Dancer From the Dance: A Novel (27 page)

Friends came up to embrace Malone, people he had known for years—how many years, they did not want to think. They were all looking at the new faces with an odd sensation of death, for they had all been new faces once. Each summer on Fire Island has a star: the boy who moves through the little society with the youth and beauty he-has just begun to squander (and what else can be done with them?). The old friends embracing Malone and Sutherland had each had his summer, had once caused hearts to lurch when they walked into a party like this, quiet and nervous as fawns. And now they were wondering—as men had wondered about them—if they could get any of these stars into their beds, or were they older than they thought they were? Were they as old as X, that man who had stared at them their first summer with that terrible despair in his face, and whom they had refused even to meet? None of this bothered Malone. In his mind he was seeing this for the last time. He could enjoy it as he hadn't since he first arrived on the Island how many summers ago.

"Look
at that one!" Malone would cry as he grabbed the person he was standing with, in a voice charged with that delight which everyone loved in him, and which they flocked to after their own capacity for wonder had vanished. "To die! To die over! And what about the green T-shirt! Oh my Christ! Get me a transfusion! I am dead on arrival! He's flawless!" And he would turn and say to John Schaeffer, who stood beside him wanting to ask Malone to dance but having no idea how to, "You must admit this place is incredible—we, who've grown used to it—" "Just a bit," breathed Sutherland, flicking an ash onto the crowd below. "Forget the sheer style, and beauty," resumed Malone, "in this room. It's all
we'll
ever see of the Beatific Vision!" "I'm glad you like it," said John Schaeffer with a smile. "Oh, I loathe it," said Malone. "Loathe it? Why?" gasped John, staring at Malone. "Because... because... oh, I guess because I'm thirty-eight," said Malone, "I'm afraid that's all it comes down to. You have all this before you, and I have all this behind me," he said to John Schaeffer. "I'm in mid-passage, darling," he said, beginning to talk like a queen so as to demystify himself, so as to destroy the very qualities John Schaeffer had fallen in love with, "I'm menopausal, change of life, hot flashes, you know. Wondering how much longer I can go without hair transplants and whether Germaine Monteil really works on the crow's feet. I've had it, I've been through the mill, I'm a
jaded queen.
But you, dear, you have that gift whose loss the rest of life is just a funeral for—why else do you suppose those gray-haired gentlemen," he said, nodding at his friends on the floor, "make money, buy houses, take trips around the world? Why else do they dwindle into a little circle of close friends, a farm upstate, and become in the end mere businessmen, shop-owners, decorators who like their homes filled with flowers and their friends flying in on Air France and someone pretty like you at the dinner table? It is all, my dear, because they are no longer young. Because they no longer live in that magic world that is yours for ten more years. Adolescence in America ends at thirty." And John Schaeffer stood there, dumbfounded, not wanting to hear any of this, because he loved Malone. "You have ten years of adolescence stretching before you," said Malone in an acid tone, stubbing out a cigarette in a plate of aspic, "and / am a professional faggot. What is gay life," he said, looking down at the dancers, "but those bumper cars at an amusement park, that crash and bounce off each other? Like some Demolition Derby." He put his hand on John Schaeffer's shoulder and said in a kind voice: "You must remember one thing, if I can leave you with anything, if my years out here can benefit you at all, then let it be with this. Never forget that all these people are primarily a visual people. They are designers, window dressers, models, photographers, graphic artists. They design the windows at Saks. Do you understand? They are a visual people, and they value the eye, and their sins, as St. Augustine said, are the sins of the eye. And being people who live on the surface of the eye, they cannot be expected to have minds or hearts. It sounds absurd, but it's that simple. Everything is beautiful here, and that is all it is: beautiful. Do not expect anything else, do not expect nourishment for anything but your eye—and you will handle it all beautifully. You will know exactly what you are dealing with," said Malone, his arm around John Schaeffer as they faced the crowd of beautiful dancers.

"But I don't want to deal with it," said John Schaeffer now, turning to Malone. "I want to go around the world with you. Go anyplace you like. I love you," he said now.

