How Long Has This Been Going On (84 page)

"Do tell."

They order a pitcher and wave over a colleague, a high-energy character big on the 'zine scene, editor in chief of
Boys Just Want to Suck Jock,
one of New York's most adorably ratty homemade newspapers.

"So who're we outing this week?" asks someone.

"If you can't feed me, at least read me," says the editor, passing out copies from his backpack. "Our double-special Gay Pride and New Kids on the Block issue." He wears a baseball cap that reads "Straights to Hell."

"One of our few mainstream pundits down in D.C. did a number on outing a few months ago," says the woman. "He feels that denouncing our own is political suicide."

"Closeted queers who collaborate with homophobes aren't our own," says someone else.

"Hey, politics," says the editor, sitting with them. "I'll take random notes."

"To understand who the enemy is, is to seize the revolutionary moment," says one of the boys.

"Be easier to understand who
ain't
the enemy is," Jezebel remarks.

"Two hundred thousand AIDS deaths," says the woman, "and not a single AIDS assassination. There's something wrong with that statistic."

Screaming noises erupt at the other end of the bar—laughter or anger, hard to tell which.

"'To understand who the enemy is,'" murmurs the editor, taking it down in a tiny notebook.

"I'll say you who the enemy is," Jezebel offers. "I'll give it in plain

English, too. It's this stupid fighting among ourselves, all this boycotting of our own agencies, and schisms within our ranks, and assholes detecting racism with a magnifying glass. We need
leaders! Unity! Clear-cut goals!
We have to be a
national bloc
or
that's all!"

"Fine," says the woman. "Now just tell me—if there were no plague, and women were fighting for a cure for breast cancer, how many men would hit the streets with us?"

"
CURE FOR BREAST CANCER CONSIDERED
," murmurs the editor, scribbling away.

"What do you bet," the woman continues, "that if men got penis cancer all over the place, the entire medical establishment would be working for a cure night and—"

"Don't pull the righteous-sister act on me, do you please," says Jezebel.

"Haven't we had enough angry lesbians on our cases tonight?" says someone else.

"Don't offend my people," says the woman.

"Honey," Jezebel replies, "they're my people, too."

The next afternoon, Tuesday, Henry sits dreaming at his desk in the office of the fifth magazine in his editorial career. It has been a long slide downhill, from the trendy and sophisticated to the eccentrically practical—a hobby-crafts rag catering to the kind of people who erect Victorian bird-houses and open-sided carports in the Sun Belt. Once, Henry was a features editor, chronicling the high life; now he's the copy person, rebuilding decrepit punctuation and clarifying obscure phraseology.

Well, as they say, It's a living—and that's astounding in itself, for Henry spent the 1980s burying people. Six years ago, Jim was nursing Eric through his death, then went home to his parents in Chicago to be cared for in turn. His family didn't want to take him in, and he died in the street. Was it that long ago now? Six years? But I hear him yet. The phone rings, and I think, That's Jim. Why didn't he call me when it happened? He knows—knew—I would have flown out to get him, though the airlines were always shoving P.W.A.s off planes then. And Jim of all people: so prudent, even before the Big Death was identified. How did he get it? And how did I walk through this hail of bullets?

Henry's desk is covered with blueprints and galleys and fresh copy, but he's staring out the window, gliding from memory to memory. Gay Pride Week always affects him enormously, as the countdown of days to the climactic Sunday Parade stimulates his old dreams of contributing to the raising up of a gay nation. Even at direst times, when it feels as if everyone is Positive or dead, Henry still sees the Parade as a day of rebirth, a pageant on the one thing gays have always excelled in, socializing.

It was at the Parade, in 1987, that Henry met Bobby, a good-natured yet dangerous-looking Polish boy from New Jersey who was fascinated by Henry's intellectual take on everything from movies to the importance of junior college in getting a decent job. Bobby was sweet but Bobby had power; Henry, too, was fascinated. They finished off the Parade at the Village fair, packed into the post-fair dancing on the pier, and went to Henry's apartment, where Bobby, on his third beer, admitted that he was "probably gay" but didn't know anything about it, had never even had sex with a man. In fact, he had come to the Parade precisely to, as he put it, "break into this lifestyle thing."

