Faggots (13 page)

And to New York he came, without giving his past, his Ma, his Pa, a second thought. He briefly considered changing his last name, to make the break more irrevocable, the return impossible, but he decided not to for the moment. Later perhaps. Or perhaps he might want to change his first name instead. Major alterations could wait. And whatever happened, it could only be an improvement on Mt. Rainier.

Timmy arrived in New York a virgin, again not such an unusual statistic these days, though from television and movies he knew all about sex and all the possibilities available to him, divisions and subdivisions, paragraphs and headings and fine print. At this moment he was unconcerned about the totality, or which clause he might elect. He did know one thing: he knew he was exceptionally attractive. People would look at him on the street and continue looking, even when bumping into someone. Sometimes these lookers were women, but he noticed that he liked it more when they were men. He hadn’t learned yet to use this to his advantage, though he had premonitions he was walking around with a useful tool.

He was five feet ten inches tall, with dark-brown hair and that open handsomeness which formerly was called “Arrow Shirt” but is now called, for some reason, “all-American,” and then only by the halt or lame. His skin was that deep white which tans nicely and is associated with health, vigor, keeping regular, drinking milk, chewing Wrigley’s, using Colgate, and walking in Keds. At this point he had been trained for little but bodily functions. What will he learn in this biggest of our big cities? Will such beauty as walks by the name of Timothy Peter Purvis grow up to be as profitably adept with his physicality as the Winston Man, and as internationally sexually desirable as Winnie, the young Paul McCartney, or the late James Dean?

He walked through the terminal, through the arcade, through the waiting room, and toward the john, for he, too, had to pee.

“Jesus,” Durwood said to Paulie. “Look at that number.”

“He’s going to the john.”

“We better follow him.”

The Port Authority was being tended to this evening by Durwood and Paulie, talent scouts for R. Allan Pooker, pornography man and head of Stud Studios.

Yootha Truth and Miss Rollarette were there as well, Yootha clutching his ratty fur coat to his thin black body as if it were December, which, for Yootha, who has not eaten in several days, it was. Miss Rollarette, in tatty white organdy dress, a flat-topped granny hat with waving poppy, and his Tinkertoy magic wand, was resting his roller-skate-clad feet from the long run uptown from Pier 48, on the Hudson at Christopher Street, where he had been visiting with the boys, waving wisdom, and watching a few blow jobs in the late afternoon waterfront’s light.

“Miss Fairy Godmother,” Yootha looked over to Rolla, “I would do anything for one dollar ninety-eight.”

“You’re too skinny, dear. Blacks are now acceptable as sex partners but your competition grows fiercer as your people push themselves into uppity mobility. You must get your act together.”

“Honey, fuck off. To get my act together, I need bread. Both kinds. I need clothes and I need exercising at the gymnasium of my choice. Also, I can no longer steal foodstuffs from the A & P. They know my ravaged face.”

“Your problem is one which faces many of our boys. Would that the social-service organization I plan to establish when my fairy comes in were already a reality. I would dispense funds immediately to aid you. How’s Forty-second Street?”

“No longer rewarding. I believe a civic clean-up has been undertaken.”

“Bloomingdale’s?”

“I can’t go in Bloomingdale’s looking like this!”

“True. Have you tried the public lavatories? I understand the Black Duchess has been doing acceptably at Thirty-third Street on the IRT.”

“I get sick of loitering at the loos. The smell is so rancid, Rolla. I am not a tea-room queen. Besides, I am looking for a more lasting relationship. And I don’t want no man who looks around toilets.”

“Poor baby, poor baby. Miss Rolla understands.” He touched Yootha’s sunken shoulders with his wand.

“Won’t do no good, won’t do no good,” Yootha mumbled.

In the toilet, Durwood was peeing to the right and Paulie was peeing to the left of the urinal that was receiving Timmy. Timmy knew that something was up. He’d noticed the two young faces noticing him. They looked kindly enough, a year or two older than he was and plain, if neat and confident. Though why they were descending upon him in a toilet when they could just as easily have spoken to him either before or after was something he did not understand. Until he noticed they were looking diagonally down as he shook his penis of its last remaining drops.

“Not bad,” Durwood said. “A winner.” And then, looking at the winner’s face: “About sixteen, I’d say.”

“Not bad at all,” Paulie agreed, zipping up his pants, not having peed at all, and walking with Timmy to the sinks. “My name’s Paulie, this here is Durwood, and we think you are one hunky number. Wanna go and get a drink?” Paulie had recently moved here from Florida and had met Durwood in just this very way.

Timmy stopped to wet his fingers under the faucet. He looked at both of their faces in the mirror, a trick he remembered from not a few Movies of the Week, and tried to study them as he considered.

“I didn’t expect anything to happen so quickly,” he finally said. “I’m not even out of the bus station. I don’t even have a place to stay. You guys queers?”

“Yeah,” Durwood said. “We are also faggot talent scouts. We sit here in this bus terminal looking for interesting new faces fresh from the outside world. You play your cards right in this city and you will be rich and famous in a way that neither one of us will ever be. You’re, like we say, a winner.”

