In the City of Shy Hunters

by Tom Spanbauer

  How much do you think I should charge for a performance? Fiona said. Five dollars? Of course the performer will get a huge percentage of the till, but how much do you think? Sixty? Seventy-five?

  Ruth Fuglistaller has a great act, Fiona said, This intemationale lounge act with the femme fatale Lana Lynx. Cool. Then there’s Watchface. Maybe Ellie at Dixon Place would give me some suggestions.

  The performers will have to dress in my bedroom, Fiona said, And there’s just the one bathroom: for the performers, for the public, and for me. Harry said we should paint the walls black and make it a black box in here, but I want to keep it light. Creamy yellow or off-white, don’t you think? What kind of chairs, Conran chairs, or should I go buy old chairs, all different kinds? I think a couch and a standing lamp, Fiona said. Give it a homey feeling. A throw rug and a coffee table.

  Reno’s good. George Osterman. KimX.

  Fiona sighed a big sigh and stuck a forkful of Garlic Chicken in her mouth.

  Then: Do you know what New York’s true and hidden nature is? Fiona asked.

  True and hidden? I said. No.

  Charcoal, Fiona said.

  Charcoal? I said.

  Charcoal, Fiona said. Do you know how to make charcoal?

  No, I said.

  You take a live substance like a tree limb and burn it in a kiln from which air is excluded.

  That’s us, Fiona said. That’s what’s left of us.

  We are so compressed here, so pressured, that carbon is all that’s left of the human spirit. Charcoal is what’s left that still burns after the fire has passed through. All the extra shit is gone. What’s left is what burns.

  New York is America’s charcoal heart. New York burns out all the extra stuff in your life. You have to be able to state what you want and why you want it as precisely and concisely as possible. There’s no time for anything else. Life is an art and art is a game, Fiona said. I see that you are playing at enjoying your Szechuan Chicken, Fiona said.

  Shrimp, I said. Szechuan Shrimp.

  Why do you think cocaine’s so popular? Fiona said. Cocaine—charcoal—same shit, different names.

  That Mrs. Lupino bitch is a fucking pain in the ass, Fiona said. Any little squeak I make she bangs on my ceiling. I’m going to have to cut her nipples off if she starts up during a performance. Do you think the curtain could be velvet? Like a dark green velvet? I wonder how much a velvet curtain would cost. My fucking dad said he won’t give me another dime. ’Course that was with Mother standing right there. If I get him alone he’ll be fine. Plus I still have my credit cards.

  David Cale is funny, Deborah Hiett, Lisa Kron, Terry Dame, Eva Gasteazoro, Linda Mancini. But no stand-up, Fiona said. I don’t do stand-up.

  Then: It’s performance hearty. Fiona said. She put her hands on her heart. And that’s why I love Argwings Khodek so much.

  He’s a dervish, Fiona said. His art is a devotional exercise that he delivers with ecstatic abandonment. Argwings Khodek is a man dancing alone in a room, not a man dancing alone in a room in front of people watching, even though there are hundreds of people watching. Argwings Khodek is never Look, this is me dancing in a room. He is the wedding itself, Fiona said, not Tony and Tina’s wedding. So given, Fiona said. So not-taken-as-given.

  So un-Noam Chomsky, I said.

  Argwings Khodek, Fiona said, Is so this-very-second.

  The breakthrough to wordless knowledge, Fiona said, Really is the climax of our whole existence, don’t you think? All being as one’s own being.

  Laying bare the human heart, I said. All of us all one thing.

  I suppose I’ll have to rent a Dumpster for all this construction garbage, Fiona said. I hope they take Visa. Do you know anybody who’s a carpenter who’s handy and needs a job?

  I was rolling cigarettes, one for Fiona, one for me.

  I can help you, I said. I’m pretty good with a hammer.

  Will! Really? Fiona said. Cool! I’ll pay you. How’s six bucks an hour?

  You don’t have to pay me, I said.

  No, Fiona said, I don’t take charity. Let’s make it seven.

  OK, I said. Seven.

  I lit Fiona’s cigarette, lit mine. Fiona leaned over and kissed me on the forehead and then put her forehead on mine.

  I’m Diogenes, Fiona said, And you’re my honest man.

