The Last Lovers on Earth: Stories from Dark Times

by Charles Ortleb

  "This is going to be big," said one of the senior editors, "I can feel it. We’ve got to get it fast."

  "I bet Binky Urban is the swans’ agent," said one of the editors.

  "I think my generation can really get into this," said Brian.

  "Are you sure, Brian?" asked the editor-in-chief. "I don’t see much irony in this swan story."

  "Well, sir, the ironic fact is that my ironic generation is really sick to death of irony."

  Brian had scored a big one here. A hush came over the room as though the senior editors were in the presence of a phenomenal new literary Zen master. Around the table knowing glances were exchanged that said this kid is really going places. All eyes in the room were upon Brian’s Giaconda smile which was emanating from his feeling that love increases one’s intelligence, one’s luck, and one’s career prospects.

  "So whom can we get to do this immediately?" asked the editor holding the Post.

  "It has to be somebody big who needs the money," said the editor-in-chief.

  "Well, I guess I know who that is," said another editor at the table.

  "Yes," said the editor-in-chief. "Mailer."

  Brian and Lance talked frequently on the phone that day. They loved the sound of each other’s voice. When Brian spoke, Lance could hear the sound of citizens upholding democracy in town meetings throughout New England. He could see the determined Paul Revere racing through town squares. There was something incredibly trustworthy and solid about Brian. In Lance’s voice, Brian could hear the adventure of the Great American West.

  The two young men spoke to each other as though they had been together in another life. There was no doubt that they would get together that night for dinner. And the next night and every night after that.

  When they met at Fedora’s, a little Italian restaurant in the Village, their excitement about being with each other was obvious to the tables around them. The restaurant was filled with gay men who hailed from every era in gay life including the Pleistocene. The diners sitting next to the couple looked sheepishly into their drinks as they tried to eavesdrop, dying to hear the otherworldly small talk of eternal love. They also hoped to hear Brian and Lance say something naughty to each other.

  What they heard, however, was a bit disconcerting, especially for those who were wearing red ribbons while downing their whiskey sours and eating their pasta. Brian and Lance were being drawn into a vortex of greater and greater intimacy by their shared stories of narrow political escape. These two young men were talking like they had survived some terrible secret war. Brian told Lance that he had been stalked by Queer Theorists almost from the moment that he showed up at a Manhattan gay bar for the first time. Someone had heard him referring to gay men as " gay men" rather than "queers," and they immediately knew they had a "queer men’s crisis" on their hands.

  When a man in his thirties approached Brian that first night with a free ticket to a Staten Island resort, Brian was a little suspicious. The man said it was the community’s way of welcoming immigrants. The ticket was for a full weekend at a place called "The Queer Farm." Brian was initially impressed with the stranger’s friendliness and generosity, but the name of the place worried him, so he told the man that he would postpone his visit until he had settled down in the city.

  Brian told Lance that he was glad he’d followed his intuition, because in the following months he had found out the truth about the resort. The "Queer Farm" was a secret place on Staten Island for gay men who arrived in Manhattan who were in desperate need of "queer orientation." He had learned that upon arrival at the resort, visitors were given just about every recreational drug known to man.

  Then, when their minds were tripping in every direction, they were taken to "queer re-education classes" inside a simulated discotheque. As the whacked-out men sat at their desks with Gloria Gaynor and Sylvester blaring loudly in the background, they were taught all the "Oh, Mary" and "Go, Girlfriend" vernacular they would need to navigate the gay bars in New York City. Then they were taught the basics of Queer Theory: the rolling of the eyes, the snap-queeniness, the perpetual whiny dismissiveness, and most importantly, how to seal oneself hermetically in an air of supercilious sniffiness. They were taught the importance of "reclaiming" all the words that had been used against gay people as their own. The primal word was of course "queer." The more times that one referred to oneself and one’s friends as "queer" the better. That would have a devastating impact on society. The war for liberation was a war of words, and the more one adopted the language of the enemy, the better. If one’s verbal armamentarium suffered from "queer" exhaustion, there was always "pansy," "sodomite," "fairy," or the eminently reclaimable British classic, "poofter." Aggressively calling oneself "poofter" in England was certain to bring every British homophobe to his knees. The Queer Theorists lectured the classes on the Queer Farm that this brilliant linguistic strategy had already had a profound effect upon society, that the sound of gay men referring to themselves as "queers" had completely disoriented the mainstream of America. "We’re winning the language wars," boasted the Queer Theorists. The men in the classes were also taught the importance of running naked through the streets on the annual Gay Pride Day with balloons tied around their genitals. They were told that the first rule of political struggle is to get noticed, and this always worked on Gay Pride Day. It was amazing how Aristotelian the logic of all this seemed to the Queer Farm inductees who had a little Special K, cocaine, and Ecstasy in their systems. This secret resort was a very effective boot camp; thousands of young gay men left Manhattan with silly romantic dreams of love and simple political justice and returned from Staten Island as hardened, battle-ready "queers."

  Lance stared into Brian’s eyes and sighed an enormous sigh of relief, "What if the Queer Theorists had gotten you? We wouldn’t be here tonight."

