Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle (35 page)

 

She smiled. "But," she said, "she realized that you had to have your own life, even if it was one that made her afraid for you."

She handed me the glass and our eyes met. I nodded, understanding what she was saying to me. "I'll talk to her," I said. "And thanks."

Jack and his mother left soon after. My grandparents weren't far behind them, excusing themselves midway through Ironside and retiring to their room upstairs. My mother and I sat in silence, watching the television but not speaking. I had planned on waiting until the next day to talk to her about anything serious, but all of a sudden she turned to me and said, "I'm not going to fall apart."

"Who said you were?" I asked.

 

"I can tell what you're thinking," she answered. "You never did hide things very well."

"Well, you caught me," I said, humoring her but also surprised that she was so aware, especially given the number of pills I knew she'd been taking. I'd looked at her latest prescription. The bottle was half empty, despite being filled only a week before.

"Don't tease me, Ned," she said. "I'm serious."

 

I took her hand and held it. "I'm not teasing you," I said. "You're right. I am worried. And if you want me to stay, I will."

 

She shook her head. "No. Go back to San Francisco. Go home."

I was struck by her choice of words. Home . She considered San Francisco my home. Until she said it, even I hadn't thought of the city as my true home. That was a position held by the house we were currently sitting in, the one that had always been home to me. But she was right. That house was no longer my home. It was hers. Mine was the apartment on Diamond, with its creaky floors and high ceilings, its big bay window, and the fireplace that coughed smoke back in our faces when we tried to use it. Home was also the whole city, and the people in it.

"Are you happy there?" my mother asked.
"Yes," I said. "I am."

"And are you happy being…" She hesitated, turning her attention back to Raymond Burr and Barbara Anderson.

"Being what?" I prodded.
She squeezed my hand. "Nothing," she said.

"You were going to say something," I said. "What was it? Am I happy being what? An employee of the United States government? A college dropout? A veteran? What?"

 

"A homosexual," she said.

 

I froze. I wasn't sure I'd heard her correctly. Well, actually, I was sure I'd heard her correctly. She'd said it slowly and clearly. Homosexual . Like it was a nationality.

 

"I don't know what you mean," I said, trying to sound convincing.

 

"What did I tell you about not being able to lie?" she said. "It's all right, Ned. I've known for some time. Well, I've suspected."

 

"Why?" I asked, wondering what particularly nelly trait had given me away, and when. "A mother knows these things," she answered. "I can't tell you how, but we do. Patricia knows about Jack, of course."

"She does?" I said, genuinely shocked.
"Don't sound so surprised," my mother said. "It's not like your generation invented it. I knew a few queer boys when I was growing up. Girls, too, although I think we girls do that sort of thing more naturally than you boys. Most of the girls I knew experimented with their girlfriends at least once or twice. For heaven's sake, Becky Zawitski and I learned how to French kiss by practicing on each other."

I was dumbfounded. My mother had never even said the word sex in my presence. Now she was talking about her foray into teenage lesbianism. For a moment I forgot that my father was dead, looking over at his recliner to see if he was overhearing anything she was saying. Then I remembered that he was gone, his chair sitting empty in the glow of the television.

"Well, are you happy?" my mother asked again.

 

"Yes," I said uncomfortably. "I'm happy." Maybe, I told myself, it was the tranquilizers that had put her in a sharing mood. If so, maybe she would forget the conversation when they wore off.

"Good," she said. "You should be."
I waited a minute before asking her my next question. "Did Dad know?"
"I don't think so," my mother answered. "But men never talk about those things, do they?" "What do you think he would have thought about it?"

"I don't think he would have understood it," she said. "But he would have loved you no matter what."

 

I fought back the tears that formed in my eyes. I was supposed to be comforting my mother, but now she had comforted me. I didn't know what to say to her.

 

"Are you and Jack lovers?" she asked. "Patricia thinks so."

"Well, I guess she'll be disappointed to hear we aren't," I said. I stopped short of relating our long, complicated history. I was still reeling from the sudden shift in our relationship, and wasn't ready to go into detail about my sex life. "I'm not really seeing anyone. Neither is Jack," I added, hoping to head her off before she dug any deeper.

"She probably will be disappointed," my mother said. "But I'm glad. I love Jack dearly, but I think you can do better."

