“Hold me,” I told him. “Hold me very tight.”
It felt so dangerous to be slipping into that oblivion. I didn’t want to be there all alone. His arms clamped about me very tightly. His lips forced my mouth open and his tongue was deep inside me also. His buttocks worked furiously and then his mouth came off mine, his head went back and he groaned very loudly. He held his pelvis very tightly against mine. He was pulsing hard inside me without any movement. I was aware of this at the same time that I was out somewhere in the midnight sky, falling and falling and falling. His strong arms kept me from falling into many small pieces, difficult to pick up again.
He collapsed on me. I put my arms around his back. He was soaked in perspiration. Slowly he eased his way out, almost automatically.
“Let’s get cleaned up,” he said.
He pulled away from my body and, crawling to the edge of the bed, he put on my terry-cloth robe and went into the kitchen. I couldn’t move. It was all right that his arms weren’t around me, but I couldn’t move my arms and legs and lift my head and be Harry. Not yet.
Rex came back with a warm washcloth and wiped my body off. Then pulled the covers over me. He returned in a moment and, slipping off the robe, got into bed and pulled me to him. He kissed me with some tenderness on my forehead.
“I’m going to stay here tonight,” he said.
“What about your mother?” I said.
“She’s with my aunt in Baltimore.”
He pulled away and turned on his side, putting one arm back to pull me up against his back. We went to sleep.
In the morning Rex said, “We’re going to have four days over a weekend coming up when we don’t have to work.”
Yes? I thought.
“My agent wants me to go out to Hollywood and interview with some people. I think I can be free a whole week with those extra days. They’re thinking about doing My Fair Lady as a movie and he thinks I might be right for something in it.”
“That would be great,” I said. I was a master at keeping my voice neutral.
“I wondered if I could borrow some money from you to make the trip. Mom’s been real depressed lately, so I’ve been taking her out as much as I can and I don’t have any money.”
“How much do you need?” I said.
“Two thousand dollars.”
That was just about what I had in the bank.
“Of course,” I said. “Just let me know when you need it and I’ll get it for you.”
Easter
The time when Christ arose was upon us: Easter. The opera was doing Butterfly and Cavalleria for school children and a number of Parsifal’s. No boys. Just girls in the garden scene. It was traditional at the opera that the boys could have this week off–without pay. It wouldn’t be fair to the girls if they had a week off and got paid too. So all the boys had plans to go somewhere and do something, except me.
Tudor had asked Asia and me to stay and take special rehearsals for his ballet Inquiétante. He thought we were doing very well, but he wanted the special performance to be more than the usual evening where the critics thought it was “good for an opera ballet company.” He felt we were close enough that it would be considered impressive by the standards of any major ballet company. He said. He didn’t say that this would make a big difference in the careers of Asia and myself, as we would be seen by the directors of all the major companies and would undoubtedly have contract offers for the next season. This said itself.
I was actually improving a lot, reaching to achieve things that we were never asked to do in the opera ballets. Tudor was a genius–an evil genius.
I think Tudor was stretching himself, too. His choreography wasn’t all the usual twirling in upon yourself with an upright spine, whirling this way and that. There was much more open movement. Long arabesques, which were my specialty. In my solo, I was doing double tours en l’air whirling around twice in the air like a top and coming down into a very drawn-out first arabesque-one arm in front, one leg in back. They were hard, because Tudor wanted them done with no preparation. No popping up on your toes and then coming down hard to give you the thrust to get into the air. Turning was not my best thing, but it was his, and his coaching was helping me a lot. With that spine and not-too-long legs, he could pirouette and do tours en l’air very easily.
“It’s not in the legs, it’s in the shoulders,” he would say. “Don’t flail around with your arms so much. It throws your shoulders out of line. Feel those shoulder blades. Place them. Hold them. Now go!” He was right. I was getting it down. Three of those in a line coming down at an angle across the stage. It was going to be a showstopper.
I was able to concentrate on the rehearsals completely, as my private life was on hold for the week. Rex had taken my money and gone to Los Angeles, for his interviews with the people who were planning the My Fair Lady movie and to see about television commercials.