"Oh, God!" Malone said with a laugh and simultaneous shudder that passed through his upper torso. "Those words. Expunge them from your vocabulary, it will save you a lot of trouble. You don't love me. I am a professional faggot. Now what other lessons can I pass on to you?" he said, moving on to put that moment behind them. "Indifference is the greatest aphrodisiac," he began carefully, trying to sum up in three minutes the experience of ten years on the circuit, and distill it properly for this fellow to whom he was passing the torch, "never underestimate the value of indifference, it is, finally, the great freedom.
Try
not to be self-conscious," he said, "or so critical. Don't mope around looking for someone else to make you happy, and remember that the vast majority of homosexuals are looking for a superman to love and find it
very
difficult to love anyone merely human, which we unfortunately happen to be. Oh, God, let's dance!" he said, for they had started to play Zulema.

The discaire was mixing old songs with the new, unlike the mediocre ones in town (who must play new music, music the crowd loves; or worse, music the crowd has never heard), and the old songs brought back the magic of whole summers to the people there. He danced with John Schaeffer in a corner, allowing him finally to be overcome by the music, and showing him without a word a step he could be comfortable with. They danced together as if they were falling in love, but John Schaeffer's love only produced in Malone a gloomy helpless guilt. They faced each other at opposite ends of an illusion. And then those first unmistakable beats of the bass guitar, those first few notes of that song that had made everyone at the Twelfth Floor holler in a communal shout of ecstasy began, those first, repetitive, low notes that had caused Sutherland to say with great hilarity one night: "Each E-flat is like the thrust of a penis," that curious song that had the power—even though it was just a song played at discotheques one year, was never the most popular there, or surfaced in public—to change the whole tenor of the place. Malone drew John Schaeffer nearer to him, closed his eyes, and began shaping the words that Patty Jo sang: "Make me believe in you, show me that love can be true," his eyes wild when he finally opened them.

He came back to the balcony drenched with sweat, his polo shirt sticking to his chest. On his face was an expression of radiant exhilaration; that expression that led people to think Malone took speed, when he didn't. It was his joy that there were men who loved other men. "How is the party, darling?" he said to Sutherland, catching his gloved arm as he swept by in a swirl of taffeta. Sutherland held his cigarette holder in the air and said: "On a scale of one to zero? Beyond credence, dearest," he said, embracing Malone. "Absolutely everyone showed up. Except Pam Tow, thank God... Don't mess my hair," he said, drawing back. "Mummy's so pleased. The pigs-in-the-blanket were delicious, the music is to die, and everyone seems to be on the same drug, which is so important. The bathrooms, of course, are filled with people sucking cock, I can't even get to the drawer with my world-famous collection of rare and antique Valiums. Are you happy, dear?" "Yes," Malone said, embracing him again. "Even John is having a good time, and Frankie is the star of the summer." "I never said you hadn't taste," said Sutherland in a sinuous voice. "He's bought a house in Freehold, New Jersey," said Malone, as they sat down for a moment and Sutherland slipped off his satin pumps. "Do tell," said Sutherland, massaging his foot. "Yes, he's making twenty thousand a year now, and he'll have a pension, too. Never say America isn't a worker's paradise!" "Grandfather always said that," sighed Sutherland. "And we haven't got the price of a bus ticket to Denver. Oh, well, we lived for other things," he smiled. Malone put his arms around him and held him close. "At least," he murmured in his ear, "we learned to dance. You have to grant us that. We are good dancers," he said. "And what," said Sutherland, "is more important in this life than that? Nothing!" They grew melancholy in each other's arms as they sat quietly there, suddenly tired for a moment, or was it years, and the party seemed to drift away; and Malone, who had become an insomniac, so anxious was he over his life, began to feel sleepy—the index of happiness—until Sutherland, looking over Malone's shoulder in a daze, noticed a tall, gaunt, bearded man standing in the hallway looking glumly at them. "But who is that?" said Sutherland. And Malone, looking around, replied in his ear: "Roger Denton. The size queen who moved to San Francisco because he had had everyone in New York. She's back, dear, and looking for new meat."

"Oh la," sighed Sutherland, his arms still around Malone's neck, "send her to that village in the Philippines filled with young men who are all that way. Don't worry," he smiled back at Malone as he slipped out of his arms and stood up to greet this guest. "I have our tickets already. Darling! How are you? Was San Francisco what they say, a weekend city?" And he embraced a giant praying mantis who had just arrived behind Roger Denton.

The crowd suddenly roared as the lights went out, and the room was bathed in a low red feverish glow, and John Schaeffer appeared at the same instant at the top of the stairs, white-faced, terrified. "I waited for you," he said to Malone, his eyes anguished. Malone took his hand and led him to the balcony and put his arm around him as the violins of "Love's Theme" began their ascent, and they leaned on the balustrade to look down at the scene.

