But I was horny, and curious, and so I went into a room where I removed my clothes and put them inside a locker with Art's. He kept the key, which he wore on a band around his wrist, like a charm. Before I could wrap my towel around my waist, Art grabbed my cock and held it while he kissed me. I responded despite my nervousness, and he squeezed me tightly. My hand went between his legs and found him to be equally aroused and impressively large.
After making out for a few minutes, he took me by the hand and led me back down the hallway. I tried to hold my towel around my waist to cover myself, but it wasn't quite big enough to circle me easily (probably by design) and my erection bobbed conspicuously in the gap. More than one hand reached out and gave it a tug, but in the darkness I saw only fingers, never faces. On the second floor there was a large room covered with mats. As Art led me to an empty space, I remembered the night Jack and I had spent with Andy years before. This room, though, was filled only with men, men doing every conceivable thing to one another involving mouths, hands, cocks, and assholes. It was a constantly-changing tableau punctuated by moans, slaps, and the occasional volley of filthy words. Everywhere I looked a different carnal act was being played out in living stereo. Art pulled me down onto the floor and tossed my towel aside. He began kissing me again while he played with my dick. After a while, he moved down and I felt the heat of his mouth as he took me in. I lay back and let him work up and down my shaft, focusing on not getting too excited too soon. Although I'd had a few encounters during the preceding months, the fact was, Art was the first in some time. I knew I could easily pop if I didn't distract myself, so I focused my mind on trying to remember the army's codes for small weapons ammunition.
I was jerked from my task by the feeling of something warm and wet pushing between the cheeks of my ass. I looked up and saw the top of Art's head. He'd pushed my legs back and was burrowing his face into me. Before I knew it, his tongue was inside of me, teasing me open. It was followed soon after by a finger.
"Hold on," I said, reaching down and drawing him up.
"What?" he asked, falling between my legs and pumping his cock against mine. "I want to fuck you." "It's just that…" I began.
"Here," Art said, reaching over and picking up a small, dark bottle. "This will loosen you up."
He uncapped the bottle and held it under my nose. I'd used poppers once or twice before, so I knew what they were and what to do. I inhaled, feeling the rush as the amyl nitrate invaded my brain and exploded. Art took a hit as well, shutting his eyes as the buzz began, then opening them and smiling wickedly. "That should open you up like one of those doors on the Enterprise ," he said, putting his hands behind my knees.
I let him do it. The amyl made everything okay. Not just okay—great. Now we know all the horrible things that can happen when you overdo that stuff, but I tell you, I'm not sure it isn't worth it. All right, when I'm being sensible I know it isn't, just like I know Thayer is right when he tells me three cups of coffee a day is enough. But lust is seldom sensible, and I know why so many guys still take whiffs out of those tiny bottles when they want to get things going. For that minute or however long it lasts, you feel like everything has opened up and that every electrical current in the universe is running right through your heart and out your dick. Everything is magnified a million times, and you don't ever want it to end.
I looked at Art and saw the most beautiful man in the world. He was Ben Murphy, my fantasy cowboy. I didn't know what I was to him, but I didn't care. All I cared about was the way he filled me up and made me want more of him, of anyone, of everyone. I found myself reaching out to the bodies around us, trying to draw them in. Some of them found their way, and we were a tangle of limbs. I felt tongues and fingers moving here, touching there, sometimes fleeting, sometimes lingering, and I didn't care who they belonged to. My face was buried between furry thighs, and I sucked eagerly at a musky pucker while somewhere below an invisible mouth coaxed an orgasm from my swollen erection. I felt Art come inside me. I was certain that I couldn't contain it, that somewhere inside a dam was about to break, cracks in its walls widening and splitting me open. I tried to hold back, wanting to hang forever in that delicate space between desire and completion. Then someone's hand tightened around my balls, pulling gently, and I couldn't stop myself. I cried out as my balls were emptied, my jism flying out like silk from a spider. My body shuddered, and for perhaps a quarter of a minute I was orbiting the sun.
