I was going through old files a short time ago, and came across this story I hadn’t read in several years. It seemed the perfect way for me to get into June this year. The Virgin Pool.
It began as a vivid dream—I woke up shivering from it. The story tell us how easy it is to be led on to your own erasure—your own powerlessness. It’s a fitting parable for our first June under the 2nd coming of Donald J. Trump—the orange-headed piece of . . . well, there will be lots of chills up ahead from Trumpie & Company, we can look forward to that.
I am releasing the story in 2 parts, since it’s long. I hope you will be entertained by it, and also made a bit uneasy, seeing how easy it is to wade out into the Virgin Pool itself, until you drown.
Perry Brass
October 9, 2018
The Virgin Pool
Alfred Wells could barely contain himself when Joey Puccio came by Odder Ends, their shop on West 18th Street, off Eighth Avenue. Joey usually came in at one to relieve Alfred. Business hadn't been good for weeks, and the both of them had been feeling down. Now, good news was tickling him. He and Joey were alone and it was bursting out of him like beer packed into a thermos. "Joey, we got into the Fortress!"
Joey's dark Italian eyes started to smile. “You’re kiddin'?"
"I'm not kidding. Their real estate manager came by today, a Mr. Winter. You should have seen him, a well-dressed, nice-looking man. He took a look at the shop, and he liked what he saw. All that money we put into the place, with the fixtures and the lights, has paid off. He said we're the kind of people they want in their building, they have a space now on the mezzanine above the lobby that used to be a smoke shop, and we can have it."
"I didn't know you applied."
"I thought I'd keep it a secret."
Joey's whole face lit up. "A secret? I don't know, Al. How can we afford it? I remember when we walked into it, just for laughs, and you said, 'Wouldn't it be great to locate here,' and I said, 'Sure, dream on, Al,' and you said if you stop dreaming in New York it's all over with. You might as well stay in Jersey City’"
Alfred grabbed Joey and kissed him. "I never wanted you to stay in Jersey City. Okay? This is going to be the move of our lives."
"Not here, Al. S'pose somebody saw us through the window? That's not what we wanna let out about us."
"Joey, we're two guys who love each other. What else are we going to let out? We have this little antique shop that two years ago was the back of a station wagon parked at flea markets. I was teaching in a high school I hated, where the kids whispered behind my back."
"Yeah, and I'm still driving a van for a florist to keep this shop open."
"Joey, you won't have to work much longer. We're going to be in the Fortress. I still can't get over it!"
Author photo: Ricardo Limon
Joey smiled again. He was thirty-six but had a wiry, young body, a body that could work all day and most of the night, as his father, an Italian brick mason had. Joey Puccio was not the world's sharpest person. He was a dark, Sicilian Italian, and like most people in his family before him, he felt self-conscious around the lighter-skinned people from the North. He had tight, curly, very North African hair and he'd been called a nigger when he was kid. Those kinds of words stayed with him, but he had a practical mind. He liked old things. He'd grown up around them—his grandmother's treasures from the old country, his mother's collection of plates and Hollywood dolls from the Thirties and Forties—things like that.
In high school, while his tough friends in Jersey City were hanging around street corners, Joey hunted through second-hand stores. Alfred Wells was a "gentile," as Joey's mother would call him. He grew up in a nice suburb of Jersey, near Princeton. One of the first questions Joey asked him after they met in The Saloon, a preppy bar in Chelsea, was "Do you like old things?"
"You mean like men?" Alfred said.
"No, like antiques. World's Fair—stuff like that."
Alfred laughed and they went back to Alfred's small apartment a few blocks away. Joey was delighted. The place was full of 1930's New York World's Fair memorabilia, Depression glass, Fifties furniture, a spooky collection of plaster Chinese doll heads, and a pink throw rug from a girl's room with all the lyrics for "It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To" on it, with a portrait of Lesley Gore crocheted into it. "We're in business," Joey promised, while Alfred began to take Joey's clothes off.
The Fortress was a huge, blank-faced building on East Fifty-Seventh Street, close enough to Sutton Place to take advantage of those people who needed that kind of address. It took up an entire city block, and rose up forty stories. The first floor was dominated by several spacious, expensive showrooms—a French shoe label, a Japanese luxury sedan, and Swedish crystal. The lobby, floored in marble, lined in tropical woods, and hung with tapestries of Renaissance hunting scenes, was immaculate. Not a thread, a pin or cigarette butt out was of place. On the thirty-foot ceiling was a bank of recessed lighting; every silver-coated light bulb was in working order.