  Fiona’s hair smelled of my Herbal Essence shampoo. The towel had fallen down from her diamond nips. We finished the Chinese and I turned off the wagon-wheel light and Fiona and I lay on the futon and smoked in the dark. WBLS low jazz on the boom box, car alarms outside, ambulance sirens, fire sirens. The light from another incarnation on East Fifth Street through the window and onto the sheets, onto her body.

  Fiona talking talking.

  Spalding Gray and Wally Shawn are probably too big to hope for, Fiona said. I think I’ll paint the floor in some wild-ass pattern. I’ll have to buy curtains for the window and the door.

  Finally, Fiona said, Our lives just come down to moments, don’t they?

  IN ALL THE world, this distracted globe, my arms around Fiona, her hair in my face, in my mouth. Her smooth white back, holding Fiona like Bernadette would do, Fiona holding me.

  The still point in the turning world.

  Now here.

  Fiona’s lips at my ear: Harry looks awful, Fiona said. I can’t get him to go to the hospital. It can’t be AIDS, Fiona said. Harry’s just like my brothers—so fussy. Harry and my brothers are so fussy. Everything clean clean. No mess. My God, you should see my brothers’ house. Right out of House Beautiful. Museum-piece quality. When they get done shitting they fold the last piece of toilet paper over like in hotels.

  It can’t be AIDS, Fiona said. It just can’t be. Not Harry. Not my little brothers.

  Then the next moment, just like that, Fiona was sleeping. Deep long breaths of sleep in my ear, her belly up and down, up and down. I pulled my arm out from under her, bent over. I pushed my ear slow into her heart.

  I rolled another cigarette. Got up, took a leak. Stood among my Art Family. They were covering their eyes, their mouths, their ears, covering their crotches and breasts.

  Outside, the monster’s footfall, shaking doors, rattling windows, big cracks in the brick walls.

  Another New Yorker gone to hell.

  In my forearms, up to my shoulders, down through my heart, splash down into stomach, cattle prod to cock.

  Trouble.

  None of us, not any one of us, no one knew how much trouble we were in.

  JUNE 1986. WHEN I told Rose I’d never been to the Gay Pride march, Rose said, Well, put your tank top on, Mary, you’re going this year.

  That Gay Pride Saturday morning, though, I woke up with my mother’s nerves.

  In my forearms first, then up to my shoulders, then some hard thing in my chest that stayed and got bigger, the closer it got to noon.

  Half a million homosexuals all together in the same place all at once on a hot day.

  I knew Rose wasn’t home. I dialed his number, left a message.

  Sorry, Rose, I said, But I can’t make it to Gay Pride today. I am going to Connecticut to visit an old friend.

  On the R uptown, no Charlie 2Moons.

  I got off at 57th and walked up to Central Park, Bethesda Fountain. Sat on the edge of the fountain, took my shoes and socks off, rolled my pants up, and stuck my feet in the water.

  The day was clear and already hot. The sound of the falling water on my ears made me feel I wasn’t alone. Wasn’t long before I pulled my T-shirt up over my head. The sun spread his open palm across my back.

  People everywhere. A man and a woman, both dressed in khaki shorts and Nikes, she in a lime-green Polo shirt, he in a navy blue, pushed a blue baby carriage. A skateboarder jumped the curb next to a NO SKATEBOARDING sign. A man with long silver hair, torn pants, and no shirt, asleep on a park bench. A woman in a red jogging bra and a blue hair tie, Nikes, carrying weights, running.

  Just over from me on the rim
of the fountain was an old man. He was smoking, wearing a Jimmy Stewart hat, an old tie with butterflies and dice on it. His shoes and socks were off too, his suit pants rolled up. The cane he leaned on was stuck in the fountain. He looked down into the water.

  The water wasn’t just milky green. It was blue too, and gray. The bubbles were white. Under the water, a Pepsi can, a straw, some blue plastic thing.

  The sun made wavy illuminations on the water. I squinted my eyes and—abracadabra!—out of nowhere were the willows, the dark earth, the wet meadow grass of Spring Creek, Charlie’s naked one long uninterrupted muscle diving through the blue Idaho sky.

  Who knows how long I sat on the lip of stone sloshing my feet back and forth in the water.

