In my own way, I wanted Illy to drop me so he wouldn’t feel rejected. I didn’t think he was going to suffer much guilt about rejecting me. In fact, that wasn’t what he felt guilty about later.
I guess, knowing what I know now, Illy felt so guilty just about being alive, that feeling guilty about what he had done to someone else hardly figured in it.
He had a religious-maniac mother, a beautiful alcoholic younger brother, and an ineffective father–what else do you need? Didn’t Philip Larkin write something about how they fuck you up, Mom and Dad and how they don’t mean to, but they do. Bizarre, isn’t it? All that fucking up being done, generation to generation. You wonder where it all started. Centuries back, probably. It takes a strong personality, or brains, or something, to break the pattern.
Now that I had the afternoon free, I went to the Thalia and saw Les Enfants du Paradis, with Arletty. I loved her line “I call myself Garance. It’s the name of a flower.” So glittering and mysterious in her spangled turban. The theater in Paris early in the nineteenth century. Mimes. I’ve come to hate them since, like everyone else, but that was the first wave. Before Marcel Marceau spawned that tribe of street inanities. Pointy-nosed Jean-Louis Barrault was really quite sexy. I read just recently that when Arletty was interrogated after the war for having had a German lover, the lawyer said, “How do you explain having a lover who was German during the Occupation?” and she said, “Je suis femme.” Not even “I am a woman” but “I am woman.” I squirmed in my seat. I knew what she meant. In a way. Rex could have been a triple ax murderer. I was ready for my fulfillment.
I was on my way, at least partially. On Monday, Illy didn’t ignore or not speak to me. It was just that we had returned abruptly to our relationship before I had ever slept with him. I was one of the boys in the dressing room again.
When somebody remembered the note in the shoe from Thursday night, he said, “I think they got the wrong shoe. Sure couldn’t have been me. They probably thought it was your shoe, Robby.” Everybody laughed. Everyone had already slept with Robby. Not much chance that someone had a crush on him.
Actually, Robby had figured out who it was. We were going down in the elevator later that day, made up to the teeth wearing nineteenth-century tuxedos for the ball scene in La Traviata. Callas was singing. I said nothing. He said nothing.
Just before the elevator got to the stage level he said, “Innocent little Harry. If people only knew, they wouldn’t be calling you the White Virgin.” And we walked out toward the set where Callas was already waiting, wearing a pink satin ball gown with an enormous skirt.
The New Ballet
No one in the ballet company noticed that Illy and I weren’t in any kind of contact, but they had never noticed when we were. Everyone laughed and made wisecracks and talked to each other in a group, so the fact that two of their group didn’t make any remarks to each other directly would never have been noticed, and it wasn’t.
What was noticed, with a great flurry of talk, was that Mr. Tudor was going to do a new ballet. There was going to be a ballet night after all, one night only. The company would do a Zachary Solov ballet that had been mounted the year before. We were going to learn Frederick Ashton’s Symphonic Variations, which was for three couples only, and Mr. Tudor announced that, after many years of creating nothing, he was going to do a new ballet.
It was going to be called Inquiétante. I looked it up in my French dictionary (I was trying to learn French, too), and it meant “disquieting.” Well, he certainly was a disquieting person, if I understood the word clearly, so maybe this was a good title. We’d see if it was a good ballet.
We rehearsed the ballet for Faust until the lunch break. It had been getting sloppy. Zachary wanted to add what he called a ballabile. I guess that meant a big frenzied ending. Well, it was big and it was frenzied, that was for sure. Actually, Zachary was very wise. So many of the company couldn’t dance their way out of a paper bag, it was better to fill the stage with a lot of activity, where the audience couldn’t see if there was any precision or not. The less precision demanded of the company, the better. The last movement we just held hands and did a giant ring-around-the-rosy. Simple but effective. Certainly not hard to learn.
After the lunch break, Antony Tudor showed up and said we would start to learn his ballet that afternoon. He said he wanted to use the ballet to show off the abilities of the company, so he was going to have two main leads and eight soloists, and everyone in the company would have some solo or duo movement. Perhaps brief, but they would have their moment in the spotlight.