"Fuck, that was hot." Art's voice brought me back to earth. He had pulled out of me and was lying on his back beside me. His cock had softened, and he played with it idly, as if petting a sleepy puppy. The men who had joined us had rolled away, becoming parts of other puzzles, and I couldn't tell which ones had participated in our orgy. I was sticky, and I reached for my towel.
"Want to go again?" asked Art as I cleaned myself up. "I can usually get it up after half an hour or so."
"Thanks," I said. "But I've got to get home."
"Okay," said Art, already looking around the room for potential replacements. "I think I'm going to stay."
"I need the key," I said, standing up and holding the towel in front of me. Art looked at me, not comprehending.
"For the locker," I explained. "To get my clothes."
"Oh, right," he said, taking the key from around his wrist and handing it to me. "Just leave it at the front. I'll pick it up later." I hesitated, waiting for him to ask me for my number, say he had a good time, or basically do anything that would suggest what we'd done meant something beyond just getting off. When he didn't, I turned and left him there, trying to get his flaccid dick to come to life. This is the problem—or at least my problem—with the kind of sex I had in those days, that, actually, I had for a very long time. The spell seldom lasted long. It was as if orgasm shattered whatever fragile magic had maintained the illusion that what I was doing was worth the time and energy. And as soon as the enchantment was gone, I became unhappy. My partners and I turned from handsome, huge-cocked princes into warty little toads who hopped away, self-conscious and spent, into the mud. Of course, at the time I just thought I was doing it wrong somehow. I told myself that if I did it enough, eventually I'd figure it out and be able to make the feeling I grasped in those moments before coming last an eternity. Like a singer training to hold a perfect note, I believed that if I could extend it each time, even by just a second, that one day I would be strong enough to sustain it forever. That, however, was not to be my night. I was sated, but already I could feel the hunger beginning to gnaw at me. I needed to leave, and so I retrieved my clothes, dressed, and managed with only a minimum of trouble to find a cab to take me back to my apartment. Actually, our apartment. Yes, I'd moved in with Jack and Andy. Not right away. After that night on the bridge, I returned to the Presidio determined not to have anything more to do with either of the men who had altered the course of my life. And I didn't, for about two months. Then, after repeated calls from Jack, I relented and went to their place for dinner. It was awkward at first. Jack and I were tentative with one another, and Andy was overly loud, as if he could break down the walls separating us by shouting at them. But I'd at last discovered that they were not lovers, although I suspected Andy allowed Jack to perform whatever services he might wish to when it suited Andy to receive them. For the next eight months I remained on base, seeing Andy and Jack from time to time as Jack and I reforged the bonds of our friendship and I completed my duty to the United States Army. I was discharged in February of 1973, and accepted the invitation to move into the third bedroom of the spacious flat Andy and Jack had gotten for a ridiculously low rent because the owner of the house, a married Irish Catholic father of six, wanted tenants who would not be put off by his use of the uppermost apartment for the purpose of entertaining the teenage boys he paid to let him masturbate at their feet. The war had officially ended in March, and I was completely free to go about my life. As for Andy, I'd slowly accepted that he was not going to be my lover, that he had, in fact, prob
ably never been my lover. I still wasn't sure what he was to me, but I had settled into an uneasy truce with my heart regarding the matter, and was more or less able to live in the same house with him without running the risk of daily emotional upheaval. By unspoken agreement, Jack and I still never spoke of our various entanglements with him.
I left The Club and went back to this home I'd created. To my surprise, both Jack and Andy were there when I arrived. They were in the living room, listening to Joni Mitchell's Blue and getting stoned on grass and red wine. They were already well gone when I walked in, and greeted me with subdued enthusiasm.
"Where've you been?" Jack asked, stretched out on the worn oriental carpet that covered the floor while Andy lay crosswise to him, his head on Jack's bare stomach. "I just went out for a drink," I said.
"You mean you got laid," Andy said, smirking. "Didn't you?"
"No," I said defensively.
"That means he did," said Jack, and he and Andy started laughing.