“My name is Timmy.”

“Tim. Tim sounds better. Shorter. Butcher and to the point.”

“I don’t know,” Paulie said. “Sometimes people want Timmies instead of Tims.”

“Paulie, you’re starving to death as a Paulie. It’s a ninny name. I told you time and again since you hit this town to change it to something smart like Brad.”

“Brad.” Paulie wrinkled his nose. “I’m no Brad.”

“Come on, Tim. Let’s go across the street to the A & O and have us a talk. They have a great sound system.”

“Maybe a Tyrone. Maybe a Humphrey. Maybe even a Dinky,” Paulie added, thinking of the handsome bearded guy he’d fucked with every night for an entire week just last month in Miami, before Paulie got fired from his job as attendant at the Club Baths, where the fucking had transpired, when he should have been changing used sheets, and thus not being on the premises the eighth night when the stranger said he’d come again. But he had waited outside and he hadn’t shown, so that, he’d guessed, was that.

Durwood shook his head. “Paulie, wise up.”

Timmy smiled at Paulie. Paulie blushed.

“You are gorgeous,” Paulie said. “You really wipe me out. I’ve never seen anything like you. Stuff a towel in my mouth and shut me up.”

Now Timmy blushed.

Paulie shook his head. “Oh, babe.” He let the words slip out, a little cry of sadness and happiness, both at the same time, that someone he was meeting, someone so beautiful, could also be so innocent and shy and inexperienced and was this what he himself had been like how many weeks ago?

And Durwood said: “You are lucky in your first new friends. Boy, are you lucky.”

In the main waiting room Miss Rollarette and Yootha followed, with their eyes, the progress of the trio of young men crossing the floor and toward the 41st Street exit.

“They went in there two and they come out of there three,” Yootha observed.

“Miss Three is a confection. They’re going to the A & O. Come, Yootha, I shall buy you a glass of milk.”

It was early for the Alpha and Omega. By eleven it would be packed with young dancers, the ones without the money or the connections to enter Balalaika or Capriccio, and certainly persona non for Fire Island Pines. But all of those places were like Paris; they represented nice spots to visit…someday. Here, in this unrejuvenated ballroom left over from some earlier dreams, everything was a bit more basic. It was cheap, in the way cheap was understood: no admission charge, and the waiters, who hustled you like crazy to drink, didn’t throw you out if you didn’t. Here the clothes were a little flashier than downtown, the heels a little higher, the hues a little more pronounced. Spanish, Cuban, Puerto Rican chic is defined a little more specifically on their own turf. And who knew but that there might be the odd old sugar daddy who arrived at midnight and noticed in the dark the sweater’s sequins or the eyelid’s glint.

Right now there were only about fifty guys in the place. The music was loud and ample, a wholesome job of it; the bass and treble were not as ideally separated as Balalaika’s important system, where Patty had spent heavily to approximate sonic boom, nor as insidiously addictive as Capriccio’s even more lavish set-up, where Billy Boner, who also owned this place, had dictated speakers simply everywhere for raising consciousness higher and higher and higher. No, here there was only music, undoctored, dished up loud. But since it was certainly an improvement on the Maryland Teen Scene and Youth Club, Timmy was impressed.

He and Durwood and Paulie were already seated with Cokes when Miss Rollarette skated across the dance floor to their ringside table.

“Permit me to introduce myself, young fellow,” Miss Rolla said to Timmy, touching both his shoulders with his wand in the act of knighthood. “I am Miss Rollarette and I can be seen all over town. I skate back and forth in this my kingdom and it gives me pleasure to welcome a new citizen.”

“Hello, Rolla,” Durwood said.

“What is your name, child?” Rolla asked, ignoring Durwood.

“Timothy,” said Timmy, trying on the longer, more formal version for size.

“Timothy. A good name. Rolla approves. Will you be an uptown child or a downtown child? The Village or the West Side, or, good fortune smiling upon you, the East Side below Ninety-sixth? You certainly evince enough potential to escape the suburbs.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“If these gentlemen are counseling you, you will no doubt shortly be actively employed. A word of warning…”

“Shut up, Rolla,” Durwood said.

“…about our fair city. We have good faggot folk and we have bad faggot folk. Just like everyone else. I myself, being well-heeled and in constant communication with my mother in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, whose sensibilities I would in no way injure, am able to see all sides from on high. I hope you will feel free to seek my advice, should your own judgment require counsel.”

“Thank you very much.”

“I am impressed you have accepted me for what I am. You have not seen fit, as so many new arrivals or fresh-mouthed kids, to giggle at my appearance and make jest. Yes, I find you impressive.”

“I used to dress up in my mother’s dresses,” Timmy shyly confessed.

“Ah, did we not all do that! The difference is that I have perpetuated the fantasy. I am a living dream.” And, in so saying, he turned on point, and rolled his way back across the floor to Yootha and his glass of milk.

