Men on Men

by George Stambolian (ed)

  Red, Leddy Purnhagen’s spirit, or I should say, Red, the spirit that had leased Teddy, was completely at home with Benjamin in the big house in Sydney. He’s a pushover for comfort.

  Benjamin learned to crawl and babble and delight his mother. Catherine shushed him whenever he cried or raised his voice, telling him, “We don’t want the family to be disturbed.” Benjamin would be quiet. He would always be quiet, never disturbing anyone if he could help it, for the rest of his life.

  The rose carpet from Hong Kong was thick and warm. Benjamin’s first word was “rose.” Throughout his life, within his dreams, roses bloomed when the emotion his unconscious was translating signified comfort, warmth and innocence.

  The carpet star above Hong Kong appears in Benjamin’s constellation.

  And Red, Benjamin’s pulsing spirit, became sensual and warm as the knees crawled across the carpet and he remembered similar carpets from centuries gone. The sailor that Teddy Purnhagen had been in love with, the young man that Teddy had exposed himself to, blaming alcohol for his bold and sinful behavior, this man who slept below as Teddy ejaculated and drowned, never to know the confused love of queers in war, this young man had the same carpet as the banker in Sydney. It was made at the same mill in Hong Kong, the same week. Nothing is a coincidence.

  Catherine Quinn died of cancer of the uterus in 1925. Her spirit was worn to thin gauzy shreds and faded in ecstatic relief having had its fill of human life. Evelyn, Catherine’s sister, halfheartedly sent for Benjamin. Benjamin wanted to scream and cry, but he bit his lip and watched his mother’s casket be lowered into the ground. He threw a rose in the hole and was led away by the wealthy banker to the ship that would take him to England, on his own, at the age of eight. As Benjamin stood on the freighter, waving good-bye to the banker and Australia, he felt defiant and strong and not as sad as he thought he should. A young sailor was directed to look over the boy. He went up to Benjamin and said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” and, “You’re a brave lad so don’t be scared.” Benjamin shook his head in agreement. At eight, he knew, thanks to Red’s strength, that he would get by. He was a polite and obedient and handsome child. He waved to the banker again, with the young sailor at his side waving also. Benjamin felt free and good. The banker, who for all of his money, had the gray spirit of an idiot, wiped a tear from his eye and felt the poor boy had a wretched life ahead of him, but also told himself that he had done more for the boy than most would for domestics. Benjamin stopped waving and wrapped his arms around himself. The young sailor talked to him about England.

  On her deathbed, Catherine had glimpsed Benjamin’s queer spirit for a moment. Benjamin was standing at the bed, shocked at the impending desertion. He could see every bone in his mother’s skull. She took his fleshy hand in hers.

  “Forgive me, Benjamin,” she muttered.

  Because she had asked for forgiveness, Benjamin felt she had a choice in the matter. She was choosing to die, to desert him, and therefore was asking for forgiveness.

  He asked, “Why do you hate me?”

  “I love you. God loves you. You’re an angel,” she whispered. But Catherine saw Red as clear as she saw her son. She saw strength and she saw sex. She remembered the fire and the pram and her pride. She closed her eyes and prayed that the devil would leave her son. “One final torture for my sins,” she thought. She was paying for her pride. And, as I said, her spirit was spent, she was full of idols and Bible fears and thought Benjamin’s spirit was Satan. (This was not the first time Red has been taken for a fictional character.) There was no doubt in Catherine’s eye that Benjamin was possessed, so Red, in the clarity and purity of death, stepped forward and rocked her forlorn confused spirit to sleep, comforting her, as if she were an infant.

  Benjamin let go of her lifeless hand. He was turning cold. Catherine saw, in that last light of life where the truth is simple and clear, that for him to survive, he would shed few tears. He had to withdraw from her. His spirit was showing hers that there was nothing to fear.

  Before he lost sight of Australia, on the deck of the freighter, with the young sailor at his side, having said he would be Benjamin’s big brother for the voyage, Benjamin said out loud to his mother fading at the horizon, “You and your Lord are selfish.”

