Faggots by Larry Kramer, Reynolds Price Page B

of course had been the beginning of the end, or of the beginning. It was only seconds before both boys were completely naked and opening themselves to the joys and conflicts redolent in this early tender moment of exploring themselves in the body of another, holding on to each other’s dickies as if they were holding on to their own. It was as if each were rather hungry from some already precocious deprivation now being at last fulfilled, their little hands grabbing their little things, Dunnie even returning kisses and not worrying that the lips, too, were Jewish. Unfortunately, Sammy could not contain his involuntary reflexes for too long and his little load of white stuff melded not with the gray flannels from the Brothers Brooks but with the brownies from the Mother Rosen. It came so suddenly, the spurt of liquid, that he looked down upon himself as it quivered out, then just sat there studying the improbable combination of semen and chocolate.
    Dunnie was also looking at the brownies rather strangely. Suddenly he smiled, and finished himself off with his own hand, directing his own whipped cream to make the dessert before them even classier. Sammy then watched him pick up a creamed-upon square and eat it. But Dunnie, as he ate, did not look at what he was eating. He looked at Sammy. And without saying a word, he held another brownie a la mode in front of Sammy’s mouth and Sammy opened his mouth and ate it, too.
    With such sweetness did both lads gain their practical introduction into what a fairy was.
    It was at this moment, too, that Duncan Heinz IV learned that he could use his body to get anybody to do anything for him that he wanted. To please him. To test his new insight he reached down and pulled up Sammy’s dirty white sneakers. “Put these on,” he said.
    Sammy, as if hypnotized, did so.
    “Walk all over me.” Dunnie said the first thing that came into his head.
    Sammy got up on the sagging mattress and walked all over Dunnie as best he could, finally falling helplessly into his classmate’s arms. Then they held each other close, felt each other’s soft (both mothers had raised Ivory babies), teen-aged skin, and fell asleep.
    This shoe experience stimulated in Dunnie a lifelong fascination with items for the feet. Winnie now has a full wardrobe of shoes and boots and loafers and rubbers and galoshes and waders and sneakers, high-top and low, for police and army and infantry and paratroopers and navy and fishermen and cowboys and chefs and stevedores and linemen, garbage collectors, Indians, postmen, wardens, tractor operators, loggers, engineers, so many refinements within a major category! He also has them in assorted sizes. One never knew. And not only did he seek for sex with young boys, but he also much preferred young Jewish boys. If he couldn’t get a former, he’d settle for a latter, even an older Jew. For, after all, wasn’t his father one of America’s leading anti-Semites?
    He is now, as we have discovered, the Winston Man. The true symbol of America’s masculinity, at two hundred thousand dollars per symbolic year. There he poses, Winnie does, in front of all America, nay, the World, on billboards and in magazines and newspapers, from Albuquerque to Auckland, and from Zanzibar to Zaire, which come to think of it is not all that far, in his washed-out denim shirt, daringly opened one button too many, staring straight out at you, honest, direct, green-eyed, wonderfully virile, in that confrontation which Hans and Irving, Anthony, Troy Mommser, all such good and supportive friends and helpmates, fellow toilers in the tobacco fields, have helped him to refine and make profitable, and which has made him into the man whom millions of women consciously and as many men unconsciously inhale as they inhale.
    He is, of course, worshipped and adored by his brothers. He is looked at, pointed to, touched, walked near, on streets, in bars and baths and discos, in stores, in crowds, at the Gay Synagogue,