by Larry Kramer
Good-bye from your late bulldog, Fred.
He considered the prose. Did it scan? Was it sufficiently metaphoric? Was it light, fluffy, but with an undercurrent of heartrending hurt and meaning? Ah, how little experience he’d had in dealing with problems of the heart! But then, who had?
So, trying to perform like a Great Person who has just discovered the cure for a heretofore incurable disease—Greer Garson as Madame Curie, Joan Fontaine in Letter from An Unknown Woman, Roddy McDowell in Lassie, Come Home… Fred Lemish as Mother Courage—he marched up to West 29th Street, taking with him a roll of Scotch tape, another note card, and a pen, in case he wished to revise or rewrite along the way.
At the shrine, he waited until an early worker left the building so he could gain entrance. Then he took off his shoes and walked up the six flights stealthily and he taped his note, as was, to Dinky’s door—at last Martin Luther and his Ninety-Five Theses on the church in Wittenberg, not a Jewish town—trying not to imagine what Dinky was doing to Dennis on the other side of it. Ah, was there any pain as agonizing as that caused by the knowledge that your beloved, correction!, ex-beloved, was doing it with someone else? He has rejected your body, he has said he prefers to do it with another body, come on Lemish!, cut the crap!, how much shit are you willing to take just for the memory of a little intimacy, how crazy and hungry can you be? With this Bowl of Cherries, your Ladies’ Home Journal days must now be over.
So up went the note and down went its author, still stealthily, Butch Jenkins departing Scene of the Crime, back down six flights, reentering his Weejuns at the bottom, walking tall out of the building, his hair now dry but his brow making up for it, giving the finger to Dinky’s seagreen Dodge pick-up, and heading home. Ever so much stronger. Out of my hair. Yes sir, yes sir. And back to behind his picnic curtains on Washington Square. Alone. To try and sleep alone.
Dinky was of course behind that lettered door with Laverne. Yes, Laverne was back in his old stamping grounds, his very own apartment, which he had vacated six months ago, causing Frigger, always ready with a oneliner, to quip to Dinky: “Darling, you’ve done what every queen dreams of doing! You’ve wound up with the real estate.”
Yes, Jack and Dinky, the two lean, handsome, youthful beauties of thirty, they’d been an admirable pair, the going-to-be-an-architect who quit school to live with the teacher of English when they thought they were in love and bought the house by the canal in Southampton and opened a store where they sold beautiful things, and failed, were side by side once more, naked upon that pedestal bed Dinky’d made with his own hands.
Both found the conjunction strange. Dinky was trying to embrace Laverne. Laverne did not wish to be embraced.
So Dinky pulled out a bedside volume and thumbed to a page. “I found this quote in Trollope. I’ve been reading this new Trollope. Remember, you introduced me to Trollope?”
Laverne remembered.
Dinky then read aloud, smiling, and as poetically as he could. “‘Did Lily feel the want of something heroic in a man before she could teach herself to look upon him as more worthy of her regard than other men? There had been moments when John had almost risen to the necessary point—had almost made good his footing on the top of some moderate hill, but still sufficient mountain. But there had still been a succession of little tumbles, and he had never quite stood upright on his pinnacle, visible to Lily’s eyes as being really excelsior.’ Story of you and me.”
“Who’s the Lily and who’s the John?” Laverne asked, wondering if he understood Dinky even now, wondering if he’d ever understood Dinky, wondering, come to think of it, if Laverne understood Jack either. All he felt was cynical. Trollope indeed. He’d go and live with Robbie Swindon and he’d try. “What makes you think we can start all over again?”
“What makes you think we can’t?”
“What would you do with Irving and Ike Bulb and Lemish and Tony and Olive and Dennis and Mr. Savannah?”
