Gay Place

by Billy Lee Brammer

  “Hey Neil — the party’s in here, man.”

  “Hey, Kermit …”

  “What the hell’s out that window?”

  “The moon,” Neil said. “The grounds are all mauvy-looking. Pastels …”

  “Lemmie take a look …”

  Kermit moved up behind him and peered out into the gloom.

  “It’s all black, man. You’re way out with that mauvy stuff. I know colors — I’ve taken up painting this year — and that stuff’s just a buggy black. Black as a Republican’s heart. A gypsy’s armpit. You like that? Black, man.”

  “Ah, Kermit …”

  “Ah, yourself … For God’s sake don’t disapprove, Senator. How the hell you been?”

  “Fine, Kermit. How about you? You’ve taken up painting?”

  “That’s it — that’s it. Yeah. I’m even goin’ into the business. Opening me a little place next week in back of my mother’s florist shop. The Renaissance Gallery … The goddam Renaissance Gallery!”

  “You don’t mean it? What got you onto it?”

  “The gallery or the painting?”

  “Both. What happened to your books?”

  “Gone. Kaput. Fini … Hell and gone. It was all out of me — all I had to say in that particular sullen art. Burned ’em. Every one.”

  “You don’t say? Hell … You shouldn’t of —”

  “Every damned one of ’em. Had to find me a new medium … Spread it around a little … That’s the way it is with us Good Doctors. You still my Good Doctor, Neil?”

  “I suppose that’s for you to decide, Kermit. You’re the only judge of Good Doctors. It takes an honest-to-God genuine P-H-D to go around conferring honorary doctors of philosophy on people.”

  “You’ve got that down, damn sure have. But he’s got to be the right kind, even if he is genuine. Like the P-H-D doesn’t really mean a hell of a lot if a cat doesn’t believe in it. He’s got to have that vision. Dig? There’s a lot of ’em out there at the college — Doctor This and Doctor That — but I don’t know but one or two that’s really got the vision. Taking it serious. There aren’t really many Good Doctors … You dig?”

  “I think so,” Neil said.

  “Hey — here’s a Good one right here …” Kermit grabbed the arm of one of the four householders.

  “Kermit … Kermit. You conferrin’ Good Doctor degrees tonight?”

  Kermit’s eyes blazed. His hair was clipped short, unevenly. The truth was, he cut his own, and the top of his head suggested a poorly tended lawn, weedy and spotted with crab grass. Although he maintained that the actor Kirk Douglas had ruined Van Gogh for him, he had, all the same, recently grown a scraggly red beard that somehow gave him the look of the movie counterpart, or a trifle more down-at-the heels version. Kermit had recorded the highest grades in the history of the college — had taught school for two or three years before entering into his decline, when he had finally got his vision.

  “This Doctor, this Good Doctor,” Kermit said, “let me tell you what he did the other day up there in that House of Repscallions.”

  “What was that?” Neil said.

  “Yeah — what the hell was it?” the object of Kermit’s attention wanted to know.

  “The cats — I mean the fat ones not the swingin’ kind — those cats up there were tryin’ to pass a bill doubling the tuition at the state-supported schools. Dig? Rather than pass a legitimate tax bill on all the robber-barons so there would be more than enough money to go around — money enough to help those deaf and dumb kids and build hospitals instead of football stadiums and take the niggers out of the shit house and maybe even end the Cold War for all I know — rather than do that they were just doublin’ tuition at the college. Dig? Well they had the votes. Like always. But you know what this Good Doctor did? He stands up on the floor of our House of Reps, grabs that snortin’ pole and offers an amendment. At the top of his voice! Ah he was hot, this Good Doctor of mine. He says as long as this lousy bill is going to pass anyhow and since those bums had the votes to double the stinkin’ tuition on something, why not leave it like it is for most kids but double it for the fratty types. He stands up there and talks about how it was when he was president of his own goddam fraternity at school — years ago … when he was president for Chrissake — and how they’d partied all night long, every night, and boozed it up and generally crapped around in a waste of shame. I mean he was tremendous, Neil. It was a stroke, a regular coop, a genuine-by-God Good Doctor masterpiece!”

