Page 320 - Some Dance to Remember

290 Jack Fritscher

“Don’t be gay.”
“Kick is a picture of health on Castro. He’s what we need now.”
“The world hardly needs another hustling prick-tease.”
“I’ll let that go by.”
“So when did he last lay you?”
“He drove in three nights ago. We had a séance. He drove back up
the next morning.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Solly flipped the coin. “Out-
of-sight out-of-mind.” He took a long drink of Coca-Cola. “I’m feeling
biblical.”
“That empty aphorism isn’t biblical.”
“This great gay plague is positively biblical. Where’s C. B. DeMille
now that we need him?” Solly relentlessly tongued his cheek. Ryan fell for
the game. “It’s all predicted in Revelations.”
“You don’t read the Bible.”
“I certainly do. Like the great W. C. Fields, I look for loopholes.”
“Asshole.”
“Are these Castro boys stupid? It’s all in the Bible. Don’t they read
the Bible? Jerry Falwell reads the Bible. I’m waiting for a gay boutique to
silk-screen some tee shirts with the slogan: ‘I Kissed A Kaposi’s Victim
and Lived.’ Your gay boys will merchandise anything.”
“Don’t make light of this. Castro has become the set for a remake of
The Andromeda Strain.”
“If you want to know the real politics behind the plague, I’ll tell you
how faggots acquire their immune deficiencies.”
“Six people I know have died. And one good friend. I kissed him
good-bye in the ICU at San Francisco General.”
“I’m touched,” Solly said, “by your cheap emotion. Disease has made
you significant. I bet you boys score body counts over brunch at the Norse
Cove.”
“Score?”
“About how many victims you’ve kissed goodbye. Exactly the way
you’ve always kept score at Sunday brunch about how many nameless
numbers you’d balled at the baths the night before.”
“Why do I listen to this?”
“Because,” Solly said, “you have all the superstition of a baptized
Catholic. Because you love fire-and-brimstone scenarios. Because suffer-
ing and dying from gay cancer, or GRID, or AIDS sounds like a call to
gay martyrdom. Because the vision of being tortured naked in hell forever
by Lucifer, the most beautiful of all archangels, gives you a hard-on. That’s

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