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CHAPTER 1: Our Shameful Secrets CHAPTER 2: Sundae at Schrafft's CHAPTER 4: Why Our Young People Are Still Being Kidnapped CHAPTER 5: Another Long Con Shot to Hell CHAPTER 6: In the Garden of the Stalactites CHAPTER 7: The Gypsy Fiddler of Gay Street CHAPTER 8: In the Matter of J.J.Diefenbaker CHAPTER 9: The Milkman's Daughter CHAPTER 10: The Great Doris Day Peanut Butter Mystery CHAPTER 11: Keen Teens International CHAPTER 12: Of Cults and Cowboys CHAPTER 13: A Role Model for Miss Sallie Chapter 14: The Domestic Economy of Mr. Hornblower Chapter 15: Monsieur Normale and the Funny Factory
| Chapter 12: Of Cults and Cowboys Gorbles said, “Do you know the Jackson Whites?” “That a Mormon singing group?” said Hornblower “No, no. Much more exciting. Article in the Times a little while ago. They are these crossbred mulatto mutant hillbillies who live up around the border of Rockland County. They keep to themselves and nobody knows where they come from. Nobody’s ever put them on TV before. We could get a car and drive up and interview them.” “That could be pretty neat, if it’s true,” said Hornblower. “Could even be the Virgule pilot.” “Stalking the wild Jackson Whites!” chirped Chrissy. “And I know somebody who has a car,” said Hornblower. “You say they’re racial?” said Corey. “After a fashion,” said Gorbles. “People are going to think you’re prejudiced.” “No no no, not it we do it sympathetically,” said Gorbles. “We depict them as a persecuted minority group.” Hornblower was scrawling on his pad. “Jackson WhitesÉI still think that sounds like a singing group. Well this calls for some more dope.” The pipe went around again and we talked about finding a good date for visiting the Jackson Whites. Corey and Chrissy would be out of town during Easter vacation, but maybe we could all drive up at the end of April. That was four weeks away, plenty of time to engage a video crew to come with us for an afternoon. “Maybe a couple of us should drive up first and see if we can find them—you know, location scouting,” said Gorbles. “Oooh, good thinking! Figure out what angle we’re working on. I better call my friend Garner, see if I can borrow his car.” Hornblower dialed and listened. “Oooh! Garner! Tommy Hornblower here. And how is your fine self? Jes’ hangin’ loose, enjoyin’ the weather, you betcha. Ooh noo, all stocked up here, this is social, not business. Thinkin’ of taking a day tripÉ” Garner wouldn’t lend his car; something about the insurance. Hornblower called another couple and then gave up. “Whyn’t you just rent one?” said Corey. “You got thirty dollars plus deposit money?” said Hornblower, sticking out his lips into a long moue. He lit up another bowl and forgot about the Jackson Whites for the afternoon. This was how most of our meetings seemed to end up. The sidestream marijuana smoke got into my lungs and made ten minutes seem like an hour. I’d peek at Hornblower’s clock radio to see if it was time yet for me to go walk the dog. To ward off boredom and the dope jitters I started sipping little tumblers of Hornblower’s jug wine. It tasted awful but it did the job. Meantime the booys’ conversations twittered away. They were hard to follow as they never had a set subject; the routine rather was to toss precious references back and forth—C. P. Cavafy, Denham Fouts, Carl van Vechten, Baron Corvo, Patricia Highsmith,Tea and Sympathy, Brooks van Horn, Cecil Beaton, La Vielle Russie, Sotheby Parke Bernet. It was like that famous National Lampoon comic-book story where a gay vampire turns all the males in town into outrageous pansies, so you end up with a visual of a Manhattan skyline with word-balloons shouting out: “Beardsley!” “Biedermeier!” “Bauhaus!” Chrissy and Corey were the quickest and cleverest at this banter, though even the rough dockboys on the bed were able to keep up with a lot of it. You really had to marvel. Did they all get the same trivia book when they turned thirteen? Twelve maybe? Sometimes they got tired of this camp Botticelli and tried to one-up each other with insalubrious tales of sluttishness. Here Chrissy and Corey were way outclassed. They’d had their flings with peers and teachers and wealthy businessmen, but this was nothing to tell that was as seamy as the dockboys’ adventures down behind the trucks at the end of West 12th Street. “You kids today!” Hornblower would say, looking up from his