“You don’t mind confronting the reality principle,” she said to me. “Swing?”
“No, sorry.”
“Only for yourself; I bet you pine for the young and the hung, and you’ll only have them when you can buy them. I wager you’ll die without ever having a good spontaneous fuck.”
“Give her time, give her time, Pincushionova,” Leatherette yelled, patting me, “she’s got years before menopause, and there are plenty of spontaneous fuckers in Manhattan.”
“And now, may I take your orders?” Pincushionova asked, pulling up her panties. “It’s on the house!”
A few weeks later, I saw Pincushionova at the opera and we stole seats in the first row of the orchestra, right behind the conductor’s podium. Using her program as a funnel, she blew air into his hair, getting him to turn around repeatedly. We were evicted, but not before we were hysterical.
Then came the dreary Sunday afternoon when I was to make my New York recital debut. I had won a prominent competition. The sponsors warned me not to expect an audience. It had never occurred to me to tell my fellow sneakers-in about my playing. Information about daylight hours was rarely exchanged, and one had to guess and glean at occupations, aspirations, private concerns. In any case, I never took my playing all that seriously. It had come easily to me, and I had known approbation early. Curtis, in Philadelphia, had admitted me when I was fifteen, getting me out of high school. Then, I’d been given a scholarship to Juilliard. I had a knack for playing with power and velocity, and rarely needed to practice. I had exceptional memory and there were occasions when, for some mysterious reason, I became possessed by someone else, a thin, darkly handsome, demonic virtuoso, who colored the keys with mystical fervor. But the only music I really adored was opera. The only time I applied myself musically was in reading scores of my favorite operas.
At my debut, I walked out onto the stage depressed, only to be given a big ovation by a respectable-sized audience. About half were the result of La Pincushionova’s lining up people and either finding comps for them, or sneaking them in. This enthusiastic response impressed the sponsors, and perhaps, even the Times reviewer, with the result that a career of sorts began for me.
La Pincushionova was born Inga Pincus. Her nickname came, of course, from Leatherette. Inga had wanted to be a ballerina, and had taken classes from the time she was eight or so. This despite her bow legs, flat feet and truly hideous face. She was much brighter than any of her classmates. Even when I knew her, she was amazing at spotting and remembering complex combinations. But, in every other respect, she was hopeless. She had resigned herself at sixteen to stock market speculations, and in her late teens made a respectable fortune by investing a small legacy left her by her blind grandfather.
After that, she traveled for a while. She loved sex, and took the opportunity of sleeping with every genital male who was willing. Apparently, they were legion. There were many heterosexual men who found her atrocious looks aphrodisiacal. They were men of all ages and kinds: married and single; some celebrities, a few cripples. But, while La Pincushionova loved sex with heterosexual men, she loathed them otherwise. And when she decided to have a child, she determined the father would be a gay man, preferably an artist. Here she ran into the great wall that separates straight and gay. For the gay men she wanted often disdained her—not because they were phobic or disliked women—but because, almost always, they were obsessed with looks, and with the status beautiful lovers bestow. But La Pincushionova loved a challenge, and eventually, she found a beautiful artist of genuine talent, and seduced him. He had moved on, no one knew where; La Pincushionova successfully bore his child. She bought the hole in the wall, mostly as a hangout for her friends, and here she was, encouraging Leatherette and me in our craziness, utterly in her element.
“Do more Jean Brodie!” Pincushionova cried.
“I’ve got to tip; I have to be in the vanguard of white women at the parade!” Leatherette chugged back the rest of his bourbon and started out. Pincushionova was carrying her son, who against all the odds was a pretty baby. She held him up as Leatherette turned to leave. “Spawn of Pincushionova!” He screamed, making a cross with his fingers, but the two year old gurgled and squealed at him, and he, suddenly and rather surreptitiously, kissed it. Then, hastily looking around, and ostentatiously wiping his lips, he called: “Be gay, be girlish, be Christian.” And flew out.
