I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore (17 page)

“And what does Peter remind you of?” Little Kiwi asked Jeff, merrily, but with an edge.

Jeff grinned at Peter. “He reminds me of—”

“You remind me of the Elephant Man!”

“You fucking zit!”

“But we have to be nice to you because you’ve got a terminal case of brainturd, that dread disease in which your brain slowly turns into a great, big, brown—”

Jeff leaped out of his chair and went for Peter, who dodged around the table. “What other wonderful games can you suggest for us to play?” I asked Little Kiwi, as Peter and Jeff lunged about us.

“I know Animal Lotto,” he answered.

Eventually Jeff heaved into his chair and told Peter to fuck off. Peter did so with a purposeful look in his eye, leaving a sober quartet to assess and attempt to make remedy.

“You have to stop fighting,” Dennis Savage told Jeff. “You’re the top-okay couple of the summer. They were fainting when you and Peter walked into tea yesterday. Fashion and ad people in the six figures are lining up for dinner invitations.”

Jeff shrugged.

“Why did he call you the Elephant Man?” Little Kiwi asked.

“Why do you think?”

“Because you like peanuts?”

“Size.”

Little Kiwi paused. “Size what?”

“Of his, uh, trunk,” I said.

“Mere trivia,” said Dennis Savage. “The issues are sharing and candor and that’s exactly—Little Kiwi, stop gaping—where Peter can’t compromise.”

“Why does he have to?” I asked.

“Because I said so,” said Jeff. You should have seen his face.

“I admit that Peter is a pretty unbending character,” I went on, “but isn’t that in itself good reason to run this affair by his rules? Keep company, but respect your differences. Share what is sharable.”

“He’s too mixed up even for that,” said Jeff. “He’s been covering his insecurity so long that he can’t open up at all.”

“Two men can’t give up the same thing at the same time,” I said.

Well, that stopped them.

“What happens in straight romance?” I continued. “The woman gives up her independence and the man gives up nothing. That’s why they’re man and wife, not husband and wife. She has to change, not he. She pays the compromises. But when two men couple, no one is giving up anything. That’s bound to create tension, and some men can compensate for it better than others. Peter compensates less well.”

“Bullshit.”

“That’s the retort of an ignorant lout. I expect something more sensitive from someone in love.”

“Look!” Little Kiwi shouted, pointing at Ocean Walk. “An ox!”

“A deer. Specialty of the Pines.”

Bauhaus strained at his rope, fuming and groaning.

“Hush, Bauhaus.”

So Bauhaus promptly barks and the deer runs off.

“It’s done all the time,” Jeff repeats. “
I
do it. Why can’t he?”

“Why don’t you give him a chance to edge into it?” I asked.

“If it doesn’t start right, it’s already finished,” Jeff retorted, flaring up. “He’ll do what he has to, or I’ll find out why but good!”

“You made him cry,” Little Kiwi blurted out. “You’re the Elephant Man!”

“Walk time,” said Dennis Savage.

Little Kiwi eyed the boardwalk. “Do ox bite?”

“
Oxen
bite. Deer don’t. Come.” Away they went, Bauhaus dragging on his leash.

“That kid is very pretty,” said Jeff, looking after them. “But real stupid.”

“He’s bright enough to know how to behave in love.”

“And how is that?”

“With ease.”

He took a deep breath, tilted his chair back, and watched me. “Let me tell you something,” he finally said. “I’ve gone to and fro in love, and walked up and down in it. I know love. Peter doesn’t. Nor do you. So he’s going to take my advice, and you’re going to keep yours to yourself.”

“Think I’ll catch up with the guys,” I said, rising. “One thing, though: next time you use the Bible for your text, don’t quote the devil. It hurts your credibility.”

“What Bible?”

“‘Going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it.’ The Book of Job.”

He chuckled. “I knew that was from somewhere.”

*   *   *

Peter stayed away all that day and night and didn’t return till just before dinner the next day. Little Kiwi insisted on making the drinks, which he called Kazootie Koolers: white wine drowning grapes, melon balls, and strawberries.

“I hope no one drops in and sees us drinking these,” said Dennis Savage. “I mean, I like them, but they’d be hard to alibi to anyone on the A-list.”

“Why don’t you do what you want to do without reference to what others think?” I asked.

“Because no man is an island!”

“
I
am an island!”

