Faggots Read online

  The straight and narrow, so beloved of our founding fathers and all fathers thereafter, is now obviously and irrevocably bent. What is God trying to tell us…?

  There will be seven disco openings this holiday weekend. Though the premier palais de dance, Billy Boner’s Capriccio, is closing tonight for the season so that Billy can open The Ice Palace at Cherry Grove, its closest competitor, Balalaika, run by the inseparable Patty, Maxine, and Laverne, will remain open, to cater to the hot-weather crowd on those weekends they don’t make it to Fire Island.

  Everyone wonders which of the newcomers will be the first to go under, because, ignorant of the above vital statistics, the fear is there’s not enough business to go round.

  On Saturday evening opens The Toilet Bowl. But that’s meant to be more than a disco.

  Later, it would be recollected as the False Summer. Everything had bloomed too quickly. Fire Island, this Memorial Day, would be like the Fourth of July. Too much too soon. Everyone was caught in the never-never land of City? Capriccio? The Tubs? Balalaika? The Pits? The Toilet Bowl? Fire Island? All cups runneth over. The weather was no help either—the glorious summer sun now obviously out to stay—and thus useless in defining and dictating destinations and activities, as it usually did when cold meant dancing and very cold meant television, joints, and bed.

  And here it was only May.

  …Is there indeed a God who would understand such as:

  “Baby, I want you to piss all over me!”

  Fred Lemish had never urinated on anything before, except perhaps some country grass late at night when he was drunk and no one was looking.

  “Or let me piss on you!”

  This Fred Lemish had never allowed.

  Fred stood there helplessly. Why was he inert in a moment requiring action? The guy wasn’t bad-looking. Should Fred enter, or walk away?

  “Or fuck my friend and I’ll suck your come out of his asshole.”

  This suggestion Fred recognized as “felching.” Was he interested in joining a felcher?

  “Or I could tie you up. Or you could tie us up. Or either one of us. Or anything else your cock desires!”

  The man certainly offered a range of choices. Should Fred? Shouldn’t Fred?

  “Are you into shit?”

  Fred shouldn’t.

  Why was he even hesitating, Fred asked himself, instead of just walking on? Because he was horny, that’s why, and this guy looked better than anybody else, there not being many here this afternoon anyway, and he wanted to get it over with and leave. That’s why. And he had not seen Dinky Adams in three weeks, six days, and, checking his Rolex Submariner, which he never took off, sixteen hours. That’s why, too. OK, he thought, what does this man want of me? Or since the man had offered the plethora of suggestions, what would Fred be capable of doing with this man? Piss and shit he wasn’t up to, though the former intrigued him, God strike him dead. It would, however, not be difficult, Fred decided, stepping in ever so casually, no commitment, only a look, to fuck the friend, who had an attractive and perfectly rounded set of white buttocks, lying just right down there, staring up at him, saying Hello.

  But then Fred became unsettled—for he now looked closer at the first chap, the chunky one who had propositioned him into the cubbyhole of a space, and noted that chunky was more akin to fat and that what had at three feet appeared to be well-formed pecs (so important), at two feet were revealed as sagging tits, a definite turnoff, mini-udders, no doubt from years of being chewed and tugged. This man was also now mumbling, almost as a litany, “…my friend’s a good slave, he’s a good slave…,” an additional turnoff, Fred not, at this moment, drawn toward bondage either, and our Hero, rendered further into indecision by third thoughts, and fourth and fifth ones too, began to wonder if he might be sick if Master did as advertised, polished everything off by protruding his tongue into Slave’s rectum to felch.

  Yet here Fred was, viewing the Slave on the bed. He wondered, too, what it was like to be a Slave.

  The Slave remained prone and silent, up-ended, as any good slave must obviously remain.

  “What do you usually do on a Friday?” the Master asked, massaging Fred’s cock.

  “Huh? Unh, go dancing later. Capriccio’s closing party tonight.”

  “Good-looking fellow like you…nice-sized dick…bet everybody’s after you. Bet you’ll still be here.”

  “Nah.”

  “Dancing, eh? I’ll bet you’re a wonderful dancer. Great-looking legs you’ve got.” The Master massaged Fred’s great-looking legs. “I call dancing fairy sports. Fairy sports is our athletics.”