“I don’t fuck with Ike Bulb, I can’t find Paulie, Irving’s a joke, Olive is boring and only into dildoes, Tony won’t see me anymore, Piero ran off with some of my money, Chipper has another lover and they moved to California, Floyd I only used to make you jealous, I don’t fuck with Frigger anymore, Dennis I only see when I feel the need to be a Master, and Fred Lemish is in love with me. He’s a mess. Love will do it every time. You see, at least I’m honest with you. I always tell you the whole story.” He then paused before adding: “Everyone is so silly. Everyone wants too much. Being gay isn’t fun anymore.”
“You need too much amusement.” Then Laverne paused, too, to think: My, it certainly was a full six years, before adding: “Love isn’t silly.”
“You were the only one who wasn’t silly. You were the only one who ever understood me.”
“I was the only one who let you get away with you! You’re too fucking handsome and too fucking clever and you always have to have your own way and I always let you and I never could believe a thing you said! Fred Lemish was right to slam you in the face. All I ever did was throw at you those mixing bowls from Crete. And miss. You ought to stay with him. He’s rich and famous and you’d always eat. And he wouldn’t let you get away with you. Yes, he sounds the right person for you.”
“You were the right person for me.”
“I was the right person for you once. No more. I’m going to go and live with Robbie Swindon.”
Dinky lay back for another moment of pause. Then he rolled over and leaned down and rummaged in a drawer in the base of the bed and pulled out a long, gray two-headed dildo from days of long ago. Then he placed it, wriggling like a snake, into that space between them, where it rested ominously.
“Using this would put me on your mountain?” Laverne inquired.
“You know you were tempted.” Dinky’s eyes and ear were twinkling.
“I wouldn’t use it then and I won’t use it now.”
“The poppers and the Vaseline are on your side between the mattress and the wall.”
“I’m not sophisticated enough for you. You always have to try new things. You wouldn’t take me as I am!” Jack picked up the dildo and lobbed it out of sight.
“And you wouldn’t take me as I am!”
“No matter what I did it was never enough! You probably still want me to fist-fuck you, don’t you?”
“Yes, I want you to fist-fuck me.”
“I could never understand why you liked to get fist-fucked and don’t like to get regular fucked.”
“Anybody can get fucked. It’s entirely different. If you’d only try, you’d see.”
Laverne just lay there. Robbie…could you come and get me now? Please! Come put your handsome silver bracelet around my neck. I mean, finger!
Dinky said: “I wish you’d get rid of your bourgeois Birmingham attitudes.” He was now trying to play with Jack’s cock.
“Fist-fucking would do that, would it?” Jack jumped up and started to dress. “I’m going home. Leave me alone. You crushed the flower. I gave you books. You gave me plants. Books live. Plants die. You only loved me when I said I didn’t love you anymore! That’s the only time you started paying any attention to me. I won’t play your games. I won’t! You just feed into my feeling terrible about myself! That’s what my dyke shrinkette said. She said that. All you do is take mother-types like me and shit all over us. She said that, too. She said you need a smorgasbord of people. Column A and Column B. I want someone who wants me and only me! Why do I keep coming back for more? I must stop! I must like me enough! I must! I won’t let you sour me for someone else! I won’t. I must get away from you!” Oh, it was difficult, pulling on his jeans, still wet from sweaty dancings, to love a liar, love pain and anguish and indecision, dancings in those Robbie Swindon arms, and would he, Jack Humpstone, come back to live with Dinky the Devil, and be hurt again. No! He was not going to return. He would break this bondage. He must! “Friends! Let’s be buddies! We share a Capriccio card and a Y membership and a house in Southampton and
let’s let it go at that!”
Dinky stood up slowly, handed Laverne his shirt, and calmly escorted him out of the bedroom and down the long corridor. “Here’s your shirt. Before Savannah, Ike and I, we went to Key West. You and I were going to buy a house there. Remember? It’s going to be the new faggot winter Fire Island. He and I bunked with four guys I knew from somewhere. One of them fucked the second while the third shat upon the fourth. And then I pissed on all of them. Before I went to sleep. It’s my shirt really. You took it. But I don’t want it back.”
“I’ll speak to you later, I’ll see you on the Island, don’t talk to me of…shirts, this is my apartment, please get out of my life…” Laverne was trying to open the front door but the latch was still on.
