by Andy Schell
“But this is different, you and me,” she continues. “You’re my friend, and I don’t give a damn about your family’s name because I would never think of you in that way.”
“I appreciate you saying that. But you know, I do have money.” I’m not exactly lying. I do have money. I’m just not married enough to get my hands on it. Do I tell her? I know what she’ll do. She’ll impetuously say, “Let’s get married!” But as much as I’d like my inheritance, it’s not worth living a lie to get it.
Amity and I peruse the pages of D together, finding the choices laughable. A Budweiser delivery man. A party designer. A wood craftsman. “G’yaw! Whoa, Bubba!” She makes the time-out sign. “Who came up with these jokers? Guys who drive beer trucks are too groovy they use blow-dryers and wear musk cologne.”
“Is there such a thing as a straight party designer?” I ask. “Letitia Baldridge,” Amity answers. “Even though she looks like a big ole drag queen, I’m pretty sure she’ sstraight. She designed
Jacqueline Kennedy’s parties.”
“Men,” I clarify.
“Who cares?” Amity says, forfeiting the question. “Party designers, closet organizers, motivational speakers they should all be shot so we can get on with our lives! Give me a filthy rich, boring-as-rice, trapped-in-suspenders banker any day of the week. Cash money, baby!” Amity falls to the floor on her back and moves her arms and legs over the hardwoods as if she’s trying to make a snow angel.
“Hey,” I laugh, poking her with my foot. “What if you had SOme guy who wasn’t boring as rice and trapped in suspenders, but who still had lots of money? What if the guy with money was fun and made you laugh and had a cute butt?”
“I’d be in heaven, Harry,” she answers, lying on her back,
“And I’d love the hell out of him. Now tell me something.” “Yes, Amity?”
“Do you have a cute butt, Harry?”
“You tell me,” I answer coyly.
“I’d say it’s beyond being a cute butt, Harry,” she “Frankly, you’ve got a great ass.”
That night, at the gym, the car salesman with the glacier eyes, JT, is there pumping up his pecs. He hoists the bar onto bench clips and walks over to me as I’m down on a mat crunches. “How come I haven’t heard from you?”
I continue with the sit-ups. “Maybe you have.” I grin. don’t even know my name.”
“JT Reardon,” he says, putting out his hand to shake. “Harry Ford,” I say, shaking it. “And I’m not in the for a car or I’d definitely call you.”
“I do more than sell cars,” he assures me. Then he goes to his bench presses.
I come home from the gym to find Amity sitting in her room on her bed, painting her nails by the light of her little lamp while listening to Troy crying into the phone machine in sobs. The bottle of champagne is empty, and there’s only a bit left in her glass. “See how loud he is?” she asks. “Can’t tell his balls smell like Brie cheese?”
“Jesus, Amity,” I laugh. “He’s torn up. He’s not talking crying.”
“I know. Those frat boys are such big titty babies. I can’t to this anymore.” She turns the volume off, gulps down the bit of champagne.
I toss my gym bag onto the floor. “Isn’t that kind of callous?”
“Well,” she says, “sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“Would it kill you to talk to him?” I ask, feeling one of my biceps. It’s growing a little, and I like the tight feeling of the engorged muscle.
“Listen, Bubba. Troy was starting to claim squatter’s rights,” she says with narrowed eyes, “and nobody owns me.” She picks up the bottle and tries to pour herself more champagne before she realizes it’s empty. She slowly sets it down. “Nobody can tell me what to do. Not Troy or my family or anyone.”
“Hey, I’m your friend. Remember?”
She jerks as if she’ sswitched gears without using the clutch and laughs. “Be a darling’ and go to the kitchen and get me a can of Raid so I can kill this bug that’s up my ass.” I smile and she goes back to painting her toes, and as I pick up my gym bag and leave her darkened room, I realize she houses another darkened room inside her.
At the end of the month, President Reagan announces his candidacy for reelection. There’s no way I’ll vote for him. He’s just so old.
