Monkey Suits

by Jim Provenzano

  13 “One for Dogs of the Desert,” Lee said with a bit of embarrassment to the sullen Black girl behind the afternoon glare of the glass cashier booth. She took his seven dollars. A ticket ca-chunked up and she pushed it out with two quarters. The warmth of the theater lobby felt good after the December chill.

  Even though he’d received a few cards in the mail (one from his parents, another from his parent’s cat), he’d forgotten to tell anyone that it was his birthday, so instead of hinting about a party or gifts from anyone, he simply went to a movie.

  As Lee floated up the escalators through the three levels of the Cineplex Odeon lobby, he recognized a man’s face under the eerie blue lights. He wasn’t sure if he’d worked a party with him or seen him on television. Sometimes both could happen with the same guy. He imagined a tuxedo placed over the man’s clothes, placed on like a paper doll.

  Yes, the face looked familiar. The guy turned to glance at Lee, seeming to recognize him as well, but he turned away as the escalator scooted him to the next floor.

  Lee considered, then hesitated. Absolutely the stupidest opening line, “Haven’t we met?” The guy would probably laugh in his face.

  Nevertheless, he followed him to the counter to get some candy. The guy turned casually, and as their eyes met, said, “I know you ...”

  The bright fluorescent light behind him, and the blue light in front of him, gave a shadowed cast to his face. He looked thinner than the last time Lee had seen him.

  “Right,” Lee said. “Um, catering?”

  “No, I quit that.”

  “May I help you?” a young Latino man called from behind the counter. Lee turned a moment, then the two ordered, clumsily chatting between getting their change and holding their popcorn.

  “Um, do you know Todd?” the man asked.

  “Who lives uptown?” Lee realized he didn’t know Todd’s last name.

  “Yes.”

  “It was at his party,” he said.

  “Oh yeah,” Lee remembered. “I’m Lee.”

  “Chet Sinclair.” They shook hands. His fingers were thin.

  “How are you?”

  “Okay, um, what are you seeing?”

  “Oh, the horror movie,” Lee pointed to the poster as they walked from the concession stand. “Got a friend from college in it. Killing some time before I go to work tonight.”

  “That’s nice. Oh, I’m here,” he stopped near the door with a poster of Meryl Streep. “I used to act, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, but I’ve been sick. Very messy. Kind of kills the thespian drive.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, it’s okay, just another bout of PCP. But I’m doing a lot of herbal stuff, quit the cigarettes. I’m on an underground drug trial for ddI, but I have to go all the way out to Queens for that.”

  “Uh. Wow. Um. Must be tough,” Lee offered.

  “Yes, well, we get by.” He paused for an awkward moment. “So. It’s nice to see you.”

  “Yeah. Take care.” Lee waved slightly as Chet turned away.

  Lee took another escalator level up and entered the theatre. No more than twenty people sporadically filled the seats. The reviewers had trashed the film, but Lee felt obligated to go. He set his bag on the seat next to him and stretched out.

  Throughout the previews, Lee thought about Chet. He’s dying. Get over it. You don’t even know the guy. Lee tried to relax. The credits appeared. In white lettering on red, eleven feet across the darkened screen, he read the familiar name.

  DANN BLACK

  Fifth billing, Lee thought. He’s probably already bought a house in West Hollywood. A guy behind him giggled when his date spilled popcorn on the floor.

  Dann’s character drove around with a woman playing his girlfriend, made out in a park, talked with a scientist and got eaten by a pack of wolves in the first reel. It gave Lee a quiet thrill to see his old college friend’s face spanning the screen, the same face of the first man to make love to him, but with an additional N, since perhaps there were too many other SAG members named Dan Black.

  Lee tried to lose himself in the movie, forget about work and the eight years between meeting Dan, sleeping with him, heck, learning how to do everything with him, then seeing him in this ridiculous movie. He’d never even seen a condom back then.

