Page 219 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 189

“Ah,” Solly said, “the meat of the matter.”
“He’s a perfect drop-dead blond,” January said. “Worship of him, I
can understand. I’d certainly get down on my knees. I mean, I’m an expert
on men. I’d never suspect he was, uh, homosexual.” She ran the tip of her
small finger around her lips. “So tell me about him, darling. I mean I’m
really interested. Does he hold up? Sir Larry Olivier, you know him, don’t
you, Ryan? He was Scarlett’s husband in real life. I remember Larry saying
he’d dallied with one male and found it not loathsome.”
“I do,” Solly said, “so love British understatement.”
“Cut to the chase,” Ryan said.
“The point, dear heart,” January said, “is Larry’s observation that
every athletic champion proves a big disappointment once you pull down
his jockstrap.”
“Kick holds up,” Ryan said. “I’ll bet Sir Larry never removed the pos-
ing trunks of a physique champion.”
“Then it’s not true,” January went straight to the question, “that body-
building is overcompensation for being, well, undercompensated in the
meat department?”
Ryan laid it on. “Kick’s posing trunks have to be specially tailored.
His waist is a medium.” He didn’t lie. “His pouch is an extra large.”
“Of course,” January said. “He’s complete. What else? Do you have
any idea how much we straight women envy you men? Anymore, every
good-looking hunk is gay. And I suppose some of them are homomascu-
line.” She smiled. “You see, I am learning your lingo.”
“It’s not lingo,” Ryan said. “It’s not semantics.”
“It’s not even Catholicism,” Solly said, “that makes Ryan write. He’s
driven more to lead the literary life than the religious. It has,” Solly looked
straight at Ryan, “its ups and downs. Living around a writer is like sharing
a house with an alcoholic. I’ve watched him suffer in total despair over his
writing. And for his writing. Isn’t despair a wonderful cliché? God knows,
the Muse is a bitch.”
Solly was not far from wrong. Ryan was bent on the literary life. I saw
his liaison with Kick, with this unfathomable perfect stranger, as the same
sort of grand passion D. H. shared with Frieda Weekley, around whom
Lawrence spun his peculiar, feverish theories about eroticism.
Ryan’s rooms expressed and explained, perhaps even better than he
knew, what he himself was all about. To understand a man’s space is to
understand him. Ryan’s life, even as a writer, was a visual art. That’s why
Kick fit in so well. He was the ultimate art object collected in Ryan’s gal-
lery. Ryan’s Victorian was a kind of movie set providing not only comfort

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