Michael Tolliver Lives

by Armistead Maupin

  “Don’t you worry about that,” said Patreese. “I got the goods on her.”

  This puzzled me. “What do you mean?”

  “Just don’t you worry.”

  Ben smiled impishly. “Did you strip for her or something?”

  “Oh Lord, honey,” Patreese replied. “She wishes.”

  That evening Lenore fixed dinner for us at the house. Sumter was there as well, still buzzing from a puppet show with his grandmother at a Christian academy in Pine Castle. It was a pleasant enough gathering, since we stayed off the hard stuff—by which I mean politics, religion, and sexuality—and my brother, touchingly, worked hard to support the illusion of a cozy family reunion. While Lenore was stacking the dishes and Sumter was watching American Idol with Ben, Irwin pulled me aside with a wink.

  “Come sit in the boat with me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nah…c’mon…it’s a nice night. The kids are watching TV.”

  This was another cradle-robbing crack, but I let it go with a curdled smile.

  “C’mon,” said Irwin, shoving me toward the latter-day ark parked in his driveway.

  We mounted the trailer and sat side by side in the padded seats, staring out at a sprinkling of stars and the brutal halogen streetlight across the cul-de-sac. Irwin looked furtively from side to side, then toward the living room window, before taking a flask from under the seat and holding it out to me. “Not a goddamn word,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Glenfiddich.”

  To me, drinking scotch is reminiscent of sucking on pennies, but Irwin had just risked hellfire two times over—drinking and cussing—in the name of brotherly bonding. The least I could do was recognize the gesture, so I took a swig from the flask and made an appreciative hissing noise. Irwin took a bigger swig, then put the flask away.

  We sat for a while in silence while a dog barked sporadically in the distance.

  “Too bad Papa’s not here,” said Irwin.

  “Is it?”

  “C’mon, bro.”

  I tried to find a way to sound less harsh. Like a lot of straight guys, Irwin had concocted myths of his father’s greatness out of pure animal need and one too many viewings of Field of Dreams. “I think we experienced him differently,” I said.

  “Remember when we were little, though? That summer he taught us to do sailor knots?”

  “I remember how much he yelled when we got them wrong.”

  “I know he could be an ornery old cuss.”

  “Ornery?” I turned to face him. “Walter Brennan was ornery. Papa was flat-out mean. Papa was…Dick Fucking Cheney.”

  Irwin gaped at me. “Who’s Walter Brennan?”

  “You know…on The Real McCoys…Grandpappy Amos.” I sang some of the theme song for him. “‘From West Virginny they came to stay, in sunny Cali-For-Nye-Ay.’”

  “Oh, yeah. The old guy with the limp.”

  “He was probably our age then,” I said darkly. “The age we are now.”

  “Nah.” Irwin considered that for a moment. “You think?”

  “A few years older maybe. Not much.”

  “Jesus.”

  The word hung there between us like a mist. Poor ol’ Irwin was probably wondering if he’d blown his monthly allowance of blasphemies.

  “I know it couldna been easy for you,” he said at last. “With your lifestyle and all. Papa could be hard sometimes.”

  “He was hard on you, too.” I remember well how the old man had screamed and yelled and threatened permanent disownment during Irwin’s bad-boy days.

  “Maybe a little,” said my brother.

  “He was even harder on Mama. She tried to leave him twice.”

  Irwin turned and blinked at me. “When?”

  “The first time…when you and I were at Camp Hemlock. She holed up at the Baptist retreat. And she was on the verge of leaving him just before he died.”

  Irwin’s mouth was hanging wide open. “How do you know this?”

  I shrugged. “She told me herself. This morning.”

  “This is nuts.”

  Another shrug. To me it was the sanest thing Mama had ever done.

  “No,” said Irwin. “I mean, she woulda said something to Lenore. We were livin’ across the road when Papa died. Mama and Lenore were really tight.”

