"How was school today, Bitta?" Taffy asked her friend, the whole time chewing gum with exaggerated motions of her very red lips. "It was okay," Bitta replied. "Sister Mary Fred spanked me again though."
"What for?" asked Taffy.
"She asked us to name the seven deadly sins," Bitta explained.
"Well, that's easy," Taffy said. "What did you say?"
Bitta answered, "Sneezy, Sleepy, Happy, Grumpy, Dopey, Bashful, and Doc."
Taffy rolled her eyes as Bitta chewed on one of her braids and the audience howled. As the two continued the show, I forgot that I was watching Alan perform. He played his part perfectly, and his singing was delightful. When the show was over, he and Taffy curtsied and scampered offstage, waving to the audience and promising to come back again soon. I joined in the applause, wishing the show could go on even longer.
Fifteen minutes later, Alan appeared at my table looking like the man I'd been with on Tuesday night. He sat down and looked at me, his demeanor shy and not at all like that of his alter ego. "Well," he said.
"What did you think?"
"I think you deserve another spanking," I said. "That was some trick."
"Yeah, I'm sorry about that," he said. "It's just that it's easier to let guys see what I do than to tell them about it. I don't know why. I guess when I'm Bitta I don't care what they think of me, but when I'm me, well, I'm afraid of the rejection."
"I loved it," I told him.
"Really?" he said.
"Really," I answered. "I thought you were funny and great and, and, and I don't know what else. It was just fantastic." "So there might be a second date?" he asked.
"I think there just was," I told him, leaning across the table and waiting for the kiss I'd been thinking about for three days.
CHAPTER 42
"Oh, my God, look at those shoulder pads."
Hearing Alan's remark, I glanced at the television as I passed behind the couch on my way to the kitchen. "Who is that?" I asked him.
"Linda Evans," he said. "Have you ever seen such big hair? Taffy's probably having a fit right now."
"And what is it you're watching?" "This new nighttime soap," he told me. "Dynasty. This is the first episode. John Forsythe is this oil tycoon, Blake Carrington, and he's about to marry his secretary, Krystle. Only she might still be in love with her ex, who just got back from working on one of Blake's oil rigs in the Middle East. And she's all freaked out because she's never had money and the servants are all being mean to her."
"It sounds ridiculous," I told him.
"It's totally ridiculous," said Alan. "That's why it's so brilliant. Come watch it with me." "I've got to go over those files," I said.
"Come on," Alan pleaded. "It's only got two more hours."
"I can get through twenty folders in two hours," I argued.
"Maybe," said Alan, "but you'll miss some awesome shoulder pads."
I was about to decline his offer again when a handsome man appeared on the screen. "Oh, and you'll miss him, too," Alan said, noting my sudden interest. "That's Steven, Blake's son. He came in from New York for his daddy's wedding, and guess what? He's a big H-O-M-O."
"Really?" I said, sitting down next to Alan. "Blake is none too happy about it either," Alan informed me. We watched as Steven and his father confronted one another. Blake was offering Steven a job on one of his oil rigs, with one condition. He had to leave New York, and his lover.
"I can find a little homosexual experimentation acceptable as long as you don't bring it home with you,"
Blake told Steven. "But don't you see, son, I'm offering you the chance to straighten yourself out." "He didn't just say that," I said as Alan smacked me.
"Shh," he hissed. "I want to hear this."
Steven looked at his father as the camera moved in on his rugged face. "I don't know if I want to," he said. The show cut to a commercial. A few seconds later, the phone rang. I picked it up and heard Taffy's excited babbling on the other end. I handed the phone to Alan. "It's Miss Chu," I said. Taffy, a.k.a. Lawrence Wong, apparently was watching Dynasty , because for the next three minutes Alan just sat and listened, occasionally throwing in an "I know" or "We really do." When the show came back on, he handed me back the phone. "She's done," he said.
"For now," I corrected him. "I take it she approves?"
