Like People in History

by Felice Picano

  From this I assumed that (1) my cousin's real estate development of a decade before had paid off as handsomely as he'd hoped, and (2) he'd moved on from assignations in garden rooms with the staff to become fully, openly homosexual, and now associated with other homosexuals— such as Julian Gwynne, who not only was a famous rock musician, but who also appeared to be very much interested in me, even though I wasn't altogether happy about the nature of that interest.

  I was really flattered by his attentions. But I was at this party under what I felt were false pretenses, and the longer I remained here, the worse it would be.

  "I've got to get back to the people I'm staying with," I told Julian as soon as I found him. We were at the van door, already mostly open, someone's Siamese cat stretched out on the top step. Outside it had begun to rain.

  "Why?" Julian asked.

  "I don't know," I said. "Because they're the people I'm with."

  "We're the people you're with now. Your cousin and I," Julian argued.

  "I know, but I came with—"

  "Wouldn't you rather be here with us? With me?" he asked, sadly.

  "Well, sure, but—"

  "I know what it is: you're disturbed about that little bet I made with Alistair, aren't you? You think it was frivolous."

  I tried to tell him that its frivolity was hardly the point.

  "Alistair told me I'd want you the minute I laid eyes on you," Julian interrupted. "A few months ago, when he and I were discussing why we'd never become lovers."

  "Why didn't you two become lovers?" I had to ask.

  "Too much alike," Julian said, opening the van door all the way and pulling me down to sit on the step between him and the purring, unmovable Siamese. "'What you need,' Alistair lectured me in that tone of voice of his," Julian went on, "'is someone who looks like me but isn't me. My second cousin Roger would do perfectly. If it weren't for the fact that he's impossibly hetero and you'd have to bust his cherry.'"

  "You're making this up," I said and pushed his arm away. He'd draped it over my shoulder as he spoke.

  "Scout's honor." Julian put up three fingers in some arcane gesture. "I mean, why should I make it up? Just to explore the delights and manifold mysteries of your undergarments?" He began to illustrate by poking those same fingers beneath my belt, pulling at my B.V.D.s. "Well, perhaps I would. But I'm not."

  Behind us, the party was in full swing. Next to me, the Siamese was pretending not to listen to a word of what we said.

  "You're not, are you?"

  "Not what?" I asked, knowing full well what he was asking.

  "That would be too grotesque if you were." Julian had wrapped both arms around me, and I had to pick them off finger by finger and yet not push over the cat, who was now looking at us with that mixture of annoyance and contempt cats do so well..

  "You know, of course, that no one is anymore? Or at least if they are, they pretend not to be."

  "Don't you think you've got that mixed up?" I asked, laughing at the faces he was making, delighted to be entertained by him.

  "No, luv, you're the one who's a bit mixed up. C'mon, admit it. You find me devastatingly attractive, and you know you'll do anything to have me rip your clothing off and lick your nubile young body from head to toe. Yet you're held back by some nineteenth-century ideas of sexuality. Am I right or am I right?"

  "Both," I admitted.

  "Well, that's a relief!" he said, and grabbed me again even though I'd just managed to pick his hands off me altogether. "I thought you might actually be foolishly unreasonable and not admit the truth. Believe me, luv, I'll respect you as much in the morning as I do now."

  "Which isn't much," I said.

  "Isn't? Why, go find that cousin of yours and ask him if the minute I laid eyes upon you I didn't completely melt like an old plum jam left in the sun? Go on. There you were, walking all bare-chested through the crowd in the noon mist, exuding obvious pleasure not to mention delicious pheromones, and being so charitable. You looked like some apostle distributing fishes and loaves. Honest, you did. That's actually what I told your cousin. I did! Where is he? Alistair! Didn't I tell you young Rog here looked like that litho of St. Philip torn out of my tattered old Bible and tacked upon the wall of my bedroom in Southwark that I used to gaze upon daily and wank off to?"

  "God!" I said. "You're such a liar!"

