Monkey Suits

by Jim Provenzano

  “Yes.”

  “Are you getting serious?”

  “Dunno.” Lee looked away. The refrigerator was crowded with Herb Ritts post cards. “I’d like to, but I don’t know about him.”

  “Give him time,” Brian burped. “Didn’t take you long to snag me.” He grinned mischievously, recalling older times.

  “Didn’t take you long to dump me, either.”

  Brian didn’t reply. His eyes glistened.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Lee warned, turning away to get another beer from the fridge.

  “I miss you,” Brian whispered over his shoulder.

  “How are things with Ed?” Lee slammed the fridge shut and snapped open the bottle, catching the erupting foam in his mouth.

  “Ed’s different. He understands me.”

  “Addiction,” Lee muttered.

  “What?”

  “An addiction. You weren’t love, just a porn video that wouldn’t stop.” He gulped more beer. It nearly froze his throat. “I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re happy.”

  Brian smirked. “Yeah, well, I guess I’m lucky I’ve got someone who knows how to turn me off.”

  “Funny,” Lee said without smiling.

  The two stood close in the kitchen, staring each other down in a sort of stalemate. Lee set his beer down, digging in his pockets. He felt suddenly foreign in the room full of people. He fingered his keys. He’d always kept his keys and wallet in his pants, even at parties. It was how he didn’t trust anyone, at work, or even in a friend’s home.

  “Do you love him?” Brian asked.

  Lee looked at the floor. “What is that, anyway?”

  “Don’t be morose.”

  “No, seriously. I mean, when do you get there, Bri? When does it get there, when it’s not just one of you obsessing over the other? Lusting over his lucky gene pool or his perfect lats or his terrific smile?”

  Brian’s smirk dropped for a moment. He was actually listening for a change.

  “I get so afraid that he’ll find out I’m just ... boring.”

  “You’re not boring.” Brian said.

  “Then why did you quit on me?”

  “That’s my problem, okay? Did you ever think that maybe I get bored with myself?”

  The two stood silent a moment while the noise of the party pushed in on them.

  “Had a test recently?” Lee asked.

  Brian flinched, pretending to be aloof. “Yes,” he lied. “I’m fine. Why?”

  “Just asking. I care about you, even if you treated me like shit.”

  “Yeah, well, you should be more concerned about yourself, you little slut.”

  Lee responded with a chummy punch in the ribs. “Faggot!”

  “Queer!” Brian punched back, harder, nearly spilling his beer. They both laughed and kept punching.

  “Hey, what’s this?” Marcos quizzed, entering the kitchen like Donna Reed in hot pants. His zippy ‘70s shirt glowed fire red under the light. “Old lovers’ cat fight, just what I like!”

  He squeezed past the two, jangling a bead necklace. “Where’s the nachos! I want more nachos!” Marcos opened one kitchen cabinet after another. As the doors opened, Lee and Brian gasped as Marcos screeched in mock surprise.

  “Look at this!” Marcos swung the cabinet doors wide like a showroom model. Kevin, Carissa, and a few others poked their heads into the kitchen. Virtually every shelf was stacked with water, wine and fluted champagne glasses; brandy snifters; dinner and dessert plates; as well as coffee and espresso cups, all in ten piece settings, all obviously the same brand used by Fabulous Food’s party rental company.

  “Look familiar?” Marcos turned and surveyed the smiling faces.

  “Quite,” Lee agreed.

  “And he’s got some very familiar tablecloths hung up for drapery in his boudoir,” Carissa added.

  Marcos closed the cabinets conspiratorially. “Which is where I’m off to, as the distinct aroma of cannabis emerges from that door. Coming?”

  Brian led the way while Lee, Kevin, and Carissa nodded a no thank you.

  “C’mon,” Brian pulled Marcos. “Lee’s got his own intoxicant.”

  “I know,” Marcos said. “We met.” He glanced back at Lee. “And if I weren’t respectful of the institution of dating among males, that is not all I would do.”

  Lee waved him off. “Thank you, dear, for your considerate self-restraint.”

