Read Online Faggots by Larry Kramer, Reynolds Price - Free Book Online Page B

guilt that, like father: like son, financed what amounted to two years of intensive psychoanalysis at Yale’s famed Child Study Center (Richard was never to know that his case had entered the international journals as “A Famous Son: The Transmission of Psychoneurotic Mishegas from Old World to New”) with a Dr. Rivtov. For four hours a week, through his junior and senior years, Richie, as the dour doctor waved his club foot by the reclining patient’s right eye, was shrunk, wherein they both discovered how terrified were his kishkas of: a) his poppa; b) his momma; c) himself.
    Armed with this useful knowledge, he graduated. And disarmed by the additional enlightenment that his cock still saluted his fellow men only, a reflexive action not dissimilar to the knee that jumps when struck by the hammer, of which both he and Dr. Rivtov naturally disapproved, though neither carpenter had come up with anything remotely resembling a new set of drawers, he tried to make the best of it. And not to be terrified that his Pop would find out. And not to be terrified that his Pop would find out. And not to be…
    This had amounted, up till now, to allowing his flagpole to be saluted and nothing more.
    But he knew there was more. He saw it with his eyes and he dreamed it in his dreams and he fantasized it in his daytimes and he knew he was in trouble.
    For he knew there was a pit of sexuality out there and that he longed to throw himself into it.
    I have to! I have to! he would torture himself before several hours napping in his lofted bed. Because it’s part of the faggot life style—to find abandonment and freedom through ecstasy—fucking and being fucked and light s & m and shitting and pissing and Oh I want to be abandoned! and where’s my copy of the Avocado …, which he would then reach for and wonder when he could courageously answer those ads placed by seekers of “willing victims” and “hot humpy young dudes to do things to.”
    Then his torture thoughts stretched out to Fire Island. This weekend I promise I’m going to try! He’d never been there before, not because of its physical inaccessibility but because of his physical fear. How to parade around, half-naked, along those fabled boardwalks and strands, in front of all those staring eyes, eyes belonging to humpies far humpier than he? Could he do it? And into that fabled Meat Rack! The sexual pits incarnate! Could he do that, too? Throw himself down there? And could he do it with class, so that they’d look at him and point him out enviously, and say: “There goes that rangy cowboy, Rich Bronstein! You know who he is!”
    Yes, how to throw himself into those pits? How?!
    One million smackolas. Wouldn’t they help?
    And then my Pop could find out. And then my Pop could find out.
    But by then I’d be free!
    And Rich!
    Yes, one million smackolas. They would surely help.
    And if I don’t do something quickly, they’ll make me marry that spaghetti heiress, Marci Tisch!
     
     
     
    While Fred walked across town to the Y, now thinking of his mother, and Abe left Ephra for an early dinner with Randy Dildough, Anthony Montano left his Beekman Place penthouse and headed south. Fred’s best friend—tall, dark-haired, dapper, Omar Sharif as an Italian diplomat—was heading, oh wondrous joyful shining late afternoon in May, for the Village streets.
    There he would get his cock sucked, his cock that had not come in twenty-three days, his wonderful uncut wop cock that deserved better things, as did its owner, slaving for Irving Slough was not an easy life, the Winston Man was not an easy account to square with one’s conscience, Winnie might be cute but people are dying, as am I, as is my cock, both of us feeling overwhelmingly the need for relief and release, I am working too hard, it’s not working hard enough, it’s sometimes, too often, soft and wavy, and that’s for hair sprays not for cocks, and what is happening now that I am getting older and there’s no