You Can Say You Knew Me When (8 page)
Read You Can Say You Knew Me When Online
Authors: K. M. Soehnlein
Tags: #Gay & Lesbian, #Literature & Fiction, #Fiction, #Gay, #Contemporary, #United States, #Contemporary Fiction, #American, #Literary, #Genre Fiction, #Lgbt, #Gay Fiction
“Here it comes,” he hissed.
I pulled my mouth away, but not quick enough. My lower lip took the first big blast, my shoulder the second. I managed to redirect the rest toward the floor. I threw my attention to my own hard-on, which somewhere along the line had decided to join the party, and finished myself off.
Sploop, sploop, sploop
onto the tile. When I looked up, Rick’s eyes were full of admiration. He leaned down and sucked his cum right off my shirt, then off my chin. Without warning he kissed me on the lips, and I tasted his spooge on my tongue, viscous. I’d be worrying about STDs after all. But the kiss felt good, and I let it linger.
“Thanks, buddy,” he said.
“Happy trails,” I said.
Alone again, I wanted a cigarette. Or a sleeping pill. I wanted to call Woody and confess, I wanted him to absolve me. But that was as ridiculous as hoping the clock would spin backwards so I could rewrite the last hour.
I had a window seat and a pillow, but even after two cocktails I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t get back into Kerouac, either. The book felt tainted by its association with Rick. So I pulled my father’s San Francisco souvenirs out of my bag.
Among the items I’d salvaged was a slim, hardback book called
How to Enjoy 1 to 10 Perfect Days in San Francisco.
I found an inscription from Aunt Katie inside the front cover:
December 1960
Dear Rusty,
I am sending this book in case there are some corners of the city, you haven’t discovered yet, and as well, it is a Christmas gift. Plus, the writer is from New York, so, you can trust him! With this $5.00, I suggest, an all you can eat prime rib dinner at House of Prime Rib, which you can read about, on page 30. Or use it for a long distance phone call, or two! Mother says don’t spend it on liquor! Thanks for writing, because we miss you, and everyone wants to be sure you are well. (Even Papa.)
Love,
Your sister, Katie
Squeezed into the space at the bottom of the page was another note:
If you hear from that brother of mine tell him if he don’t want a good swift kick in the keester tell him he better write soon, before Mama has a heart attack from worrying.
From,
Angelo
I turned to page thirty to confirm the House of Prime Rib description, but what caught my attention was a description of the city’s nightlife on the facing page:
If you have ever visited New York’s Greenwich Village, you will take San Francisco’s Beatnik Land in your stride. One suspects that the bohemians of the Village in the ’30s produced more genuine talent and creative accomplishments than today’s beatnik community. This is probably because the really creative beatniks have long since disassociated themselves from the over-organized movement. In fact, by the time you visit San Francisco, Beatnik Land might be completely relocated in Venice, California.
In the margin, my father had written defiantly, “Says You, Square!”
Clearly this was not a book of any use to a twenty-year-old with
hepcat
ambitions of his own. (Poor Aunt Katie, all good intentions and misplaced commas.) I was touched by this youthful defensiveness—no,
touched
isn’t strong enough. It was remarkable to me: my father as defender of the San Francisco underground.
After flipping through the book, I discovered, wedged inside the back cover, an unmarked, sealed envelope. It was literally stuck there, as if the binding glue had softened and then reset around it. I tugged it free and sliced it open.
It was a letter, written in my father’s hand.
November 1, 1960
Dear Danny,
Or should I say, “Dear Incredible Vanishing Friend?” Just pulling your leg, but I sure hope this letter gets forwarded to wherever you are, otherwise I won’t get to say Happy Birthday, pal!
The news here is good-bye “Rusty.” See, nobody calls me Rusty here. They call me “Teddy.” It just happened, when I first met Don Drebinski, the guy who runs the Hideaway, I said my name was Edward and he said, How about Teddy? And that’s how he introduces me to everyone. Guess I’m ready to be “a new man.” You should be here instead of mopping floors in Los Angeles. You could be anyone you want to.
