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Plucked Chickens

Edward M. Cohen

    In the middle of my home town - Kingston, New York - there is a park where the married men come to cruise and the middle aged queens come to watch. I suppose there is a park like it in every small town in America; islands bypassed by Gay Liberation.
    The marrieds do not get out of their cars. I suppose because they are afraid to be seen. They have left their sleeping wives at home with a story about walking the dog or buying a paper and they circle the park in their minivans, sometimes stopping with the motor idling, sometimes turning down a side street, looking for someone to blow, or be blown by, sometimes to pay, sometimes for free. One guy is a foot fetishist and he is looking for someone to walk on his chest. The local Elvis impersonator is a voyeur and his car follows the others around. In a town like Kingston, everyone knows everyone else.
    There is a cadre of boys who come to get picked up; some on bike, some on foot. Some are newly arrived in town; some have been here for years. The high school dropouts who clerk at Macdonald’s lounge under the trees after work.
    “You do it for the money?” I asked one kid.
    Ordinarily, the hustlers talk to the hustlers and we queens talk to one another but, this night, I’d come out early so there were only the two of us, with no cars circling, and he seemed as lonely as I.
    “I’ve got a job,” he snarled.
    “Where?”
    “Kingston Hospital.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Washing dishes.”
    “You like it?”
    “It’s okay.”
    “How long you been at it?”
    “Seven years.”
    The pay was lousy, he added, which was why he had started to come to the park. Also, there was not much to do in Kingston at night if you were poor and had no TV. He did have a girlfriend but she was pregnant which was why he was coming out so early because things were going from bad to worse and he was getting scared. I told him I knew the feeling.

*

    We have our junkies in Kingston and the cops drive by but they don’t do much until one of the homeowners complains about the circling cars. Around two in the morning it can get pretty noisy. Then, the cops flash their lights in our eyes as they pass but we preen and murmur, “Another close-up, Mr. DeMille?” and there is nothing more they can do.
    We know our rights as an oppressed minority. The oppressed of the oppressed because even the gay kids, on their way to the clubs, hoot at us from their cars. We embarrass the marrieds and the hustlers don’t like us because we never have any money.
    Which explains why, the next night when I saw the dishwasher, he and I didn’t say hello. But that was okay because my buddies had shown up to sit on the benches and gossip and giggle and sing themes from “I Love Margie” and “Bonanza.” Only fifteen minutes away, there is this hip club, where the kids are heading, where everyone dances with everyone else; gays with gays, gays with girls, straight guys with gay guys, and the gays even kiss on the dance floor.
    But we old timers came out when things were different and habits die hard. We don’t even like to dance with one another and, as far as two middle aged queens having sex; once, I went to bed with a guy from the bench and it turned out he had shaved all his pubic hair. He had heard that it grew back thicker and he wanted his crotch to look like Robert Mitchum’s.
    “I hate to tell you this,” I sighed, “but I think Robert Mitchum is dead.”
    Those were the good old days, he replied, when you cruised in secret and had to watch for the Vice Squad. Once, he told me, he had eyed this stud in Greenwich Village and they had both looked over their shoulders as they passed, good sign number one. Then, they stopped and did the cloak and dagger number, staring into a shop window, peering sideways, never smiling. Finally, they started the “You live around here? - You live alone?” tap dance. Street cruising is a forgotten art, we agreed, and none of the kids today could have survived way back then for a second!
    Because this stud finally asked “You wanna fuck?” and my pal answered, “Sure,” and bingo, out came the badge and the cuffs since the stud was from Vice. Only, the queen didn’t panic because he knew the laws about entrapment. They wouldn’t let him make bail until morning, but he stayed up all night in his jail cell and, next morning, he told the judge that the cop had said, “You wanna fuck?” and if that wasn’t entrapment, what was?
    “Besides, Your Honor, I’m a red blooded American boy. My friend asked if I wanted to fuck, I thought he meant girls!”
    Smart faggot. Stupid cop. Case dismissed. Things like that made you proud in the old days because life was so tough. You could get robbed. You could get blackmailed. You could get V.D. and pass it on to your wife. What do these kids today know about being scared?
    I blew him anyway, though he looked like a plucked chicken to me. That was the way we were brought up. You fulfilled your responsibilities and finished what you had started. Some things change but not what’s right and wrong.

*

    We queens don’t like the noise in the dance club. We can’t talk over the music. We miss the slow dances. The crowd is too young. The kids are too cliquey. The bar is too expensive. The drinks are watered. Here, we buy a six-pack and the evening is set. Most of our parents are dead so it is no big deal who knows and who doesn’t but we don’t believe in telling the world. If we kissed on the dance floor, someone would see. Someone would talk and who needs the gossip? We do not discuss our home lives at work, except for what we ate last night and what shows we watched on TV. Two schoolteachers who have been lovers for thirty years have told the town that they live together because they are brothers-in-law and nobody asks any questions. The kids say we should come out of the shadows but we like to be where we always have been.

*

    Every once in a while, when the night gets late and the benches are surrounded by beer cans, one of us joins the procession to see if a car will stop. Usually, one does because the stream of boys is thinning. In summer, one queen grows particularly wild as the night heads toward dawn. He wears an oversized tee shirt and, after popping in and out of several cars, off come his shorts and he parades the neighborhood in the tee shirt clinging to his naked ass. The boys on the bench laugh at his antics because what else can you do? He has been one of the gang for thirty odd years. We worry he is going to get AIDS or arrested and, sometimes, we warn him but, mostly, people will do what they do. Once or twice, the cops have shined a light on him. “All right, Frankie. Time to put on your pants and go home.”
    The other night, in a drizzle, there were only two others left besides me; a haggard lush and Frankie. The lush rambled on for hours about the Albany trip he was taking tomorrow, to see his social worker at the V.A. because deadbeats receive their benefits but he keeps getting screwed out of his. All this noise about gays in the military and he, a bona fide veteran, can’t get what is coming to him. Last time he went to Albany, he arrived so blasted that he missed his appointment, so this time he has to get home early to make sure he wakes on time. I told him to set the alarm but, as he weaved off, he turned down a side street after a cruising car.
    That left Frankie and me in the dark, protected from the drizzle by the trees.
    “He’s got some slab of meat,” Frankie whispered.
    “Who?”
    “That veteran,” he answered.
    “No kidding?”
    “The biggest in Kingston.”
    “You don’t say?”
    “Down to his knees.”
    “Well, I hope his crotch is not plucked.”
    Frankie laughed because he knew immediately whom I was talking about since he has had everybody in Kingston. Then, we both lapsed into silence. I suppose he was waxing nostalgic about the veteran, like when I moon over a trip my boyfriend and I took to Fire Island way back when. We had just met. We were in love. We had heard about Cherry Grove and we wanted to stroll hand in hand down the beach in public. Afterwards, thrilled, we rushed back to our room for sex more dazzling than the sun.

*

    That’s why I like the park. I like to talk in disconnected circles to guys like Frankie who know what I mean. I like to think about the past in shared silence. I like the cool breeze. The steady hum of the cars. The play of the headlights in the dark. Old friends. The gossip. The songs.
    And, years from now, at the super-market, when I spot the snarling dishwasher, carrying the baby his girlfriend is carrying now, not to worry, buddy, I know the rules. Nobody says hello.

 

    This story was originally published in the Sept/2002 issue of Urban Graffiti (now defunct)

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