I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore (14 page)

“I wish you would.”

Little Kiwi gave a stage whisper into Daniel’s ear that could be heard clear to Baker Street. “They call him Secret Mantis.”

Daniel looked at Little Kiwi for a bit, then took him by the arms and said, “Inspector, if you weren’t securely accommodated with Dennis Savage here, I’d really worry about what would happen to you.”

Little Kiwi looked up at him. “Why?”

“Because there are men who would spot you and cart you home and treat you real tough.”

“And hit me?”

Carlo laughed. It was the first noise he had made since Daniel had joined us. He laughed so long that he held himself, and dropped his dessert plate, and made a mess, until Daniel was standing over him, and pulled him up, and Carlo held Daniel back, but he stayed near him and felt his badge and read out the number on it. Then he said, “Okay. But this time you can be Carlo. You.”

Daniel nodded. “Midnight again.”

Carlo said, “Yes. Again.”

Daniel shook hands with all of us one by one—with Little Kiwi he pretended to groan and hold his hand in pain—and left.

“Is that why he had a gun, after all?” asked Little Kiwi. “Just that?”

I nodded.

“And doesn’t like the U.N.?”

I said, “Only Communazis and their dupes like the U.N.,” a remark that has enlivened many a party. This was not a political group, however, and my words landed unchallenged.

“But how can he be Carlo?”

“How can you be Inspector Wilberforce?”

Carlo’s eyes clouded as he thought of something.

“Look at him,” I told them. “He’s had his first taste of an Imaginary Lover.”

“What?” said Carlo, but dimly.

“You’ve made a breakthrough,” said Dennis Savage. “Apparently.”

“No,” Carlo replied. “I always knew about this.”

“About what?” asked Little Kiwi.

“About,” I answered, “what Carlo is. And what his lovers are. And why they ask faggot questions—though I’ve always thought sex itself is the highest form of inquiry.”

Carlo looked at me, and shook his head.

“And,” I went on, “he is getting to know about fantasy.”

“I don’t believe in fantasy,” said Carlo.

“‘I must see the Things, I must see the Men,’” I exulted.

“Who said that?” asked Little Kiwi.

“Edmund Burke.”

“Who’s Edmund Burke?”

“Well, who are you, for that matter?”

Secret Mantis, the canine wonder, thrust his head out of the bathroom, cagily watching.

“I’m Inspector Wilberforce, as is well known,” Little Kiwi explained. “But we don’t know who you are.”

“Yes,” said Dennis Savage, coming up behind Little Kiwi and putting his arms around him. Carlo, still half-dazed by the revelation of the uncertain in the familiar—and is this not what the Imaginary Lover is?—slowly joined them, putting his arms around Dennis Savage. “Now tell us, my friend,” Dennis Savage pursued. “Who are you?”

“Well,” I said, “sometimes I think I’m Edmund Burke.”

And Eric Said He’d Come

Christopher, an opera director with a twin brother who is also an opera director, invites me to a cottage by the sea. His friend Helen has taken a place in the Grove for a week; they want scintillating company. I’ll do my best.

I met Helen once, at the Met. Inside of twenty seconds she asked what my middle name is, where I got that tie, how I met Christopher, if I knew where the Wagnerian contralto Ottilie Metzger died, and if she could try on my dark glasses.

I never turn down an invitation to Fire Island. Christopher met me at the ferry, where I feigned the necessary suave. I had dressed precisely, as if for a sacred pageant set on the sand, which, in fact, is what the Island of Fire is. In gray corduroy shorts, striped T-shirt, Mickey Mouse watch, running shoes, and punk socks, I’m so
right
that if there were grapefruit sections in my hair, I’d start a fad. Think hot to be hot.

Helen greets me warmly, on the deck of a trim little thing of a house on the ocean, west of the Monster. There is another guest, one Larry.

“Welcome to the D-list,” he tells me. “You realize we’re the only people in the Grove under sixty-five!”

Christopher laughs. Helen glowers. I’m bemused.

“The
Grove!
” he cries. As if to say: “The Black Hole of Calcutta!”

“What’s for lunch?” I ask, to cue in the next scene.

“Decay. Ugliness. Stupidity.” Larry marches off to the beach, I presume to head for the Pines. Dire on a dune, he adds, “If you can’t get into hell, they send you here.” Exit.

Silence.

“Good grief,” I explain.