  The sailor said, “I like shellfish.”

  The sailor was looking forward to bedding down with the boy. He wanted and hoped to fuck the boy’s tight little butt.

  Brian!

  Hey! Give in to what you see in your mind’s eye. Vera always says that. One night, I know this has nothing to do with Benjamin, but anyway, one night when I was twenty-two, or maybe even twenty-one, Vera and I were sitting by candlelight on the bare floor in her apartment in Brooklyn, and she told me, “Brian you are sooooooo empty. You are empty enough to be filled with the spirits.” She said I was vacant enough to be rented. She told me that I could receive energy from other worlds that are all around us. It kind of freaked me out at first, but she told me about that white light thing, and then she said she wanted me to fuck her. She said it wasn’t fair that I was gay. I said, hey, there have always been gays and that it had nothing to do with fairness, and she tried to talk me into going beyond the male-female costume trip, but I said, “Whoa, Vera, my cock is my antenna and I know what I can pick up and what I can’t.” She said she couldn’t wait for cable to be installed and we both laughed and stayed friends, but I still think she is coming on to me sometimes.

  Anyway, so about this story, let me just say this: Vera gave me a book to read on “automatic writing” a while ago, and the spirit, named William James, said it doesn’t matter if you believe it. When it is necessary, you will remember that you read about it, and belief or disbelief will be irrelevant. The facts will be clear. Sometimes, if I’m stoned, I’ll think, “Yeah, it all makes sense,” then sometimes I think, “What the fuck is this all about?”

  I stripped down because it’s so hot at my desk. I wait for my spirit writer to manhandle me. From the window I see the ocean beyond Benjamin’s yard. His yard is really overgrown now. Roses are even in the gutters and chimney. I wait for the spirit. Take me.

  I must have dozed, but no new lines. The moon is full over the Atlantic. It is bright enough to still see color, bluish colors. The moon is a fluorescent jawbreaker that I suck and take out of my mouth to check for changes, then reinsert, running my tongue round and round its sweet surface. My lips are blue from sucking the moon. I relax, take deeps breaths, digging the ink drip after drip after drip.

  The coquette boy on the freighter. Benjamin. He did bed down with the young sailor. At eight, he fell in love with the young man. He wanted to be fucked. His spirit knew what he wanted. “Bugger” was what the sailor called it.

  Benjamin’s bugger star rises over the Indian Ocean.

  On the last night, before docking in England, the sailor held the boy close in their bunk. He ran his fingers through Benjamin’s fine golden hair and patted his pink behind.

  He whispered into the boy’s ear, “This has been our secret. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he answered, “I’ll never tell.”

  The warmth that Benjamin felt from that sailor on the freighter was enough heat to keep the boy alive during the first years at Aunt Evelyn’s house on Gale Street in London. He had a secret. He daydreamed of the sailor holding him tight and protecting him from all the bullies. He knew that someday he would find that closeness again. The word “queer” excited him. With the sailor as guide, he had learned of the sensual touch that he would hunt for the rest of his life, no matter how secretive he had to be.

  With Aunt Ev’s came religion classes and he soon learned why his desires were to be kept secret. He told himself that since he was an orphan, God would consider his sinful thoughts less heinous than those of parented children.

  Benjamin was not close to his aunt or uncle, and of his three cousins, only Duncan, who was two years older than him, treated him like a brother. The other two made it
clear to Benjamin that he was an outcast, and never let him forget that he was “extra.” Duncan told him one night, after the two younger children were asleep, that the reason they resented Benjamin was because he was “extra,” and, Duncan said, “extra means extra special.”

  Benjamin was an obedient child. He did the chores required of him, and made good grades in school, and never made noises or disturbances that would make his presence felt. He always took less than the others at meals, and if there was ever a question of blame among the children, Benjamin would accept it.

  At fourteen, he had grown into a handsome, lean, young man. He was shy, and had the reputation of being a “goodygoody.” Only at night, in his bed, did the noise and screams and anger and tears come. He would bite into his pillow to stifle the sounds, and finally fall asleep. One night Duncan heard him crying and asked what was the matter.