Bobby turned out to be a natural, raw but committed—and, in his appetitive yet loving approach, a blend of Henry's two types, the Wild Boy and the Sweetheart. Carefully hiding his new life from his relations, Bobby became Henry's lover, balancing Henry with his studies and a very full family life at home.

The two years with Bobby were the happiest—well, let's say the most serene—in Henry's romantic career. Never before had he so delighted in the sheer physical appeal of his partner; never had he felt so in control while being swept away. For Bobby, Henry knew that rare love that moves past fine sex and strong emotional support into ecstasy. He didn't mind that he was by far the more involved of the two, that Bobby was, in a way, using him, as a mentor teaching the dos and don'ts of gay life. Henry liked being the know-all. Besides, when Bobby would tell him, "You're neat to talk to because you understand about things," Henry rejoiced—as intellectuals will—that he could have impact on this beautiful beast. And when Bobby left for Los Angeles in late 1988, Henry wept but never blamed. Bobby would drop in on his occasional trips east, and when he walked into Henry's place Henry would hold him and hold him, and Bobby would laugh and pat Henry's back and say, "It's okay, Henry guy. It's okay."

Neatening his desk to check out for the day, Henry thought of himself as the crocodile from
Peter Pan,
haunting the Parade for more of what he had tasted, for another Bobby. Hopeless, of course: Who gets more than one in this life? Anyway, it was all no-fault cruising now for Henry, look but don't touch. Terrified of that mortifying death, Henry had become an onanist, endlessly running porn video and beating off, to drain himself of hunger.

Coming home, Henry pulled off his clothes, grabbed the last of yesterday's Heinekens from the fridge, and turned on the rest of last night's video. A Latino man was fucking a white man who had a huge handlebar mustache; the camera stared at the bottom, on all fours, as he raised his head and calmly stared back. Yes, he seemed to mean, I'm doing this, and nothing on earth—neither law, nor hatred, nor plague—is going to stop me.

If we had only put that energy into our politics, Henry thought, we would have built that gay nation.

Across the river, in a backyard in Brooklyn, a group of old friends is enjoying a barbecue, all straights but for one man, who remarks that the categories of Trivial Pursuit are strangely weighted toward specialized interests. Sports, for instance. Half of the population—women—doesn't follow sports either as history or current event, and gays—

"Come on," says one of the straights. "Sports are part of life. Wallpaper. Everyone knows who... well..."

"Who pitches for the Yankees?" says our gay friend. "I don't."

"History's
the killer," says a woman.

"No, because history is F.D.R. and 1848 and Weimar. It's supposed to be part of our education.
Sports
is the killer, because its inclusion says that we're all supposed to have some take on it, whereas—"

"Well, everyone—"

"No,
not everyone!
Many people don't
know
about it and don't
care
about it! What would you say to a category in musical comedy? Would you know who wrote
Kiss Me, Kate
? Or who played Reno Sweeney and Annie Oakley?"

The straights were mystified. "But nobody knows that stuff," said one of them.

"Nobody I'm friendly with knows about sports. Except you."

"So?"

"You straight men think the whole world is you. What you like is liked. What you know is known. It never occurs to you that there are people on the planet who don't see the world through your eyes."

Everyone's quiet.

Says our gay friend, "You just don't get it. You're so used to yourselves, you don't know that anyone else is there."

* * *

Back in Manhattan, at a Village piano bar during a rendition of "Over the Rainbow," a woman tells her male friend, "I always feel left out when they play this!"

"Are you kidding? This number is
universal!"

"Oh? So how come it's the
gay
national anthem?"

The next morning—Wednesday of this Gay Pride Week, 1991—an old woman makes her way into the offices of the Gay Men's Health Crisis.