An hour later Malone pushed John Schaeffer down the stairs in front of him, for at that moment "Law of the Land" had begun. It was one of those parties that people were not going to leave: Everything was as they wanted it. The people, the music, the drugs, the place. Around four Malone and John Schaeffer, exhausted, sweating, came out onto the terrace where I was cleaning up glasses. John Schaeffer walked back inside to get wine, and Malone walked down the deck to the bay. His face was calm, and innocent, and fresh in the way some faces are after a night of dancing. "Well," he said, as he stripped off his soaked green polo shirt and shoes and waded into the bay, "at least I learned to dance." He saw me there and called: "Tell Sutherland it was a wonderful, wonderful party, tell him I'm going out west, tell him I'll write." He waded deeper as I stood there. "I'll only be happy working in some little town in Idaho, and living a decent life. First I'll build a cabin and then I'm going to dental school," he said, waist-deep now in the still, dark bay, turning one time to wave good-bye, his slim white figure and grave eyes visible in the lights from the throbbing house, and then, with a single splash, suddenly vanished in the darkness. I stood at the water's edge and wondered if I should go after him: especially after listening to his reflections on the young man who had killed himself in Manhattan that afternoon. Someone was always dying at one of these parties, trying to sniff a popper at the bottom of a swimming pool, or jumping off a balcony on Angel Dust, but as I listened I could hear no cries for help. And the warm, dark night descended on me as I stood there with an armful of glasses, napkins, and discarded scarves and ribbons. "Malone!" I yelled. But there was no answer.

Even as Malone was swimming across the bay, Sutherland searched for tranquility in his own way. He was still at the party when word got back that twelve men had died in the fire at the Everard Baths, and the rumor went around (via one of the boys on the dock that evening who had heard Malone agree to fly back after the party) that Malone had gone up in smoke, too. Did Sutherland think Malone had gone back to the Baths? And assuming the worst, did he go upstairs and take a pill? Or did he go to his room even before Malone had waded out of his life, simply because the party had exhausted him? Whichever is true, sometime before dawn he awoke (as who would not in that deafening house) and reached for another Quaalude. He had taken so many drugs that evening, mixing them in his bloodstream with the equanimity of a chemist in a research lab, and not even remembering what he had taken, half-asleep, he reached reflexively for another pill. He pulled the pillow closer and shortly afterward, while the distant strains of "Love's Theme" crept up the staircase and down the hall, his heart stopped beating. The host of the Pink-and-Green Party was not discovered, much less thanked, till Tuesday afternoon when a writer who had taken a midweek share to finish a book on gay consciousness and who planned in fact to interview Sutherland entered the room. The writer found a note on the table beside Sutherland, which he had left to deter any guests who might stray up to his bedroom, and which made no mention of suicide—for Sutherland had little use for suicide, and less for suicide notes: "Don't awaken me. It was kind of you to come. I'll call you in the city. Kisses to you." A forest of X's followed, which looked like crosses, but were really kisses.

In the letter Sutherland had once composed on the funeral of his dreams, he was to be laid out on the high altar of the cathedral of Cologne, while an orchestra played "Pavane for a Dead Princess"; but instead he was sent off at Frank E. Campbell's on Madison Avenue. The wake was exactly the sort Sutherland would have loved, attended by everyone he considered beyond the pale of simple good manners, but who could have danced him into the other world: the crowd Sutherland called "the hard-core tit-shakers," with whom he had danced for nearly twenty years. The dealers and the astrologers and the psychics came. Even in a week that saw many gay funerals, half of Seventh Avenue was there, and people whose names appear monotonously in the columns: a man from Hatston's read the eulogy, and one of the two Egyptian heiresses read a few lines from Schopenhauer, and Sutherland was cremated. The coffin was closed, which prompted a hairdresser at Cinandre to ask: "But how do you know he's really dead?" Others came up to an old friend of Sutherland (a retired queen who had been to Sutherland what Sutherland was to Malone) and claimed the dead man owed them money. Others—the old guard of New York psychics who still practiced such things, and felt it a favor to offer their services like this—inquired if they might put us in touch with Sutherland now that he had passed over. A professor from Rutgers pointed out that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had died on the same day, not four hours apart, on the Fourth of July; and the departure of Malone and Sutherland on the same night was just as curious, and even more symmetrical, to some queens.