Everyone was very excited. All ballet dancers believe that with the right break, stardom is just over the hill. Wealth and even fame are of no great moment; it is the chance to dance that they yearn for, to have those few instants of flying and darting about in the enchanted gaze of their audience. That is what they live for, and to deny them is like refusing water to someone crossing a desert. They are famished for those moments.
I was in back and only barely heard Tudor say, “The leads are going to be Asia Mercooleva and Harry Potter. I think they will look very good together. She is very dark and he is very fair.” He then went on to announce the supporting eight dancers who would be the soloists. Everyone had pulled slightly away from me. I found I suddenly was standing in more space than I had been standing in before. I could see Asia across the room, and the same thing had happened to her. Tudor’s choice could mean so many things, but basically it meant that he considered us the two best dancers in the company. I don’t think that was true. My tours en l’air weren’t perfect, and because I’m tall, I could never get off the ground enough to do a lot of beats with my feet. More likely he saw us as crowd pleasers. Asia was very beautiful and had a very elegant line. I was tall enough to partner her well and was unknown in the ballet world. He probably saw us as making a splash.
On the other hand, maybe the company thought they had missed something important: that I was sleeping with someone powerful at the opera who made a deal. Tudor would choreograph a new ballet and I would get the lead. It had happened before.
I certainly didn’t think it was because I was star material. But I was excited at the idea that I would be learning a ballet that had never been done before from one of the world’s great choreographers.
The music was going to be Poulenc. Hard to dance to. Indefinite rhythms. Wandering music lines. Helen beat it out of the battered piano in a not-bad way. For all of her pounding out of Bizet, Verdi, and the rest, when called upon, she could play with a lot of emotion.
Mr. Tudor did not improvise on the dancers or seek inspiration from their movement. He arrived with a notebook and had planned the first two or three minutes of the music. It doesn’t sound like much, but two or three minutes is a lot of dancing. The curtain was going to open with everyone onstage. We were all divided into couples. Each couple had separate movements, as though each was alone on the stage doing its own pas de deux.
The idea was that through the twelve minutes of the piece, dancers would slowly leave the stage. It would not be clear who were the soloists and who the principals until the ballet proceeded towards its close. Asia and I would have the last three minutes alone on the stage, and I would actually have the last thirty seconds to myself. I would be left alone when the curtain fell.
The Poulenc music was very moody and I got the picture immediately. It was about the impossibility of love and aging and being left alone. At least that was how I was going to interpret it. Tudor made a point of not wanting to discuss what anything meant. That I knew. He had a horror of people who danced with their faces. Although Nora Kaye, who was one of the best interpreters of his ballets, danced with her face all the time, she danced with her body, too. I don’t want to be unfair to her. Not a beautiful body and not beautiful feet, but a great dancer.
I could see from the movement that Tudor clearly did choreograph on himself. The movement was the kind of movement he did well himself. It had the qualities of his own t
emperament. It was contained and tied up in knots, then suddenly breaking out in yearning, then pulling back in hesitation. He was a genius, too. You had to give him that. He gave each dancer the kind of movement that was suited to their body. He had obviously thought it out well, watched the company, and decided who was going to do what before he showed up in the studio.
We really didn’t accomplish all that much that afternoon. He started setting Asia’s and my opening pas de deux while the rest of the company watched. It was really nice. He had her twist her sinuous body all around me, and I helped her place her limbs here and there. We didn’t move around the floor much. He explained that with all the couples, we didn’t have much room. Also, we would be onstage the entire ballet, and he wanted to conserve our energy for when we would have to fill all the stage space. I was nervous. This was going to be a big deal. A far cry from the ballabile and running around in circles holding on to people’s hands.
Rex partnered Maggie Black. A perfect choice: he, all sexy bad boy; she, all neat and cool precision. She really could dance. He’d have to work to keep up with her. They were among the soloists, so I knew Tudor would give them something good to do. He liked Maggie.
