Aubrey was subdued. He was desperate to touch her, kiss her. The timing was bad, she said. She’d been to UCLA that day for tests. Something was funny with her eyes. They dilated the pupils and made her scan a grid — she was certain it was CMV. If the virus was confirmed, she’d have to take medicine each day through a shunt. She was forthright and even-tempered except when it came to Zephyr. She didn’t want the boy to see her around the house with a fucking permanent tube in her arm.
Chet laid her shaking body down. She wet his face with tears and sex, and searched his eyes with the drama of the inchoately blind. He pulled off the condom but Aubrey made him put on another. She came in great, shuddering waves, and when Chet caught up, he hated that his come couldn’t find hers, turning stickily onto itself, sheer pornography; he wanted to give her his best, a viscous magic bullet — to fuck her to life as she’d been fucked to early death. Once outside, he tore off latex and quickly wrapped their bodies in sheets, as if to preserve and protect — to cleanse — through an improvised classicism of the bedroom. Aubrey said, “I needed that,” and laughed so hard she shrieked and gasped, pounding his chest with tiny fists.
Zephyr and the sitter were asleep on the couch when they came in. The girl quietly gathered her things, and Aubrey lifted the unconscious child in her arms. She trudged upstairs and tucked him in, then called to Chet from the landing. They went right to bed. It was a long time since Chet had a sleepover. He hoped he wouldn’t snore or cry out from a dream.
His last thoughts were of the treasonous roommate, and not the girl he left behind: Ryan the apostate, the cockatrice à table at a swanky bistro, say, Le Voltaire, beneath what was once the master’s house — supping on canard aux cerises, awaiting his lover’s return from the urinal.
Wish Jason and his Argonaut well…
Troy Capra
The legendary personal manager was well known for his collection of large outdoor pieces. He walked them past a Nevelson, a flock of Lalanne sheep, a Schnabel table with some kind of metal figure in its center, an enormous bronze breast and, finally, the most peculiar of alclass="underline" a phony garden populated by two male manikins, one young, one old, pants down around the knees, the latter humping a tree while the former fucked a hole in the ground. The figures were motorized; Moe flicked a switch and everyone watched straight-faced. He waved toward a Kienholz — more middle-aged men in suits without pants, standing around a barrel — but the sprinklers had been on and it was too far a trudge.
Rod Whalen’s body was amazingly beautiful, a transformation casually attributed to years of power yoga. It was easy to see how a true collector might be stirred. Instead of desiring him, Troy merely wondered how muscles could look that way — gills seemed but a small evolutionary jump. They reminisced about that Guys and Dolls summer while a gang of pretty boys and fortysomethings arrived, including Zev Turtletaub and the dermatologist Leslie Trott. The producer escorted a handsome kid with tangled eyebrows and a cold sore: “Taj Wiedlin, my Veepee of Bedevilment.” Troy shook hands all around. Maybe Quinn was right and coming here today would somehow pan out. He liked the queers well enough but rarely went to house parties. Wall-to-wall men had a way of throwing him into heterosexual panic.
When the guests disbanded for drinks, Troy cornered Moe for a little spin control. He told the attentive manager how he was in truth a theater director who’d conflated his labors in the adult film world into an epic monologue that he planned to film before an audience the very next month, with himself as star. Trusskopf said the idea was brilliant and demanded an invitation. He seemed sincere.
The director introduced Up in Adam as his “seminal work” and that got a polite laugh. The half-hour film took place in a barracks. It featured a raw recruit (Rod Whalen aka G.I. Blow) and a black drill sergeant (Sarge Large). For kicks, Troy had ripped off a favorite movie, The D.I. — he had the black get in Rod’s face and shout, just like Jack Webb: “Do you love me?” G.I. Blow rejoined, “Yes sir!” Again: “Do you love me?” “Yes sir!” “I can’t hear you!” “I love you, sir!”—and on and on, until Sarge Large barked, “Prove it, Mister!” At this, the room broke into pandemonium. Troy hung a few minutes, then went to find the head.
As he walked down a hall, Troy imagined big-bellied Kiv waddling after, realtor in tow, face flushed by desire of possession — house-haunted. He stepped into a vast neo-classical salle de bain with white-marble lion-pawed bath and tiny Bonnard. He lowered himself onto the bowl, staring up at a recessed fixture. He imagined a Spy Shop camera hidden within; cued by infrared beam, Troy’s naked ape image might at this very moment be supplanting the shopworn Up in Adam players. In a bit of funhouse high-tech horseplay, the partygoers were actually watching him shit and he’d never be the wiser.
He decided to explore, treading softly toward the cavernous master suite: twenty-foot ceilings, majestic savonnerie, Louis XIV armchairs in suede and leather — a Johns and a Clemente, and a Haring painted on a vast tarp. There was a life-size sculpture of a man that soon revealed itself to be the true flesh figure of Moe Trusskopf, head turned upward like a poet translating the clouds. Kneeling crotch-level was the bedeviling Mr. Wiedlin himself. Troy slunk off as the latter’s coughing began, like croup in a clinic of the damned.
When the director returned, most of the audience had dispersed to kitchen and patio. Only three or four diehard cinéastes remained in quiet attendance of the acrobatic enlisted men — Quinn among them, thigh welded to a married attorney’s. The acne-pitted Dr. Trott stood in a corner shoveling down canapés, regaling Zev Turtletaub with radioactive gossip, indifferent eyes only occasionally drifting to television screen. As Moe resurfaced sans ami, the houseman answered the door and a great whoop rose up: there was Richard Dreyfuss. Betsey Blankenberg brought up the rear with a party-hopper’s fatuous grin. The bantam latecomer embraced Moe and Leslie and Zev, then sat up close to watch final maneuvers with boyish impunity. “You know, I’ve never seen one of these,” he said, squeamish fascination turning to horrified glee.
Betsey shook her head indulgently.
“Oh my God!” he gasped. “Is that physically possible?”
“I thought you knew,” said Moe, deadpan. “This is a CAA training tape.”
Richard laughed like hell and the room started filling up again.
Troy assessed his options from the kitchen. He could make an end run for the Kienholz, but wasn’t sure of an easy alley exit; probably worth investigating. He cursed himself for not having parked on the street. He was certain to be boxed in, probably by Dreyfuss.
The door opened and a server came through, followed by his old chum Betsey. There was nothing for Troy to do but take her by surprise — a pain-free moment suspended in time, like after you catch a finger in a door. She stood back, trying to work the equation of why he was there, unable to factor “gay” as an answer. He leapt in and told the truth, more or less, a blue movie done long ago for money, Moe’s boyfriend, yadda yadda, and was halfway into the Skin Trade rap when Dreyfuss came in, searching for nosh. Betsey reintroduced them, but the actor nodded as if meeting him for the first time.