"Who do I speak to about this?" she demands, banging an envelope against her open palm. "This disgusting mail you keep sending me. Right here, this... this... I don't want it in my mailbox. I'm not giving you people any money and I'm not taking any more mail from you!"

The woman is imperious, and the G.M.H.C.ers, wanting no problems—that's their problem—take the woman's name and assure her that she'll be pulled from the computer.

"Pulled?" she says. "Computers?"

"You'll never hear from us again."

"Starting when, I'd like to know!"

But hold. A G.M.H.C. officer, told of what's going on at Reception, says, "She
what?"

His co-workers try to calm him.

"She said
what?"
he screams. "And you gave in to her fucking
what?"

Moments later, he is in Reception, screaming at the woman.

"You disgusting stupid bitch!" he explains. "People are dying by the thousands and
you
don't want
mail?"

His colleagues combine to head him off, though the woman, strangely, doesn't seek cover or seem to react in any way.

"I'll give you the fucking
mail"
the man cries, struggling to throw a paperweight at the woman as his friends try to drag him back into the offices. "You screaming stupid
bitch!
You
hating Nazi
dried-up
filth!
Loveless... Let
go
of me, you fucks!
She's
the one you should be after!"

"You'd better leave," a young woman urges the visitor.

"Don't shove
me,"
the old woman cried. "I've had—"

"Move,"
says the young woman, firmly taking the visitor out of the offices, into the elevator, and downstairs to the lobby, where she eyes the old woman and says, "You know when you've taken a really major dump and your ass is
really
browned up?"

The old woman stares at her.

"I mean, when the johnny paper is just
smeared
brown." "You kids must think you own the world!"

"The paper isn't you. The smear isn't you. But think of some freak in the night, rummaging through garbage, tenderly licking up the smear. The freak is you. And if I thought I could get away with it, I'd kick your fucking cunt in. Now, get out of the office building of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, you demented vicious idiot."

The young woman turns and walks away.

Henry's having lunch with one of his former writers—from his feature-editor days—and, suddenly, the guy comes out to Henry. Last year they were closeted; this year they're rigging up for the Green and Orange Party.

"It was Elaine Denslow's books that did it," the writer tells Henry. "She inspired me to... to talk about my life. But you must know about this, don't you?"

"Yes, I—"

"Now I need to hear about the adventures, the
origins."

"It's not that—"

"The back-room bars!"

"Will you
please
?" Henry nearly shouts. "It's a whole life. It's not just fucking."

"Yes, of course. It's Liza Minnelli, too."

"No. No, it's some kid in Racine or Dallas who doesn't know how his or her friends will react when they learn that he or she wants
this
instead of
that.
It's people who have been so lied to that they don't know who they are, and people who have been born to a higher comedy, because growing up having to fake it makes them sharp and sassy."

"Well, you'll like this," says the writer. "Because I figured I was ready to put my byline right out on the gay table for all to see. Maybe try a novel."

Henry made the tiniest of wry faces.

"It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it," said the writer. "Anyway, my agent shopped it around, and one editor—a woman, who should know about prejudice... Well, she says, 'Oh, who cares about a gay novel, it'll be nothing but sex.' Then she adds, 'I certainly hope your author won't call the rest of us "breeders." I hate that habit of reducing people to what they do in bed.'"

Lady, you can go bald at high noon in Macy's window.

* * *

Peter Smith was having a bad week. Both of his part-time waiter jobs fell apart at the same time, he was subsisting on graham crackers and Velveeta, and no way would he be able to make the rent. I could call Johnny and Walt, he thought. Or Lois and Elaine. But I don't want to be known as a flop and a moocher. I don't want them to lose their faith in me.

Some of my readers might call this pride, as if naming a sin; but it's just a desire to retain one's self-respect. Peter's roommate, an unassuming—all right, dreary—man who worked in the billing department of Roosevelt Hospital, said that if "things didn't improve" for Peter it would really be necessary for him to move out by Sunday, it really, really would. Peter agreed, thinking, Something's got to come through by then.