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How Long Has This Been Going On?

St. Martin's Press

PART I

Los Angeles, 1949-1950

IN THE DAYS when men were men and women adored them, there was a club called Thriller Jill's on a side street off Hollywood Boulevard. It was one of those late-night places, didn't get going till ten or even eleven. Bouncer at the door, tiny stage for the acts, one toilet marked "Men" and the other marked "Queens." The walls of the Queens' Room drew a lively business in graffiti—mostly a name, a phone number, and a brief statement of intent ("Mona, La Brea 6-8738, I'll suck you silly"), observations on fellow habitués ("Delissa is a scheming cunt," answered in green lipstick by "I am not scheming!"), and the occasional poll, with names constantly rubbed out and replaced, on such topics as "The Worst Lay in Hollywood," which became so popular that its list of names ran along three sides of the room, especially after somebody thought to cross out "Hollywood" and write in "the World." The walls of the Men's Room were relatively bare, although directly over the urinal someone had written, "I have killd six fagots so far number sevin get reddy."

The question is, Was there really a Jill? Some of the older crowd, the johns who'd been coming as long as anyone could remember, would tell you that there certainly had been a Jill, way back before the war, and she was some thriller, all right. A few claimed to have known her. Over an Angel's Tip or a Seabreeze they'd spill their curious stories, about how Jill said this and they snapped right back with that, or how she threw some fresh-mouthed hustler boy right out onto the street on his pretty little bum, just right out there. Bonk!

But the truth of it was that the club had changed its name about as often as a queen changes her shade of eye shadow. It had started as a tidy Italian cafeteria catering to rank-and-file technicians in the picture business, degenerated to a hash joint during the Depression, reasserted itself as a nightclub—three of them, Alfonso's, Club Morocco, and the Happy Palace, growing more sullen at each resuscitation—and finally went to the Other Side as Dirty Ginny's, then the Glass Slipper, Long Jim's, Easy Mary's, the Diadem, and at last Thriller Jill's, with the little platform of a stage and the blundering pianist and the gloomy bouncer and a pair of incredible bartenders in tight black T-shirts and Lois, the manager, her eyes always on the move to keep the place legal. "Stay clean," she'd warn the aggressive johns, the ones who treated Jill's like their personal bordello. Look, what they did outside the club was none of her business. Once they were through the door and thirty feet from the entrance they could bang a zebra for all she cared. But inside Jill's everything was strictly G.I.: no dancing, no kissing, no fondling. "Fancy stuff," Lois called it. "Fancy stuff's for your bedroom," she liked to say. She hated being touched—you know, the way some guys can't talk to you without putting a hand on your arm or something, like they're going to fall on their ass if you don't hold them up. All these guys running around touching each other while they talk. It's some fancy thing they're doing. Course, they don't touch women, but Lois dressed like a guy, talked like a guy, and moved like a guy. So they treated her like one. Fine. Just keep your hands to yourself.

Monday night. Slow. But slow even for Monday. Place is so dead the Russians could fill it with spies and no one'd notice or care. That's why Derek Archer's here, with the usual starlet beard. Where do they all come from? Week after week, Monday after Monday, this half-baked movie star slips over to the Other Side in Thriller Jill's; and this week the starlet is Charnay, next week it's Adrienne, then Sheree, Brenda, and Carelle. Beard after beard helping that faggot convince himself that No One Knows About Him. Sure. Like I don't know Truman's daughter sings crummy opera.

Movie star, Lois thought, watching him at his table, the same one every week, way in the back at the corner—watching him stare deeply into the eyes of this week's starlet, talking about "the contract" and "Mr. Mayer" and "You know what Hedda says?" Who is he lying to? is what I want to know—the rest of us or himself? Funny thing about it, he's got real sure taste in starlets. Lois tried to date Sheree, but Sheree was playing it cool. Okay, honey. You think you're getting something out of life letting a famous pixie take you out to a pixie club where you and I are just about the only biological women on the scene? Fine. But can I say this? One night with me and you would have a whole different picture of what the world calls pleasure, whether you like it or not. And, Princess Sheree, I believe you would like it once we got going.

