The Fancy Dancer

themselves into a wordless prayer that God might help me somehow to get to Denver so that I could talk to some of those people. Maybe talking to another gay priest would help me.
    I wondered how I could possibly fabricate an excuse to go to Denver. It was farther away than anywhere I’d gone with Vidal. What else was going on in Denver that I could attend as a cover? Father Vance had mentioned an anti-abortion conference that was going to be held at Regis College in Denver in August some time. Maybe he would give me permission to go as a vacation.
    I sat there thinking for a long time, in a stifled state almost like mental prayer.
    Rugged blond blue-eyed priest, has hands, will travel.
    Finally I bestirred myself and searched for my breviary. Let it be recorded that Father Tom Meeker, after reading forbidden magazines with suggestive pictures in them, did say his Divine Office.
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    That Saturday, the ball wasn’t supposed to start till 8:00 p.m., but we left Cottonwood around noon.
    I had asked Father Vance for permission to do a few hoars’ hiking in the Hellgate Canyon near Helena, camp out there that night, then make my regular Sunday visit to my parents and Father Matt. Father was getting a little worried about my rundown look, and he said Sure, go ahead. I actually did plan to look in on my parents on Sunday—supposedly Vidal was nothing to hide, so they might as well meet my good friend from Cottonwood.
    Vidal and I made a big show of loading our groceries and hiking equipment into the Triumph, and left town about twelve-thirty.
    I was getting more and more nervous about the ball, and about the whole way we were living. Once in a while I’d have paranoid thoughts that Mrs. Shoup was following us around, writing down everything we did in a little black book. Or was having a private detective follow us.
    We got to Helena around two, and got rooms in a cheap little motel outside of town, not too far from the Broadwater Hotel.
    For the first time, we had several hours in a private place. But not surprisingly, I wasn’t in any mood to take advantage of them. Vidal tried hard to get me in bed with him, and finally gave up in exasperation. We almost had a fight, and Vidal went off to his room and shut the door.
    Deeply depressed, I lay on the bed and brooded for the rest of the afternoon. About six-thirty, with a feeling that it was my fate, I got up and started putting on the costume that I’d thought out. Then, in front of the bathroom mirror, I worked on my face with a set of Magic Markers of different colors.
    At about a quarter to eight, my room phone rang. I picked it up.
    “You getting dressed?” Vidal said.
    “Thought I might as well,” I said.
    “I’m all ready,” he said. “Look, don’t get so uptight. Try to relax and have a good time. Nobody’s going to recognize you, I promise.”
    “I know you’re trying to understand,” I said.
    “We wasted the whole goddam afternoon,” he said. “It could have been nice.”
    “I know,” I said. ‘I'm sorry.”
    A few minutes later, he knocked on the door of my room. When he came in, we looked at each other and our jaws fell. Then we broke out laughing.
    For a little over thirty dollars, Vidal had put together a really amazing costume. He was a fancy dancer. But neither I nor his father or the Blackfeet tribe would have recognized him.
    First, he had bought a beautiful but very fake Indian war bonnet at the tourist shop. It had pink, blue and yellow feathers in it. Instead of with beading, the brow band was decorated with little shells, beads and seeds. Vidal had gotten some glue, glitter, sequins and thread and needle at the dime store, and added some extra touches to the bonnet. But the crowning touch was the insertion of about three dozen peacock feathers in the bonnet and in the part that trailed down the back.
    Vidal was wearing little else: a skimpy vest, a pair of bikini briefs and a pair of cheap moccasins, also from the tourist shop. But these items had also been transformed into a wonder of sequins and glitter. The vest had hippy bead-and-shell necklaces and pieces of peacock feather sewn onto it like insane brocade. The eye part of one peacock feather was sewn insolently over what I had learned to call his basket—two others accentuated his buttocks.
    This absurd and magnificent outfit really set off the crude hard beauty of his body. You still noticed the patchiness of his skin, his callused hands, the scars from fights. It