“Sure.”
He smiled and touched the tip of her nose.
She took Norman’s arm when they reached the sand, fortifying herself with his warmth. Beneath a full moon, the Cliff House gleamed like a mansion out of Daphne du Maurier.
She was the first to speak.
“Do you want to talk?”
“I wish … never mind.”
“What, Norman?”
“I wish I was better-looking.”
“Norman!”
“The old part wouldn’t be so bad, if … forget it.”
She stopped walking and made him turn to face her. “In the first place … you are not old, Norman. There’s no reason for you to go around apologizing for that all the time. And in the second place, you are a very strong, masculine and … appealing man.”
He acted as if he hadn’t heard any of it. “Why do you go out with me, Mary Ann?”
She threw her hands up and groaned. “You’re not even listening.”
“Lots of guys are after you. I’ve seen the way Brian Hawkins looks at you.”
“Oh, please!”
“Don’t you think Brian’s handsome?”
“Brian Hawkins thinks any woman who goes to bed with him is …” She cut herself short.
“Is what?”
“Norman …”
“Is what?”
“A whore.”
“Oh.”
“Norman … I wish I could show you the things you’ve got going for you.”
“Don’t strain yourself.”
“Norman, you are gentle … and considerate … and you believe in a lot of … traditional values … and you don’t make me feel like I’m out of it all the time.”
He laughed bleakly. “Because I’m more out of it than you are.”
“I didn’t say that. And thanks a lot!”
“Do you think I could make you happy, Mary Ann?”
She had been afraid of that one. “Norman … I always have a good time with you.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“We haven’t known each other very long.”
The line was so weak she was instantly sorry she had used it. She studied his face for damage. He seemed to be struggling with something. His features were strangely distorted.
“I don’t push pills, Mary Ann.”
“What?”
“I don’t sell Nutri-Vim. I just told you that to … I just told you that.”
“But what about the …?”
“I’m coming into a lot of money really soon. I can buy you anything you want. I know I must look like a failure now, but I’m …”
“Norman,” she said as gently as possible, “I don’t want you to buy me anything.”
His face had eroded completely. He stared at her in desolation.
“Norman …” She reached up and readjusted his new tie. “It looks … real nice on you.”
“I’ll take you home.”
“Please don’t feel like …”
“It’s O.K. I just … want too much sometimes.”
He said almost nothing on the way back to Barbary Lane.
What D’or Won’t Tell Her
A FLUORESCENT PHONE BOOTH GLOWED LIKE ECTOplasm against the black slope of Alta Plaza as Mona and D’orothea strolled west up Jackson Street.
Mona shuddered. “What a creepy place to make a phone call!”
“You’re afraid of the dark?”
“Terrified.”
“I never would’ve guessed.”
“I thought everybody was afraid of the dark. It’s the only thing that distinguishes us from animals.”
D’or grinned. “Not me. Black is Beautiful, remember?”
“It looks good on you, anyway.”
D’or stopped walking and took Mona’s hands in hers. “Hon … would you still …?”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand and began walking again. “No big deal.” Mona frowned. “I hate that.”
“What, hon?”
“The way you weed out things you think I can’t handle.”
“I don’t mean to seem …”
“I’m not all that fucking fragile, D’or. Don’t you think you could communicate a little more?”
“Fine.” D’or looked hurt.
“And I don’t need to hear that you love me. I know you love me. D or. The thing is … you don’t really share your … your thoughts with me. Sometimes I feel like I’m living with a stranger.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry. You asked what was bothering me.”
“You want to move out. Is that it?”
“No! I never expected miracles, D’or … ever. I just …”
“Is it the sex part? I’ve told you that isn’t important to me if …”
“D’or … I like you a lot.”
“Ouch.”
“Well, goddammit … that’s a lot, isn’t it? I mean, I’m not sure I even need a lover, male or female. Sometimes I think I’d settle for five good friends.”
They walked in silence for several minutes. Then D’orothea said: “So what do we do?”
“I want to stay, D’or.”
“But I have to shape up. Is that it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Look, Mona … you’re bitching about something.”
Mona glared at her. “Do you really think it’s my function in life to sit here on my ass all day while you’re out there making another hundred thou off the same son-of-a-bitch who fired me?”
“Mona … I could talk to Edgar Halcyon about …”
“You do and I’ll pack tomorrow.”
“Well, what then? What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know … I feel cut off, somehow. I can’t hack all these blue-haired old ladies with Mace in their pocketbooks, marching their poodles endlessly up and down the …”
“There’s nothing I can do about …”
“You could let me share your life, D’or. Introduce me to your friends … and your family. Christ, your parents are in Oakland and I’ve never even seen them!”
D’orothea’s tone grew chilly. “Let’s not drag my parents into this.”
“Ah!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re petrified that Mommy and Daddy will find out you’re a dyke!”