  “The amendment didn’t carry,” the young man said, grinning at Neil.

  “But you tried, man. You stood up there and gave yourself hell …”

  “What was the vote?” Neil said.

  “I dunno. I think we got about twenty.”

  “How about the bill itself?”

  “Same.”

  “Well, if I’d been around you’d’ve had twenty-one …”

  “More than that,” the young man said. “Hell! A lot more than that. We had some spark when you were there, Neil, workin’ that floor, rockin’ those bastards back on their ass-behinds. You were always getting us votes — from just out of nowhere. We had some leadership then. Now … we’re just floppin’ around, aimless.”

  “Tell him about the used car deal,” Kermit said. “You weren’t aimless then. Hell no.”

  “It was actually Kermit’s idea,” the young man said.

  “No it wasn’t. No it wasn’t.”

  “Yes it was.”

  “Well you gates did all the work.”

  “Anyhow, there was this bill pending that was backed up like a sledgehammer by the new car dealers. Practically all the gold in Fort Knox behind it. The new car boys were unhappy about the used car boys. A couple of special interests, but the junkies were way outclassed, and it was a really awful bill. It would’ve stopped car sales on Sunday. You know. Religion and all that. And it was going to pass for God’s sake. Can you imagine? So Kermit gets this idea. He calls me over and says how about amending the thing to exempt Buddhists. Kermit’s been practicing Zen and he says he might want to start selling used cars on Sundays and why the hell should he have to observe somebody else’s religious holiday? So I put it up and argued and my God it passed! So then some of the others pitched in with amendments exempting Seventh-Day Adventists and Jews and Mohammedans and some oddball sects, and fairly soon the sponsors got the idea. They could just visualize all those sharpie used car dealers — all those Rasputins — claiming they were big on Zen or Shinto converts and getting away with it. So they withdrew the bill …”

  “It all sounds enchanting,” Neil said. “I think I’ll come back.”

  “I wish you would. Don’t you see? We can block a few things — stop a murder in the streets sometime; blow the whistle on a crime about to be perpetrated in broad daylight, but we’re not really doing anything. Just throwing spitballs.”

  “I’ll see you Good Doctors.” Kermit had freshened his drink and was turning to leave, tugging at his baggy corduroys.

  “Where you going?”

  “I just saw an absolutely angelic knocked-up woman in there. You know how I am about them, man. I dig. I dig all of ’em. The more knocked-up the better. Love ’em every one. Their figures get lovely and they just glow, goddammit … See you later …”

  Kermit turned and headed into the other room. They watched him move into the crowd, his dirty cotton sweatshirt, the red beard, blending garishly with his conventional betters.

  “I ought to get back, myself,” Neil said.

  “Hey — do you know Porter?”

  “Who?”

  “Porter Hardy. The laboring man.”

  “I’ve met him once or twice. Isn’t he a new one?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t have any official title. I don’t think he was ever even a business agent. Jumped right out of college into labor politics. He’s a kind of pamphleteer — without portfolio — a sort of junior grade Mahatma for the pipefitters …”

  “Ummn.”
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  “He’s here. He wants to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know. The usual, I guess. Come on …”

  They moved through the other rooms of the house. He caught a glimpse of Stanley and Elsie, still firmly planted on the couch, but he could not get their attention as he passed. They wandered through the crowd, past dancing couples and three young men, eyes floating into their foreheads, bending over bongo drums; past the girl with the hula hoop and a man grinning apishly and making Polaroid pictures and Kermit pushing up next to a very pretty and slightly disturbed-looking girl who was enormously pregnant. They found Porter Hardy in one of the bedrooms where the crowd had begun to thin. He was sitting on the edge of a studio couch talking with a nice-looking woman of about the age of all of them. Hardy, aware of their presence, succeeded nonetheless in completing what he was saying to the woman …

  “Would you do that? Would you do that for me? They are, after all, public records, and I just want to take a look at them overnight.”

