How Long Has This Been Going On (66 page)

As they danced, Walt's cock, which had gone soft a good while before, began to harden again.

"Uh-huh," Blue remarked. "I feel you now."

So they danced, and Blue whispered, "Pretend we're boy friends. We do it every day and we're crazy about each other."

They danced, Blue tracing lines along Walt's back. "I play this record on special occasions," he said. "I knew you were special the second I hit eyes with you, watchin' you look all around and pretend you weren't lookin' at all. You saw me, certainly. Did you think I was special, too?"

"I was very struck by you, Blue."

"I like the way you talk."

Well, they danced, and when the cut ended, Blue took Walt back to bed, working himself up, then softly guiding Walt down to him by the back of the neck, saying, "Get sweet on my piece, now."

"It's not safe, Blue."

"A minute or so won't hurt. Do it to the music."

Poor Walt: so eager to reach Gay City, so well equipped with maps and charts—yet so unhappy when he reads them.

* * *

"Oh, so
licious,"
Evan breathes out. "Such lovely fuck with you." Kissing Alice as she thrusts her hand into her, curing the tingles, working around the soft edges of Alice's cunt with a steady pull. Alice is helpless, damp, wild, and rising for more, torn out of herself. "Oh,
sin!"
she cries; and Evan gloats at her power over her lover. Licking the love cream off her fingers, leaning over Alice, holding her down, strong with her, kissing her, loving her, and knowing Alice fears and needs her—which is all Evan wants on earth—Evan whispers, "I want to fuck you in hell."

Blue is back inside Walt now, probing to the utmost, and Walt is weeping. Nothing works for him, and nothing, he feels, ever will. If this incredible big blond Blue cannot draw him to a climax, who ever can?

"You crying now?"

"No," Walt quietly wailed.

"Shit," said Blue, pulling out again. "Tell me what's wrong."

"I'm
wrong, Blue."

"Let's rest a spell." Cuddling the boy, heartening him. Blue reads and wants to soothe his worry. "Wonder what we'll do with a boy like you."

"Everybody gets sore at me when I go home with them, which isn't all too often, for that very reason. I liked dancing with you, though."

"Well, I say
one
of us has to shoot. Get your legs up for that ol' Blue kiss-an'-come."

Blue was very close to creaming by now, and, quickly burrowing into Walt, he started to move his ass off, sailing to the moon.

"Yeah, now, that's for me," says Blue. "That's my ass, baby."

Blue went on in that vein, pounding and sighing and chanting, head high and eyes bright; and Walt was very taken. "Oh, Blue," he said.

"Got to
go
with it. Hear me, now."

"Blue..."

"Now we're gettin' there."

"Oh, golly, Blue, I'm—"

"Sure, it's almost—"

"Wait, Blue!"

"Fixin' to come, boy! Here goes Blue!"

"Yikes!"

Walt's body shook as he exploded, Blue joining him a second or so after, heads together, arms entwined.

"Blue!"

"Oh... oh, honey kid... you're..."

"No..." Panting. "Blue on top of me..."

"So damn right like that."

"I... Blue, I
came...."

"Yeah..."

Wet, hot, and emptied, the two held on to each other as Mantovani played through the gay San Francisco night. Up and down the town, women and men were out and wandering, calculating the possibilities. But here in a bedroom of the Kid's home, two men lay at peace, having achieved the dream.

I have to say something about this. It sometimes happens that two people of disparate backgrounds and hopes meet and fall almost instantly in love; it's happening now, for these two. If I had to rationalize it, I'd say that Walt desperately needs a man who will empower his sexuality, and that Blue is—unbeknownst to all—a softie who strongly responds to the emotionally wounded. But who can rationalize such needs? Love is Blue; that's all.

Upstairs, the Kid and Chris sat at his desk, talking over his script,
The Truth of Our Lives.
Chris was right: Setting the absurdly suave yet turbulent soap-opera plotting against the real life backstage was like cutting a cross section into American social life, sifting its hypocrisies for some sad, lovable truths.

"This is a gentle play," Chris told the Kid. "It wants to understand, even to forgive."

"I forgive no one."

"How you wish that were true."