“I forgot to warn you about Larry,” says Christopher.

“Whose friend
is
that?” I ask.

Helen and Christopher share accusing looks.

“Never mind,” I tell them.

Helen can’t let it rest. “The worst of it,” she begins—then checks herself, looks away, goes out the front door and immediately surges in through the back—“The worst of it is: he’s
such a
schmarotzer!”

“Helen,” Christopher begins.

“But your friend must be thirsty from his trip. Quick, a tea, some cheese wedges, a boiled egg. Schmarotzer means ‘parasite.’ The Nazis used it against the Jews, as if they were cultural parasites battening on Goethe, Schiller, Brentano, without contributing anything of their own.
Battening!
I would mention Heine and Mendelssohn. I lived in Germany for two years. Munich.”

“Why is Larry a schmarotzer?” I asked, feeling my way into a new word.

Helen became tragic. She looked off to a remote prospect—the colored frieze atop the facade of the Munich Staatsoper, I imagined.

“He comes and he takes, and he takes, and he takes,” Helen observes.

“He brought fruit,” Christopher puts in. “He made pasta primavera.”

“With marinara sauce!”

Helen dramatically reveals a tub of cold rigatoni, stained red amid broccoli and cauliflower. “The last supper of a schmarotzer!” she screams.

“Egad,” I say, to fill in a pause.

Now Helen is quiet, showing us what patience looks like. “Does he offer anything to the group? Tell me that, please!” She turns to me. “And he has the nerve—no, I can’t! It’s
too
much!” She claps a hand to her mouth, but it flies right off again. “He had the nerve to ask for
Irish Coffee!
” She bustles to the fridge. “Now, there’s five kinds of cheese…”

Eventually, I note that planning a cheese tray is Helen’s most constant activity. Christopher has taken to calling her the Cheese Gräfin, and I join him. She seems to like it, or any kind of attention. It’s hard to give her as much as she wants, though, as she never stops attending herself—asking, remarking, planning, promising. At length, in a daze, she says, “I must do the dishes,” though the sink is empty.

Ottilie Metzger died at Auschwitz.

*   *   *

After lunch I excused myself for a solo flight in the Island manner and headed for the Pines, my favorite place. Here I learned to admire or tell off, here comprehended the pride of the beauty and the passion of the troll, here conceived the classes of gay and learned the nuances that separate tough from stalwart. I was a kid here, and grew wise. There are a number of stories that are assigned to each gay man’s collection whether or not he’ll have them: “The Day I Told My Parents,” for instance, or “What I Saw in the Bars.” There are perhaps fifteen such titles, and I think it notable that while those with an urban, rural, business, or family setting can take place anywhere in America with acceptable resonance, every beach story must take place on Fire Island. For here we find gay stripped to its essentials. The beautiful are more fully exposed here, the trolls more cast out than anywhere else—thus their pride and passion. The beguiling but often irrelevant data of talent and intelligence that can seem enticing in the city are internal contradictions in a place without an opera house or a library. Only money and charm count. Professional advantages are worthless, for, in a bathing suit, all men have the same vocation. Yet there are distinctions of rank. Those who rent are the proletariat, those who own houses are the bourgeoisie, and houseboys form the aristocracy.

Of course you cannot tackle the place alone.

Here you learn to focus your view of the scene. You decide which options you will take—say, toward fashion or naturalism, favoring colleagues or competition, dealing in aggressiveness or self-protection. It is too extreme to say that one’s first trips to the Island will govern the rest of one’s life in gay; but if it isn’t true, it should be. New Yorkers virtually come out in this place. Every other gay beach is a strip of sand, merely theatre. But the Pines is a culture, really life.

There are three rules: You must let a veteran squire you about on the first jaunts, you must take to it gradually, and you must find your gang and join it. You
cannot
tackle the place alone.

Helen’s “Does he offer anything to the group?” resounds in my head; suddenly I run smack into Eric, ensconced with friends between Pines and Grove. Between: as if respecting fashion but resenting it. Fearful of the sun, Eric is swaddled like an Arab. All I can see are his eyes, nose, and mouth. He is thrilled that I materialize by chance, for anything that wants to occur by arrangement unnerves him. “And Eric said he’d come” is this famous, useless remark we make at parties, our voices trailing off as we survey a dismal gathering that needs an Eric.