desk. “Mmm-hmm!” Hornblower had taken up a new, mind-numbing pastime. You will recall that he said he was going to have real artist execute the Virgule logo. That artist turned out to be just a dockboy who had some Letraset and Chartpak type catalogues. Hornblower became absolutely mesmerized by this pressure-sensitive transfer lettering—there were so many hundreds of typestyles, and it was so much fun to rub these letters off their plastic sheets. Sometmes when I showed up for the meeting I’d find him already super-stoned and super-focused, biting his tongue and bearing down hard on his desk with a Letraset burnisher. The burnisher was a pen-like metal tool with a ball-shaped tip. The idea was that you rubbed the tip back and forth across one side of the presstype sheet, and if all went well (and often it didn’t) the character on the other side would stick firmly to the paper underneath. Very painstaking work, the sort of thing one probably needed to be high on marijuana for. Aunt Pudge told me the art department at work was full of hippies, which made me imagine a big room full of potheads, sitting at their drawing tables all day and diligently rubbing in the headings for the Time-Life Book of Sleeping. It wasn’t enough to be stoned, though; some delicacy was required, and this was beyond Hornblower. He held his burnisher like a potato masher and always mangled his characters. Since the presstype sheets each had only two or three virgules and sets of parentheses, Hornblower went through many two-dollar pages of Letraset. For the title itself, he favored the really ugly, outrageous typefaces: They all looked as though they belonged on a Philip Roth book, or on the title cards of a TV game show. It was one afternoon while the booys were chirping away and Hornblower was busy burnishing, that he suddenly he came out of his fugue state, looked up and said: “Oooh. This is so amazing, you’re all so bright!” he said. “Just think if we put it all on TV. We frame it as a roundtable discussion of keen teens. Now that! That I tell you is viable program concept.” “A round table?” said Corey. “You mean like—like the David Susskind Show?” said Gorbles. “Who David Susskind?” Gorbles and Chrissy explained that David Susskind was a sometime TV producer guy who had a weekly discussion program involving lots of swivel chairs on a black-black set. The program was considered very daring and sophisticated, at least by old people. Hornblower wasn’t impressed. “Oh. Yeah. I know the kind of show you mean. People in swivel chairs?” He started telling us about a Sunday afternoon TV chat show back in Oklahoma, with a fellow named Burbleson or something, who was thought to be very smart. If you said something smart-alecky at the dinner table, your family would sneer and say, “You oughta go on Mr. Burbleson’s pro-gram.” “They had swivel chairs, you say?” said Gorbles, bouncing a gum eraser on the plywood table. “Yeah. Basically same show concept,” Hornblower said airily. “Incredible.” “But no David Susskind.” “Yes, I think we’re clear on that,” Chrissy snapped. “David Susskind Show definitely not for keen teens,” said Hornblower. “This Susskind guy is probably too ethnic and too local-orientated.” “I used to watch David Susskind sometimes when I stayed with my mother in Rowayton,” said Chrissy. “She always left the television set on whether or not anyone was watching it.” “Virgule want broad appeal. Want appeal to keen teens in Heartland.” “Actually, Hornblower, the Susskind show was often quite amusing.” “We’re not going to do David Susskind,” said Hornblower. “Oh, but you’d have enjoyed it. Susskind particularly liked daring outré topics. Like he’d have the Mattachine Society on.” “Don’t want to hear about that!” “I remember once they had a whole bunch of really—well you’d have to say swishy characters. All in these wide neckties and v-neck cashmere sweaters.” “Sixties suburban faggot look, you mean,” said a dockboy. “Little trimmed sideburns? Razor-cut hair?” said Corey, tracing hairlines on his face with an index finger. “Quite,” said Chrissy. “You mean clean-cut?” said Hornblower. “Sounds like what we used to call all-American clean-cut look.” Chrissy went on. “Anyway, this show I’m telling you about. There were about twenty of them.” “The cashmere swishes?” asked Gorbles. “Yes. And of course they were all in their swivel chairs. All crowded onto the set. My mother was home, killing off a fifth of Johnny Black, and she kept glancing over at me through the corner of her eye and said, ‘I hope you’re not turning out like that.’ Which was really ironical because you know what they were saying? They were saying, in these ridiculously queeny voices, ‘We ussed to be homossexsuals, but now we are ssstrraight. We have found a cure through this new way of looking the world. A new philosssophy.’” “Oh! You’re talking about Aesthetic Realism,” Gorbles shouted. “Right. That David Susskind Show! That’s legendary. Aesthetic Realism, yeah, they’re always putting up flyers around Washington Square. You’ve seen them. ‘We have changed from homosexuality, but the press covers it up.’ et cetera et cetera.” “Those weirdoes!” Hornblower rocked backward in his seat. “They such bad news! Got into fight about it. Outside Julius’. Just coming out through side door. And one of those characters was handing out pieces of paper. Recognized the guy, used to be in Julius’ all the time years ago—so I looked at what he was handing out and I told him, ‘You sorry faggot.’ Old queen just loses it, calls me names, starts to chase me down Waverly Place. Drops his flyers of course, flying everywhere. Then he shouts after me, ‘You too can change!’ I’d rather run into a Jesus freak.” “Jesus freaks,” said Gorbles thoughtfully. “Funny you mention. Now there’s a subject no one’s addressed properly.” “Why would you want to?’ Hornblower had his face screwed up as he lit a joint. In his head he was still outrunning the Aesthetic Realism freak. “You know. The God Squad! Reprogramming! It’s in all the papers. There were all those cases up at Yale or Harvard. Kids join these Bible-reading cults, they get kidnapped and deprogrammed. Piece in the Times about it.” “Oooh! As topic for Virgule, you mean. Oooh. That’s excellent, really good, Gorbles.” He picked up his pen and wrote it down, repeating it aloud. “‘Why Our Young People Are Turning to Cults...’ And we can bring on an expert in cults. What are the big cults today? Children of God?” “Scientology. Moonies,” said Gorbles. “Moonies are really big in San Francisco. My freshman year roommate’s sister’s a Moonie. Then you’ve got that Guru Mahar-ji, 13-year-old perfect master?” “Hold on, hold on,” said Hornblower. He was trying to write this down. “I believe he’s fifteen now,” said Chrissy. “Who fifteen?” said Hornblower. “Hornblower,” said Chrissy, “how can you possibly not have heard of Guru Mahara-ji, the 13-year-old, I mean 15-year-old, perfect master?” “Posters all over the streets,” said Gorbles. “He’s coming here.” “I can’t keep up with all the new cults,” said Hornblower. “Children of God! Now that very big when I in California in ‘68. They almost take over whole state. Anyone know Children of God?” No, we’d never heard of them. “Well regardless,” said Gorbles, “if you do something about cults, you can’t just be anti-cult, you have to give a balanced presentation. Equal time and all that. And that may be the difficult part to finesse.” “Ooh you are so right, Gorbles. TV producers have real problem with religion and occult. Never want to touch it with ten-foot pole. Did I tell you about the witch? No? I never told you about the witch? Witch story is story unto itself. This is back when I am writing for Cowboy Duke’s Knowledge Roundup in Boston. Well, Hornblower being most advanced thinker as well as main creative mainspring on the whole writing staff, is only one to come with original ideas. I’m not telling you that, that was consensus opinion. I say, ‘Let’s bring on a witch. A real witch, not a phony.’ Because a friend of mine knows a witch. Very nice lady. Lived up in Salem. Can you beat that? And in addition she is daughter of General Pershing, or another general I think. I think she is even in Social Register. Real high-class lady. Like I say, she wasn’t going to cast spells or anything. Just going to come on and say, this is what witches really are, and how we have been misunderstood. Oh, and Hallowe’en coming up, too, so very topical.” “Brilliant idea,” said Gorbles, bouncing the gum eraser again. “I’d like to see that show.” “Would have been landmark in broadcasting! You’d think they’d all go for it, right? But unh-unh. The producer, and the—oh!—everyone!