I have it in mind that I’ll be a painter. But not as they say a “Sunday Painter” which is what a fellow called me at a party. I went with Ray, remember I wrote about her, the Jewish brunette with the Natalie Wood face and the damn husband. I thought about keeping away in case the old guy shows up with a shotgun, but she’s irresistible! I could eat her for breakfast, lunch and midnight snack. She’s a painter, and planted the bug in me, having seen my sketches and knowing I was very moved by the Richard Diebenkorn paintings last year. She showed up at my door Saturday to lure me out into the night and I said, “I got to fix my hair first,” and she said, “No, don’t, you look
funk
.” Which melted me like wax. Funk being hep language for what we would call “cool” on the West Side. We got a lift in Mike Kelsey’s T-bird convertible. This is reason for jealousy, because he’s another young fool like myself under the spell of the married beauty, but a heck of a nice guy so as its hard to feel meanness and rivalry toward him, and who can resist the convertible? It is a glorious way to travel under the Frisco night sky, where the fog turns orange from city light reflecting up.
In the car we drank whiskey and drove all the way from my place near the ocean to North Beach (which isn’t a beach at all, or anywhere near the beach). Ray is between us on the seat and telling stories of all the great characters we will meet tonight, possibly some Negro musicians fond of that smokable tea. But wouldn’t you know when we get there Ray disappears with her gang of lady painters which includes the supposedly famous Jane Chase, a tough broad never seen without her own jug of liquid brown poison. My rival Kelsey is smoking a damn pipe which smells like Irish Uncles sitting around telling stories and stinking up the house. I’m eventually drunker than a Roman at an orgy, except alone, when some creep says, “Ray claims you’re a Sunday Painter.” And the one next to him says, “A real plain air type.” I know an insult when I hear one so I tell him “Watch it, I can knock you on your behind.” One of them called me “Bruiser” and the other one nearly died laughing. So I swung at them. More like I stood up and fell onto them. I was damned drunk and bang, down I went.
Ray came running over and I said “What’s the idea talking bad about me to those jokers” but she just gave me a kiss and said forget about them. She made Kelsey drive me home, and he practically killed us driving in the wrong lane on California Street and making some poor stiff swerve spectacularly to avoid death for all concerned. We cursed Ray and every woman to ever tempt a guy and leave him loveless, then he got me up the stairs and we drank some more booze and had a swell time, just a couple of fellows. After he left I took a shower to cool off. (First I got hot and bothered by thoughts of Ray, her helping me off the floor and holding my head so sweetly as she passed me over to Kelsey, so I had to Take Care of That Need, which I’m sure you know what I’m referring to, my oldest true friend.)
I couldn’t sleep so I told myself,
Write it down for Danny.
Because you’re the only one who would live the whole thing out with me if you could. That’s why these sentences are a bit wobbly though I hope it all makes sense. The truth is, I like painting out in the plain air but I don’t only paint on Sundays, so those guys can kiss my Irish ass.
A long dumb story of your friend in Frisco, hopefully entertaining for you on your birthday because you deserve a good laugh and more than that too. Send the new postal address and news of yourself.
Your friend, Teddy
(Though still Rusty if that’s the way you want it)
There was almost nothing about this letter that didn’t astonish me, starting with its imitation Kerouac veneer. Phrases like
I could eat her for breakfast, lunch, midnight snack
sounded like my father, the kind of goofy-embarrassing Dad I remembered from long ago—long ago being shorthand for before Mom died. But could I remember him ever saying that he was moved by anything, much less a Diebenkorn painting? Had he ever mentioned that he’d once aspired to be a painter? Was this just folly, nurtured by his lust for a beautiful woman, or did he actually take a stab at painting
plein air
? And what about Ray, this married woman luring younger guys out into the night to parties marked by drunken brawls and pot smoke?