“It does not.”
“Well, what, then?”
“I don’t … talk to my parents. I haven’t exchanged a word with them since I got back from New York. Not a word.”
“C’mon!”
“Have you seen me do it? When have I talked to them?”
“But why?”
“When did you last talk to your mother?”
“That’s different. She’s in Minneapolis. It wouldn’t take that much for you to …”
“You haven’t the slightest idea what it would take, Mona.”
Mona stopped walking and turned to confront her. “Look, I know you must be a lot more …” She cut herself off.
“A lot more what?”
“I don’t know … sophisticated?”
D’orothea laughed ruefully. “That ain’t the half of it, honey!”
“Well, so what? Do I look like a snob to you? I’ve done a thing or two for Third World people, you know!”
“My father is a baker in the Twinkie factory, Mona!”
Mona stifled a grin. “You made that up.”
“Drop it, will you?”
“No. You think I can’t relate to older black people, don’t you? Racist and agist, in spite of myself!”
Silence.
“That’s it, isn’t it?”
“I think you’re very good with people. Now let’s drop it, O.K.?”
So Mona shut up.
Her liberal consciousness, however, wouldn’t permit her to discard the issue.
She would pursue the matter on her own.
There couldn’t b
e that many Wilsons working at the Twinkie factory.
Michael’s Visitor
MICHAEL WAS MAKING HIS BED WHEN THE DOOR buzzer rang. He sped up the procedure, laughing at himself. He never made his bed for himself. He did it for others … or the hope of others.
The same reason, really, that he kept the toilet clean and a fresh guest toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet. You never knew for sure when you were auditioning for the role of housewife.
He opened the door on the second ring, prepared once more to be a sympathetic ear for Mary Ann.
“Brian!”
“I’m not … interrupting anything?”
“As a matter of fact, Casey Donovan is languishing in my boudoir.”
“Oh, I’m …”
“A joke, Brian. Esoteric. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing … I … I’ve got some Maui Wowie. I thought you might like to smoke a little and … rap for a while.”
Such a quaint word, thought Michael. Rap. Straight people still longed for the Summer of Love.
The grass took hold quickly.
“Jesus,” said Michael.
“How much is this stuff, anyway?”
“Two hundred a lid.”
“Please!”
“Swear to God.”
“My teeth are numb.”
“Who needs ‘em?”
Michael laughed. “Damn right! Is this stuff local, Brian?”
“Uh uh. L.A.”
“Good ol’ Lah!”
“Huh?”
“Lah. L.A…. get it?”
“Oh … yeah.”
“L.A. is Lah. S.F. is Sif.”
“Is it ever!”
They laughed. “Jesus, Brian. One more toke and I’ll see God.”‘
“Too late. He moved to Lah.”
“God’s in Lah?”
“Who you think sold it to me?”
“Sometimes,” said Brian, “I get the feeling that the New Morality is over. Know what I mean?”
“Sorta.”
“I mean … like … what’s left? You know?”
“Yeah.”
“Guys and chicks, chicks and chicks, guys and guys.”
“Right on.”
“But now … you know … the pendulum.”
“Yeah … the fucking pendulum.”
“I mean, Michael … I think … I think it’s gonna be all over, man.”
“What?”
“Everything.”
“Sodom and Gomorrah, huh?”
“Maybe not that … dramatic, but something like that. We’re gonna be … I mean people like you and me … we’re gonna be fifty-year-old libertines in a world full of twenty-year-old Calviniste.”
Michael winced. “Lusting in their hearts like Jimmy … but nowhere else.”
“Yeah … Are you horny?”
Michael’s heart stopped. “Uh …”
“Grass always makes me horny.”
“Yeah … I know what you mean.”
“Why don’t we … do something about it?”
The room was so still that Michael could hear the hair growing on Brian’s chest.
“Brian … that’s kind of … complicated, isn’t it?”
“Why?”
“Why?” repeated Michael. “Well, I … you and I aren’t exactly coming from the same place, are we?”
“So? There must be some place in this fucking city where they’ve got straight chicks and gay guys.”
“You want us to … go cruising together?”
“Kind of a kick, huh?”
Michael looked at him for several seconds, then broke into a slow grin. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”
“Fuckin A.”
“It’s truly twisted.”
“I knew you’d get into it.”
“Maybe,” said Michael, turning into Pan again, “we could break up a couple.”
Three Men at the Tubs
LEAVING THE HAMPTON-GIDDES’, JON FILLED HIS LUNGS with the cleansing fog that had spilled into Seacliff from the bay.
Collier grinned at him. “I knew you’d OD, sooner or later.”
“Shut up.”
“You’re stuck on that Tolliver kid, aren’t you?”
“I’m not stuck on anybody, Collier. I just get sick of that bitchy talk about twinks. That’s just a queen’s way of being a male chauvinist pig!”