Although the building was new enough to show age quickly, it did not age. If it did take an army of workers to keep the place in order, you rarely saw it. Occasionally, you'd see a doorman or a porter—in a perfectly pressed, maroon uniform—padding through the lobby or at attention by the large elevators. On their return trip to the building, Alfred sniffed the lobby's thick hall carpet. It smelled as if it had been freshly shampooed that morning. "Here's the space," Mr. Winter said, walking with Alfred and Joey on that same maroon carpet as it rolled through the lobby and up into the mezzanine. "I hope you gentlemen'll like it."
Alfred had to nudge Joey to keep him from giggling. "We do," Alfred said modestly. "What sort of lease were you interested in?"
Winters smiled. "How does five years, same rent, sound?"
The space was beautiful. It was surrounded with plate glass, had visibility from the lobby, and had a security system installed. It was roughly twice the space they had in Chelsea, but comparatively, on a per foot basis, the same rent.
"Wait a second," Joey said. "Why are you doing this for us? You're offering this great space for the kind of rent we couldn't get in the East Village. Mr. Winter, what's the story here?"
Winter nodded his head. "What's the catch, right? I understand your skepticism, young man. See, it's like this. The real estate market, as you well know, is not doing that well. The French shoes are hurting, the crystal people are talking about packing up and going back to Stockholm, the Japanese cars always do well, but frankly we felt that we wanted something a little, what is the word—funky? Off-beat. I looked at enough shops, and went by and saw what you guys have done, and we'll be glad to work with you. Also, I can tell you're hard working; that impresses me. Now, does that answer your question? Are you interested or not?"
"Interested," Alfred replied. "Very interested."
"Good," Winter said. "And tell you what: if you ever consider moving into the building yourselves, we have studios and one-bedrooms that come up from time to time. Just now there's a whole group of Arabs who're moving back to their quarter of the world, I think that some political faction they're involved with got voted out of office—"
"By a firing squad?" Joey asked.
Winter nodded his head. "Exactly. One of their attaché's kept a studio on the eighteenth floor, and I'd be willing to let you have it very reasonably."
"A studio?" Joey said back in the shop. "You, me, and Winnie"—their West Highland terrier—" in a studio?"
"A studio on Sutton Place," Alfred said. "You know what they say about New York. There are only two things to remember here—"
"Yeh, the first is location and the second is where you put it. But Al-honey, this building is not on Sutton Place. In fact, if you ask me, I think it's kind of tacky. It's overdone. It's too everything."
"The Fortress is not tacky. We're living in this rat trap in Brooklyn now—"
"Yeh, but at least it's got several rooms. So, when I get pissed with you in one place, I can walk into another."
"Sure, and it's got those nice kids from Bushwick High School who met you on that street corner. Remember those kids who tried to beat you up and called you all the names?"
Joey's eyes fell to the floor. He took out a pocket calculator from behind the counter. "Alright," he conceded. "So how much money we gotta bring in to keep ourselves and this store in the Fortress?"
The first month or so, after their move to the Fortress, Alfred and Joey were dazzled by it. It was like they had woken up in a fairy tale, in an Arabian Nights setting, where elegantly dressed guests walked politely past them and quiet servants did all the work; where most people took for granted things they had to think about. Shopping for food was difficult: they were used to neighborhood grocery stores and open-air markets, not the yuppy-erias that weighed out fruit by the ounce and meat by the gram, like in Europe. It was impossible just to go downstairs to the lobby without looking showered and shaved. Sometimes Joey took the service elevators because he still drove the truck for the florist parttime during the week and on holiday weekends like Easter and Mother's Day. He wore a green uniform and he didn't feel right in the tenants' elevators with all the toity people staring at him. His uniform got stained, and he felt embarrassed. The service elevator boy finally realized he wasn't delivering anything.
"Who's the john?" the boy, a wise kid in his teens with reddish hair twisted into funny braids, asked.
"The what?" Joey asked.
"You know, who's paying you to come up and visit?"
Joey felt really embarrassed. "I live here."
"Sure. Listen, I don't have to let you up this way. Who is it, the wife or the husband who shuddn't see you?"
"I am not a hustler," Joey said. "But thanks for the compliment. Here." He took out his wallet and peeled off a five-dollar bill. "Go out and buy yourself some mouthwash, and don't bother me anymore."
The boy smiled and thanked him. "Whatever turns you on," he said, and let Joey off on the eighteenth floor.