Monday, Asia and I rehearsed our pas de deux. We would rehearse it again on Thursday. Tuesday, I was doing my solo for Tudor. Wednesday, Asia would rehearse hers. Then Friday we would run through the whole thing.
After the rehearsal Tuesday, which went very well, Tudor said to me very smoothly, “What are you doing for dinner? I thought we might go somewhere and just discuss some of the fine points.”
So the time had come. I think I had lulled myself into some kind of false security, thinking if he hadn’t made his pass by now he wasn’t going to. Cunning of him: waiting until I had fallen in love with my solo and the lure of the critics seeing me in it. I didn’t miss a beat.
“Of course. Where’ll it be?”
At least he didn’t say “my place.” “Café des Artistes. About eight? You know where it is?” I did, actually. I wasn’t intimidated. One good aspect of being brought up by Belle-Mère was that she hated cooking and eating in, so I had spent a lot of time in restaurants, many of them quite good.
I did have a good jacket, shirt, and tie, so I wore them. I might be the little beggar boy asking for crumbs, but I didn’t have to look it.
Tudor was already at the table when I arrived. He was wearing his navy blue suit, the one with the double-breasted vest. He was trying to look his best and in his vulturish way he could be quite good-looking.
“You’re very handsome, Harry,” he said as I shook his hand. My thoughts about him coming right back in my face. I smiled. He asked me a little about my background. I told him very little. I had a glass of wine. At least I was enjoying the restaurant. That big splashy 1930s mural, the low lights. The food wasn’t great, but for New York the ambiance was nice. Not loud, not bogus Frenchy. I had sole, always a favorite of mine. I was thinking of cervelle with capers, which I also like. When I told him I was considering it, Tudor said, “Brains is a very unusual choice for an American. They usually only like steak.” I told him my mother had always loved France and French things. Funny, I hadn’t thought of or spoken of Belle-Mère in a long time. We wrote every few weeks, so I knew she was all right.
Mr. Tudor was very amusing. I told him that, and that I was a little surprised. He said, “Do you think sexual beasts can’t be witty?”
As we ordered dessert Tudor put his hand on my thigh. We were seated side by side on a banquette. “Pardon me,” I said. “Am I in your way?” and slid over so his hand fell onto the seat between us. He said nothing.
At coffee he said, “Of course I want to sleep with you, Harry. You are so beautiful. Unusually beautiful. And talented.”
“You don’t want to sleep with me. I’m terrible,” I told him. “Ask anybody. I hardly move.”
He didn’t take it as a joke.
“I don’t believe you’re terrible at all. You couldn’t be. As for asking anybody, I couldn’t do that, I’m sure. But I could ask Siegfried Ilquist or Rex Ames, I suppose.”
That stopped me. How did he know? Or was I just kidding myself? Did everybody know? Did Illy know I was sleeping with Rex? And Rex know I was sleeping with Illy? And the whole dressing room know I w
as sleeping with both of them? As did Miss Craske, Alfredo Corvino, Mattlyn Gavers, Antony Tudor, and everyone else who might give a shit as to what the ballet boys were doing?
I felt like such a slut. I had been sort of priding myself that I was a cut above the rest of them. Not prowling the streets picking up tricks, doing quick blow jobs in the subway toilets, hanging around in the Ramble in Central Park. Even if there was a difference, to the casual observer there was none. Just another pretty boy screwing guys right and left.
I felt insulted and a little angry. “You really are determined to get me into bed, aren’t you?” I said, turning and looking straight into his hard little agate eyes.
He didn’t flinch.
“I’m afraid it’s a must, Harry.”
“Well, I’m afraid it’s a must that you’re going to have to get along without.”
Later I thought there would have been other things to say. I could have said that I was so much in love with someone else I just couldn’t, even though I found him very attractive. The usual. Or that I would, but I would have to work my way up to it, postponing the whole thing until after the performance and having the showdown then. But it would have been of no use. He would have insisted under any circumstances, and right then. Tudor was a man of no sentiment. Like a giant cobra, he wanted to gorge on the prey. Then. What the prey felt was of no consequence.
