Cockeyed

Chapter Two

“Uncle Hunny asked for trouble, and he got it,” Nelson Van Horn said, indicating the man slouched in a chair across from me. “You just cannot live the life my uncle’s led and not have chickens coming home to roost by the dozens — by the hundreds, for heaven’s sake! And it certainly doesn’t help when you go on television and flaunt your irresponsible lifestyle, and at the same time you’re practically wearing a sign that saysthreaten me, blackmail me, exploit me. Uncle Hunny,” Nelson went on, shaking his head with exasperation, “what in God’s name did you expect was going to happen when you said all those idiotic things about giving away millions of dollars? Especially considering all the incredibly sleazy people you’ve chosen to associate with over the years?”

Art Malanowski was seated next to Hunny looking much more subdued than he’d been on Channel 13 Wednesday night or on The Today Show on Friday. It was Saturday morning now, and the three men were not just tense and unhappy but also wilting in the tropical heat of my Central Avenue office. The air conditioner was on the fritz again, and I had the window above the useless unit propped open with my twenty-year-old bicycle pump, itself no longer operable.

“Nelson, don’t you talk to me about sleazy!” Hunny shot back.

“Girl, you had just better watch your tongue when it comes to sleaze, what with you working for those Wall Street rip-off artists who practically made the whole economy of the country crash down on everybody’s head but yourselves. If you calling my friends sleazy isn’t the pot calling the kettle un-ironed chiffon, I don’t know what is.”

“Uncle Hunny, let’s have a reality check here. Can we just do that? First of all, Livingston Brothers is one of the most conservative investment concerns in the country, and we have been injured by the current downturn just like every other financial institution. Badly off as we are for the moment, we have few personal regrets down on State Street. Secondly, it is you whose past is finally catching up with you. Good grief, why would we even be sitting here talking to a detective if you hadn’t been so totally reckless and irresponsible, chasing after all those seedy characters for all those years. And you still don’t know how to control yourself.” Nelson looked at me and said, “Did you catch Uncle Hunny on The Today Show yesterday?”

I said I had.

“Well, you tell me, Don. Did Uncle Hunny do himself any good — or the cause of gay rights or gay marriage any good — by complimenting Matt Lauer on his ‘nice basket’?”

Hunny and Art looked at each other, grinned and gave each other a fist bump. “For goodness’ sakes, I thought we were already off the air,” Hunny said, and then he and Art started giggling all over again.

The nephew, a carefully toned, attentively groomed man in his early forties, sighed heavily and said to me, “So you can see what we’re up against.”

I said, “Matt Lauer seemed to take the comment in stride. It isn’t clear he even knew what your uncle meant.”

“Oh, girl, he knew,” Hunny piped up.

Art added, “Don’t you believe, dearie, that that was the first time anybody ever said something nice about his bulge to Missy Matt Lauer. And everybody knows about the casting couch at NBC. Do you think those people on those shows get those jobs just on their looks?”

“Brian Williams, Alex Trebek, Chris Matthews, Perry Como back in the old days — they all had to put out,” Hunny said and mimed an act of fellatio.

“Do you see what I mean?” Nelson said to me disgustedly. “Is it any wonder that somebody on Moth Street cut the Channel 13 cable the other night with an ax, presumably to shut my out-of-control uncle up?”

“Nelson,” Hunny said, “them thar was outside agitators that chopped up the TV line. None of Arty’s and my neighbors feel that way about us or would do such a thing on the night of my lifetime achievement award. Well, maybe the Brownlees. Or the Haneses. Or Peter Petengill. They all hate our guts. Or Evelyn Seltzer.”

“Possibly the Fromes,” Art mused additionally.

“Now you are making my point for me,” Nelson said to his uncle. “Some people just do not appreciate your flamboyant personalities and have it in for you. They don’t like the constant sexual innuendos, and they don’t at all like the activities that everybody thinks go on behind those innuendos.”

“It is true,” Hunny said, “that some people think it’s tacky pulling college boys’ underpants down as often as possible and enjoying a nice gobble. But certainly you are not one of those narrow-minded people, Nelson.”

“Ho!” Nelson rolled his eyes. “If only they were col ege boys.”

I said, “So, are you also gay, Nelson?”

“Yes, I am. There seems to be one of those genes jumping around in the Van Horn family. But it’s one thing to be gay and it’s another thing entirely to make a sorry, obscene spectacle of yourself, and your family, and most of gay America. A friend who works for the Human Rights Campaign in Washington called me last night and asked if there wasn’t anything I could do to control Uncle Hunny. This man, who my partner went to Dartmouth with, saw The Today Show fiasco, and he pointed out — as if I needed reminding — that Art and Uncle Hunny were playing right into the religious right’s hands.”