"All right," I said. "I did."
"Didn't he want you to stay over?" asked Andy, rolling onto his side and sitting up on one elbow. "We didn't go to his place," I admitted, flopping down in the armchair across from them. "Where'd you do it?" said Andy. "In an alley?"
"We went to this place called The Club," I said, figuring I might as well tell them everything. "The Club?" Andy exclaimed. "That place is a hole. You could have at least gone to the Ritch Street Baths. Shit, The Club." "It was his idea," I said. "How was I supposed to know?"
"He better have been one good fuck," Andy remarked.
"It was fine," I said. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Come here," said Andy, waving me over.
I shook my head. "I'm just going to go to bed," I said.
"Come on," Andy insisted. "Get over here."
I joined him and Jack on the floor. I rested my head on Andy's stomach, while Jack laid his on mine, so that we formed a triangle of bodies. Andy handed me the joint and I took a hit. "If you're driving into town with a dark cloud above you," Joni sang in her too-sweet voice, "dial in the number, who's bound to love you."
"See," Andy said as I closed my eyes and felt the rise and fall of his breathing. "It doesn't matter. Nothing matters."
I closed my eyes as Joni sang us her lullaby. "If your head says forget it but your heart's still smoking, call me at the station, the lines are open."
No, I thought. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
CHAPTER 33
"The SLA want Hearst to cough up four million more to feed the poor," Burt announced as I entered the office. "He says he doesn't have it."
"Bullshit," I said, taking off my coat and hanging it on the hook behind the door. "If he wants little Patty back, he'll come up with it," said Burt, turning the page of the magazine in his hands.
"What've we got today?" I asked him, sitting down and looking at the stack of folders forming a Tower of Pisa on the corner of my desk.
"Same old, same old," he said. I leaned back and stared out the window. It was raining. Still raining. It felt like it had been raining for months, although probably it had only been three or four days. But rain in San Francisco in February seems to last forever, turning life into one long, gray chill. Our office's antiquated heating system rarely came to life, and when it did, it let out only occasional burps of heat, which were quickly devoured by the dampness.
In early 1974, I was working for the Veterans Administration in the medical center on the site of the old Fort Miley base. I'd tried to distance myself from the military, but without a college degree, my options had been limited. After a year in low-paying jobs at coffee shops and bookstores, I'd returned to the army in search of better employment. They'd obliged by assigning me to the VA hospital, where I was in charge of following up on claims filed by Vietnam vets, who since returning from Southeast Asia were suddenly coming down with all kinds of ailments, both physical and mental. Concerned that something might be going on, the government had established an office specifically to look into these claims and keep track of the soldiers filing them.
That duty fell to me and Burt. Another veteran of the war in Southeast Asia, Burt had been a Marine chaplain stationed near Da Nang during some of the fiercest fighting. A few years older than myself, he was short, overweight, and possessed of a caustic wit, which he turned mostly on the government and any affiliated group. He also happened to be gay, as I'd been pleased to discover many of the VA staff were. Burt said it was because we were all anal-retentive and that made us good administrators.
"Why Patty Hearst?" Burt mused out loud. "I mean, if you're going to kidnap someone, it should at least be someone people care about, like Tricia Nixon." "Too much trouble," I said as I took the first folder from the top of the stack. "Besides, then it would be a federal crime."
I opened the folder and read the patient's bio. PFC Trevor M. Headly. 27. Suffering from chronic headaches and unexplained neurological problems. After only a month on the job, I could predict with astonishing accuracy what I would find in the reports. Most of the soldiers were, like Trevor, young, and most were experiencing unusual symptoms not consistent with anything the army had ever seen in its soldiers. Private Headly had undergone several rounds of tests at the VA hospital, none of which had found anything out of the ordinary. It was my responsibility to telephone Trevor and inform him that there was nothing more we could do for him.
"Oh, my lord, you should see Gloria Vanderbilt's little boys," said Burt. "I swear that Anderson Cooper's going to be a big fairy when he grows up. Have you ever seen a gayer six-year-old?" "What are you reading?" I asked him.