  That’s true, I thought. They were praying for Mama’s queer son, who was dying of a biblical plague out there in sunny Cali-For-Nye-Ay.

  “I’m just telling you what she said,” I murmured.

  “Anyway…why would she just up and leave him? He had cancer.”

  “Yeah…but he’d had the operation a while back…and everybody thought he was getting better. Even Papa said he was back in fighting form.”

  Irwin frowned. “But why would she…? Do you think something happened?”

  “A wasted lifetime, I’d say. Taking a rough guess.”

  Irwin was aghast. “I never heard word one about this.”

  He looked so rattled that I put my hand on his knee in a way-too-awkward gesture of comfort. “She’s ready to go, Irwin. That tends to loosen people’s tongues.”

  He nodded numbly. We just sat there for a while, listening to that barking dog and the distant joyful noise of Ben and Sumter, yelling out their choices for American Idol. The kids were watching TV all right, and the grown-ups were facing the facts.

  I took my hand off Irwin’s knee. “I guess she just needed to tell us.”

  “She didn’t tell us,” Irwin said bitterly. “She told you.”

  I could understand how he might be hurt. He and Lenore had spent years caring for Mama, and she’d repaid them by saving her biggest secret for the absentee son from the West. For a moment I considered telling Irwin about Mama’s fears of having to live on a respirator—and the obvious wedge that had driven between her and Lenore—but I knew that would open a whole new can of worms. It was best to just leave it alone.

  “Mama’s no dummy,” I said. “I’m sure she knew that I’d tell you.”

  16

  Practical Considerations

  Back in San Francisco, we hit the ground running. Ben joined his boss and two other craftsmen at the Concourse Exhibition Center, where they were setting up for a big furniture show. Meanwhile, Jake and I were up in Pacific Heights at the French Consulate, replacing the dead portions of a boxwood hedge. This was my second job at the consulate, and I loved working there, gardening for the government that had seriously pissed off Bush by declining his war.

  Consulates aren’t my usual thing. I was referred to the job by someone I’ve known for years, a socialite named D’orothea (the apostrophe was added during her modeling days) who ran a stylish restaurant here in the late eighties. She and her wife, DeDe, knew someone on a committee at the consulate, so I was called in at the last minute to gussy the place up for a garden party. They must have liked us, because there we were again, leaning on our pickaxes in the foggy sunshine. A nice lady from the staff who looked a little like Leslie Caron (the current version) had just handed us a tray of leftover goodies.

  “Mmm,” said Jake, lifting an éclair. “Freedom pastries.” He’s a dry little dude, but every now and then he fires off a good one.

  Chuckling, I reached for a pain au chocolat. “You should take some back to your beau.”

  Jake looked at me with a cheek full of pastry. “My beau?”

  “Fuck off. I’ve been in the South.”

  “Orlando’s not the South.”

  “A lot you know.”

  “And Connor’s not my anything. We’ve only had a couple o’ dates.”

  “Connor, eh?” The new…whatever…had surfaced while I was away, but this was the first time I’d heard his name. I knew only that Jake had met the guy at Lazy Bear, the big gay shindig up at the river. They had taken a walk in the redwoods and talked about global warming. The second date, presumably, had been back in the city.

  “It’s no biggie,” said Jake. “It won�
�t go anywhere.”

  “Why not? He’s gay, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Does he know the score about you?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “And he’s cool about it?”

  Another nod. “Maybe a little too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jake turned over a bucket and sat on it, his hands dangling disconsolately between his knees. “Ever heard of Buck Angel?”

  I thought for a moment. “A country singer, right?”

  Jake shook his head. “A transman porn star. An FTM.”

  It took a while to wrap my head around that. “Okay.”

  “Connor’s totally hot for him.”

  “Hot for him in real life? Or just hot for his movies?”

  “His movies,” said Jake, sounding a little testy.

  I just didn’t get it. If Jake, an FTM himself, had a thing for a guy who liked FTM porn stars, what the hell was the problem? It looked like smooth sailing to me.