Pincushionova took our orders, then busied herself with her other customers. I looked over at La Golgotha and saw he was wearing a blue-and-green striped sweater, despite the heat.
“Don’t ask,” he began. “I felt fat this morning, and wanted to hide it. There’ll be all these cute guys in the parade today, and I don’t want them to see my worst side. I know it’s hard to miss it, so I wore this sweater.”
“But, La Golgotha, if one fell for you and you went home together, you’d have to undress, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course not. I’d do him and he’d go home.”
“But somebody’s who’s only looking for a blow job isn’t going to care how you look.”
“Oh yeah? When was your last free trick?”
“You’ll give yourself heat stroke. And then where will you be?”
“In the hospital with a cute intern?”
I dug into my waffles and ice cream, and he said: “Do you think I should get my face remade? At work they have this great insurance plan. And it covers all sorts of things. And my boss was telling me that her sister looked just like me, and went in and had these operations. You see, they break your jaw … can I have some of your vanilla ice cream for my pie?” I nodded. He slipped some off my plate, and continued. “Then they reset it; they’re able to do all sorts of things. They can cut out extra bone, for example, then can shave your Adam’s apple. Then they can peel away the extra gum and give you braces so your teeth’ll come into line. I think I’d have to have three or four operations, but they’d be cheap.”
“Now, La Golgotha, you really don’t look that bad. In fact, you’re aging better than anybody I know.”
“But I hate my face. I look just like Joan Sutherland, and you know I can’t stand her.”
“Do you think we would have liked Maria?” I asked him as he gobbled his Boston cream pie. We had had this conversation often in the years since La Callas’s death, but we, or at least I, found a strange comfort in repeating it. “I was re-reading her husband’s book last night. We would have understood her, don’t you think?”
“You think she would have understood us?” This was his usual response, but today, smacking his lips after his last bite of pie, he went further. “I think she hated fags.”
“She was surrounded by them!”
“She needed them. Who else had time for her and liked soap operas, westerns, and ice cream, as much as she did? But that doesn’t mean she liked them. The only people she liked were rich old straight men who were uncircumcised. We don’t know anybody like that. We better get going.”
WE ROSE TO LEAVE. He still had his sweater on. I shook my head. La Pincushionova rushed over to kiss and wish us well. “I’m going to take a taxi down to the Village later this afternoon. I’ll see you then.”
La Golgotha leaned over and absently kissed her son, muttering: “Spawn of Pincushionova!” We walked down to Columbus Circle to join the parade.
We had hoped to meet up with our friends, and maybe march with them, but, of course, the scene was one of utter chaos when we arrived, and we saw no one we knew.
“I’m feeling kind of nervous,” I said to La Golgotha.
“So am I. I just hope I don’t get made fun of too much today.”
“But that’s not supposed to happen … is it?”
“It’s not supposed to happen in real life, but it does all the time. People throw garbage at me or scream remarks when I’m riding my bicycle. They giggle at me at work. Last week, when we went to that movie, those queens on line in front of us were laughing at us for being fat and interested in them
. Why do you think this will be any different?”
“Well, let’s hope for genuine solidarity. Shall we start here?”
“Might as well,” he said. We joined a group of marchers.
The march started, and we ambled along, but there was something strange about the group of men around us. They seemed to be eyeing Golgotha and me. I felt, more than saw, their discomfort. They were all very blond, very built, in tight T-shirts, some artfully tom. They all wore shorts, with shining white socks and expensive-looking, rather baroque sneakers that had been painted an ugly shade of purple. I caught Golgotha’s eye, he had been staring at these men. I could tell he was simultaneously in heaven and in hell.
Finally, the slightly older man who was heading this section jogged back to us. “I beg your pardon,” he panted aerobically, “but what the fuck do you two think you are doing?”
“Marching?” I answered hopefully.
