballs and lilac-sweet from her perfume.

“Dirk sat huddled next to his grandmother in her red-and-white 1955 Pontiac convertible and felt as if the night was going to eat him alive; he wished it would. Fifi hadn’t taken time to put the top back on. She ran through red lights. Dirk had never seen her do that before.

“When they got to the hospital a doctor met them in
the hallway and led them back into the waiting room. Fifi took Dirk on her lap. Dirk could never remember, later, if the doctor had ever said the words, but he knew then that his parents were gone. He pressed his face into the velvet collar of Fifi’s coat and their tears mingled together until they were drenched with salt water.

“Dirk listened for his parents’ voices in the wind sometimes. But soon he forgot what they had sounded like. All he could hear was his Grandma Fifi whistling with her canaries in the kitchen or calling to him to come out and play in the yard or asking the pastry dough what shape it intended on taking this afternoon or singing him lullabies.”

Dirk went on to tell the story of life in Fifi’s cottage, the fathers in the shower, the story of Pup Lambert and the magic lamp. He told the story of Gazelle and the stranger, Fifi and Derwood, Dirby and Just Silver. All his ancestors’ stories were also his own.

Each of us has a family tree full of stories inside of us, Dirk thought. Each of us has a story blossoming out of us.

“Dad?” he asked the darkness. “Mom?” but Dirby and Just Silver were gone.

He picked up the golden lamp. It was heavy with stories of love. It was light with stories of love. It could sink to the bottom of the sea, touch the core of the earth with the weight of love. It could soar into the clouds like a creature with wings.

Just then he saw that the lamp had begun to smoke—
vapors writhing out from it like snakes. And Dirk saw emerging from that mist the face and then the whole body of a man. There was a piece of sapphire silk with golden elephants on it wrapped turban-style around his head. Dirk knew that beneath the turban, the man’s scalp was shaved; he was the stranger who had come to Gazelle’s door with the very lamp out of which he was now materializing.

“Come with me,” the man said.

“Where?”

“You’ll see.”

The braid rug on the floor of Dirk’s room began to quiver. Then the corners furled off the wooden floor and the rug lifted from the ground, bringing with it Dirk in his bed. Dirk closed his eyes the way you do on a roller coaster, wind and gravity forcing lids down, forcing him to grip the brass posts as the bed levitated. Eyes still closed but he knew he was outside now careening through star-flecked space on warm wind, part of him wanting to scream, wake from the dream, part of him letting this be, this journey to wherever, this journey on the voice of the man.

Beneath him the city the way it looked from inside the Japanese restaurant on the hill where waitresses in flowered silk kimonos brought starbursts and blossoms of sushi maki and champagne in silver ice buckets. A platter of gleaming wineglasses and luminous liqueurs, main courses served on polished plates, towering flam
ing desserts, candlelit birthday cakes. And on to the edges where it was darker and on to the sea that broke against the shore in seaweed black against iced jade pale. Dark waves becoming pale foam like the banks of wild dill and evening primrose growing along the highway. Ancient stone creatures emerging from the sea. Fields full of cattle. Some were there to die. He saw a bull mount a cow like a wave of life in the midst of static death. Fields full of farmworkers, sweat stories hidden behind the clustering clean sea green, sea purple of the grapes they picked. Redwood groves purple shadows light fallen like pollen through high leaves. Sea going so far it looks like sky. Just blues forever. Sky like a field of lupine and white wildflower fluffs. Sheer rivulets of water a skin of light over the sand. On and on. Where was he going?

In a field at the edge of the sea was a white house with crystals and lace in the window. Trumpet vines grew over the trellis and picket fence in front. A hammock in the garden. On the porch were surfboards, sandals, sleeping golden retrievers.

Duck Drake and his family lived in the house that smelled of beeswax and lavender and home-baked bread. Duck’s mother Darlene had wide-apart green eyes, frothy yellow hair and petite tan legs. She liked to stand on the
porch having long conversations with the mockingbird who lived in the garden. She was always asking Duck questions about what his favorite flower was and why and what was his favorite color and time of day and animal and what dreams did he have last night? Duck’s brothers and sisters, Peace, Granola, Crystal, Chi, Aura, Tahini and the twins Yin and Yang, were always careening through the house like a litter of blond puppies yelping, “I’m not delirious, I’m in love.”