  “Help me out here,” I said.

  Jake sighed and looked up from his dangling hands. “He’s real proud of his pussy, you know.”

  “Connor?”

  “No…doofus. Buck Angel.”

  “Okay…thanks…keep going.”

  “He calls himself ‘a real man with a real pussy.’ It’s part of his whole macho image. He flaunts it.”

  The light began to dawn. I remembered the night Jake and I hooked up at the Lone Star and how utterly alienated he had seemed from the plumbing he was born with. “Don’t worry,” he’d said. “I’ll keep my pants on. I don’t like that thing any more than you do.” But Connor, apparently, was attracted to Buck Angel, at least in part, because of his vagina and the immense pride he took in it. And there, as they say, was the rub.

  “So Connor…” I began.

  “…wants to fuck me,” said Jake.

  “Okay.”

  “No…it’s not okay. I don’t wanna get fucked.” Jake gave me a bleak little smile. “At least not there.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “What should I do, boss?”

  “Have another éclair,” I said.

  I could hardly wait to get home that night to Google Buck Angel. I found a video clip that featured him in a witty scene at a laundromat. He was buff and tattooed, a completely convincing biker dude with a shaved head and a red mustache, and he was slowly feeding his clothes to a washing machine while a trio of beautiful women ogled him delightedly. When he was totally naked, he sat down to read a newspaper, so the women leaned closer to catch a glimpse of what lay beneath. It was a vagina all right.

  I was cruising a gallery of still photos when Ben ambled into the office with a mug of tea and looked at the screen. “Is that him?” he asked, leaning forward.

  “That’s him.”

  “Fuck. Look at his pecs.”

  “I know. And check out the ass. He’s got those little dents like you do.”

  “Is there a frontal shot?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I found it for him.

  “Jesus.”

  “Shaved and everything,” I said.

  “You know what?” said Ben. “That’s fucking hot.”

  I shot him a look.

  “I’m serious.”

  “I can see that.”

  “It’s a little…unsettling, but…under the right circumstances…”

  “I swear,” I muttered. “You young people today.”

  I was joking, but not really. The world is changing way too fast for me with its Podcasts and pregnant strippers and macho manginas. No sooner have I mastered one set of directions than another comes along to replace it. It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with what’s going down. My only solace lies in something Anna once told me:

  “You don’t have to keep up, dear. You just have to keep open.”

  I saw Anna two days later, when the weekend rolled around. I picked her up at the apartment and drove her to the SPCA on Sixteenth Street in search of the cat she wanted. The adoption center there is a well-designed modern facility that’s considered a model for the rest of the country. It’s what they call a “no kill” shelter, where animals are guaranteed a home until they’re adopted. The dogs live on “Lassie Lane,” each in his own sunny private apartment. They have couches, potted plants, and TVs playing cat videos. The cats have a separate “condo” facility, complete with aquariums and picture windows, so they can stare at the birds outside. I went there once between marriages, five or six years ago, thinking that a pet might make a decent stand-in for a husband. As I wandered the halls, peering through doors at recumbent wretches with longing in their eyes, I might have been back at the Ritch Street Baths, where love (or at least a warm body) was potentially waiting around the corner.

  You just had to keep looking.

  “Where do these kitties come from?” Anna was standing in one of the cat condos, stroking a handsome longhaired domestic on a perch.

  “From Animal Control, I think. They find the ones that are adoptable.”

  “What about the unadoptable?”

  I shrugged. “I guess they don’t make it here.”

  “Where is Animal Control?” she asked.

  It was barely a block away, so we were there in a matter of minutes. This was a city-run operation, the front line of animal rescue, and the difference was palpable. The rooms were more like cells than condos, and some of the animals were howling in panic and confusion. “This is more like it,” said Anna, surveying the scene.