I am invited by a college friend, Iris, to a Pink Party in New York, and I’m concerned about attending because I don’t have any clothing that is pink. She assures me that it isn’t necessary. I decide to fly to the Cayman Islands first, then up to New York. Amity loves that I am jetting off by myself, and I’m aware that I’ve ascended a notch in her book.
As an airline employee, I fly from Dallas to Grand Cayman for a total of twenty dollars. First class. Who needs family money? Though it is standby. I land at night and check into a moldy American franchise hotel. The turquoise carpet and drapes are sprouting penicillin, the sheets smell like someone’s dirty scalp, and the air
conditioner is spewing a damp Legionnaire’s breeze. I just want to get back on the plane and fly around the stratosphere in first class
In the bathroom, I brush my teeth and prepare to wash my face by attempting to unleash the little bar of soap that is trapped in paper. I get so frustrated trying to un case it that I practically pop a blood vessel. Finally I smash it against the counter, rip it open, and take out little chips to wash with. Since the chips are with the oceanic tap water, I get no lather at all.
After brushing my teeth with saltwater and Colgate, I slip into the dirty-scalp sheets and pull the bedspread up to my chin. Traveling is so glamorous.
The next day I lie in the sun to disinfect. After hanging out the sand awhile, I take a walk down the beach. I soon sense I’m being followed, and when I turn around there’s a guy who big muscular legs walking twenty yards behind me in a S After the third time I glance back he says to me in a sexy “The farther you walk, the longer it takes us to get back to hotel room.” How can I resist that?
Our sex together is lingering, tropical, salty as if we’re in the sea. Our bodies meld into a gradual, steady, warm build arcs with the end of the afternoon. It’s weird, but I think of while I’m with him. I fantasize that she’s here on this island me and this hot boy with thick thighs. I know she likes and this is one I’m sure she’d love, so I bring her here in imagination. I’m aware that I’m starting to want to share
I do with her..” as if it’s not valid unless she’s a part of it.
As evening approaches the island, we sit by the pool and en a sunset that is the same pink and orange as the grenadine orange juice in our drinks. Turns out he’s a dancer from the ship anchored in the distance, and he has to return to the ship the nine o’clock show. Before he leaves, I suggest grabbing couple of cocktail napkins and using them to write down our numbers.
“I don’t do that,” he says casually.
“Oh, because you’re on a ship?”
“No, I just don’t give my number out. I’m not looking for a relationship.”
, “
‘ OK, I say, trying to be nonchalant. The truth is, my feelings are hurt, regardless of the fact that he’s a stranger. I suppose I am looking for a relationship. Why do I always have to pretend I’m not? Am I the only gay guy my age who’s looking for a steady thing? It’s not as if I want some boring suburban life in one of those tribe neighborhoods where everyone has the same red-tile roof and two-car garage. Believe me, I have no desire to drive a station wagon and cook casserole recipes that call for truckloads of cream of mushroom soup. I just want a mate who would live in a cool apartment with me, maybe even a house (slate roof), and share his life, his soul, his body. Someone who would make me laugh. Someone who’s smart. Someone who votes. Someone who would let me walk through the door after a long trip and say, “Honey, I’m homo!”
The next two days an island boy with body odor pesters me to let him experiment with his bisexuality. Not the relationship I’m looking for. I decline
and depart the warm sands of Cayman for the icy insanity of New York.
New York is frozen. Solid. Iris and her roommates live in Hell’s Kitchen on a street that is famous for its rats the kind of rats that sit on top of the garbage cans and catcall women in high heels. If you carry groceries past them, they ask, “Got anything good?” Rats you could saddle up and ride to the Bronx. I always think I should bring a ham or a plate of enchiladas, which I could throw onto the sidewalk to divert their attention while I make a frenzied dash to the stairs of the building. Arriving from the islands, I have nothing but a half-empty container of Tic-Tacs. I pop the lid, scatter them onto the snowy pavement, and make a run for it before I realize there are no rats in waiting. They must have frozen to death.
