Cockeyed (2 page)

“He’s pulling your leg,” Malanowski said chortling. “Hunny is basically levelheaded.”

Somebody in the room started chanting, “No, he’s not!” and others picked it up. “No, he’s not! No, he’s not…!”

Then they all cheered as Hunny said, “I’m gonna act just as grown-up as America’s all-time favorite billionaire, which means wherever I go there’s gonna be a Pontiac under everybody’s seat from now on!”

Timmy said, “Uh oh.”

Suddenly looking a little more sober, Malanowski said,

“Hunny is well known for being generous, and I’m sure he will continue that. But in a kind of organized way. Maybe like Paul Newman. A foundation or whatever.”

“Artie, luv, you are
my
Paul Newman,” Hunny crooned, and planted a big wet kiss on Malanowski’s cheek. “And I’m your Bea Arthur!”

“Hunny, Paul Newman wasn’t married to Bea Arthur.”

“Yes, he was!” Hunny insisted, and another chant broke out all around the room — “Yes, he was! Yes, he was!” — before
6 Richard Stevenson

trailing away into raucous laughter.

The TV reporter asked, “How long have you two been a couple? I get the impression it’s been quite some time you’ve been together.”

“Oh, girl!” Hunny sang out, waving his arm and flinging an inch of cigarette ash onto the reporter’s blue jacket. “Arthur and I have been lovebirds since before
you
were even born. We’re not actually legally married, what with the State of New York still futzing around on the subject of gay marriage. But the reality of the situation is, we are already
so
married — the way we depend on each other and all — that we could give a rat’s ass what all those closet queen politicians do or don’t do.”

“But we would like to make it legal,” Malanowski said. “Just to show that we’re as good as anybody else.”

“And to make sure you’re in Hunny’s will,” somebody yelled, but this produced only scattered guffaws.

“Well,” the reporter said gamely, “like a lot of married couples, you two do seem to have quite a bit in common.”

“You bet we do,” Hunny said. “For example, we both like having buckets of money drop out of nowhere all of a sudden, ha ha ha!”

Malanowski added, “You bet we both like money. After all,”

he sang, almost in tune, “mon-ey makes the world go ‘round…

the world go ‘round…the world go ‘round…”

There were cheers again, and Hunny added, “Money, yes, you bet, but don’t forget boys! Boys, boys, boys!”

This led to more applause and then cries of “Bring on the boys! Where are the boys?”

Somebody yelled, “Put the twins on TV! Let’s get a little of the twins!”

The large black man reappeared in a voluminous pink satin blouse, and this time he was guiding the two identical youths wearing wAnt soMe? T-shirts into the center of the scene.

Hunny welcomed them by wrapping his arms around them and CoCkeyed
7

bellowing, “Everybody meet Tyler and Schuyler. These are our pool boys! Aren’t they
adorable
?”

The two comely lads stood looking goggle-eyed and twitchy, and plainly under the influence of a controlled substance.

The reporter was beginning to look uncomfortable now and glanced off to the side, maybe at her producer. She said to Hunny

— and then immediately looked as if she wished she hadn’t said it — “But you don’t have a swimming pool, do you, Hunny?”

“The boys may have misplaced it. They’re easily distracted,”

Hunny said, and this elicited a mixture of laughter and boos around the room. Tyler and Schuyler gawked into the camera.

“Anyway,” Art said, “maybe we’ll have a pool put in tomorrow.

The Luntzes, up the street, have an aboveground pool, and we know there’s room for one of those out back.”

“We have to wait until we actually get our hands on the money,” Hunny explained. “We’ve decided on the lump sum of a billion dollars instead of one billion, eight-hundred-seventy-two million spread out over twenty years. I mean, I could croak in three years and so could the freakin’ state of New York.”

“I understand,” the reporter said, “that the Lottery Commission is actually paying out nearly two billion dollars so that even after taxes you will still end up with an entire billion dollars.”

“Hey, does Warren Buffet pay his own taxes?” Hunny asked.

“Not on your life.”

“We’re going to get the check on Friday,” Art said. “They’re going to present it to us on
The Today Show.
Isn’t that fabulous?

They probably don’t remember that about ten years ago when we went down to hold up a sign on Hunny’s birthday, he got arrested for mooning Al Roker.”