As we headed to the dressing rooms after the rehearsal, Rex pushed past me and said, “I’d like to see you tonight. Are you free?”
I said into the back of his neck as he pretended he hadn’t spoken to me, “I’m always free.”
We did our class and then we went to the dressing room to make up and dress for Faust. We were going to try the new ballabile ending. It was a mess, but a jolly mess. It was the kermesse scene, so the audience wasn’t going to be critical. They rather enjoyed seeing some good-looking young people with waistlines having fun. Whether it was good dancing or not was impossible for them to judge, anyway. It was just a break from watching the tenor and soprano waddle around.
Afterwards, Rex and I had something to eat at Bickford’s. I had bacon and scrambled eggs. I liked eating breakfast at all times of the day and night; it was a meal I was always interested in eating. Then we took the subway down to my place.
I haven’t really told you all that much about Rex, have I? He lived with his mother. I’ve told you that. She went back to Baltimore occasionally to visit relatives, and while she was away, we could get it on at his apartment. But that was rare. (The night I dragged him to the floor fully clothed was one of those occasions.) Rex didn’t have any feelings about being more comfortable in his own bed. He was comfortable fucking anywhere. My apartment was kind of a second home for him.
“Let’s get comfortable and watch some television,” he said as he came in the door, strewing his leather jacket, boots, and blue jeans across the kitchen and little sitting room as he made for the bedroom.
I knelt down and bit his cock through his Jockey shorts. It started swelling. He stood there while I soaked his shorts thoroughly with my saliva. It was really big now. I worked my way back and forth on it, kind of like playing the harmonica. I started to pull down the band of his shorts to slip it into my mouth, but he stopped my hand. “Hold off,” he said. “We’re going to really get into it tonight.”
I stood up and started taking off my clothes. I always hang up my clothes and fold things neatly, put everything away so I know where things are. I didn’t get that from my mother. She’s pretty messy. I guess it’s a gene thing. Some ancestor was a neat freak.
Rex found a striped cotton bathrobe on the back of the bedroom door. He usually wore that around my apartment. I put on my other bathrobe. The terry-cloth one. Rex turned on the television. I had an ancient set that one of my neighbors had given me. I would never have bought one on my own. I never have.
I don’t know what we watched. Rex was learning to like cuddling from me, so we arranged the pillows, he put his arms around me, and I put my head on his shoulder. He could be very reassuring and sweet, and he had a warm, reassuring body. Except that it was only there when it was there.
I asked Rex if he had ever slept with Tudor. He looked at me as though I’d gone mad. “Not unless he paid me,” he said, “and not even then. And he’s not going to pay anyone, not as long as he’s got those sappy ballet boys to prey upon. He doesn’t figure anyway, Harry. He’s just got that leftover life to kill. He can’t do anything for anybody. He’s lucky he’s got that job at the Met. Who else would have him?”
“I would always like to be hopelessly unimportant,” I said. “Then I’ll never have to worry about being a has-been.”
“You probably have nothing to worry about,” Rex said, flipping his legs over my shoulders and pushing my face towards his crotch. “Get down there.”
“Italian foreplay,” I mumbled as best I could.
I was the girl in our relationship. I liked it that way. Rex was older by a few years, and I enjoyed having the male presence to revolve around. Since then, I’ve wondered if it was because I missed my father. I remember very little about my father when we were in Michigan. He was so uninterested in having a home life, I find it hard to imagine that he was interested in running off with another woman. But he did. Married her and had two more children. My half-siblings. I don’t even know what sex they are. When Dad got out of there, he really got out of there. So maybe Rex was a kind of surrogate dad. He said to me once, “I’m really not a difficult kind of guy to get along with.” And I said, “As long as everyone obeys, right?” His look said it all. He couldn’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t. He got very testy when they didn’t. Rex Ames wasn’t a good team player.
