I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore (16 page)

“Do we have to be here?” I asked Eric as we climbed to the ferry’s upper deck. “We ought to, yes. But do we have to?”

“Isn’t that the Cheese Gräfin?” he asked, pointing.

It was: sitting at the dock, watching, forlorn.

“Where’s Christopher?” I asked.

Eric waved.

The Gräfin watched.

Now I waved. “Helen!” I called. “Helen!”

She watched.

“Why is she there?” Eric asked.

“To see us off in a kvetching manner.”

At last she waved, a sad, fulfilled wave of the most thorough good-bye. There would be, she seemed to acknowledge, no Michael house next summer, no more Jamboree.
Her
story ends here. But there was Christopher, lapping a cone. You cannot tackle the place alone.

The tea crowd cheered us as we floated by.

“Whom are you waving at?” Eric mused.

“At the gay community.”

We looked back at the dock. Helen and Christopher had vanished.

“The swank and the drab,” I told Eric, “and all between.”

“There is nothing,” he said in mock queen, “between swank and drab except early-middle Nazi punk.”

“You sound like one of your characters.”

“Was that an insult or a compliment?”

“Everything I’ve ever said to you or about you, in your whole life, is a compliment.”

“Yah.” He nods vigorously, looks away, hates hearing that, more praise to suffer.

And what I’m thinking is, If I use him in a story, he’ll probably never speak to me again.

The Shredding of Peter Hawkins

My fourth best friend fell in love for the first time in his life when he was thirty-four.

“Ridiculous,” someone told me. “Peter’s too shallow to love.”

“Disaster,” said another. “No one that layered should do an affair.”

“Heaven,” a third pronounced it. “When you ask him what he’s been doing he smirks like the Mona Lisa. And
have you seen the boyfriend?
”

“He’ll be lacerated!” Dennis Savage exulted. “That ersatz Clark Gable in Speedos! He’ll writhe and shriek like a rat in a Skinner box! He’ll be shredded, and I hope I’m there to see it!”

“Has love shredded you and Little Kiwi?”

“No, because we’re flexible. You have to give in all the time. You have to be humiliated and abused and it hurts like wild. Peter Hawkins thinks he can do it scot-free. Love without tears! That’s like dessert without fat! Oh, just wait.” He was whispering now, almost cackling, like the Wicked Witch dunking the poisoned apple. Tasty. Delicious. “Just wait.”

I wouldn’t have long to wait, because Dennis Savage, Little Kiwi, and I were about to share a house in the Pines with Peter and a fifth individual (contracted on the phone by Little Kiwi) who for unknown reasons never turned up when we were there. We put it down to sound social planning, and asked no more about it, though our mystery housemate left a trace here and there, especially in the pantry. It was a handsome house, by Pines standards. Significant others included Little Kiwi’s possibly extraterrestrial dog, Bauhaus, and Peter’s boyfriend, The Incredible Jeff McDonald.

*   *   *

Jeff was then living out the last years of his legend; one more little epoch and he would fade into the background of an Edward Hopper. But even at forty-some-odd he retained everything that had made him notable: a handsomeness that inspired cries of “Eureka!” from Morton Street Pier to the Thalia; a lazy walk that not five in a thousand could imitate; and thighs of, literally, death: once you glimpsed them, if you could not have them for your own, you died. In the 1970s, during High Middle Eagle and Tenth Floor Culture, everyone knew his name, but few knew him, for he wasn’t a flirt. He was a lover.

I thought he’d be good for Peter, experienced and patient and maybe a bit worn down. Beginners don’t usually handle an affair well, but veteran Jeff could ease Peter over the Three Fatal Mistakes in Romance: being late, being bored, and being hurt. I wondered, though, who would help Jeff deal with Peter’s First Principle of Rational Living: being private.

“Always hold something back,” he would tell me, “or they’ll keep taking and taking.”

“Who’s they?” I asked.

“Little secrets build up your personal space. And make your associates make sense. We must admire the clarity of reason.”

Peter lived for reason and personal space. Once his phone rang while I was visiting, and, consulting his watch, he told me, “This will be my mother, asking if I got the invitation to Cousin Patty’s wedding and am I going.”

It was. He got it. And no, he wasn’t going—
because she asked.
“I’ve told you over and over, if you harass me about family things I won’t attend them.… It’s no use whining.… Nor will I give in to emotional blackmail. Yes, you are pushing. It’s irritating, boring, and stupid. So give up because you can’t win.”

