Cockeyed ds-11

by Richard Stevenson

  “That’s a pretty bleak assessment of the way a lot of gay people have lived for a pretty long time. Basically, people like Hunny are just like us and the people we know. They get up every day and go to work, and at the end of the day and on weekends they want a little comfort and diversion. They just do it with more humor and a cruder style than most gay people do. And most straight people.”

  “Much of the trouble has to do mainly with style, yes. I grant you that. It’s not my style, though, and it’s not yours. And it’s a style that causes trouble a-plenty for the rest of us when it turns up in antigay TV ads in Maine.”

  I said, “Should corn be boiled for three minutes or five?”

  “Three is plenty. Aunt Moira always said twenty minutes, but her corn was so tough only her hog could eat it.”

  “She kept a hog?”

  “My cousin Kevin.”

  “Shoemaker talks about Hunny and Art as being natural and free and in touch with their inner child. There’s a lot of truth to this, and I enjoy them and even sort of envy them whenever I’m not cringing.”

  “I sometimes find that humor and playfulness refreshing, too, but it’s the relentlessness that gets to me after a while. And the CoCkeyed 153 always sexualizing everything. Give it a break, I always want to say.”

  “Maybe they are just more honest than the rest of us.”

  “Oh, Donald, please. At this late date, are you going to go hippie on me?”

  “I mean honest in the sense that they are in touch not so much with their inner child as their inner Sigmund Freud. Sexuality is always going on, and people like Hunny and Art are just more aware and comfortable with the phenomenon than most of us.

  And they’ve learned not to be afraid of it but to have fun with it. They’re more like the Thais in that respect, except in Thailand people are not so crude about it or so insistent.”

  “Exactly. They have a sense of proportion. They may be in touch with their inner child, but they are also comfortable with their outer grown-up.”

  “Well, Hunny and Art’s way of life is a part of gay culture that I hope never disappears. The self-destructive parts of it I could do without — all the alcohol especially — but the gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may spirit makes a lot of sense for getting people through this…I don’t want to say vale of tears. For most of the lucky ones like you and me, it’s not that at all.”

  “‘Cockeyed caravan of life,’” Timmy said. “I think that’s what you mean, especially in Hunny’s case. Preston Sturges in the script for Sullivan’s Travels talks about our passage on this plane of existence as ‘the cockeyed caravan of life.’ The cockeyed caravan does seem to be thriving in one of its most esoteric and at the same time least inhibited forms over on Moth Street.”

  “I just hope,” I said, “that Hunny can survive his more-hectic-than-most expressions of unassimilated queerdom. It’s a life that though it has its rewards for some people, it also takes a toll.”

  “A price must be paid.”

  “I’ve made some mild stabs at getting Hunny to moderate his behavior, but he has a way of making me feel like Aunt Polly to his Tom Sawyer.”

  Timmy said, “That corn must be done.”

  “Right.”

  “Donald, I have a lot of trouble thinking of Hunny as a character out of Twain. Boyd MacDonald maybe. Or William S.

  Burroughs.”

  “Oh no, not Burroughs. Hunny is alert, alive, and I think I can even say truly happy.”

  My cell phone went off, and when I saw that it was Hunny calling I was tempted not to answer it. But I guessed that it was some new awful mess that Hunny had created or stepped in or had land on him, and I was right.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Brienings were at it again. They had phoned Nelson and told him that they had read on somebody’s Internet blog that Rita Van Horn’s disappearance was a hoax, just as Bill O’Malley suspected it was. Mrs. Van Horn, the blogger reported, had been spotted in a motel in the town of Lake George where she was staying under an assumed name. Obviously, Arletta Briening told Nelson, this was all part of a scheme to delay or even avoid paying the Brienings the half billion dollars they were owed. When Nelson insisted that the Van Horns knew nothing of this, Arletta said she was sure the report was reliable because the information came from one of her fPAAC friends and they were honest people.

  “Did the blogger give the name of the motel?” I asked Nelson.