  "Am not. Also I was hungry and wanted the food you were giving out. Give us a kiss, luv."

  I pulled back. "No way."

  "C'mon, don't be like that! This sodding bunch don't care what you or I do. Just a little..."

  He managed to smudge his face across mine before I could pull back.

  "Well, that's not very professional. I suspect you need a bit of training in that area;"

  "I do not."

  "Well, then show us a professional one."

  "No."'

  "Maybe later on," he suggested. "When there's not so many other sods around?"

  "Maybe," I allowed. "Look, I really do have to get back to the house and tell them I wasn't stolen away by aliens."

  "The day is still young," Julian said naughtily, his hands all over my body.

  "C'mon! Let go," I said.

  "Tell you what," he temporized. "I'll let you go under one condition: that Alton, my driver, takes you wherever you want. So long as you promise to come back with him."

  "I don't want to miss your set. When do you go on?"

  "We were slated for fifth this afternoon. But at this rate, who knows?"

  It was indeed raining much harder now, with occasional rumbles of thunder. While I'd been in the van—and so very distracted by Julian— I'd not given a thought to what the rain would be like for the enormous crowd stuck out in the open. As the chauffeur drove out of the performers' area and around the throng, I wasn't surprised to see people huddling under makeshift covers and blankets; nor, I guess, was I surprised to see others naked, holding hands, singing and dancing around in the rain and mud.

  I was certain the others had returned to the house. Even so, I asked Alton to drive near the orchard where Edgar had twice before parked. No, the pickup wasn't there, although the trees were rather sodden and bare of fruit.

  The roads were more clogged than earlier in the day. People were still arriving, remaining in their cars because of the lashing downpour and frequent bolts of lightning.

  "It won't last," Alton decreed. "Be over in a hour. Jes' a summer storm."

  He negotiated the difficult passage out to the main road and followed my so-so directions to Edgar and Sarah's house, all with good humor.

  I expected them to be together when I arrived, sitting around the trestle table in the big kitchen. In fact, I'd been looking forward to having them see me arrive in the limo and me having to tell them that I was going back to be with my millionaire cousin and Julian Gwynne. I had been especially looking forward to watching Michelle's reaction to that news. She might have been invited to stay here with Edgar and Sarah, but I was being driven by Gwynne's driver and returning to his party, and who knew, I might remain all night with him, if I wanted—spending the night in a hotel in Rhinebeck with Julian and Alistair and the entire rock band and its entourage. I thought this constituted revenge of a fairly high order, thought it all out in advance.

  When we drove up to the house, Alton shut off the motor. "Boss said not to come back without you," he explained.

  "I could be a while," I argued, not liking having my freedom curtailed, since I'd not yet made up my mind what I planned on doing.

  "He ain't goin' anywhere without me," Alton argued back. "'Sides, I can catch me some Z's here as good as dere."

  I was even more irritated when I got indoors and the house was empty. Or rather looked empty. Then I realized that both bedroom doors were closed. They hadn't been closed earlier. That meant... The tin pot of coffee was still warm, and I poured a cup. I'd been smoking grass with Julian for the past few hours and was starving. Lucikly, some bread had been kept, and I smothered chunk
s with honey and butter. It was one of the best meals of my life.

  Maybe they weren't all asleep, but out. No, Edgar's pickup and Tom's mustard-colored Datsun were still parked outside.

  Well, maybe they were sleeping. Just sleeping.

  How many to a bed? How many to which bed?

  Thinking of the combinations possible sent me into giggles. Then I thought about where Michelle was sleeping. And with whom. Whoever it was, it clearly wasn't me. As she'd planned for me to find out. Well, wasn't that too bad! I thought. Maybe I didn't need Michelle. After all, I hadn't needed her until she moved in. Hell, I hadn't even known she existed until a few weeks ago. And while she'd been interesting, she'd never been that interesting. I could easily live without her. Had for how many years already? But just so she didn't get the impression I couldn't, I decided to write a short note:

  Hey you guys! No one was home. And I thought it would be uncool to keep Julian Gwynne's limo driver waiting for me. So I'm splitting. See you sometime. Don't know when I'll get back to Manhattan. Better mail the keys.

