“Awwriiiight, mama!”
It was Ikey St. Jacques, grinning like a jack-o'-lantern and cute as the devil in his tiny red-and-white workout suit. His hands were outstretched, Jolson-style, and one of them held a lighted cigar.
She tried to stay cool. “Uh … hi. You’re Ikey … right?”
“I knew it,” he said with a husky chuckle. “That fool lied to me.”
“Who?”
“That candy-ass producer out there. He knows I like big mamas, so he lied to me, the sucker! I knew you was in here.” He took a long drag on his cigar and looked her up and down. His head was no higher than her waist. “I saw you on Carson. I said to my agent, that is one foxy lady.”
She wasn’t buying this at all. “Look, junior …” She flailed toward the cigar. “Those things make me sick. The entrance was cute, but the bit is over.”
He regarded her dolefully for a moment, then went to the table, reached up and stubbed out the cigar.
“Thank you,” she said, extending her hand. “Now … I’m Wren Douglas.”
He shook her hand. “Sorry ‘bout that.”
“Hey … no biggie.”
“I come on strong sometimes. Don’t know why.”
She was beginning to feel like a bully. “Well, it was just that cigar. You ought not to smoke those, even for a joke. It’ll—”
“Stunt my growth?” He laughed raucously. “I’m seventeen years old, lady!”
“Wait a minute. Says who?”
“Says me and my birth certificate. And my mama.”
She drew back and studied him. “Nah. Sorry. No way. I’m not buyin’ that.”
“You think I’m lyin'?”
She shifted her weight to one hip and appraised him coolly. “Yeah. I think you’re lyin'.”
He glared at her defiantly and shoved his sweat pants down to his knees.
She took stock of the point he was making and responded as calmly as possible. “O.K…. Fine … we’ve established your maturity.”
The kid wouldn’t budge, arms still folded across his chest. “Say I’m seventeen!”
She glanced anxiously toward the door. “Pull your pants up, Ikey.”
“Say I’m seventeen.”
“Ikey, if somebody walks in here we could be arrested for … I don’t know what. All right, big deal. You’re seventeen. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
A half-lidded smile bloomed on the kid’s face as he returned his sweat pants to their rightful position.
Wren clapped her hand to her chest and heaved a little whinny of relief. “God,” she muttered to no one in particular.
Ikey moved to the table and picked up a sweet roll almost as big as his face.
“It seems to me,” said Wren, now angered by his nonchalance, “you could find a subtler way to tell people.”
The kid licked the edge of the pastry, then shrugged. “Saves talk.”
“Don’t give me that.”
Another shrug.
“You like doing it.”
He set the roll down and fixed her with the same sweet spaniel gaze he used on his television father. “Lady, if you spent your whole fucking life impersonating a seven-year-old, you’d rip your pants off every now and then, too.”
She smiled, realizing his predicament for the first time. “Yeah; I probably would.”
“I’m a fan of yours,” he added. “I don’t wanna fight with you.”
She was embarrassed now. “Look … everything’s cool, Ikey.”
“Isaac.”
“Isaac,” she echoed.
“Can I light my cigar now?”
“No way.” She softened this ultimatum with another smile. “I really can’t handle ‘em, Isaac.”
He nodded. “Are you mad ‘cause I called you foxy?”
“Not a bit. I appreciate that.”
“Well, I appreciate what you’re doing for … people who don’t fit the mold.”
In half a dozen words, he had explained the bond that linked them; she was unexpectedly moved. “Hey … what the hell. I like doing it. I mean, most of the time. This is the end of a tour, so I’m a little antsy, I guess. You know how that can be.” She wanted this to sound like a confidence shared with another professional.
He emitted a froggy chuckle. “Yeah.”
“I watch your show all the time,” she said.
This seemed to please him. “You do?”
“I think you’re amazingly believable. Most TV kids are so cloying, you know … too cute for words. Plus, I like your scripts.”
