“Like this?” Mona pointed to her costume.
“No, but they … well, they don’t wanna screw you. They just want … like special services they can’t get anywhere else. Like I had this one guy from Stockton who wanted me to wear black lace panties and sit on his knee while he dictated his will to me.”
“Sure.”
“I swear, Judy. And it took forever. I had to go see Dr. Craig that week.”
“Why?”
Bobbi tittered. “He said I had single-handedly turned writer’s cramp into a venereal disease.”
Still wearing the costume, Mona wandered back to the parlor and took a beer out of the refrigerator behind the bar. She longed for a joint.
Charlene appeared and smirked at Mona’s outfit. “Mighty early, aren’t you?”
“I don’t like to be rushed.”
“He’s not comin’ for an hour.”
“It’s O.K.”
“You’ll have B.O.”
“Lay off, Charlene!”
“Nervous, ain’t you?” Her tone was openly bitchy now. She resents me, thought Mona. It pisses her off that Mother Mucca likes me.
“I’m fine,” said Mona blandly.
“Maybe so,” said Charlene, “but you’re spillin’ the beer.”
At fifteen minutes and counting, Mona sat alone in the parlor. Mother Mucca entered from the kitchen and took her place quietly at Mona’s side.
“You O.K.?”
Mona nodded.
“It’s something you can tell your grandchildren about.”
“Sure.”
The old woman put her arm gently around Mona’s shoulders, taking care not to disturb the costume. “You look … real fine.”
“Thanks.”
“The other girls are all in their rooms. They’ll stay there till he’s gone. You’ll use Charlene’s room, so I’ll tell you when to come in. He’ll be there already. You remember what to do?”
“I think so.”
Mother Mucca patted her hand. “You’ll do just fine.”
“Mother Mucca?”
“How can he …? How’s he getting here?”
“Oh, in a limousine.”
“A limousine?”
“Sure,” said Mother Mucca, tapping her head to signal a clever man. “That way, nobody’ll think it’s him, see?”
The rap came on Mona’s door.
“He’s here,” whispered Mother Mucca.
Mona slipped out into the starry desert night. A warm breeze blew in from the north, flapping the sleeves of her habit. Mother Mucca took one last look at her new girl, readjusted her wimple and scurried back to the parlor. Then Mona opened the door of Charlene’s cubicle.
The customer was seated cross-legged on the floor next to the bed. He was wearing the saffron robes of a Buddhist monk.
“Sister … I have sinned.”
Mona cleared her throat. “I know, my child.”
The whip, as arranged, was lying on the bed.
Interrupted Idyll
THE TAXI RIDE FROM MANZANILLO OFFERED LITTLE more than crumbling hamburger stands, palm-thatched shanties, and occasional burros rummaging in the roadside garbage.
Mary Ann’s and Burke’s destination, however, was not to be believed.
Perched airily above an azure bay, the resort of Las Hadas gleamed like an opium dream from the Arabian Nights. Bougainvillaea blazed electrically against whitewashed walls, gargoyles peered from minarets into sun-drenched courtyards, birds sang and palms swayed.
And Mary Ann’s heart took flight.
“Oh, Burke, just look at it!”
She didn’t mean that, of course. What she meant was: Look at us.
The beach was a crescent of silvery sand with water so clear that Mary Ann could watch tiny fish darting between her legs. Burke dunked her with infantile glee, holding fast to her waist as they surfaced into the sunshine.
How long had it been since someone had done that?
How long had she waited for this smile, these eyes, this strong, simple spirit that had come to her in a world marred by greed and anxiety and computer dating? And how long, dear God, would it last?
They sunned together on their backs, fingertips touching.
“Where’s Michael today?” asked Burke.
“On the ship.”
“He could have come with us, you know.”
“I think he wanted to take it easy.”
“I see.”
“Burke?”
“Yeah?”
“Why did you leave California?”
There was a pause, and then: “I don’t know. I guess … my father and all.”
“Your father?”
“The publishing business. He needed help.”
