The name change, however, was only partially effective, since he couldn’t go to the bank or mail a package at P.O. Plus without discovering someone who had known Harry in his former life. With no warning at all, the dog would pounce ecstatically on a perfect stranger—strange to Michael, at any rate—and this person would invariably exclaim “K-Y!” in a voice that could be heard halfway to Daly City.
Michael and Thack doted on the dog to a degree that was almost embarrassing. Neither one of them had ever planned on owning a poodle—they regarded themselves as golden retriever types—but Harry had banished their prejudices (poodlephobia, to use Thack’s term) on his first visit to the house. For one thing, Charlie had always avoided those stupid poodle haircuts, keeping the dog’s coat raggedly natural. With his round brown face and button nose, Harry seemed more like a living teddy bear than like a classic Fifi dog.
Or so they assured themselves.
They had lived on the hill above the Castro for over two years now. Michael’s decade-long residency at 28 Barbary Lane had come to an end when he and Thack recognized their coupledom and decided to buy a place of their own. Thack, who’d been a preservationist back in Charleston, was far more keen on their home-to-be than Michael, who on first sighting the For Sale sign had regarded the place as a hopeless eyesore.
Faced with green asbestos shingles and walled with concrete block, the house had seemed nothing more than a hideous jumble of boxes, like three tiny houses nailed together at odd angles. Thack, however, had seen something quite different, hurdling the wall in a frenzy of discovery to pry away a couple of loose shingles near the foundation.
Moments later, flushed with excitement, he had announced his findings: underneath all that eisenhowering lay three original “earthquake shacks,” refugee housing built for the victims of the great disaster of 1906. There had been thousands of them in the parks, he said, all rowed up like barracks; afterward people had hauled them off on drays for use as private homes.
In negotiation with the realtor, of course, they kept quiet about the house’s architectural significance (much in the way the realtor had about the bum plumbing and the army ants bivouacking below the deck). They moved in on Memorial Day, 1986, christening the place with a Chinese meal, a Duraflame log, and impromptu sex in their Jockey shorts.
For the next two years they had set about obliterating the details that offended them most. Much of this was accomplished with white paint and Michael’s creative planting, though Thack made good on his promise to bare the ancient wood in both the kitchen and the bedroom. When, after a season or two of rain, their new cedar shingles took on the obligatory patina of old pewter, the householders glowed with parental appreciation.
Yet to come were a new bathroom and wood-frame windows to replace the aluminum, but Michael and Thack were pressed for money at the moment and had decided to wait. Still, when roaming flea markets and garage sales, they thought nothing of splurging on an Indian blanket or a Fiesta pitcher or a mica-shaded floor lamp for the bedroom. Without ever stating it, they both seemed to realize the same thing:
If there was nesting to be done, it had better be done now.
A record hot spell had finally broken. Beyond their deck (which faced west into the sunset), the long-awaited fog tumbled into the valley like white lava. Michael stood at the rail and watched as it erased the spindly red television tower, until only its three topmost masts were left, sailing above Twin Peaks like the Flying Dutchman. He filled his lungs, held it, let it go, and breathed in again.
His potted succulents were looking parched, so he uncoiled the hose and gave them a thorough drenching, taking as always a certain vicarious pleasure in their relief. When he was through, he aimed the cooling stream into a neighbor’s yard, where the scorched and curling fronds of a tree fern testified to its need. The fern, in fact, was the last patch of green in sight down there; even the luxuriant weeds of the past spring had turned to straw in the drought.
“Hey,” said Thack, coming onto the deck from the kitchen. “We’re rationing, remember?”
“I know.” Michael turned the nozzle to mist and gave the fern a final, guilty shower to wash away the dust.
“They’re gonna fine us.”
He turned off the water and began to coil the hose. “I didn’t take a shower this morning.”
“So what?”
“So the tree fern gets my water. It evens out.”
His lover turned and headed back to the kitchen. “Since it’s not even our tree fern…”
“I know. O.K.” He followed him through the sliding glass door.
Thack opened the oven and knelt to study a bubbling casserole, pungent with shrimp and herbs. “Mrs. Bandoni says the new owners are gonna level the place.”
“Figures,” said Michael, sitting at the kitchen table. He could see the tree fern from here, see the empty house with its streaky windows and cardboard boxes, the fading beefcake pinup taped to the refrigerator door. The sight of the place always made him shiver a little, like a deserted hamster cage with the straw still in it.
“The foundation’s bad,” said Thack. “Whoever bought it will have to start from scratch.”
The previous owner had been an architect or draftsman of some sort. A wiry little guy with a silvery crew cut and a fondness for jeans and sweatshirts. In the months before his death, Michael could see him at his table, hunched over his blueprints, removing his glasses, rubbing his rabbity eyes. Since his house fronted on another street, they had hardly ever spoken, except to yell neighborly things about the weather or the state of their respective gardens.