  Lee had yet to ask Brian about his health. He wasn’t even sure how to do it. He just assumed he was okay. Of course, the guy he’d just seen in the lobby looked pretty healthy a year ago. He’d read the GMHC flyers left in the crowded hall at the Community Center. He listened to the news, but every talking head seemed barely able to say the word “homosexual” without a twinge of distaste. How was he to believe their words and the charts of the government? What if they were all lying? He’d seen the paranoid headlines, heard jokes about government germ warfare gone awry. What was he supposed to believe, other than the fact that people were dying?

  The movie became increasingly ridiculous. He’d lost track of the plot. The monster wolves traveled in a pack, their red eyes glowing. He watched a man transformed into a beast with the usual second-rate special effects; the pulsing flesh growths, the yellow contact lenses. How could all these people spend so much money on something like this? What if they’d made a movie about AIDS instead? When would that happen? If he had been as aggressive, or as closeted as Dan, would this be the kind of work he’d get?

  Somehow, he knew that was the reason why his few forays into theatre as a college stage technician led him to admire actors, but not want to be one. At least it led him to Dan, who often played a lead role. Lee’s erratic last year of college, having changed majors three times before settling on a vague Fine Arts degree, was filled with nights spent exploring Dan’s body, and his awkward first love.

  Dan had moved to California a week after graduation, asking Lee to go with him. But with no direction, except his desire, Lee balked. He’d always had New York as his goal, not to really be anything, just to live there, where he knew hundreds more Dan’s awaited.

  Halfway through the movie, it seemed apparent that “Dann’s” character was definitely dead and not due for a return appearance as a monster, so Lee got up and left the dark theater.

  He stopped in a small corner store and scanned the magazine racks, feeling the familiar urge to glance through the porn magazines, then fought the urge, thinking it a waste of money. The two Indian shopkeepers talked in their native language, while a tape played some Indi-pop. He wanted to ask the men what they thought about selling stacks of porn magazines? Did they watch the customers, play games guessing who would buy the gay stuff? And where could he get a tape of that cool music?

  Lee turned from the ‘3 for $9.99’ pile and the row of Stroke, Heat, and Honcho faces whose snarling glances aroused him. He didn’t need to see more men with boners wagging at him, making him want what he couldn’t have. He flipped through the December GQ with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman on the cover, smirking with success in tuxedos. They looked terrific in black and white. Why was it that when Lee put on a monkey suit, he looked like just another waiter?

  Lee was about to put the magazine down when he spotted a male model in a sexy pose with a woman on page 177. The guy’s body looked familiar. It looked like a cater waiter, the one with the beeper. At Lee’s first training session for Fabulous Food, he had said he was a model. Then, after responding to a beeper call, he left the room and didn’t return.

  This was too depressing for Lee. They did it, some of them, moved right along on their roads to success. Dan and the model, and all the people he served. He saw the path they took, yet his ran alongside, like a train track, veering off into some gray area toward Trenton.

  He bought the GQ. He wouldn’t even dare to work with something like Boner Boys in his backpack.

  14 A bright flash passed from the hallway and into the room.

  “Video crew,” Lee assured the rookie whose name he forgot. “Totally tacky. This is definitely a wedding recepti
on.” As the light glared over the either bald or white-haired heads of the guests, Marcos glanced to see the cameraman, squinting to dodge the harsh strobe.

  “They rent the Waldorf for a wedding reception?” the rookie mumbled. Marcos crossed to stand next to Lee, whispering, “All this so two hets can fuck with God’s approval.”

  “It’s not just a marriage, dear,” Martin, their captain for the night, leaned in. “This is a merger of two corporations.”

  “Huh?” The rookie was dumbfounded.

  “The groom just happens to be a Vice President at Bankers’ Trust. The bride’s daddy just happens to be the CEO of Merriman, Stein and Shafitz.”

  Marcos refused to pretend to know anything he didn’t know. He wanted facts. “Is that the bond trading firm on Ann Street?”

  “The very same.”

  “I did a lunch there,” Marcos said.

  “Which happens to be negotiating a currency exchange deal with–”

  “Bankers’ Trust.”

  “On the nose.” Martin nodded. “There’s more food inside, sir,” he announced yet again to a burly man with a drink in each hand.