  “Child, that man features!” Marcos whipped out a crisp finger snap before disappearing around the corner.

  “So,” Lee asked Kevin and Carissa. “What are you two whispering about?”

  Carissa was silent. Kevin looked at her for a second. “Something covert.” He sipped his drink.

  “Is this something I can know about?” Lee asked.

  “Well, let me put it to you this way. Are you ready to give up your job?” Kevin deadpanned.

  “Not really, as much as I hate it.” He tried to joke, but the two seemed far from joking.

  “Then we can’t tell you.”

  “At least not yet,” Carissa finished. “But if you wait a while, you’ll see.” The two grinned at each other. “Oh, yes. You’ll definitely see.”

  Lee suddenly felt like a kid left behind while his older siblings ran off on a wild private adventure. Anything Kevin was involved in would be interesting. This was his chance to get beyond the usual chitchat between parties. Besides, what did he have to lose, other than a weekly paycheck?

  “Wait a minute. Maybe I am ready.”

  “We should talk,” Kevin patted Lee’s shoulder. Lee had no idea what they were up to, but judging from some of the photocopied news stories he’d been reading at meetings, and with the crowds of new people that had poured in since the City Hall demo, he knew it would be good.

  Half an hour later, Lee was about to enter the back bedroom and smoke some pot when he walked by the half-opened door to Billy’s smaller spare room. Behind the pile of coats, two shadows stood close together kissing. One was the tall friend of Cal’s. The other was Cal.

  Lee lurched back, at first embarrassed, hoping not to be seen. He considered barging in and punching one of them. Instead, he walked back to the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of champagne, poured a tall glass, and drank it in three gulps. Two guys, who were flirting and leaning against the fridge watched him, their conversation halted. Lee stormed to the door.

  “Leaving so soon?” Billy caught up to him.

  “Yup,” Lee said pulling to escape.

  “But what about your coat?” Billy clung to his arm.

  “I’ll get it tomorrow.”

  “But, honey...”

  Lee ripped himself away. He pressed the elevator button, then veered off to the stairwell, clomping loudly down the echoing cement walls.

  He stood a moment outside the apartment building, glad to finally breathe some cool air free of the stuffy smoke and heat. He turned at the sound of someone following him out.

  “Hey, where you running off to?” Brian had followed him. He too, was without a coat.

  “I’m leaving,” Lee said.

  “Where’s Calvin Clean?” A truck rumbled by, bearing the unmistakable pink elephant logo of the rental company. Somewhere across town, a party they hadn’t worked at was disintegrating into memory.

  “Look, I’m just leaving, alright? Just go back and work the crowd like you always do. I’m sure you’ll get the pick of the crop.”

  Brian slung his arm around Lee’s shoulder and led him to a black iron gate. “Maybe I want you. Look, did he do something?”

  “Are you that desperate?” He leaned against the grate, dizzy from the alcohol.

  “Not desperate. Comfortable. Leeway, sweet Leeway.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Remember that night when I lifted a bottle of Cristal, and you had all those candles?” Brian pressed against him, hovering close a moment, then pressed his lips to Lee’s. The warm moisture in his mouth felt good, but his cheeks and nose
were cold. Lee held on while Brian’s much warmer tongue darted deeper into him. He wanted to feel a trace of the passion, but instead felt empty and useless. His glasses bumped against Brian’s face, nearly falling off. He pushed Brian away.

  “You can’t just dive back in when you feel like it,” he said as he adjusted his wire rims. But Brian’s eyes were glazed, drunken and open wide in a false erotic sincerity. He didn’t mean anything by it. He just wanted to get laid.

  “Goodnight, okay?” Lee pulled away and walked down the street, leaving Brian behind, who watched silently for a moment, then went back inside.

  His hands thrust in his pockets as he walked, despite the spring warmth, Lee felt chilled but secure, his keys in one hand, wallet in the other, gripped inside his pants.

  He passed what seemed like dozens of happy handholding straight couples strolling at a ridiculously slow pace. He darted past them to the 1 train stop to the bottom of Manhattan, then up, over and down to the PATH station.