 

I almost laughed. Under different circumstances, I would have. Instead, I leaned over and gave my mother a kiss on the cheek. "I love you," I said.

"And I love you," she told me. "Now, can we agree not to worry about each other?" "Agreed," I said. "At least not too much."

"I'm tired," she said. "I think it's time to go to bed." She stood up, letting go of my hand. "Do you know Monday night was the first one I've spent without your father in twenty-six years?" she told me.

"Do you want to sleep in my room?" I asked her. "I can sleep on the couch."

"No," she answered. "Your father and I shared that room since the night we were married. I've been Alice Brummel since I was seventeen years old, and whether he's in that bed with me or not, your father is still a part of who I am. I can live with a ghost if I have to."

She turned and walked down the hallway, leaving me alone. I looked again at my father's recliner, thinking about how many nights he had sat in it while I lay on the floor, watching a favorite program. I stood up and went to it. I could see the indentation where his body had worn its shape into the cracked genuine-artificial-leather vinyl. I reached out and ran my fingers over the arm, thinking for a moment that it might still be warm from the heat of him. But it was cold, and I pulled my hand away. I couldn't bring myself to sit in it. My mother might have been able to share her bed with a ghost, but I'd had enough of haunted places. On Monday, I would get on an airplane, leaving my mother with her memories. I would go home. I didn't belong here. It was my father's house, not mine, and I would leave him to look after my mother.

I clicked the television off. "Good night, Dad," I said, thinking about everything my mother had said. Tranquilizers or not, I knew she meant every word. "I love you, too."
CHAPTER 35
"Happy birthday, old men."

Burt had to yell to be heard over the din. Buzzby's, as it almost always was, was packed. On that Saturday night—a warm one in the summer of 1975—it was overflowing with handsome men. Adding to the noise was the throbbing disco music pouring from the sound system. "You got me where you want me." The voices of the three women who called themselves the Ritchie Family sang the one line of their hit song "Brazil," which we'd been hearing in the bars for the past few weeks and which had been stuck in my head like a crazed bee.

Burt kissed me, then Jack. "Twenty-five," Burt said. "Do you guys feel old?"

"We're still younger than you are," I teased. To my relief, the Ritchie Family faded out and the unmistakable first notes of "Jive Talkin'" began. I'd developed a huge crush on Barry Gibb, whose beard and bedroom eyes I found enormously and embarrassingly attractive, and I tapped my foot in time with the music.

"Where's Andy?" Jack asked. "We're going to be late."
"Relax," I told him. "The show doesn't start for another forty-five minutes."

"Here," Burt said, handing me what was obviously a record album that had been hurriedly wrapped. I pulled the paper off, revealing a copy of Shirley & Company's Shame, Shame, Shame , the cover of which featured a painting of Shirley shaking a disapproving finger at a cringing Richard Nixon.

"I thought it was appropriate," said Burt.

I had to laugh. I loved the song, and I appreciated Burt's humor even more. We'd both felt betrayed following the revelations of Nixon's lying about what was happening in Southeast Asia, and were even more disgusted by his involvement in the Watergate scandal. His resignation the previous year to avoid impeachment seemed to us to be the worst kind of cowardice, and our anger was only inflamed when Tricky Dick received a pardon from former Vice President Gerald Ford a month later.

"What do I get?" Jack asked Burt, pulling a wounded expression.

 

"You get to have your way with me," Burt told him, running his hands over Jack's chest and extending his tongue. "I'll do anything you want."

Jack pretended to think for a moment. "All right, then," he said, pulling Burt close. "I want you to drop your pants, bend over, and…"
"And what?" Burt said breathlessly.

Jack leaned into him, his mouth almost touching Burt's. "Tie. My. Shoe," Jack said, breathing each word into Burt's face.

"You bitch," said Burt, laughing as Jack tried to kiss him. "Get away from me." "But you said you'd do anything," Jack replied. "What kind of sex slave are you?"

"Did I hear someone say ‘sex slave?'" Andy materialized from out of the crowd, interrupting the game between Jack and Burt. He was holding a rolled-up magazine in his hand, which he dropped onto the bar. I picked it up.

"Blueboy," I read as Jack and Burt looked on. "‘The national magazine about men.'" "Open it," Andy said. "Page thirty-six."

