traffic clearing again. From here south to the pier the coast road rides at sea level, snaking between a crumbling set of hills and the barest strip of beachfront. The houses are cheek by jowl along that strip all the way to Santa Monica, perched on tiptoe above the tide, waiting—almost yearning—for the Big One.
"I don't think I had a youth at all, tortured or otherwise," Gray remarks, more wistful than I've ever heard him. "I turned thirty-five before I was ten."
"Yeah, I've seen the pictures. All these picnics and everyone laughing, except this one little serious guy with a book in his lap. You should have glasses an inch thick by now."
"I read books instead of living." He says this matter-of-factly, without any whine or regret.
I'm about to protest that reading was the very thing that brought him to that outre world of beats and jazzmen, a far bohemian cry from the ranch or the Cheez-Whiz mainstream of the fifties, but I hold my tongue. This is the most he has ever said about how it used to feel, being a lonely kid. Somehow I don't want to gloss it over. "Did you know you were gay?"
He shakes his head. "I wasn't anything."
"So when did you come out?"
"Assuming I ever did," he replies dryly, "I guess when I was thirty."
Nineteen-seventy, same as me, for I was starting to rattle the knob on the closet door when I was thirteen or fourteen. I assume Gray is being very precise here, that he had nobody to speak of between the onset of the carnal itch and almost twenty years later. I feel an immense and loyal sadness for the youth he missed, and even think it may have been worse than mine, despite the fraternal abuse and my exile among the piss-blooded micks of Chester.
We're coming into Santa Monica, and traffic seizes again, the Sunday night thrombosis. Gray goes left and leaves the coast road, ducking up an alley behind the stores on Chatauqua. He's got shortcuts forty years old. We scoot down another steep alley and cross up Santa Monica Canyon, coming around to Ocean Avenue through a neighborhood of perfect thirties bungalows. You half expect to see those exiles, Thomas Mann and Brecht, walking their Weimaraners. Then the Palisades are on our right, and we're high above the beach, with the pier like a paving of diamonds on the water.
"But I feel gay now," Gray declares with an unmistakable puff of pride, turning up Colorado.
"Yeah? Well, now that you mention it, you're looking a little lavender around the edges. Do you feel an irresistible desire to listen to Judy at Carnegie Hall?"
We shriek with delight. It's already the most we've ever said to each other. I almost wish we weren't going anywhere, that we could just ride around like this all night. Through the winter Gray and I have grown tighter, like roommates except we live in different Baldwin houses. Yet there's always been a line we never cross, the no-man's-land where you walk on eggs. I usually chalk it up to my illness, or to Gray's unfailing reserve and discretion. Tonight there's no line. We're easy and antic, tooling around in a pickup.
This is what a brother is, I think, lolling my head out the window to let the wind blast my hair.
AGORA's not exactly in the middle of Venice, but more on the interface with Ocean Park. It's still in the senseless crime district, but being as the neighborhood is more industrial, it's not quite so High Noon, crack on every corner. We head up a street that's leased to Hughes Aircraft, great hulking warehouses on either side painted puke-green, World War III being assembled within. At the end is a cul-de-sac that forms a sort of low-rent industrial park, four modest factories not much bigger than bloated garages, sprawled around a parking square.
Dumpsters big enough for eighteen-wheelers dominate the open space; and yet, improbably, from the center of the square rise four royal palms, freakish as giraffes. The palms are never pruned or watered, and more than one truck has smashed against them backing up. But they
"I don't think I had a youth at all, tortured or otherwise," Gray remarks, more wistful than I've ever heard him. "I turned thirty-five before I was ten."
"Yeah, I've seen the pictures. All these picnics and everyone laughing, except this one little serious guy with a book in his lap. You should have glasses an inch thick by now."
"I read books instead of living." He says this matter-of-factly, without any whine or regret.
I'm about to protest that reading was the very thing that brought him to that outre world of beats and jazzmen, a far bohemian cry from the ranch or the Cheez-Whiz mainstream of the fifties, but I hold my tongue. This is the most he has ever said about how it used to feel, being a lonely kid. Somehow I don't want to gloss it over. "Did you know you were gay?"
He shakes his head. "I wasn't anything."
"So when did you come out?"
"Assuming I ever did," he replies dryly, "I guess when I was thirty."
Nineteen-seventy, same as me, for I was starting to rattle the knob on the closet door when I was thirteen or fourteen. I assume Gray is being very precise here, that he had nobody to speak of between the onset of the carnal itch and almost twenty years later. I feel an immense and loyal sadness for the youth he missed, and even think it may have been worse than mine, despite the fraternal abuse and my exile among the piss-blooded micks of Chester.
We're coming into Santa Monica, and traffic seizes again, the Sunday night thrombosis. Gray goes left and leaves the coast road, ducking up an alley behind the stores on Chatauqua. He's got shortcuts forty years old. We scoot down another steep alley and cross up Santa Monica Canyon, coming around to Ocean Avenue through a neighborhood of perfect thirties bungalows. You half expect to see those exiles, Thomas Mann and Brecht, walking their Weimaraners. Then the Palisades are on our right, and we're high above the beach, with the pier like a paving of diamonds on the water.
"But I feel gay now," Gray declares with an unmistakable puff of pride, turning up Colorado.
"Yeah? Well, now that you mention it, you're looking a little lavender around the edges. Do you feel an irresistible desire to listen to Judy at Carnegie Hall?"
We shriek with delight. It's already the most we've ever said to each other. I almost wish we weren't going anywhere, that we could just ride around like this all night. Through the winter Gray and I have grown tighter, like roommates except we live in different Baldwin houses. Yet there's always been a line we never cross, the no-man's-land where you walk on eggs. I usually chalk it up to my illness, or to Gray's unfailing reserve and discretion. Tonight there's no line. We're easy and antic, tooling around in a pickup.
This is what a brother is, I think, lolling my head out the window to let the wind blast my hair.
AGORA's not exactly in the middle of Venice, but more on the interface with Ocean Park. It's still in the senseless crime district, but being as the neighborhood is more industrial, it's not quite so High Noon, crack on every corner. We head up a street that's leased to Hughes Aircraft, great hulking warehouses on either side painted puke-green, World War III being assembled within. At the end is a cul-de-sac that forms a sort of low-rent industrial park, four modest factories not much bigger than bloated garages, sprawled around a parking square.
Dumpsters big enough for eighteen-wheelers dominate the open space; and yet, improbably, from the center of the square rise four royal palms, freakish as giraffes. The palms are never pruned or watered, and more than one truck has smashed against them backing up. But they
Similar Books