"She thinks we should start dressing like Krystle," said Alan. "I knew the big hair would be too much for her to resist." I laughed. In the month that we'd been dating, I'd come to appreciate Taffy's eccentricities. Unlike Alan, who only donned drag when he was performing as Bitta Honey, Lawrence was almost constantly in character, unless he was working at his job as a securities analyst on Wall Street or visiting his very traditional Chinese family in Queens. Where Alan did it for fun, Lawrence wanted tobe Taffy, to the point where he'd begun saving up for what he disturbingly referred to as his "snip-and-rip" operation, which he planned on completing by New Year's Eve of 1985. The fact that his parents were still actively looking for a suitable wife for him was only a minor roadblock, one he assured his friends he would deal with soon.
It felt like Alan and I had been together far longer than just four weeks. Being with him was easy. My worries about his being able to deal with all of my baggage had been unfounded, mostly because he'd been equally afraid that I would be put off by the fact that he sometimes dressed up as a woman. Once both of us realized that what we saw as potential problems weren't problems at all to the other, we'd quickly settled into a relationship. Now Alan spent most nights of the week at my apartment, an arrangement I was happy to encourage. I liked having someone to come home to, and on the nights when Alan worked late at the restaurant, I liked it when he crawled into bed beside me in the early morning hours and put his arm around me, holding me while we slept.
We watched the rest of Dynasty together, Alan marveling at the clothes and me marveling at the convoluted and only-barely-believable plots. When Steven decided to take Blake up on his offer, sacrificing his lover in the process, we booed him. But we both knew we'd be tuning in the next week to see what happened. At eleven, the news came on and we watched as the day's events were replayed for us. In Iran, American hostages were entering their 437th day of captivity, although negotiators were hopeful that an end was in sight. The Defense Department had issued an order that, commencing immediately, soldiers' boots would no longer be shiny, as the polished surface could give away their presence to enemies. And in Washington, preparations for the inauguration of Ronald Reagan were nearly complete.
"I still can't believe he won," Alan said as Reagan was shown laughing jovially with reporters. "The man made movies with a chimp." "I voted for him," I said.
"You did?" said Alan, sounding more than a little surprised. "But he's a Republican."
"So," I argued. "He's also one of the big reasons why that anti-gay proposition lost in California."
"That was, what, two years ago?" said Alan.
"That's right," I said. "Only two years. And everyone's forgotten it already. He's not as bad as you think. Did you know he spoke out against Prop 6 after one of his aides came out to him? David Mixner. He sat Reagan down and explained to him why Briggs was wrong, and Ronnie listened to him. I'd rather have a guy who listens than one like Carter who can't get our hostages home." "I didn't know that about Reagan," Alan admitted.
"Most people don't," I said. "That's the problem—people forget everything that happened more than a few days ago."
"Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it," said Alan. "I know. I know." "That's a perfect example," I told him. "The actual quote is, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' That's how Santayana wrote it. But everybody gets it wrong." "It's the same thing, sweetie," said Alan. "No, it isn't," I said. "And that's why history gets all fucked up. Someone makes a little change here, someone else makes one there, and pretty soon you've got the South winning the Civil War and Ronald Reagan setting kittens on fire for fun."
"I didn't
say he set kittens on fire," Alan objected. "And if you're so worried about people knowing history, why don't you teach it to them?" "What do you mean?" I asked him.
"Teach," he said again. "As in stand in front of a class and teach. You'd be good at it." "I'm too old," I said.
"You're thirty," countered Alan.
"I don't even have a college degree," I said. "It would take forever. I'd be, like, thirty-five before I even got my B.A. And that's going full-time." "You're still eligible for GI Bill benefits," Alan said. "That would pay for most of it. And it wouldn't take that long. Besides, you're going to be thirty-five anyway, so you can be thirty-five doing something you like with your life or you can be thirty-five still talking about how you wish you'd done something with your life. Seems like a no-brainer to me."
I started to argue some more, but I realized that he was right. For years I had been working at a job I despised, simply because it was something to do. It wasn't what I wanted for my life, but could I really go back to college at my age? I'd be around kids 18 and 19 years old, kids who had been in elementary school while I was in Vietnam. I'd be completely out of place.
Jack did it, I reminded myself. Granted, he'd done it at the usual age, but he'd still faced a lot of obstacles. He'd never been a good student, and nobody expected him to succeed academically. I knew that many times he'd doubted his ability to learn. But he'd done it. By now, I thought, he had his master's degree. Maybe he'd even kept going. And if he could, I reasoned, then so could I.
"Maybe I'll look into it," I told Alan, shutting off the television. And I did look into it. Although I'd tried not to appear too excited about the idea in front of Alan, in reality I had taken his words to heart. I did love history, and the idea of teaching it to other people was something I knew I could really get into. Hadn't I spent most of my life as a witness to some of the most important events in American history? When I thought about it, it seemed I'd been born at the perfect moment to watch the life of my country unfold. Now, perhaps, it was time to share those experiences with others.
I made some calls to government offices and student centers. I ordered college catalogs and read them at work, becoming dizzy at the range of options available to someone who wanted to learn. Things had changed a lot since I'd gone to Penn twelve years earlier. Now there were courses in just about everything, and I found myself interested in all of them. But first, I needed to get in, and that meant filling out forms, writing essays, and getting transcripts from my one semester at Penn State. I did all of this without telling Alan, or anyone else, of my plans. I still felt that I might fail, and I didn't want to embarrass myself.
In February, I sent off applications to NYU and Columbia, then began the long wait for a response. I distracted myself with work and with Alan. He had recently landed an understudy role in a new musical, March of the Falsettos , and despite there being only a slim chance that he would get to perform on stage, he was delighted with the opportunity to rehearse with the cast. The show premiered Off-Broadway in April. Two weeks into its run the actor playing Whizzer, the lover of Marvin, the play's central character, became ill with bronchitis, and for six performances Alan got to perform. I sat in the audience for all six, standing at the end of each one to clap as he took his bow. And I wasn't the only one to take note of his excellent performance. After his final show, he returned to the dressing room to find a note from none other than Stephen Sondheim inviting him to audition for a role in his new show. (The result, Merrily We Roll Along , would close after only sixteen performances later that year, but it would earn Alan more critical praise.)
I'd almost, but not quite, forgotten about my applications when on a beautiful July afternoon I received in the mail three envelopes. The first was a rejection, with their regrets, from Columbia. The second was an acceptance, with their congratulations, from NYU. And the third was a letter from Andy. Actually, there was very little in the way of a letter, just a note that said, "Jack asked me to send you this. I guess Brian has it. How are you?" Also enclosed were two newspaper clippings from the Bay Area Reporter . The first one, dated July 2, was headlined GAY MEN 'S PNEUMONIA. The second was from two weeks later, and was titled GAY MEN AND KS .
I sat at the kitchen table and read the articles. The contents were confusing and frightening. A handful of gay men in San Francisco had developed an unusual form of pneumonia. Some also had been diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma, a type of skin cancer normally seen in elderly men and generally found only in two out of every three million people. Yet young gay men were now coming down with it in small but statistically improbable numbers. Even more worrisome, more than half of them had died within months. Researchers were unsure why the two diseases were suddenly cropping up in homosexuals, but feared that it may be linked to drug use or sexual activity.
I put the articles down and looked again at Andy's note. "I guess Brian has it," he'd written. Had what? Pneumonia? Cancer? In typical Andy fashion, he'd simply dumped something in my lap with little explanation.
It had been eighteen months since I'd left California. I'd heard from Andy only a couple of times, and sometimes forgot about him for long stretches. My life was in New York now, and San Francisco seemed far away. When I thought about Jack or Brian, which was seldom, it was in an abstract way, as if they were characters in a book I'd read long ago and the plot of which I could now only sort of remember. Good things were happening for me, and I didn't want to look back. I crumpled up Andy's note and the articles and was about to throw them into the trash when I looked at the acceptance letter from NYU. How could I lecture Alan, let alone students, about the importance of remembering history if I myself was so quick to shut the door on my past? Brian and Jack had hurt me, Jack more than once, but they were still important players in my life. If Brian was really sick, I asked myself, what would I prove by ignoring him? Jack clearly wanted me to know something was wrong, or he wouldn't have asked Andy to send me the clippings. I picked up the phone and dialed Brian's number, surprised that my fingers remembered the sequence after so long. As the phone rang at the other end, I fought the urge to simply hang up. And when I heard Jack say hello, I fought even harder, saying simply, "It's Ned."
There was a long silence. Then Jack said, "You got the articles."
"Is Brian really sick?" I asked him.
Jack started to cry softly.
"How bad is it?" I asked.
"Bad," Jack whispered, trying to control his shaking voice. "He's dying, Ned. They think he has a few days, maybe a week." I swallowed hard as a lump formed in my throat. As angry as I was at Brian, the idea of him dying was too much. I couldn't imagine the vibrant man I'd loved being struck down by some invisible parasite eating away at his lungs or burrowing into his skin.
"What can I do?" I asked when I was able to speak again. "Nothing," Jack answered. "There's nothing anyone can do. I just wanted you to know." He hesitated a moment before adding, "He loves you, Ned. Maybe not the way he should have, but he loves you. So do I."
"Not now, Jack," I said. "Don't do this now. I just wanted to see how he's doing." "I'm sorry," he said. "It's just that I miss you."
"Tell him I called," I said, hanging up before Jack could say anything more. I looked at the pieces of paper I still held in my hand. Was there really a sickness stalking gay men, or was it just a coincidence that so many of us were coming down with these things? And why only in San Francisco? Was there something poisonous in the air, the water, the fog? I knew that wasn't likely, but still I was afraid. Brian was sick. Would Andy, Jack, or I be next? Jack and I, in particular, had cause for worry. We'd both slept with Brian. For all I knew, so had Andy. If whatever was taking down gay men in California was indeed passed along through sex, it was likely we had all been exposed to it. I told myself to calm down. I felt fine. I hadn't been sick with anything more serious than a cold in years. I had nothing to worry about. Besides, I chided myself, the person I should be worried about was Brian. He was the one dying. Part of me wanted to get on
a plane and fly to his side, but another still hated him for what he'd done.
And then there was Jack. Did I hate him? No. Despite everything, I couldn't. Our relationship went back too far, and the roots were too deep, for me to hate him. But I wasn't ready to forgive him. I heard the front door open. "I'm home," Alan called out. He appeared in the doorway a moment later.
"Hey there," he said. "What's going on?"
I hid the articles and Andy's letter beneath some junk mail and held up the acceptance from NYU. "Put on your dancing shoes, baby," I told Alan. "I've got some great news."
CHAPTER 43
The white-painted face that peered out at me from behind the door of apartment 4A looked like it belonged to a china doll. The eyes, rimmed in black, peered down demurely at the floor. The cherry-red lips, were pursed slightly. Jet black hair was done up in an elaborate chignon pierced by ivory chopsticks. Somewhere in the room, a woman's voice soared in a moment of operatic exuberance.
"I'm sorry," I said, looking again at the number written on the paper in my hand. "I think I have the wrong number. I'm looking for John Fink."
"That's right," the woman said in a decidedly male voice. "Come in." The door opened wider and I stepped inside. The geisha like figure, clad in a red-embroidered kimono, shuffled to the stereo and turned down the volume before addressing me again. "I'm John Fink. You must be my buddy from GMHC."
I nodded. "Ned," I told him. John clapped his hands together, and I saw that despite the delicate kimono and makeup, his body was very much that of a man. Hairy wrists extended from the sleeves of his outfit, and the hands were much too large to be those of a woman. It was one of the signs Alan had taught me to look for when trying to determine the gender of someone who might be in drag.