Buddies (10 page)
There’s a directness, an eagerness to confront, that sets certain kinds of people apart, at the beach or elsewhere, in trunks or a suit, out to boogie or looking for trouble. There’s a look in the eye, a grab of the hands, and you’re in over your head, drowning. If men tend to start fights and women tend to avoid them, it’s interesting that gay men tend to avoid them, too. Spend an hour in an Irish bar with ten people present and you’re sure to see men fight. Yet who has ever seen a fight in a gay bar, no matter how crowded? (Carlo dimly recalls one in the Eagle about twelve years ago.) Is this because gays are too busy confronting profound questions of male identity to spare energy for fighting? Or is it simply a cultural matter, another facet of the straight style?
Whatever its basis, it does put a certain quickness into the air. After dinner Norma asked me to institute some intellectual sport of a Manhattan savvy—no, not in those words—and in response I suggested we all try an old favorite in my family, the Question Game, in which the participants (five brothers can play) trade questions that must be answered truthfully.
“It’s all the rage at those New York loft parties,” Norma gushed; this was wishful thinking. “Now, Danny, do you love me for myself, or just for my physique?”—pronounced “
fi
-si-cyew.”
Danny D. looked over at me and said, “What the hell kind of fucking stupid game is this?”
Imagine your ten closest friends in Danny D.’s position, thinking what he thinks, and consider what response they might make, as opposed to his: and you’ll understand what I wish to note about confrontation.
The next day, after lunch, Norma cornered me with her aria book and expressed a life’s dream to attempt “In questa reggia.” I obliged. It sounded like Thumbelina singing the piccolo part of “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” but, as we pulled into the finish, she clasped my shoulders and kissed my ear, her life’s dream accomplished. And there, dripping wet from the shower, nude and irate, was Danny D.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what it is with this opera stuff, but Norma’s my girl. Got it?”
Like Sal, I was too startled to react. Jim, out of nowhere, came up and said, “Hey, Danny D.!”
“Yo, Jimbo!” came the reply, familiar on many a building site.
“Take it easy,” said Jim, touching Danny D.’s neck. “He’s just playing piano for her. She’s singing. End of bit, right?”
“What I see is she’s a girl and he’s a guy, huh?” He swung the flat of his hand through the air, meaning, “Cut!”
Danny D. went back inside to dress, Norma followed him, Brenda came up to Jim whispering, “Did I miss something, Honeycock?” and Laurie again beckoned me to the beach, now with a jab of her thumb.
“Numbnuts,” she began, as we settled on the sand just above the wetline. “Stop interfering with that romance. I thought gays were supposed to be sensitive.”
“What did I do?”
“You assisted the world’s champion cockbaiter in baiting her man’s cock.”
“Norma?”
“Don’t you see how she makes Danny D. feel when she pulls out that opera jazz? It’s supposed to be something
she
knows about, and
he
doesn’t, so he’s supposed to feel like a clod. Or didn’t you know about these punk Italian
signorine?
”
“Who do you think I am, Errol Flynn?”
“Well, man, it turns out they’re choice touch. But getting along with them is another thing. Because they bust ass and bite balls and torch cock.” She imitated them: “‘Buy me
that!
Where’s my
ring?
It must be
catered
or my girlfriend Teresa won’t be jealous!’”
I considered this.
“Your brother’s a neat guy,” she went on. “The way he covered for you with Danny D. You didn’t know what the fuck was coming down. And he did. That’s sensitive.”
“Yeah, he was
so
sensitive on the beach some years ago, as I—”
“I’m talking now.”
“Look how you defend a man like that. Haven’t you heard the word chauvinist? Don’t you know how he treats women? They’re just packages of sexmeat to him.”
“He was
there
for you, man!”
“Oh, come on! Any brother will defend you! That was to show you what a great guy he is.”
She stared hard at the water, said, “I’m going to hit you because I want you to remember the next thing I’m going to say. Remember it for a long while.” Then she grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and slapped my cheek harder than I’ve ever been slapped, harder than I thought I could be.
“Some brothers don’t defend you,” she said quietly, holding on to me. “Come
on?
Some brothers will stand by and watch their friends rape you. Listen, they’ll do it themselves, brothers. You’ll think maybe they’d look away at the time, lay a little shame on it, at least? Don’t think that, mister. Don’t think it.