Hunny said, “Nelson’s boyfriend is so drop-dead fab- ulous that hardly anybody can stand it. He’s into derivatives, which have gone out of fashion, though he is just too, too fashionable otherwise. The two of them have places — places is what they call them — in Clifton Park and Palm Springs. Nelson’s squeeze is named Lawn Brookman, spelled L-A-w-n. Art and I call him Yawn.”

“So, Nelson,” I said, “it’s not only your uncle’s well-being that led you to bring him to me? Are you also hoping I might help alter his personality? That’s really outside my area of expertise.”

Nelson slumped wearily. “The reason I am involving myself in this ridiculous business at all is to protect Uncle Hunny from his own worst instincts and from the people his bad instincts have gotten him involved with. I admit I have no real hope that Uncle Hunny will change. Just acting a little more discreet in public is what I’m hoping for. For his sake, and for our family’s sake, especially my parents — but also Grandma Rita, Uncle Hunny’s poor mother.”

Hunny glared. “Nelson, anything I do or say is just fine with Mom. Always has been, always will be.” To me, Hunny said, “My sister Miriam, Nelson’s mother, is just a sad lost cause sexual-orientation-wise. Miriam thinks PfLAg is an insect repellent. And my brother-in-law Lewis tells his golfing buddies that Nelson isn’t married because his fiance died on 9/11 in the World Trade Center, and he is still too broken up over it to start dating again.”

“Not true,” Nelson said, looking even more despondent.

“My parents are conservative, but they are not bigots and they are not mean-spirited. They simply observe certain standards of taste, about which Uncle Hunny plainly knows nothing. I don’t understand that, really. Grandma Rita has had her personal difficulties, and now her mind is not what it once was. But she has always been well-mannered in her outgoing way, and I know she is well-respected out at Golden Gardens. And Grandpa Carl also set high behavioral standards. He was a well-spoken, churchgoing man who always went out of his way to make other people feel comfortable. Uncle Hunny, on the other hand, seems to take great pleasure in making people feel un comfortable.”

“I have standards of taste, too,” Hunny said, winking at Art.

“Except, I have certain standards of bad taste I try to live by. To each his own, Nelson, to each his own.”

Art said, “Nelson, your father did so tell people you had a girlfriend who was killed on 9/11. That came back to Hunny and me from several sources. She was supposedly a securities analyst, CoCkeyed 13 and her name was Gwen Bainbridge, Lewis told people.”

“Miriam and Lewis,” Hunny said, “talk about Lawn as Nelson’s roommate. Like they’re twenty years old and live in a dorm.”

“Hunny, according to some of these blackmail attempts,”

I said, indicating the bundle of computer printouts the three men had brought along with them to my office, “a number of the things people are saying about you go beyond questions of taste. Lowbrow high-spiritedness is one thing, but some of these people say they have proof that you’ve done things that are illegal. For instance, serving alcohol to minors. The law takes that seriously, as I’m sure you know. And you’ve had phone calls now from — how many? seven? — young men who say you got them drunk and had sex with them. Are any of these guys telling the truth?”

Hunny snatched a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket and lit one with a butane lighter. “Now, lookie here, girl,” he said, shooting smoke and spittle my way, “I am not now and never have been into serious chicken. A boy has to be old enough to know better, or I’m not interested. Well, interested maybe. I’m only human. But I don’t ever mess around with some youngster’s emotions. It’s fun I want, and I want a boy who’s old enough to know what he wants, especially if what he wants is just to have some fun. It’s true that sometimes a twenty-one-year-old needs a little lubrication to loosen up his inhibitions, just like I did when I was twenty-one and just like Nelson did.” Hunny’s nephew stiffened and, if I wasn’t mistaken, blushed. “It’s possible, of course,” Hunny went on, “that a few of these boys might have been just a smidgen short of twenty-one. I mean, if a kid is obviously post-adolescent I don’t see any need to check his driver’s license. Would you?”

Hunny seemed to be addressing me. I said, “I’m in a longtime relationship, but that’s beside the point. I don’t have young guys from my past lining up and threatening to haul me into court unless I cough up thousands of dollars. You do. Can any of these under-twenty-ones prove that you got them sauced up 14 Richard Stevenson and then — did whatever it is you do?”

“Gave them blowjobs,” Hunny said cheerfully, glancing around for an ashtray and then flicking ash into my wastebasket.

“There could be a few pictures out there somewhere. No videos, though, I don’t think. And no pictures from any of the guys who have called so far.”

Nelson muttered bitterly, “Oh, so far. That’s great.”