He’d been a bachelor, Michael knew, but one who seemed comfortable in his solitude. His illness only became apparent, in fact, when visitors started showing up at his house. There were older folks mostly, people who might have been relatives, arriving with fresh linens and covered dishes, sometimes in groups of three or four. Once, when the man’s primroses were still in bloom, Michael looked down to see a uniformed nurse sneaking a cigarette in the garden.
“I hope,” said Thack, “it’s not some hideous stucco-onplywood job.”
Michael frowned at him, lost for a moment.
“The new house,” said Thack.
“Oh. Oh, yeah. Who knows? Probably.”
Thack closed the oven door. “Go ahead and water the damn thing, if it bothers you that much.”
“No,” said Michael. “You’re right.”
His lover stood up, wiping his hands on his Levi’s. “Your mother called, by the way. She left a message on the machine.”
Michael grunted. “About the weather, right?”
“C’mon.”
“Well, that’s usually what she says, isn’t it? ‘How’s the weather out there?’”
“That’s because she’s afraid of you.”
“Afraid of me?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact.” Thack took two Fiesta platters from the cupboard and set them on the counter. “You treat her like shit, Michael.”
“I treat her like shit? When have you ever heard me say anything that could…?”
“It’s not what you say, it’s how. The color just drains out of your voice. I can always tell when she’s on the other end. You don’t talk that way to anybody else.”
He wondered what had brought this on. “Have you been talking to her or something?”
“No.” Thack sounded faintly defensive. “Not lately.”
“You talked to her at work. You told me so.”
“Last week,” Thack answered, searching in a drawer. “Are the napkins in the wash?”
Michael thought for a moment. “Yeah.”
His lover tore off two sections of paper towel and folded them lengthwise.
“She never calls me at work,” said Michael.
“Well, maybe she would, if you wouldn’t be so hard on the old gal. She’s trying her damnedest to hook up, Michael. She really is.”
He didn’t want to discuss this. If the “old gal” had made ove
rtures of reconciliation, they hadn’t come until last year, when his father had died suddenly of a heart attack. Like most country women in the South, she required a man’s guidance at any cost, even if that meant making up with her hell-bound gay son in California.
“She misses you,” said Thack. “I can tell you that.”
“Right. That’s why she calls you.”
Thack dumped a handful of butter lettuce into the salad spinner. Slowly, maddeningly, a smile surfaced on his face. “Sounds to me like you’re jealous.”
“Oh, please!”
In point of fact, Thack and his mother had become cloyingly chummy in recent months, swapping homilies and weather reports like a pair of Baptist housewives in a sewing circle. This from the woman who had never spoken to his first lover—not even when she knew he was dying.
It was her grief, after all, that had finally made the difference, her loss that had sent her to the telephone, desperate for company. If he was jealous, he was jealous for Jon, who had asked for her blessing and never received it. But how could he ever say that to Thack?
“She’s against everything you stand for,” Michael said finally. “You have nothing in common at all.”
Thack began to spin the lettuce. “Except you,” he said.
At dinner they talked about Thack’s day. He’d worked at the Heritage Foundation for almost a year now, organizing tours of historic houses. Lately, more to his taste, he’d been testifying before the Board of Permit Appeals, pleading the case of endangered buildings.
“They’re dragging their asses again. It really pisses me off.”
“What is it this time?” Michael asked.
“Oh…an Italianate villa off Clement. Fuck off, Harry. I’m not through.”
The dog sat at Thack’s feet, head cocked for maximum effect, licking his little brown lips.
“It’s the shrimp,” said Michael.
“Well, he can wait.”
Michael gave the dog a stern look. “You heard him, didn’t you?”
Harry skulked off, but only as far as the doorway, where he waited stoically, rigid as a temple lion.
“We’re gonna lose it,” said Thack. “I can tell already.”
“Oh…the villa. That’s too bad.”
“It’s near the nursery, you know. I stopped by around noon to see if you wanted to have lunch.”
Michael nodded. “Brian told me. I was out delivering Mrs. Stonecypher’s bamboo.”
“Delivering?” Thack frowned. “I thought you had employees for that.”
“I do, but…she likes me and she spends a lot of money. I make an exception in her case.”
“I see.” Thack nodded. “You were whoring.”
Michael smiled at him. Rich people were beyond redemption in Thack’s view of the world—just another corrupt facet of the white, male, sexist, homophobic, corporate power structure. Even poor old Mrs. Stonecypher, with her bad hats and wobbly teeth.
“Sorry I missed you,” he said. “You should call first next time.”
Thack shrugged. “I didn’t know. It’s no big deal. I had lunch with Brian.”
Michael shuddered to think what his partner and his lover found to talk about when he wasn’t there. “Where’d you eat?”
“Some new place downtown. Sort of Mexican nouvelle.”
“The Corona,” said Michael. “We went there last week.”
“It’s nice.”
“What did you have?”
“The grilled seafood salad.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Michael. “Brian had that last time.”
Thack poked at his shrimp for a moment, then said: “I feel so sorry for that poor bastard.”
“Brian? Why?”
“Oh…just the way she treats him.”
Michael looked at him for a moment. “What did he tell you?”
“Not much, but it’s easy enough to deduce.”