  He trod down the sooty stairs into the tunnel below. A scrawny black man sitting on a milk carton rattled a coffee cup of change. Lee tried to ignore him and shoved a dollar bill into the turnstile. The metal arm cranked him through.

  The crowd of waiting commuters, rowdy kids and frumpy couples, all dressed in variations of blue, gray, and black, seemed to glare at him as a unit as he passed. He lumbered past them, staking a claim at an unoccupied column far down the length of the station. He felt awful. The combination of beer and champagne began to churn in his stomach as he sat hunched below the column where he’d first spoken to Cal.

  It seemed an hour until the train screeched into the station. Lee leaned to watch the approaching lights, contemplating either suicide or merely vomiting. Dozens of tiny gray mice scattered from the pit of grimy tracks. A deafening baritone blast of the train’s horn jolted him to standing.

  Once on the train and under the harsh fluorescent light, the passengers looked even worse, a mixed bag of dour-faced workers and exhausted revelers. A rugged man in black leather glared at Lee, briefly fondling his crotch.

  You’re ridiculous, he wanted to shout. A tiny black woman mumbled to herself as she scanned her Bible. Two paint-spattered men loudly discussed a soccer game in Spanish. Lee closed his eyes, but the image of Cal kissing the tall stranger flashed before him. The son of a bitch. Two-timing bastard slut.

  There, he’d said it to himself. Lee felt sick, dizzy. He had to sit, but the only seats would have required nudging close to others, something he couldn’t stand at the moment. A huge fat man ripped open a bag of corn chips and began eating.

  Lee felt in his pockets, momentarily comforted by the bump of his keys in front, his wallet in back. At least he could get home. Would Cal even care enough to bring his coat? Fuck him, who cares. Forget him, just get yourself home.

  He couldn’t tell which pain was worse, the one in his head, his heart or his stomach. One was about to demand relief.

  Carefully staggering his way to the end of the rumbling car, he pulled the latch and slid the shining metal door open. Heads turned as the noisy screeching grew louder. He slammed the door shut behind him. Between cars, the passing globes of lights on the tunnel walls flashed by. He lurched over the side chains and pondered jumping. What if I don’t die? I’ll be eaten alive by rats. Besides, the space between cars was so tight he wouldn’t be able to get out and get himself decently run over.

  The noxious brew of alcohol rumbled in his stomach. Quickly removing his glasses and clutching them, he lurched over the side, heaving out the night’s fill of beer, champagne, and nacho chips. Another surge sped up his throat, a bit spewing through his nostrils. Coughing and spitting, he hung over the chain a moment. His sinuses burned. Traces of it dribbled along the side of the train car.

  Suddenly relieved, he breathed the stale tunnel air, stood upright, wiped his mouth and nose. Pulling the door of the next car open, he hoped no one would notice him, not that he really cared at this hour. He sank to an empty section at the far end, glancing down at his shirt. No big stains, just a few droplets. Once again seated, he put his glasses on and felt very tired, but much better.

  Walking close to his apartment, he took his usual short cut through the back parking lot behind Las Funeraria Americas. The back door was wide open. Someone must have been working late. He saw a long silver table glowing under a harsh fluorescent light.

  He jumped suddenly when a dog barked across the street. He ran to his door, fumbled with his keys, raced up the stairs and into the safety of his lonely home. He unplugged the phone, then turned on the shower in his clothes, stripping under the hot water. He left his sopping shirt and jeans in the tub. He brushed his teeth, drank some juice, then brushed his teeth again.

  He had to find a way out of it all. What was supposed to be an easy way to make money had long since prevented him from moving on, from jumping into his life, or what he thought it should be.

  He walked around the apartment, weak-kneed, methodically picking up any stray objects that belonged to Cal; a pair of socks, a magazine, a few cassettes. He dropped the cluster neatly into the kitchen trashcan and crawled to his futon for a long dreamless night of sleep.

