Further Tales of the City Read online

  Michael thought for a moment. “Have you ever tried getting laid when you’re dressed as a nun?”

  “Why not? There must be nuns who have.”

  “Climb every mountain, huh?”

  Ned laughed. “I suppose you could be an All-American nun.”

  “What’s that? A denim habit?”

  “Denim under your habit,” smiled Ned.

  “Right. So I can swing into action at a moment’s notice. Like Superman. I like it, Ned—style and content. You got an answer for everything.”

  The nurseryman gave him a once-over, then smiled. “Sister Mary Mouse, huh?”

  They remained there in the dappled light, finishing their lunches in silence.

  Then Michael said: “Do you ever get tired of all this?”

  “The nursery, you mean?”

  “No. Being gay.”

  Ned smiled. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t mean being homosexual,” said Michael. “I wouldn’t change that for anything. I love men.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “I guess I’m talking about the culture,” Michael continued. “The Galleria parties. The T-shirts with the come-fuck-me slogans. The fourteen different shades of jockstraps and those goddamn mirrored sunglasses that toss your own face back at you when you walk into a bar. Phony soldiers and phony policemen and phony jocks. Hot this, hot that. I’m sick of it, Ned. There’s gotta be another way to be queer.”

  Ned grinned, tossing his yogurt cup into the trash. “You could become a lesbian.”

  “I might,” Michael replied. “They do a lot of things that I’d like to do. They date, for Christ’s sake. They write each other bad poetry. Look … we give them so much grief about trying to be butch, but what the hell are we doing, anyway? When I was a teenager, I used to walk down the street in Orlando and worry about whether or not I looked like … well, less than a man. Now I walk down Castro Street and worry about the same thing. What’s the difference?”

  Ned shrugged. “They don’t beat you up for it here.”

  “Good point.”

  “And nobody’s making you go to the gym, Mouse. Nobody’s making you act butch. If you wanna be an effete poet and pine away in a garret or something, you’re free to do it.”

  “Those are my choices, huh?”

  “Those are everybody’s choices,” said Ned.

  “Then why aren’t they exercising them?”

  “They?” asked Ned.

  “Well, I meant …”

  “You meant ‘they.’ You meant everybody else but you. You’re the only sensitive one, right, the only full-fledged human being.”

  Michael scowled. “That isn’t fair.”

  “Look,” said Ned, sliding his arm across Michael’s shoulders, “don’t shut yourself off like that. There are two hundred thousand faggots in this town. If you generalize about them, you’re no better than the Moral Majority.”

  Michael looked at him. “Yeah, but I know you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “It’s just so fucking packaged,” said Michael. “A kid comes here from Sioux Falls or wherever, and he buys his uniform at All-American Boy, and he teaches himself how to stand just so in a dark corner at Badlands, and his life is all posturing and attitude and fast-food sex. It’s too easy. The mystery is gone.”

  “Is it gone for you?”

  Michael smiled. “Never.”

  “Then maybe it isn’t for that kid. Maybe it’s just what he needs to get Sioux Falls out of his system.”

  A long silence, and then: “I’m sounding awfully old, aren’t I?”

  Ned shook his head. “You’re just a little gayed out after the tour. I feel that way sometimes. Everybody does. Nobody ever said it would be easy, Michael.” He tightened his grip on his friend’s shoulders. “You want me to help you make your habit?”

  Michael’s eyes widened. “You sew?”

  “Sure,” said Ned, “when I’m not standing in a dark corner at Badlands.”

  Unoriginal Sin

  PRUE RUMMAGED FURIOUSLY FOR THE RIGHT WORDS. “He’s just … different, Father. He’s different from any man I’ve ever known.”

  “Somehow,” replied the priest, “I have no trouble believing that.”

  “He’s decent and he’s kind and intuitive … and he has such respect for nature, and he understands God better than anyone I’ve ever known.”

  “And he’s a helluva lot of fun in the sack.”