“It’s too bad. You would have been wonderful in the lead of the new ballet,” he said. Quite calmly. His card was down on the table.
I put mine down. “This means it’s off, then?”
“That’s how it is.”
I stood up. “That’s the way it’s going to have to be, then,” I said, and left him and his little bald head gleaming on the banquette in the low and glowing lights of the Café des Artistes. I took my raincoat and headed out into the cold spring night. It was raining. The Seventh Avenue subway entrance was very near, almost at the corner, and I ran down into it.
My mind was blank. I didn’t even feel devastated. I couldn’t feel much of anything. My big moment in dance had come and gone, and there was nothing I could do about it. Who could I complain to? I could talk about it, but who would care? It was a common enough story in ballet. Except a dancer turning down a chance at a role was rare, if not unheard of.
I went right past my Eighteenth Street local stop–I wasn’t in any mood to go home. I got off in Sheridan Square and I walked around aimlessly. Bareheaded in the rain. (Dancers never wear hats.) My hair must have been plastered down over my eyes when I ran into Robby Schmidt on the corner of Bleecker and Carmine. I was vaguely thinking of going down the street to Mona’s Candlelight and maybe picking someone up. I was really quite beside myself.
“What are you doing here?” Robby said, all bright eyes and impenitence in the rain. Obviously out shopping for some large cock. “Why aren’t you with Rex?”
Obviously Tudor had not been prescient when he mentioned Illy and Rex. Everyone knew.
I didn’t feign surprise. I said, “He’s in Hollywood for some interviews. About a film or something.”
“He changed his plans? I was just feeling so envious, thinking of him in St. Thomas.”
“St. Thomas?” I said.
“Oh, I know I’m terrible, but I saw the tickets in his dance bag while he was in the shower Friday night, so I slipped them out and took a quick peek. He was going to St. Thomas on Saturday. That must have been a quick change of plans.” Robby was swift of lip, but he wasn’t so quick to jump to conclusions. For the moment he was believing there had been a change of plans.
I fell into my role of the concubine. “Yes, his agent caught him in the nick of time, late Friday night. He went out Sunday. I’m here because I’m rehearsing the solos for the new ballet.”
“How’s that going?” Robby said. For all his silliness he was a serious dancer.
“Really well. I think it’s going to be great,” I said. Let him find out for himself that I’m out of the lead when they start company rehearsals again next Monday.
I walked back to Sixteenth Street. I threw myself down on my bed and didn’t sleep that night. The future gaped like a big black hole. The ballet had disappeared, and so had Rex, to St. Thomas with my money and possibly with his mother. He was always talking about how she needed a vacation. From him, that shithead.
I had nothing to do the next morning and was still sleeping when the phone rang shortly after ten. It was Mattlyn, the ballet mistress. She was always normal and nice and I guess had dealt with these kinds of things many times in her years at the opera. “Bad news, Harry. Tudor has decided to give the lead role to Richard Zelens. He told me this morning and asked me to tell you. It was my decision to call you. I didn’t want you to come in and be told in front of everyone.”
“I knew,” I said. “Am I back in the corps?”
“Not even,” she said. “You’re out of the ballet.”
Silence.
“You did the right thing, Harry. It wouldn’t have been worth it. He would have been quite capable of giving it to Richard anyway. He likes the way Richard turns.”
“Thanks, Mattlyn. Thanks a lot. I’ll see you Monday. We’re rehearsing Dance of the Hours, aren’t we?”
“It’s been changed. We’re doing the ballabile from Faust. Poor you.” There was real sympathy in her voice.
“Poor us,” I said, and hung up.
I threw myself into action. It was only Wednesday. I had four days before Monday. I felt as though some giant hand had swept down and clutched me. I was in the grip of something, that was for sure.
I pulled on my clothes. No shaving. I went up Eighth Avenue to a travel bureau I had seen up near Twenty-first Street and went in.
“Can you book flights to St. Thomas?”
