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from Portugal."
    "Oh, God, he lives on Beekman Place, doesn't he?"
    "Yes, but Howard lives off Sutton, and he wants me to move in, too. Damn, I don't know what to do."
    "Marry John! Sutton Place is all Jewish dentists."
    And they burst into laughter over their solution to this problem; while at the next instant, the creature who, for a reason I could not put my finger on, fascinated me more than any of the habitu6s of that place came in the door: Sutherland. He swept in trailing a strange coterie of Egyptian cotton heiresses, the most popular male model to come over from Paris in a decade, a Puerto Rican drug dealer, and an Italian prince. Sutherland was dressed in a black Norell, turban, black pumps, rhinestones, and veil. He held a long cigarette holder to his lips and vanished among the crowd. The dark man began to debate idly whether he should go to bed with Archer Prentiss, who was (a) very ugly, but (b) had a big dick.
    In the midst of their deliberations, Zulema's "Giving Up" suddenly burst out of the recapitulations of Deodato, and the two woodsmen got up to dance; at their rising, two other boys in black with tired, beautiful eyes, sat down immediately and began discussing the men who had just left: "I call him the Pancake Man," said one. "He doesn't use makeup!" said the other. "Oh, no," the first replied. "The opposite! Because he's the kind of man you imagine waking up with on Saturday morning, and he makes pancakes for you, and then you take the dog out for a walk in the park. And he always has a moustache, and he always wears plaid shirts!"
    "I agree he's gorgeous," said his friend, "but someone told me he has the smallest wee-wee in New York."
    And with that, as if the boy had snapped his fingers, the big, blond woodsman standing by the dance floor in all his radiant masculinity, crumbled into dust.
    "Oh please," said the one, "I don't need that." He covered his face with his hands. "I'm already on downs, why did you say that?"
    "Because it's true," said the other.
    "Oh, God," the first moaned, in the nasal wail of Brooklyn, "Oh, God, I can't believe that. No, he's my Pancake Man."
    "They all wear plaid shirts, and they all have moustaches," said his friend. "You might as well pick one with a big dick. None of them will look at you, anyway."
    He looked out between his fingers at the woodsman, who was now talking animatedly to Sutherland in his black Norell and turban and long cigarette holder, and said, "Who is that woman he's talking to?" And the other side:"Her name is Andrew Sutherland, and she lives on Madison Avenue. She's a speed freak. She hasn't long to live." At that moment, "Needing You" began, buried still in the diminishing chords of "You've Got Me Waiting for the Rain to Fall," and the two boys on the sofa—with hearing sharper than a coyote's, and without even needing to ask each other—bounded up off the sofa and headed for the dance floor. Instantly their seats were taken by an older, gray-haired man and his friend, an even older fellow who because of his hearing aid, toupee, and back brace was known among the younger queens as Spare Parts. "I find him so beautiful," said the man of the boy who had just left, "like a Kabuki, that long neck, those heavy-lidded eyes. He never looks at me, do you think because he's afraid?" They began to discuss a friend on the dance floor who had recently learned he had cancer of the lungs. "No, no," said Spare Parts, "he has cancer of the colon, I think, his mother has cancer of the lungs." "Yes," said the friend, "he used to scream at his mother for smoking too much, and she used to scream at him for eating too fast. And now look." "He flies out to the clinic tomorrow," said Spare Parts. "Do you suppose he wants to go home with someone?" "You know," said the friend, "I would think the fact that he's dying would give him the courage to walk up to all these boys he's been in love with all these years but never had the nerve to say hello to." "Well, he has a look