  “Father!”

  “Well, let’s get the cards on the table, girl. This isn’t the dressing room at Saks, you know.”

  Prue didn’t answer for a moment. She sat there rigidly in the darkness, hearing the scuffle of feet outside the confessional. “Father,” she said at last, “I think somebody’s waiting.”

  A sigh came through the hole in the wall. “Somebody’s always waiting,” bemoaned the cleric. “It’s just that time of the month. Can’t this wait till lunch on Tuesday?”

  “No. It can’t.”

  “Very well.”

  “You’re so sweet to …”

  “Get on with it, darling.”

  “All right …” Prue hesitated, then began again. “We have slept together.”

  “Go on.”

  “And … it was good.”

  The priest cleared his throat. “Is he … clean?”

  Stony silence.

  “You do understand me, don’t you, my child? I’m talking hygiene, not morals. I mean, you don’t know where he’s been, do you?”

  Prue lowered her voice to an angry whisper. “He’s perfectly clean!”

  “Good. You can’t be too careful.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me how … different he is, Father. I know that better than anyone. I also know that I need him in my life very badly. I can’t eat … I can’t write … I can’t go back and make things the way they were before I met him. I can’t, Father. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Of course, my child.” His voice was much gentler this time. “How are his teeth, by the way?”

  “For God’s sake!”

  “Prue, lower your voice. Mrs. Greeley is out there, remember?”

  A long silence, and then: “How can I share this with you, if you won’t be serious with me.”

  “I’m being deadly serious, darling. I asked about his teeth for a reason. It would help to know how … uh, presentable he is. Does he look O.K., aside from his clothes? I mean, would we have to fix him up?”

  “I cannot believe this!”

  “Just answer the question, my child.”

  “He’s … magnificent,” Prue sputtered. “He’s a handsome middle-aged man with nice skin, nice teeth. His vocabulary is better than mine.”

  “So all he needs is Wilkes?”

  “For what?”

  “To pass. What else? The man needs a new suit, darling. We all had to pass at one point or another. Henry Higgins did it for Eliza; you can do it for Luke. Simple, n’est-ce pas?”

  Prue was horrified. “Luke will not be … fixed up, Father.”

  “Have you asked him?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of that. He’s such a proud man.”

  “Ask him.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  The cleric sighed. “Very well.”

  “Anyway, where would I do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “This … makeover. He won’t come to my place, I know that. What would I do? Make him hide in the closet when my secretary’s there? It’s perfectly ridiculous.”

  Father Paddy seemed to ponder for a moment. “Let me work on it, darling. I have an idea.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll take a bit of arranging. I’ll get back to you. Run along now. Father knows best.”

  So Prue collected her things and left the confessional.

  Glowering, Mrs. Greeley watched her walk out of the cathedral.

  White Night

  IT HAD BEEN FIVE DAYS SINCE THEIR
LAST TAPING.

  “It’s wonderful to see you,” said DeDe. “I was going a little stir crazy at home.”

  They were eating dinner at a seafood place in Half Moon Bay. DeDe was wearing a Hermès scarf on her head and oversized sunglasses. Mary Ann was reminded of Jackie O’s old shopping get-up for Greece.

  “I’d think you’d be used to it by now,” said Mary Ann.

  “What?”

  “Being confined. First Jonestown, then the gay Cuban refugee center.”

  “You’ll never know true confinement,” mugged DeDe, “until you’ve lived with a hundred Latin drag queens.”

  Mary Ann grinned. “Grim, huh?”

  “Noisy. Castanets day and night. Aye-yi-yi till it’s coming out your ass.”

  Mary Ann laughed, then concentrated on her scallops. Was this the time to ask? Could she ease into the subject delicately? “Uh … DeDe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you doing all right? I mean … is something the matter?”

  DeDe set her fork down. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well … your mother says you’ve been having nightmares.”

  Silence.

  “If I’m prying, tell me. I thought it might help you to talk about it.”

