married …?”
Tex said, “My pet, he’s a New Yorker. They’re all bisexual, at least a man of his class. He’s here alone without his wife, you’re here, not an uncomely ephebe. If you’re subtle about it, he might let you demonstrate the difference between sucking and blowing.” A crazy Texas laugh, so at odds with his modulated tone, wildcatted up out of him till he capped it over by slapping himself and saying in mild admonishment, “Miss Me.” And he slid toward a potential customer and said professorially, “The Kierkegaard boom seems to be continuing, doesn’t it? Sartre’s influence, no doubt.”
I had an image of a vast city in which people ate breakfast when it was still dark out, drove to work in patient files under raw red skies, peeled off boots in fluorescent-lit offices, at home after work practiced the Hammond organ or dozed, joked about their “spare tire” and patted it fondly—a whole gray world in which I was biding my time, stupid withlonging and fear. But here, in Tex’s shop, something dangerous was glowing as bright as the waste gas flaring day and night off exhaust stacks above the factories in Gary, Indiana. I felt exhilarated by the presence of so many sophisticated adults: the woman in a black turtleneck examining Either/Or; Morris playing efficient behind the cash register and conspicuously effacing himself like a glamourpuss actress in a nun film; Tex tapping his cigarette in a Ricard ashtray, his fear of bankruptcy temporarily pushed aside; and this successful New York heterosexual who might tolerate me in his bed.
Tex introduced us. The man’s first name was Lester and the last something Russian that ended in “iak.” He wore horn-rims that he kept taking off as he spoke or examined a book, as though they served no function other than rhetorical. He wore a shaggy coat as a metonym for the hair I felt certain must cover his entire body. He had the bulging forehead, shaggy brows, and strong jaw of Beethoven in the hand-size, chalky busts that my childhood piano teacher, Herr Pogner, doled out to students as prizes.
And now Tex had proposed this New York Beethoven as a prize for me, someone I’d be allowed to service later as he reclined on the anonymous hotel bed, his thoughts winging back to the East Coast a full day before his heavier body. Surely this man had no need of me. Surely Beethoven was entirely self-reliant.
At that time I had a horrible brush cut my father had chosen for me, neither long enough to comb nor short enough to be marine-sexy, and I wore not ivy-league horn-rims but thick black glasses that girls said made me look “intellectual,” a dubious compliment in the 1950s. Although Tex had assured me only the other day that New Yorkers prized intelligence, I wasn’t sure mine could be counted on. It didn’t feel like a thing in our very thinglike world, a world where identitybegan with the choice of massive automobile (my mother was a “gay divorcee” as could be seen from her powder-blue Buick convertible with its upholstery outlined in red piping; my father was “no-comment” rich in his midnight-blue Cadillac).
I asked the man what he thought of the Kierkegaard boom. He mouthed the word boom and picked up another book. I was left standing there.
But then, despite or maybe because of the rebuff, it became more and more important to me that he be aware of me, realize that I was “feeling gay tonight.” I kept standing next to him, like a horse whose bridle has been dropped. I picked up a book and turned the pages without seeing them. I inched closer to him and let my shoulder brush his. He stood there taking it, until suddenly he looked up, frowned, put the book back, and moved away.
For the next hour I kept inching close to Lester while maintaining a space between our shoulders or stationing myself in the next aisle face-to-face with him over bookshelves. If he caught my glittering eye he’d smile the pained smile reserved for possibly
Tex said, “My pet, he’s a New Yorker. They’re all bisexual, at least a man of his class. He’s here alone without his wife, you’re here, not an uncomely ephebe. If you’re subtle about it, he might let you demonstrate the difference between sucking and blowing.” A crazy Texas laugh, so at odds with his modulated tone, wildcatted up out of him till he capped it over by slapping himself and saying in mild admonishment, “Miss Me.” And he slid toward a potential customer and said professorially, “The Kierkegaard boom seems to be continuing, doesn’t it? Sartre’s influence, no doubt.”
I had an image of a vast city in which people ate breakfast when it was still dark out, drove to work in patient files under raw red skies, peeled off boots in fluorescent-lit offices, at home after work practiced the Hammond organ or dozed, joked about their “spare tire” and patted it fondly—a whole gray world in which I was biding my time, stupid withlonging and fear. But here, in Tex’s shop, something dangerous was glowing as bright as the waste gas flaring day and night off exhaust stacks above the factories in Gary, Indiana. I felt exhilarated by the presence of so many sophisticated adults: the woman in a black turtleneck examining Either/Or; Morris playing efficient behind the cash register and conspicuously effacing himself like a glamourpuss actress in a nun film; Tex tapping his cigarette in a Ricard ashtray, his fear of bankruptcy temporarily pushed aside; and this successful New York heterosexual who might tolerate me in his bed.
Tex introduced us. The man’s first name was Lester and the last something Russian that ended in “iak.” He wore horn-rims that he kept taking off as he spoke or examined a book, as though they served no function other than rhetorical. He wore a shaggy coat as a metonym for the hair I felt certain must cover his entire body. He had the bulging forehead, shaggy brows, and strong jaw of Beethoven in the hand-size, chalky busts that my childhood piano teacher, Herr Pogner, doled out to students as prizes.
And now Tex had proposed this New York Beethoven as a prize for me, someone I’d be allowed to service later as he reclined on the anonymous hotel bed, his thoughts winging back to the East Coast a full day before his heavier body. Surely this man had no need of me. Surely Beethoven was entirely self-reliant.
At that time I had a horrible brush cut my father had chosen for me, neither long enough to comb nor short enough to be marine-sexy, and I wore not ivy-league horn-rims but thick black glasses that girls said made me look “intellectual,” a dubious compliment in the 1950s. Although Tex had assured me only the other day that New Yorkers prized intelligence, I wasn’t sure mine could be counted on. It didn’t feel like a thing in our very thinglike world, a world where identitybegan with the choice of massive automobile (my mother was a “gay divorcee” as could be seen from her powder-blue Buick convertible with its upholstery outlined in red piping; my father was “no-comment” rich in his midnight-blue Cadillac).
I asked the man what he thought of the Kierkegaard boom. He mouthed the word boom and picked up another book. I was left standing there.
But then, despite or maybe because of the rebuff, it became more and more important to me that he be aware of me, realize that I was “feeling gay tonight.” I kept standing next to him, like a horse whose bridle has been dropped. I picked up a book and turned the pages without seeing them. I inched closer to him and let my shoulder brush his. He stood there taking it, until suddenly he looked up, frowned, put the book back, and moved away.
For the next hour I kept inching close to Lester while maintaining a space between our shoulders or stationing myself in the next aisle face-to-face with him over bookshelves. If he caught my glittering eye he’d smile the pained smile reserved for possibly
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