He gave her a businesslike nod. “They’re gettin’ better, I think.” He hesitated a moment, then said: “Look, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” she said.
“I don’t want you to get pissed off again.”
She smiled at him. “I’ve over that now. Don’t worry.” As a matter of fact, she felt completely comfortable around him. He’d done nothing but tell her the truth. “Go ahead,” she said. “Ask away.”
After another significant pause, he said: “Can I put my hand … in there?” He was pointing to her cleavage.
She pursed her lips and scrutinized his face. That spaniel look was doing its number again. “For how long?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Twenty seconds.”
“Ten,” she counteroffered.
“O.K.”
“And no jiggling.” She bent over to afford him easier access. “Make it quick. We’ve got a show to do.”
Isaac’s arm was engulfed to the elbow when the door to the green room swung open. The dumbfounded woman who stood there was the woman whose likeness adorned the walls. “Oh … excuse me. I …”
“Hey,” said Wren. “No problem.” She removed Isaac’s arm with a single movement and straightened up. “I lost an earring.” She reached down and gave the kid’s shoulder a pat. “Thanks just the same, Ikey. I’ll look for it later.”
The television hostess became a stalagmite, then cast her stony gaze in Isaac’s direction. “The director wants to see you on the kitchen set, Ikey.”
The kid said “Yo” and strode toward the door. He gave Wren a high sign as he left.
“Well,” said Wren, turning back to the anchoroid, “you must be Mary Ann.”
The woman wouldn’t melt. “You must be sick,” she said.
“Now wait a minute.”
“I’ve done shows on child molestation, but I never thought I would—”
“That child,” said Wren, “is seventeen years old!”
“Well, I don’t see what … Who told you that?”
“He did.”
Thrown, the anchoroid thought for a moment, then said: “And I suppose that makes it all right.”
“No,” Wren replied evenly. “That makes it none of your business.”
Member in Good Standing
THE SHOW HADN’T GONE AS MICHAEL HAD EXPECTED. Instead of a freewheeling romp, there’d been stiffness and long silences and palpable tension in the air. The trouble had begun, he suspected, when Mary Ann introduced Wren Douglas to the studio audience as “the woman who’s shown America how to make the most of a weight problem.”
Whatever the cause, something had soured the interview beyond repair, so he decided against requesting an introduction after the show. Mary Ann had already obliged him with introductions to Huey Lewis, Scott Madsen and Tina Turner. There was nothing to be gained by abusing the privilege.
Besides, it was eleven-fifteen, and he had a nursery to run.
The place had been his since 1984, when his partner, Ned Lockwood, had moved back to L.A. The exhilaration of ownership had been a new experience for Michael, prompting him to renovate and expand beyond his wildest imaginings. He had built a new greenhouse for the succulents, then enlarged the office, then changed the name from God’s Green Earth to Plant Parenthood.
The only problem with being sole proprietor, he had long ago discovered, was that you couldn’t call in sick to yourself. To make matters worse, his three employe
es at the nursery (two other gay men and a lesbian) knew subtle ways to trigger his guilt whenever he showed up late for work.
Actually, he relished his time at the nursery. The busyness of business helped him to forget how much he missed what had come to be known as “the unsafe exchange of bodily fluids.”
If he remained idle too long, his euphoric past could creep up on him like a Frenchman pushing postcards, a portfolio of fading erotica fully capable of breaking his nostalgic heart.
It wasn’t just an epidemic anymore; it was a famine, a starvation of the spirit, which sooner or later afflicted everyone. Some people capitulated to the terror, turning inward in their panic, avoiding the gaze of strangers on the street. Others adopted a sort of earnest gay fraternalism, enacting the rituals of safe-sex orgies with all the clinical precision of Young Pioneers dismantling their automatic weapons.
Lots of people found relief on the telephone, mutually Master-charging until Nirvana was achieved. Phone sex, Michael had observed, not only toned the imagination but provided men with an option that had heretofore been unavailable to them: faking an orgasm.