  Marcos elbowed Lee. “Ooh, check that one.”

  “Where?” Lee glanced over, momentarily blinded by the camera lights, which swerved away a moment later. Between the white flashes briefly burned into his retinas, he saw a chubby cameraman in a tux followed by another, thinner young man connected to him by a cable. Across his shoulder a battery pack hung by a strap. He carried a boom microphone, which at various moments and at a certain angle jutted from his crotch, as phallic as a pole vault. The chubby cameraman slowly ambled through the crowd, his assistant following, attached by the cable like an overgrown fetus. People darted away from the light and were drawn to it, depending on their egos. They huddled together in stagnant poses, as if for a photo. The men displayed bellies pushing from white shirts, the women wrapped in glitz, bringing hands to faces to show off their jewelry. Guests chatted into the camera to the unseen bride and groom as if preparing a time capsule to be viewed long after their death. “Barry and Gina, we wish you the best. We been tagetha thirty-five yeahs and we hope you find the happiness and love we got.”

  The light clicked off. The Siamese duo wove further into the crowd. As his eyes readjusted to the light, Lee noticed, as did most of the women and waiters, that the photographer’s assistant was strikingly handsome; light brown skin, square jaw of a gunslinger, hair sharply cut close, and a large flat nose. His eyes were dark and round as a doe’s. He gave Lee the briefest glance before disappearing down the main hallway to magnetically capture more aunts and uncles for video posterity.

  “Amazing,” Lee whispered.

  “What? Kathleen Turner’s dress?” Martin asked.

  Marcos knew what Lee meant. “He’s mulatto, y’know,” Marcos confided.

  “Don’t you mean ‘biracial?’” Lee murmured, attempting not to sound too sarcastic.

  “Nope. Perhaps an octoroon.”

  “Is that what you are?” the rookie asked.

  “Moi? Octoroon?” Marcos gasped softly, somewhat insulted. He brought his hands to his hips, nearly jostling an old woman who squeezed her way to the table of food. He ignored her. “Honey, I am half Puerto Rican, one quarter Dominican and one quarter pure Spanish,” he stated proudly.

  Lee grinned, having heard the bloodline declaration many times before.

  “Quite a mix,” Martin commented, trying to calm him down.

  “You must have quite a temp-ah.” A voice came from two feet below Lee and Marcos. It belonged to the elderly woman, who, having succeeded in sneaking up behind the four waiters to grab a plateful of roast beef, saw fit to commune with them.

  Marcos swirled about and lit up with charm. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.” He guided the woman away from the table. “There’s a lot more food in the reception hall. This is just the standby stuff.”

  Lee could only smile. On the few occasions when people actually said something that required a response, he usually stuttered or spoke so softly that he had to repeat himself.

  “My husband Aw-thuh had a terrible tempah,” the woman rattled on. Marcos leaned over his shoulder and winked back at Lee as he offered his arm to the woman. He led her to the main buffet rooms. Politely nudging others out of the way, he got the woman a plate of food and a seat by a cocktail table, where he bowed and left her sitting alone.

  Lee contemplated a ruse like Marcos’ to move about. He didn’t care to watch as the horde of guests crowded to the buffet tables, their mouths full and chewing while they stuffed more food onto tiny plates. Half a dozen stiff-backed waiters, most of whom he didn’t know, carved meat and doled out slices with an air of detached elegance.

  Flashing ballroom lights signaled the masses to the main ballroom. How can they eat more? Lee wondered. After supervising a bit of assistance in cleaning up after the first deluge, Martin led the waiters to a ring of buffet tables around the edge of the dining room, all cordoned off and hidden by a yellowed curtain hung from under the balcony’s edge. The massive dessert buffet featured over two dozen arrangements of candies, pastries, cookies, coffee urns and fruit. Lee burped. The sour buttery taste of pilfered shrimp crept up the back of his throat. The sweets did not look appealing.

  Lee peeked from behind the thin curtain as the guests streamed into the large ballroom, filled with tables; each decorated with enormous floral centerpieces.