He shook his head as he rang off. “Some people simply cannot admire the clarity of reason.”

Speaking as one who also suffers from wedding-crazed parents, I could admire the clarity of Peter’s reason. But I wondered how it felt to be his mother.

I wondered, too, how Jeff would take to Peter’s mode of living. One forgives much at the start of an affair; we are tough only with perfect strangers and imperfect intimates. So Jeff tolerated going to dinner alone because Peter had to catch up on some “unsharable” friend, or getting no answer when he phoned at midnight, or learning that Peter would not join him at a Mets game, period. “Baseball is for jerks,” is how Peter put it; and Jeff took it.

I agree, I confess. Football and tennis are for sports, and baseball calls for a nerd’s sensibility. Still, I had to ask Peter if he hadn’t been a little hard on Jeff.

“In fact, no,” Peter replied. “I don’t drag him along to the theatre, do I?”

“Maybe he’d enjoy being dragged.”

“He’d be bored, and he wouldn’t like me as much anymore because I’d be boring him. He’s a wonderful man, and I truly love him. Truly. You see, I’m not afraid to say so. It’s … it’s a miraculous thing, love. But it must be understood, and kept within reasonable bounds. It does not make sense for me to suffer through baseball games or for Jeff to suddenly have to like Stephen Sondheim. He just isn’t cultured, and I am, and we have to work around that.”

“What if…?” I didn’t have the heart to go on. Poor blind boy, I thought; are you in for trouble.

“What if what?” He was smiling, content that he had learned love’s call number and could phone up as it suited him.

“What if love doesn’t see reason? What if Jeff says, ‘Come to a Mets game or else’?”

Peter mulled that over for a bit. “That won’t happen,” he said finally, yet with perhaps somewhat less than his usual authority. “He likes me too much to do that.”

I nodded as uncommittedly as possible, the way you’d be polite on Mars.

“Well, doesn’t he?” Peter asked.

“I know that you two are very much involved with each other. And I wish you a flawless romance.”

He decided to accept that as agreement, and The Summer of Peter and Jeff began.

*   *   *

I would date the absolute first moment of this particular story to a Pines afternoon in mid-June. Jeff and I were on the deck tasting my favorite childhood treat, potato-chip sandwiches, when Peter ambled up looking breezy. Jeff asked, “Where have you been?” and Peter replied, “Nowhere,” and Jeff said, “Where is nowhere?” and Peter said, “What difference does it make?” and Jeff countered with “It makes a difference to me,” and Peter asked, “Why?” and I wished that a giant eagle would swoop down and carry me away. Or no, a winged Italian mesomorph with vulnerable eyes; but I’d take an eagle.

“I don’t want you walking off on me,” said Jeff.

Peter sat down and began to eat the filling out of my sandwich. “What am I, your houseboy?”

“Where were you?”

“If you mean, was I cheating on you, you know I wasn’t.”

“You’re damn straight I know you weren’t.”

“That’s all you have to know.”

“I’m late for my bolero lesson,” I began.

“Don’t go,” said Peter. “This is not the first time this has happened. But it’ll be the last.” He turned to Jeff. “I went away. Now I’m back. It doesn’t matter where I was. End of scene.”

Howling and barking on the walk warned of the return of Dennis Savage and company. Jeff pulled his chair closer to Peter’s. “If it doesn’t matter, why keep it a secret?”

“If it doesn’t matter, why do you have to know?”

“Where were you? And I mean it.”

Peter folded his arms across his chest and sighed.

Little Kiwi ran up. “Bauhaus caught someone’s Frisbee just like that dog in the commercial and raced off with it! Now they don’t know where it is! I expect he buried it, but he won’t tell.” He examined Peter: sullen. He saw Jeff: mad. “Oh no,” Little Kiwi whispered. “The first quarrel.”

Dennis Savage plopped the grocery bags on the table with a groan. “How does beef stew grab you? With new potatoes.”

No one spoke. Jeff gently rubbed Peter’s neck, but Peter wouldn’t look at him. Little Kiwi took the bags inside. Bauhaus fell off the deck into the poison ivy for about the twentieth time that weekend.

“That dog is such an asshole,” said Dennis Savage. Then he noticed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Peter, trying to smile.

“One more time,” said Jeff, slipping his arm around Peter’s shoulder. “Where were you?”

“Please don’t do this,” Peter replied. “I’m loyal, clever, and cute. I’ll never let you down. Never, I promise. Isn’t that enough?”