Joey didn't mention the incident to Alfred, for the simple reason that the shop was starting to do very well. Neither of them could complain about that. When he wasn't driving for the florist, Joey worked himself to the ground cleaning the place, rearranging the stock, and attending to customers. Like his father, Joey had a dray horse's capacity for work, and he rarely ever complained. Alfred could not work as hard as he did, but Alfred had a great eye. He could—literally—spot something a mile away that was sellable. Joey went for sentiment and he would have stocked the place with grandma's lace, sweet little dolls, and tin soldiers. But Alfred had a great sense of kitsch, of very off-beat humor.
He started to stock Odder Ends with odder and odder things that quickly sold, like a group of almost pornographic French corset dummies from World War II in suggestive poses—these Al spotted in the back of a warehouse in Connecticut—and something that could only be described as firemen's jockstraps from the 1920's. They were heavy cotton, and had little metal snaps on them, so that a pair of outer pants could be hitched to them. These, Joey thought, were too strange for East Fifty-Seventh Street, but every one of them sold in a few days. A dealer's dealer, called a picker, came by with a whole suitcase full of them, and Alfred grabbed them. Now that they were in a better location, they got first pick from the pickers, and their stock got better, while their prices went up, too. The draw of the shop was that they managed to keep it a lot of fun in a very serious neighborhood.
Mr. Winter, beautifully dressed as ever, came in and smiled. "You boys are what the Fortress needed," he said. "This shop has pizazz, taste—if you get what I mean? And Joey, here—what a worker! Wow!"
Joey turned bashfully away, while Alfred thanked him, and told him that business was doing well. Since their rent was locked in, he could crow a bit. Other stores he knew in the East and West Village were barely holding their heads above water, but they were doing well. "I knew you would," Winter said. "I knew you'd be right for us."
Alfred thanked him.
"Thank you," Mr. Winter said. "And if I can do anything else, let us know."
By the next gift season, which began right after Halloween, Joey was able to quit his driving for the florist, and the two of them stayed in the store all the time. They arrived at nine in the morning, and often didn't leave till ten at night. Alfred only went out to see pickers and scout other stores on the trendy East Side. He came back with the scoop on who was charging what, for what. Joey stayed in, working his butt off, cleaning and polishing the cases and stock. When they weren't on the mezzanine, they were upstairs in their studio on the eighteenth floor. The most fun they had was walking Winnie, who never got used to being in a small apartment, away from the grass and other doggie smells of Brooklyn. In fact, they came home several times to find that Winnie had misbehaved on the parquet floor of the living room, which was the only room.
Joey got sick when he saw this. Sick with anger and anxiety. He never believed that they got all the good fortune that came to them without strings attached. "'Spose this Winter sissy catches wind that the dog has wizzed on the parquet?" he asked Alfred one evening.
"How is he going to do that?" Alfred asked.
"You never can tell. There's something about this place that's just too much. It's too spotless. He's always throwin' us this bull 'I wish I could get the staff to work like you guys.' I mean, Al—'spose he finds out we're slobs up here?"
Alfred brought Joey over to the couch that opened into a bed and began to take Joey's knit shirt off. It was a cheap shirt. Joey could not get used to paying a lot of money for a knit shirt. "Knit's knit," he'd say.
"Don't worry," Alfred said. "We're not slobs up here. Maybe you should put Winnie in the bathroom until we get ready to fold up the couch again."
Joey smiled. Unfolding the couch before it was time to go to sleep had become a code for them. Joey put Winnie in the john, and when he returned Alfred was naked. Alfred had love handles and a pale, hairless body. But, as Joey's mother would say, he was a "gentile," and there was something about Alfred's sheer Americanness that turned Joey on. Alfred was like Velveeta cheese, something Mrs. Puccio never allowed in the house. So, of course, Joey always craved it. He picked friends whose moms had Velveeta cheese in their refrigerators.
Christmas went through in a complete rush. Or crush. It seemed that nobody in the Fortress was doing any business, except the very quiet Japanese auto show room and Odder Ends. The shop was jammed from opening until closing. The rich private school kids from the building came in, dragging their parents. People came in off the street, and customers came by who lived on the West Side but said they'd heard about Odder Ends from friends. "It's worth the bus trip," they said. Even the snotty lady who worked in the French shoe store came by one evening two days before Christmas, before Joey and Alfred closed up, to congratulate them. "Ees a bad time," Simone said, in her Chanel suit and perfect patent pumps. "Even the rich"—she pronounced it 'reesh'—"are beeshing. Is that how you say it, beeshing?"
