The Lure (30 page)

The familiar drawl drew Noel long before he located its source—then there he was, Little Larry, arms akimbo, a smile on his face, leaning against a subway steel girder. “What’s up?” Then, as Noel didn’t answer, “Where you going, man?”

“Who knows.”

“Oh-oh. We don’t sound happy tonight, no, sir. Hey, how come you’re not with your new friends tonight?”

“It’s my night off.”

“Me, too. Take the local. We’ll go raise hell in the Village.”

“I don’t know. I think it would just depress me.”

“Get high. Get laid. That’s the way to come up again.”

“I just did. That’s the problem.”

“Oh, yeah. Do tell. But over a drink at the Grip,” Larry said, closer now, moving away from the platform edge as the local pulled into the station.

Noel stepped in with Larry and out again a minute or two later on Christopher Street, beginning to tell Larry what had just happened with Mirella.

Vitale was sympathetic and Noel was too full of it to keep it to himself, so he let Little Larry worm the whole business out of him as they walked the half dozen blocks to the Grip.

There they ordered drinks and found a fairly quiet spot.

“It’s clear to me what your problem is,” Larry said, leaning cockily against the bar, and looking over the crowd. “Jesus! What a shitty crowd tonight. Trolls. Dragons. Lizards. Things that go squish in the night. Ecch! Hiya, Tom! Casper.”

“They’re playing
One Night Affair,
” Noel said, realizing the song was on again, as if in mockery. “Well? What’s your great elucidation?”

“Strange as it may sound, I think you are a true bisexual. Like Buddy here. Hey, Bud, help me pick up Noel’s spirits. He’s in the dumps ’cause he just balled some chick to the moon, and never came himself.”

“Stop using so much coke,” Vega said, leaning over the bar. “It numbs up everything.”

“I didn’t use any coke,” Noel said, half bothered by the sudden exposure of his private life.

“But you
have
been using it. Up at…well, you know where.”

“That’s not the problem!” Larry interrupted. “Are you going to listen? As I said before, here you are this exotic breed, the true bisexual. And you made a simple error tonight of getting pussy when you wanted cock. That’s all.”

“Whaaat?” Noel wouldn’t buy it.

“Speaking of which,” Vega said, “Randy was in looking for you tonight.”

“Christ! That’s all I need,” Noel said.

“Let me put it this way,” Larry went on. “Let’s say you’re in the mood for Chinese food tonight, right? But the only Chinese restaurant is closed. The only place that’s open serves pizza. Now pizza is fine, wonderful, right? But when you order the pizza and eat it, it just isn’t as good as it usually is. Why? Because you wanted Chinese food! Very simple! You have to get laid the right way tonight. You’ll rebalance your moods and your desires and feel terrific!”

“You’re so full of shit I can’t stand it,” Noel said. But he felt better for having talked about it, and amused by Larry’s advice.

Little Larry seemed about to be taking his own advice. He turned to a tousle-haired, farm-boy type next to him, and began a very heavy come-on. Noel was surprised when Vega leaned over the bar and whispered:

“He might be right. At any rate, it’s nothing to get hysterical over.”

“I’m not hysterical.”

“You were when you walked in. Calm down, will you.”

Noel stared at Vega until Buddy moved away to serve a customer. It’s easy enough for you to say, Noel wanted to shout. You’ve been sleeping with guys since you were fourteen. You found out early. Like Larry, who’d told Noel he’d found out when he was twelve. But at twenty-eight! Twenty-eight, damn it, never once suspecting, this of all possible futures lay ahead.

It was easy enough for Vega with his easygoing Caribbean upbringing, playing with other boys in the mangrove patches, then going for a dive in some clear pool or tropical beach. That at least was natural, meaningful. It was not like seven years of being with Monica, after a childhood and adolescence where everyone agreed you could be crippled, aphasiac, mentally retarded, and you were still better off than being—queer. The stupid jokes in locker rooms, the epithets—“faggot, girly, fag, queer, queen, cocksucked”—aimed to sting worse then any others. The occasional glimpses of real queers at a bowling alley or movie theater—limp-wristed, swaying, slim, lisping, effeminate-acting, garishly dressed fifties queens. And only one glimpse was necessary to see they were a breed apart, to be shunned, despised, as though they carried a terrifying disease.

