by Larry Kramer
“Darling, you love faggots. They are a challenge for you. You will not rest until you turn one of them on. I know and respect your chase.”
“I suppose.” And then, after a wave of her long chains of real gold and a swing of her Oriental bracelets, she asked: “Why, do you suppose?”
“Do you wish my best Hampstead Heath interpretation?”
Dordogna nodded and rattled.
“Because you and I, I consider my own problems just as yours, are terrified of real men, mainly because real men are such godawful bores.”
“True. So true. And no challenge whatsoever.”
“And they are not interested in what we are, things which faggots know so well, things of beauty and moment, things of fashion and fun, things of this instant and long ago, they love old things.” Then, pausing to consider that she was an old thing, she added: “The only trouble…one does so want now and then to get laid.”
The meeting was not an instantaneous success. Randy was, naturally, nervous, and Dordogna could find no clue to how to play her hand.
She tried flattery, demureness, an interest in films and other current events. Adriana tried a few off-color jokes and then excused herself to go home and dress.
Alone, Randy was even more nervous with the woman. But then, inadvertently, she hit upon her clue.
“You are such a powerful man,” she said. “You must tell me about power.”
He suddenly found this woman honest and sincere and interesting. He began to relax. He then recalled she had a husband. He relaxed even more.
Well, it’s a start. And, thinks he, she does seem so terribly interested. Perhaps she is. After all, he is important. But then, thinks she, so am I. Two Important People Belong Together think both of them. Could I live with that, thinks he. Could I live with that, thinks she. She has not put a foot wrong. Nor has he. They are dancing well together. She wonders if he is possibly bisexual. That would make things so much easier. He wonders if she is possibly a dyke. That would make things so much easier. He wished he knew a dyke who could tell him if Dordogna was a dyke.
He said: “I am to receive the President’s Medal, given semiannually to that young businessperson who most embodies the ideals of our nation.”
She said: “How wonderful! I am to receive the Man of the Year Award from the International Consortium of Masculine Accessories.”
He said: “How wonderful! It’s nice to know a Man of the Year.”
She said: “It’s nice to know someone who embodies the ideals of our nation.”
Yes, it’s a start indeed.
Finally, after seven cups of Formosa Oolong, he shook her hand and kissed her cheeks and promised to call her early in the week.
She asked him at the door: “Tell me, are you going to this quaint Toilet Bowl I am hearing so much about?”
“Oh no no no no never.”
So she knew where to find him later on.
Did not our Fred have much to analyze! After a return to his Henry James abode for an evacuation, he paced around his premises for approximately ten minutes, querying his inner self for indications on how Cary Grant might conceivably have handled any of these new plot points, coming to no ready conclusions, either as Cary’s scriptwriter or his own, before deciding his castle was more akin to a prison and heading out, for deeper concentration, to the streets. He walked down Christopher, already running over at mid-afternoon, thinking that if he had to parade through this sewer, among these slags (but they’re my friends, I’m a slag, too, I’m in this zoo, too), once more in his lifetime, don’t they know there’s something better? (where!), he’d slit his wrists indeed, Menchitt & Swinger notwithstanding.
So I am on that fence of life I am always condemning Anthony for so straddling. My mind is saying: “Get rid of that loser! Cut your losses before you cut your throat!” And my internal organs residing slightly south of that fine thinking machine are saying: “You ain’t over this one yet, Charlie.”
Should I walk away? This thought came to him as he found himself at Dinky’s building. My goodness, have I journeyed so uptown so quickly? How about a postcard? “Dear Dinky, I was searching in your wastebasket and I found your sweet note to George.” Or a telegram? “I was ransacking your belongings and I found your leather and chains.”
Or a letter of declaration posted, Martin Luther-like, upon your front door: “I love you, you want to love me, you said George doesn’t mean a thing to you, we can work it out, just you wait and see, leave it up to me.”
Then he walked home again to hold telephonic communications concerning Dinky’s own creative letter writings with both Gatsby and Anthony.
Gatsby naturally said: “You must confront him! How can you let the prick get away with it!” He also said that he’d reached Chapter Two of his novel, was considering a move from the city, “too much fucking interference, and what’s happening with your own fine script?”