Come on?
Listen. You got a brother to watch out for you, you be real glad of him.” She released me and hugged herself, trying to calm the breathing. “Chauvinism. I hear it. That … logo word. How do you think
I
treat women, huh? Who am I, Tinker Bell? Jane Austen? I lay ’em and leave ’em!
I’m
Errol Flynn! And don’t hand me that sisterhood shit!
Politics!
What the shit do I care who’s king this year? They’ll never be on my side, will they? Yours, either. Or your brother’s. Know whose side the kings are on? Know who the kings
are,
for Christshit? Do you?
Rich! Straight! Males!
” She stood, walked into the bits of water at the end of the waves, and looked back at me. “Rich straight males,” she repeated. “You’re a subversive. And your brother’s an exploitable prole. And I’m not on the chart.”
After a few minutes, I said, “You know, you should have been an ironworker.”
She laughed. Hell, she downright roared.
“I’ve got a nickname picked out for you,” I added. “Stinger.”
“Do they all have nicknames?”
“The hot ones do. What do you think ‘Danny D.’ is? His last name’s O’Brien.”
“Speaking of which,” she said, glancing over my shoulder. Danny D. was heading over the dunes toward us, hopping daintily from one boiling footprint to the next in green nylon trunks that might have gone out of style in 1956.
“Yo hey,” he said, plopping down next to me. “Going to apologize for blowing off steam like that there.”
“Forget it.”
“No. First it’s that groveling cheat Sal, then that piano. You know, Norma, sometimes she leans on me with the music, sort of.” He asked himself, “What do you mean leans on you?” “Leans on me, like suddenly she’s too busy to play with me, or like it’s this big put-down game. Like she’s flirting with the songs, see?” “I see, man. So even though he’s your pal’s brother, you got to wonder what he’s up to, right?” “Right.”
“Danny D.,” I said, “don’t wonder. I’m gay.”
“Gay who?”
“No,
gay.
As in Not Straight.”
He turned questioningly to Laurie.
She said, “He means he’s a faggot.”
Danny D. gave me a searching look. “You shitting me?”
I shook my head.
“You mean gay like … boy meets
boy?
Boy gets
boy?
”
“Let’s hope.”
He thought this over, regarded me once more, leaped up with a whoop of joy, ran into the ocean, and ran right out again, shouting, “Cold water! Run for your lives!”
Her mind on other matters, Laurie asked me, “What’s your brother’s nickname?”
“Jimbo.”
“You never call him that, do you?”
“I don’t know Jimbo. I scarcely know Jim.”
“You don’t say it like a name,” said Danny D. “You know that?”
“How does he say it?” Laurie asked.
“Like a … a secret.”
I shrugged. “This has been being a holiday of secrets.”
Danny D. was laughing again. “Wait’ll I tell that bitchen Norma. Only thing is, how the fuck do I get back over that sand? Coming down, I almost burned my footsies off.”
“Get your feet cold in the ocean,” I suggested. “Then run like hell.”
“Hey, you’re a smart kid.”
“Danny D., I’m older than you are.”
“Yeah?” He got into the water to his knees. “You’re still a kid.” He faced the houses. “Okay,” he began, “let’s go,” revving up. “It’s
banzai time!
” And away he went.
* * *
Norma accepted my decision to curtail the operatic end of my repertory; she seemed to sense that the men had made one of their handshake pacts and, wise girl, bore it without reproach. I even managed to essay Joplin’s “Peacherine Rag” (with the barest hint of Second Viennese School harmony) for Danny D., and he told Jim, “That’s a swift kid, pal. You raised him right.”
“He was hell at first,” said Jim. “But he’s cooling out nicely. Right, sport?”
“I’d rather die.”
“Commie punk,” said Danny D.
The usual nookie session followed dinner, and Laurie excused herself to, as she put it, “make a blonde.” She probably did not mean by origami. Alone, then, alarmed and amused at spending a weekend at Fire Island without touching base at The Pines, I elected to put the time to use and got out notebook and pen and just started writing, as if by Ouija board, aim and tone wandering. What eventually came out was a story, an early version of this one, in fact. I had written plenty of stories, but till now they had been fantasies, or dialect romances, or urbane comedies about people I had never met. Now, suddenly, one was about someone’s real life—rudely so, but a hard pen has no conscience. I wrote straight through, and, reaching a temporary lull in the tale, this lull, I stopped, stimulated and exhausted. It was well after midnight. I decided to walk down to the beach before turning in.