Duck was the only one who never talked about his crushes since his crushes were on boys and Duck knew Darlene wouldn’t understand at all. He thought it was strange because of how free she was about other things. Once she tried some pot brownies that Peace made but she said they just made her depressed and unable to stop giggling. She let Crystal’s boyfriend sleep over and she had told all the girls that when they were ready to have sex she would take them for birth control. But when it came to Duck’s secret he knew she wouldn’t accept it. He had heard her talking to her best friend Honey-Marie about Honey-Marie’s son Harley. Harley was a few years older than Duck, and Duck had always admired him from afar. He looked like he was born to play Prince Charming with his fistfuls of curly dark hair, flashing dark eyes and ballet dancer’s body. He spoke in a soft rich voice and wore baggy cotton trousers with Birkenstocks and color-
ful socks. Harley was a waiter at a café in Santa Cruz but he really wanted to go to San Francisco and perform Shakespeare. Finally, just before he left, he told Honey-Marie that he was gay. She was devastated. Duck heard her tell his mother, “My heart is broken.”

Then he heard his mother say, “It could be worse. He could have something really wrong with him.”

He breathed a sigh of relief on the other side of the kitchen door.

“Something
is
wrong with him,” Honey-Marie said.

Then Duck’s mother said, “I guess you’re right. I’d probably feel the same way if it was my own son.”

After that Duck tried. He took Cherish Marine to the prom and bought her a huge corsage of pink lilies. He even rented a tux (although he would not put his feet in weasel shoes and wore his Vans instead). Cherish Marine was a bathing suit model and all the boys wanted to be her date but she liked Duck with his lilting surfer slur and teenage-Kewpie beauty. They danced all the slow dances and Duck felt Cherish Marine’s bathing-suit-model-breasts pressing through her peach satin prom dress. They went to the pier with a group of other kids and shared a bottle of champagne which Cherish Marine liked to drink with a straw. They sat next to each other on the roller coaster, Cherish Marine’s slender thigh pressing against Duck’s leg, her hands grabbing his knee as their light bodies were thrown from side to side of the car,
bruising, the metal bar hardly enough to keep them from being flung into space. But when the evening was over Duck walked Cherish to her door and kissed her good night on her smooth peachy cheek. She looked into his eyes waiting for something more but he only said, “You are a total babe. Thank you for being my date,” and left.

Cherish Marine was stunned.

Duck went surfing because it was the only thing that comforted him. When he surfed he felt as aqua-blue and full and high as the waves but he also felt lost, a small human who could as easily be washed away as his father Eddie had been. Even the other surfers were separate from each other in their own tubes of water. Once in a while he’d see a guy holding his girlfriend and once he had seen a guy surfing with a pig on a leash. Duck wanted a boyfriend he could surf with, someone he could tell his secret to, someone who had the same secret inside. He wanted to reach inside his lover and touch that lonely secret with his own.

Duck decided to leave Santa Cruz. He drove his light-blue VW Bug along Highway 5 listening to the B-52s. He opened the windows and let the wind run its fingers through his shoulder-length hair that was bleached white from years of surfing in sun and salt water.

I am finally free, Duck thought, and then he thought about his brothers and sister and his mother telling them not to get sand all over everything and please be quiet so
I can do my yoga, Duck could you please pick up some tofu patties for dinner, you look just like your daddy I miss him so much he would have been so proud of you the way you rode that wave. The soaring free feeling was mixed with a sadness as Duck realized how alone he really was now. It was kind of like surfing—but then, Duck thought—everything was kind of like surfing.