Of course one or two of his high school classmates turned out to be homosexual. But he’d been so attached to Monica and so distant from anyone but her and her friends that when those old friends were thought of at all, it was as people who’d selected an unconventional way of life that barred them from the real felicities: marrying, having babies, being with other couples, and having good times.

Then he’d begun to teach in the Village and that attitude, and the terminology, changed. “Gay” was the term—gay clubs, gay dances, gay demonstrations, gay this and gay that.

Faggot! You can’t whistle you know, if you’re a queer. Wear green on Thursdays; it’s a symbol, it’s a sign. Hanging out in showers, looking at another guy, or worse touching him even by accident, and you’re queer, a fairy. Don’t brag about the girls you made it with—faggot! Hey, man, let’s go knock down some fags, beat the shit out of them. Yeah! Or better still, let’s not!
Comment ça.
The Third Sex. The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name. Urnings. Perverts. Queer as a three-dollar hill. I don’t want my son to grow up to be a sissy! Isn’t my boy a real little man? You don’t mean you’re one of them!

“Twenty-eight fucking years of programming. And today I am the victim of my own damn acquiescence in it.”

“What’s that, Mac?” Someone next to Noel asked

“Nothing.”

“Well?” Larry said, turning to Noel. “Are we going?”

“Where?”

“Uptown. To trash.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Vega said.

“Who asked you?” Larry shot back.

“Look at him! He’s in no condition…”

“He’ll never be in a better condition. You got a customer, Mr. Vega,” Larry added, and watched satisfied as Buddy moved off.

“I thought you were working on someone,” Noel said to Larry. He half resented Vega’s interference.

“Later for him. I’m hungry for Chinese food, baby. Pizza won’t do. Let’s go.”

“I don’t know.”

“Here, take this, it’ll put you in a sleazy mood.”

Noel looked at the big, flat, white tablet Larry handed him. It was scored on one side, marked on the other 704.

“You’re kidding. A Quaalude will put me to sleep.”

“A half won’t. Take half now, the other when we get there. Go on,” he commanded, “do it. It’ll put you in a sleazy mood.”

Larry almost did it for Noel, but finally Noel took half the pill and washed it down with a slug of beer. Larry disappeared into the increasingly crowded barroom, and Noel hung out at the bar, finishing the beer, until he could no longer clearly revolve in his mind his own despair as the Quaalude began to take effect, relaxing him, making him begin to forget his despondency. Soon the rhythms of the music from the Wurlitzer seemed all pervading.

“Let’s go,” Larry said, suddenly at his side. He steered Noel out the door, and they began walking uptown along West Street.

The hard yellow glare of the streetlights reflected off the metal buttressing of the closed-to-traffic West Side Highway. Little Larry talked dirty from the moment they left the Grip, wrapping one of Noel’s arms over his shoulder, half dancing along on the sidewalk. Noel didn’t mind. For the first time today he felt okay, the half Quaalude took off all the edges, softened everything, making walking effortless, as though he were on a moving sidewalk.

After a few blocks, Larry lighted up a joint, and they took turns smoking it. “You’re going to like this place.”

The grass added a slight twist to every one of Noel’s perceptions—still peaceful, but a bit off center, like going down what seemed a really high curbstone across acres of street, and up again, climbing a hill to the other curbstone.

This intersection looked familiar. Why?

He stopped and looked around. Then he saw it—the abandoned Federal House of Detention. Its grilled-over windows, the garbage thrown against its walls, broken glass on the sidewalk, the big front doors solidly locked against junkies and kids. Noel hadn’t been there since that dread March morning. Now he looked away. It was just an old building, after all.

But he had to check across the street, too, under the highway. Sure enough, there it was, the warehouse where it had all begun. Even it had lost its foreboding and mystery. Even it was ridiculous. He began to laugh at how ridiculous, laughing so hard he couldn’t get the words out to explain to Larry, and so he contented himself laughing as they walked past it, until Larry hushed him, whispering that they were at Le Pissoir.