  They studied each other like two men who had narrowly escaped death in a plane that had lost its hydraulic system. Lance then told Brian about the time he had eluded the AIDS activists.

  "They approached me at a club with a very big offer, one they thought I couldn’t refuse," said Lance.

  The activists had wanted to give Lance one of the most lucrative AIDS modeling contracts in history. They had secretly taken his picture and worked up dozens of AIDS campaigns with his cowboy image. They thought they had found New York’s newest AIDS stud.

  "They had me sitting on a horse in an AIDS testing poster that said ‘Howdy! Get tested pardner!’ They had me standing against a backdrop of a stunning mountain range in an ad for AZT, with the line ‘We’ll climb the mountain of AIDS together.’ They said I had the manly good looks that they felt promoted the proactive AIDS agenda. They even used special computer-generated techniques to show me wrestling in a field of sunflowers with a dog in an ad that said ‘Man’s best friend is really a condom.’ And worst of all, they even had someone work up my image laid out in a casket for a gay funeral home that said ‘In the end, what matters is that you look good.’ "

  "No way!" said Brian. He looked like he was about to cry.

  "They offered me millions. Thank God I had money. Who knows what someone will do when they are down and out? I told them that if they didn’t destroy the ads, I would sue every single one of them out of the activist business."

  The two fell silent and their stillness was filled with mutual gratitude for whatever it is that brings souls together in the darkest of times.

  They returned to Brian’s apartment full of the impatience of new lovers. The lights in Brian’s bedroom went off early that night, and shortly afterwards, it happened again. As soon as the two touched each other, the curtains and the windows of the bedroom spontaneously opened. Then a wind and a light of Biblical proportions swirled into the room and once again the two men turned into swans and headed out into the star-filled sky above Manhattan. This time the swans headed out into a pattern that would take them up the Hudson and around the whole island.

  The last Circle Line tour of the evening
was still in the water, and the passengers almost capsized the ship as they ran to the side and tried to photograph the swans with their night-vision cameras. The captain of the ship called Channel One on his cell phone, and the station broke into the news to tell New York City residents that the swans were making night flights over Manhattan again. Word spread quickly throughout the city as residents stretched out of windows to get a look at the new icons of New York’s improvement in the quality of life. The streets of Manhattan quickly filled with citizens heading for the East River to catch a glimpse of the new celebrities.

  A car rushed the mayor to midtown so he could stand at the United Nations to be photographed as the swans crossed the sky above him. It was an astounding passage. The light around the swans had the same otherworldly quality and it made the East River iridescent. In the sky behind the swans were sparks of gold, silver, green, and turquoise. It was an image that some of the middle-aged onlookers thought they recognized from their LSD days.

  Up and down the East Side, New Yorkers cheered and applauded as the swans passed. It was better than anything that Macy’s had ever put on.

  The next morning the lovers awoke from their flight in a state of nirvana. Both had very foggy memories and both said they felt like they had awakened from a sleep of a thousand years. Upon waking, both wondered what day it was and where they were. They had the weird sensation that they had just been born.

  On their way to work that day, they noticed that the swans were once again on the front page of every newspaper. They both immediately identified with the swans and saw them as a symbol of their new love. The Daily News headline was "Swans Take City by Storm." In a similar vein, the Post headline was "The Swans Are the New Keys to the City." The Times did a page-one story about the history of swans and their potential effect on the economic life of the city. One real estate agent said the price of co-ops on high floors was bound to go up. And several travel agents said they thought the swans might double travel numbers to the already popular metropolis. The Times also did a sidebar on the cultural meaning of the swans. A former student of Robert Graves was quoted as saying that he thought the swans could have a major impact on the mythology of New York City. He also said that he wouldn’t be surprised if unicorns and golden pigs began to roam the city in the near future.

  The swans lifted the mood of the entire country. Children all over New York were as captivated by the swans as they were by stories of Santa Claus. In every elementary school drawing class, children chose swans as the favorite subjects to sketch. Illustrations and paintings of swans soon lined school hallways in all five boroughs. Adults began to talk about redemption and resurrection. Romance was in the city air. Nearly every person with a therapist brought up their feelings about the swans. Single people who saw the swans suddenly believed that there was a lover out there somewhere looking for them, that no one could be alone forever. Even a prisoner at Rikers Island who could barely make out the swans as they passed over the prison after he had been beaten to a bloody pulp (by two correction officers who were engaged in improving the city’s quality of life) was captivated by the swans. He thought that God is merciful and good and that soon he would be taken to heaven by the swans.

  When Brian got to his publishing house that morning, the company was in a state of crisis. One of Mailer’s people had told the house that Mailer would consider the project too flaky, so they’d better try someone else. Mailer’s people had suggested Vidal, but the editor-in-chief suspected that the suggestion was catty and facetious. The editors were all told to get on the phone with the city’s top agents and find a high profile writer who would rush a swan bestseller into print. Brian was asked to join a small group of editorial assistants in preparing a data base on swans that could be used for background by the author once they found one. The assignment made Brian inexplicably happy.