  Then I couldn't resist adding one more touch, a postscript for Michelle:

  P.S. I guess it was just meant to be!

  Much later that night, following the performances, I told Julian what I had written. I didn't explain who Michelle was, only that we'd come up together. But when he heard about all the bedroom doors being closed against me, he couldn't help but protest. "It's a good thing I took you away from those people."

  He'd finally located a room in the Rhinebeck Hotel that had a lockable door, and had at last managed to pull me out of the enormous, noisy, messy performers-and-hangers-on party the entire place had erupted into several hours before. He'd also managed to locate an empty bed, and we were in it together, I quite stoned but by no means as stoned as I was pretending to be. "Why?" I asked, all innocence.

  "Why?" Julian asked. "Why? Just think of the ghastly debaucheries they might have subjected you to," savoring them in his mind if not on his lips. "Here, let's get these off you," he added, giving my denims a great pull. "My, you American lads just wear underwear no matter what the situation, don't you?"

  "Stop!" I protested and weakly batted away his prying fingers, so he had to use his teeth to grasp the elastic band of my underwear, which meant his hair was tickling my tummy and so I was laughing and rolling around.

  "Who knows what perversions I might have fallen prey to," I replied, feeling, if truth be told, like some character out of Congreve, or was it Richardson? "Stop, vile ravisher!" I attempted.

  "Don't be daft," he replied, having gotten my underwear mostly off by dint of his teeth and fingers. "You known damn well how extremely tacky it would have been, whereas here... with me..." Julian continued stripping off my socks and then looked me over as though I were a very welcome late snack brought up by the hotel's so far mythical room service. "Here, the perversions are perfectly ordinary ones. As I shall proceed to illustrate."

  "What do you mean 'How is it with Julian'?" I asked. "It's completely impossible. As you very well know."

  Alistair sighed and handed me the bong for another deep hit of Michoacán grass.

  We were sitting on the terrace of his penthouse in Chelsea, only a few blocks from my own West Village apartment, yet light-years away in rent, decor, glamour, not to mention the amounts of time and cash lavished on the place.

  It was a warm mid-October night, two months since Woodstock. On either side of us stood two perfectly trimmed orange trees, their light citrus oils flavoring the still night air. From inside, we could hear on the stereo the electrified guitar and ghostly vocals of a group called H. P. Lovecraft: their current hit, "The White Ship." A glance into any window off the enormous, wraparound terrace would show a dozen people within, still at the dinner table or stretched out upon divans built into the living room. The refectory table still hadn't been cleared: remnants of Alistair's huge Indian feast lay scattered about, despite the presence nearby—necking heavily with a guest—of Kenny, Alistair's soi-disant houseboy.

  I could see Julian, who'd cornered two people between the dining room and kitchen, talking to them with that rapid, staccato movement of lips and head which I'd by now come to recognize as Stage Two: "I've got them hooked; now what exactly do I want with them?"

  "So does this mean...?" Alistair didn't know how to ask it. "I must sound like Suzy or Cholly Knickerbocker. But are you two splitting up?"

  "I'm awfully fond of Julian," I began. "Grateful too. For everything!" I tried to encompass in a single word how much of my life had altered since meeting the rock star.

  How explain how much it had changed? Outwardly, the only real changes were in my hours and in my associates. I still officially resided in four tiny rooms on the first floor of a West Village tenement. I still officially worked for the same textbook publisher as before. True, I was seldom home anymore except to change clothing or to pick up my mail. My real residence seemed to be one hotel suite or another: the Sherry in New York, the Biltmore in L.A. since we'd been eighty-sixed from the cottage at the Beverly Hills. Sometimes I thought I really spent the greatest amount of my time in an airplane seat flying between places. As for work, when I did arrive at the twenty-sixth-floor office—which was no more than one or at most two days per week, between Julian and the band's gigs—I seldom remained more than a few hours. What was odder was that that was okay too. I still hadn't gotten over how Frank Kovacs—that jerk among jerks—had taken me aside one afternoon and asked, "Is it true about Julian Gwynne?"