Joey laughed. "Bitchin', yeah, that's how you say it."
"They used to buy three, four pairs shoes at one time. Now ees just one. I know not what you boys do, but you do it right, n'est-ce pas?"
Alfred smiled. "Merci," he said warmly.
After she left, Alfred took Joey aside and held him. "Not here," Joey objected. "'S'pose somebody's looking through the window?"
Alfred let out a laugh. "'S'pose I ate your dick right now?"
Joey didn't say a word. He was nuts about Alfred. For a gentile, Alfred had the hottest blood in the world. Sometimes he made Joey Puccio look cold. Joey smiled, and then Alfred said: "It is amazing, isn't it? the Swedes are leaving. The French shoes are down on their heels, and we're doing great business. I don't understand it. Do you think it's just this building? Maybe it's you, Joey, and the Fortress. The two of you seem to work great together."
Joey started getting the place ready to lock up—moving all the stealable stuff into the safe under the counter. "Don't think about it," he said. "Just don't queer our luck, okay?"
"You mean we shouldn't try to question it? Is that what you mean?"
Joey nodded his head and began polishing the marble floor in front of the register with a soft mop.
They decided to close at eight o' clock on Christmas Eve, no matter who was there—how many people, or what they were buying. They literally had to sweep people out before Joey could begin cleaning up. They were both exhausted and tense. Joey cleaned up as well as he could, while Alfred put the valuables in the safe, and totaled the receipts. It began to snow outside, as they locked the store.
They wandered down into the lobby, tastefully decorated for Christmas in white and silver, and watched the snow come down on East Fifty-Seventh Street. It was Christmas, finally, in the city, during a bad economic year, but the snow covered everything with its fresh winter magic, and the quiet, which only New York could have in a heavy snow, was lovely. They sat down in two large wing chairs in the lobby alcove, and watched the thick flakes come down.
"Now it really feels like Christmas," a voice boomed. They both looked over to the right, near the concierge's desk, as Mr. Winter approaching them. The name seemed so appropriate then. Alfred started to smile.
"Yes, finally Winter comes," Alfred joked.
The manager, who seemed too dignified to get a joke like that, broke into a deep smile. "Are you guys stuck in the city for the holiday?"
"Stuck and happy!" Alfred said. "We're too tired to move."
Winter said he knew the feeling. Then he told them that he was alone. Everyone he knew had left. Both of them felt suddenly very sorry for him. "Hey," Joey said. "Why don't you come up to our place? We'll open up a little brandy and watch the snow come down. It's Christmas, right?"
Alfred was really surprised when Joey said that, and even more surprised when Winter took him up on it. The three of them walked towards the elevator in the quiet, very empty building, on a snowy Christmas Eve. It seemed that they didn't wait more than a second before the elevator came. Did Winter have some sort of secret touch with the button?
The attendant was a young, blond man whom neither Joey nor Alfred recognized. He smiled at Mr. Winter, and Alfred was instantly aware that the young man's smile had the empty, glazed quality of drunk people. The door closed, and the attendant pressed the button for the eighteenth floor, as if he knew by instinct where they lived. "You have a nice evening, Mr. Winter," he said as they got off. "Merry Christmas." The young man did not stop smiling, while the door closed.
Suddenly, Joey had a terrible thought: suppose Winnie had an accident on the floor, just as the building manager entered their apartment? That would justify his worst fears. "Would you mind waiting here?" he asked Winter. "We want to put Winnie in the bathroom. She gets crazy with strangers when they first arrive."
"I understand completely," Winter said, and waited while Joey and Alfred unlocked the door and walked in.
"You're crazy," Alfred said. "But I still love you. It was nice to invite the old guy in. I guess he gets lonely at Christmas."
Joey ran over to Winnie. It was true—she had made another, slight puddle on the parquet floor in the living room. "What are we gonna do now?" Joey groaned. He ran into the kitchen nook, grabbed a sponge, and cleaned it up. Alfred scooped up the dog, talked to her, and put her into the bathroom.
"You okay?" he said to Joey. Joey nodded, and tossed the sponge in the cabinet under the small kitchen sink. Alfred grabbed a small throw rug from the hallway and threw it over the darkened parquet. Then the two of them went over to the door to let Winter in.