  DeDe looked down at the Sony Micro Cassette-Corder that Mary Ann had bought with her first paycheck from Mrs. Halcyon. “It wouldn’t make bad copy, either.”

  Mary Ann was devastated. She turned off the machine instantly. “DeDe, I would never …”

  “Please. I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.” DeDe’s hand rose shakily to her brow. “Turn it back on. Please.”

  Mary Ann did so.

  “I’m edgy,” said DeDe, massaging her temples. “I’m sorry … I shouldn’t take it out on you … of all people. Yeah, I’m having nightmares.”

  “About … him?”

  DeDe nodded.

  “How well did you know him, anyway?”

  DeDe hesitated. “I wasn’t in the inner circle, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Who was?”

  “Well … mostly the ones who slept with him. He had a sort of coterie of young white women who were always getting screwed for the revolution. Sometimes he had sex as often as ten or twelve times a day. He used to brag about it. It was how he took control.”

  “But he never …?”

  “He knew about me and D’orothea, and he hated it. Not because we were lesbians, because he couldn’t have us.”

  “It was that important to him?”

  DeDe shrugged. “His track record’s available. He took two wives from Larry Layton, and he fathered a child by one of them. He fucked anything he could get his hands on, including some of the men.”

  “I see.”

  “He was … with me only once. At Jane Pittman Gardens.”

  Mary Ann looked puzzled.

  “Our dorm,” explained DeDe. “A lot of them were named after famous black women. I was sick that night, with a fever. D’orothea and most of the others were at a white night….”

  “Uh …?”

  “Suicide practice. Somebody else must’ve run the show, because Jones came to the dorm and climbed into bed with me.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He told me quite calmly that he thought it was about time the twins saw who their father was.”

  Mary Ann shook her head in disbelief.

  “And then … he raped me. The twins were in the crib next to us, screaming through the whole thing. When he finally left, he leaned over and kissed both of them rather sweetly and said: ‘Now you’re mine forever.’ ”

  “Awful.”

  “He means it, too.”

  Mary Ann reached across the table and took her hand. “Meant,” she said quietly.

  DeDe looked away from her. “Let’s go get a drink somewhere.”

  Man and Walkman

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON, THE TIME OF DAY WHEN SUNSHINE streamed through the green celluloid shades at the Twin Peaks and made the patrons look like fish in an overpopulated aquarium.

  Michael sat on a window seat, against the glass—like the snail in the aquarium, he decided, passive, voyeuristic, moving at his own pace. He was still wearing his God’s Green Earth overalls.

  The man next to him was wearing a Walkman. When he saw Michael watching him, he took off the tiny earphones and held them out to him. “Wanna listen?”

  Michael smiled appreciatively. “Who is it?”

  “Abba.”

  Abba? This guy was built like a brick shithouse, with an elephantine mustache and smoldering brown eyes. What was he doing hooked up to that sort of smarmy Euro-pop? On the other hand, he was also wearing a Qiana shirt. Maybe he just didn’t know any better.

  Michael avoided the confrontation. “Actually,” he said, “I’m not big on Walkmans. They make me kind of claustrophobic. I like to be able to get away from my music.”

  “I use them at work mostly,” said the man, “when there’s a lot of paperwork. I smoke a doobie at lunch, come back, put these babies on and go with the flow.”

  “Yeah. I can see how that might help.”

  The man laid the Walkman on the table. “You’re in the chorus, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I came to your welcome home,” said the man. “What a scene!”

  “Wasn’t it great?” grinned Michael. Five days later, he was still tingling with the exhilaration of that moment. Several thousand people had mobbed their buses at the corner of 18th and Castro.

  “I saw you kiss the ground,” said the man.

  Michael shrugged sheepishly. “I like it here, I guess.”

  “Yeah … me too.” He fiddled with the Walkman, obviously searching for something to say. “You don’t like Abba, huh?”

  Michael shook his head. “Sorry,” he replied, as pleasantly as possible.