“We are the Lavender Sons of Body Beautiful section. You and your pet are giving us a bad aura. You mind shoving off?”
“Well … ,” I began but he cut me off with a loud snort.
“No well about it, honey. We take obesity as a personal insult. And just look at your shoes! Where did you get them? On sale at the Buster Brown’s in Bangladesh? Our athletic shoes are the foundation of our solidarity, that’s why we broke our asses last night, painting them lavender! See? SEE?!” He began kicking up his feet in rhythm, higher and higher, obviously with the idea of pounding his lavender sneakers into my head. “Now, get the hell out of here before we cripple you!”
I grabbed La Golgotha without a word and hustled him to the section in front.
“They were so beautiful,” he sighed. “I knew it was too good to last.”
“They were dumb jocks; and jocks are jocks, gay or not. In fact, jocks are all the same sex. And that’s impotent from exhaustion!”
“That makes me feel better,” he said wistfully, looking back over his shoulder and tripping.
“I’d like to see them all crucified!” I spat.
“Oh, yes,” he breathed longingly.
We marched for a time, getting closer to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, where we had been told we could expect a counter-demonstration.
It still didn’t feel right to me. I said to Golgotha: “I feel strange here.”
“So do I,” he said, uneasily.
We were about to move on, when a woman marched up beside us. “We appreciate your support,” she said, “but me and my sisters have been talking about you two pigs, and look, men are men are men, gay or not. You get me? So move out!”
“But,” I said to her, “we’re just looking for a place to march.”
“So you’re not supporters?! Then die, you pricks. On the double!”
“Come on, Golgotha,” I yelled, and we ran as fast as we could, nearly knocking over a baby policeman, who had evidently been instructed to obstruct the parade.
“Hey, watch it, you fat fags!” he screamed.
From our newest phalanx, we looked back and saw the banner of the group we had been marching with. It was being waved proudly aloft in front of their group. We hadn’t seen it since we had approached from the back. It read: Third World Lesbian Sado-Masochists.
I called La Golgotha’s attention to the banner. “No wonder they didn’t like us,” he said. “We’re not third world.”
We were in a ragtag section, it seemed. Those around us looked tired and sick. Many were holding on to one another. I knew we had stumbled into the section of those suffering from AIDS. I was about to turn to Golgotha when I saw someone I knew. My heart sank. I stared, hoping it wasn’t he.
He saw me looking at him and smiled. His teeth were broken and discolored. He approached Golgotha and me and marched in step with us. “Yes, it’s me,” he said. “I could see you wondering. It’s obvious you don’t have it yet. You should move out of here, you and your friend.”
La Golgotha was looking at us; he knew who I was talking to.
“This is—”
“I know,” Golgotha said. “I have some of your records. I like them.”
“Thanks. There won’t be any more. I don’t have the energy, now. Oh, they’re stopping us again. You should move on,” he said to me, “or some fool will think you have it.” He coughed, then continued, “You still have a career don’t you?”
“Not really,” I replied. “I thought you still did.”
“I started losing engagements as soon as it got around. Then, when I didn’t think I’d get through March, I had to cancel everything. In April, for the first time, I started losing my memory, then my coordination. I can’t practice, even. I miss it so much. Don’t you?”
“Oh, no. I was never happy concertizing. I was never as successful as you, not with the cognoscenti. Anyway, I hated to practice …”
He smiled, then self-consciously covered his mouth. They let us start up again. “I remember,” he said with a laugh, coughing, “I remember how you hated to practice, and you never fooled Maestro. You could fool everybody else, but he’d catch the smallest mistake and go crazy. He thought you had a great talent.”
“Oh, come on,” I said, “a knack, maybe.”
“No, a talent. I can admit it, now. That’s why we all hated you. You were fat and mean and arrogant, we just disliked you for that, but it was the combination of laziness and talent we hated.”
Another marcher came up behind him and hugged him. He eyed Golgotha and me suspiciously, but my friend kept on talking to me. “You remember … ?”