He held up his magazine. There was a picture of Mia Farrow on the cover.
"People?" I said, reading the title. "What's that?"
"It's new," he said, flipping through the pages. "This is their first issue. You've got to read it when I'm done. Did you know Lance Loud used to write to Andy Warhol when he was a kid? And he has a rock band? They're called the Mumps."
"Do people really care about that stuff?" I asked. "It sounds like a bunch of celebrity gossip." "Please, Mary," Burt replied, slipping into the tone he usually reserved for conversations outside the office. "What do you think we do when we all get together at the Café on Sunday morning and dish about who did what to who on Saturday night? It's what we live for. This is the same thing, just on a bigger scale."
"Yeah, but they'll need more than the gay male population of San Francisco to buy that rag if it's going to stick around," I argued. "You're forgetting housewives," said Burt. "They're basically gay men in curlers and slippers, and there are millions of them. They'll eat this shit right up. Look, it says here that Frank Sinatra served Mia Farrow divorce papers in front of the cast and crew of Rosemary's Baby . I always thought he was an asshole. Hot, but an asshole."
It was at times like these that I had a difficult time imagining Burt attending to the injured and dying while battle raged around him. I knew he had. I'd heard the stories of his bravery from a number of men who had served with him. He himself rarely talked about his three tours of duty, and he never mentioned any of his heroics. Some days I would have sworn he must have a twin somewhere, a much butcher version of himself who had gone to Vietnam while Burt stayed home and watched soap operas.
"Speaking of hot assholes," Burt said, closing the magazine and putting it down. "How's that roommate of yours?"
"I assume you mean Andy," I said, suppressing a smile. Burt had a well-known crush on him, which Andy had so far managed to completely avoid noticing. "That would be the one," said Burt.
"You should have come out with us last night," I told him. "You could have seen for yourself."
"Sorry, but I don't need the frustration of watching him flirt with everyone else at the Midnight Sun while I drink myself stupid," Burt said. "I had a perfectly good time at home watching Mannix and beating off, thank you very much." I had to laugh at his dramatics. Burt was a sweet man, and would have made anyone an excellent lover,
but his physical type wasn't exactly prime meat in the bar market, a problem compounded by his preference for men with muscle and attitude. I kept telling him he should show up wearing his Marine uniform, a suggestion that was met with rolled eyes and a prim shake of a finger. "I only do drag on Halloween," he always said, immediately changing the subject. I sometimes wished Andy would take an interest in Burt. He'd given up pretending he might still be interested in women, but since I'd come to live with him, he hadn't had anything even resembling a boyfriend. Instead, there had been a string of one-night stands, men whose faces I'd see once in the morning as they stumbled from Andy's bedroom to the bathroom, then would disappear back into the ever-swelling ranks of homosexuals flocking to the city and extending the boundaries of the Castro block by block. He never discussed these tricks, and on the rare occasions when Jack or I would comment about one of them, Andy always pretended not to know who we were talking about. It was very clear by that point that whatever sexual relationships had once existed between myself and Jack, myself and Andy, and Andy and Jack had become something else. Friendship, yes, but more than that. It oversimplifies it to say that we had become a family. Families stay together out of obligations based on blood and sense of duty. We stayed together because we were all pieces of the same machine. Each of us had a different function. Jack was the engine. Andy was the fuel. And I, well, I suppose I was the brake that prevented everything from crashing.
Gay men are not unique in our ability to create lasting friendships with former lovers, but I do think that we've perfected it. At least, I know that I have never heard a straight person answer, "I blew him in the washroom of the San Francisco Hilton," when asked how he first met the friend of fifteen years that has been brought along as a dinner guest. It's a rare ability, being able to see sex as a perfectly acceptable form of social introduction, an even rarer one to move beyond an initial, perhaps fleeting, sexual attraction to something more without embarrassment. As a friend once remarked to me upon receiving news of his younger sister's engagement, "Straight people get married so that they can have sex. Gay men have sex so that they can get friends."