Oh, Chris was right: The onstage scenes were all the more fun when they erupted in songs concocted specifically for these characters. "Every song should be a little off," Chris warned the Kid. "As if the character doesn't know why he or she is singing these lyrics, but the audience does."

"Whew, grammar," said the Kid. But Chris had good ideas. The Kid was especially amused by her determination to cast the show in a broad cultural mix, to explore a more comely authenticity than television's soaps ever did.

"Every role a different race!" Chris decreed, but half in jest. "Except for Auntie and the hunk, I don't want to see a white man on that stage."

"Speaking of the hunk," said the Kid, "how are you and David J. getting on?"

"Fervently."

"I approve. He's strong, sensible, and even tolerant. A woman's dream guy."

"Not a man's?"

"I like a little fire with my ice."

Chris nodded. "Like that strange blond boy you live with."

"He isn't strange. He just wears his cock ring a bit tight."

"What do you think of that black girl with the deep, deep voice for Suspicia?"

The Kid shrugged. "Good reading, I guess. And she's a hot visual. But can she be ruthless?"

"She can play it."

"She's gay, you know."

Chris paused. "I didn't, actually. Silly me."

Smiling, the Kid said, "You always know the gay men, but you miss the women. Why is that?"

"No idea."

"Figure it out, boss. The director of a soap-opera spoof should know gender presentation technique."

"Look, it's gays who are supposed to know who's gay on sight, not me."

"That's a myth, you know. It grew up back when everybody was closeted, and we had to sniff each other out. Like dogs meeting on the sidewalk. After you got the procedure down, you started to feel omnipotent if you pulled the mask off maybe four people a year. That's what we called it—'pulling the mask off.' But it was easy then, you know, because so many people
wanted
to be out. Nowadays, closeted gays usually fool everybody, at least in the short run. I sometimes wonder how tolerant we should be of that. Think of how useful it would be if the twenty percent or whatever it is all came out at once."

"Make sure you get J.'s shirt off somewhere in there, if possible without any pretext whatsoever. It's a soap tradition."

"Oh, it wouldn't be a Jerrett Troy production without skin. Do you think your Suspicia would go topless?"

"She seems game."

"Gamer than our hunk, I'll bet. Doesn't he have a problem with the beefcake stuff? Feels a bit penetrated?" "Don't be wicked, Johnny. He'll do his job."

"Are you going to marry him?"

That stopped Chris for a while. "Golly, what a question."

"He's going to ask you." To Chris's scoffing look, the Kid offered, "I know men. I know love. I know yearning."

"Didn't you once tell me that never in your life have you allowed yourself to yearn for someone?"

"I didn't say 'allowed myself.' I said it never happened. And I wouldn't have it any other way. My idea of safe sex is the guy doesn't ask for your phone number."

Chris made a gesture:
See?

"But I've observed," the Kid insisted. "The detective knows crime without committing it."

Smiling and vanquished, Chris asked, "Meanwhile, how's the score coming?"

"Heaven. That boy's a cool breeze in a New York August—eager, gifted, charming, and vulnerable. I'd stub my toe to avoid hurting him. So tell me—is the play
good?"

"So far, Johnny, it's terrific."

"Fine," said David J. Henderson. "I could use a hit. No, Christine,
easy
strokes, and always up and down. Otherwise, the surface will look all crisscross when it dries."

They were painting David's apartment.

"It seems so odd to me that there's a system for painting walls," said Chris. "I mean, it's just painting. It's just walls."

"It's my home," said David, imperturbably.

"You're so strangely conventional in your worldview."

"No, Christine,
slow
brush, full paint... Bight. Haste makes a mess. Conventional... maybe. If it means I prefer going home to my loved ones instead of trying to lead my entire life inside a theatre."

"You want kids," said Christine, resignedly. They'd been through this before.

"I want kids, Halloween candy, father-son athletic banquets..."

Chris made a retching noise. "Don't you realize how dreary those people are?"

"Chris, what do you think I am? My looks don't make me an exciting personality; you just think they do because... I don't know. It's glamorous or whatever." He had stopped painting, holding the brush, telling her something for the first time. "But I'm not glamorous. You see me as the captain of the something team in their legendary all-state season. Class President and Most Popular. I was never anything like that. I was... Well, just don't mistake the packaging for what's inside."

