Read Online I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore by Ethan Mordden - Free Book Online Page A

the single-person family (especially mine), I smiled. One must. But then this kid moved in with Dennis Savage, and the kid was called Little Kiwi, and Dennis Savage acted as if he owned every place Little Kiwi was in, like a father, a creditor, and a king all at once. What was I to do? Especially as they would show up at my apartment whenever they chose. Actually, what I did was: I thought, There is a tale in this now. Another story begins to stir in this our gay life.
    As Lord Mayor of the Circuit, Dennis Savage intends his visits as an honor, but somehow he always shows up when I’m pushing a deadline and, as he lives in my building, there’s never a warning. If I bar my door to him, he goes into some grotesque routine in the hall, which makes for crabby neighbors. Worse yet, now that Little Kiwi has moved in with him, they go everywhere together, often in the company of Little Kiwi’s disreputable dog, Bauhaus. But people tell me how lucky I am to have Dennis Savage’s confidence—“and that fetching number who walks in his shadows! My, my, my! ” Will you listen to the sound of them? As if we were still in the late 1940s, when all the bars were unmarked and only bombers wore bomber jackets.
    I’ve told Dennis Savage to call first. I’ve lectured him on the rudeness of poking into my fridge uninvited. I’ve warned him that Little Kiwi’s fabled charm is lost on me. And all he says is, “Have you noticed how lamplight picks up the tones in his hair?”
    “How old is that kid, anyway?” I once asked him.
    “Old enough to love.”
    “He has the interests of a child of eight.”
    “He voted in the last election.”
    “For whom? The Velveteen Rabbit?”
    “Everyone adores him. They dress up for him and bake a pie. Look at you.” I keep house in jeans and a sweatshirt. “And what do you give us to eat? BLTs!”
    Actually, I give Dennis Savage BLTs. Little Kiwi subsists on grilled-cheese sandwiches and sliced tomato.
    “Everyone wants Little Kiwi,” says Dennis Savage. “You should know this. Except no one can have him but me.”
    “Oh, yeah?”
    Dennis Savage chuckles. “I dare you.”
    How satisfying it would be to outfox Dennis Savage, though on the other hand his relationship with Little Kiwi is too fascinating to menace. I always listen for the sour notes in the gay duet, perhaps because the local Sloan’s, at First Avenue and Fifty-third Street, seems at times to be populated exclusively by quarreling moustaches. But in these two I see the seamless fraternity of the worldly and the naïve, the hip and the unspoiled. Dennis Savage has been everywhere; Little Kiwi knows nothing.
    Despite my complaints, I enjoy their visits, though they do tend to take over. One evening, as spring gave way to summer and my workday dwindled into daydreams and staring out the window, the two of them and Bauhaus paraded in.
    Dennis Savage went into the kitchen to see about a snack, Little Kiwi was poking into the two huge cardboard boxes my new stereo had come in, and Bauhaus grabbed a sneaker in his mouth, ran around in a craze, crashed into the piano, and lay there.
    “Hey! This would make a great boat,” said Little Kiwi, laying one of the boxes on the floor. “Would somebody push me around in my boat?”
    “I’ll push you, little darling,” I said. Suddenly Dennis Savage came roaring out of the kitchen, steel in his eyes.
    “Well, well, well,” I remark. “Look at somebody nervous about something.”
    Dennis Savage takes a long breath and smiles. “This is a funny apartment and you are a funny man.”
    “It’s a funny world.”
    “How would you like no head?”
    “Now I’m playing store,” Little Kiwi announces, hauling the box up on its side. “Who wants to buy a dog?”
    “What else do you sell in your store?” I ask. “Kisses?”
    Little Kiwi looked at me for quite some time, then shot the same look at Dennis Savage: confusion? distrust? fear? I must admit, lamplight does rather pick up the