  He had this stricken look on his face: I was about to reveal his hero as a major queer.

  "Is what true?" What had Maria and Debbie told everyone?

  "You know, that you're with him whenever you're not here?"

  I thought, okay, here goes, I'm about to be fired for being a fag. But the up side was that I didn't need money, and I'd probably be able to collect unemployment insurance.

  "It's true. I travel with him and the hand wherever they go," I said.

  Kovacs all but gushed. "I think Gwynne's the best ever. Even better than Clapton," he said with the sober tone in which people announce deaths and circumcisions. "Don't worry. I'll cover for you. Just keep Gwynne happy and make sure he keeps playing."

  It was those words that best explained the way in which my life had changed. I was surrounded by, covered with, drenched in, unable to free myself from the enormous attentions and totally demanding needs of Julian Gwynne's larger-than-life ego.

  "I think I understand your problem," Alistair said. He'd known Julian longer than I: surely, he ought to understand. "But you know," Alistair added darkly, "maybe the problem isn't Julian. Maybe it's..."

  "What?"

  "You know, being gay."

  "Imagine a little thing like that crossing your mind."

  "Well, you have been sitting on the fence about your sexuality for years."

  "Who? Me? Are you kidding? I've done everything I could to get a girl."

  "Please! Girls are a dime a dozen. I have to fight them off and I'm as fly as Oscar Wilde."

  "Maybe that's because you have something they want? A name. Money. Where I have jack shit."

  "I'm sorry. I've seen far sorrier specimens than you, dear Cuz, have babes lined up." He paused. "The thing is, even the dumbest woman has good intuition. And if their radar reads you're not sure what you want, they generally keep away, in droves." He moderated that. "C'mon, it's not that bad being a homo. I've not found it's limited me very much.

  And since you're so anti-establishment and all, I would think it adds another feather in your cap. Wear your hair long. Smoke dope. Be against the war. Sixty-nine with a guy. Could you possibly be more anti-American if you tried?"

  "Maybe." I moped. "But this may only be a phase," I argued, and when the look on his face demanded a response, I added, "I mean, I haven't yet decided whether this is it or not. I might still want to go out with women. I might! There are plenty of bisexuals, you know. Guys who date women and men."
r />   "Fine!" Alistair said. "Do your own thing, man! But let me just give you a tip. I'd save that kind of bullshit for your mom and dad. What? They know?"

  "My sister was talking about Julian and Dad said, 'Sounds like some commie-fag to me.' He was half baiting her, of course, but he wanted to say exactly that. So I said, 'He is a commie-fag. And so am I!'"

  This event had only gone down a few days before our penthouse terrace conversation, and I vividly related the scene to Alistair, setting him inside that Long Island dining room he recalled from his youth, with the same relatives—older if not wiser—he well remembered.

  "What did he say to that?" Alistair asked.

  "Well, after he was done choking on his lamb, my mom said something like 'Serves you right, Richard, for baiting your son like that.' "

  "She didn't believe you!" Alistair said.

  "Not then, she didn't. Not till I began complaining about the bed Julian and I shared in the Drake when we were in Frisco. She got sort of white-faced, then pulled herself together and changed the subject. My sister's husband kept his head down and went on eating and eating."

  "Imagine if they knew I'd engineered the affair," Alistair mused.

  "They wouldn't believe it. You're still a good little boy to them," I said. "Anyway, you overestimate your role." As usual, I thought.

  "You'll admit I was crucial?"

  "Once you saw me, sure! You're hardly why I was at Woodstock."

  "I might have assumed you'd be there. Everyone of a certain age between Maine and Virginia was."