Starlets. You know what a starlet is? A hooker in bugle beads.

Look. Mr. Derek Archer's eye wavers briefly as one of the hustlers lazily stretches, drawing the bottom of his shirt from out of his belt and catching Archer honest. The john at the table with the hustler is so entranced that he touches, and Lois strides by in her usual way.

"Stay clean," she tells them, hustler and john. The hustler takes off, unconcerned, while the john pats it down with Lois.

"He's so skittish," the john tells Lois. "Such an unruly boy."

"You'll figure him out," says Lois, starting to move on.

The john tries a smile; it looks carved, as on a jack-o'-lantern. "He's so trampy, wouldn't you say?" he calls after Lois. "A deliciously trampy boy."

Hustlers and johns, Lois thought, watching the room. That's the sex that shows. You're young, you trade; you're old, you pay. Then there's the sex you don't know about: the queens, living entirely on the Other Side but keeping their dignity; and the double-jointed, like Derek Archer, who lives on both sides. There are the tourists, too, who come in every size from starlet to plainclothes cop. But, hell, the starlets dress the place up and the dicks don't hassle you except before an election as long as they get their dough.

That's where I fit in, Lois thought. Money for fuck and actors going into their dance and the queens taking in everything that happens. And me: I pay off the cops. Someday some crazy broad'll wander in here by accident, look around, turn to Lois and say, "I'll take you." And the whole fucking homo world can drop dead on itself.

No, she thinks, heading backstage. No, this gig's okay. It's just that everyone you meet in it acts like a conga line of himself, you know? Like, trade is so tough, and johns are such squares, and the cops are so nun-fucking corrupt. Funny, they call it law enforcement—but they're so busy raking in their percent they couldn't arrest Sinatra for being thin.

Yeah, and what about you, in your man's pants and the greasy T-shirt?, she adds. Backstage, the boys second the thought with their eyes—Jo-Jo the emcee, Desmond the pianist, and Johnny the Kid, the club's singer and all-purpose cutie-pie. More purposes than Lois liked to think about, because one wrong foot—even one overheard comment—and the cops could close her down like snap-your-finger.

"Hey, Lois," said Jo-Jo, sewing a button onto his jacket. "When are we going to get these dead bulbs on the mirror replaced?"

"When lesbians own poodles."

Jo-Jo shrugged. "It's just lightbulbs, lady. So we can see what we're—"

"You want million-dollar showbiz, join the Follies. This joint is Skid Road."

"No, it isn't," said Desmond, in his gentle way. "This is a nice place."

"Empty tonight?" asked Jo-Jo.

"Yeah, but watch yourself. There's two guys I don't recognize. I'm not saying it's J. Edgar Hoover honeymooning with Clyde Tolson exactly, but let's don't beg for trouble, okay?"

"Gotcha."

"Johnny the Kid," Lois said. "Like, why do I constantly regret having taken you among us here? Why do I not trust you? Why do you look so sweet yet give airs of treachery on a scale of, like, some pirate in the Arabian Nights?"

Johnny the Kid beamed at her, and did he have a smile.

"Why do I suspect that you are underage, carrying false papers, and lying about everything except the color of your eyes?"

"He's a nice boy," said Desmond. "He sings the most beautiful 'What's the Use of Wond'rin'?' I ever played for."

"Gatti-Casazza has spoken," Jo-Jo put in as he smoothed his hair, staring into the mirror.

"He's good for the club," Desmond went on, rising to look at himself over Jo-Jo's shoulder, Desmond the woeful player of a thousand songs and the master of none. "He brings the customers in clamoring, with his fresh looks and appeal."

Jo-Jo looked at Desmond in the mirror, shook his head, turned to him, and straightened Desmond's bow tie.

"What good is it checking the glass," said Jo-Jo, "if you don't fix what you see?"