  “What sort of stuff do you like?”

  “Well … lately I’ve been getting into country-western.” Michael laughed. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Redneck music,” said the man.

  “I know. I used to hate the crap when I was a kid in Orlando. Maybe it’s just the old bit about gay people imitating their oppressors. Like those guys who spend their days fighting police brutality and their nights dressing up like cops.”

  The man smiled faintly. “Never done that, huh?”

  “Never,” said Michael. “Was that strike two?”

  The man shook his head. “I’ve never done it either.”

  “Well, then … see how much we have in common?” Michael extended his hand. “I’m Michael Tolliver.”

  “Bill Rivera.” Latin, thought Michael. This was getting better all the time.

  “I have a friend,” Michael continued, “who used to go to The Trench on uniform night, because he loved having sex with people who looked like cops or Nazis or soldiers. One night he went home with a guy in cop drag, and the guy had this incredible loft south of Market, with neon tubing over the bed and high-tech everything … to die, right? Only my friend didn’t say a word, because he was supposed to be a prisoner, and the other guy was supposed to be a cop, and a prisoner doesn’t say ‘What a fabulous apartment’ to a cop. He said he could hardly wait for the sex to be over so he could ask the guy where he got his pin spots from. I don’t have that kind of self-discipline, I suppose. I wanna be able to say ‘What a fabulous apartment’ first thing. Is that too much to ask?”

  The big mustache bristled as he smiled. “It is at my house.”

  Michael laughed. “It doesn’t have to be fabulous.”

  “Good.”

  “It doesn’t even have to be your apartment. Mine’s available.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Russian Hill.”

  “C’mon,” said the man, downing his drink, “mine’s closer.”

  He lived on 17th Street in the Mission. His tiny studio was blandly furnished, with occasional endearing lapses into kitsch (a Mike Mentzer poster, a Lava Lite, a plasti
c cable car planter containing a half-dead philodendron).

  Michael was enormously relieved. Bill Rivera wasn’t tasteless—he was taste free. Gay men with no taste were often the hottest ones of all. Besides, thought Michael, if we ever kept house together, he’d probably let me do the decorating.

  Then he spotted the handcuffs on the dresser.

  “Uh … pardon me?”

  Bill looked up. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, removing his Hush Puppies. “Yeah?”

  Michael held out the handcuffs, as if presenting Exhibit A. “Aren’t into this, huh?”

  Bill shook his head. “It’s just a living.”

  “Uh …?”

  “I’m a cop. Does that mean you wanna leave?”

  “Now wait a minute …” Michael was dumbfounded. Bill stood up and removed something from a dresser drawer, holding it out to his accuser.

  “My badge, O.K.?”

  Michael looked at it, then back at Bill, then back at the badge again.

  “O.K.?” asked Bill.

  “O.K.,” said Michael.

  Almost numb, he sat down on the bed next to the policeman and began unlacing his shoes. “What a fabulous apartment,” he said.

  The Pygmalion Plot

  PRUE HAD ALREADY RIPPED THREE SHEETS OF PAPER from her typewriter when her secretary stepped into the study.

  “It’s Father Paddy,” she said. “He says it won’t take long.”

  Prue groaned softly and picked up the phone. “Yes, Father?”

  “I know you’re on deadline, darling, but I need you to answer a few questions.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How does your schedule look? The next three weeks or so.”

  Prue hesitated. “What are you up to?”

  “Tut-tut. Aren’t we snippy this morning. Just answer the question, my child.”

  Prue checked her appointment book. “O.K.,” she said. “Fairly slow, actually.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.”

  “Father …”

  “And tell your Mountain Man not to fill up his dance card either. I’ve plans for the two of you.”

  “What?”

  “Never you mind. In good time, my child, in good time.”

  “Father, I don’t know what you’re cooking up, but you might as well know that Luke is not … well, he’s not the sort of man who’ll take orders from other people.”