  My breath in. My breath out.

  WHAT I CAME up with was this: Since I was a Crossover, and a Crossover is someone who what he’s afraid of happens to him, I might as well let it happen.

  Let gay, let pride, happen to me.

  I loved Charlie, and Charlie was a boy, a boy I had sex with. I couldn’t get it up for Fiona. Now Rose.

  MY LEGS WADED through gray-green water. When I got to the splashing water, I looked up, raised my arms into the sky, reached.

  It’s the Gay Pride march today! I said, out loud to Bethesda Fountain. Then I turned around, cupped my hands around my mouth. Gay Pride! I yelled. Ta-da!

  The old man quick looked at me, poked his Jimmy Stewart hat up.

  So, he said. You going?

  How about you? I said.

  Nah, he said. I’m too old for mishegoss. But you, he said, You’re young. You should go give ’em hell.

  All daring and courage, I said, All iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.

  The old man flipped his cigarette into the fountain, rubbed his nose.

  Ah fuck Teddy Roosevelt, the old man said. Just go be who you are. Who you are is what it is, the old man said. And you don’t have much time.

  ON THE STEPS of the 42nd Street Library, I sat down next to a lion, around one-thirty, just about the time they were releasing six hundred thousand purple balloons into the air.

  On the pink Gay Pride pamphlet, I read the marchers would observe one full minute of silence in memory of those who had died of AIDS.

  One full minute of silence in Manhattan isn’t that silent. The balloons were pretty, though. The whole sky was purple at first, purple shining down on the men and women looking up, but as the balloons floated higher and higher, what we were staring up at was the bright sunny sky, unrelenting.

  When the one full minute was over, people cheered, cried, waved flags, held each other.

  The show must go on. A band started playing. Disco music from the Monster float.

  I followed the parade on the sidewalk, not on the avenue with the marchers. I pretended like it was just another New York day and I was just another New York guy who was walking toward Washington Square Park.

  At Washington Square, the parade turned west. The farther west I walked, and the closer to Sheridan Square, people were jammed in so close there wasn’t enough air. Marching bands, baton twirlers, guys in tutus on roller skates, franticker and festiver, elaborate floats. Drag queens and muscle men and Dykes on Bikes and black gay men and black lesbians, and Latino gay men and Latino lesbians, Asian men and women—really, I don’t think you could find a bunch of people who were so different yet so the same all together in the same place at the same time.

  A half million homosexuals, showing off, parading, dancing, running, roller skating, strutting, skateboarding, rickshawing, you name it, through the streets.

  Next to me on the sidewalk was a Latino woman in a wheelchair with a rainbow on the back of the chair. Her white silver-haired lover behind her leaned up against the wheelchair. They were laughing their asses off. And then there was these two Asian guys—I don’t know if they were Korean or Chinese or Vietnamese or what, but they were scrubbed up and starched white, their thick black hair shiny in the sun, and they were both standing there like schoolboys waving little flags with pink triangles on them.

  Then the leather guy drove by on his Harley-Davidson, long hair—looked like ZZ Top with his beard—and there was his big bare white hairy ass arched up out over the seat. The Asian boys, when they saw the Harley guy’s ass, covered their mouths, little screams.

  In the arch of shade under the Washington Square monument is where I saw them: four policemen on horses. I recognized the white stallion right off.

  The cops were just sitting there, watching the parade, smoking and talking to each other. I mean Richard White was talking and the other cops were listening.

  The Monster float went by: nearly naked men disco dancing. Sergeant White and the other cops didn’t even look up.

  What followed the Monster float was a group of people in uniform. Four women, six or seven men. Their purple and pink flag: Gay cops.

  The crowd gave out a big cheer.

  Even from where I stood, I could see Sergeant White’s face get red. He threw his cigarette down, then quick pulled back on the reins. The white stallion reared and the other horses jumped, horse hooves onto cobblestones.

  Sergeant White started shouting orders.

  Yes, sir! Yes, sir!

  Each cop, each white-guy cop, followed Sergeant White in formation and turned his horse to the right.

  More shouts from Sergeant White.

  Yes, sir! Yes, sir!

  The cops turned their horses completely around and faced the other direction. Turned their backs on the gay cops. Pointed their four horses’ asses at the gay cops.