“Were you … in the publishing business in San Francisco?”
“No. I was just … bumming around.”
“For three years?”
He rolled onto his side, facing her, smiling slightly. “Are you asking me how rich I am?”
It did sound that way, and she was horrified by her gaffe. “No, Burke! Really. I was just … Never mind. I’m flustered, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Oh, it’s just so damn typical!”
“What is?”
“You know. You meet somebody nice, and you get along with them fabulously, so of course they live three thousand miles away! It’s a gyp, that’s all.”
He slid closer to her and cupped his hand against her cheek. “Was last night a gyp?”
“No. You know that.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “We’ve got a week, Mary Ann. Let’s make the best of it, huh?”
They ate lunch overlooking the water in a garden of manicured tropical foliage. An artificial waterfall made lush sounds in the swimming pool behind them.
A child approached wearing a sandwich board that announced the resort’s coming events. “How precious!” said Mary Ann, noting his blue clown’s costume and pointy-toed court jester shoes.
But as he came closer, she made the discovery that he wasn’t a child at all.
He was a dwarf.
Embarrassed, she turned away, hoping the little man would pass up their table for a group of boisterous tourists seated near the pool. He didn’t, though. He approached the young lovers with a toothy, imploring smile, holding a red rose in his outstretched hand.
Now it was unavoidable. “Burke, have you got a peso or something for him?”
Her companion didn’t answer. He was chalk white, and still as a corpse.
“Burke, is something …?”
His voice was scarcely more than a whimper, a pathetic trapped-animal sound. “Make him go,” he said.
“Burke, he’s only a—”
“Please, please … make him go!”
The dwarf needed no encouragement. He was three tables away by the time Burke stumbled into the shrubbery and fell to his knees, vomiting. Mary Ann moved to his side and gently stroked the strawberry curls on the back of his neck.
“It’s O.K.,” she said. “It’s O.K.”
Seconds later, he straightened up and tried to regain his dignity. “Forgive me, please. I’m really sorry. I should have …”
“It’s O.K.,” she said softly. “I can see how he might make you …”
Burke shook his head. “It wasn’t him, Mary Ann.”
“What?”
“It was the rose.”
Douchebag
ONCE A PHILIPPINE NIGHTCLUB SPECIALIZING IN bosomy chanteuses, the Mabuhay Gardens had mutated almost overnight into San Francisco’s only punk rock showplace. There, amid the dying palms and tattered rattan, Bruno Koski came off like a bona-fide heavy from an early Bogart film.
The punks and punkettes eyed him with ill-disguised envy, lusting silently after his pitted complexion, his garbanzo-bean eyes, his casual air of native degeneracy.
Bruno Koski was the real thing.
Jimmy, the stage manager, recognized him immediately. “Hey, Bruno, what’s …?�
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“I’m lookin’ for Douchebag.”
“You know her?”
“Just tell me where she is, kid.”
“Over there. Next to the amplifier. The one in the garbage bag.”
Bruno glanced sullenly toward the sound equipment, avoiding the eyes of the assembled punks. Three of the punkettes were wearing Hefty bags, modified as ponchos with safety pins.
“Oh,” amended Jimmy, seeing Bruno’s irritation. “The one with the green hair.”
Bruno approached her.
“You Douchebag?”
“Yeah.” She was chewing gum viciously. Her hair, several shades lighter than the Hefty bag, was chopped off close to her scalp. She was wearing a button that said PUNK POWER.
“My name’s Bruno.”
She chewed even harder. “So?”
“So I wanna talk to you.”
“Nope. Crime is comin’ on.” She nodded toward the stage, where a gang of black-leather musicians was slithering into position for its next assault on the audience.
Bruno glowered at Douchebag, but decided to humor her. He needed the little bitch, after all. He could put up with her for a few minutes longer.
Crime was so loud he felt his brain was bleeding. The punks and punkettes turned spastic under the spell of the music, quivering like convicts in a hundred different electric chairs. The song was called “You’re So Repulsive.”