  “Nothing,” Benjamin heaved, “I’m sorry.”

  Duncan held him close and patted his pink behind and ran his fingers through Benjamin’s darkening hair, and the two boys masturbated each other.

  Duncan whispered, “This is our secret.”

  Benjamin said, “I know.”

  The noises Benjamin heard in his head were his own words, the yells he would have made to the boys at school for making fun of him for coming from the “land of convicts,” or for being a “sissied orphan lad.” The noise was every feeling he suppressed, and the tears were for the need to be touched and held. Since the day he dropped his mother’s hand, he had only been held by the sailor on the freighter and Duncan. And with Duncan, he learned to fall asleep soundly, holding on to the older boy’s arm, forgetting the rest of the world and all the meanness.

  In 1933 Duncan left for the Navy. Benjamin never saw him again. He was killed in World War II. And Benjamin left Aunt Ev’s to work for a man he had met on a park bench.

  “Who is this man?” Aunt Ev asked as Benjamin packed his suitcase.

  “He works in the theater,” Benjamin said, “and he will give me a room and board and a small salary. I’ve written the address here.”

  He handed the woman the paper, knowing she would soon misplace it, knowing she was only upset because her obedient servant was departing.

  “Well, Benjamin,” she said at the door, “I see your mind is made up. Remember to let us know how you are, times are hard, and remember, our home is your home.”

  He thought that one day he would be honest with her and write her a letter and tell her that every time she said, “Our home is your home,” she was really making it quite clear to him that he was a guest, an “extra.” He never did write that letter. After one Christmas exchange, they were never in touch again.

  A bench star over London. Benjamin becomes a houseboy for one of the queens of England.

  The man on the park bench was an actor named John Wyatt. Benjamin was attracted to him and took a seat on the opposite bench. John Wyatt introduced himself as “John Q. Wyatt, actor extraordinaire, and”—he raised an eyebrow and lowered his voice to a throaty theatrical growl—“the Q in the middle stands for one of the swellest queens this side of the Channel.”

  Benjamin smiled, but did not quite understand the humor. He sensed that the actor was implying a queerness, and he could see there was a sexual arousal, but he felt it was so public. The man’s bold gesture to Benjamin’s thigh was no secret to the people walking past the bench.

  John Wyatt introduced Benjamin to his friends, all of them had something to do with theater. For the first time in his life, Benjamin felt free to be fey. He loved John Wyatt and learned to mimic his humor till he too found the humor in it. He learned to touch freely within the theatrical circle and he learned the sexual exercises of the professional. Benjamin became the darling of the queens. They called him “princess,” and when John Wyatt traveled to Cornwall to “serve penance” with his wife and child, “for appearance sake, I mean, my God, I am a public figure with a growing reputation to protect, can you imagine,” Benjamin remained in their London flat and was besieged by proposals from the other queens. He lived with John Wyatt for four years.

  “There is magic in the red,” Benjamin said of the theater lights. He had gone onstage to retrieve John Wyatt’s cigarette lighter, and in what was a very bold move for him, he lingered and turned and bowed to the empty house. The red stage lights warmed him and embraced him and he pretended for a moment that he was inside a character. He returned to John Wyatt’s dressing room flush with the din of imagined applause and announced that he too wanted to become an actor.

  “Dearie,” John Wyatt sighed, flaunting his unlit cigarette in Benjamin’s face, “I think you would make a better actress. Light me, damn it.”

  Benjamin lit his cigarette and looked hurt, so the actor added, “Dearie, there’s only room for one actress in our little family.”

  The following weeks were full of bickering between the actor and Benjamin. Benjamin was feeling, for the first time, that he could be someone. He threw back to John Wyatt what the actor had said to him so often, “You can get by on looks for just so long, dearie.”

