Toca Sacar had planned a rather unusual theater festival for Cornichons. After The Trojan Women, we were going to do Racine’s Phedre. He had decided against doing Midsummer Night’s Dream as well as The Merchant of Venice. Phedre, with all its blood and guts and wild drama, was to be recited in a very stately French and some kind of English, as far as I knew. Then we were going to do Victor Herbert’s The Red Mill. Largely because Toca’s friend Kitty Carlisle Hart had starred in it originally and had said she would come to Cornichons if there was a production. Not to star in it, I guess. She’s ninety-four. And then we were going to wind up the season with Tea and Sympathy because Toca felt I was a young Anthony Perkins and should be given my chance to shine. At least that’s what he told me.
Since there was obviously no one in the student company who could at all handle the lead in Phedre, Toca had arranged that the French actress Brigitte Balnéaire would come to Cornichons to play the lead. “Why not Brigitte Bardot?” Nina had muttered. Brigitte Balnéaire had been a sex kitten some time in the distant past although I think she first came to fame as a child actress during the war. I figured she had to be in her sixties and that the claims that she had been a collaborator when she was four was something we could excuse.
Where the students were going to fit into this production was problematical, but I was going to play the role of the young son with whom Phedre falls in love. “It’s a tunic-and-toga kind of thing, which makes the costumes easy,” Toca said. “And you have the legs for it. And Brigitte will probably welcome being all swaddled up in a toga. She always had good arms and that will be about all you will see. Good hair, too. She’s perfect for Phedre.”
“Can she act?” I said.
“Never could,” Toca said, “but who cares? It’s Racine. Nobody can act Racine. Everyone is just going to be drowned in iambic pentameter. How’s your French?”
Fortunately for Toca my French is pretty good. Although I was obviously going to be speaking with an accent. Nina suggested I coach with Mme. Cretonne in Charlestour. She was a French teacher and somehow an acquaintance of Nina and Graham. “You’ll never lose your accent, but at least she’ll steer you around the worst parts. It will give the natives an opportunity to complain a lot about Racine being debased by Americans, which is always fun for them. As though anyone really wanted to see anything by Racine in the first place. And having Brigitte Balnéaire come down is not a bad idea. A little star power for the festival. God knows, no one here is going to have any idea who Kitty Carlisle Hart is.”
“Who is she?” I asked. We were all sitting around the kitchen table before I left for rehearsal. A large plate in the center of the table was heaped with croissants, pain raisin, and pain chocolat. “I could never live very far from a bakery,” Nina said. “At least in France.”
“Nina is the only person I know who can prepare lunch by going to the bakery,” Graham said, reaching for another pain chocolat. “And this is only breakfast.”
“I’ll have trouble getting into my tights if I keep this up,” I said, deciding that one croissant was really enough. As I left the table Nina said, “Kitty Carlisle was a singing actress in the 1930s. I think she was too much of a lady for Hollywood. She married the big Broadway playwright Moss Hart, and she did a television show called What’s My Line? She’s a smart woman. Dorothy Kilgallen was also on that show. She died in mysterious circumstances, drowned in the bathtub.”
“Maybe Kitty did it,” I said.
“She probably would have liked to,” Nina said. “Dorothy was quite a pain in the neck. No lips.”
“I know the type,” I said. “No lips means they just don’t want to give.”
“You have a nice full mouth,” Nina said.
“Let’s not go there,” I said. “That’s me. Give ’til it hurts.”
“I wasn’t talking about sex,” Nina said.
“Everything is about sex finally,” I said.
“I suppose you’re right. Either about getting it or not getting it.”
“It’s the not-getting-it people who always think it’s not important,” I said.
“Where were we?”
“Kitty Carlisle.”
“What more is there to say?” Nina said.
“I must run. I have a great fear that Toca thinks I can sing and that I’m going to be the male lead in The Red Mill.”
Nina said, “Whatever can possess him?” and I left.
Part of my work with the Festival was teaching the younger students. As though I knew anything about teaching. I had done a TV series when I was teenager and then hadn’t worked again until I left college. But the people I had met on the series were working all over the place and so I had contacts. Which is how I did the revival of Little Mary Sunshine Off-Broadway right out of college because a friend of mine was playing the lead and they needed one more Canadian Mountie. That was me. I can sing if I’m kind of the last in the crowd. After I did that I did Naughty Marietta in New Jersey at the Papermill Playhouse, and then was out of work for only about two weeks before the director took me with him for summer stock in St. Louis. You know they say in theater “It’s not who you know but who you blow.” But my career has been pretty free of that. Of course, there are always older men giving you lingering glances, but that’s not very flattering. If it’s warm, and has a penis, and is under thirty, they’re going to be giving you those hungry looks. I hope when I’m middle-aged I’m not going to find every man under thirty attractive. It’s so desperate.