At the first break, she turned back to him. “Outasight, huh?”
“Yeah,” he lied.
“You shoulda seen it when they had Mary Monday and the Bitches.”
“Yeah?”
“Shit, man. They trashed the microphones and tore up the tables and the stage manager freaked out … and, man, it was just deee-praved!”
“Sounds like it.”
“Course, that’s nothin’—I mean nothin‘—compared to The Damned or The Nuns. I mean, that’s heavy metal … really scuzzy stuff. Some o’ that stuff makes you wanna really puke!”
The cud-chewing mouth became too much for him. “Hey … get rid o’ that stuff, will ya?”
She stared at him, unblinking, for several seconds, then removed the gum from her mouth, rolled it into a neat little ball and stuffed it up her nostril.
She didn’t flinch when he outlined his proposal.
“I just … trash her a little bit, huh?”
“Yeah. She don’t live far from here.”
“You’ll gimme her schedule and all? I mean, I don’t have to bust in, do I?”
“Nope. We’ll arrange a time. You leave that to me, punk.”
She beamed at that. She was a punk now. She was earning her punk credentials for real. “Hey, Bruno … like what do I get out of this?”
“What d’ya want?”
She thought for a moment. “I wanna start my own group. We need three hundred bucks.”
“It’s yours.”
“You know The Scorpions?”
“Sure.”
“It’s gonna be a group like that. Only it’s gonna be all chicks, and we’re only gonna sing during our periods, so that we can really gross people out when we—”
“Hey, punk … O.K., O.K.!”
Douchebag’s mouth curled. “Shit, man! I can’t wait till I’m thirteen!”
A Changed Man
BRIAN WAS ON HIS WAY OUT THE DOOR WHEN THE phone rang in the little house on the roof.
“Yeah?”
“Hey! What’s happenin’?”
It had to be Chip Hardesty. Chip Hardesty would ask “What’s happenin’?” at his grandmother’s funeral. He lived in Larkspur, but his home was barely distinguishable from his Northpoint office. Both had Boston ferns, Watney’s Ale mirrors and basket chairs suspended from chains. He didn’t particularly get off on being a dentist.
“Not much,” answered Brian. For the first time in years, he was lying through his teeth.
“Bitchin’! I’ve got a plan.”
“Yeah,” said Brian noncommittally. Chip’s last plan had involved a case of Cold Duck, a rental cabin at Tahoe and two sure-thing dental receptionist students from the Bryman School. One of these women—Chip’s, of course—had been a dead ringer for Olivia Newton-John.
Brian’s date had been uncomfortably suggestive of Amy Carter and had loped along at a strange angle in an effort to compensate for a left breast she felt to be smaller than her right.
“Are you working tonight?” asked Chip.
“Afraid so.”
“What time you get off?”
“Eleven.”
“O.K. Listen. You remember Jennifer Rabinowitz?”
“Nope.”
“O.K. Huge knockers, right? Works at The Cannery. Pierced nose—”
“Barfed at the Tarr and Feathers sing-along.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. The barfee.”
“You never told me that.”
“Sorry. I should have mentioned it on my Christmas card.”
A hurt silence followed. Then: “I’m doin’ you a favor, man. You can take it or leave it.”
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“O.K. Jennifer’s got this friend—”
“Makes her own clothes. Great personality. All the girls in the dorm just love—”
“What the hell’s wrong with you, man?”
“I’ll be out of it, Chip. Better count me out.”
“What’s that mean? Out of it.”
“Beat. Exhausted. Eleven o’clock’s a little late for—”
“Christ! You haven’t crashed before two in five years!”
“Well, maybe I’m getting old, then.”
“Yeah. Maybe you are.”
“Chip?”
“Yeah?”
“Go spray your hair, will ya?”
As a matter of fact, he wasn’t a bit tired when he finished with his last customer at Perry’s. He felt vigorous, exhilarated, as spirited as a fourteen-year-old about to lock himself in the bathroom with a copy of Fanny Hill. Lady Eleven was the best thing that had happened to him in years.