  She found a small black cat she liked: a timid war-torn creature with a notch in its ear. A sturdy lesbian staffer let us into the room, where Anna sat in a folding chair and waited for the cat to approach her. It took a while, but it happened. The cat rubbed against Anna’s leg, emitting a feeble throaty noise that was closer to “ack” than “meow.” Satisfied, it sprang into her velvet lap and curled up to the size of a dinner plate.

  “She fits,” said Anna, smiling at the staffer.

  “We call her Squeaker,” the staffer said. “For obvious reasons.”

  Anna nodded.

  “You could name her what you want, of course.”

  Anna rubbed the cat’s chin with her forefinger.

  “She’s older than the others,” the staffer added. “Will that be a problem?”

  “It hasn’t been for me,” said Anna.

  She looked up at me warmly. “Let’s take her home.”

  By the time we’d arrived at Anna’s apartment, heavily laden with pet paraphernalia, she had already named the cat Ninotchka. She’d first seen the film as a gender-confused nineteen-year-old and since then had nursed a serious thing for Garbo. “We can call her Notch for short,” she said, “after her most distinctive feature.”

  We didn’t call her anything for a while, since she crawled under Anna’s ancestral oak armoire and refused to come out. All that remained of her was a tiny disembodied voice going “ack” from time to time, like a cricket stranded in the woodwork.

  “She’s just getting her bearings,” Anna said blithely as she poured me a glass of sherry at the kitchen table. Her hand, I noticed, was shaking a little.

  “Can I help with that?” I asked.

  “What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll spill on you?”

  I smiled at her as she poured her own drink.

  “A toast to Ninotchka,” she said, lifting her glass.

  I clinked my glass against hers. “Wherever she may be.”

  “And listen to me, dear: If I die before she does, she’s not to go back to the shelter.”

  I admit I was rattled by that. “Well, “I said, “aren’t we melodramatic this afternoon?”

  “It’s a practical consideration, dear. Don’t be silly. You just never know.”

  No, you don’t, do you? I was thinking of dear, departed Harry, the poodle I thought would surely survive me. Or other positive guys who maxed out their credit cards, counting on death to cut them a deal, but ending up broke and alive. Not to mention th
e virus-free friends who’ve recently dropped dead of heart attacks. The end can come—or not come—to anyone at anytime, and no one knew that better than Anna. Her mother had died at ninety-something, still running a brothel in Nevada; her daughter hadn’t made it far past fifty. Assumptions of any kind are a luxury we can’t afford.

  “All right,” I said. “If that happens…we’ll take her.”

  She patted my hand in gratitude.

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “I’m sure we’ve got something she can live under.”

  Anna glanced toward the armoire. “Careful, dear. She can hear you.”

  Around twilight Jake showed up, letting himself into Anna’s flat with the key she had given him. He’d brought her a bag of persimmons from the Farmers Market and a ridiculously large block of toilet paper from CostCo. He stayed for a few minutes in hopes of meeting Ninotchka, but the cat, not unlike Garbo herself, wanted to be alone.

  When Jake headed back to his own flat, Anna turned to me with a gleam in her eye that I’d come to recognize over the years. “He’s seeing someone, you know.”

  “I know,” I said evenly.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, reading my expression.

  I explained—perhaps a little too delicately, considering the audience—that Jake was not as comfortable with his “birth genitals” as his boyfriend wanted him to be.

  “I thought his boyfriend was gay,” said Anna.

  “He is. And he relates to Jake as a guy. He just likes the idea of…”

  “A vagina,” said Anna. “You can say it, dear.”

  Anna had become too much of a parent for me to discuss this issue with any degree of nonchalance. “Jake says he can’t relate to his vagina, that it’s basically…a foreign object to him. To use it having sex with his boyfriend would be like…denying his essential masculinity. If you follow me.” I smiled at her helplessly. “Are you following me?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Was it like that for you?”

  “Like what, dear?”

  “Did you feel that way about your penis?”

  “Well,” said Anna, widening her eyes above the rim of her sherry glass, “let’s just say I wasn’t especially attached to it.”