I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore (13 page)

After that, there was little for me to do but take my groceries home, sit down at my desk, open the notebook, and distress my neighbor.

*   *   *

Carlo did throw Daniel over, spang in the middle of winter, completely upsetting everybody’s schedule. Our friend would be available when he should have been occupied, the droop when he ought to be the hedonist, and chaotically in doubt when he owed us the directness of a pilot. I had not realized before how much a guide Carlo had been, trading his lack of sophistication for our hunger for data on sensuality. We taught him how to bluff his way through brunch; he taught us how to play a bar. If the Circuit is ice, Carlo had slipped; now he was breaking through and would drown. “Tell me what to do,” he had said—
Carlo
needed telling!

He certainly didn’t need any tutorials in how to drop a lover. He believes catastrophic announcement works best, and drops mates the way gunfighters of the Old West dropped their challengers: he shoots them down in cold blood. As far as I can see, he doesn’t give off warning signs of recalcitrance or hostility, or arrive late for dinner, eyes avid after some rebellious tryst, or become inexplicably unavailable. No. It is as if it has suddenly occurred to him that he doesn’t want a lover anymore. And he will turn to his innamorato and say, “Would you mind if we didn’t see each other for a while?” He’s very nice about it, almost gentle, once he detonates his bomb. He just means to announce that he’s had enough, thank you, enough.

But every so often we run across someone who doesn’t suit our behavior patterns—indeed, one who plans to overwhelm them. For the French, it may be the German army. For writers, it may be your editor’s replacement, who ushers you into a third-rate café, smiles engagingly, and says, “There’s a problem.” For gays, it may be the man who doesn’t take no for an answer.

Carlo’s no had never been challenged, because, frankly, the man is so good-looking that most other men accept his rejection as their due—the sole instance, I believe, in which gay is inferior to straight. The average heterosexual man, turned down for a dance, a date, or a fling, tends to think the woman had made a foolish mistake. Gays in a comparable position mope or frantically double the weights in their workout. Perhaps Carlo got his first no this time around because Daniel is even better-looking than Carlo; perhaps because Daniel really is dangerous; perhaps because it was high time. Anyway, Daniel did not take no for his answer.

“He’s after me,” said Carlo, walking into my apartment one afternoon, as you might say, “The grocery clerk overcharged me.”

“After you?”

“He won’t let me alone. Daniel. He says if I don’t talk it out with him he’s going to…” I was trying to look blasé, but I don’t wear dark glasses in the apartment and my eyes gave me away. Carlo stopped; he has no more desire to become Dish of the Week than you or I, boys and girls.

I thought of all those sizeable sweethearts Carlo had acquired—Wayne Hibbard, the only man I’ve met who cries when his favorites don’t win Oscars; or Scooter Smith, so kind-hearted he has had mercy sex with some of the most atrocious men in New York; or Big Steve Bosco, so ebullient that he hugs strangers on the street. Daniel was broader, cooler, and more judgmental than they, and I could easily see him refusing the role of the discard.

“He’s tough, isn’t he?” I asked, though it wasn’t a question.

“Do you know what he did? The night of the Blue Party, we were going back to my place, and at the corner of my block this guy came up at us with a knife.”

My face must have been too blank, for Carlo decided to backtrack. “The Blue Party, remember? When Frank Donner came in Arabian pajamas and Eddie Palladino grabbed his—”

“I wasn’t there.”

“How could you not be there?”

“Probably because my pen was flying and I didn’t want to throw away an evening of A-list work just to go to another night of…” I trailed off. He doesn’t approve and he never will, no matter how I explain it.

“I’ve been to so many parties,” I tell him.

“I know, Bud. But each one—”

“Is not as interesting to me as what I can do at my desk.”

He shakes a finger at me.

“You and my neighbor should get together,” I tell him. “She thinks I should get out more, too.”

“Sometimes I don’t think I can talk to you anymore.”

“A guy with a knife,” I prompt.

“Yeah.” He nods. “Yeah. And he was whispering. Listen, it was like … like ‘Some for me, now.’ Like that: ‘Some for me.’” Carlo paused, shifted position, brooded. I always take my desk chair and leave the big black armchair with the ottoman for the guests, giving me the chance to tower over them in an academic manner, like a psychiatrist. I might lay in a supply of threatening little pads and take up saying, “Any dreams lately?”

