Hunny led us into the kitchen and said, “Art, just one. I would like just one itsy-bitsy snort.”

“No.”

“My mother is missing,” Hunny told Shoemaker. “So we are all very stressed. Oh, I suppose you know that. Mrs. Whitney told me you called. That was so nice of you to take an interest.”

“It sounded to me as if you could use a few queer friends.

Some of us at the RDQ commune saw you on TV, and we all just stood up and cheered. I said, ‘Boys, behold! Can our eyes be deceiving us? He’s on TV, and he is an unassimilated gay man!’ Generally the gay people who appear on television are so assimilationist they might as well be het.”

Hunny and Art stared at Shoemaker. Hunny reached for a cigarette, then changed his mind and just fiddled with the ashtray.

Hunny said, “I’m glad somebody thought I was fun. An awful lot of people sure didn’t. That’s all I aim to be, Quentin — friendly and fun. What’s the point taking everything so seriously? At least when you don’t have to.”

“Yes, grown-up activities are necessary to making the world go round — plowing the earth, harnessing the energy of the waters, milking the goats. But acting grown-up all the time is utterly soul-destroying, and I could see immediately that you were not a man who had anesthetized or even strangled his inner child.”

Art said, “Hunny wouldn’t do that.”

134 Richard Stevenson

“Gay spirit is being crushed at every turn in our society equally by small-souled straight people who can only stand us if we act just like them, and by gay people who’ve lost their connections to the great spirits of the earth and the universe that made us large and free.”

“Hunny is definitely large and free,” Art said.

“Well, I am honored to know you. Both of you.”

“Thank you,” Hunny said, glowing. “Thank you so much.”

Again, Hunny reached for a cigarette but then thought better of it.

“So, your mom left the nursing home and she still hasn’t been found?” Shoemaker asked.

“No, and it’s been over twenty-four hours. We think she went off with somebody, but for the life of us we can’t think who.”

“What is her birth date?”

“January twenty-eighth. Why do you ask?”

“One of our members, Savion Davenport, can do her chart and see if we can get a handle on what lies ahead. What time of day was she born on January twenty-eighth?”

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

“She’s never had her chart done before?”

“Well, just Medicare.”

“Savion is highly intuitive, so he’ll figure it out.”

Art said, “So you live in Vermont? We were over there one time several years ago.”

“In Ferrisburg, near the lake. Most of the back-to-the-earth folks who moved to Vermont from New York in the ‘60s have semi-assimilated. A lot have regular jobs, and I can’t argue with that. Not everybody can afford to swim with the dolphins, or needs to. A lot are doing righteous work — teaching, medicine, traditional healing, energy work, what have you. However, Dennis Bower, who was one of the original radical faeries on the West Coast in ‘71 is now a deputy assistant secretary of defense.

CoCkeyed 135

We may have to levitate the Pentagon again, ha ha, and reclaim Dennis’s spirit!”

“Are there porpoises in Lake Champlain?” Art asked.

Shoemaker chuckled. “Aren’t there porpoises everywhere?

The thing is, not everybody can see them. Or is willing to. The Native Americans near Ferrisburg tell stories of porpoise-like creatures filling the lake like carp in a farm pond before the coming of the white man.”

Hunny said, “There was an Indian on the Van Horn side of the family, a Mohawk. My sister Miriam claims that’s just a story, but my mom said Dad admitted that it was true. About a hundred years ago. Some kind of Song of the Loon type of situation, except the Indian must have been straight.”

“That may help account for your free spirit, Hunny. And don’t be too sure your ancestor was straight. He could well have been a berdache. ”

“What’s that?”

“Berdaches are Native Americans who are free of gender straitjackets.”

“We saw an Indian drag queen one time at Foxwoods Casino,”

Art said. “But I guess you’re talking about something historical.”

“Not necessarily. Drag queens are very much in the berdache spirit. Like your friend Marylou Whitney. I could tell even just talking to her on the telephone that she was deeply real and she was deeply special.”

Art said, “Yes, in Palm Beach Marylou is famous for being the most glamorous woman with a dick in South Florida.”

Hunny gave Art a look. “That is not funny, Arthur. Marylou would not be amused. She is somewhat self-conscious about her penis.”

“I didn’t mean it to be funny. I was just stating a fact. Anyway, on Bill O’Malley you defended Marylou’s right to have a dick if she wanted to. You practically said it was in the Bill of Rights. So don’t tell me, Hunny.”

136 Richard Stevenson

Hunny went for his cigarettes again, and this time he got one out of the pack. “I don’t remember any of that O’Malley stuff at all. Oh Lord.”

Shoemaker eased his chair back a foot or so as Hunny lit his Marlboro. “Hunny, you were just wonderful on O’Malley. You were the truth-teller. You were the free spirit. You were the unassimilated queer restoring the Whitmanesque joy of being free and gay and alive and at one with nature in a setting where gay people generally act defensive and bitter and defeated by the soulless and puritanical strictures of the medium.”

Hunny shot smoke at Shoemaker and said, “Wow, if I was that good, I sure wish I could remember more of it.”

“At the Rdq commune, you made us proud all over again to be sissies.”

“I was a radical myself one time,” Hunny said. “I didn’t think of it that way at the time. I just thought of it as being pissed off and totally up to here with the New York Police Department.

Artie was one, too. We were at Stonewall when the cops raided the place and we got arrested. Except for a few disorderly conduct things in the ‘80s, it’s my only time to be arrested. It’s where Artie and I met.”

Shoemaker got down on the floor in front of Hunny. “Take your shoes off,” he said. “I want to kiss your feet.”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

Art said, “You should meet the twins. They’ll probably drop by later.”

Climbing back onto his chair, Shoemaker said, “Instead of your being shunned by gay America, Hunny, the Human Rights Campaign and all those other assimophiles should be hoisting you on their shoulders. It makes me want to weep, the way you’re being treated by your own kind.”

“Well, Quentin, it is disappointing. Especially with Mom missing and with so many other situations I’m currently dealing with. You won’t believe what I’m putting up with. That’s why Donald is here. I needed a detective just to deal with this CoCkeyed 137

incredible amount of crap. Donald, tell Quentin what we all have been going through since I won the lottery on Wednesday. It’ll make your hair stand on end.”

“All of it? Including the Cobleskill situation?”

“Yes, maybe Quentin has some ideas on how to deal with people who are just out-and-out satanic.”

“Satanic! Let’s hear about that. The Radical Drama Queens have ways of dealing with Lucifer’s minions.”

I described to Shoemaker the events of the past five days. I told him about the blackmail and other threats, the pellet-gun attack, Rita Van Horn’s going missing, the kidnapping hoax, the laundry basket full of requests and demands for a share of Hunny’s billion dollars, the smears from Bill O’Malley and the Family Preservation Association of Albany County, the lawsuits by fPAAC, Dave DeCarlo and Mason Doebler, and finally about the Brienings and Mrs. Van Horn’s history with them and their loony extortion plot.