  During an all-night party of the Royal Family of Picadilly, Benjamin and another “princess” were inebriated to the point where they allowed themselves to be photographed wearing tinsel crowns and nothing else. They posed, to the cheers of the guests, with tongues lapping at each other’s cocks. John Wyatt had planned the so-called impromptu “photographic entertainment” and he paid the photographer for the pictures and threatened Benjamin with exposure if he ever tried to “make a name” for himself.

  Benjamin moved out and into a flat with another stagehand who worked at the Old Vic. John Wyatt pursued him, begging him to come home, but he would not relinquish the photographs to Benjamin, and so, Benjamin threw him out. John Wyatt was gone, but the term “dearie” remained with Benjamin for his life. He found himself on his own and forced to accept a job backstage at the Windmill Burlesque in order to survive. The seediness of his shared flat, and his exaggerated dignity, the latter coming from associating with “royalty,” was rationalized in one newfound phrase that Benjamin repeated often: “The Theater is my life!”

  In 1940, at the age of 23, Benjamin met Queen Mary at a party, and fell in love. Queen Mary was truly famous. He had film roles and stage roles and was about to go to Hollywood. He was married to a lesbian and their marriage was a perfect disguise.

  I think Vera is a lesbian sometimes. We were at the beach before and she pointed out two women that she thought looked great in bikinis. Then this hot stud who works at O’Casey’s on Beach Boulevard came over to our blanket and stood there talking to us, his equipment was bulging out of his trunks. It was hanging right by our faces, and I would look up to him, then down to his bulge, and then to Vera, and there she was, still staring at the two women in bikinis, and here’s this huge thing hanging in front of her face. His name was Scotty. He told me that O’Casey’s has a happy hour when all drinks are only fifty cents!

  What has that to do with Benjamin?

  Don’t I have a say in this story? It’s my paper. My idea. My desk. Benjamin was my friend. It was my fault he went to Rodeo looking for me. Weiner, my dachshund, still sits at the fence waiting for Benjamin. From my window I can see him sitting there, as if Benjamin will be coming out with a bone for him. He just waits there. Dogs don’t know about time.

  Neither does Brian.

  Benjamin fell in love with the wealth and fame of Queen Mary’s world. He lived among original paintings in gilded frames and red velvet couches and servants. Queen Mary gave him a fur-trimmed dressing robe. The famous actor’s closet was the size of the room Benjamin had been living in.

  “My home is your home, darling,” the Queen said.

  And this time, Benjamin took advantage of that line he had heard so often on Gale Street. In the plush safety of the man’s house, he became a snob. He learned to find the best tweeds. He learned to order the servants about. And, he found the nightly blackouts during the war “
such a bloody bother.” The Queen had procured a military deferment for him.

  The Queen was twenty years older than Benjamin. He treated the handsome young man tenderly, doting on his whims, surprising him with gifts, and only expected loyalty and sex in return. Benjamin felt contented and loved and surrounded himself with more and more objects. He felt the Queen was magical. The red of the theater world was in every room, every carpet, every goblet, and in every dramatic gesture either man made. When he was not worshipping the Queen, he was worshipping the Queen’s world. The only time that Benjamin found himself pulled from the magic was when he read of Duncan’s death in the war. Even then, he expressed his grief by reprimanding the maid who had delivered the paper with breakfast to his bedside table.

  Benjamin traveled as Queen Mary’s personal manager to Toronto in 1949 for the run of Macbeth in which the Queen starred. The years of rich red bliss holding each other under the silk sheets as the bombs dropped on London, declaring undying love, had yielded with time to routine accusations and suspicions of affairs whenever either was apart. Benjamin maintained the house in London and entertained tricks, while the Queen was in Hollywood filming and having every young available man up to his suite. To save the marriage, they decided it best to travel together.

  Benjamin befriended the stage manager of the theater in Toronto, and confided in him, “I’m just the Queen’s lady in waiting, his plaything, and meanwhile my own career in the theater has gone stale. I had aspirations once. And there’s nothing I do right for him. And what about when I get old. He resents my being with him here, I can tell, because he’s used to having all his young things, and he can’t with me around.”