Page 206 - Some Dance to Remember

176 Jack Fritscher

“Goodbye, E-E.” Kweenie pushed him away.
“Beasts!” Evan-Eddie shoved off to the perimeter of talk. “They have a
name for guys like you,” he shouted back over his shoulder to Kick. “You...
you...you...Sports Homo!”
Kweenie rolled her eyes back in her head. “I hate his retro-fits.”
“Don’t ask me,” Ryan repeated. “Ask Kick. I’m not his keeper.”
Opel relished the melee.
“Have you done any modeling? Any TV?”
“Once, back in Alabama,” Kick said, “I posed for a little six-o’clock
news show. A double-biceps shot filmed with lasers.”
“A double-biceps shot? Show me,” January insisted. “I’m a show-me
kind of girl.”
“Like this.” Kick leaned smiling into the pose. “It really wasn’t much.
Only a quick five-second clip edited in with other sports shots. Kind of a
high-energy promo to introduce the evening news, weather, and sports.”
“Kick turned down a print ad for Winston cigarettes,” Ryan said. “He
won’t promote something he doesn’t believe in.”
“Of course,” January said. “You don’t smoke. I’m sure neither of you
does, or ever has, or ever will. On the other hand, I...”
Her words faded under to a low voice-over. Ryan’s eyes turned from
her face. In that instant he had spotted Teddy’s entrance through the
gallery door. He stopped to sign the guest register. He looked up, feeling,
I think, Ry’s strong stare. Then Teddy caught a full shot of Kick’s lumi-
nous blond presence. Before Ryan tossed off half a wave, Teddy turned
tail, dragging behind him a leatherman who looked more than a bit the
same type as Ryan. Teddy wanted a second chance to love Ryan all over
again, but a muscleman he couldn’t compete with had taken his place. He
didn’t need Mr. Universe rubbed in his face. San Francisco was, as he had
predicted, the place where you go to lose a lover.
The instamatic moment stopped January dead in her tracks. Some-
thing like sorrow glazed Ryan’s face. January raised her tweezed eyebrows.
She was about to ask paparazzi questions.
The naked needed cover.
“Not to change the subject,” I said, “Solly Blue should be here.”
“Who’s Solly Blue?” January asked. “Is he important?”
“If you’re filming the New Homosexuality, he is,” Ry said.
“Solly’s radical,” Kweenie said. “He takes these faggots back to the
roots of what they came out for.”
“What’s that?” January asked.
“Straight men,” Kweenie said.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK