She nodded. “I doubt if he will, though.”
“But he might?”
“He might. He doesn’t know a soul, Brian. I told him to call if he needed help with anything.”
He nodded slowly. “Sort of a … Welcome Wagon gesture.”
She glanced across at him, then blew on the surface of her steaming dinner. “You’re not jealous. Don’t pretend to be jealous, Brian.”
“Who’s pretending?”
“He’ll be a nice new friend for both of us. He worked on the royal yacht, for God’s sake. He’s bound to be interesting, if nothing else.”
He plunged a fork into his dinner. “So what’s the name of our interesting new friend?”
“Simon,” she answered grumpily. “Simon Bardill.”
“What does he look like?”
“Gorgeous. Well, sort of gorgeous. He looks a lot like you, as a matter of fact.”
Brian stroked his chin. “Why do I find that disquieting?”
She rolled her eyes in retort. “What in God’s name would I do with a younger, English version of you?”
“The mind fairly boggles,” he replied.
Campmates
AS DAWN CREPT OVER DEATH VALLEY, MICHAEL stirred in his sleeping bag and catalogued the sounds of the desert: the twitter of tiny birds, the frantic scampering of kangaroo rats, the soothing rustle of the wind in the mesquite tree …
“Oh, no! The vinaigrette leaked!”
… the voice of Scotty, their chef for this expedition, taking stock of his inventory in preparation for breakfast. His plight provoked a burst of laughter from Ned’s tent, followed by more of the same from the sandy bluff where Roger and Gary had slept under the stars.
“What’s so fucking funny?” yelled Scotty.
Ned answered: “That’s the nelliest thing that’s ever been said in Death Valley.”
“If you want butch,” the chef snapped, “try the third RV on the right—they’re eating Spam and powdered eggs. Us nellie numbers will be having eggs benedict, thank you.”
General cheers all around.
A tent was unzipped, probably Douglas and Paul’s. Boots crunched against gravel, then came Paul’s voice, froggy with sleep. “Does anybody know the way to the bathroom?”
More laughter from Ned. “You didn’t really believe that, did you?”
“Listen, dickhead, you told me there was running water.”
Roger came to the rescue. “All the way down the road, on the right-hand side.”
“Where’s my shaving kit?” asked Paul.
“Behind the ice chest,” said Douglas.
Turtle-like. Michael inched out of his sleeping bag, found the air decidedly nippy, and popped back in again. There was no point in being rash about this. His absence from the banter had not yet been observed. He could still grab some sleep.
Wrong. Scotty’s smiling face was now framed in the window of his tent. “Good morning, bright eyes.”
Michael emerged part of the way and gave him a sleepy salute.
“Are you heading for the bathroom?” the chef asked. “Eventually.”
“Good. Find me some garni, would you?”
“Uh … garni?”
“For the grapefruit,” explained Scotty. “There’s lots of nice stuff along the road.”
“Right.”
“Just something pretty. It doesn’t have to be edible, of course.’’
“Of course.’’
Garni in Death Valley. There was bound to be a message there somewhere—about life and irony and the gay sensibility—but it eluded him completely as he stood at a sink in the middle of nowhere and brushed his teeth next to a fat man in Bermuda shorts and flip-flops.
On the way back to the campsite, he left the path long enough to find something suitably decorative—a lacy, pale-green weed that didn’t appear to shed—then decided on an alternate return route. He felt strangely exhilarated by the brisk, blue morning, and he wanted to enjoy the sensation in solitude.
They had pitched their tents along the edge of a dry creekbed at the northern end of the Mesquite Springs campground, where a kindly quirk of geography kept the neighboring RVs out of sight behind a rocky rise. As a consequence, he had trouble finding the campsite until he spotted the sand-colored gables of the Big Tent—a free-form communal space Ned had built with bamboo poles and tarps from the nursery.
Breakfast was a success. Scotty’s eggs benedict were a triumph, and Michael’s garni received a polite round of applause. When the table had been cleared, Douglas and Paul began heating water for dishwashing, while Roger and Gary repaired to their corner to divide the mushrooms into seven equal portions. After each had downed his share, Ned proposed a hike into the Last Chance Mountains. “I have something to show you,” he told Michael in private. “Something special.”
Scotty stayed behind to fix lunch while everybody else followed Ned into the hills, stopping sporadically to exclaim over a flowering cactus or an exotic rock formation. (Douglas was positive he had seen hieroglyphics at one point, but his unimaginative lover assured him it was “just the mushrooms.”)
They came to a windy plateau scattered with smooth black rocks that had split into geometric shapes. At the edge of the plateau, a six-foot stone obelisk rose—a man-made structure which struck Michael as considerably less precise than the landscape it inhabited.
Douglas stood and stared at the slack of rocks. “It’s very Carlos Castaneda,” he murmured.
“It’s very phallic,” said Gary.
“Well, don’t just stand there.” Ned grinned. “Worship it.”
“Nah,” said Gary, shaking his head. “It isn’t big enough.”
Their laughter must have traveled for miles. Ned began walking again, leading the way.
Michael caught up with him. “Was that it?”
“What?”
“The thing you wanted to show me?”
Ned shook his head with a cryptic smile.
They had yet another slope to climb, this one with a staggering view of the valley. Reddish stones arranged along the cresi seemed to be fragments of a giant circle. “It used to be a peace symbol,” Ned explained. “Remember those?”
As they scurried down the slope, Michael said: “That wasn’t it, I guess?”
“Nope,” answered Ned.
The terrain leveled out again, and they proceeded uncomfortably close to a crumbly precipice. The mushrooms were singing noisily in Michael’s head, intensifying the experience. And distances were confusing in a land where the tiniest pebble resembled the mightiest mountain.
Suddenly, Ned sprinted ahead of the group, stopping near the edge of the drop-off. Michael was the first to catch up with him. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Look!” His partner laughed. He was crouching now, pointing to the valley floor beneath them where five brightly colored tents squatted like hotels on a Monopoly board. Behind them, shiny as a Dinky toy, was Ned’s red pickup. They had circled back to the ridge above the campsite.
“Well?” asked Ned.
Michael peered down at the tiny tribal settlement and smiled. He didn’t need to ask if this was Ned’s surprise; he knew what Ned was saying: Look at us down there! Aren’t we magnificent? Haven’t we accomplished something? See what we mean to each other? It was a grand gesture on Michael’s behalf, and he was deeply touched.
Ned cupped his hands and shouted hello to a Lilliputian figure standing by the campfire. It was Scotty, no doubt, already making preparations for lunch. He searched for the source of Ned’s voice, then waved extravagantly. Ned and Michael both waved back.
After lunch, the group became fragmented again. Some withdrew for siestas and sex; others enjoyed the gentle down-drift of the mushrooms by wandering alone in the desert. Michael remained behind in the Big Tent, a solitary sultan engrossed in the silence. By nightfall, it seemed he had lived there forever.
He rose and walked toward the hills, following the pale ribbon of the creekbed through the
mesquite trees. It was much cooler now, and fresh young stars had begun to appear in the deep purple sky. After a while, he sat down next to a cactus that was actually casting a shadow in the moonlight. A breeze caressed him.
Time passed.
He got up and headed back to camp, almost mesmerized by the amber luminescence of the Big Tent, the faint heartlike pulse of its walls, the gentle laughter from within. As he was about to enter, one of the canvas tarps trapped the rising wind like a spinnaker on a galleon, then ripped free from its restraints. Several people groaned in unison.
“Can I help?” he hollered.
“Michael?” It was Roger’s voice.
“Yeah. Want me to make repairs?”
“Fabulous. It’s over here. This back part just flapped open again.”
“Where?” His hands fumbled in the shadows until he found the hole. “Here?”
“Bingo,” said Gary.
Bringing the errant canvas under control, he laced the twine through the eyelets and pulled it tight. Then he made his way back to the front of the tent and lifted the flap.
They had dispensed with the Coleman lantern, having learned the night before that it didn’t have a dimmer switch. Paul’s inspired alternative was a heavy-duty flashlight in a brown paper bag, which was presently casting a golden Rembrandt glow on the six men sprawled across the Oriental rug Gary had received from his wife in their divorce settlement.
Gary sat against the ice chest, Roger’s head resting in his lap. Douglas and Paul, the other pair of lovers, were idly rummaging through a pile of cassette tapes in the far corner of the tent. Ned was giving the hard-working Scotty a foot massage with Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion.
It was a charming tableau, sweet-spirited and oddly old-fashioned, like a turn-of-the-century photograph of a college football team, shoulder to shoulder, hand to thigh, lost in the first blush of male bonding.
“Thanks,” said Gary, as Michael entered.
“No sweat,” he answered.
Ned looked up from his labors on Scotty’s feet. “You got some sun, bubba.”
“Did I?” He pressed a finger to his biceps. “I think it’s the lighting.”
“No,” Gary assured him. “It looks real good.”
“Thanks.” He entered and stretched out on the empty spot next to Ned and Scotty.
Scotty grinned at him blissfully. “There’s some trail mix and cheese, if you’re still hungry.”
“No way,” he replied.
After a brief exchange of eye signals, Roger and Gary rose, dusting off the seats of their pants. “Well, guys,” said Roger, “it’s been a long day….”
“Uh-oh,” piped Scotty. “We just lost the newlyweds.”
Roger’s embarrassment was heartrending. With a sudden stab of pain, Michael remembered the early days when he and Jon had been equally awkward about this maneuver. “Give ‘em a break,” said Ned, laughing. “They don’t have a tent. They have to have privacy sometime.”
“And they’ve been working like Trojans,” added Douglas.
The departing Gary shot a look of amiable menace in Douglas’s direction. “I’ll get you for that.”
“For what?” asked Scotty, after the lovers had left.
Douglas smiled. “Gary brought rubbers.”
Three people said “What?” at the same time.
Douglas shrugged. “They don’t call it a crisis for nothin’.”
“Well, I know, but …” Douglas was almost sputtering, “Forget that. I’m willing to do my bit … but c’mon.”
Ned unleashed one of his mysterious grins. “I think they’re kinda fun myself.”
“Why?” asked Douglas. “Because they make you think of straight boys?”
“Marines,” said Paul, embellishing on his lover’s theme.
“I don’t fantasize about straight men,” Ned said flatly. “I’ve never sucked a cock that wasn’t gay.”
“So what’s so great about them?” asked Scotty, his left foot still nestled in Ned’s hands.
“Cocks?” asked Ned.
“Rubbers.” grinned Scotty.
“Well …” Ned’s nut-brown brow furrowed. “They’re sorta like underwear.”
“Calvin Klein Condoms,” said Paul.
Everyone laughed.
“Why are they like underwear?” asked Scotty.
“Well … didn’t you ever ask a guy to put his Jockey shorts back on just because it looked hot?”
“Yeah, sure, but …”
“And all there was between you and that incredible cock was this thin little piece of white cotton. So … that’s kinda what rubbers are like. They get in the way, keep you from having everything at once. That can be the hottest thing of all.”
Scotty rolled his eyes. “They are balloons, Ned. Face it. They will always be balloons. They are ridiculous things, and they are meant for breeders.”
More laughter.
“I remember,” offered Douglas, “when the rubber machine always said ‘For Prevention of Disease Only.’ “
Paul looked at his lover. “They still do, dummy.”
“But they always scratched out the ‘Disease’ part and wrote in ‘Babies.’ Now straight people don’t even use them anymore.”
“Yes they do.”
“No they don’t. They use the pill, or they get vasectomies or something.”
While Douglas and Paul continued with this halfhearted quarrel, Michael signaled Ned, to indicate he was leaving. He slipped under the flap and made a beeline for his tent, avoiding even the slightest glance at the rise where Roger and Gary were encamped. He was almost there when a voice called out to him.
“Is that you, Michael?” It was Gary.
“Uh-huh.”
“Come on over,” said Roger.
He picked his way through the darkness until he found the path leading up to the rise. Only the moon lit the faces of the lovers, snuggled together under a zipped-open sleeping bag. “See”—grinned Roger—“we didn’t run off to fuck.”
“It must be the mushrooms,” said Gary. “We’ve been telling ghost stories. It’s really nice up here. Why don’t you get your sleeping bag and join us?”
He looked back at the dark dome of his two-man tent, sitting empty under the stars. “I think I’ll take you up on that,” he said.
They fell asleep, the three of them, after Gary had told the one about the man with the hook.
Michael dreamed he was once again on the ridge above the campsite, only this time it was Jon who knelt beside him. “Look,” Jon whispered, “look who’s down there.” Mona emerged from one of the tents, so tiny she was almost unrecognizable. Michael waved and waved, but she never saw him, never stopped once as she walked into the desert and disappeared.
Mona Revisited
SEATTLE HAD ONCE STRUCK MONA AS AN IDEAL RETIREMENT spot for old hippies. Its weather was moderate, if wet, its political climate was libertarian, and a surprisingly large number of its citizens still looked upon macrame with a kindly eye. In the time it had taken Jane Fonda to get around to exhibiting her body again, almost nothing had changed in Seattle.
Almost nothing. The lesbians who had baked nine-grain bread in the sixties and seventies now earned their livings at copy centers across the city. Mona was one of those lesbians, though she was every bit as puzzled as the next woman by this bizarre reshuffling of career goals. “Maybe,” she told a friend once, in a moment of rare playfulness, “it’s to prove we can reproduce without the intervention of a man.”
Mona lived on Queen Anne Hill in a seven-story brick apartment house the color of dried blood. She worked four blocks away at the Kwik-Kopy copy center, a high-technocracy in varying shades of gray. Neither place did very much for her soul, but when was the last time she had worried about that?
“Cheer up, Mo. It can’t be as bad as that.” It was Serra, her co-worker at the neighboring copier. Serra, the perky young punk.
“Oh, yeah?”
Serra looked down at the huge m
anuscript she was collating. “It can’t be as bad as this.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“ ‘A Time for Wimmin,’ ” answered Serra.
She made a face. “How is it spelled?”
“How do you think?” said Serra. “Maybe we should call the Guinness Book. If my hunch is right, this could be the longest dyke potboiler in the history of the world.”
“Any sex?”
“Not so far,” said Serra, “but a helluva lot of nurturing.”
“Yawn.”
“Really,” said Serra. “What have you got there?”
“Much worse,” she replied. “That queen from the Ritz Café is having a thirtieth-birthday party.”
“An invitation?”
“A Xerox collage, no less. Featuring a lovely photo of his dick and some old stills from I Love Lucy. He’s made me do it over twice.”
“Of course,” said Serra.
“The dick is loo orange and Lucy’s hair is too green. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Who gives a shit, huh? Is this art or what?”
Serra laughed, but her face registered concern. “You need a day off, Mo.”
She looked down at her work again. “I need a lobotomy.”
“No, Mo. I mean it.” Serra left her machine and moved to Mona’s side. “You’re pushing too hard. Ease up on yourself. Holly can spare you for a day or two.”
“Maybe so,” she retorted. “But Dr. Sheldon can’t.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Barry R. Sheldon,” she explained. “A periodontist on Capitol Hill who’s on the verge of repossessing my gums.” She offered Serra a helpless smile. “As we speak, young lady.”
Serra’s sympathy seemed mixed with embarrassment. “Oh … well, if you need a loan or something …”
“That’s nice.” She squeezed Serra’s hand. “It’s a little more serious than that.”
“Oh.”
“I could use a little more overtime, as a matter of fact.”
“I just thought … I thought you could use a change.”
“You got that right,” said Mona. “Your machine is jamming.”
“Shit,” muttered Serra, sprinting back to her post.
When noon came, Serra insisted on treating Mona to lunch at the Ritz Café, a perfect backdrop for Serra’s squeaky-clean Kristy McNichol bob. They both ordered Pernod Stingers, and Serra raised hers in an earnest toast to Mona’s recovery.