  I was back at the house on Moth Street, where Nelson and Lawn had arrived in person to deliver news of the new threat from the Brienings.

  “No, he didn’t. I asked Arletta and she said no.”

  “This is probably somebody’s malicious imagination at work.

  Do you have the blog URL?”

  Hunny said, “What’s a URL? Is that like ‘you are luscious’ in e-mail language?”

  “No, Uncle Hunny, it isn’t.”

  Nelson had the address at blogspot, and while Lawn sat by the kitchen phone scanning the Financial Times, Art, Hunny, Nelson and I went upstairs to Hunny and Art’s room, where they kept their computer on what might have been somebody’s boyhood desk. Hunny and Art had a double bed with a veneer headboard that looked like Richard Widmark might have slept in it in Kiss of Death. Clothing was heaped around the room and tumbling out of closets. A bookcase contained only a few books — some paperback movie guides and a glossy photo book called Butt Boys of Budapest. The flat-screen TV was nearly identical to the one in the living room downstairs.

  Art went online and found the blog called Blood of Tyrants, a right-wing anti-Obama bilge-fest. It was the work of someone calling himself Tom In Paine. In addition to the flag-draped anti-tax and pro-gun screeds, there were stories on “typical” gays as child molesters and links to ex-gay ministries.

  A posting from that morning described Bill O’Malley’s

  “expose” of “Huntington Van Horn’s gay lifestyle” and the FPAAC suit against the lottery for spreading “perversion and immorality.”

  Tom In Paine credited O’Malley for first revealing that a missing persons report involving Hunny’s mother was actually a publicity stunt concocted to obtain a TV reality show contract, like the recent balloon-boy hoax. The blogger stated that Mrs. Van Horn was in hiding at a Lake George motel. She had been spotted coming and going by an FPAAC member who had seen her photo on the O’Malley show when Hunny was waving it around. The motel was not named.

  I said, “There must be dozens of motels in Lake George.

  Tom In Paine had to know that this would be hard for us or anybody else to check out and refute.”

  “Mom enjoys Lake George,’ Hunny said, “but I think this is just a pack of lies.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Uncle Hunny. Most of the stuff on these right-wing blogs is pure fiction. But I know Mother and Grandma used to go up to Lake George and ride around on a paddleboat and stay at a place near the lake where they liked the stuffed haddock at the restaurant across the street. It might be a good idea if somebody rode up there and just took a look.”

  I asked Nelson if he knew the name of the motel.

  “No, but Mother would know.”

  “Antoine doesn’t go in to work till four o’clock tomorrow, so maybe he and the twins could ride up there. Tyler and Schuyler could work on their homework in the car.”

  ‘Well, we really have to do everything possible to get Grandma Rita back quickly,” Nelson said. “Arletta reiterated to me that their deadline is Wednesday for the half billion to be turned over.

  In fact, she said noon Wednesday, not a minute later.”

  Hunny flicked an ash from his lit cigarette into the ashtray on top of the computer, whose keyboard was brown with nicotine stains. “Oh Lord, all we need is for the Brienings to distribute letters out at Golden Gardens calling Mom a crook right before she walks in the door out there or she is found in a hospital in New Jersey waking up from a coma.”

  “Why New Jersey?” I asked.

  “Becaus
e that’s where Karen Ann Quinlan was in her coma.”

  “New Jersey, the coma state,” Art said. “It’s on the license plates.”

  “I am thinking more and more,” Hunny said, “that maybe I should just give the Brienings the half a billion dollars. That money isn’t even real to me anyways. I would never miss it. And then we could just concentrate on getting Mom back and not have the Brienings hanging over our heads and breathing down our necks.”

  “That is what Mother prefers,” Nelson said. “But that’s easy for her to say, because she and Dad have nice pensions from the county. No, I think you’ve been right, Uncle Hunny, to try to keep the money away from those terrible people. Lawn has some ideas on how you can invest it that he wants to discuss with you, but of course that can easily wait until we have resolved the situation with Grandma Rita.”

