Richard Stevenson: Tongue tied

"How about 'Hogs for the hogs-breathed'?" Jeris said. "Or 'Hemorrhoids for the hemorrhoidal'?"

Laughing and coughing up a merry storm, Plankton sputtered out, "What about

'hoors for the hoor-ible'? That wouldn't be too hard to take," he said, and Jeris coughed and cackled too.

They quickly collected themselves when I said, "Maybe it'll be 'homicide for the homophobic'"

Plankton set down his soft drink, removed his shades, and gazed at me through the air pollution with deep-set red eyes that once must have been blue. "You don't think they're really that dangerous, do you? They're out of control, sure. That's why we brought the cops into it, and that's why we called you. But now you're starting to scare the bejesus out of me."

I shrugged. "These people are not without humor, but they're also a bit nuts. How nuts, we don't know. You and the people on your show are out of control too," I said to Plankton, "but you're not homicidal that anybody knows of. So, surly and obnoxious and frightening to some people is sometimes just that and nothing worse."

Jeris said to Plankton, "That's a compliment, J-Bird."

"Oh? I'm not so sure it is," Plankton said, and slid his shades back on.

I said, "So you're bringing on personal security for yourself? That's a useful precaution at this point."

"Two of them are in my office now. It's a service Lyle Barner knew about-ex-cops and, Christ, they look like a couple of World Wrestling Federation bone-crunchers.

What a pain in the effing butt this is," Plankton said, and flicked a cigar ash in his soda can.

"You afraid the Secret Service might crimp your style, J-Bird?" Jeris asked. "Hey, it didn't slow Bubba down."

"Are you single?" I asked Plankton.

"Divorced. Twice. Three kids, all adults-or about as adult as any kids are these days."

I only thought it, but Jeris said it out loud. "That's hard to believe, with a role model like you, Jay." They snickered together companionably.

I asked, "Is there anybody you live with or are close to that the FFF might go after?"

"I live by myself. I have an apartment on Sixty-fourth, off Lex." Plankton said to Jeris, "Jesus, I hope they don't try to do anything to Babette. Cripes."

I was ashamed of myself as soon as it came out. "Who's Babette, J-Bird? Your poodle?"

This was their style of wit, and they both heh-hehed.

"Babette's a bitch," Plankton said, "but…"

Jeris finished his sentence. "… but not nearly the bitches that Gail and Theresa were!"

More happy chortles, more fumes. As my gorge was rising, my heart was sinking. The gay-baiting was bad enough, but this casual misogyny was even worse. They sneered at gay people to their faces, but my guess was that they put their girlfriends down in this contemptible way only behind their backs. Or, worse, they carried on like this in front of their girlfriends, who suffered through it all as part of some awful bargain they believed they had had to make, and maybe they were right. I needed the work at the time-Albany in the past month had apparently experienced an uncharacteristic outbreak of decorum, so my services had been in limited demand. But it seemed likelier by the second that I would not be able to abide any association whatsoever, even for an inflated fee, with the J-Bird and company. I knew I would be seeing Lyle Barner within minutes, and I decided I would break the news first to him that I was soon to be gone.

"Long time, no see," Barner said. "Looks like you're not twenty-six anymore, Strachey."

"Thank you."

"But you're as sexy as ever. How do you do it?"

"Ingest lots of grease, put off going to the gym, not too much bed rest."

"Funny, I try some of that. But for me it doesn't work so well."

"You can't do slovenliness halfheartedly, Lyle. You've got to give it your all."

He laughed, a little nervously, and glanced at the door to make sure, I guessed, that it was shut tight and no one had overheard this exchange. Jeris had let us use his office for a private confab following Detective Barner's official tour of the tear gas-attack area.

It had been nearly sixteen years since I'd last laid eyes on Barner, and he hadn't aged as badly as apparently he thought he had. Beefy, with powerful shoulders and arms, a broad mug, and big sad brown eyes, Barner had what was once called a "man's man" way about him that still had its potent appeal. I'd had a couple of sexual encounters with Barner in the early eighties, back when Timothy Callahan and I had already gotten serious with each other but the angel of monogamy had not yet appeared before us, at least not to me.

Barner had been interested in me at the time, and for me there was the sinful thrill that came with Barner's vague resemblance to my high-school football coach. But his essentially morose nature, as well as his terror of being outed as an Albany gay cop, was a source of tension between us. And anyway Timmy was arguing for a more conventional straight-and-narrow relationship between us, both out of a well-founded fear of AIDS and because it was his moral ideal; he had always been both selective and definite in what he retained during his early years with the nuns of Poughkeepsie, as well as in his later years at Georgetown, where the free flow of ideas was revered by the Jesuits there and where on every classroom wall hung a crucifix.

In an attempt to integrate his divided selves, and partly at my urging, Barner had headed for San Francisco in the mid-eighties; it was easier out there for cops to be unclos-eted.

But instead I'd heard he'd married a divorcee with six kids. That hadn't worked either, I was not bowled over to learn later. And the rumor I'd picked up in the mid-nineties, that Barner was back east with the NYPD, was now confirmed.

I said, "I thought once you'd cut the cord with Mother Albany and discovered the moist charms of life in the Bay area, I'd never see you again. Or that if I did, you'd have flowers in your hair."

"I had to come back east because my ma's not well,"

Barner said simply.

"Sorry to hear it. Your mother's here in the city?"

"No, Albany."

"But no back-to-your-roots for you?" "It wouldn't work."

"I guess not. Albany city government is no longer stuck in the nineteen-thirties. It hasn't been since the eighties. But the Neanderthals have managed to retain the law-enforcement and criminal-justice portfolios. I can't see an out gay cop fitting in comfortably. Although I'd love to see some ballsy young gay guy break the mold."

Barner said coldly, "That's right, Strachey. You'd like to see somebody else stand up and take a pounding. But you never stood up yourself, did you?" "Become a cop, you mean?" "It's a hell of a lot harder than what you do, and it's more important."

"When it's done right, which it rarely is, that's true. But I don't fit into institutions very well, as is documented in the archives of the Pentagon."

"Then maybe you should keep your fucking mouth shut about cops being out."

I said, "I take it you're not."

He shook his head.

"And it's gnawing at you?"

"No, you're gnawing at me, that's all."

"Lyle, I haven't knowingly been within a couple of thousand miles of you for over fifteen years, for chrissakes." Deja vu was setting in. This sounded like a repeat of half the conversations I'd ever had with Barner.

"That's right, Strachey. You haven't spoken to me for sixteen years. And as soon as you do, you start right in again."

"Are you in a relationship?" I asked.

He hesitated. "Yes. Kind of one."

"A cop?"

"Yeah."

"Ah-ha."

"He's out."

"Oh-ho."

Barner's look softened, and he said, "I'm totally wacko nuts about Dave, and I'm afraid I'm going to lose him. He's in the Gay Officers Action League. He wants me out too, so we can do that political stuff together. But he's treated like crap by three-quarters of the officers in the precinct, and he can hardly do his job. I love my job, I'm good at it, and I don't want to get up every day and have to wade through that shit while I'm just trying to go out and be an effective police officer."