Later, as he climbed out of the shower, he acknowledged the fact that he felt a strong sense of fidelity toward the siren in the Superman Building. She belonged to him, in the purest, most satisfying sense of the word. And he belonged to her. If only for half an hour.
He had met an equal, at last.
Love on a Rooftop
THE HAMPTON-GIDDES WERE THE FIRST TO ARRIVE FROM the ballet. “Fabulous latticework,” gushed Archibald Anson Gidde, appraising his host’s new rooftop deck.
Peter Cipriani nodded. “I found this gorgeous twink carpenter in the Mission. Dirt cheap and pecks that won’t quit. Jason something-or-other.”
“They’re all called Jason, aren’t they?”
Peter snickered. “Or Jonathan.”
“Was his ear pierced?”
“Nope. But he wore cut-offs to die. And knee socks with Lands End come-fuck-me boots. He was hot.”
“How is he with kitchens?”
“Who knows? I can only speak for bedrooms, my dear.”
“Ooooh,” said Archibald Anson Gidde.
Minutes before midnight, the deck was crowded with A-Gays, tastefully atwitter over glissades and pirouettes. Charles Hillary Lord lifted a spade of cocaine to Archibald Anson Gidde’s left nostril.
“I talked to Nicky today.”
Arch inhaled the powder noisily. “And?”
“I think he’s going in on it.”
“Good,” said Arch indifferently. “That should help you a lot.”
“We don’t need help, Arch. It’s a sure thing. I just want you in on the ground floor.”
“Then you won’t be hurt if I say no.”
Chuck Lord sighed dramatically and swept his arm over the rooftops of Russian Hill. “Arch … do you have any idea at all how many faggots are out there?”
“Just a sec. I’ll check my address book.”
“There are—and this is conservatively speaking—one hundred
and twenty thousand practicing homosexuals within the city limits of San Francisco.”
“And practice does make perfect.”
“Those one hundred and twenty thousand homosexuals are going to grow old together, Arch. Some of them may go back to Kansas or wherever the hell they ran away from, but most of them are gonna stay right here in Shangri-la, cruising each other until it’s pacemaker time.”
“I need a Valium.”
“Goddammit, Arch, don’t you see? We’re O.K. We’ve got houses and cars and trust funds and enough … assets to pay for Dial-a-Model until we’re a hundred and two, if we want to. It’s those fuckers on food stamps and ATD, selling crap at the flea market and painting houses in the Haight, who’re gonna need this when the time comes.”
Arch’s face grew serious. “Doesn’t that smack of exploitation to you, Chuck?”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Somebody’s gonna do it! You know that, Arch. Why shouldn’t we be the first?”
“I don’t know. It just seems … risky.”
“Risky? Arch, it’s social history! It’s Wall street Journal stuff! Think of it! The first gay nursing home in the history of the world!”
Arch Gidde turned and looked at the city. “Gimme some time, O.K.?”
Chuck flung an arm over his shoulder and adopted a more affectionate tone. “Nicky’s even thought of a name.”
“What?”
“The Last Roundup.”
“Oh, for God’s …”
“Don’t you see? A tasteful butch Western motif, with barn siding in the rooms and little chuckwagons for the food—”
“Let’s not forget the denim colostomy bags.”
Chuck glared at him. “You joke, but I know you see the profit in this!”
Silence.
“Look, Arch: it’s very civilized, in a way. I mean, we could have a steam room and everything. The orderlies could be Colt Models!”
“That’s always nice to know when they’re carrying you to the toilet. Look, Chuck, everybody’s different. This is your fantasy. What are you gonna do with, like, the drag queens?”
“We could—I don’t know—we could have a separate wing.”
“And Helen Hayes look-alike contests?”
“Well, I don’t see any reason why—”
He was cut short by Peter Cipriani, shouting excitedly to his guests. “O.K., don’t crowd. One at a time, gentlemen, one at a time.” He handed a pair of binoculars to Rick Hampton, who aimed them in a northerly direction.
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