The Fancy Dancer

was the body of a gutter fighter who had come out in the trappings of his innermost Jung-ian fantasy.
    “Good God, where did you get those peacock feathers?” I asked.
    “At the hospital thrift shop. They had a whole vase of them there. Some lady had used them like flowers, and she got tired of them.”
    He was looking searchingly at my costume, trying to figure out what my fantasy was.
    My clothes were simply some Western outdoors items, and they hadn’t cost me a cent—I had fished them out of my own closet at the St. Mary’s rectory. Walking boots, Levi’s faded to baby blue, a leather belt, a pale yellow long-sleeve cotton shirt, and a straw cowboy-type hat.
    There was just one bizarre touch to this outfit. I had drawn colored designs all over my face and hands and neck. My shirt was daringly open to the waist and sleeves rolled up to the elbow, showing that my chest and arms were designed too. I had even ripped out a small square in one thigh of the Levi’s and put a design on the patch of skin that showed through. The suggestion was that I was tattooed all over with wildflowers, birds, butterflies and green leaves.
    A big butterfly covered my whole face. The marks on the wings were my eyes, the body was my nose, and the smaller back wings spread over my cheeks. My fingers were green stems, ending in roses on the back of my hands. There was a pair of red lips on each of my palms. My neck was covered with stars. On my chest was a smiling angel with a pair of red lips in the middle of its chest.
    “Holy Christ,” said Vidal, “yours is even better than mine. Your own mother won’t recognize you.”
    “Cheaper too,” I bragged. “All it cost me was the Magic Markers, three ninety-five at the drugstore.” “You’re making quite a display of yourself,” he teased. “Didn’t know you had it in you. After being such a virgin all afternoon.” He was walking around me. “Every one of those things means something. They’re like—embroidery on vestments, huh?”
    This hadn’t occurred to me, but right away I knew he was right. The vestments of those guilty masses I had celebrated had burned right through into my skin.
    He came up to me and kissed me gently. “So we’re not going as anybody else. You’re going as you and I’m going as me.”
    As we Walked out through the lobby, I heard my gayness commented on in public for the first time. An old cowboy type was leaning against the desk gossiping with the clerk, and he sang out, “My oh my, looky all the pansies goin’ off to the garden party.”
    I shrank from the words, but kept walking as if I hadn’t heard.
    » » »
    The Broadwater Hotel is a beautiful relic of Helena’s gold-rush days.
    It stands just off the highway south of town, in an immense park with old poplar trees planted along its avenues. The dark Gothic pile of verandas and towers rises mysteriously above the treetops, now darkened by a century of rain and storm. Abandoned and closed up for years, with the furniture still inside it, the hotel had recently been rescued by a history-minded group of Montana financiers. They had reopened it as a kind of exotic resort hotel with authentic Gay Nineties atmosphere. There was even talk that they would put the famous old hot-spring swimming pool back into working order again. But for now the pool was still a weedy ruin.
    As we walked up the wide front steps, where the carriages had once stopped, we could already hear the music through the open windows of the grand ballroom.
    “I guess there’s not going to be any rock music tonight,” said Vidal, a little disappointed.
    “Doesn’t sound like it,” I said. “That’s a Strauss waltz called ‘Wine, Women and Song.’ ”
    Vidal laughed.
    In the huge lobby, the fantastic costumes mingled with the regular guests, who stared a little but didn’t say much. We were stared at, especially Vidal.
    “My God, the costumes,” I said. “Some of them must have cost hundreds of dollars.”
    We stopped in front of a Victorian-looking poster with all kinds of fancy script that was mounted on a stand. It announced the Silver State Bicentennial Ball, with entertainment, door prizes and contests. Down at the bottom, it said, “Sponsored by the Mon- r tana Calamus Committee.”
    “Who the hell is the Calamus Committee?” I asked.
    “Probably a bunch of rich butch businessmen,” said Vidal. “I’m dying for a drink.”
    We stood in the crowded bar, with its Art Nouveau stained glass and