“Well, stop deducing. You have no way of knowing what goes on between them.”
Thack smiled at him slyly. “There in the strange twilight world of the heterosexual.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Thack chuckled.
“Have they had a fight or something?”
“I don’t think they’re together enough for that. She’s always out somewhere.”
“She’s a public figure,” said Michael, resenting the way Thack always sided with Brian. “She can’t help it if people want her to do things.”
“But she loves it.”
“Well, what if she does? She should enjoy it. She’s worked hard enough for it.”
“I’m just telling what he said.”
“He can be a real slug, you know. He’s a helluva sweet guy, but..”
“What does that mean—slug?”
“He gets stuck in ruts. He likes ruts. That’s why he likes the nursery so much. It doesn’t challenge him any more than he wants it to. He can just coast along…”
“I thought you said…”
“I don’t mean he isn’t doing a good job. I just meant he isn’t as ambitious as she is. I can see how it might be kind of a drag for her.”
“I thought you guys got along great.”
“We do. Stop changing the subject.”
“Which is?”
“The fact that…” He stopped, not really sure what the subject was.
Realizing this, Thack smiled. “Did you see her show today? Dead dogs.”
“Yes.”
“Was that lower than Geraldo or what?”
“I thought it was funny, actually. Besides, she can’t help what her producers decide…”
“I know. She can’t help anything.”
Michael gave him a sullen look and let the subject drop. In the long run, Thack was too much of a newcomer to fully grasp the nature of Mary Ann’s personality. You had to have known her years ago to understand the way she was today.
Somehow, in spite of the immense changes in their lives, Michael continued to see them all as perennial singles—he and Brian and Mary Ann—still chasing their overblown dreams, still licking their wounds back at Barbary Lane.
But he had been gone for two years; Mary Ann and Brian, even longer. His employee, Polly Berendt, occupied his old digs on the second floor, and the rest of the house was inhabited by people whose names he hardly knew. Except for Mrs. Madrigal, of course, who seemed constant as the ivy.
He had seen the landlady just that morning, poking among the fruit stands at a sidewalk market in Chinatown. She had hugged him exuberantly and invited him and Thack to dinner the next day. He had felt a twinge of guilt, realizing how long he’d neglected her.
He mentioned this to Thack, who shared his concern.
“We’ll take her some sherry,” he said.
Now they lay on the sofa—Michael’s back against Thack’s chest, Harry at their feet—watching Kramer vs. Kramer after dinner. It was a network broadcast, and the censors had doctored the scene in which Dustin Hoffman and his young son are heard, one after the other, taking their morning pee.
“Can you believe that?” Thack fumed. “They cut out the sound of the pee! Those fuckers!”
Michael smiled sleepily. “Must not be in keeping with Family Values.”
“Damn, that pisses me off!”
He chuckled. “So to speak.”
“Well, dammit, that was a sweet scene. You can’t even tell what’s happening now. It’s not funny anymore.”
“You’re right,” said Michael.
“Fuckin’ Reagan.”
“Well…he’s almost gone.”
“Yeah, and his asshole buddy will be running things.”
“Maybe not.”
“You watch. Things are gonna get worse before they get better.”
Thack gestured toward the TV. “You wanna watch this?”
“Nah.”
“Where’s the clicker?”
Michael ran his hand between the corduroy cushions until he found the remote control, one of three at
their command. (He had no idea what the other ones did.) Poking it, he watched the screen crackle into black, then turned over and laid his head against Thack’s chest. He sighed at the fit they made, the sheer inevitability of this moment in their day.
Thack stroked Michael’s hair and said: “I picked up more vacuum cleaner bags.”
“Good.” He patted Thack’s leg.
“I’m not sure they’re the right ones. I got confused about our model.”
“Fuck it.”
Thack chuckled. “You know what I’ve been thinking?”
“What?”
“We should just go to an ACT-UP meeting. I mean, just stop by to see what it’s like.”
Somehow, Michael had been expecting this. Thack’s advocacy had been bubbling like a broth all week, close to over-flowing. If it hadn’t taken this form, it would have almost certainly taken another. An irate letter to the Chronicle, maybe, or a shouting match with a Muni driver.
When Michael didn’t react, Thack added: “Don’t you feel like kicking some butt?”
He tried to keep it light. “Can’t we just hug it for a while?”
Thack was not amused. “I have to do something,” he said.
“About what?”
“Everything. AZT, for one thing. How much do we pay for that shit? And Jesse Fucking Helms is gonna fix it so poor people can’t even get it. And you know what those sorry bastards think? Serves ’em right, anyway. Shouldn’t’ve been butt-fucking in the first place.”
“I know,” said Michael, patting Thack’s leg.
“I can’t believe how cold-blooded people have gotten.”
Michael agreed with him, but he found his lover’s anger exhausting. Now, more than ever, he needed time for the other emotions as well. So what if the world was fucked? There were ways to get around that, if you didn’t make yourself a total slave to rage.
“Thack…”
“What?”
“Well…I don’t understand why you’re mad all the time.”