“Nothing is enough,” Jeff told him. “That’s what love is. The more you have the more you need. You aren’t halfway there yet.”

Peter got up and started for the walk, calling out, “I’ll be back for dinner.” Brisk. Nonchalant. The Peter I know. At the turning he paused, came back, and looked Jeff in the eye. “Okay,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Okay. I went to visit Tod Graham. His father has cancer. He needs visits. The house was full of people. Is that what you want? Is that enough now? Is that love?”

Bauhaus barked.

“Little Kiwi,” Dennis Savage called out, “come get your idiotic dog out of the grunge.”

“Yes, that’s what I want,” said Jeff.

Little Kiwi joined us, eyeing Peter and Jeff nervously. “Bauhaus, come!”

Bauhaus made a pass at the deck, missed, and whimpered.

Jeff went over to Peter. “It’s silly to fight over something so small. Let’s save the fights for the big issues.”

“I don’t want to fight at all.”

“But we will.”

“It hurts me when you fight.” Peter was pleading: a strange Peter. “It
hurts
me, Jeff.”

“It hurts me when you aren’t honest.”

Little Kiwi dragged the dog onto the deck. “Now he’s full of cooties. I
told
you not to fall off, didn’t I?”

“I
am
honest,” said Peter. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.

Jeff took him in his arms.

I looked at Dennis Savage. He was somewhat less than thrilled to witness the shredding of Peter Hawkins, after all. “Little Kiwi, he said, “come help me zip up the salad.”

Little Kiwi was watching Peter and Jeff like Emily Dickinson viewing the dismembering of a butterfly.

“Shoo,” I told him.

He ran into the house.

*   *   *

For the next few days, Jeff and Peter played together like puppies. “It’s always like that,” Dennis Savage informed me, “after the first fight. But then comes the second, and the third.…”

“What a horror show,” I cried. “We’ve seen Peter crying—Peter who mutes ghetto blasters with a look.”

“Yes, that really scared you. Because if our strong, sensible Peter can cry, anyone can, right?”

“Who’s anyone, as if I didn’t know, you dreary plop who rims scrofulous sheep?”

“The day you fall in love, I will personally phone in the item to Liz Smith:
BOY WRITER STRICKEN WITH CASE OF FEELINGS. CONDITION CRITICAL. WEEPING, MOPING, AND PICKING LISTLESSLY AT HIS ZWEIBACK AND MILK.
”

“I always knew you secretly hated me.”

“First Peter, then you, and that’ll be the end of you arrogant sons-of-bitches who think you can take it or leave it. You’re going to die, boyo, just like the rest of us. I’m going to fix you up with death himself.”

A pause ensued.

“You know,” I said, “sometimes these jokes get a little out of control.”

Yes. And he nodded. Yes.

*   *   *

Peter and Jeff did start quarreling again; by August it had become a routine of the house, something always going on, like MTV or construction noises. There was a lot of Why? and When? from Jeff, and rebuffs from Peter. Why won’t you come to Dick’s party? When did you get home last night? Why do we have to go to Europe for Thanksgiving? When a wall of silence failed to prove deterrent, Peter worked out a way to answer Jeff’s queries without saying anything, and their bickering took on an absurdist note, like a play with every third line missing. “Why aren’t you?” provoked responses like “But I am—or I shall have had to be, before long,” or simply “Because I believe that you are Attila the Nun.”

Jeff was exasperated and bewildered, unable to battle through these rebuses. But Peter reclaimed some of his old dash. He would not surrender to the fascism of romance again.

“I know what,” said Little Kiwi one lunchtime. “Every day each of you has to tell one true thing that you never told anyone before.”

“Is that how you and Dennis Savage survive?” asked Jeff.

“We don’t have to,” said Dennis Savage. “We’re—”

“Flexible, we know,” I put in, thinking that he’s about as flexible as the Pope’s hernia truss.

“Now, for example,” Little Kiwi went on, “Jeff could say who Peter most reminds him of. And Peter could tell about the cutest thing Jeff ever did. Or something.”

“The cutest thing Jeff ever did,” said Peter, “was when he forgot to clean out the medicine cabinet when his parents were visiting, and his mother came out of the bathroom and said—”

“Shut up!”

Peter, lean and mean, smiled. “You want me to be honest, don’t you?” he said.

“And loyal, how about that?”

“Oh, no.” Peter shook his head, snapped his fingers, pointed at Jeff. He had found the stop in reason’s mind that would put love in its place. “Loyalty needs lying. Do you want me to be honest or loyal? It’s one or the other.”