Iris congratulates me for making it to her door, and though assures me my sunburned skin will qualify me for the soiree, or at the very least I can chew a piece of pink bubble with my mouth open, I return to the streets to buy a pink thinking it will be sufficient for my debut. Of course, arrives at the party in these incredibly pink, incredibly well-thou out ensembles that border on Broadway set design. The party thrown by an actor magician named Aaron, who happens to live Iris’s building, which is actually a funeral parlor on the floor. Aaron is part of the famous drag entertainer Chad entourage, though I have no idea who Chad Barclay is. Chad working on a play titled Theatrica: She’s Hitched with Librium. love the title and try to be as funny. Of course, that never
I’m a bit uncomfortable at the party, because everyone is actor or writer, or painter or something worthy, and I realize journey into the skies is kind of an embarrassment. I stop tellin people I’m a steward and just say, “I travel,” in a way that them not ask further.
Halfway through the party I lose Iris, but decide to find because friendships like hers are what I miss most about my in Dallas, and I’m only in New York for two days. Someone they saw her and Aaron headed for the roof earlier. I scout outside hall and find the steep ladder steps that lead to the in the building’s roof. I climb slowly, because I’m a little and pop my head into the frigid winter night. I hear what like a scuffle. I look to the right and see Iris and Aaron ten feet away on the roof. Aaron is driving her back forcefully. is crying. It’s all very Hitchcock the cool blonde in the dress; the dynamic fellow, a magician by trade, shadowing her a rooftop in New York. Is he trying to kill her?
No. He’s fucking her.
Iris had told me over the phone that she was having a little with Aaron. Iris and I have been tight friends since school,
we’ve wondered aloud what it would be like to sleep together, but never really felt the need to find out. I am gay, after all. But then again, so is Aaron.
At the moment, he has her off-the-shoulder 1950’s dress gathered up in his hands, and he’s using it for balance as he rocks into her, steadily, driving her back, until they brace against an air duct. My first thought is, “How’s he maintaining a hard-on? It’s freezing.” My second thought is, “How’s he maintaining a hard-on? He’s gay.” As for my first question: He’s left his pants on, and though his dick is pulled through the fly of his pants, it’s certainly not waving in the midnight air. As for my second question: Iris has her hands around his neck, she’s kissing all over his face, and she’s so excited she’s crying, and he seems to be equally enthralled, meeting her kisses with wild passion. So I guess he’s not that gay. Still, I find this fascinating, and since they’re completely unaware of me, I continue to watch.
I’m cold. My ears are hurting already, and my fingers are nearly frozen to the pipe I’m using to steady myself. But I keep watching. I can’t believe that Aaron is giving it to her so cocksure and that Iris is abandoning herself so freely and getting so much pleasure from him. I remember what Amity sounded like when she was being ridden to the finish line by Bart, and I wonder if she’d be so vocal coming down the home stretch with someone like Aaron or me?
I CHAPTER
SIX
/- Amity and I are just roommates,” I declare, standing in kitchen with my mother. “I know that,” my mother says, mixing curry into mayonnaise a very exotic dip for the Midwest. She’s it herself, because she’s scaled back our family maid, Marzetta, minimal hours on account of Donald, her new husband, who anything worth doing should be done by yourself. I watch her as she stirs. Like Amity’s, they’re too young for the rest of but only because my mother has had not only a face-lift, but hand-lift also. My late father’s golfing buddy, Bud Orenstein, plastic surgeon, tried his experimental hand-lift surgery on mother and it actually worked. Of course, she has little scars at wrist points, but those are covered by gold bracelets cut to a fit so that they never move from their camouflage position.
My mother is secretly relieved that Matthew and I have up, she tells me. It’s much easier to talk to her friends about she explains, now that I’m living with a girl down in Dallas. whoever this Amity is, she is good enough for my mother. said is you should bring her up here to visit sometime. It’s” that I meet her.” She smoothes her auburn hair with her left
“Why in the world is it important you meet her?”
She places the dish of curry dip on the platter and spreads the crudit6s around it. “She could be the beginning of something new and wonderful for you.”