  “The ancient Greeks, in their infinite wisdom, knew just what precipitated a butler’s revenge. They called it hubris: the impious disregard of the limits governing men’s actions in an orderly universe. This is the sin to which the great and gifted are most susceptible. It is not only the turning of tables against the rich by the poor, it is also the punishment of arrogance by the gods, and the gods always get their revenge in the end.”

  – Taki, The Butler’s Revenge

  “If injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil. But if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”

  – Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

  “It’s what happens when your choices

  Are narrowed to fashion or violence.

  Adjustments, you make adjustments.”

  – The Waitresses, “Jimmy Tomorrow”

  (c. Future Fossil Music; BMI)

  29 “They are going to throw AIDS-infected blood on you.”

  Trish Fuller wasn’t sure how to react. She had never been forced to respond to such a statement. She’d held the hands of terminally ill patients, had sat through her own father’s painful death of prostate cancer, and had attended countless funerals. The closest event she could relate to this threat was the day she saw a woman lying on the sidewalk near Lincoln Center. Having been hit by a passing bus, her blood seeped from her coat to the sidewalk. Trish had become queasy and rushed off.

  But this was something completely different. Margaret took the first call, from a frantic Dina Carmichael. She’d said that a friend of hers had a friend who had an employee who said that some radical gay group was planning a demonstration tonight where they were going to crash the Met’s doors down and spill vats of AIDS-infected blood on all the party guests. More calls came in, rumor after rumor. Guests began to call with one excuse after another, sending their checks of course, but bowing out of showing up.

  Despite her unflagging spirit, Trish wondered how to cope with this. Never before had such a thing happened, not even in the sixties when Black militants descended on Manhattan during the civil rights protests. Above all, she wondered why.

  Of course, it must have been Winston. In a terrible case of bad timing, Winston had written a rather unpleasant editorial in the May issue of his magazine. She tried to forget about the whole thing and nearly succeeded, until Margaret came to work early to show her the item on ‘Page Six:’

  “It seems the gay rights group Act Up is planning to act up at Trish Fuller’s AIDS benefit tonight at the Met. Protestors are peeved that Hizzoner, the Mayor, has replaced author Drew Van Sully, who passed away yesterday, as keynote speaker. Act Uppers ar
e also up in arms about Trish’s hubby Winston for making remarks about “stern measures to control the disease-carrying behavior of promiscuous homosexuals and drug addicts” in his magazine, The American Republic. Mrs. Fuller may have a hard time filling seats at her soirée, despite assurances by a Police Commissioner’s spokesman to keep protestors out of the partygoers’ path. Talk about a headache!”

  After thrice reading the article over breakfast, Trish left a message at Winston’s office to call home the moment he arrived. She’d have a lot of phone calls to make.

  To find a moment of relaxation before the daunting task ahead, she escaped to the back closet of her Fifth Avenue town house and opened their back-of-the-closet wall safe to extract her anniversary emerald necklace and matching earrings, which she planned to wear to the benefit.

  Made in the 1960s by a little-known jeweler who later created designs for Tiffany, Winston had bought them for their tenth wedding anniversary, and as a lavish token for their subsequent vacation to Egypt.

  A lovely conversation about that trip with author Drew Van Sully at a party almost a year before had led to her friendship with the author. The idea for the benefit grew from his astonishing tales of health problems.

  Trish held the necklace up, amused by its deep green sparkles and the angular gold setting that nearly approached kitsch. They might be a touch over the top, but she was the hostess, and they were in theme with her guest of honor’s book.

  But doing the party as set along the Nile River had been dismissed months before. To her, theme parties were definitely outré. She moved the box aside, when her nearby scrapbooks drew her interest.

  The hairstyles, the gowns, all charted the shifting trends through time. How could they all have thought such dresses and fashions attractive? Absurd. Her scrapbooks spanned the decades of galas and opening nights, all the way back to her debutante ball at the Rye Country Club. How long before the current photos and clippings would look so silly?

  At least this year she was au courant. Trish Fuller knew how to throw a party. Her face may have been ravaged by time, fatigue and a few thousand too many cigarettes, but what she lacked in beauty she made up for in taste, influence and jewelry.