“Fine, fine, just fine, everything’s coming along just fine,” Fred answered, throwing a guilty look at his unused IBM.
And Anthony had naturally advised: “Why confront him? Maybe he never even sent it. It was in the wastebasket! Forget it. Don’t overreact. You know you tend to overreact. And if he said all those nice things to you in person, give it a try.” He also said that he was personally feeling very warm toward a young trampolinist, “so who am I to give you advice? I should slit my wrists. But then I think that if I were my father, I’d probably be doing it with a chorus girl. What do I know, Tante? Why are we persisting with these losers? By the way, he wants to go to Fire Island. Can we come and visit?”
Gatsby had also said: “Lemish, you’re in trouble. You want to love so much you can’t afford not to believe. See it through, see it through. And learn from it. You’re strong enough.”
So, feeling strong enough, Fred walked again, this time uptown to the Y, taking with him some comfort from those important words from Flatchkind & Krasspole: “Human sex obviously reflects human experience for better or for worse. And said human’s human fear is that other humans will find him wanting, thus making it difficult for him to change without patient, beneficial, therapeutic, outside aid.” I shall be his outside aid. Who’s had more beneficial, therapeutic, outside aid than I? I shall help him change. He wants tenderness? Tenderness he will have. I wonder what to call what I gave him before? Do I need a recall to Dr. Dridge? No! I can work this out myself. I must also, among many other items, try not to think that according to Vonce, Noodrick & Pelt there are three roles one can play as a homosexual: one involving being the daddy to someone who is the son, another, therefore, being the sonny to that pop, the third involving looking for yourself in someone approximately identical to you, and that it looks like Adams, D., is an experienced actor of all three. Along with a few others…Well…, Dinky’s searching. Well…, so am I. I shall also try not to think that Dinky is showing distinct Fefferisms. Can I handle same four years later? God knows we all have problems. What’s a little leather? It’s even rather sexy. No, I shall not be self-righteous. And I must not be dismayed by a casual tidbit plucked from the garbage to a person who means absolutely nothing to him.
Feeling ever so much better now that Decision had been reached, he jogged his jog, worked out his workout, and stepped upon the scale to discover he’d made one hundred and fifty again. A good omen.
But, just in case, he also stepped into the punching-bag room and courageously approached three mean-looking blacks.
“Excuse me, but I have never hit anybody in my life and I was wondering if you could give me a few pointers on how, if I had to, I could punch a guy in the face. Without hurting him, of course.”
Of the 2,639,857 faggots in the New York City area, 2,639,857 think primarily with their cocks.
You didn’t know the cock was a thinking organ?
Well, by this time, you should know that it is.
Fred jumped off of his fence and into The Toilet Bowl.
Its street, West 14th, by that sparkling Hu
dson, was mobbed with many thousands strong, waving tickets in the air, pushing toward that tiny door, let me in, oh let me in, while searchlights dueled with their outstretched arms and with the sky and with the neighboring ancient warehouses used by the day for meat. Mounted policemen were trying their proudly perched best to keep the streets clear, their horses not obliging, so that arriving glitter queens, descending from rented pumpkins, flaunted hauteur that far-from-red-carpets were deposited for their welcome, they’d go home, but rushed to queue instead, joining beauties of both sexes caught in the eternal conflict of which to maintain: their finery or their place in line. “Darling, we’re living Day of the Locust,” was the constant cry.
Fred greeted Frigger at the door. “You have obviously done your usual superb p.r. job,” Fred said, waving his v.i.p. ticket as Frigger ushered him in past glaring, jealous, waiting eyes.
“Come right in, come right in,” Frigger invited him, and in Fred walked and up Fred was lifted, to a tenth floor, and into the newest of New York’s mammoth caverns of mirrored heavens, another city happening, vistas, roads leading this way and that, balloons and buntings and flowers and lights and trees and fountains and sparklers and music wrapping it all in a Tiffany blue box of life. Billy Boner certainly knew how to spare no expense and set the scene so his guests could party.
And were they not all here! The Beautiful People all in force. Models and beauties and heirs and heiresses, from museums and magazines and foundations and organizations, charitable, tax-exempt, international, department stores, frockeries, Sotheby’s, embassies, hot-dog kings and TV stars and rock faces and physical culturists, a legion of decorators, a score of Wall Streeters, designers of tablecloths and designers of lives, harlots and humpies, Godivas and Casque d’Ors, shrinks and shirkers, conversationalists and cruisers, gaggles of gossamer ladies and gents, sports heroes, pitchmen, newscasters and weathermen, real estate and art and craft and camping and display and publishing and all continents and all major cities and all leading countries, rivers, streams, creeks, crannies, a slummer or three from Washington, the Mayor, the Chief of Police, rival Families, and the press, thank God, the press. Women’s Wear could be truly pleased!
“It’s gorgeous!” The Divine Bella, their correspondent on the spot, gushed up to Fred, in hostess white, a huge orchid pinned to his neatly starched and Oxydol-clean Exxon uniform. “You must see it! You simply must see it all! Every taste has been catered to and I for one wish to live within these walls forever!” And he rushed his big self off to gather more names and items for the several pages his publication had promised him for this important, newsworthy opening night.
Fred stood by the main entrance, where the checkroom indicated that an entire wardrobe could be left for the same fee as a coat, and studied the signposts. Lusitania Lounge. Rancho Notorious. Dixie Disco Dancehall. Martha Mitchell Memorial. Jackie O. The Radziwill Annex. Crabb and Weissmuller. The Fucketeria. Where to begin? What does it all mean? I’d rather not think about what it all means. How to use it all in my script? Where’s Abe? Where’s Dinky?
“Ladies and Gentlemen!…The Toilet Bowl is proud to present its first main event of this proud evening, the one, the only, Guestess of Honor, our First and Foremost Very Own First Lady of Song, Our Very Own New Disco Queen…Miss Yootha Truth!…”
Miss Yootha Truth? The crowd didn’t have the vaguest. Who the fuck was she? But then that song started, the song that last night, was it only last night?, everyone had been asking about, “The Alabama Aw Shits,” so everyone immediately knew who was Miss Yootha Truth, and they rushed into the gargantuan Roseland that was the Dixie Disco Dancehall, all flickering light bulbs and real fake moons and stars, and plopped themselves down on the virgin floor and sniffed their ethyled wristbands in readiness, and Miss Rollarette skated among them with his wand, creating the proper mood and atmosphere and entrance for his star. And out he came.
“Rolla, we’ve started!” Yootha had said just minutes earlier, while they waited for their entr’acte backstage, where he unfortunately had to share his dressing room with the fucking and crucifixion acts. The make-up table was confused with Crisco and Muguet de Scandale, and Yootha vowed it wouldn’t be long before he’d not have to be so mortified again. “We’re on our way!”
“Yes, Yootha, we are. And Rolla is proud of you. You are now setting a fine example for all my boys. Rolla is additionally most honored that you have requested him to be your Maid of Honor on this, your first night of many nights of tribute. It is reassuring that some people do not forget the earlier kindnesses of strangers.”
“I couldn’t have done it, Rolla, without your support and belief in me and my talent.”
“Now, dear, wasn’t it a man in a Doubleday’s men’s room that got you started on your rise to fame?”
“Oh, Rolla, I long to see him again! I dream of him and hope that one fine day I shall see him across a crowded room and we shall rush into each other’s arms and live most happily ever after.”
“Just write another song about it, dear. Out of your pain.”
Now, with the crowds going wild, bobbing and swaying and sniffing to Yootha’s intricate mouthing of the words, as the song boomed out over the huge sound system, Rolla’s own flat-brimmed granny hat also nodding its poppy to and fro, both singer and Maid of Honor shivered for their success. Yootha thought of Billie Holiday, and the Supremes, and Diana, and Donna, and thought, too, of this floorful of faggots and foreigners, none of whom two days ago would have given him the time of night, but now were whistling and clapping and cheering one of their own. So, throwing out his long white-gloved arms in upstretched love and thanks, bending his frail body in artistic gratitude, then standing upright again to acknowledge the acclaim with thrown-back chin of pride, then up with the arms again, mustn’t be quite so energetic, the net is flimsy and the seams are frail, but let them know it, let them know!, the new star cried out to his legion of new worshippers: “I forgive you!”