We both laughed. I did indeed remember. We had met at Curtis, in Philadelphia. He was a few years older than I, and brilliant. His musicianship had everyone at Curtis in awe. And he was openly gay, the first I had ever met. I knew about myself and had dirty fantasies, but hid behind my bulk and clumsiness. I was a desperately shy and hopelessly unengaging sixteen year old, utterly without friends. He was always nice to me, though. And there was something—I hate to use the word—liberating about his attitude. I was so tired of provincial Italian-American judgments. Not only about sexuality, that was the least of it, but about everything. I didn’t know how to breathe, and he showed me how. I was also desperately, madly homy, and he sensed that too.
One day he saw me in the lobby, flopping around. “How do you expect to make a career when you act like that? You know what you need? You need to get laid!”
“How?”
“What do you mean, how?”
“I live at home. I don’t have any money for a hotel.”
“What do you think the practice rooms are for?”
“The practice rooms?”
“You never practice in them, God knows, but you have the same access to them we all do. You can lock the door, use them all night. No one ever monitors them. You could sign up a room, sneak a trick in through the back way, lock the door behind you, and fuck like bunnies as long as you wanted.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. What’s your problem? You have to be pubescent. You can’t have pimples without pubic hair, can you?”
“But where would I meet somebody? And who would be interested in me? I’m so … well, you know.”
“Oh, I see. Well, that’s a tough one. But maybe …”
At that point, Maestro came back, grunted at the two of us, and we followed him into his studio, but I kept looking at my friend during the lesson. Eventually, he arranged for me to meet a twenty-year-old hustler. He paid (the rates were low in those days, at least in Philadelphia) in exchange for my taking him to a small family restaurant in South Philly to which only locals had easy access. As it happened, I was a local celebrity, and we got a sumptuous meal for nothing.
I’ll always be grateful to him. The hustler was Lochinvar-like. I was terrified he would act like the boys in gym class. In the century before I was able to leave high school and study piano all day, I had become very experienced with, but not inured to their taunts. But no, we locked the door of practice room thirty, and he sedu
ced me. I can imagine the horror of the Pat Buchanans of this world at my initiation, but my friend, rather than leading me to hell, showed me a bit of heaven. I was full of self-hatred, of course. What fat child isn’t? And don’t mention guilt—scratch an ex-Catholic! And it was worse to love classical music. And far worse to be slightly effeminate and hopeless in every ritual of the straight world. And then to be a performer, why, even when they applauded, I felt a freak. By stage managing a sexual experience that was neither painful nor ugly, that was completely free of the clumsy fumbling of guilt-ridden adolescents, he taught me that there was nothing sinister about a little pleasure.
The next day, I seemed to be glowing; even Maestro noticed. My friend asked me how it had gone.
“It was wonderful. But something worries me.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, it was paid for.”
“So?”
“But that’s supposed to be … well …”
“Look at it this way, isn’t it better to shop than to bum?”
Eventually, though we were rivals, we went out for evenings together. I met people. I wasn’t so alone. And I saw what life was among humans. It was ugly and complex, suddenly beautiful, then infuriating, and always to be treasured and grasped, not fled from as my parents and their parents had fled, into the malnourished safety of platitude. Heavy loneliness and sullen rage, my boon companions since consciousness set in, disappeared for a time. My playing improved, became freer. Even Maestro thought so. And my friend opened me to music. The piano works of Boulez, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Crumb, forced me to think, to confront the whole idea of sense in sound through one player’s touch in ways I could never have imagined. I’ll never forget his rebuking me for thinking the Debussy etudes boring as well as unplayable, by sitting down and playing them as though they were effortlessly spun poetry. He opened my ears. As a result, I manhandled Schumann and Chopin less, and found colors in Schubert, and solutions to Beethoven that were mine and interesting. What little success I had, I owed to him.
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