“Well, so Daniel did this … maneuver, or something. I didn’t see it, exactly. Something like karate. Turning and kicking. And the guy went down like … like he had never been there. Didn’t even scream. And Daniel picked up the guy’s knife and said, ‘Let’s go,’ and he took my arm and he kind of … pulled me along. About seven doors down the street he threw the knife into a garbage can. And I was so hot for him, then. I was, okay. God, he’s such a
man.
But I don’t…”

This was key.

“… I don’t want him asking me for any more details.”

“What?”

“Well, he does!”

“About what?”

“My family. And where I’m from. You know. Faggot questions. He won’t tell me what he does but he wants to know what I was like in sports when I was a kid. That’s really neat!”

“All right, all right.”

“Yeah, I really want to talk about it, don’t I?”

“All right!”

“Yeah.” He went over to the piano and picked out the right hand of the
Moonlight Sonata.
“‘Some for me,’” he repeated, shaking his head. “You know why everyone’s in San Francisco? Because this town is a madhouse. It is a
madhouse!
”

“So I hear. Eric says—”

“Just listen, okay?”

I shut up.

“He kisses me…” Carlo regarded me, considering. Maybe he shouldn’t tell me. But he goes on: “He holds me down when he kisses me. On top of me. Listen.” He left the piano, gazing at his hands, trying to show me what Daniel’s hands do. “He kisses like he’s eating you up—or no,
drinking
me, gulping me down. Like … I’m a glass of punch and he’s going to drink me and then go out for seconds somewhere.” He turned his hands over. “No. No … Only me. He only drinks me. That’s what makes it so … I can’t even breathe. When I pull away to gasp for air he grabs my head and holds me there and goes on drinking me up. He won’t let me breathe!”

No, I was wrong before.
This
was key.

“When I first met him, you know what I thought he was? Don’t laugh.”

I waited.

“A knight. You know, in shining armor? A
hero.
”

“Isn’t he, now?”

Carlo showed me his hands again, how they hold him down. “If he’s a hero, why won’t he tell me what he does?”

“Maybe he wants you to guess.”

“‘Some for me!’ Do you believe that?”

“Meanwhile, if you don’t see him again, what will he do?”

“Oh, he’s just bugging me. He’s making a case.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Of what?”

“So you aren’t.” But your days of carefree love are over, I thought, and you will know fear in time—because Chatty Cock is no match for Murder Cock.

*   *   *

I knew a little fear myself when Daniel called me to ask if we could meet. I feared scanting the etiquette by talking to him—it was Carlo, after all, to whom I owed fealty.

“I think not,” I said.

“In the open,” he urged. “Wherever you want. What could happen?”

I agreed, finally, to connect with him downtown in Footlight Records, a treasure house of old collectibles and an ideal meeting haunt because the later my associate, the more time I have to parse my sections of devotion. Records are my vice. But Daniel was standing outside when I got there. I dragged him in, though he was obviously eager to talk, and—while I don’t enjoy Collecting with someone breathing over my shoulder, whether of or against the sport—I tried to make a game of it.

“Look!” I said, holding up an album. “The June Bronhill
Bitter Sweet!
”

Daniel put a gloved hand on my shoulder and I turned around. He looked at me; only that, but that sufficed. So I took a deep breath and went outside with him to find some lunch. Just don’t charm me, I silently warned him. I’m doing this for Carlo.

Well, you know these dangerous men can be very attractive across a table from someone they want something from. Daniel wanted me to give a dinner so he could get hold of Carlo again. “I just want to talk to him,” he said.

“You’ll have to tell him what you do.”

“I intend to. I always meant to, right along. But he’s delicate. He doesn’t look it, but he is. The trouble with Carlo is, he … he lacks inexperience. He never learned the hard way, like most of us. He likes the same thing every time. The easy thing. And he could be so … so
wild.
” Daniel spills this out calmly as he sips coffee. Sure, let’s all talk about our sex lives. “He’s a very hot man. But he stabilizes. Now, I say the interesting thing about taking a lover is letting him expand your sensuality.
De
stabilize. Love isn’t forever, anyway. Why not make an adventure of it?”