"Nice things you've done with this place," Mr. Winter said as he walked into the living room, admiring the view of snow falling on buildings all over the East Side. "I have almost no view—I'm on the third floor in the back. No light. No view. I guess that's what happens when you're in charge. Or at least you try to give people that impression."
Joey went to the kitchen cabinets and brought out three snifters and a bottle of cognac. It seemed the perfect thing for that sort of night, at that sort of time. He came back in and saw his lover and the building manager sitting comfortably opposite each other and talking.
"People often ask that," Winter said. "How we keep the building spotless. You know we've had to cut back? These are hard times, believe me. It's the staff. Small. Dedicated. And they're all hand-picked by me. Let me tell you, nothing happens in this building that I don't arrange."
"That's nice to know," Alfred said, his voice strained and tired. "In this world where there seems to be no order at all, that's nice to know."
Joey handed the glasses and poured out the cognac. Then he excused himself, went into the bathroom, peed, and talked quietly to Winnie. "It's okay," he whispered to her. "We'll get rid of this guy, and then you can come out an' join your parents."
He went back into the living room and sat down comfortably next to Alfred on the couch. He felt the first taste of cognac warm his throat, and then glide down and make a little light in his trim belly. He looked over at Winter, who'd been making light, almost whispering chit-chat with Alfred. Now he felt no fear at all about Mr. Winter. The man seemed quite pathetic—definitely a lonely old queen, Joey was sure. Or else one of those blighted, stiff heterosexual men left out in the cold by women. Women didn't look at them as men, merely as conveniences. Someone to buy them dinner or open a door. That was all. Although Joey was sure Winter was not the sort to reveal much about himself, he hoped that the manager was a queen, rather than one of the other type. Joey had known enough of them in Jersey City. Straight, sexless men; he felt sorry for them. They were too hopeless even to be bitter.
Winter took another deep swallow of his cognac. The glass covered most of his face, and he looked like a flat old fish in a fishbowl. Joey smiled. Winter was a flat old fish, certainly. The manager put down his glass. "When I first met you guys," he said, "I was sure you were going to be right for this place."
"How was that?" Joey asked. He looked over at Alfred, and noticed that Alfred looked as glazed as the elevator boy. It must have been the hour and the exhaustion, Joey thought. Alfred usually could hold his own in the alcohol department, but they had been working so hard. Joey was used to this kind of hard work, but not Alfred.
'Put it like this. We've had a lot of guys like you who've lived in the Fortress, decorators and such. But there's a new generation out there now. The AIDS thing has brought it out. These guys are angry. They push it into your face, you know what I mean?"
Joey smiled. "Sure," he said. "That never made me very comfortable, either."
"How about you?" Mr. Winter turned to Alfred. "Do you know what I'm saying, also?"
There was only silence, and Alfred's deep breathing. "God," Joey said. "He's asleep. I guess it has been a hard day."
Mr. Winter made a funny little giggle. "That's my company, I guess. I put everybody to sleep."
"No, No," Joey said. As much of a stiff as Winter was, Joey didn't want to make him feel worse. It wasn't Winter's fault. Or his company. Joey got up with the hope that Winter would follow suit and leave. But Winter didn't.
"I guess he just needs a bit of a snooze," the manager said. Then he smiled at Joey and Joey, out of politeness, smiled back. "I want to show you something," Winter said. "Something we don't show most of our tenants— except the most wealthy and exclusive ones. A night like this is perfectly made for it."
"What are you talking about?" Joey said.
"I bet you didn't realize the Fortress had its own health club. It's very exclusive and expensive, so we don't advertise it."
"But I'm not a member," Joey said. "And Alfred is sleeping. I really shouldn't go no place."
Mr. Winter got up. "Your friend's fine. He just pooped out, that's all. This place is superb; it's one of the hidden jewels of the city."
"But I ain't dressed for it," Joey said. "And I—I don't know, Mr. Winter..."
"Come on," Winter said. He softly, courteously, touched Joey's arm and Joey got to his feet. "You yourself, personally, invited me up for this nice drink. I owe you one."
"Alright," Joey said. "If you insist. Does it have a steam room, and all that?"
Winter smiled. "It's got everything you'll ever want. Steam. Towels. Wonderful robes. They'll take care of all of your needs."
(to be continued)
Perry Brasshas published 23 books and has been a finalist for Lambda Literary Awards 6 times. His latest book, A Life Without Money, and Other Poems, is available at Amazon, the Bureau of General Services Queer Division, and other places that sell fine books. He is the president of the Gay Liberation Front Foundation and can be reached through his website perrybrass.com.