  This made Fred laugh.

  “No, seriously. Dancing is sports for faggots. We’re the best at it. And there’s no win or lose. No competition. No being last guy chosen in gym.” He began to suck Fred’s cock.

  Fred figured he might as well stay. As long as he was here.

  The Everhard Baths on West 19th Street was owned by a syndicate of businessmen and not by the Firemen’s Benevolent Athletic League, as rumored—a rumor obviously and happily encouraged by management so that the boys would feel safe. The building, not dissimilar to bath houses the world over, of whatever persuasion, was large and ugly, barrel-vaulted beneath and corridored above. It contained what no one boasted was the first heated swimming pool in New York, or anywhere else, at this moment a little too fetid for everyday use, as were the entire premises, though Murray, the night manager, in response to inquiries why the place was always dirty, claimed, with facts and figures rushing round above his head, that attendance fell off after a thorough cleaning.

  Diamond Drew Everard (the “h” was added for business reasons when the place went obviously gay in the Swinging Sixties), had been a beer baron who needed a congenial place to soak out for the last half of the last century, so he bought this old church and converted. “Congenial” came to mean more than that along around 1920 (then as now a three-star, “worthy of a detour,” national shrine in the faggot Michelin), though undoubtedly itineraries were a bit more covert in 1920 than they are today. The genealogy found the premises passed along over the years to Tammanys, Piping Rock sportsmen taking a flyer, several members of the cloth (both ecclesiastical and judicial), even a madam and her girls, all looking for a quiet turn on their investment. Up at bat now was this syndicate, one William Boner in the saddle, which evidently kept the policemen on the beat most happy with regular contributions to the Church of the Most Precious Blood, since many plaques attested to same and no harassment, which is no small feat for a business netting six million dollars cash on the barrel for providing like with like, statutorily illegal in this city and this country and this time—but there you have it, ipso facto again.

  While he fucked the Slave, hoping all the while that Master would watch only and not give vent, Fred attempted to remember his decisions:

  Had he not decided to write about a Voyage of Discovery into this World in which he lived? This Faggot World.

  Had he not—just three months ago, as they both sat perched and observing from the edge of Capriccio’s dance floor, watching the passing throngs—quoted to his good friend Gatsby (Tall, Blond, Handsome, Fred’s Trinity, Fred’s Robert Redford, intelligent, witty, and wise, another trinity, yes, everything Fred always wanted in a lover, though Gatsby was not interested) from the Penguin Companion to Literature, European: “‘The Stendhalian hero refuses any form of authority that would impinge on his personal liberty, and in defiance of both good sense and history, sets out to remake the universe in his own image.’”

  Gatsby, who had received this name at Princeton because he was from St. Paul, Minnesota, and wanted to be a writer, and who was now, at thirty-three, at last beginning his novel, which he described as “an exercise in self-loathing,” and whose proposed theme was “how can two guys who don’t like themselves ever let anyone else like themselves and hence be available for love?” (though he agreed with Fred that one must not abandon hope, which, with intelligence, just m
ight work), had pooh-poohed: “There you go again, Lemish. You govern your emotions to fit the scene just like everyone else. You want to be a part of things and go to all the parties and disco openings and Fire Island and have a lover more than anyone I know. Don’t give me that Artist/Hero-as-Outsider shit.”

  “Not true. ‘Alienation, however, does not lead our hero out of society, but deeper into it, for he is impelled by a curiosity to know, down to the smallest detail, the corrupt world that he wishes to escape. Concealing his opposition, he takes part in the intrigue of his day with the secret aim of proving to himself, by the very falseness of his conduct, the distance that separates him from his contemporaries.’ Story of my current life.”

  “Smoke screens, Lemish! More of your smoke screens. All you want is Love. And if you’ve wanted love so badly, why haven’t you had it? Does not that say something about The Wanter, not his World?”

  And Fred Lemish, courtesy of twenty-one years of assorted forms of therapy, recently terminated, store open for business, proudly answered: “We’ll see. World watch out! The Wanter is Ready!”