“I wasn’t
arrested
,” Hunny insisted. “I was just locked in an office until the show was over. And anyway the security guard

— one of the biggest queens I ever saw wearing a uniform —

that big black ol’ Miss Mary Mary Quite Contrary told me that Al thought it was pretty funny, and the problem was tight-assed
8 Richard Stevenson

Katie Couric.”

Timmy said, “We have to put this on the calendar. Friday morning at seven.”

“Maybe we should have a few people over.”

The Channel 13 reporter didn’t look as eager as Timmy and I were to witness this groundbreaking media event, and also she appeared to be receiving signals from somewhere to wind up the interview.

Before she could speak, though, the screen suddenly went black. A few seconds later one of the anchors on the studio news set appeared and said, “Well, it looks like we’ve lost Tiffany.”

“Yes,” said his female colleague, “But wasn’t that fascinating?”

Looking unsure of how to respond — even this codger seemed to understand that
hint of mint
cracks were a thing of the past — the anchor simply nodded and moved on to the house fires and convenience store holdups that somebody at the TV station thought the people of New York State’s capital region needed to know about.

“Uncle Hunny asked for trouble, and he got it,” Nelson Van Horn said, indicating the man slouched in a chair across from me. “You just cannot live the life my uncle’s led and not have chickens coming home to roost by the dozens — by the hundreds, for heaven’s sake! And it certainly doesn’t help when you go on television and flaunt your irresponsible lifestyle, and at the same time you’re practically wearing a sign that says thReAten Me, bLACkMAiL Me, exPLoit Me. Uncle Hunny,” Nelson went on, shaking his head with exasperation, “what in God’s name did you
expect
was going to happen when you said all those idiotic things about giving away millions of dollars? Especially considering all the incredibly sleazy people you’ve chosen to associate with over the years?”

Art Malanowski was seated next to Hunny looking much more subdued than he’d been on Channel 13 Wednesday night or on
The Today Show
on Friday. It was Saturday morning now, and the three men were not just tense and unhappy but also wilting in the tropical heat of my Central Avenue office. The air conditioner was on the fritz again, and I had the window above the useless unit propped open with my twenty-year-old bicycle pump, itself no longer operable.

“Nelson, don’t you talk to
me
about sleazy!” Hunny shot back.

“Girl, you had just better watch your tongue when it comes to sleaze, what with you working for those Wall Street rip-off artists who practically made the whole economy of the country crash down on everybody’s head but yourselves. If you calling my friends sleazy isn’t the pot calling the kettle un-ironed chiffon, I don’t know what is.”

“Uncle Hunny, let’s have a reality check here. Can we just do that? First of all, Livingston Brothers is one of the most conservative investment concerns in the country, and we have been injured by the current downturn just like every other
10 Richard Stevenson

financial institution. Badly off as we are for the moment, we have few personal regrets down on State Street. Secondly, it is
you
whose past is finally catching up with you. Good grief, why would we even be sitting here talking to a detective if you hadn’t been so totally reckless and irresponsible, chasing after all those seedy characters for all those years. And you
still
don’t know how to control yourself.” Nelson looked at me and said, “Did you catch Uncle Hunny on
The Today Show
yesterday?”

I said I had.

“Well, you tell me, Don. Did Uncle Hunny do himself any good — or the cause of gay rights or gay marriage any good —

by complimenting Matt Lauer on his ‘nice basket’?”

Hunny and Art looked at each other, grinned and gave each other a fist bump. “For goodness’ sakes, I thought we were already off the air,” Hunny said, and then he and Art started giggling all over again.

The nephew, a carefully toned, attentively groomed man in his early forties, sighed heavily and said to me, “So you can see what we’re up against.”

I said, “Matt Lauer seemed to take the comment in stride. It isn’t clear he even knew what your uncle meant.”

“Oh, girl, he
knew
,” Hunny piped up.

Art added, “Don’t you believe, dearie, that that was the first time anybody ever said something nice about his bulge to Missy Matt Lauer. And everybody knows about the casting couch at NBC. Do you think those people on those shows get those jobs just on their looks?”