“Can I send that to Bartlett’s Quotations?”
“Just drive, will you?”
“The tubs, right?”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I could drop you off at the twink’s house.”
“Collier, if you mention that one more …”
“The tubs it is, milord.”
Jon kept silent on the long ride to Eighth and Howard. He hated these unsettled moments when the stuffiness of the Hampton-Giddes and the aimlessness of the Michael Tollivers seemed equally inapplicable to his own life.
At times like this, the tubs was an easy way out.
Discreet, dispassionate, noncommittal. He could diddle away a frenzied hour or two, then return unblemished to the business of being a doctor.
It was really his only choice.
Decorators, hairdressers and selected sheriffs deputies were expected to be gay in San Francisco.
But who wanted a gay gynecologist?
Most women, he observed, expected their gynecologist to be detached in dealing with their most intimate specifics. They did not, however, expect detachment to come easy. In their heart of hearts lurked the tiniest hope that they were driving the poor devil mad.
Gay was not Good in OB/GYN.
The television lounge of the Club Baths was jammed with terry-cloth Tarzans.
For once, they were genuinely engrossed in the television.
“Forget about the orgy room,” said Collier. “It empties during Mary Hartman.”
Jon grinned, already feeling better. “I’m hungry, anyway. We never got past the braised endive, remember?”
They microwaved a couple of hot dogs, laughing over the oven’s obligatory warning about pacemakers. A pacemaker at the Club Baths was about as common as an Accu-Jac at the Bohemian Club.
Then they parted, each seeking his own private adventure in Wonderland.
Jon prowled the corridors for fifteen minutes, finally settling on a dark-haired number in a room near the showers. He was resting on his elbows in bed.
His towel was still on, his rheostat turned up.
A good sign, thought Jon. The desperates invariably kept their lights down and their towels off.
When they had finished, Jon said, “Let me know when you want me to leave.”
“No problem,” said the dark-haired man.
“It’s nice to rest.”
“Yeah. It’s a mob scene out there.”
“Full moon.”
“I like it better on slow nights. I mean … sometimes I come here just to … get away.”
“Me too.”
The dark-haired man folded his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “I wasn’t even particularly horny tonight.”
“Neither was I. I usually tell myself I’m here for the steam, but it never seems to work out that way.”
The man laughed. “Quelle coincidence!”
Jon sat up. “Well, I guess I’d better …”
“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
“Thanks. I’m here with a friend.”
“A lover?”
Jon laughed. “God, no!”
“Are you … one of the reachables?”
“Sure.”
“Can I give you my phone number?”
Jon nodded, extending his hand. “My name’s Jon,” he said.
“Hi. I’m Beauchamp.”
Cruising at The Stud
FOR HIS NIGHT ON THE TOWN WITH BRIAN, MICHAEL settled on The Stud. The Folsom Street bar was suitably megasexual, and its pseudo-ecological décor would probably be the least intimidating to Brian.
It might even remind him of Sausalito.
“It reminds me of The Trident,” he said, as they walked in the door.
Michael grinned. “That’s the Code of the Seventies, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it in something that looks like a barn.”
“Christ! Look at those tits by the bar!”
“Yeah. He’s gotta been pumping iron since junior high school, at least!”
“The chick, Michael!”
“Hey,” said Michael. “You look at your tits and I’ll look at mine!”
The other patrons were grouped undramatically around the central bar, some in knots of three or four. They laughed in short, stony spasms, while a scruffy-looking band imitated Kenny Loggins singing “Back to Georgia.”
“Here’s the plan,” said Michael in a stage whisper. “If I run into anything that might interest you, I’ll send it your way.”
“Not it, Michael. Her.”
“Right. And you do the same for me.”
“Don’t worry.”
“See anything you like?”
“Yeah. Ol’ Angel Tits over there.”
“You’ll have to pry her away from that guy she’s with.”
“Maybe he’s gay.”
“Forget it. He’s straight.”
“Now, how can you tell?”
“Look at the size of his ass, Brian!”
“Gay guys don’t have fat asses?”
“If they do, they don’t go to bars. That’s the other Code of the Seventies.”
The woman who sat down next to Brian was wearing a beige French T-shirt that said “bitch” in discreet lower-case letters. “You guys here together?”
“Yeah. Well … not exactly. He’s gay and I’m straight.”
“How nice for you.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Michael’s a friend.”
“What do you do?”
“Me and Michael?”
“No. You. For a living, like.”
“I’m a waiter. At Perry’s.”
“Oh. Heavy.”
That irked him. “Is it?”
“Well, I mean … that’s kind of … plastic, isn’t it?”
“I like it,” he lied. No radical-chic cunt in a bitch T-shirt was calling his job plastic.
“I work for Francis.”
“The Talking Mule?”
She rolled her eyes impatiently. “Ford Coppola,” she said.