Art said, “Hunny, if anybody accused you of being a pedophile, you could get testimony from tons of people saying you like sex with guys of all ages.”

“Like at work,” Hunny said. “I’ve blown half the straight guys at the warehouse. But they’re mostly married, so I really can’t say how many of them would stand up for me. Hey,” Hunny added.

“Good choice of words — stand up for me,” and he and Art cackled.

Nelson looked close to tears.

“And then in addition to the men who are explicitly threatening to expose you for illegal acts,” I said, “are a dozen or so who have asked for money and used language where there’s an implicit threat. We’re talking nearly twenty of these characters to deal with, and maybe more on the way, no? If I do take you on as a client, Hunny, this could run into time and money. As a sexually active gay man about town, you’ve had a busy career.

Tracking all these guys down and then explaining to them in the nicest way possible that blackmail and extortion are illegal in the state of New York could take up a sizeable chunk of my work week or month.” I went over my standard fee schedule, and as I sat across from not-so-plutocrat-looking Hunny and Art, I left off the surcharge I normally add for any billionaires who find their way to my Central Avenue walkup.

Hunny looked at me speculatively and said, “Your office is kind of tacky, but your rates aren’t.”

“Those are my normal fees. Once in a while people ask for their money back, but most are satisfied.”

Hunny smiled and said, “Don, have you ever fooled around with an older, more experienced man?”

“I told you, Uncle Hunny, that Donald is gay. That’s one reason I brought you to him. But he just told you that he has a boyfriend. God, can’t you ever leave it alone? All this sex, sex, sex, sex. People just get sick of it.”

Hunny flapped his wrist at his nephew. “Well, get her!” He looked over at me and said, “Nelson and Yawn prefer collecting gym equipment to collecting boys. How silly can a drag queen be?”

“Do you and your partner do drag?” I asked Nelson conversationally and maybe because I was curious as to what I might get Hunny to come out with next.

Nelson said, “Lawn and I do not do drag, no. That’s just the way my uncle talks. Constantly.”

“When you were twelve,” Art said, “you got caught wearing your mother’s underwear. Hunny’s mom told us about that.”

Art and Hunny chuckled, and Nelson went red again. “Uncle Hunny, I am trying to be helpful. You called me and asked me if I knew anybody who could deal with these ghastly seedy characters who came oozing out of the woodwork as soon as you won the lottery. I bring you to this man who knows how to deal with predatory scumbags and might be able to keep you from being conned, or even — let’s just get it right out there — out of jail.

And what do you do? You and Art spend the entire time insulting me and dishing detective Strachey. So, do you want help, or do you not? If you do, then I suggest that you start acting like a mature adult for the first time in your life.”

“Anyway,” Hunny said, “I’ve been in jail before. That’s something I know I can handle, if it comes to that.”

“That was entirely different,” Nelson said. “This time it wouldn’t be about social protest. It would be about corrupting a minor or something really serious you couldn’t wriggle out of so easily. And it wouldn’t just be overnight, either.”

I asked, “You were arrested at a protest, Hunny?”

“Yes, on June twenty-eighth, 1969.” He smiled at me and batted his eyelashes and flapped his wrist once.

“Stonewall? You were there?” I had goose bumps.

“Both of us were,” Art said. “Hunny and I met when they shoved us both in the same paddy wagon.”

“Wow.”

“Some of us in the Van Horn family,” Nelson said, “are actually quite proud of Art and Uncle Hunny. Lawn and I are both grateful for the social revolution that made it possible for us to live as comfortably and openly as we do as gay men. But that was then and this is now, and throwing beer bottles at the police is no longer either appropriate or necessary. And there certainly is no need anymore for gay men to go around shrieking defiantly and sexualizing every utterance and affecting the personalities of ten-year-old girls. Art and Hunny and the other people at Stonewall that night could afford to act like that because they had nothing to lose. But now, thanks to the post-Stonewall social gains, we all have plenty to lose. And lose things we most certainly will if our most prominent role models go on TV and start rolling their eyes and waving their arms around and shrieking about Matt Lauer’s ‘nice basket.’”

As Nelson gave his speech, Hunny made a show of looking bored, and then he picked up the lists of blackmailers and extortionists that he had placed on my desk earlier.

Paying no attention to anything Nelson had said, Hunny looked up at me with a queasy expression. “You know, Don,” he said, “there are a couple of these humpy numbers that we might have to end up paying something to. Annoying as that would be.”

“Why is that?” I said.

“Because two or three of them I think would have to be considered maybe kind of…dangerous?”

Art leaned over and peered at the list and nodded, and Nelson slid even farther down in his chair.