“So am I,” said Peter, strolling in. “I’m Fire Island.” Nice. Assured. “I’m the embodied truth of the Pines. I’m the destiny of homoerotic passion.” He marched into the house and came out munching a hunk of cheese. “Aren’t you going to ask where I was?” he asked Jeff. “If it doesn’t matter, why keep it a secret, right? So where was I?”

Jeff ignored him.

“Hey,” Peter went on, “what would happen if I took Bauhaus for a run?”

“You best not,” said Little Kiwi. “He’s afraid of an ox.”

Jeff got up.

“Do you want a Kazootie Kooler?” Little Kiwi asked Peter, his eyes on Jeff.

“Hell, yes.”

Jeff confronted Peter.

“I was with Jim Guest,” said Peter, quite casually. “All night. He’s hotter than you are. Now you know and how do you like it?”

Jeff fetched Peter a walloping blow to the side of the head and knocked him flat on the deck.

To Bauhaus’ crazed barking, Dennis Savage and I jumped between them. Jeff threw us one by one off the deck into the grunge. Bauhaus came, too; it’s possible that he prefers it there.

Jeff pulled Peter to his feet and smacked him down again.

“I knew you’d be understanding about this,” said Peter.

“How do I like it?” shouted Jeff. “How do I like it, huh?”

Now Little Kiwi got between them. “Go away!” he cried, harrying Jeff with his chair as one tames a tiger. “Go away
now!
”

“This is how I like it,” said Jeff, pushing past Little Kiwi to get to Peter again. Dennis Savage and I had just gained the deck when we saw Jeff haul Peter up by the collar of his shirt and Little Kiwi punching Jeff in the back. Suddenly, someone said, “What the fruit is going on here?” and we turned to find the most nondescript man I’ve ever seen, standing on our deck holding an overnight bag and a briefcase. He was a pair of glasses with no eyes behind them.

“Which of you,” he went on, “is Virgil Brown?”

“I am,” said Little Kiwi.

“I’m Orville McKlung. Permit me to point out that you said nothing about violence when I inquired about the tenor of the house. Nor did you speak of a dog.”

Bauhaus grumbled in the grunge.

The man walked past us into the house in the flat-footed but hip-rolling gait of the queen who believes that everyone thinks he’s straight. We could hear him rummaging in the kitchen. Sniffing. Put out.

Outside, our riot collapsed. Little Kiwi picked up the fallen chair. Dennis Savage examined Peter’s ear, which was bleeding. Jeff stood off a bit, not taking his eyes off Peter, not even to blink. A moment later, the stranger was back, flourishing a cookie wrapper.

“And who, may I ask, ate almost all my Lorna Doones?”

“I didn’t know they were yours,” said Peter.

“I saved them for tonight! It’s my Wednesday night special!”

(“That sounds like you,” Dennis Savage murmured to me.” “Your mother wears a dribble bib,” I replied.)

“Would you like a Kazootie Kooler?”

“No, Mr. Brown, I would like my Lorna Doones replaced.”

“Mea culpa,”
said Peter. “I’ll go.”

“Let me,” I said. His shirt was torn almost in two.

“Peter and I will go,” said Jeff. “Together.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Do you want more of the same?”

Peter held his ground. “I won’t cry for you this time.”

We all stood and waited, except Orville McKlung, who muttered, “Swindlers,” and went inside.

“Come on,” said Jeff, extending his hand.

“No!”

“If you don’t take my hand,” said Jeff, “I’m going to drag you to the store by the neck for all the Pines to see. And when the dish queens get through with you, you’ll be the laugh of the week.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Peter.

“Bud,” said Jeff, his eyes still on Peter, “do you believe me?”

“I believe you would try,” I answered.

“I hurt you,” Jeff told Peter. “I’ll hurt you again. And I’ll be sorry then as I’m sorry now. But you hurt me, too. You’ve been hurting me since we met. That’s what love is.” Jeff seemed to circle around Peter, surround him. “Now, come with me and we’ll buy this man his cookies, and then we’ll take a walk on the beach and talk about it. I can make it up to you.”

Peter laughed softly. “How could you possibly?”

“Tonight.”

Peter paused, looked away, shook his head, let Jeff take his hand. “I don’t love you anymore,” he said dully.

“That’s when you love me the most,” Jeff told him. “When you feel it hurting.”

“Somebody … please help me,” said Peter.

Little Kiwi whispered, “I’ll help you. What do you want?”

Peter looked at Jeff. “I want to go with him.”

“You don’t need any help for that,” said Jeff.

And away the two of them went.