The girl was a pretty Hispanic. This was a very Puerto Rican neighborhood, and they booked lots of flights back and forth to Puerto Rico and further south.
“I’d have to see what I could get you,” she said. “It’s Easter. The hard thing would be getting you back. When do you want to come back?”
“I’m not sure,” I told her. “Actually, I’m trying to find my brother, who is on vacation there. My mother is very sick and I’m not sure what hotel he’s at. I think I should go down and tell him. Just calling him could be a shock.” The lies just flew off my tongue. They even sounded real to me. They certainly sounded real to her. In the Spanish-speaking world, “Mother” is the big word. “We can probably find him,” she said. “There aren’t all that many resorts there. Here’s a St. Thomas travel brochure. It probably has all the hotels listed. Why don’t you go home and make some calls. I’ll see if I can’t get you down there this afternoon if you can find him. We can always cancel if you don’t.”
I rushed home. It wasn’t even all that hard. I called the big ones first. Bluebeard’s Castle and others. No dice. Then I started the second rank, and after about four calls, there he was. The Shibui. Japanese on St. Thomas. Mr. Ames was registered. Did I want to speak to him? He was still in his room, cottage four actually. No, thanks, I’d call back later.
I rushed back to the travel agent. She had gotten me out on a four o’clock flight that afternoon. I wrote her a check. It was taking every cent I had left, but I had no idea of not going. I had to be with Rex, had to see Rex. Losing the ballet had shaken me. He was my only stability. I could handle losing the ballet if I had him.
The only ticket she could get me back on was in the morning the next day.
“If you are just going down to break the news to him, that should be all right, shouldn’t it?” the agent said in a nurse’s tone.
She was really concerned. I felt sort of shitty lying to her.
“You can try to change it when you get down there.” She added, “It’s always easier on the other end.”
I threw things into a bag. No bathing suit. I was not planning on doing any swimming. By four-fifteen, I was over Long Island on my way to St. Thomas. It was the first time I’d ever been on
a plane. We had taken buses from Michigan to Chicago and Chicago to New York. I didn’t feel especially thrilled. I was too hysterical for that.
St. Thomas
Even when you’re in a state of hysteria, landing in the tropics after a short flight from cold, concrete-bound New York has something of the miraculous about it. Can it be that there are palm trees blowing in air heavy with the smell of rotting vegetation? A sun so hot and high there are hardly any shadows? How can this be coexisting with the gray streets of New York, slick under the dirty spring rain?
I was no seasoned traveler, even if my mother had dragged me from Michigan to Chicago to New York. But I had the sense and the money to jump into a taxi when I saw the line waiting for the passengers as we emerged a few at a time from the terminal. I was among the first.
I told the driver I was going to the Shibui, which prompted no inquiry as to where it might be.
We drove through Charlotte-Amalie, charming and Danish-looking, with flat little mini-baroque facades painted rose, white, and dark red, submerged in bougainvillea and hibiscus. “Sensual” was the word. There was something in the air that made you feel like fucking.
Outside the town, we climbed a hill. I could see that St. Thomas was largely low mountains. The Shibui was on the flank of one, overlooking the town, and beyond it the far, far reach of the ocean, glittering in the sun. Which was thinking about setting soon. Was this all the same day that I had decided to find Rex on St. Thomas?
It was. Unfolding so quickly I could hardly keep up.
The driver dumped me beside the curved entrance drive in front of a low-lying Japanese-style building. More buildings in the same style with curvy tiled roofs spread down the hill behind it. There was a smallish swimming pool at one side beside the reception building. Someone who was neither Oriental nor black, as my taxi driver had been, was behind the desk–young, male, overweight, with a tie. I asked him where I might find Mr. Ames. He told me and asked if I was planning to stay. “I don’t know yet,” I said. He didn’t seem very surprised or very interested in my dropping in unexpectedly. He came out in front of the building with me and indicated where the cottage stood that Rex was renting. Down the hill and off to the left, the fourth one over there. I’d see a number by the door.
The Sex Squad Page 20