Everybody Loves You (9 page)

Of course he had known Champ McQuest.

“One of many such,” he said. “Those chillingly handsome young men who fell into the city in droves in those first years after the Riot. The gates were pulled down,” he recalled, with a somewhat regretful smile. “The citadel was opened up. Champ was not the handsomest or the youngest, but he may well have been the nicest.”

We were sitting on his back deck, looking at the ocean. This far east, there were few sunbathers; even the beach parade, a routine of Pines afternoons, tended to give out and turn back several houses to the west of us. Two boys were wrestling in the sand. A jogger robustly pumped along the water's edge. A straight couple laden with grocery bags trudged toward Water Island.

“Young men, young men, young men,” he sighed. “Some of them place themselves well, others put on stomachs and tend bar to East Siders slumming in Chelsea, and a few fall into very wrong hands. Handsome young men. I've wondered what life might have been like if I'd been born when they were. Born, I mean, into this demotic everything-is-possible Stonewall thing, where you go to a gym and grow a mustache for love instead of paying for it. I never mind paying. That's what money is for. But if I had been
younger…
” He slurred out the word with a trace of wonder, as if the concept could scarcely be imagined, much less debated. “If I had been young when everyone else was young … and if I had not been rich and powerful.” He hugged himself, shrugging playfully. “Well. Would
I
have gone to the weight rooms and worn jeans and frequented orgies just on the basis of who I was or pretended to be? Would I have delicious companionship
just because I showed up?
I love to ask. But I don't quite see it. All that effort, all that …
handsome
running around. It's so much easier to buy love than hunt for it. And then … even if you find it … don't you have to
deserve
it? You have to be as worthy as your partner, don't you? You have to be a
handsome young man!
Much, much more fun to buy your love, wouldn't you?”

“But can you buy love?” I asked. “Or just sex?”

“Writers are so naïve. You can buy anything, in fact. You can buy murder, don't doubt me. Don't. Don't.”

The two boys on the beach, spent by their wrestling, lay side by side in the sun. One put his hand on the other's head.

“Anyway,” he went on, “you can't necessarily have your love for free, either, so where are you then? Champ, now, dear Champ was certainly one of the elect. Yet he was always falling for men who didn't respond.
He
had no love. And my.
My,
how it rent him. The
passion
of a boy in love with a boy! The incredible
dis
regard for the
stan
dard
cau
tions!”

“Why did he die?”

“He was too sweet to live. He was too sensitive to survive. He fell prey to overwhelming despairs. Choose one. Freshen your drink?”

The two boys on the beach ran into the ocean and started wrestling again.

“You mustn't get into a state about Champ McQuest,” the wise old queen warned me. “There were so many such. So many handsome young men who never even made it to bartender. And Champ was
born
to doom. Who knew
anyone at all
as glum as he? Did you? Tom Jones in the Dostoyevski edition, that was Champ McQuest.”

“What did he die of, though?”

“Oh, he was one of the overdoses, technically. There was quite a lot of that at the time. Many of them simply lay there and gave out the soul, but some actually
did themselves in.
One went out a window shouting the name of the model agency that had dropped him for galloping debauchery. Alas, he had defied the cautions.”

“And Champ?”

“Hm … can one recall a specific event, some
triggering
thing? He had such a greed for agonies, poor boy. It happened in your house, didn't it?”

I was speechless.

“Aren't you in the house they call Chinatown? Way over on The Other Side by the cruising park? It used to have a myriad of Oriental gewgaws hanging from the eaves over the deck. Wind chimes and fairy bells and a whole orchestra of gongs. If the breeze was right you could hear ‘Limehouse Blues.' But you stalwart sprouts of Stonewall have taken all that down, haven't you? All the … decoration. You want to be your own decorations.”