  “I might,” the woman said. “I’ll think about it.”

  She looked up at them and began to rise. “Excuse me,” she said. She walked across the room, knocked lightly on the door to the bath, and moved on inside.

  “Well!” said Hardy, getting to his feet. “Hello, Senator …”

  They shook hands. Their host departed almost immediately.

  “I won’t take much of your time …”

  “Not at all.”

  “… I just wanted to talk with you a moment. I wanted to congratulate you on this afternoon first of all.”

  “It was pretty bad,” Neil said. “I suppose it would’ve been a shambles if the Governor hadn’t been there to paste things together.”

  “Well … I’m not enamored with Arthur Fenstemaker, exactly, but I imagine you’re right. What I meant, though, was the speech. I thought it was a fine speech.”

  “You think so? You liked it? You were there?”

  “I sneaked in after the last course. Swiped a chair at the back. It was a good speech. I liked what you said — what you were getting at.”

  “Maybe you can tell me then what I was getting at. I don’t remember much of anything I said … Somehow got off the text.”

  “Well it was all right. All right.” Hardy did not smile. He seemed to mean everything he said. He was slim and slightly stooped, well dressed and somehow over-earnest in the manner of a bank vice-president. Neil decided he would look more at home in a Merrill, Lynch office rather than a union hall.

  “You’re very kind,” Neil said.

  “How do you plan to conduct your campaign?” Hardy said. He had suddenly shifted gears.

  “The campaign? There probably won’t be much of a campaign. I’m going back to Washington. I’ll be down here a few times before the election, make some speeches. I can do most of it practically long distance, though. Films and transcriptions.”

  “I mean issues. What are you going to talk about?”

  “Well … You know. Christ. A little of what I said today. God, Mother and Moderation. But I imagine it’ll get pretty bland before it’s over.” Neil smiled at his little joke, but Hardy seemed more intense and humorless than ever.

  “Don’t you think you’ll need more than that to whip Edwards? A real issue. Something clear-cut?”

  “No.” Neil decided to see who could out-soberface the other.

  “No?” For the first time Hardy’s radio announcer’s voice showed strain. “You don’t think so?”

  “No.”

  “Have you thought of pegging it on straight liberal-conservative lines?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “I think I would lose.”

  “I don’t think you would.”

  “Well … You file in the primary, then.”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean it that way. I want you in there. It’s just that I think you’re going to lose if you go the route you’re planning. I’ve been all over the state. Traveled it all year, from one end to the other. Things are changing. We’ve never been stronger. And we’re gaining strength every day.”

  “That’s good to hear. Best news I’ve heard all day.”

  “But I want it to be good for you. Have you given any thought to the possibility of campaigning on a labor issue? Against the open shop, for example.”

  “No … No I haven’t.”

  “That kind of campaign would make us very happy, of course.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I think you could win on it.”

  “I don’t think so. I think it would beat me and beat your union shop even worse. You know how long this state’s had right-to-work laws?”

  “Too long. And there’s certainly nothing sacred about them and —”

  “Why hell!” Neil said, “Even some of the votes you’d ordinarily count on as liberal would defect on that one. I think I might even vote against it if —”

  “You mean that?”

  “No. But you boys are getting stronger the way things are … Why rock the —”

  “We’re getting stronger for precisely that reason. People don’t like things the way they are. You have any money?”

  “What?”

  “Money. Finances. It costs money to run a campaign.”

  “I’ve got some.”

  “How much?”

  “Enough.”

  “How much? A hundred thousand?”

  “No. Nothing like it.”

  “It’ll cost you that much to run the kind of campaign you’re planning. You know that?”