*   *   *

“You know what’s funny about extroverts?” I said. “They’re just as dogmatic as introverts.”

“Did you hear the other guy call me ‘Mr. Brown’?” said Little Kiwi.

“Speaking of that,” said Dennis Savage, “whose idea was it to let Little Kiwi arrange for the disposition of the shares in this house?”

“‘Mr. Brown,’” Little Kiwi quoted, striking a solemn pose, “‘I would like my Lorna Doones replaced.’”

“Little Kiwi, get that menace of a dog back among the living!”

Little Kiwi helped Bauhaus onto the deck and said, “Now everyone has cooties but me.”

“That won’t last long,” replied Dennis Savage, as I pretended to fan myself like a deb at a more than usually intense prom.

And when anyone complains to me that he’s getting old and has no romance, I think of Jeff and Peter, and remark that I know someone who didn’t fall in love till he was thirty-four.

Think of all you have to look forward to.

A Christmas Carol

My family has been celebrating a highly traditional Christmas since before I was born. We trimmed no trees—Mother disdained them as fire hazards. But we did everything else Americans do, from rummaging through closets to see what presents were heading our way to gloating over them on Christmas Eve as my father took home movies and mother served champagne to those of age and caviar to all. I mean the real thing, too, on a multi-leveled tray bearing chopped, boiled egg, minced onion, sour cream, and toast. (When he thought no one was looking, my dad would slip a spoon into the fish and glop it down neat.) The caviar tray was as much a part of our Night Before as was staying up late with my brothers to reminisce, bicker, and watch the Alastair Sim
Christmas Carol
on television. The great moment was when all five of us spoke, along with Sim, the immortal line, “Are there no prisons?
No workhouses?
”

On Christmas Day we bundled into the car for the larger, dynastic festival at my Aunt Agnes’ in Connecticut. Some four generations made a day of it, with drinks and little meatballs at noon as the various cars pulled in, followed by the dread ritual of the Kissing of the Grandparents, the kids trundled into the living room where the old folks stiffly held court in high-backed chairs, my grandfather passing out antique silver dollars to all the dutiful children. “Was he good?” Grandfather would ask as my cousin Ellis filed by. “Very good,” said my aunt Laura; and Ellis got a coin. “Was she good?” asked Grandfather, as my cousin Ruth came up. “Basically,” my aunt Jane answered; a coin for Ruth. Now it’s my turn. “Was he good?” my grandfather inquires of mother, who replies, “He’s a perfect little monster-child!” I got a coin anyway, as Mother fumed.

The men sat in on the televised football game in the den, the women traded eternal wisdoms here and there through the house, and the kids repaired outside for touch football with something like twenty on each side, ranging in age from five to thirty. Sacred acts were committed, too, as when my cousins would bring their fiancées to meet their engaged in-laws. I can remember Ellis introducing Sally, person by person, as they moved through the house. Years before, when we were still kids, that time was claimed by the annual Monopoly game, with Ellis, Donald, Jeff, and I behind locked doors as my little brothers and cousins plotted raids outside in the hall. (Ruth still claims she can never forgive us for leaving her out.) Some years, there was a free-for-all upstairs on the third floor, more modern than the rest of the house and amply supplied with huge closets and magical attics. It was the best kind of game: no rules. Everyone just ran around screaming and hiding.

At length came the holiday dinner, in three seatings because of the crush of people. First seating was desirable if you wanted primary choice of the turkey platter, but the second-seating people would come up and stand behind you, grumbling in hunger. Second seating was more convivial but a little thin on the soufflé potatoes; and third seating, reserved for the drunks, who didn’t much care whether they ate or not, was a touch campy, with too many green peas. Then came buffet-style coffee and dessert, of an endless suspense punctuated by us kids, who would ask, “Is it time yet?” every three minutes.

By 7:30 or so it was time: for the presents, enough to fill F. A. O. Schwartz for a year. My Uncle Willy was in the toy business, so his were the best—forts, gas stations, and building sets—but there was a general emphasis on things to play with rather than things to wear. My Uncle Mike would read out the cards through a megaphone—“To Bud from Aunt Jane and Uncle Sonny”—as various grownups clapped and the recipient bellowed out a law-abiding “Thank you!” Everyone leaned over to see what came out of the wrapping, and reactions were not muted. Uncle Willy’s toys received ovations from the kids, plus cries of “I want that, too!” while the occasional sweater won oohs from the mothers and boos from the kids.