“Champ McQuest died in our house? Jesus, I knew there had been a suicide, but I—”

“Oh, I shouldn't call that a suicide. I shouldn't. Such a
deliberate
word, don't you? There comes a time in certain lives when one is too miserable to live, so one simply dies.
How
one dies is of rather small moment. Champ was very mixed up, and very unhappy, and very drugged. So it all came together on him one night, and the next day he was no longer with us. You know, I think … I just
think
I have something you should see. Sip your wine and gaze upon the sempiternal sea while I make sure it's out here.”

He went into the house. While he was gone, the two boys came out of the ocean arm in arm, grabbed their towels, and dried each other off. They stood for a while, looking at each other.

“Well, we're in luck,” said the wise old queen, returning with a small black rectangular box. “I must say, I
thought
I'd taken it out here.”

I would have said something, but my attention was held by the two boys from the beach, who were coming up the walkway onto the wise old queen's deck.

“Russ and Billy,” said the wise old queen.

They called to him, waved at me, and went into the house.

“Believe it or not, I don't do anything with them. I just like to watch them together. Why? Who can tell us why? Maybe even money is not enough. Maybe the reason some homos stay straight is out of
fear
of the
dream.
They fear to be … all homoed up into starving wraiths who get nothing. Take your wine along, I've this to show you now.”

The box held videotape.

“Russ and Billy will be napping, luckily. I wouldn't want them to see this. It's strong material. What we used to call ‘private films.' Of course, everything's transferred to video now. What pleasing novelty to see dear old friends back among us from the past. But don't expect state-of-the-art…”

Waves of static gave way to what looked like a piece of cardboard bearing the ballpointed legend, “Sailor Dick and Pants-Down Johnny.”

“A certain half-baked Seventh Avenue
tycoon
who must remain nameless or I might vomit used to hire boys to make these … what to call them, my dear? Noose operas? Where it looks as if one boy is getting hung by another?”

“Hanged,” I told him. “Not hung.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Porn stars are hung. People are hanged.”

“Ah, there's Champ. How tired he looks. I wouldn't appear in a piece this tawdry to save my life. Of course, they're totally fake and harmless, and the money was terribly good. Still…”

Champ was pretty much what I had expected, a solemnly nice-looking chap who seemed very uncomfortable to be where he was, in a spotlit corner of a dark room, sitting in a chair. The raspy voice of an unseen man directed him in a stripping scene, item by item. “Leave your socks on,” the voice ordered. “Now let's see a little action.”

“That's our friend from Seventh Avenue,” said the wise old queen. “He liked to
superintend
his shows through a microphone, right into the sound track. Everyone else was making silents. Not he. Lavish productions, spare no expense.”

“Don't rush it, baby,” the voice grated out. “Take your time and you'll get your dough.”

“Rather Brechtian, wouldn't you?” said the wise old queen. “All these directorial impositions
during
the show?”

Champ stopped masturbating and said something toward the camera. He seemed hostile, but he wasn't miked, and I missed it.

“Silly name, isn't it, Champ McQuest? It was originally something extraordinarily simple. David Jones? Donald Jones? There was so much of that then. So many David Joneses coming to the city to turn into Pants-Down Johnny.”

“Or Sailor Dick.”

“No, the sailor is an unusual item. He looks like a pro to me.”

That he was, as I soon saw: sturdy, self-possessed, edgily efficient, and incongruously mustached in his navy whites. He hulked into view through a doorway and stood there, a pose in the shadows. The brutal voice told Champ to undress the sailor, step by step as before, and go down on him. They obeyed the command in the awkward simulation of hot that bedeviled early porn; and the technical setup was so poor that most of the action spilled out of the light into darkness. It was hard to see, much less believe.

“Paramount is eating its heart out,” said the wise old queen.

“Fix the lights,” the voice muttered to someone, and the beam slowly and effortfully reached out to the two actors. As the light hit him, the sailor gazed up, straight into the camera, and it struck me that he looked just like …

“Sweet Jesus!”

“A friend of yours?”

“It's Tom Adverse.”

“Ah.”

“You must know him—the Cherry Grove Carpenter.”