I bit him through his undershorts. He had kept them on. I was completely naked. Rex had these little twinges of modesty. This time he let me snake the front end of his penis over his waistband. His eyes were fixed on the television screen, but he was playing with my hair, so I knew I had his attention. Rex had the most complete command of his penis of any man I have ever known. If he decided he was not going to screw someone, they could have his penis in their mouth for half an hour and it just wouldn’t get hard. He could be dry-humping you with an erection the size of a baby’s arm stretching his jeans to their limits and look at his watch and say, “I’ve got to get out of here.” And stand up, push at himself to get things to subside a little, and be out the door. Only to get it up a few minutes later for some John he was scheduled to see.
He had decided not to regulate his penis that evening. Soon it had pushed its way above that blue-and-white band all by itself. Foreplay was not Rex’s long suit. It was that Italian blood. He told me that Italian foreplay was “You … there.” He wasn’t far off the mark.
He stood up on the bed and pulled off his underpants and threw off the robe. I knelt in front of him. I could see us in the big mirror on the wall by the window. (I had found it in the street-very nice mahogany frame.) We had the lamp on the dresser on, so his body was lit with yellow light from the lamp and blue light from the television. A marble faun. Not classic. Renaissance. Did you ever see The Sleeping Faun in Munich? Like that-not overly long legs; but the slope of the thighs in one direction and the whole triangle of the shoulders down across the flat pectorals and the even flatter abdomen, directed everything to the cock.
He moved it in and out slowly. He didn’t shut his eyes the way Illy did. He looked at me, but in a very absent way. Dancers have strong stomach muscles and very flat. His were like some cabled bridge, holding up the weight of his outstanding penis as though it were very heavy and straining to drop. Occasionally, when he took me from behind, I could feel his abdomen slapping my buttocks and it felt good, flat and hard and powerful.
He pushed me down on the bed and lay down beside me, his head in my crotch. He took me in his mouth while forcing himself in and out of mine and started probing my anus with his fingers. Hard. Like some animal trying to eat you and tear at you at the same time. Rex didn’t usually let himself go like this. “Hey,” I said gently, taking him out of my mouth. He stopped, pulled himself up to me, took me in his arms, and started kissing me, equally hard. He slipped his cock
between my legs and we lay on our sides, him holding me in his arms, his mouth and his penis probing deep, deep, deeper. “I have to have it,” he said, and turned me on my back. I pulled the pillow under my buttocks. He knelt between my legs, pulling at himself slowly, downward, as though making it as long as possible. He wasn’t masturbating, more checking the wonder of it. I always kept Vaseline under the pillow. I rubbed a handful up between my buttocks and used that hand to join him in pulling down on the swinging curve between his legs. He lay down on me and slowly pushed in.
“Easy,” I said.
Rex knew what he was doing. Not roughly but steadily he pushed his way in and began rhythmically pulling in and out. He could do this a very long time. Rex enjoyed the feelings of his penis in another body as much as, if not more than, his orgasm. He was never in a rush to get there. It wasn’t your pleasure he was concerned with. Never. But his pleasure was my pleasure. The more he relished those deep plunges into my flesh, the more pleasure I had. Not so much the thrill of the feeling of him in me, but the pleasure of giving him pleasure.
I heard a famous painter say, once, “I think homosexuality is envy,” and maybe it is. Maybe I was loving his doing this leisurely penetration because he was my surrogate. He was having the pleasure for me. Surely I have never had an equal pleasure in penetration. It’s okay. The orgasm is good. But I never felt the luxuriant writhing about, the seeking to get that cock in as deeply as possible so every little millimeter could have the pleasure of being immersed in warm interior flesh. He loved it, and his rich pleasure was something I could share. Since I was the rich pleasure, how completely ego-satisfying.
I had gotten pretty good at holding off my own orgasm until Rex came. I had to put my hand over my penis sometimes to keep the regular thrusting of his hard stomach from forcing an orgasm out of me. As he approached orgasm, he lost control of himself completely and the thrusting became frantic. You could tell that he held himself back from the edge as long as he could, and when he irrevocably slipped over that edge, he crashed down that slide to orgasm totally abandoned. It was pretty exciting. I took my hand off my penis and let his body push me over my own edge.
The Sex Squad Page 19