  “Just hang out here a while,” Martin whispered as he looked up and down the hidden tables under the balcony. Lee glanced at the tiered silver bowls of black cherries, raspberries, and blueberries. Each bowl, about three feet wide, contained over forty pounds of fruit. Martin rearranged the garnish. “The union guys’ll know when to pull the curtains,” he said.

  “Why the curtains? Theatrical appeal?”

  “They’d be eating all this during dinner if we didn’t hide it.” Martin quipped before slipping off to attend to another part of the ballroom.

  The rumble and guffawing babble of the guests permeated the curtain. He was doing next to nothing, sneaking fruit every few minutes, not touching the waxy desserts, which could have used a dusting. Leaning against the back wall, he bent over to stretch his legs. As he stood, the handsome assistant cameraman he’d stared at came by and picked a few cherries out of the bowl.

  “Hope it’s okay,” he said.

  “No problem,” Lee smiled, abruptly standing back at attention. “Help yourself.”

  The two stood silently a moment, not looking at each other. Lee remembered having seen the guy on his way home on the PATH train. He definitely recalled that handsome face. He’d even been wearing a tux.

  Somewhere in the dining room, a wineglass shattered.

  “Somebody dropped an earring,” the guy smirked.

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  Say something. Lee didn’t. Hearing his voice, which had a sexy gravelly quality, surprised him when combined with the comment. Wasn’t that a gay joke?

  The guy took another cherry, nodded and walked off.

  “Anybody goin’ to Brooklyn?”

  “Upper West Side?”

  “Where you headed, Marcos?” Martin asked.

  “Downtown.” Marcos folded his shirt before placing it into his bag. “Share a cab, with me, sweetface?” The waiters scooted around each other in various states of undress, combing their hair, packing their bags, and changing their socks.

  “Sure,” Lee agreed.

  “I didn’t know you lived downtown, Lee,” Martin said.

  “Actually,” Marcos cut him off, “he’s a bridge and tunnel kid.”

  “Brooklyn?”

  “No,” Marcos said. “Worse.”

  “Jersey?”

  A few guys chuckled while Lee quietly seethed, “It’s not like it’s fucking Minnesota!”

  “Might as well be,” one waiter said.

  “What do you guys think, that the world drops off a cliff at the
Hudson River?”

  “Calm, child, we’ll get you home.”

  A fifty-four-year-old banker, who was an uncle of the groom, and one of the last few dozen guests to linger well after dessert, was a bit miffed to see a half dozen young men standing around in the rest room with their pants off.

  “Excuse me,” Marcos said politely as he moved to let the man stand at the urinal. Marcos made a sour face behind his back. The boys were silent as the man stood, peed, and left. Upon his exit, Marcos resumed gossiping.

  “Did you see his wife, that mega mamma?”

  “With the bracelets shoved all the way up her arms to hide the bags?” one waiter smiled.

  “You vicious queen,” Lee said while attempting to finger comb his hair into a presentable order.

  “But it’s true! She reeked of Porcelana.”

  “How can they live so long?” Lee wondered.

  “How can they have so much money?” another added.

  Marcos pulled on his coat. “Honey, I dunno what the secret is, but I want it. Come on, baby. Let’s ou-tray.”

  Lee gave up on his static-distorted locks. Moussed up, it resembled a Brillo pad. Pulled down it merely looked stringy. Cut short, it at least stayed out of the way. It was useless. He’d never have A-gay hair.

  Lee and Marcos walked down the ornate lobby of the Waldorf and into the street. “We are outta here!” Marcos sighed. “C’mon, baby. I gotta be clubbin’.”

  “Just let me button my coat.”

  “Oh, do that in the cab. Our chariot awaits.”

  Lee couldn’t admit to Marcos that he wanted to hang out a while and see if he could spot the video guy he’d almost managed to converse with, but he needed to share cab fare.

  They scooted into the first of yellow cars lined up outside the entrance to the Waldorf. Luckily, the driver caught most of the green lights going downtown. As they whooshed through the glowing streets, Marcos bubbled with anticipation of his night to come. “Those child’s be workin’ it. I’m gonna feature ce soir.”