The Fancy Dancer

God. His hands, his mouth, his pressing straining body stripped me of every shrewd and stubborn he that I had ever hidden myself in.
    Over us rose the mountain, impassive and serene. Only the mountain saw us, through the window.
    » B »
    Afterward we lay there still loosely embraced, unwilling to give up the touching yet
    “I’m surprised,” he said softly.
    “At me?” I said. “I didn’t put up much of a fight,
    did I?
    “No,” he said. “At me. Usually I like to get rougher and raunchier. I felt like I was dancing again. Only I left my fuckin’ feather bustle back up on the Black-foot.” He smiled dreamily.
    “You don’t connect that dance with anything Indian, do you?”
    “Nope. The tribal council’d shoot me if they could hear me say it. It reminds me of—I’ll tell you what. It does remind me of a kid who was my first lover, up there. We discovered the whole thing by ourselves without even knowing it had a name. He was a beautiful dancer.”
    “What happened to him?”
    Vidal laughed softly and raised up on one elbow, looking down at me. I looked up at him out of my sudden amnesia. The past, the priesthood, even the fact that I had ever worn clothes, had all fallen down a cliff somewhere.
    “When he woke up to what he was doing, he got scared to death, and he got married. He’s still up there, living at Starr School with his wife and kids. I used to see him at the races at Starr School sometimes. He won fifty dollars off me one time but he could never look me in the eye.”
    “Did anybody know about it?” “My dad figured it out.”
    “Did he threaten you with jail or anything?”
    Vidal laughed again. “No. But he kidded me so much, it was one of the reasons I left. That was always the way the Indians did things. They never forced you. They just kidded you until you got back in line.”
    “What was the old-time attitude toward it, I wonder?”
    “Oh,” said Vidal carelessly, “from the little I read, they were pretty relaxed about it. If a guy wanted to cross over and live as a woman, they let him. What the warrior studs did in the secret societies, I don’t know. Who cares? It’s all in your head, anyway . .
    He kissed me again.
    “In case you didn’t notice,” he said, “you’re my lover.”
    Far at the back of the mind, the urgency of who I was waited to come forward again.
    “You didn’t tell me you love me,” I said.
    Vidal shook his head and started laughing. “You’re very free with that word love,” he said. “You’d think it’s a basketball, the way you bounce it around.”
    “But...”
    “Look,” he said, “you’re still very green at this. You’ll leam. You’ve got lots of time, so don’t jump in with both feet.”
    I was very disappointed at his reaction, and began to remember that I was a damned sinner, and naked. My clothes were scattered nearby, and I reached for them. Vidal stopped my arm by grasping it with his hand.
    “Now your feelings are all hurt,” he said. “What do you want me to say? I never waited so long and so hard for someone in my whole life, and it was worth every minute. And I need some breakfast.”
    That made me feel better. “You’re not only a pervert, you’re a glutton,” I said.
    He got up, walked naked to the phone and dialed room service.
    “But they’ll have to come in the room,” I said.
    “Take your clothes and hide in the bathroom, dum-105
    my,” he said. “Yeah, this is Room 203. I want to order a real big breakfast. Four eggs over light, a lot of bacon, a lot of toast, and coffee.”
    When room service knocked on the door, I cowered in the bathroom while Vidal wrapped himself in a towel and went to answer. The lies start in again, I thought. Finally he told me the coast was clear. The waiter had gone, and there on a big stainless steel tray was enough breakfast for two.
    We ate off the one plate, and drank out of the same cup.
    “You’re pretty good at this sort of thing,” I said. “You think of everything.”
    “You’ll get pretty good at it too,” he said. “You’ll have to be better than me.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I think I'm gonna be a genius at it You realize what’ll happen to me if somebody finds out?”
    “I’ve got a vague idea.”
    “They barr you from mass, confessions, everything. They ship you off to a retreat house somewhere and try to shrink your head. If you say you won’t go, they throw you out. The only thing they can’t take away from you is that mark on your