  That evening Brian and Lance met at a restaurant on the Upper East Side. They were both amused when the waitress approached their table wearing a large swan broach on her uniform.

  "My grandmother gave me this," she said. "I never thought I’d be caught dead wearing it, but under the present circumstances, it’s kind of cool, don’t you think?"

  They both agreed, and as they looked around the restaurant, it looked like every woman dining there had the same grandmother. Swan mania had gripped the entire city.

  After Brian and Lance exchanged a few more stories about their close calls with Queer Theorists and AIDS activists, Brian told Lance all the interesting things he had learned at work about swans. They both became a little spacy as they discussed the swans, and once again, everyone around them at the restaurant could tell that they were in the presence of an extraordinary love.

  After dinner they strolled east toward the river to see if they could get a glimpse of the swans. Near First Avenue they encountered a familiar looking man in a black cape and beret. It was the city’s leading Queer Theorist and they both shuddered when they recognized him. Lance put his arm around Brian and pulled him closer as the caped Queer Theorist passed. He gave them both a dirty look, as though he knew who they were. They suddenly felt both vulnerable and brave. They wanted to protect each other from Queer Theorists and AIDS activists and the homophobes that were chomping at the bit all over America. Their love would make them warriors.

  Time passed quickly as they gazed up at the stars from their perch on the East River. It was an incredibly beautiful summer night and the sky was crystal clear. It would have been a great night to have watched the pageant of the swans. After a couple of hours, disappointed that they hadn’t shown up, Brian and Lance headed back to Brian’s where their new world of total erotic happiness awaited them.

  Later that night, the swans were spotted flying in circles above Harlem. People danced in the streets and were convinced that this was a sign that their community might survive the city’s quality of life campaign.

  Entrepreneurs swiftly took advantage of the swans. All kinds of swan T-shirts were hawked on the city’s streets. The few street artists who were able to escape prosecution under the city’s quality of life laws were making a killing by selling paintings of the swans flying over just about every monument in New York City. Swan dolls filled the windows of the leading department stores. People dissatisfied with the politics of New York City discussed the possibility of starting a Swan Party to challenge the hegemony of the Democrats and the Republicans.

  Every night as Brian and Lance’s relationship became more and more intense, the flights of the swans became more and more dazzling and inventive.

  Choreographers at Lincoln Center began incorporating some of the more unique movements executed by the swans into their dances. NBC considered updating its logo from a peacock to a swan.

  The flights of the swans were such a widely anticipated nocturnal event that the Gray Line scheduled special buses that followed the flight of the birds every night. The swans soon became the number-one worldwide attraction. They seemed to quench some international thirst for transcendence and harmony.

  Not everyone had the same feelings of wonder and joy about the swans. On a small farm outside of New Hope, Pennsylvania, a retired zoologist was not at all captivated by the swans. Perhaps the man had had a bad swan experience in his past, or he just lacked imagination; whatever it was, the zoologist thought that there was something weird about a city that was so obsessed by a couple of birds. He was a cranky man and he had a rather unpleasant idea about the swans that he wanted to check out.

  One Friday night he drove his wife into the city for a steak dinner and afterwards they hailed a cab to take them to the promenade on the Upper East Side near the river. Luckily, Brian and Lance had turned in early that evening, so the zoologist and his wife did not have to wait until the middle of the night for what the zoologist wanted to see. When the swans approached in all of their glory, the zoologist and his wife could hear the sound of cheers and applause up and down the river’s promenade. The zoologist’s wife was transfixed by the sig
ht. For some reason it reminded her of the night after their wedding. She was hoping her husband would put his arm around her. But her husband was busily examining the two celebrated swans through giant infrared binoculars he had brought with him.

  "Ah ha! Just what I thought! Why hasn’t anyone noticed this?" he exclaimed.

  "Let me look," his wife said. "What do you see?"

  "They’re male. It’s a male couple!" he shouted.

  "They’re gay?" she asked.

  "What do you expect? It’s Manhattan."

  As soon as the couple arrived back in New Hope, the husband went to the computer and e-mailed the New York Post.

  It didn’t take long for the swan story to take a new, even more sensational direction. The Post ran a cover picture of the swans with the headline "Gay As Geese?"

  The Times waited until experts could be contacted in Washington before reporting the fact that the swans were a gay couple. While some in the city were delighted by the revelation, many were horrified. Parents who had urged their children to adopt the swans as role models tried to keep the tabloids away from their children. Some tried to reignite their children’s interest in Lamb Chop and Barney. Images of swans were soon banned from school hallways. Several high school productions of Swan Lake were promptly cancelled.

  All of a sudden, the mayor was evading questions about the swans during his press conferences. In a complete about-face, some of his staff began to suggest that the swans might actually be threatening the quality of life in New York by taking people’s attention away from more important issues like jaywalking and the dangers of letting poor people clean windshields. Some conservatives in the city blamed the swans on the mayor’s support of the gay community and they pointed to the legislation that the mayor had passed which urged gay couples to register with the city. One smart-alecky columnist suggested that the next thing that would happen in the city would be for the horses that pulled the carriages in front of the Plaza to all go gay.