My mother, like Bart, like so many people, thinks I just haven’t found the right girl. She doesn’t believe that anyone is gay. She thinks that Liberace has “a rare form of masculinity” and that Richard Simmons is just “playing a role.” She thinks if I’ll just get on with it, I’ll be happy.
If all learning was by example, perhaps I would. The day after my father killed himself, she sweetly instructed the maid to take his Cadillac, the very one that had put him to sleep, and return it to the dealership for credit. And a month later, she used that credit toward the purchase of a new car for her new husband, my new stepfather, Donald, a retired general in the air force who fought in the Korean War, as well as in Vietnam. He’s sixty-something years old, but has the body of a forty year old. He’s handsome, in a John Wayne kind of way, though his hands look as if they were transplanted from a gorilla. I suspect the reason he still has a full head of hair is because he’s not given any of it permission to fall out.
They met at a golf tournament at the country club It was one of those mixer things where you draw your partner’s name from a golf hat. Donald, whose wife had succumbed to cancer just six months prior, drew my mother’s name. When she identified herself, he went to her, kissed her hand, carried her clubs to the cart, and from the way she tells it practically hit every shot for her along the eighteen holes. My biological father, from a fine family that taught him every rule of etiquette known to the civil world, had to be prompted to accomplish even the simplest gesture, such as holding a door open for my mother. He was a man’s man, and he had little patience for women. So naturally, when my mother met Donald, she attained the nirvana never offered by my father: the state of bliss that comes from surrendering every decision to someone else
who then makes you feel as if the decision is yours. I think she’ crazy. Golf is already a stupid game, and I can only imagine ridiculous it gets when someone is hitting your shots for you. she put it in no uncertain terms: “I don’t care if Donald’s collar as blue as your father’s blood,” she told me, after announcing elopement. “He’s the best man for me at this point in life.” “What is her family like?” my mother asks.
How can I answer? Whenever I mention her family, dodges me. “I haven’t met them yet.”
“All in good time,” my mother says, picking up the tray vegetables. We join her husband in the great room. General left his living quarters in the retired officers’ village of the air to move into my parents’ (mother’s) house on the edge of country club. How could my mother bring this carpetbagger our lives? He looks so comfortable, sipping his glass of scotch the fire, his feet on the needlepoint-covered ottoman, his boots on. “This isn’t a bunch of crap from Levitz,” I want to “My grandmother did that
needlepoint, so take your boots soldier!”
I was eight years old when I sat with Grammie at her ranch in Colorado, and we drank lemonade while she stitched ottoman cover. I’d come down with a mild case of chicken pox week I was supposed to fly off to Italy with my family for a week holiday, and so, being quarantined, my family went on me and left me in the care of Marzetta. instructing her to send on to my grandmother’s ranch when I was well enough to Those two weeks at Grammie’s are magic in my memory. In morning we ate bacon and pancakes, and Grammie let me small cup of coffee with lots of cream and sugar in it. We horses in the grassy valley below the house. My grandmother regal, yet trustworthy and unaffected, and for a woman of breeding, she rode comfortably in the saddle, like a cowgirl fifteen. In the afternoons, we listened to records on the
everything from Patsy Cline to exotic bamboo music from a phono graph she’d obtained while on an adventure tour of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. And when we’d accidentally leave a record in the sun too long and it warped, she’d take it off the turntable and walk to the edge of the porch, high above the valley below, and fling the record far into the distance like a Frisbee. “Goodbye, Benny Goodman!” she’d yell while transforming his bowed recording into a spinning flying saucer. She taught me how to throw a Frisbee that way, with old warped vinyl records.
In the late afternoon, we’d hike down to the stream and cast our rods for rainbow trout. And in the evening we’d take our catch to Fish Fry Point, where my grandfather had built a stone fireplace with a grill for cooking our bounty. We’d eat our fish right out of the pan, then roast marshmallows over the fire for dessert. Fish and marshmallows. Ginger ale to drink. Then Grammie would read from her latest book Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, or Wallace Stegner’s A Shooting Star until the real stars would appear, and we’d hike back to the house by the light of the moon, our handheld flashlights puncturing the trail with quick stabs of light as we walked.