“I forgot to tell you, Irving invited us both to his Meat Rack party tonight.” Dinky unlocked the door.
Laverne was through it as fast as he could be.
That’s when Dinky found Fred’s letter.
Boo Boo’s own communiquè to Abe’s diplomatic pouch had read (as best as sweaty nighttime hieroglyphics on Hermes winged feet could be de-coded by the enemy Pop):
Sir, It has come to our attention that your Richie is an homosexual. He has therefore naturally been kidnapped.
He is quite safe but somewhat uncomfortable. He is buried under a remote piece of soil in the Meat Rack of Fire Island Pines.
The amount demanded is One Million Dollarinos in unmarked old $100 bills.
You are to bring the money to the above resting place tomorrow, Sunday, at midnight in an old suitcase.
A helpmate will greet you at boardwalk’s end and lead you to your assignation with destiny.
Come Alone! To go to the Police would be callous, unlucky, untoward, and dangerous to your reputation as his Pop.
For, unless you do everything, Richie will remain buried alive and the world will know the awful truth!
Oh, did not our Abraham pace and pace, back and forth, crisscross, up and down, over and back, diagonally, wearing thinner and thinner his bedroom Oriental! So God is finally getting his revenge! For my success! For my hubris! It was like receiving a note from the President that your son was missing in action. Guilts and guilts and doubts and worries and questionings. Is this a kidnapping like is so currently popular abroad? Should I call the police? Maybe the F.B.I.? J. Edgar Hoover? No, he is dead. And the country hasn’t been safe since. The President who sent me this letter? My brother, Maury, with whom I do not speak? My older son and lawyer, Stephen, who with his fine wife is away for the holidays in Aruba? Peetra, who gives me another son in Paris? Gain one son and I lose another! Ephra? How can I tell Ephra? Fire Island Pines is where faggolim go! I am meeting Fred there. Can it be true? Can my Richie…?! My Wyatt…?! Our offspring are faggolasexual queerim! What have we done? Ephra! It was your fault for holding him too close! Reconciliation! I must bring about reconciliation! Is this my Mission? Come to haunt me in a Toilet Bowl? What is God trying to tell me? What is Richie trying to tell me? He is trying to tell me that he’s a lazy queer who wants a lot of money. That’s what he’s trying to tell me. Oh, the conniving son of a bitch.
For Abe of course smelled the something fishily off kilter. His Wyatt had delivered the note himself. How could his Richie be in danger? How could dangerous kidnappers be lurking behind him in all those dancing fairies? Did he not know his own son and self? His own son was kidnapping himself! Should he call Mr. Bronfman to discuss his recent experiences with his own kidnapped son?
He walked around the apartment. Now he was thinking of Richie and now he knew why. And everything reminded him of Richie. The messy toothpaste tube. The camp pictures of the pudgy boy always on the losing Color War team. His ballet tights! Why didn’t I realize then!
But why doesn’t he come right out and say it? Pop, I’m a gaynick and I want more money. Because I would slam his tuchas and send him off to our branch in Australia. That’s why. And make him marry that ugly Marci Tisch.
And he knows it! And so now he blackmails me. And he will tell the world his secret before he tells to me. He becomes the conniver! Oh, Abraham Bronstein, how your words come back to smack you in your ass.
Ephra, who at dawn had come in from her own adjoining suite, had queried: “You are not sleeping?”
“How do you know I am not sleeping?”
“An ex-wife knows.”
And seeing him worried, and embracing him, and hoping that his crisscrossings on her rug meant Hope, she asked him: “Abraham, are we having by any stretch a reconciliation?”
But when she heard him greptz in surprise and saw him traipse her rug anew, she returned to her own bed, this time to dream of horses.
Randy Dildough had not received a letter. His came in a phone call. Myron Musselman again. The 217 holiday weekend situations for Bronty, The Last Survivor were definitely not biggies, they had no legs, this stinker, loser, bomb, meant twenty-three million dollars of P-P’s money down the toilet, whoever’s responsible for this one had better have a pretty good idea for what to do next or else he’s in a spot of trouble all his own.