The Toilet Bowl was launched! In Dixie Disco Fred danced and danced with Tarsh and Gatsby and Mikie and Josie and Dom Dom and Fallow and Bo Peep and Bilbo, all of whom he’d be with tomorrow in the house they shared in Fire Island Pines.
The music was in high gear, society slummers really cutting rugs, these boys can certainly dance and show us a good time!, building to Up and Upper and Uppest with an overlay by that clever Pepino of “Now Is The Hour For Us,” on top of “Old Acquaintance,” with, from the seventeen left-handed speakers the additional rhythm of “Jingle Bells,” and just barely audible but a clever bit of bouquet garni nevertheless, from speakers twenty to twenty-five, on the right, a low feed-in of his prized recording of the theme from “Cobra Woman,” played on the lute by the composer himself, all of this beneath the overriding blanket of “Honey, Where Has Our Love Gone To,” the tensions of many thousand bodies so minutely matched to the music’s every whim, matching their evening’s drugs, coordinated with Pepino’s own, so that clashing cymbals jerked them Up like the electric shocks of Disp, then Down with marimbas and cascading xylophones to the low of Flayl, all of this codified, amplified, innuendoed, transmogrified beyond any body’s pure cognition, the smashing of the brain!, all it felt was GOOD!, these boys can really show us how to play!, Fred dancing in all of this, among his friends but waiting for Dinky, “Forgiveness, Patience, Tolerance, Tenderness, are my new keystones, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” he even thinking that in this melange of sound, such a nice gesture from Pepino, he’d heard the theme music tossed in from his own Lest We Sleep Alone.
In the Lusitania Lounge, all fitted out most smartly with the gleanings from a sunken Cunard liner, Irving Slough was holding forth. He leaned against the portholed-backed crush bar, surrounded by his friends and associates, were they not the same?, and felt proud. Here was his dear Hans Zoroaster, surrounded by seven of his beauties, including Winnie, ah yes Winnie, well…, and here was his old friend and beard, Adriana la Chaise, and here, too, was his fine vice-president, Anthony Montano. A
nd do we not all represent a veritable rainbow of the panoply of today!
For Hans was all in brown leather, his freshly pierced tit gleaming with a ring of Van Cleef gold, and Winnie was in a modest half-naked Indian costume, his body lightly burnished with Germaine de Laszlo’s Get Ready for Summer Tone # 4, and the models—Lork, Carlty, Yo-Yo, Dawsy, Tom-Tom, Pusher—were all dressed alike in St. Laurent suits, and Adriana was dressed like a Marine, and carrying an enormous mailbag, “Working-class haberdashery is now so chic,” and Anthony wore his conservative suit and tie, and Irving…
“To us and our noble profession, to which we owe so much!” Irving toasted after tipping the cute waiter in the bikini and pinching his bunny’s tail.
His group toasted him back with averted eyes. For Irving had finally done it. He was appearing at last in public in full leather drag. From head to toe he was all in basic black.
Winnie was having difficulty following everyone’s words. He was dusted, marvelously so, The Gnome’s stuff was the best, no doubt about it, but Winnie knew when no one was looking at him and this always bothered him, dusted or not. He sensed underlying currents neath the dust, particularly since Irving, a kisser, had not kissed him as he usually did, and Anthony kept fidgeting with his fingers as he directed his look-out to exterior shores.
Irving continued his toast: “We have been taken in! Where others have not! We have risen to the top, to be in control, always providing we not be too obvious, not rub their noses. How many places allow us to be so creative? Where else could we be so much the unseen power!” He was suddenly overcome with such gratitude that he grabbed an armful of models, three or four of them, not Winnie, and cooed and cuddled them, and ruffled their finery, and then continued toasting with full hug: “Yes! We have commercialized the human body! Yes! To Advertising!”