"Got a new number for you tonight, Lo," said the Kid. "Desmond and me're putting in 'So in Love.'"

Lois, looking over some papers at her desk in the corner, nodded absently.

"Come on, Lo. Don't we get points for working so hard? Brownie points, Lo? 'So in Love'—that's the masochists' national anthem." The Kid sampled a bit of it for her, emphasizing its "taunt me" and "hurt me." Jo-Jo hummed along, and Desmond helpfully mimed his accompaniment, his fingers pattering along the edge of the makeup table.

"What are you wearing tonight, Johnny?" Lois asked, looking up.

"This."

The Kid was in a summer-weight cotton dress shirt, open to the belt, and black slacks.

"He always dresses so nice," said Desmond.

"Last night," Lois corrected, "he sang the closing set wearing nothing above the belt but a funny-looking vest!"

"It was paisley," said Jo-Jo.

"I don't give a fuck it was Fauntleroy chartreuse. You know how borderline that stuff is." She took two envelopes out of her desk, locked it, and, as she passed, told the Kid, "Don't dress like a whore when you sing in my club, okay?"

"You're the boss," said the Kid.

"He's a fine young fellow," Desmond called out as Lois left. "He brings them in, panting."

"They'd come in, anyway," Jo-Jo observed. "What else are they going to do—stay home and listen to the A & P Gypsies?"

Back in the club room, a few more tables had filled and the smell of liquor and smoke was asserting itself. First Monday of the month—payoff night. Lois stuck the two envelopes into her back pocket, checked her watch, leaned against the bar.

One of the johns—one of the younger ones, always unobtrusively well dressed and soft- spoken in a confident way—came up as if he'd been waiting to speak to her. Lois braced herself.

"The show's getting better and better," the guy begins, toasting his beer at her. "Really fine singer, that boy."

The guy pauses, waiting for Lois to respond.

"So?" she says.

"That boy-next-door look is, uh, really nice to see. And he's so young, too. When he sings he seems so, uh, smart and experienced, and yet he can't be much over, what, sixteen?"

"You want to talk, talk. You want to ask questions, find a school."

"Wait, I ... Sorry, I just wanted to know if he maybe ... like, if he needed an older friend to help him, you know. ..."

Lois plays it real easy. She's certain the guy is no plant, because he's one of the regulars. And she's not unsympathetic to his problem, because she and he both know that Older Friends meeting young men to Help is the reason for Thriller Jill's in the first place. The entertainment and socializing are fun, but the sex is what's true.

Still, Lois hates it when they try to use her to get to the Kid, or even to the hustlers. It's like getting touched. It's taking more than they got a right to.

"I'm a barkeep and a dyke," she tells the man. "I'm not a pimp. Got it?"

He nods and moves away as one of the bartenders signals to Lois—the law is here—and the lights go down for the show. Lois pats her envelope pocket and hits the street.

Nothing is said at these transactions. No one ventures an opinion—even, apparently, has one. It's not a matter of attitude. It's a matter of fact: If you're outlaw, you pay off. You pay in full, on time, and without a face. No expression. Don't provoke them. Think of it as Other Side tax. Think of it as a bank deposit without the hello. Some cops joke it around a little, especially when they see a woman. Lois's cops don't say anything. They just sit in their unit and the guy in the shotgun seat takes the dough and that's it.

Tax. Lois thinks, Everybody pays it somewhere along the line. Your gender. Your race. Your looks. Moving up in business, you'll pay certain kinds of tax. Your wife and kids and mortgage—that's a tax, too. That's a "Don't hate me, I'm like everybody else" tax.

Back in Jill's, Lois stands against the bar during the entertainment, as always admiring how easily Jo-Jo creates a wholly different show every night by varying his jokes and bouncing off the news.

"It seems that F.D.R. left Harry S. two sealed letters," Jo-Jo is telling them, "the first to be opened in grave need and the second in gravest need. So there was the railroad strike, and Harry opens the first letter. It reads, 'Blame it on me.' So everything's fine. Then Miss Alger Hiss comes to trial."