Michael himself had once faked an orgasm over the phone. Unable to come, yet mindful of his manners, he had growled out his ecstasy for at least half a minute, pounding on his headboard for added effect. His partner (someone in Teaneck, New Jersey) had been so audibly appreciative of the performance that Michael fell asleep afterwards feeling curiously satiated.
Most of the time, though, he ended up in bed with the latest issue of Inches or Advocate Men, his genitals cinched in the cord of his terry-cloth bathrobe.
He had learned several interesting things about pornography. Namely: (1) it wore out; (2) it reactivated itself if you looked at it upside down; and (3) you could recycle it if you put it away for several months.
Unlike most of his friends, he did not have sex regularly with a VCR. He had done that once or twice, but only at a JO buddy’s house, and their timing had been so hopelessly out of sync that his only memory was of lunging through the sheets in search of the fast-forward button.
“What are you doing?” his buddy had asked when the video images accelerated and Al Parker and friends became the Keystone Cops.
Michael had replied: “I’m looking for that cowboy near the end.”
And this was what bothered him about owning a VCR. If that cowboy was yours for the taking—yours at the flip of a switch—what was to stop you from abandoning human contact altogether?
He had taken the test in April, and it had come back positive. That is, he was carrying the virus or had already fought it off, one or the other. According to some doctors, this gave him (and a million others) a 10 to 25 percent chance of developing a full-blown case, but other doctors disagreed.
What did doctors know?
All he knew was that his health was fine. No night sweats or sluggishness. No unusual weight loss or mysterious purple blotches. He ate his vegetables and popped his vitamins and kept stress to a minimum. For a man who’d lost twelve friends and a lover in less than three years, he was doing all right.
Just the same, a mild case of the flu or the slightest furriness of the tongue was now capable of filling him with abject terror. The other paramount emotion, grief, became more and more unpredictable as the numbers grew. His tears could elude him completely at the bedside of a dying friend, only to surface weeks later during a late-night Marilyn Monroe movie on TV.
And people talked of nothing else. Who has it. Who thinks he has it. Who’s positive. Who couldn’t possibly be negative. Who will never take the test. Who’s almost ready to take the test.
To get away from the tragedy—and the talk—some of his friends had moved to places like Phoenix and Charlottesville, but Michael couldn’t see the point of it. The worst of times in San Francisco was still better than the best of times anywhere else.
There was beauty here and conspicuous bravery and civilized straight people who were doing their best to help. It was also his home, when all was said and done. He loved this place with a deep and unreasoning passion; the choice was no longer his.
When he reached the nursery, a renegade Pinto was parked in his usual place out front. He spotted Polly among the arborvitae, clipping a can for a customer, and tapped the horn gently to get her attention. “Someone we know?” he hollered, pointing toward the offending car.
His young employee set her clippers down and wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “David’s new squeeze,” she yelled back. “I’ll get him to move it.”
He could see another parking space at the end of the block, so he decided not to make an issue of it. “That’s O.K.,” he told her. “Don’t break up the lovebirds.” It was lunchtime, after all, and David and his new beau were undoubtedly in the greenhouse making goo-goo eyes over Big Macs.
He parked and walked back to the nursery in the toasty sunshine. Polly was on the sidewalk now, hefting the arborvitae into the back of the customer’s station wagon. “Sorry about that. Didn’t know you’d be back so soon.”
“No problem,” he said.
Brushing the dirt off her hands, Polly followed him to the office. “How did it go? Did you bring me a lipstick print?”
“Shit,” he murmured, remembering his promise.
“You didn’t,” she said calmly. “That’s O.K.”
“I didn’t meet her,” he explained. “She and Mary Ann had rotten chemistry, so I decided not to risk it.”
Polly shrugged.
“You’re disappointed,” he said. “I’m really sorry.” So far she had cajoled lipstick prints from Linda Evans, Kathleen Turner and Diana Ross.
“Was she gorgeous?” Polly asked, leaning dreamily against the cash register.