Maybe that’s one of the things I can teach the kids here. When it comes to sex, don’t get desperate. Of course, you can’t mention a thing to teenagers although that’s what they want to know most about. When I think of myself I was a pretty hot ticket at sixteen. And nobody’s even supposed to touch you until you’re over eighteen.
My class was waiting in the old riding stables at the Abbey. Well, not exactly stables. What would you call it? The manège. The indoor riding arena? At any rate, what had once been the large building where they had practiced riding. The monks rode? Who knew? Actually the Abbey had been a national military school for some time and the students had practiced here. In the time of Louis XVI. You don’t think of people like Marie Antoinette riding, but they did. Wearing enormous hats with plumes if the old prints are correct. Imagine all that hair topped off with a feathered hat when your horse runs away with you. Must have been a mess.
Now the riding arena is a theater and the mess is most of the student body. I had ten kids from the ages of ten to eighteen, boys and girls. A mix of English-speaking and French. The English speakers were from both England and the United States. I think I can go on record that none of them were exactly jailbait. They all seemed to be slow developers. The ten-year-olds were among the most mature. The rest were struggling with acne and overweight bodies. Or maybe they had been selected for me because of their uniformly loser qualities. Why do many of the children of well-to-do people want to be in the theater? Just because Dina Merrill made it shouldn’t be an inspiration. She is a great beauty and although the money came from her mother, Marjorie Merriweather Post, she could really act and no one knew she was rich. Most of her public, anyway. At any rate, there were no Dinas among my little crew, all present for a class called “Theatrical Movement.”
The kids sat on the edge of the stage; I stood in front of them. “Let’s get ourselves lined up in order of height,” I said. They all stood up obediently, and I indicated with my finger who should move where until I had them all in order of size.
One little girl lifted her hand, “Shouldn’t we be separated into boys and girls?”
“Why would you like that?” I said, not too friendly.
“Because our bodies are so different and we’ll play very different kinds of roles.”
“Your bodies aren’t so different,” I said, looking at her flat little body. “At least not yet.”
What in the hell was I going to do with them? The most they could hope for was a crowd scene or being a dead body during a battle. If we ever got around to battles.
“How many of you can sing?” I said. Of course they all raised their hands.
“All right. Let’s do movement for singers. Let’s all pretend we’re in an old Jane Powell or Deanna Durbin movie and we’re the friends who march along behind Jane or Deanna singing vigorously.” Yes, I used the word “vigorously.” I don’t know what was getting into me.
“What will we sing?” the little flat little girl wanted to know.
“How about a Beatles’ song? I know that’s long before your time, but maybe you know ‘We All Live in a Yellow Submarine.’ Come on, let’s march around the theater here. Follow me.”
So I started singing “Yellow Submarine,” which fortunately only has the words “We all live in a yellow submarine.” In order of height they marched behind me singing loudly, and once we had marched around the theater I could think of nothing better than marching them out the open door and around the Abbey grounds. At least this will be good for weight loss, I thought, and then marched them out of the Abbey grounds and down the little main street of Cornichons. It certainly brought the shopkeepers to their doors, me looking even more of a fool than the kids. It was a hot day, and there was a lot of perspiration flying about. It was good for the fatties. Henrietta, Little Miss Thin Body, was, of course, right behind me, strutting and shouting without a drop of moisture. She’s probably headed toward being the first female president of the United States, the little bitch. She should have been back at the far end of the line.
I saw Toca Sacar sitting at the café near the Abbey gates as we marched by, so after the march about and a little lie down to dry out their unattractive bodies I let them go and went over to have a cup of coffee with Toca. My petite nemesis Henrietta said, “It hasn’t been an hour yet.” But then ran out the door when I said, “Would you like a second march around town? This time we’ll sing ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’”
Toca was sitting with a good-looking young man. Very dark hair. His unusual green-gray eyes had the look of an intelligent animal. “This is Steve Strapontin,” he said. Gesturing toward me, “Hugo Bianchi.” Steve was a perfect gentleman and stood up to shake hands. Don’t you think that’s the first clue that a young man’s not going to make it when he doesn’t know the rules well enough to stand up when shaking hands? If he stays seated to shake hands you know you can forget all about him. On every level. He’s headed for a nice lifetime job at the hometown high school.
Steve had gotten that part right. Firm handshake. Nice smile. Conservative clothes from some Italian name. Impossible to know where he was from. “Where are you from?” I said as I sat down. The nice man who runs the café already knew that I wanted an espresso and brought one out. Before Steve could answer Toca said, “Steve’s here to do the lead in The Red Mill. He can really sing. I hope you won’t be disappointed.”
