Interested in French and Greek cultures as a sideline and also has some curiosity about water-sports. Call NNFGOST anytime.
I was alone in my office at the time, Virginia at one of her long lunches and the two homosexuals involved in a legal conference having to do with true sales figures and the exact percentage of purchases to returns. (This is difficult ground to walk; on the one hand we want to show the District Attorney that there is very little profit in the newspaper and that his illegal actions have severely hurt our business; on the other hand we do not want to circulate the impression that we are not doing well or are in any kind of financial trouble. The true sales figures, of course, are a mystery and we can only seek a figure which would be an appropriate metaphor.) Nevertheless, I locked the outer door and then closed the door of my office before I picked up the phone and dialed NNFGOST.
A wavering, uncertain voice answered. This is to be expected; the more insolent or outlandish the ad, the less can be expected from the proprietor. “Hello,” I said, “I saw your ad in the new issue. I’m calling up in reply.”
“Oh,” he said with a giggle, “I didn’t even know that it was out yet. The new issue. I just placed the ad a couple of days ago.”
“Well it is,” I say. “What do you mean about water sports? Exactly what did you have in mind?”
“Oh, that was just an extra. Something that I put in. A lot of the fellows are interested in that kind of stuff. It really isn’t my thing, but I’d be happy to cooperate. Are you, uh, interested in water sports?”
“What are water sports?”
There was a thick, clamoring pause on the other end, then the voice said, “I thought that everyone knew.”
“I don’t know. I’m very interested.”
“You haven’t told me anything about yourself. You’ve got my number and know what I want and everything and I don’t know anything about you at all.”
“That’s perfectly all right,” I said. “You think that people take pleasure from being pissed on. Is that what you mean?”
“I don’t,” he said rather hysterically. “It isn’t my kind of thing at all. French and Greek — ”
“French and Greek,” I said, “I bet that it’s French and Greek. Listen you lousy, stinking pervert, we’ve had our eye on you for a good long time. You don’t think that you can live unobserved in this country, do you? You don’t think that there can be any secrets from us, do you? Think of the most private, unspeakable act you have committed, the act which is locked deepest in your memory and which you are sure no one but yourself can ever know and
that act
, that very act, is written down somewhere in a file folder in black and white in an alphabetized drawer and can be reached by us anytime we want to look you up. You think that we can take this kind of thing seriously?”
“You’re a prankster,” he said weakly, his voice modulating now to the perfect and predictable faggart’s shriek, just as I had expected. “You’re just out to torment me, to take advantage because I have the courage to come out in the open. I’m going to hang up on you and call the police.”
“Don’t give me that gay liberation crap,” I said. “You’re a lousy stinking homosexual, that’s all you are and that’s all you’re ever going to be and you can dress it up with French and Greek and water sports all you like but you know exactly what you are. You disgust me. You are committing a crime against nature and God, do you know that? You are placing your soul in jeopardy, you are risking your eternal future because you don’t have the strength to control your bestial and stinking impulses. Well, you take a tip from me, friend, we are watching you with the closest and greatest interest and the biggest favor you could do yourself is to get the hell out of the newspapers. Your private nightmare is your own affair but when you start pandering — ”
“You’re
Exiles At the Well of Souls