—they all waved their hands—No! You can’t! This for children! Gonnaget hate mail from here to kingdom come! Station president never allow it! And here I thought they’d all be open to new ideas. Boston, liberal capital. Big joke. Probably all because of Nixon. Fucking Nixon.” “Nixon?” I chimed in. “How did he figure in this witches’ brew?” “Nixon cut funding. Cut funding educational TV. Control all educational channels through FCC.” Hornblower looked deeply into the bowl of his pipe. “Fucking screen is clogged.” He banged the pipe into the Cinzano ashtray. “We out of rolling papers?” No more rolling papers. Hornblower focused on his pipe screen for a minute, poking a safety pin through it till it was usable again. “Helps be stoned do this kind of work. Requires absolute concentration.” He jabbed himself with the pin and went, “Oh fucking Nixon.” Finally he replaced the screen and filled the bowl again and sucked hard. The wad of dope in the bowl became a glowing red cone that popped and sent out sparks. “You should clean your dope more, Horny,” said Gorbles. “Or get some sinsemilla.” Hornblower exhaled slowly, then took another drag before passing the pipe around. “Whole-grain dope!” he gasped. “Healthier for you. Okay kids. This is it.” “Calling it a day?” said Gorbles. “No! I’ve decided on a format for the show.” “I think we have a format,” said Gorbles, “we’ve got a couple, in fact. All we need is material.” “Keep it simple, low-budget.” “That’s the new format?” asked Chrissy. “No! The format is...a panel show!” Corey said, “What’s a panel show?” “Where they sit at a long counter, like Meet the Press,” said Gorbles. “No—” went Hornblower. “Can I be Lawrence P. Spivak?” said Gorbles. “—not Meet the Press.” “Lawrence E. Spivak,” Chrissy corrected. Hornblower went on, “I’m talking more likeÉQuiz Kids.” “The Quiz Kids?” I barked, incredulously. “Mmm.” Hornblower tilted his head, very pleased I knew the name. “Something like that. Little bit of What’s My Line maybe.” “That’s better,” said Gorbles, nudging me. “You can be Dorothy Kilgallen.” “But then they’ll kill her for knowing too much,” grunted a visitor on the bed, where he was sampling Hornblower’s new Colombian dope. “That is a complete canard!” Chrissy snarled, tossing his bangs. “But do we have a mystery guest?” asked Gorbles. “That’s the $64,000 Question.” “Ooh maybe a mystery guest every once in a while,” Hornblower went on. “But the main thing is we have a panel.” Corey whined again, “What is a panel show?” From the file drawer under the desk Hornblower pulled out a bent, cracked, 8x10 glossy of the Quiz Kids radio program, circa 1945. They were all wearing mortarboard caps and gowns, and eager expressions. “Found this in old bookstand on Fourth Avenue other day. Pretty neat, huh?” “Ehhww,” said Corey. “That’s a panel?” Chrissy tossed his hair. “Quiz Kids! Oh, basically now you’re seeing Virgule as a kind of retro, campy production?” “Will we have to wear those awful graduation hats?” said Corey. Chrissy: “Basically you’re going for nostalgia.” Hornblower: “No! Absolutely not!” He banged his hand down hard. “Goddamn. Haven’t you kids been paying attention? I always say, Virgule must be modernest show alive. All original material.” “Then why are you basing it on the Quiz Kids?” I asked. “Not basing it on Quiz Kids! Just an interesting picture I picked up and thought you’d appreciate. Shows what classy panel show used to look like.” Hornblower was very pissed off. He sulked for a few moments while calming himself with a new drink and a new cigarette: “Trouble with young people’s television is that they always spend too much on their sets and their clowns and their cowboy stars. And all those puppets.” “I like puppets,” said Corey. “So do I,” I said. “No puppets. Puppets are a waste of money. All that money paying for puppeteers could be going into quality writing. Puppets and over-the-hill cowboy stars. That is what is always wrong with young people’s television. Virgule will always have best writers.” “What will they write about?” I asked. “Questions. And answers. “ “It’s a question-and-answer show?” “We’ll have questions and answers and other things.” “It’s a game show you mean,” said Gorbles. “No! Not a game show,” said Hornblower. He was very firm about it. Were there ever any grownups going to be involved in this mad enterprise, I wondered. As if on cue, one showed up at our our next skull-session. He was an enormously grown-up fellow at that: at least six-seven in stocking feet, with a wild shock of strawberry blond hair. He was sitting on the end of the bed, his elbows on the table, and his thighs so tightly