I thumbed through the pages until I came to the one he'd told me to look at. When I reached it, Burt let out an audible gasp. "Is that you?" he asked, looking from the magazine to Andy, then back again.

"It sure is," Jack said.
"Every last inch," I added.

"What do you think?" asked Andy. "Aren't the pics great? They shot me so you don't see the scars on my leg."

 

I tried flipping through the rest of the magazine, still unsure what exactly it was, but Burt grabbed it from me and turned back to Andy's pictures.

"It's porn," Andy said, seeing my puzzled expression. "For gays."
"How'd you end up in it?" I asked him.

"This guy came into the bar last month," he said as he motioned for the bartender to bring him a beer.

"Said he was a photographer and asked if he could take some shots of me sometime. I thought he was just looking for some action, but I figured why not? So I went over to his studio a couple of days later, and he turned out to be the real thing. He shot Cheryl Tiegs once."

"I don't think Cheryl Tiegs ever looked like this," Burt said, still admiring Andy's spread. "Who's Brad Majors?" asked Jack.

"Oh, that's me," Andy answered. "I thought I should come up with something sexier than Andy Kowalski. Gene—that's the photographer—suggested Stanley Kowalski, but I didn't really get that."

Burt and I exchanged glances while Andy, oblivious to both the literary reference and his strong resemblance to Tennessee Williams's butch antihero, took a handful of peanuts and popped them into his mouth before continuing.

"Anyway, he thought I kind of look like Lee Majors. You know, from the Six Million Dollar Man . So Brad Majors. Brad was my idea. I think it sounds cool."

"Why use any name?" Burt said.
"For when I do films," Andy told him.
"Films?" Jack said. "You're going to do films?"

"Maybe," said Andy. "Gene says the money's good. Better than I make bartending. He knows some guy who directs, and he's going to tell him about me."

 

"I assume we're not talking about Francois Truffaut or John Schlesinger," Burt remarked. "I don't know his name," said Andy. "Could be. But I thought Gene said it was Tony or Tommy or something."

"Well, congratulations, I guess," I said. "The pictures are great."
"The issue just came out," said Andy. "I stopped and picked one up on the way over here." "I don't think you're the only one," Jack said, nodding.

We looked over and saw a group of men watching us. When they saw Andy looking back, they smiled and waved. I turned to Andy. "Well, Brad, I think you have some fans. We should leave before there's a riot."

We walked out onto the street and headed for the main event of the evening, a performance of Beach Blanket Babylon at Club Fugazi. Although it had been running for over a year, I'd yet to see it, and I couldn't wait. Word had quickly spread about Steve Silver's bizarrely fabulous revue featuring campy songs and impossibly huge hats, and it seemed like the perfect way to celebrate Jack's and my birthdays.

"I can't believe we're living with a porn star," Jack said to me as we walked to California Street to catch the cable car. Andy, ahead of us with Burt hanging on his every word, was too far away to hear.

"I can't believe we slept with a porn star," I added.

 

Jack put his arm around my shoulder. "That was a long time ago," he said. "We can tell everyone we knew him when."

"What are you two talking about back there?" Andy called back to us.
"You!" I shouted back.
He and Burt waited for us to catch up. "What were you saying about me?" asked Andy.

"We were talking about how they'll need to put Vaseline on the lens when they shoot you," I said. "To make you look younger."

"I think it's more likely to be Crisco," Burt remarked, as Andy shook his head. The cable car arrived a few minutes later and we boarded. As it began the climb up Cathedral Hill, we sat alongside tourists with cameras around their necks and street maps in their hands. Many of them had made the common out-of-towners' mistake of wearing shorts and T-shirts, believing that because San Francisco is in California, it must therefore always be warm. Now, with the sun going down, they were hugging themselves to stay warm. But still they were happy, as were we. We were, after all, in the most beautiful city in the world, chilly summers notwithstanding. Where California crossed Powell Street, we jumped off and transferred to the trolley going north toward Chinatown, taking it as far as Jackson Street before getting off. The walk into North Beach toward Washington Square was not a long one, and we arrived at Club Fugazi with time to spare. We were seated at one of the tables for four in the front cabaret section near the stage, and minutes later we each had a drink in hand. By the time the lights dimmed, we were on our second ones and in a festive mood.