  “I am just so grateful,” Hunny said, “that that poor old lady over in Nassau wasn’t Mom. I never imagined Mom dying like that. Out in the woods, I mean. She doesn’t like nature as much as she likes comfy and cozy and a good time. She’s always preferred town over country.”

  Art said, “That lady who died was a farmer. Maybe she went the way she always wanted to go.”

  “I can see Mom keeling over at Applebee’s with a huge plate of nachos in front of her. She would be dying happy.”

  “Like mother, like son,” Art said. “A fatal helping of Applebee’s nachos sounds like just the ticket for you, dear one.

  In fact, include me in. Or would we rather die in the sack with a pair of humpy rugby players sitting on our faces?”

  Hunny laughed. “That’s a tough one.”

  Nelson shot a glance at me — he badly wanted me to be his ally in disapproving of Hunny and Art’s far-from-Noel-Coward-like sexual humor — but I found myself letting him down, and I was almost sorry I could not oblige. Though I did hope that Hunny could find a way to contain himself in the future when on national television.

  “Well, let’s get going then,” Nelson said. “Lawn and I are driving back over to East Greenbush to see how Mother is doing, and I guess you’ll be talking to Antoine. Right, Uncle Hunny? I’ll get the name of the motel.”

  “Yes, but I do have to do one thing. My old boss at BJ’s called earlier and said most of the staff had quit because I was going to give them all a million dollars. The managers are having trouble both with stocking and at the checkouts, and Earl asked me if I would urge the gals and guys to come back temporarily and then give a week’s notice after I presented them with their checks.

  I said I would do that for the sake of the customers who are apparently waiting an eternity to get out to the parking lot with their three hundred rolls of toilet paper, so I have to make a few phone calls.”

  “Okay.”

  “One other thing, Nelson. Tell Lawn I will invest some money with him — maybe a million or so — as a favor to you and my sister. But the bulk of my fortune, whether or not it includes the half a billion the Brienings are after, is going to be placed in safe investments that are socially responsible. I was just thinking about this after something Arthur said, and my plan is to invest heavily in — for one thing — Applebee’s. tgi Friday’s also, even though it has some unpleasant associations for me now, what with the kidnapping scam and the tgi‘s Dumpster’s role in that. But I love their nachos, too. I just want you and Lawn to CoCkeyed 159 understand that this is the first time anybody in our family ever had such a huge amount of money, and I simply am not about to take any chances with it.”

  Nelson did not sigh or roll his eyes over this announcement.

  He looked as if he could not figure out for the life of him exactly how to respond.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Quentin Shoemaker and eight of his Radical Drama Queen friends arrived around eleven that night. They had a big wooden box full of the paraphernalia Quentin said they would need for any “action” that might be called for. Among the six was Ethan Kulak, the Rdq‘s psychic, and Savion Davenport, the commune’s astrologer. Kulak was even tinier than Shoemaker, with intense black eyes and a small round mouth that made him look as if he was always about to say something starting with a W. Davenport was also skinny, and had a brown bony face and enough dreadlocks for a small sheep to get lost in. The communards were all in raggedy shorts or jeans and T-shirts, except for a rugged older man named Graham who wore a Hawaiian grass skirt and halter top.

  Antoine had gone off to work the overnight shift at Golden Gardens, but Marylou and the twins were in the living room monitoring the eleven o’clock local newscasts for any reports on Mrs. Van Horn, or any new outbreaks of anti-Hunny activity.

  The rest of us gathered in the kitchen, where Shoemaker astonished Hunny, Art and me by declaring, “Ethan and Savion have consulted the heavens, the spiritual and energy flows, and each other. And they can say with some degree of certainty, Hunny, that your mother is at the present moment in the town of Lake George.”

  “Whoa. Really?”

  “That’s amazing,” Art said.

  Kulak had placed the photograph of Mrs. Van Horn that Shoemaker borrowed earlier in the center of the kitchen table.

  She grinned up at us, and just at the bottom of the frame was the top of a cocktail glass with a swizzle stick peeking out.

  “Whereabouts in Lake George?” Hunny asked. “And what is she doing? Is she well? Is she being held captive or anything?”