  Had he not decided, Yes!, that as a writer and citizen/person/liver-in-the-here-and-now he must experience, or at least witness, Everything to the fullest? (go ahead, Master, piss on me!), if he was to be the Christopher Columbus, or was it the Amerigo Vespucci, certainly the James Boswell of his faggot world, if he wanted Abe Bronstein to produce his eventual script about this world, for all the rest of the world to see, the first respectable faggot movie, perhaps they could get Brando (though lately he was too fat) to play a role, with Paul Newman, together again, pretending it was real, perhaps, come to think of it, they were both too old, better use Redford and McQueen, oh, weren’t they all too old…where were the Newies?…; and while he was so investigating, witnessing, experiencing, could he not also be proving how he and Dinky were Making It, were falling in love, also for all the world to see, two intelligent homosexuals, not running, like every other faggot, when appeared the first bump in the road, proving that It Could Be Done?!

  “What you want, Tante, doesn’t exist,” his best friend, Anthony Montano, who was married to his position as Vice President and Creative Director, in charge of the Winston Man, at Heiserdiener-Thalberg-Slough, had said to Fred just last week as they were leaving the Probe Cinema on Times Square after viewing Twenty Cocks Over Tokyo. “Buy a dog. Dogs are faggot children.”

  “Nonsense. It is possible for two intelligent men to be turned on to each other in totality: emotionally, physically, and intellectually. Though I am about to become middle-aged, I shall not become a bitchy, middle-aged queen. I shall not turn sour.”

  “I tell you, buy a dog.” Anthony did not like to explore subterranean problems.

  Fred persisted: “All I want is someone who reads books, loves his work, and me, too, of course, and who doesn’t take drugs, and isn’t on unemployment.”

  “And who reads and appreciates, preferably in the original Dostoyevsky and Proust, plus is a good cook and a faithful lover and kisses you a lot and is terrific in bed. Plus being Hot and gorgeous.”

  “What’s wrong with that? It seems a perfectly acceptable and desirable fantasy.”

  “You’re in the wrong country. Go around the world. Take the Geography Cure.”

  “Sprinkle isn’t much of a kisser,” Fred said, referring to Anthony’s lover, whom Fred, naturally, didn’t like or think good enough for his best friend. “Where is he, by the way?”

  “Visiting his mother. He’s trying the Mother Cure. Where’s Dinky?”

  “Dodger, his lodger, says any day now.”

  “Fred, they don’t want us. We just don’t know how to play. How to pretend. They’re all out there playing. Sometimes they’re Cliffs and sometimes they’re Cecilias, but they’re playing, and all we are is Fred and Anthony. Who would want me? I want to play house, too. I’m hungry, possessive, insecure, successful, a dissatisfied bubby. I’d run from me. Become a martyr to your work. Work is the only thing that matters.”

  “You are a martyr to your work. You work twenty-five hours a day at a job you don’t even like. What has it got you? You don’t even have time to get laid. Anyway, faggots don’t want to know about success. It reminds them of what they’re evading. I spent years becoming a success; when I tell a trick I wrote Sleep, it freaks them out. They either run away or start treating me like an old man.”

  “No, no, we’re the evaders. Nothing’s good enough for us. Work is the only thing that matters. Life is a compromise. I’m going to become straight. It’s not possible for two men to get it together.” Anthony pulled his raincoat on and tugged the belt tightly.

  And Fred, who would not accept these opinions of his friends, and who, with Anthony, never wished to delve into why they weren’t lovers—Fred told himself Anthony’s hairy body bothered him, and Anthony told himself Fred was too much like Anthony—and who, now, would shortly have his Dinky Adams back and in his arms, said: “No, Tante, it’s definitely time for love!”

  Fred was close to coming when he felt the trickle of warm piss. It splashed upon his back. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t do that,” he muttered, now trying to come quickly.

  “You like it! You like it!” the Master yelled, his stream now waterfalling.

  “I’m coming! I’m coming!” Fred felt called on to announce.

  “Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” The Slave now uttered at last.

  “I’m coming…!”

  “Give me all your gism, baby! Pile drive that ramrod cock right through my brain!”

  Fred, closer, tried his damnedest to comply.

  “I feel that come inside me, baby! I feel it! I feel you! Fill ’er up! Fuck me to the moon!” The Slave had turned most verbal.