Membership was required to get in, but the doorman knew Larry, and somehow knew that Noel was part of the “family” as he said, waving them inside.

In the big, red-painted elevator, Larry began to play with Noel, who didn’t bother to resist, nor even much care, even though two other hot-looking dudes also in the elevator couldn’t take their eyes off what Larrry was doing.

The doors opened to a burst of funky music and deep red lighting. It took Noel a minute to see a large loft room with bare walls, plank floors, to the left a simple stand-up bar, a bit brighter, with a few guys standing, drinking. Other rooms were visible beyond this one in both directions, shadowy figures stalking through them. Aside from the music, which wasn’t even as loud as in the Grip, there was no noise, except for what once or twice sounded like a gruff command from a room behind the bar.

Noel immediately ordered a beer and dropped the second half of the Quaalude without being told to. Larry began talking to the bartender and Noel leaned against the bar and tried to get his bearings in the darkness.

Before he had, a man came out of one of the rooms and stood in front of him, saying something that Noel didn’t understand. Tall and fair-haired, he was naked except for a double-wrapped chain around his waist, and a leather bracelet on each wrist. He was well muscled, his body oiled to gleam in the red lights. Two little metal rods had been stuck through his nipples. As Noel watched, the man flexed his pectoral muscles and the little rods jumped. He began to laugh. The man reached out and took Noel’s hand and showed him how to twist the rods sideways. Noel pulled his hand back and turned around to the bar. Behind him, the man whispered something; Noel turned around and threw his beer at the guy: a thin curtain of it flew out, covering the man from head to toe. He stood still, then fell on his knees and began kissing Noel’s shoes until, disgusted, Noel kicked him away. He backed off saying what sounded like, “Thank you, master, thank you,” until Noel turned back to the bar and Little Larry.

“Looks like you made a friend.”

“What a creep.”

“You’ll find more like that in there,” Larry pointed behind the bar. “That’s for the pros: S and M, water sports, scat, fists, pain, the works. I think you’d better check the other one. People are apt to be a bit more affectionate.”

“How can you see anyone?”

“You can. Don’t worry. Have a good time.”

“Where are you going?” Noel asked, aware that his words were coming out slowly, slurred.

“Into the romper room.”

Noel remained at the bar watching shadows pass and suddenly coalesce in doorways. Two guys next to him progressed from necking to heavy petting into full sex, their shirts came off, their pants dropped. Noel made room for them. Someone else nearby ordered a beer, and began rubbing his crotch, while staring at Noel. Others gathered to watch the two men make love. Noel moved again. The bartender, an attractive bearded fellow Noel had seen before in the Grip, was having his nipples bitten by a patron leaning over the bar. Over the speaker system Noel heard words that he first thought were song lyrics. It was repeated, clearly a man’s voice saying, “Back bar, got a guy here who’ll take care of that bloated kidney for you.”

The room was filling up, forcing Noel farther from the bar. Every face around him seemed an archetypal image of luxury, sin, eroticism, temptation, lust: eyes shining, hungry; lips wetly open; tongues lolling sensuously; bodies gliding to focus now on a shoulder, now on a well-developed chest in the shifting red light.

Despite his haziness from the drugs, Noel determined to get out. As he reached the elevator, the doors opened. A rush of people massed toward one room, carrying Noel with them.

He seemed to enter a bubble. He could still hear the music, but muted, subsumed in a sough of sliding, rubbing sound, as of many bodies in constant motion. Hands reached out, touching him lightly, tentatively, and as he turned away from them, he moved into other hands, other bodies, stroking, caressing. Then he was floating along, slowly turning, bodies sliding against him, hands more forceful now, someone opening a shirt button, someone else unzipping him, someone else lifting his shirt from behind, a hand slipping down the back of his trousers. All the while he was moving, revolving through the mass of bodies, until he saw a face near him that looked familiar, kind, and hands reached out for him.