jammed under the table ledge that I couldn’t imagine how he’d ever get out again. He looked as though he’d been there all day, smoking away with Hornblower. Hornblower introduced this giant as “Mister Wee Wally Walton—Harvard College ‘66, B-school ‘68, former financial aide to Francis Sargent, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts—pretty neat, huh. And he has a car!” “Not with me,” said Wee Wally. “I flew down.” “Oooh. Maybe next time you drive down, Wee Wally, and we can take you on research trip for our new television show!” “Sure! Any time.” “How’s ‘bout that, kids? Wee Wally a friend in need.” Wee Wally beamed at us all, one eyebrow up, one eyebrow down. “How do you two know each other?” Chrissy asked, very dubious. “Oooh!” said Hornblower, “Wee Wally famous onetime drinking buddy and raconteur! Way back in days long ago when Hornblower is head writer for Cowboy Duke’s Knowledge Roundup.” “Whose onetime famous drinking buddy?” I asked. “My famous drinking buddy,” Hornblower said. “Sure! We had a couple of beers together,” said Wee Wally, nodding. “That’s hardly a famous drinking buddy,” said Chrissy. “Famous drinking buddy is when you get drunk in 1940 with Humphrey Bogart at Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard.” "Say!" said Wee Wally, "whatever happened to Cowboy Duke’s Knowledge Thingummy?” “Was piece a shit,” replied Hornblower. “Cowboy Duke a blowhard and a fraud.” “No kidding! What kind of fraud?” “Wasn’t a real cowboy, for one thing. And he hated every idea I came up with. That’s why they fire my good ass.” “Yeeah, I remember you weren’t in town long. So where’s Cowboy Duke now?” “Got new show. Cowboy Duke’s Science Show. Same tired format otherwise. You got smartass kids and” —Hornblower counted off on two fingers—”you got cheesy old man in cowboy hat. Some format! But what I wanted to show you, Wee Wally, was this.” “Yeah you wanted to show me something.” “A script?” said Chrissy. “Hornblower wrote a script?” said Gorbles. Hornblower stood a manila envelope on its end and delicately extracted a piece of Bristol board covered with presstype. “What you think of my logo for Virgule?” Wee Wally squinted at the cracked Letraset. “Far out! It all makes sense now. I can see right now what kind of show it is.” “Wee Wally, my trust in you is redeemed!” “It’s a game show! Right?” Hornblower shrank five inches. “Ooowhy you think that?” “This, um, typestyle you use. Reminds of the big one. The famous show. You know. With all the questions and answers.” “Noo, no game show! We’re a panel show. A panel show for keen teens. Don’t you think this looks like the title of a panel show?” “I thought a panel show was a game show?” “Because on Virgule kids don’t just answer hard questions. They talk about current affairs and controversies.” “Sex and drugs? Roe v.Wade? What?” “Not that kind controversy. We toe the line a little. Mothers wouldn’t like it.” “So you do what? Rock music?” “Noo! Important things. Current events! Keen teens discuss current events.” “Okay. Sure. Sounds wild! Like a teenage David Susskind Show.” “Funny you say that. Just talking about David Susskind the other day. Though I’ve never actually watched that program.” Wee Wally was looking around, probably for the hundredth time that day. “Say Tom, I’m noticing this is a real tiny place you got here.” “You betcha. Easy to keep clean.” “Not so good for entertaining, haw-haw!” Wee Wally took up so much room that Chrissy, Corey, Gorbles and I were sort of huddling around the kitchenette or sitting on the windowsill with a couple of dockboys. “And you don’t have a TV,” said Wee Wally. “Noo. No TV. Baaad karma.” “Far out. So how do you follow the business, I mean, how do you see what’s on TV these days?” “Not a problem, Wee Wally. Our show isn’t interested in seeing shit that’s on these days. This is how Hornblower keep a pure mind.” “But if you had TV you could see the competition. You could see what people are interested in.” “Not interested in what stupid people interested in! That’s why I’m creating Virgule. Virgule going to open new doors. Break down third wall. All new material. Ain’t that right, kids?” “Going to be different,” said Gorbles agreeably. “Far out,” said Wee Wally. “I wish you the best. Now, you got any more of that grass we did earlier?” They smoked for another hour, and when Wee Wally finally staggered out, he said, “Best of luck on your game show!” “Wee Wally