The letter had never been sent, perhaps because it had gotten stuck in the binding and forgotten. Or maybe because Danny was already out of touch, not only with his brother back home but with his old pal Rusty up in San Francisco, too. I felt a rare stab of empathy for my father, or at least for this younger version of him: his obvious affection for Danny, the nearly desperate need to pour his heart out, his drunken humiliation, his late-night masturbation. Was there more of this kind of thing back in the attic in Greenlawn? Would Deirdre find it, and if she found it, would she know to save it? Or would it get thrown away, just another bit of ancient history best forgotten?
As soon as I spotted Woody’s smiling face above the crowd and heard him call my name, the guilt-stricken drama I’d set myself up for faded away. He hadn’t even told me he would be here. Now I was getting a strong hug, a public kiss, a ready arm to relieve me of an overstuffed carry-on.
“Careful with that,” I told him. “There’s Garner family treasure in there.”
“You brought the family fortune with you?”
“The family baggage, so to speak.”
In his other hand he dangled keys to a car borrowed from his friend Annie for the night. My hero. Neither of us owned a car, and the airport was chaotic because of winter-storm delays. Somewhere in that moment I let go of the notion that I would confess my men’s-room misadventure. I’d write it off as a
slip
and move on.
“I’m still half asleep,” I told him. “You talk first.”
He got me up to speed on our friends: Ian’s computer crashed while he was uploading his webzine, and Woody spent two nights restoring his hard drive; Brady was informed that the warehouse where he lived had been sold and would be refurbished as an office park; Colleen attempted to dye her hair pink and was flipping out at the results. They’d all been leaving messages with Woody, asking if he’d heard from me, though he hadn’t called any of them back because he’d been so busy at work. He had the usual dot-com sweatshop complaints—the extra-long hours, the urgent projects foisted on him without advance notice; the daily meetings that amounted to little more than jargony pep talks; a constantly shifting corporate mission. (Digitent had started out as an
e-commerce website
, but was now defining itself as something called a
wireless service portal
.) Worst of all was what he’d dubbed “digital daycare”: supervising a stable of young programmer-dudes who had no clue how to function in an office. Woody, at thirty-one, was one of the oldest of the bunch. He’d been hired as a web designer but was quickly shifted to management because unlike everyone else, he had real work history.
His eyes were bright and active while he talked. He had beautifully shaped eyebrows that wiggled like inchworms when his speech got animated. Woody was the first fair-haired, fair-skinned guy I’d been involved with. If I have a
type
at all it’s on the Danny Ficchino end of the spectrum, dark and Mediterranean, a clear contrast to what I see in the mirror. Woody comes from the neighboring Northern European gene pools, Scandinavian-Dutch-Scottish: light brown eyes shot with gold, fair cheeks that pinken when he exerts himself, thin lips made thinner by his wide smile. Since I first saw him I’d adored his ringlet curls, which in the sunshine seemed to be woven from straw and in dim light became mutt-brown, so much so that it seemed a lie that he’d labeled himself blonde on his driver’s license.
He was two years younger than me, but I often responded to him as someone older. His therapeutic mindset made him deliberative about plans, levelheaded with problems. I had always charged heedlessly into my life. My career started off as a lark in college; my move to San Francisco was an impulsive attempt to escape Nathan; plans I’d once made to leave were aborted after I met Woody; my close friendships all grew out of infatuation, a pursuit of those who sparkled. There was a trend swelling right around then among Christian teenagers, the wearing of little bracelets marked
WWJD
:
What would Jesus do?
Answer that question and you would walk the righteous path. Those days, I often asked myself,
What would Woody do?
He wasn’t my messiah, but I looked up to him.
Oh, and the most obvious way I looked up to him: with my eyes. He’s six-foot-four, almost six inches taller than me, all limbs, with the forward-curving shoulders typical of the tallest guy in the room. Strangers were forever asking him if he played basketball. (The answer: No, tennis. When he stretched up to serve it was like a swan craning its neck before flight.) To me he was adorable as only a gangly guy who takes himself a bit too seriously can be. He was my golden, gawky, smiling swan.