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"Cheek to cheek!" the crowd cried--or however you say that in Spanish. (I can't remember.) He'd met Bovary on a toilet, butt to butt; how perfect was that?
There wasn't much more to the show. When my father's story, about the love of his life, was finished, I noticed that many of the older people in the audience quickly slipped away--as did nearly all the women. The women who stayed, I realized only later--as I was leaving--were the transsexuals and the transvestites. (The young boys stayed, and by the time I left the club, there were many more of them--in addition to some older men, who were mostly alone, no doubt on the prowl.) Senor Bovary led me backstage to meet my father. "Don't be disappointed," he kept whispering in my ear, as if he were still translating and we were still sitting at the bar.
My father, standing in his dressing room, was already stripped to the waist--wig off--by the time Bovary and I got backstage. William Francis Dean had a snow-white crew cut and the starved-down, muscular body of a lightweight wrestler or a jockey. The little falsies, and a bra no bigger than Elaine's--the one I used to wear when I was sleeping--were on my dad's dressing-room table, all heaped together with the pearl necklace. The dress, which unzipped from the back, had been undone only as far as my father's slender waist, and he'd slipped the top half off his shoulders.
"Shall I unzip you the rest of the way, Franny?" Senor Bovary asked the performer. My father turned his back to Bovary, allowing his lover to unzip him. Franny Dean stepped out of the dress, revealing only a tight black girdle; he'd already unfastened his black stockings from the girdle--the stockings were rolled at his narrow ankles. When my dad sat at his dressing-room table, he pulled the rolled-down stockings off his small feet and threw them at Senor Bovary. (All this before he began to remove his makeup, starting with the eyeliner; he'd already removed the fake eyelashes.) "It's a good thing I didn't see you whispering to young William at the bar until I was almost done with the Boston part of the story," my father said peevishly to Bovary.
"It's a good thing someone invited young William to come see you before you're dead, Franny," Senor Bovary told him.
"Mr. Bovary exaggerates, William," my dad told me. "As you can see for yourself, I'm not dying."
"I'll leave you two alone," Mr. Bovary told us in a wounded tone.
"Don't you dare," my dad said to the love of his life.
"I dare not," Bovary replied, with droll resignation. He gave me a long-suffering look, of the you-see-what-I-put-up-with kind.
"What's the point of having a love of your life, if he's not always with you?" my father asked me.
I didn't know what to say; I was quite at a loss for words.
"Be nice, Franny," Senor Bovary told him.
"Here's what women do, William--small-town girls, anyway," my father said. "They find something they love about you--even if there's just one thing they find endearing. For example, your mother liked to dress me up--and I liked it, too."
"Maybe later, Franny--maybe say this to young William after you've had a chance to get to know each other," Mr. Bovary suggested.
"It's too late for young William and me to get to know each other. We were denied that opportunity. Now we already are who we are, aren't we, William?" my dad asked me. Once again, I didn't know what to say.
"Please try to be nicer, Franny," Bovary told him.
"Here's what women do, as I was saying," my father continued. "Those things they don't love about you--those things they don't even like--well, guess what women do about those things? They imagine they can change those things--that's what women do! They imagine they can change you," my father said.
"You knew one girl, Franny, una mujer dificil--" Mr. Bovary started to say.
"Now who's not being nice?" my dad interrupted him.
"I've known some men who tried to change me," I told my father.
"I can't compete with everyone you've known, William--I couldn't possibly claim to have had your experience," my dad said. I was surprised he was a prig.
"I used to wonder where I came from," I told him. "Those things in myself that I didn't understand--those things I was questioning, especially. You know what I mean. How much of me came from my mother? There was little that came from her that I could see. And how much of me came from you? There was a time when I thought about that, quite a lot," I told him.
"We heard about you beating up some boy," my father said.
"Say this later, Franny," Mr. Bovary pleaded with him.
"You beat up a kid at school--rather recently, wasn't it?" my dad asked me. "Bob told me about it. The Racquet Man was quite proud of you for it, but I found it upsetting. You didn't get violence from me--you didn't get aggression. I wonder if all that anger doesn't come from those Winthrop women," he told me.
"He was a big kid," I said. "He was nineteen, a football player--a fucking bully."
But my father and Senor Bovary looked as though they were ashamed of me. I was on the verge of explaining Gee to them--how she'd been only fourteen, a boy becoming a girl, and the nineteen-year-old thug had hit her in the face, bloodying her nose--but I suddenly thought that I didn't owe these disapproving old queens an explanation. I didn't give a shit about that football player.
"He called me a fag," I told them. I guessed that would make them sniffy.
"Oh, did y
ou hear that?" my dad asked the love of his life. "Not the fag word! Can you imagine being called a fag and not beating the shit out of someone?" my father asked his lover.