  “Yes. I’ve got assurances of more.”

  “What if they bug out on you in the middle? What if they shift over to Edwards? It’s happened, you know. Those bastards — boy I can imagine where that money’s coming from — those birds go with a winner. If you start slipping just a little, why —”

  “I don’t plan to slip,” Neil said. “Not even a little.”

  “We’ve got money. We could help you. But more than that, we’ve got people, votes, discipline. We’re organized. You’d be amazed. Like shock troops this year.”

  “As I said, that’s great. I want those votes — and I’d welcome the money if you have it. You ought to talk to the Governor. He’s handling the —”

  “Oh boy, I can imagine how he’s handling it. How he’d handle us. The first thing, he’d take our money but he’d want it in cash and under the table. He wouldn’t want the union label on any of the financial reports. Then he’d tell us to get out and organize our people but for Chrissake be quiet about it …”

  “You needn’t. I’m not ashamed of your support. I just meant the Governor was in charge of —”

  “I know how he’s in charge, mister. Listen — I’ll tell you the Facts of Life, revised edition. We’re not going that route any more. We’re good and tired of being back-door lovers. No more extramarital affairs. No more meetings in the dead of night. We’re through with being screwed in the rumble seat. Either you — or any candidate — is good and strong for us in public or we sit on our hands …”

  “Well …”

  “We mean it …”

  “You’ve put your case beautifully and I sympathize. I’m for you. I’ll tell anybody I’m for you. Anybody who asks. But I’m not going to stand up on Mount Baldy in a white vestment and sing about it for the next two months. That’s the way it’s got to be …”

  “You’ll —”

  “I’ve got to get back to some friends …”

  “You may regret it, Senator.”

  “And you may get Owen Edwards. I frankly don’t give a damn. And you could get somebody a whole hell of a lot worse than Arthur Fenstemaker if he ever moves out …”

  “I wish to God he would.”

  “I enjoyed it.”

  “Yes.”

  Neil turned and walked out of the bedroom, leaving Hardy still on his perch on the studio couch. Jay McGown approached him from behind.

  “
Hey, Neil …”

  “Jay. Did you get the man tucked in?”

  “Think so. I wanted to tell you I appreciate the plug in there. I heard part of it — what you were saying there at the end, at the top of your voice.” He stood next to him, smiling, weaving slightly.

  “Thanks,” Neil said. “But I probably just lost the labor vote in there.”

  “Nah,” Jay said. “Where’s your drink?”

  “Need a new one, I guess. Must have left it behind.”

  “Come on,” Jay said. “I’ll make you one.”

  They started back into the kitchen. Kermit was standing alone in the middle of the dining room. He grabbed Neil’s arm.

  “Hey, Good Doctor.”

  “Kermit. Where’s that pretty pregnant woman?”

  “Scared her off, man. She quailed on me. Can’t seem to get through, make myself clear. How I feel, I mean.”

  “Shave that beard for a starter,” Jay said. “It’s that beard that gets in the way.”

  “Lose my identity, man? Hey, Neil —”

  “Yaz.”

  “You know old John Tom?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was a Doctor. I meant to tell you that. He was an awfully Good Doctor. I meant to tell you … How come he split?”

  “What?”

  “How come he went away?”

  “I don’t know,” Neil said. “I wish I did.”

  “Good Doctor,” Kermit mumbled to himself, walking off alone. Neil and Jay moved into the kitchen. The ice tub was half full of water, and the young man who had taken Neil to see Porter Hardy was breaking open a box of whiskey.

  “Look at that host,” Jay said. “That’s a host for you.”

  The young man looked up, smiling. “It’s the liquor lobby that’s host. We take their booze and vote against ’em. They’re awfully tolerant …”

  They poured fresh drinks. Neil took several quick swallows. His throat was dry and then he was suddenly, miraculously, tight. The party raged on around them.

  “Grongk,” Neil said aloud.