The Pines boardwalks can be tricky after dark, but Water Island’s planks are fearsome, dilapidated and unmarked. It was worth any hazard, though, to reach that vast healing velvet of black sky trimmed by its knowing moon, a Pines moon. I searched westward for the lights of the gay citadel, just out of reach. Tomorrow, I resolved, I’ll pay a call.
I heard whistling behind me and turned to find Jim in jeans and a ratty old yachting sweater.
“Thought you’d be out here,” he said. “I saw your notebook on the table, sport. Fixing to write a story about something?”
“Did you read any of it?”
He swung a foot through the water. “Can’t make out your handwriting. Thought I recognized some names, though.”
“You want to play the Question Game?”
He laughed softly. “Uh-oh.”
“One last time?”
“Okay, sport. One last time forever.”
“You first.”
He had it all ready. “What do they say about me now? Back home?”
“They … don’t mention you at all.”
He thought it over, nodded. He thinks that’s fair. “Shoot.”
“That time on the shore. Were you really trying to drown me?”
“Oh, that.” He came up to me. “That time on the shore, right.” He looked me in the eye; at close range, Fire Island moonlight permits excellent vision. “You blew it, sport. One last time forever. You know the answer to that question. The answer is yes. The question you should have asked is,
Why?
”
“I don’t want to know that answer.”
“Sure you do. You’re going to be a writer, you’ve got to know everything.” He took my arm. “Let’s go back to the house. It’s cold.”
“I want to stay a bit more.”
“That boardwalk’s all busted up. It’s dangerous alone.”
“I got out here, didn’t I?”
“Suit yourself.” He started off, whistling.
“Jim.” I guess it does sound like a secret. Telling, not keeping one. “Why … did you try to drown me?”
After a long while, he said, “Sport, some men just weren’t meant to be brothers.”
I watched him head back up the dunes in the moonlight, and I thought, Whatever happens, I can use it. I can observe, abstract, enhance it, distance myself from or embrace it. It was a great moment; years from now, white-haired, fêted and crabby, I may do a madeleine on this memory. I showed my fist to the virgin moon, to leave a picture for me to recall, and someone grabbed it and pulled me around: Jim, the brother I most resemble and am least like, more boyish than I would dare be and more man than I am permitted to use in my world of the
comme il faut
intelligentsia.
“Come on along,” he said, annoyed at having to tell me twice.
One day they nearly drown you; the next, they want you on hand for social comedy. Oh, I’ll come on along; the only things I don’t resist are hard liquor and brute force. I’ll come on and take a bead on all of you. I am eager to confront, now, and I’ll get a story out of it, no matter what is done to me. From here on, I know everything and you got five.
Okay, sports?
A droll tale of sociosexual crossover, containing a treatise on sexuality thrown into the middle of the plot, for which the author makes no apology to his readers.
Well, there I am, as all too often, at my desk to scrimmage with the muse while everyone else in town is out on the streets having terse encounters. It’s a Saturday afternoon in late fall, when the opinion-makers stroll Soho in awe of themselves, when fashionable people do the latest sweater along Madison or Second, when bagladies shop with such abandon that one finds overturned garbage cans all the way from Eighth Street to the Park. But I’m at my labor, painfully ooching through a piece I would knock off in two hours if only this were winter—if possible during a blizzard and with emergency rations of Johnnie Walker Red and Mars bars laid by in the pantry. Dragging along as the sunlight robustly streams down and the great world frolics only blocks away (am I missing a Major Brunch?), I seem to start this piece over again with each new sentence, making it something like a tiny encyclopedia. This proves, I ruefully reflect, that New York doesn’t have more sex than other places, just more opinions.
So I was relieved when Dennis Savage came in, his eyes brightly furtive and his tread a fidgety sarabande.
“Well, well, well,” I said. “Guess what you’ve been doing.”
Smiling, he led me to the couch, sat me down, and prepared to launch his report.