“I've never been to the Grove,” said the wise old queen, airily. “Is it nice?”

“Okay,” said the voice. “Take him over now. Real slow. Slower. Keep him calm.”

The camera swung over to another spotlight, this one trained on a length of rope dangling from the ceiling and noosed at the end. Tom brought Champ over to it, and the two of them waited, apparently for instructions. But we heard nothing.

“A penny for his thoughts, wouldn't you?” said the wise old queen.

“Okay.” The voice had returned. “Now loosen up his neck muscles so he'll respond to the rope when he drops. Easy does it. Got to soothe him up for this.”

Whoever he was, the man running this show suddenly symbolized everything I loathed in that early era of Stonewall, all the selfish money and back-alley egomania that still helps keep our world disjointed, all a-spin upon itself. “God, what a voice,” I said.

“Yes, he should have sung opera.”

“Loosen him up, come on. Think about how nice it'll be to do him now. He's almost ready. Turn him around to show us. Yeah. Stand over to the right a little so … yeah, so we can see what you got. Beautiful, baby. Nobody does it like you.” A beat, then: “Look at them, huh?”

Champ said something to the voice, again off-mike. He spoke to Tom, too, and Tom looked inquiringly at the voice. It told them, “No play, no pay, baby. That's what it is.”

Champ and Tom had a few more words, but the voice cut in with, “Noose that boy up and hang him,” and Tom threw his left arm around Champ's middle and reached for the rope with his right.

“Jesus.”

“They're standing on the floor, you know,” said the wise old queen. “Nothing can happen.”

“I know, but … I think Champ has a crush on Tom.”

“
Had
a crush.”

To myself I said, Don't be too sure.

Champ was fighting like a tiger, but Tom easily overmatched him. Within a moment he had looped the rope over his head and zipped it up. In the shadows let me come and sing to you.

“Lovely,” said the voice.

“It's so beautiful when they struggle,” came a second voice.

“Poor Champ,” said the wise old queen.

Tom was holding Champ from behind, holding him tight and talking into his ear. Champ was shaking, but after a bit he suddenly grew quiet. I could hear the voices breathing. What was Tom telling Champ—“Work with me till we finish this gig and we'll get our money and split”? Would they go out to celebrate? Was this as far as Tom ever went, stylized snuff duets?

Champ broke free of Tom's grip, but Tom reached for him and Champ turned and impulsively threw his arms around him.

Surprised, Tom thrust Champ away with an odd look on his face. Champ tugged at the rope. Tom stopped him and with a single movement pulled the noose open and slipped it off.

Champ turned away from Tom.

Tom looked at the camera.

“Tasty boys,” said the voice, and the screen immediately went dead.

“Isn't it savory,” said the wise old queen, “that Russ and Billy will never know about such things?”

One must not forgive. One must understand.

—Cosima Liszt von Bülow, 1870

When I got back to the house, it was nearly dark. Dennis Savage and Lionel were in the kitchen, arguing over whether or not to put garlic in the salad. Bert was napping on the couch.

Little Kiwi, on the stairway, beckoned me upstairs in elaborate pantomime. He and Carlo joined me in my room.

Door closed, Little Kiwi said, “We have a plan. We're going to lay for the ghost tonight. Carlo is part of the Ghost Patrol, and you can be, too.”

“Look…”

“We're going to lay for the ghost.”

Carlo grinned at my questioning glance. “He learned a new expression.”

“Carlo taught me. Don't you want to help us trap the ghost? We're all going to stay up, and when it comes out, I'm going to take its picture. Ghosts die when you photograph them, you know.”

“Why don't we just wait out the weekend,” I suggested, “and let it vanish the way it came?”

“We're going to lay for it.”

I looked in on Tom. He was lying faceup on his bed staring at the ceiling.

“You okay, Tom?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Want to talk?”

“Thought I'd get some sack time in. I'm kind of beat.”

“Okay.”

As I turned to go, he said, “You could tell those guys they shouldn't fool around with it. It's more serious than that.”