“Yeah,” he answered. “In a Fellini sort of way.” He thought it wise to downplay the thrill of it all.
Polly sighed. “She’s welcome in my movie any ol’ day.”
He amused himself by picturing the confrontation: the voluptuously rotund Wren Douglas putting the moves on pretty Polly Berendt, muscular yet petite in her faded green coveralls. “Well,” he said, “she shows every sign of being hopelessly het.”
“So?” said Polly. “I’m no separatist.”
He laughed. The new lesbian adventurism was a source of endless amusement to him. If gay men could no longer snort and paw the ground in fits of purple passion, it seemed only fitting that gay women could. Somebody had to keep the spirit alive.
Polly slipped her hand around his waist and pressed her freckled face against his shoulder. “I want a wife, Michael. I want one bad.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Is it because I’m twenty-two? Is that what it is? Were you this way when you were twenty-two?”
“I was that way when I was thirty-two, but I got over it.”
She tilted her face toward him. “My friend Kara went to a psychic last month, and she said that Kara’s true love would show up within the month … and that she’d be driving a golden chariot.” “Right.”
“I swear this is true. Kara met this girl called Weegie last month and they’ve been inseparable ever since.”
“What about the golden chariot?”
“She was driving a Yellow Cab!”
He snorted.
“Kara called a cab from DV8 and Weegie drove up, and that was it. Wedded bliss. Me … I look and look and end up with some former battered wife who takes me to see The Women at the Castro and hisses at all the sexist parts.”
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.
She hesitated, then said: “Cuz I wanna go to Wimminwood.”
“Where?”
“A women’s music festival up at the river.”
He shrugged. “Go. You’ve got vacation coming. What’s the problem?”
“Well … it’s next week, when you’re on vacation.”
He saw her point; that left only David and Robbie to run the nursery.
“I really wanna go, Michael.”
“Sure, but ?
??”
“I’ve talked to Kevin,” she added. “He says he’ll be glad to stand in for me.”
“Who’s Kevin?”
She jerked her head toward the greenhouse. “David’s new squeeze. He’s had experience.”
“He works at Tower Records, I thought.”
“Yeah, but he’s off next week … and he used to do gardening for an admiral when he was in the navy, and … C’mon, Michael, don’t make me miss this opportunity.”
He smiled at her. “Thousands of half-naked women going berserk in the redwoods.”
“No!” she protested. “Some of them are totally naked.”
He laughed. “You don’t sound like somebody looking for a wife.”
Actually, she reminded him of himself years ago, relishing the prospect of a weekend of lust at the National Gay Rodeo in Reno.
David’s new boyfriend stayed at Plant Parenthood for the rest of the afternoon, making himself useful in the fertilizer shed. He was industrious, cheerful and seemingly honest. Michael saw no reason why he wouldn’t serve as an adequate substitute for Polly.
At four twenty-five, Teddy Roughton called. “It’s late notice,” he said, “but there’s a JO party at Joe’s tonight. I thought you’d wanna know.”
Michael felt faintly embarrassed. “Thanks, Teddy. I think I’ll pass.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Those things make me feel … self-conscious or something.”
Teddy clucked his tongue like a disapproving English matron. “Foolish, foolish boy …”
“I know, but …”
“He’s got brilliant visuals, Michael. That chap from the Muscle System is coming.”
Michael thought for a moment. “The one with …?”
“That’s riiight. And if that’s not enough for you, Joe’s rented One in a Billion.”
“Fine, but …”
“Think about it, at least. All right?” He might have been recruiting for a parish bake sale. “Eight o’clock. Joe’s house. We’ll see you if we see you.”
The weather was unnaturally balmy at closing time, so Michael took down the top of his VW for the ride home. Tooling along Clement, he marveled at the warm silkiness of the air against his face. This was nothing less than a true summer evening, and the city smelled of steaks and hibiscus. His loins took note of the tropicality and began to lobby for their rights.