"I wouldn't, because in fact I was very close to two boys very much as you describe. Yet I saw how troubled they were."

"I was never troubled. I was boring." David started painting again. "You're probably misled because our sex is so good."

"Jesus, J., how could I be misled about something that basic? Someone at the theatre asked me what you were like in bed. I called you 'thorough.' It's the highest praise, believe me. I've known wilder men and more sensitive men. But I've never met anyone as skillful as you. You're some kind of fabuloso for sure."

"I guess I just love women." He's smiling.

"Maybe you'll always be out chasing skirt. Men who make love like that don't want to waste it, I've learned."

"No, I'll be home so much you'll be sick of me."

"I just hate that whole pregnancy thing," said Chris, with surprising force. "All the medical stuff—and I'm almost thirty-seven, which is risky. Though I guess we could adopt...."

"I want my
own
kids. And thirty-seven's not so risky. We'd have to consult with a—you're splashing me with paint—uh, a doctor or two, obviously, and—"

Chris threw her brush down and cried,
"Damn
you for sounding so reasonable about it! Why aren't you some redneck who grabs me by the hair and bangs my head against the wall and calls me bitch?"

David stared at her, his chambray work shirt and oldest jeans daubed with paint, his face atilt, eyebrows up and wondering.

"Shit," said Chris, picking up her brush. "Why are you so
handsome?"

The more they worked on the score for the play, the more the Kid respected Walt's talent and, more important, enjoyed Walt's company. The tales he told! Scandihoovia, Dexter, mean Uncle Gustav, Claude, Win, and Danny.

"You've had some life," said the Kid. "Did you ever do sex with those two uncles you live with, or whatever they are?"

"Not entirely," said Walt. "But you know what? They can be very parental at times."

"We're all parental about the people we love. I once saw a very young gay fellow fussing at his boy friend—some huge hunk old enough to be his father—because he had brought a chicken to eat during a showing of
Citizen Kane."

Walt didn't grasp the nature of the offense. "Was it a live chicken?" he asked.

"No, but you are. Am I wrong, or do you have to beat them off with a plowshare?"

Walt blushed. "I don't have all that much time for romance. It can interfere with your career goals."

"Don't try to kid the all-knowing Green Goddess, lovey boy. I know your kind. When you fall—and you will—you'll fall heavy."

Walt said nothing, his expression even, his manner patient. Then he said, "I brought the music for Auntie MacAssar's big solo."

"Let's hear it."

"Get ready, it's got a wide range."

"So do I, Walt."

The Kid didn't own a piano, but he had rented one for him and Walt to work on, and Walt played the new music, singing the lines in his light baritone as the Kid looked over his shoulder, occasionally singing along.

"Play it again," the Kid ordered. A third time. Then he said, "Now me," and sang the number faultlessly as Walt expanded the accompaniment, flowing under the Kid's vocal with countermelodies and a touch of clashing harmonies.

"I love it," said the Kid at last.

"Golly, you really
can
sing!"

"Never underestimate a goddess. I was holding them spellbound at Thriller Jill's when I was barely old enough to shave."

"What's—"

"Wait here."

Returning from another room, the kid showed Walt the photograph of the young Johnny that he had kept all these years.

"Wow," said Walt. "You look so young and happy."

"I'm still happy," the Kid corrected, a bit crossly.

"What songs did they sing then? Show tunes? The rare stuff?"

"No, it wasn't... it wasn't all that gay then, the scene. We didn't have our music mapped out for us. I used to do some wicked parodies, though—pop tunes with fiddled-up lyrics just for us. Can you play 'Mr. Sandman'?"

"I don't know that one."

"A cappella, then."

And the Kid went into his lubricious version of the Chordettes' old hit, to Walt's delight. "Teach me that!" he begged.

They were still at it when Blue breezed in.

"You remember my housemate," the Kid began—but he stopped abruptly at the gladsome familiarity with which Blue and Walt greeted each other.

"Wondered when we'd cross paths some more," said Blue. "Didn't trade no phone numbers, sure, but a good mix like us tends to want to come together somehow or other, you know?"