A few titters.

"Communists and pumpkins and it's terribly embarrassing for Harry. So he opens the second letter. It reads, 'Start writing two letters. ...' "

Well, they laugh. But, shit, they're not here for Jo-Jo's views on newspaper stuff. They want him way over the fence, with the secret words and the jokes nobody else gets. And they want the Kid, because he's a looker. Even Lois kind of felt a little something, watching him in the vest. He had oiled his chest, too, the sneak.

The Kid's doing a lot of nostalgia tonight: "Let's Do It," "Lucky in Love," "Make-Believe." Are they really listening to him, or are they just watching, drinking him in? The all-American looks with the busy green eyes: Everybody loves a scamp. Anyway, they know what's good around here, and the Kid knows he's it.

Larken's here, too, Lois notices—the only regular she truly likes. Strange guy. He doesn't hustle, he's too young to be a john, and his style's too jam for a queen. He's like the nice- looking young guy in a war movie who gets blown up about reel three. Sandy hair, slim, smart-looking. Remember high school? Larken was the boy you pretended to be crazy about when what you really wanted was for Mary Beth Taggert the Head Cheerleader to rub against you, saying, "How about I eat your muff?"

As the show ends and the lights come up—about thirty-five seconds late because the bartenders are asleep again—Lois joins Larken at his table.

"What do you say, my friend?" is her opening.

"Hi, Lois. Dandy show."

"With Bob Hope and that Dead End Kid of a Buddy Clark, how can I go wrong?" Larken smiled. "You always tear down whatever you build."

"What do I build?" Lois caught the eye of one of the bartenders and cocked her head at Larken. The bartender nodded.

"You've got a whole little world in here," said Larken. "Self-contained. Neat-like."

Desmond the pianist shuffled by in hunt of praise. Larken waved at him, and Desmond asked, "Did you like the Jeanette-Nelson medley? We worked so hard on it."

"I could tell. But you sneaked a little Jeanette-without-Nelson in at the end."

"The Love Parade!" Desmond exulted. "You noticed! But life is one great parade of love, isn't it?"

The bartender put Larken's drink on the table, a glass of draft. Larken started to say something, but Lois made a quick gesture: You're welcome and say no more.

"Yes," Desmond went on. "Love parades through this bar. Now we sense it, now it's gone. It's just like music, because all of us respond to it, yet not all of us can sing."

Larken thought that over. "Desmond, that's ... that's pretty deep."

"It's quite a thought," Desmond eagerly admitted. "It just came out of me."

"Desmond, Desmond," said Larken, nearly laughing.

"Look," said Lois, "it isn't love parading through anywhere, because love is in hiding. As for this place—"

"It's a nice place," said Desmond. "They come from miles around."

"It's a joint," said Lois.

"The music and the fun," Desmond cited. "The jests and surprises of this bar."

Larken and Lois looked around: at the johns silently aching; at the glowering hustlers lined along the back wall; at the queens dishing everyone in sight, in history, in the imagination. This was the world. All it contained, besides your day job, and maybe your cover marriage, was here.

"It's a joint," Lois insisted. She turned to Larken. Her eyes said, Right?

"Well, yes, it's a joint," Larken agreed. "But a necessary joint."

Desmond, feeling ratified, wandered off.

Lois shrugged.

Larken shrugged, too, smiling at her.

"I wonder why you come here," Lois told him. "You're not like the others. You're too ..."

"Uh-oh."

"No, it's not an insult. You're too gentle for this place. Look at them."

Lois nodded her head at the crowd, not taking her eyes off Larken.

"What do you see?" she asked him.

"My friends, I guess."

"Your friends? The queens gabbing away there like exotic birds in some rain forest? And those saphead johns? Your friends? The hustle boys are your friends?"

"They're my kind, somehow or other."

"Christ."

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Excerpted from How Long Has This Been Going On? by Ethan Mordden. Copyright © 1995 Ethan Mordden. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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