  If I’d had a gun, Rose’s silver revolver, I might have shot Sergeant Richard White right then.

  I DON’T KNOW how long I stood there, but when I went to move on, a bunch of people had crowded in behind me and from the side. I was in a place no bigger than my body, stuck between a light pole, a garbage can, and a parked car.

  From down the street, marching bands, drag queens on stilts, belly dancers, you name it.

  The wilder the crowd got, the bigger the hard place inside my chest.

  I pushed through the crowd of people, put my head down and just pushed. Then I was running in and out, in and out, through the crowd, heading as fast as I could to 205 East Fifth Street, I-A. So many people on the sidewalk I had to move into the street to run. Running against the parade.

  I heard the drums and whistles a block before I saw them. Around the corner, a huge burst of dust storm, lightning, thunder, wind blowing tumbleweeds and sagebrush: Native American gays.

  The song of the men and women dancing sounded like hundreds of waterfalls and wolves. Horses when they fight. Made you want to lie down and cry, or laugh your ass off, or both.

  * * *

  THE ONLY WAY out is in.

  If I barfed I’d feel better, but I didn’t barf.

  After some time, who knows how long, I raised my head and looked into the sun.

  Nothing but heat and dust on my shoulders, June grass in my hair.

  The drums, the bells around their ankles, the high heya-heya-heya cry to the Great Mystery. The bear claws, the whistles, the porcupine quills, the breechcloths, the smell of buckskin and sweat, the sun shining onto the gold, copper, turquoise, the silver glint.

  From out of the dust came a rider on a horse. His hair was long and black and wavy and his horse was ayaHuaska.

  Charlie 2Moons was doing the Hippodrome Stand; then he leaned down into a Crupper Jump. I reached my hands up and Charlie grabbed my hands and I was flying in the air; then my butt was on ayaHuaska’s fortune-telling butt and my arms were around Charlie’s middle, his hair in my face, and I was holding Charlie close to me, holding him safe.

  Charlie and I on ayaHuaska galloped up Fifth Avenue, all the way up, through the riches to the rags, through the grid, downtown to uptown to out of town, all the way out to the shadow tunnel of cottonwood leaves and branches, kicking up dust and horse farts, then over the railroad tracks, across Highw
ay 30, to the sagebrush plains, the low flatland and the tall grass, into the tules, down into gullies, to the bottoms.

  But it’s not the truth.

  No Charlie. Nowhere.

  RUNNING AGAIN, FASTER and faster, the hard place in my chest a hurt where I didn’t even know hurt.

  I saw a space in the marchers and quick ran farther out into the street—and smack into the next group of marchers.

  People with AIDS. Walking wounded. Thousands.

  I sat down right there on the pavement on the corner of Fifth and Washington Square North, put my head between my legs. All around me, above me, the humanity. Several men stopped, asked if they could help. I could only shake my head.

  My eyes looked only at the feet.

  Who knows how long I sat there, how many pairs of shoes, flip-flops, Nikes, sandals passed over and around me, how many shadows walked by.

  Below me, a puddle on the pavement, sweat and tears and snot, a river of mucus run out of me.

  I got up, made it to the curb. An old woman in a babushka gave me a drink of water from her Evian bottle.

  The sun, it’s so hot! Drink!

  My breath in, my breath out, I stood up straight, made myself look.

  One after another, every way a person can look—old young white black brown red yellow men and women—some in wheelchairs, some on crutches, some of them blind and walking with white canes, some of them just skin and bones, some of them healthy-looking as can be. They were marching, smiling, waving at the crowd, elbow, elbow, wrist wrist wrist.

  One guy my eyes went to right off was walking close to an older taller guy. You could tell it was his first time, first time in a gay parade, first time with AIDS. There was nothing special about how this guy looked, just a thirty-year-old white guy in khaki pants and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, socially shy, terrified, mostly his eyes on the ground or looking into his lover’s eyes.

  In that moment, my body understood what it was to be brave. I’d always thought that brave people were just brave. Martin Luther King, Jr. was brave. Malcolm X was brave. Harvey Milk was brave. Rosa Parks was brave. Red Cloud was brave. Brave was something in their bones they just did.