“Are you kidding? I’m thrilled,” I said to Steve. “I don’t have much of a voice. I’ll be fine in the chorus.”
Toca said, “No, you’ll play the best friend. You get one song.”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“I’m from Germany,” Steve Strapontin said without a hint of any accent.
“You have no accent at all,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“Steve also speaks French, Spanish, and Italian,” Toca said proudly, as though he personally had taught Steve. Or was Steve’s mother. Obviously Toca had a letch for Steve. But then Toca had a letch for almost anyone. He had his arm draped possessively across the back of Steve’s chair. Steve sat straight up with his elbows on the table. His body language was ignoring Toca, even if he wasn’t. I wondered if Toca ever had a lover. He was acting like a love-struck seventeen-year-old who had never had a date.
Toca said, “I think that was great what you did with the kids. They thought it was exercise, but actually you were training them not to be self-conscious. Marching them through the village like that with everyone staring. That was brilliant.” He smiled approvingly. I had obviously been replaced in the romance department. Now I was the young teacher under his supervision. Toca was always living in the movie of his own life.
I learned that Steve lived in Paris. He had been working as a model. I could see that with those strange eyes he would do well. He had done some Off-Broadway in New York. He didn’t say what. He had been on the road in Bye-Bye Birdie. Toca seemed to know all this.
“Your name sounds French,” I said. Toca had pronounced it with a good accent. Toca spoke French well. Where he learned it God only knows. “My family was Huguenot. They went to Germany way back when. Long before there was any Germany. They went to Westphalia. About the only thing we kept was the name. I don’t think I have much French blood.”
“But you speak French?”
“Hardly at all. We never spoke French at home. That was lost long ago.”
“You have unusual eyes.”
“I think that’s from my Russian grandmother. She fled Russia during World War II and got involved with my grandfather who was a soldier. I think he actually brought her out of Russia. They didn’t get married until a long time after my father was born.”
I said, “Is your father as handsome as you are?”
Steve said, “Am I handsome? Whatever I am, my father is much better looking.”
“What does he do?” I said.
“He’s an accountant. He lives with my mom in Augsberg.”
“Do you have any siblings?”
Steve hesitated a moment.
I said, “Brothers and sisters.”
“One sister. She’s married and lives in Augsberg, too.”
Toca said, “You probably want to know if there are any more like him wandering around on the earth.”
“No, Toca,” I said, “I was just placing him. I always want to know certain things about people. Like where their parents met.”
“My parents met on the Autoroute,” Steve said. “My mother picked up my father, who was hitchhiking. She was with some other girls. He was in the army at the time. He was something in that uniform.”
“What about your parents?” I asked Toca. I didn’t want to seem to be concentrating too exclusively on Steve.
“My parents?” Toca said. His tone suggested he didn’t have any parents. “I think they always knew each other. They’re cousins.”
“Oh, God, Toca,” I said. “That explains so much.”
“That I’m crazy,” he said. “It sure cuts down on ancestors when your parents are cousins. When you get to your great-grandparents the family tree gets pretty simple.” He laughed. “They are so much alike they could only have one kind of child. I’m exactly like them.”
“They’re both gay?” I said.
“Who said I was gay?” Toca said.
“Hello,” I said.
Steve broke in. “What are some of your other questions you like to ask people?”
“My favorite is ‘What were your teenage masturbation fantasies?’” I said.
“Men,” Steve said with no hesitation.
“I don’t know. I didn’t masturbate much. Hardly at all,” Toca said. “Not until I was about eighteen or so.”
“Really?” I said. “Think of what you have missed. Mae West said, ‘There’s no substitute for experience. Except being sixteen.’” I didn’t want to get into it. At sixteen I didn’t have time to masturbate considering what was going on in my private life. But I certainly wasn’t going to wave that in Toca’s face.
“Are you going to the Abbey?” Steve said, starting to get up from the table.
“I am as a matter of fact. Do you already have your room there?”
“Yes. Toca was nice enough to show me to it. I need to unpack.” Turning to Toca, “Didn’t you say there was a meeting at six o’clock?”
“Here, Toca.” I put some francs on the table. “This is for my coffee.” He was fumbling in his pockets. “We’ll see you later.” I could tell he was ready to kill me for making off with Steve.
We walked away quickly as though we were conspirators. The conspiring young against the older.
“Actually, I don’t have a room in the Abbey. I have a room across the street. I just wanted to come to your room with you,” I said. Steve turned the doorknob and opened his door.
“You’re right across the street?” he said, as I walked into the room behind him. No one locked doors at the Abbey. It was something like a mixed fraternity and sorority house. I went over to the window and looked out. Before I could turn around he was pressed against me from behind with his arms around me. He pressed his lips against my neck, and one hand reached for my crotch. We stood that way for a moment. “The door is open,” I said.