“Brian Williams, Alex Trebek, Chris Matthews, Perry Como back in the old days — they all had to put out,” Hunny said and mimed an act of fellatio.

“Do you see what I mean?” Nelson said to me disgustedly. “Is it any wonder that somebody on Moth Street cut the Channel 13

cable the other night with an ax, presumably to shut my out-of-control uncle up?”

CoCkeyed
11

“Nelson,” Hunny said, “them thar was outside agitators that chopped up the TV line. None of Arty’s and my neighbors feel that way about us or would do such a thing on the night of my lifetime achievement award. Well, maybe the Brownlees. Or the Haneses. Or Peter Petengill. They all hate our guts. Or Evelyn Seltzer.”

“Possibly the Fromes,” Art mused additionally.

“Now you are making my point for me,” Nelson said to his uncle. “Some people just do not appreciate your flamboyant personalities and have it in for you. They don’t like the constant sexual innuendos, and they don’t at all like the activities that everybody thinks go on behind those innuendos.”

“It is true,” Hunny said, “that some people think it’s tacky pulling college boys’ underpants down as often as possible and enjoying a nice gobble. But certainly
you
are not one of those narrow-minded people, Nelson.”

“Ho!” Nelson rolled his eyes. “If
only
they were col ege boys.”

I said, “So, are you also gay, Nelson?”

“Yes, I am. There seems to be one of those genes jumping around in the Van Horn family. But it’s one thing to be gay and it’s another thing entirely to make a sorry, obscene spectacle of yourself, and your family, and most of gay America. A friend who works for the Human Rights Campaign in Washington called me last night and asked if there wasn’t anything I could do to control Uncle Hunny. This man, who my partner went to Dartmouth with, saw
The Today Show
fiasco, and he pointed out — as if I needed reminding — that Art and Uncle Hunny were playing right into the religious right’s hands.”

Hunny said, “Nelson’s boyfriend is so drop-dead
fab-
ulous that hardly anybody can stand it. He’s into derivatives, which have gone out of fashion, though he is just too,
too
fashionable otherwise. The two of them have places —
places
is what they call them — in Clifton Park and Palm Springs. Nelson’s squeeze is named Lawn Brookman, spelled L-A-w-n. Art and I call him Yawn.”

12 Richard Stevenson

“So, Nelson,” I said, “it’s not only your uncle’s well-being that led you to bring him to me? Are you also hoping I might help alter his personality? That’s really outside my area of expertise.”

Nelson slumped wearily. “The reason I am involving myself in this ridiculous business at all is to protect Uncle Hunny from his own worst instincts and from the people his bad instincts have gotten him involved with. I admit I have no real hope that Uncle Hunny will change. Just acting a little more discreet in public is what I’m hoping for. For his sake, and for our family’s sake, especially my parents — but also Grandma Rita, Uncle Hunny’s poor mother.”

Hunny glared. “Nelson, anything I do or say is just fine with Mom. Always has been, always will be.” To me, Hunny said, “My sister Miriam, Nelson’s mother, is just a sad lost cause sexual-orientation-wise. Miriam thinks PfLAg is an insect repellent. And my brother-in-law Lewis tells his golfing buddies that Nelson isn’t married because his fiancé died on 9/11 in the World Trade Center, and he is still too broken up over it to start dating again.”

“Not true,” Nelson said, looking even more despondent.

“My parents are conservative, but they are not bigots and they are not mean-spirited. They simply observe certain standards of taste, about which Uncle Hunny plainly knows nothing. I don’t understand that, really. Grandma Rita has had her personal difficulties, and now her mind is not what it once was. But she has always been well-mannered in her outgoing way, and I know she is well-respected out at Golden Gardens. And Grandpa Carl also set high behavioral standards. He was a well-spoken, churchgoing man who always went out of his way to make other people feel comfortable. Uncle Hunny, on the other hand, seems to take great pleasure in making people feel
un
comfortable.”

“I have standards of taste, too,” Hunny said, winking at Art.

“Except, I have certain standards of
bad
taste I try to live by. To each his own, Nelson, to each his own.”

Art said, “Nelson, your father did so tell people you had a girlfriend who was killed on 9/11. That came back to Hunny and me from several sources. She was supposedly a securities analyst, CoCkeyed
13