  He and Fred flapped together in split-splats against the now drenched mattress. Then Fred quickly jumped up, disengaging, grabbed his towel, and tried to leave.

  “I haven’t sucked you out yet!” the Master/Pisser pleaded.

  Fred ran out of the cubicle, not listening as Master apologized to Slave: “It’s all right, honey, I’ll find you another one.”

  Fred headed for the showers below.

  Some hero, he thought.

  Fred Lemish was thirty-nine years old. He was single, still, though for many years he had claimed to want a lover. He had had one or two before, perhaps nine or ten; he often had trouble defining precisely what constituted a lover and not just a trick he had turned a number of times, even allowing for a tendency toward attempted reconstructions on Just Good Fucks or root-canal work on Vacation Romances Best Left Where Found. But, by any definition, none had lasted beyond a vague introductory offer. He usually blamed it on the other fellow and still maintained that he was alone against his will.

  Fred had a hairy chest, wide shoulders, at last a thirty-inch waist, after years of a slight inner tube of fat amidships, “love handles,” where new introductions so annoyingly always placed their hands, casually, in greeting, in reality only prospecting the land beneath the shirt to judge how hard the terrain, and hence how desirable, before walking away, never to be heard from again, if the merchandise was too soft, too excessive, which, in Fred’s case, it had until recently been, plus those sturdy legs, an embarrassing liability as a child (what other kid had fully formed calves like cantaloupes at ten?), now at last accepted for the muscular bonus they were, along with that hairy chest, now also useful as a marketable difference, which the same childhood of being the only King Kong among years of hairless Greek-statued schoolmates had not allowed, plus the requisite mustache, now, alas, mingling black hair with strokes of gray, and, also alas, the small but growing bald spot on the crown of his dark head, which no amount of Head Start Vitamins with the Mysterious Ingredients or Hair Trigger Program Formula 6 available by mail from I. Magnin in Beverly Hills and applied nightly with a hot towel and left steaming on the scalp for twenty minutes followed by a glass of warm milk and two additional capsules of minerals essential to the roots’ natural growth had alleviat
ed. He had briefly attempted to camouflage the mustache and temples with Revlon’s Fabulash—recommended in California by Frigger, he of the rock-hard barrel chest and construction-worker arms and the witty one-liners and the infallible gift of his mouth always winning at “Come Into My Parlor,” a good friend he later discovered to have tricked with Feffer on that very day Feffer had returned to Fred for their second attempt at Togetherness—the aroma from which, not to mention the resultant turgidity, he found sufficiently unpleasant to discontinue the effort.

  He belonged to two gyms and attended them regularly, alternating them to avoid monotony. At Sheridan Square (“The Magnificent Obsession”) Health Club, also known as “Bodyworks (but the mind doesn’t),” he could muscle-build close to home with the Village faggots, a serious lot much concerned with hyperbolic results to parade on Christopher Street, though they and their conversations (everyone was “she” or “Mary” and various were the opinions on opera, recipes, and yard goods) were a bit too bitchy-queeny for Fred’s taste; to him they all connoted creeping, crepuscular middle-aged dissatisfaction, on the road to leather and other arcane sexual deviances sacrosanct to the unloved, and he still had hope, if not their over-muscled definition. Most of the time he used the 63rd Street West Side Y, jauntily known as the biggest gay bar in town (and much kickier than the Y’s at 23rd or 47th Streets), and here he joined fellow quipsters, a jolly, congenial lot, many of them now good friends: Frigger, when he was in from L.A.; Gatsby; energetic Tarsh; the Divine Bella; the city’s famous lovers, Josie and Dom Dom; Fallow the dapper; Mikie, the thirty-four-year-old flower child; sweet Bo Peep—for his three-mile jog and his hour of serious weight-lifting.

  And how his muscles had appeared! His body reacted, his pecs and lats and delts took form, his love handles diminished (Frigger’s suggestion of the Waist Sweater had worked!), his stomach tightened, he even had obliques! He’d now entered that fatless state of being in Great Shape, certainly better shape than any of his straight friends (how many of them worked out seven days a week?), and all was now obviously ready at last to lead on to consummation with Mr. Right. All those years of chunkery—was it to keep love away? For, if a faggot bartered with his body, hadn’t he best get his wampum in order?