Once, a wicked friend envisioned satirical Ph.D theses for all the famous gay writers. A lapidarian storyteller and essayist got “The Use of Style in Filling a Vacuum.” A veteran of pre-Stonewall got “Beauty and Truth: The Positioning of Jeans in My Dust Jacket Photos.” Unfair, I thought, but I laughed. Eric, by miles the best writer of the lot, got “The Swank and the Drab: Philosophy and Technique.” Yet here he was, hiding from both the swank and the drab, hiding
between,
as if instituting a new sort of gay in which neither praise nor blame will be freely given. A quiet place, this, just around the corner from the turmoil of keeping up with Jones, with his Chelsea lats, Perry Ellis sleeves, and Greek tan.

I tell Eric of the schmarotzer and the Cheese Gräfin. He is mildly fascinated, but mainly he wants an ice-cream cone. I feel I should get back to my house. We decide to drop Eric’s things off at his friends’, head for downtown Grove for ice cream, and then … but he won’t plan farther ahead. He may stay over in the Grove. He may return to the Pines, where he spent last night with a group of queens so ritualized that their place is known as “the house of good taste and bad manners.” Then, again, he may simply vanish. He is always in flight, fearful of fame, and seldom seen.

On the way to ice cream we pass the baroque guest house called Belvedere, where a gorgeous blond houseboy stares balefully about him.

“A beauty in the Grove,” we murmur. “How bitter he seems.” Who wouldn’t be, here? “What does he bring to the group?” I almost ask, thinking of Larry the schmarotzer. Larry had spoken of “Pines People” and “Grove People”; but only the losers divide the world into winners and losers. You cannot redeem yourself by joining the people who—you think—hate you.

Eric suffers a raptus of indecision when we hit the ice-cream stand—should he buy a sandwich in the grocery instead? He does, and there we meet the Gräfin, her basket filled with goodies. She’s thrilled to meet Eric and insists he join us for drinks. “Blueberries,” she cries, showing us. “I thought we’d have them with sweet cream.” And “Cheeses!” she reveals. “Do you want biscuits or crackers with them?” Ensues a pause as Eric and I try to remember what the difference is. “I’ll get both!” she vows.

I gather that Christopher also stole away; the Gräfin hopes to lure us back with tasties. Surprisingly, Eric wants to come. “It’s the blueberries,” he tells me. “Only food impells me now.” He is worried, though, about meeting the schmarotzer. He doesn’t want to confront the injured nagging of the disinherited gay, that terror born of taking one’s reading at others’ evaluations. It reminds me of a few unpublished writers I have met, who believe there is a conspiracy to keep them out of the top houses, the hot magazines.

Actually, no one thinks about them whatsoever.

“The schmarotzer is Pines bound,” I tell Eric, “and now he is out of the saga.” Eric smiles and looks away. He imagines that half the things I say are allusions to obscure lit that only I would be mad enough to read. He is intent on the blueberries, and refuses to speak of anything else. “How many will she let me have?” he wonders.

“She’s so impressed with who you are that she’d give you the box.”

References to his public radiance disenchant him; now he won’t talk at all. But he’s
thinking
of blueberries.

Christopher has returned, and we drink tequila with lemon while waiting for the Gräfin to accommodate us. Christopher works hard when he directs opera, but at socializing he turns himself way down, seldom talking and scarcely listening. We have been friends since college, some fourteen years now, and have long since accepted each other without qualification.

It is not a dangerous relationship, and I wonder if that is enviable or pitiable.

The Gräfin returns with her groceries and we cheer. Eric gets ready. But for once she does not produce a tray. She unpacks in the kitchen, as noisily as possible—do I actually hear her calling out the items as she unloads?—but joins us with nothing in hand.

Eric is worried.

The Gräfin asks if Eric will stay for dinner, asks again, urges—he is evasive throughout—and I suddenly realize that she is using the blueberries as incentive. Hopeless. Promising to come by tomorrow if he’s still here, Eric beats his retreat. The Gräfin is startled. It is her habit, whenever someone is leaving, to call out hysterical attempts to detain him—dire requests, pathetic mandates, whimpers of pain, anything. It is a relatively minor maneuver in the practice of high kvetching. Eric will have none of it. He smiles, says something wonderful, and goes.

“Will he come to dinner?” Helen asks me.

“I think not.”

“He offers,” she sighs, “so much to the group.”