Duck got to Zeroes at night and built a fire at the campground. He heated up a can of beans and watched the waves, nodding with encouragement at the good ones like a proud father, watching the sun drop into the sea. He thought of how his father had died in the ocean and how instead of hating the water or being afraid of it he loved it even more. He didn’t understand why that had happened to his dad but now he knew that his dad’s spirit was there in the waves protecting him. He wondered if his father would understand about how he loved boys. Somehow he thought that if his dad were alive his mom wouldn’t have agreed with Honey-Marie. She would have been too happy basking in her love for Eddie Drake. Around Eddie Drake everyone just basked—they felt safe, they didn’t judge. Duck had never heard his dad say a negative thing about anyone’s personal choice—just about things like the Vietnam War and the assassination of Martin Luther King and what was happening to the oceans. Even now after his death, he was like the sun—falling into the waves, rising again every morning—still
with Duck like a god in an ancient myth.

Duck slept on top of a picnic table that night with his arm around his surfboard. He looked up at the stars and wondered if the future love of his life was looking up at them too. He couldn’t have known about the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of a room where a boy lay wishing for Duck.

Duck waxed his board and surfed-in the dawn; he felt as if he was pulling the sun up behind him as he rode the waves. Then he rinsed at the outdoor showers. He wanted to stay out by the water forever but he knew that if he was going to live in Los Angeles he would have to try to get work.

He applied at a surf shop in Santa Monica. He had worked at one in Santa Cruz and he knew a lot about boards. Plus there was something about Duck that made people like him right away—his grin and the innocent openness in his blue bay-window eyes. The owner of the shop told him he could start the next day.

When evening came Duck drove into town—to Santa Monica Boulevard. He had never seen so many gay men all at once. He felt the buzz of desire making them all beautiful. Everything was sexy here—hamburgers and ice cream and books and boots and even supermarkets became sexy. There was even a billboard advertising gay cruises. The men on the billboards were all tan and muscular and the men on the streets looked like they had
stepped off the billboards. Music thumped out of bars, and through the doors Duck saw strobe lights pulsing. He wanted to dance. He had never danced with another man. Some men came out of a club with their hands in each others back pockets. Sweat was pouring down their necks and arms. Someone whistled at Duck. He was afraid to look at who it was.

“Do you have some money for food?” a boy asked him. The boy had huge brown eyes. Duck gave him a couple of dollars even though he hadn’t had dinner himself.

“Thanks, man,” the boy said. He was different from some of the other guys around there—really young with a sweet mouth. When he smiled Duck saw that he had a gap between his front teeth. On the sidewalk in front of him was a huge chalk drawing of a beautiful blue angel.

“You new around here?” he asked.

Duck shrugged, not wanting to admit that this was his first time. His mouth felt dry and his heart was like the music coming out of the bars. “That’s a good drawing,” he said to change the subject.

“Thanks. Want to go to Rage?”

“Sure,” Duck said.

The boy stood up and wiped his chalky hands on his jeans. Duck followed him into the bar that was crowded with men. A lot of the men knew the boy.

“Hey, Bam-Bam!”

“Is that you?” Duck asked.

The boy cocked his head. “Bam-Bam, yeah. Why?”

Duck started laughing. “My name is Duck,” he said.

“Well at least it’s not Pebbles.”

Bam-Bam was a wild dancer, flinging his arms around and around over his head, gyrating his torso and hips. Duck found out later that sometimes he worked as a go-go boy when he could get a gig. Unfortunately it didn’t pay much and most of the time Bam-Bam was out on the streets spare-changing or doing whatever else street kids did for some quick burger bucks.

“Where are you from?” Bam-Bam asked Duck over some beers that a guy in leather chaps had bought for them.

“Santa Cruz.”

“And this is your first time out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Out. Coming out.”

“Oh. Yeah,” said Duck. “I mean no.”

“It’s cool,” Bam-Bam said. “Everyone has to have a first time.”

“What about you?”

“I’m from all over. I was in Frisco last. I just keep moving. I’m a mover. I’m not from anywhere.”

Duck nodded. He figured that wherever Bam-Bam was from—everyone had to come from somewhere, right?—it wasn’t a two-story white frame house full of crystals and waffles and laughing golden children.