Paulie shivered. “She still gives me the creeps. I think she’s a witch.”

“She…he…certainly is unusual,” Timmy said. “How does…it…make a living?”

“I believe he works for the Army recruiting office. Isn’t that a hoot? Now, can we get down to business?” Durwood pulled his chair closer to Timmy.

“Who is that with…him?”

Paulie squinted his eyes to look across the floor; he was tired and, though he had youth on his side, certain of his newly assumed activities were wrecking his health and stamina. “That looks like Miss Yootha Truth…”

“…who is a starving nigger and a lesson to us all,” Durwood finished. “Now, can we get down to business?”

“Go ahead.”

“You need a place to stay? You need a job? You need instant pocket money for the hundred-and-one things a fella longs for? You need a base of operations from which to get your feet on the ground and launch your successful moon shot into this our Biggest Apple? I know the man who can provide each and every one of these here items for the one and only you. His name is R. Allan Pooker. He is not what you would call a swell fella, but he pays on time and the sheets are clean and he doesn’t hit you or anything like that.”

“Is it like that movie musical,
Oliver
?” Timmy asked.

“No, it’s not that bad.”

“Oliver.” Paulie tried on the name.

“What do I have to do?” Timmy inquired, his eyes again on the poor shivering young black thing across the room, lapping up the inside of his empty glass like the hungriest of scraggy cats. “And how much will he give me for doing it? And is it any fun?”

“I guess the best thing for us to do is go down and let you ask him yourself. Come on.”

The three of them started across the dance floor, toward the entrance. The music was playing Direne Jones’s “Doin’ It Twenty-Four Hours a Day Don’t Make It Love,” and Paulie stopped in the middle to join a small group of daytime strays swaying to the beat, then peeled off by himself, softly establishing his own back-and-forth motion, with an animation and an interest he had not been seen to hitherto possess. He then pulled Durwood to him with one hand, and then with his other he pulled the watching Timmy as well, so that the three of them were in a circle with Paulie’s arms around them both.

Timmy paused a moment to reflect upon his reactions. Events were happening quickly and he was not unaware that he was dancing with two youngsters of his own age and sex and in rather sleazy surroundings with an assortment of fellow chorines the likes of which Mt. Rainier had never seen. He did not, he decided, find it unenjoyable. Besides, he had always liked music and he thought that Paulie was cute, in a way that reminded him of Elaine Loomis, who had a round face and safe smile and sat across from him in Home Room for years. So shortly after Paulie had put his hand around his waist, he put his own arm around Paulie’s, causing the lad to give an involuntary shiver, which brought a look ceilingward of mock disapproval from Durwood, which made Timmy smile and put his other arm around
him.
Now they danced like a tight little unit, their insularity a protection from the outside freaks, why were there always outside freaks?, looking in, here no exception, two transvestites and a Cuba Libra, and the more sinuous Direne’s voice became, followed by Rose Tundra’s insistent, commanding version of that classic, “Dance! Dance! Dance!,” the closer the three came together, so that Paulie’s lips were brushing Timmy’s and Durwood’s both and they were all holding each other tightly like girls in the locker room before the first mixer of the season. When the beat thumped into crescendo and glissandoed into an open plateau, Timmy, vaguely aware that his crotch was fuller than usual,—he’d never got a hard-on while dancing in his bedroom—thought to himself: I might as well show them what I really can do, and spun away and performed a few graceful and intricate steps and turns which he had perfected in that bedroom, never imagining he’d be showing them off quite like this, including the mock hesitation both arms right left right right that he’d noted some kids using on a Don Kirshner TV Rock Special, and this caused Paulie to duplicate the movements, and now they were dancing together—Durwood tried but couldn’t get the tricky hesitation right—Paulie and Timmy, looking like, though they would never have heard of them, young Tony and Sally de Marco, which one Tony?, which one Sally?, in and out, arms over and down, touch hip, touch hip, down down over and back. Paulie’s eyes closed, his own crotch running over, and Timmy’s eyes closed, and they instinctively touched chests and bumped groins and whirled about to collide asses and then knock hips, right and left, and as Rose Tundra droned on and upward, their own movements became slower and their gestures tiny and delicate, weaving a spell for the coming moment of climax and ending, neither one realizing that their sweat was comingling, just that it had been a good brotherly get-together and workout that would remain as a nice memento of Timmy’s first High in the big city, which would soon evaporate and coalesce into the rest of the night, which was now about to commence, as the song was over, or rather whipped into a third one, a foot-stopping clinker of completely non-urgent intensity, designed to clear the floor and aid the waiters, which also cleared the air of mood and closeness and opened the eyes of our two dancers, who looked at each other, wrinkled their noses in distaste, hitched up their startled trousers to their former height, and instantly marched off the dance floor, smiling, friends, grabbing the less terpsichoreanly gifted Durwood, and headed, all three joined in arms and new fellowship, toward the door, waving to Rolla, waving to Yootha, Timmy feeling more a part of
something
here than he ever was back home, and out toward R. Allan’s and that new beginning.