Randy, of course was responsible for this one.
Would the convergence of all ill auguries never cease?
Randy hung up the phone but held on to the receiver. He was momentarily sorry he’d not brought that Robbie Whatshisname back. He could now fuck the shit out of him. But he’d ditched that fawning niceness when some déjà vu from somewhere suddenly became uncomfortable. Probably just as well. Jesus Christ, I probably saved his life.
He picked up the phone again. A call to R. Allan Pooker sleepily informed him that Timothy was one of his starlets. He was on his way, to Fire Island in a Rolls.
So once again Randy felt his rise to the occasion. He would have to go to Fire Island to save his new James Dean.
But Timmy had been crowned the new Winston Man. The younger smoking market is so important. He was now sleeping in the arms of Hans, in his elaborate villa, Utopia, on the bay at Tuna, in Fire Island Pines.
And Irving, also on the Island, but alone, in his villa, Chain Male, on Doctor’s Walk, overlooking the ocean, in The Grove, unpacked his Vuitton of leather, studied his yet-to-be-pedigreed-dog collar, and wondered once again if his meting out of vengeance, or more therapeutically, a lesson, or less euphemistically, scared the living shit out of him, would Get Dinky Back, particularly when the pupil had been so tardy with the teacher, much less showing up at school.
But as he unwrapped his package from the Marquis de Suede, he congratulated himself. What experienced teacher could not find a way? And it would be the Ultimate Humiliation. And it would be tonight!
And Boo Boo Bronstein, who’d zipped to Fire Island drugged out in his Porsche, and taken the ferry across, and stepped out at last and on to its hallowed famous dock and boardwalks, but walked with head down to the ocean’s edge, now sat staring at that water in the glaring new day’s light and wondering…what the living, fucking, shit have I done?
At some time or other between April and November, the 2,901,019 faggots in the New York City area come to Fire Island.
It is one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Here they attempt to play house. It is as much a home as any of them ever have.
And Memorial Day Weekend is its Champagne Launching!
Open House!
The crowds are pouring in. The seaplanes unload every three minutes, only twenty minutes from New York. The ferries (the Queen, the Duchess, the Princess, the good ships Lollipops) are over-burdened and heaving back and forth from the mainland town of Sayville, only ninety minutes from New York, as fast as royal ladies can. The Firefly buses from the city have tripled their charterings to standing room only.
For, if God were to take a ribbon of land and sand and wave His Magic Wand over it, proclaiming: “You’re beautiful!,” the result would be Fire Island Pines.
It’s a couple of miles long. It’s perhaps half a mile wide. Boardwalks crisscross each other like the neat darns
of socks. Lots are filled to overflowing with desirable homes that adjoin and tumble into each other among spreading pinery and evergreenery and all-pervading fun and love. The sand by the ocean is the whitest and the widest. The water is the bluest. The sun tans more evenly here. Since it appears more often. The stars, of course, shine much more brightly. Both up above and on this beach below. Dancing is more fun and eating is more fun and sex is much, much more fun, and strolling under the moon at three o’clock in the morning or watching tangerine sunrise or popsicle sunset—everything, EVERYTHING!, is more fun. And filled with hope. Which is more fun. For everything, naturally, must always have Hope.
“If the Outside World is ugly and not many laughs and doesn’t want us anyway, what’s wrong with making our very own special place, with our dancing and drugs and jokes and clothes and music and brotherhood and fucking and our perfectly marvelous taste!”
“You are absolutely right. There is simply nothing that is ugly at Fire Island Pines. The eyes are bathed with constant delights. Uglies and uglinesses are simply not tolerated. Go Away! Shoo!”
“We have created our own aesthetic!”
“You mean our own Ghetto.”
“This place is all about belonging, the love of friends, Togetherness!”
“And the Quest for Beauty.”
“And the search for Mr. Right.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“We play here too much.”
“Never too much.”
“I think we come here to be hurt and rejected.”