Without speaking he backed up with me still held tightly and kicked the door shut.
“What should we do next?” I said.
“What would you like to do?” His voice was muffled against my neck. I was stiffening under his hand. I put my own hand behind me. He was already hard. Very hard. As I took my hand away he pressed against me.
“I want to take your clothes off,” I said. I walked over to the bed. I turned around and put my arms around his neck and kissed him. Steve was a good kisser. No tongue. But very warm lips. He had full lips but not the kind that look like they’re stuffed with something. Cul de poule they call it in French. “Chicken ass.”
When lovers fall down on a bed in each other’s arms it is always awkward, particularly if they are two sizable men. Steve and I were very much the same size. Could probably wear each other’s clothes. I pushed him on his back and pulled his T-shirt up over his head. He was very passive about it. Beautiful torso, natch. Like a dancer’s. I love that. I love muscles that look like they do something. That aren’t just there, all puffed up with no particular use in mind.
I turned around on the bed and knelt to untie his shoelaces. He began to open my pants as I did so. I always want the shoes and socks off before the pants. There’s something really ridiculous about a man with nothing on but his shoes and socks. Particularly if they’re not wearing sweat socks. Black ankle-clingers and oxfords. I don’t think so. Like an old porn film. Did people think that was sexy?
He had my pants open and pulled down and jockey shorts also as I got his shoes and socks off and thrown on the floor. He put me in his mouth. I continued on with business as usual. With my knees on either side of his head I undid his jeans. He wore no belt. I pulled his jeans down. He lifted his hips to make it easier. It was a very sexy movement. He was wearing jockey shorts, too. I pulled them off his extremely stiff stiffie. Pretty great. I put it in my mouth as I pushed his jeans and shorts down his legs. He pushed them off with his feet. I laid down on him and felt the two thrills at the same time. I don’t usually like this kind of thing all that much. I don’t know which to concentrate on. Sort of like trying to make a circle in front of your chest and pat your head at the same time. It takes so much concentration you really can’t relax. With Steve it was different; who knows why?
Steve pushed me over on my back and turned around, his feet on the pillow. “I think I am going to have to fuck you,” he said. I pulled him down on top of me. He kissed me with a lot of concentration. I put my arms around his shoulders. They were very hard. Much harder than the smoothness of his body would have suggested. He didn’t have much body hair. The German part. His cock was between my legs and moving.
“What about a rubber?” I said in his ear.
“There’s one in my jeans,” he said, reaching for them. I have to say he was excellent. When you’re beginning to make love with someone and they have to get up to . . . pull off their shoes, go to the bathroom, get a rubber, get the lube, whatever . . . is always that bad moment that requires the suspension of disbelief. Steve wasn’t letting that happen. That cock was pushing in and out and that mouth was on mine while his hand was reaching out for his jeans at the foot of the bed. He found it. He stopped kissing for just a moment to tear it open with his teeth. It was on very expertly with one hand.
He pulled away. He reached down and pulled my feet up. My shoes were still on, my pants and shorts around my ankles. He left them that way and put himself against the backs of my legs. I’m supple. All those dance classes even if I can’t dance.
He was pushing his way in. Very gently. Softly. He was all the way in. He lay there. “That’s so great,” he said in my ear. He was kissing me again somehow, over my trapped ankles. I reached up and got my sneakers off, leaving my socks on. And then got one foot out of my pants and shorts so I could open my legs. I put them around his back. He started to work.
He pulled away a little bit to look at me. “I’ll know when you’re starting to come by the look in your eyes,” he said. And he kept looking at me and I at him. This whole thing was as though we were very much in love, and I didn’t even know this German freak who was fucking my brains out. “How do I get into these things?” I asked myself. He came at the same time as I did. He buried his face in my neck but the groaning was pretty loud. If Toca was outside the door he was going to hear.
He stayed hard inside me long after he was finished. I thought perhaps he had gone to sleep. I held him firmly in my arms until finally it slipped out. He still lay there a long time. “You’re very sweet,” he said, looking at me as he pushed his body up a little. I said nothing but just patted him on the back. He shifted off my body and lay beside me, one leg over me. “I could really do that all over again,” he said resting his head on one hand, his elbow bent, looking at me.
“Could you?” I said. “But now it’s almost six, and there is a meeting to go to. Someone may throw the door open at any moment to tell us to get ready.”
“I’d rather fuck,” Steve said.
“Who wouldn’t?” I said. Then he took his shorts and cleaned up, pulling on his pants without any underpants as we clambered off the bed.
“I hope we’re going to be doing more of that,” he said.
“Let’s not talk about it,” I said. “Let’s just see what happens.” I kicked his underpants under the bed. No use letting the world know what had just gone down.