  “Your mother is asleep right now,” Kulak said. “So it wouldn’t be good to call her even if we had her number. She is healthy and contented but somewhat worn out.”

  “Wow. How can you tell that?”

  “Savion Googled her name, and that helped. There was some kind of blog saying she had been seen in Lake George.”

  Hunny’s face drooped. “Oh. You’re getting your information from Tom In Paine. Now I don’t know. That guy is an idiot.”

  “Yes, I know he is, but we confirmed the sighting,” Davenport said. “Your mother’s sign of Jupiter is entering the seventh house, and today is August seventeenth, so she is sure to be equidistant between Saratoga Springs and Schroon Lake. That has to be Lake George.”

  Hunny looked at Art, who shrugged. “Why the hell not?”

  I said, “So you guys have a wireless laptop you carry around to make your calculations?”

  “I’ve got my Blackberry,” Shoemaker said. “And Ethan has his human mind.”

  I said, “So, Ethan, can your human mind come up with an address for us where Mrs. Van Horn can be found?”

  Nelson had phoned earlier to tell us that the motel where Rita and Miriam Van Horn used to like to stay was called the Silvery Moon. We had let Antoine know about that, but no one else had yet been told.

  Kulak said, “I am fairly sure it’s the Super 8, but I’m not one hundred percent certain.”

  “Hunny and Art’s friend Antoine, along with Tyler and Schuyler, who you met out in the other room, are going to take a drive up to Lake George in the morning to try to check out the supposed sighting of Mrs. Van Horn. Maybe a couple of you could ride along and add your extrasensory GPS.”

  The Rdqers agreed to do that and asked if they could spend the night in Art and Hunny’s house. They said they had their Tibetan prayer mats they could sleep on, and they had brought their own dried head cheese breakfast cakes. Hunny said, sure, there was plenty of room. I said they were also welcome to Hunny and Art’s guest room and I would spend the night at home. I thought about inviting some of them to come over and spread their mats out at the foot of Timmy’s and my bed but concluded that Timmy’s bemusement might be limited.

  I asked Hunny to walk with me out to my car. It was a hot moonlit buggy August night on Moth Street. We passed the two security guys sitting on the porch, and one of them said to me,

  “Are those hippies?”

  “You could call them that. I doubt if they would use the word.”

  “They look like they are.”

  “That word is mostly used now for revivals of H
air. These guys aren’t actors. They’re genuine.”

  “I just wondered.”

  When we got out to my car, I said to Hunny, “You know, Quentin and his crew are full of shit.”

  “I thought they might be.”

  “They are good and sweet and decent, but they have no more idea where your mother is than Bill O’Malley does, or the balloon boy.”

  “I know. But Quentin is nice to me and he doesn’t treat me like I’m a bad gay person and a traitor to gays just because I’m so fun-loving and enjoy a stiff one once in a while. Oh, I mean drink,” he added and chortled.

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice blowjob, Donald?”

  “No.”

  “It relieves tension.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “I guess you’re getting it at home.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  164 Richard Stevenson

  “Variety is nice.”

  “I can’t deny that.”

  “Well, maybe some of the Rdq boys will be up for a romp.”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Donald, girl, do you think I should tell them to go back to Vermont? They aren’t going to be much help, it looks like. But I like having Quentin around to boost my morale. I love that he wanted to lick my feet. At first, I thought, oh, what a weirdo. But he wasn’t referring to shrimping, I don’t think. He meant to show his respect.”

  “He admires you a lot. And he’s not alone.”

  “Oh, I know. Not everybody’s dumping on me. All the gals out at BJ’s have called and expressed their heartfelt wishes about Mom, and some said I should have kicked Bill O’Malley in the balls. A lot of the gang we normally see at Rocks on Saturday night have been supportive, calling and sending nice cards. I heard that some radio program in Troy called Homo Radio said nice things about me. It’s just phonies like Nelson and Lawn and that type of straight-acting gay person who have been pissing all over Artie and me.”