very well connected financially,” said Hornblower when Wee Wally was out the door. “Does not understand the television business, but he can get us seed money if we want to go it alone.” “What does that mean?” I asked. “Means it is possible, in today’s environment, to syndicate show on your own, don’t need go through network, don’t need educational TV channels to back you up.” “What does that mean?” “Don’t you worry Miss Sallie. Wee Wally and Hornblower have long long discussion about business matters. We have Wee Wally Welton on our side.” I said goodbye. It was time, past time, to walk the dog. Gorbles left with me. “Well now,” Gorbles said when we were out on Gay Street, “do you suppose Mister Wee Wally is really going to invest in the show?” he asked. “But of course. He sees Hornblower as another Merv Griffin, has his ear to the ground of all the latest TV trends.” “I assume that’s sarcasm.” “Who else would have thought of panel show for keen teens! What a breakthrough.” Gorbles began to laugh, and then to cough. “Heekheekheek heekheek—ahack! ahack! ahack!” We paused on Waverly in front of the Northern Dispensary while Gorbles held onto a railing and caught his breath. “I have to stop smoking Hornblower’s dope. Switch to something to something smoother—like sandpaper.” I have to finish a thirty-page paper by Thursday he began to say, then coughed and laughed and coughed again. “I’m surprised you’ve held out with him this long,” Gorbles said finally. “And that crowd of twinks and streetkids he has around him!” I didn’t know what to say. “How long have you known him?” “Oh I’ve known him forever. I knew him last spring when he was creating a new show called YouthQuake! That’s capital-Y, capital-Q, exclamation point.” “What happened to it?” “Well, he got a bunch of pretty boys around him, and then he introduced them to someone at the educational channel, and they said, you should get a better concept for your show (he didn’t really have a concept, you see) and you should get some girls too, and then all the pretty boys drifted away and he looked for some new ones, and he changed the name to Virgule, and he called me up and asked me what I thought of the name, and I said it stank. And then you came aboard, and here we are. Say, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Is Suzy Parker really your aunt?” “I’m not even absolutely sure who Suzy Parker is.” “No, I didn’t think so. You weren’t there, but Hornblower said to some of us, ‘Now this Young Lady is very well connected. You remember the famous model Suzy Parker in the Fifties?’ Saying this to people who can’t remember anything before the Kennedy Assassination. ‘Well, our Miss Sallie is her niece, but don’t go mentioning it. She doesn’t like it to get out.’” “I can’t believe he said that.” “Of course you can. That’s our Hornblower.” “Saying that in front of all his skuzzy street kids. Disgusting.” “Skuzzy? You want skuzzy? Hee! Hee! Hornswoggler may do skuzzy things but that’s not one of them. Anyway they’re not all street kids. Hey! Look at Chrissy. Fine lad, prominent family, famous father. In the Social Register. Does a little whoring on the side but hey! that’s life. Hornblower’s kids are all oddballs and runaways. Look at you. You’re basically some kind of runaway or streetkid yourself, aren’t you?” “What do you mean?” “Well you never talk about your family. You’re the black sheep? They threw you out? Put you in the nuthouse and you ran away? You can’t be halfway normal and be involved with—Vir-gule?” It sounded like a sanitation device the way he twisted it out. “Hee hee! You couldn’t stand it!” “You want to come along and walk the dog with me?” I just blurted that out. “You can meet my aunt afterwards. She’s not Suzy Parker.” “Can’t do dogs tonight. Got a thirty-page paper due by Thursday and I haven’t started it yet. I’ll be up all night. Next time maybe.” I watched him walk away, down Waverly Place. Before crossing Sixth he turned around and saw him looking at me. Now I was more embarrassed than ever. What was I thinking, inviting Gorbles along? I must have been really starved for company. That, and I wanted to make it perfectly clear (as our President would say) that—no, I had not been in a nuthouse and had not run away to live on the street. It put me in a foul mood just thinking about it. In another ten minutes I’d probably be kicking the dog.
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