So that was the missing piece after all: Carlo didn’t want to be on his back with someone who gets so much out of being on top. It’s innocuous, even amusing, with a switch-hitting buddy. But with Murder Cock one may feel plundered.

“The odd thing,” he went on, “is when I first picked him up, I took him for a man who would do anything. He looks like a sort of degenerate saint.”

“You’re too smart for him.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“You’re like a lot of people I know. You verbalize.”

“Don’t you?”

“Sure. And I worry Carlo, too. You see, he thinks it’s bad luck to know about something. He thinks it’s good luck to do it.”

“I can’t live that way.”

“Morals, politics, death, and feelings.”

He sipped coffee and looked at me, considering what occult antecedent might have inspired that declaration. “I’m a policeman,” he said.

“I don’t catch the metaphor.”

“Literally. That’s what I do.”

I was startled silent for a good twenty seconds. Then all I could say was “Good grief.”

“See?” he said. “That’s why I keep it a secret. I’m the best friend of all the men I have no use for, and the natural enemy of all the ones I like. Don’t get me wrong: I’m on the right side. I just don’t care for my teammates.”

“That’s politics and morals.”

“You can joke about it because you don’t live it. You’re not on a team. You work alone.”

Except for my neighbor, I thought.

“But, I’ll tell you, everyone who sees me in uniform thinks I’m a hundred things I’m not and refuses to imagine the things I am. Think about it. What if you had to go around as a…” He searched.

“A commissar?”

He eyed me sagely. “We understand each other, don’t we?”

“Not entirely. Policeman are a universal gay fantasy. Half the culture dreams of being arrested and treated to the protocols of interrogation. You have it made.”

“That’s just it, right there,” he said heavily. “I’m not a fantasy. I’m a man, like you, like Carlo, like your fathers and brothers. I don’t want to have to arrest my lovers.”

“You’re a person.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s feelings. Three down, one to go.”

“Look, I’m proud of what I do, and I’m tired of trying to talk my fellow gays into being proud for me. Look…”

“Look.”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“If you hadn’t told me this, I wouldn’t have done. I have to respect what Carlo wants. But I believe he’ll want to see you again, on one condition—you have to come in uniform.”

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

He thought it over. “What could I do in uniform that I can’t do out of it?”

“For one thing, you could have arrested the man with the knife instead of just neutralizing him.”

He folded his hands on the table and looked at me.

“Is that my neck between your fingers?” I asked.

“I just want to tell you one thing. I’m very fond of Carlo. He’s a very, very beautiful man. A beautiful man. If this doesn’t work, I may want to neutralize you.”

“I wonder if a New York City police officer should speak to a citizen of New York in that manner.”

“Policemen are like everyone else. We break our oaths to make an effect.”

“Anyway, that’s all four, isn’t it?”

*   *   *

So, on a night that timed to Daniel’s schedule of patrols and breaks, I gave a dinner, the only one I give: Tree Tavern frozen pizza, spruced up with extra cheese, ketchup, oil, and oregano, and martyred in a raging oven for dark crust. I think the recipe (my mother’s) is older than I am. With the most banal possible green salad, a boisterous dessert, and a lot of liquor, it’ll do; anyway the people I know like pizza.

If Carlo was uncommunicative before the meal and taciturn during it, he was dead silent when Daniel walked in. In fact, he was stunned. Indeed, Daniel was a policeman. In his blues and accoutrements he looked … well, yes, stunning—like a knight. A hero. Dennis Savage exhaled audibly and Little Kiwi whispered, “Oh, yikes!” Diplomatically, I rattled on and then ran down, and there was absolute quiet. The rest of us watched Carlo, who looked like the little boy who would pray, “Oh God, make me good, but not yet.”

“Are those handcuffs real?” Little Kiwi finally asked Daniel.

“They sure are. Want to try them?”

“I’m not allowed to. I’m glad you’re back, though. You’re not dangerous, are you, Daniel?”

“Only to bad guys.”

Bauhaus doesn’t fit under my couch, so on his unfortunately frequent visits he sits in the bathroom and barks if anyone tries to get in, or if anyone doesn’t. Now he barked.

“Do you want me to tell you the alias of Inspector Wilberforce’s canine wonder,” Little Kiwi asked, “never yet revealed?”