dozens — by the hundreds, for heaven’s sake! And it certainly doesn’t help when you go on television and flaunt your irresponsible lifestyle, and at the same time you’re practically wearing a sign that saysthreaten me, blackmail me, exploit me. Uncle Hunny,” Nelson went on, shaking his head with exasperation, “what in God’s name did you expect was going to happen when you said all those idiotic things about giving away millions of dollars? Especially considering all the incredibly sleazy people you’ve chosen to associate with over the years?”
Art Malanowski was seated next to Hunny looking much more subdued than he’d been on Channel 13 Wednesday night or on The Today Show on Friday. It was Saturday morning now, and the three men were not just tense and unhappy but also wilting in the tropical heat of my Central Avenue office. The air conditioner was on the fritz again, and I had the window above the useless unit propped open with my twenty-year-old bicycle pump, itself no longer operable.
“Nelson, don’t you talk to me about sleazy!” Hunny shot back.
“Girl, you had just better watch your tongue when it comes to sleaze, what with you working for those Wall Street rip-off artists who practically made the whole economy of the country crash down on everybody’s head but yourselves. If you calling my friends sleazy isn’t the pot calling the kettle un-ironed chiffon, I don’t know what is.”
“Uncle Hunny, let’s have a reality check here. Can we just do that? First of all, Livingston Brothers is one of the most conservative investment concerns in the country, and we have been injured by the current downturn just like every other financial institution. Badly off as we are for the moment, we have few personal regrets down on State Street. Secondly, it is you whose past is finally catching up with you. Good grief, why would we even be sitting here talking to a detective if you hadn’t been so totally reckless and irresponsible, chasing after all those seedy characters for all those years. And you still don’t know how to control yourself.” Nelson looked at me and said, “Did you catch Uncle Hunny on The Today Show yesterday?”
I said I had.
“Well, you tell me, Don. Did Uncle Hunny do himself any good — or the cause of gay rights or gay marriage any good — by complimenting Matt Lauer on his ‘nice basket’?”
Hunny and Art looked at each other, grinned and gave each other a fist bump. “For goodness’ sakes, I thought we were already off the air,” Hunny said, and then he and Art started giggling all over again.
The nephew, a carefully toned, attentively groomed man in his early forties, sighed heavily and said to me, “So you can see what we’re up against.”
I said, “Matt Lauer seemed to take the comment in stride. It isn’t clear he even knew what your uncle meant.”
“Oh, girl, he knew,” Hunny piped up.
Art added, “Don’t you believe, dearie, that that was the first time anybody ever said something nice about his bulge to Missy Matt Lauer. And everybody knows about the casting couch at NBC. Do you think those people on those shows get those jobs just on their looks?”
“Brian Williams, Alex Trebek, Chris Matthews, Perry Como back in the old days — they all had to put out,” Hunny said and mimed an act of fellatio.
“Do you see what I mean?” Nelson said to me disgustedly. “Is it any wonder that somebody on Moth Street cut the Channel 13 cable the other night with an ax, presumably to shut my out-of-control uncle up?”
“Nelson,” Hunny said, “them thar was outside agitators that chopped up the TV line. None of Arty’s and my neighbors feel that way about us or would do such a thing on the night of my lifetime achievement award. Well, maybe the Brownlees. Or the Haneses. Or Peter Petengill. They all hate our guts. Or Evelyn Seltzer.”
“Possibly the Fromes,” Art mused additionally.
“Now you are making my point for me,” Nelson said to his uncle. “Some people just do not appreciate your flamboyant personalities and have it in for you. They don’t like the constant sexual innuendos, and they don’t at all like the activities that everybody thinks go on behind those innuendos.”
“It is true,” Hunny said, “that some people think it’s tacky pulling college boys’ underpants down as often as possible and enjoying a nice gobble. But certainly you are not one of those narrow-minded people, Nelson.”
“Ho!” Nelson rolled his eyes. “If only they were col ege boys.”
I said, “So, are you also gay, Nelson?”
“Yes, I am. There seems to be one of those genes jumping around in the Van Horn family. But it’s one thing to be gay and it’s another thing entirely to make a sorry, obscene spectacle of yourself, and your family, and most of gay America. A friend who works for the Human Rights Campaign in Washington called me last night and asked if there wasn’t anything I could do to control Uncle Hunny. This man, who my partner went to Dartmouth with, saw The Today Show fiasco, and he pointed out — as if I needed reminding — that Art and Uncle Hunny were playing right into the religious right’s hands.”
Hunny said, “Nelson’s boyfriend is so drop-dead fab- ulous that hardly anybody can stand it. He’s into derivatives, which have gone out of fashion, though he is just too, too fashionable otherwise. The two of them have places — places is what they call them — in Clifton Park and Palm Springs. Nelson’s squeeze is named Lawn Brookman, spelled L-A-w-n. Art and I call him Yawn.”
“So, Nelson,” I said, “it’s not only your uncle’s well-being that led you to bring him to me? Are you also hoping I might help alter his personality? That’s really outside my area of expertise.”
Nelson slumped wearily. “The reason I am involving myself in this ridiculous business at all is to protect Uncle Hunny from his own worst instincts and from the people his bad instincts have gotten him involved with. I admit I have no real hope that Uncle Hunny will change. Just acting a little more discreet in public is what I’m hoping for. For his sake, and for our family’s sake, especially my parents — but also Grandma Rita, Uncle Hunny’s poor mother.”
Hunny glared. “Nelson, anything I do or say is just fine with Mom. Always has been, always will be.” To me, Hunny said, “My sister Miriam, Nelson’s mother, is just a sad lost cause sexual-orientation-wise. Miriam thinks PfLAg is an insect repellent. And my brother-in-law Lewis tells his golfing buddies that Nelson isn’t married because his fiance died on 9/11 in the World Trade Center, and he is still too broken up over it to start dating again.”
“Not true,” Nelson said, looking even more despondent.
“My parents are conservative, but they are not bigots and they are not mean-spirited. They simply observe certain standards of taste, about which Uncle Hunny plainly knows nothing. I don’t understand that, really. Grandma Rita has had her personal difficulties, and now her mind is not what it once was. But she has always been well- mannered in her outgoing way, and I know she is well-respected out at Golden Gardens. And Grandpa Carl also set high behavioral standards. He was a well-spoken, churchgoing man who always went out of his way to make other people feel comfortable. Uncle Hunny, on the other hand, seems to take great pleasure in making people feel un comfortable.”
“I have standards of taste, too,” Hunny said, winking at Art.
“Except, I have certain standards of bad taste I try to live by. To each his own, Nelson, to each his own.”
Art said, “Nelson, your father did so tell people you had a girlfriend who was killed on 9/11. That came back to Hunny and me from several sources. She was supposedly a securities analyst, CoCkeyed 13 and her name was Gwen Bainbridge, Lewis told people.”
“Miriam and Lewis,” Hunny said, “talk about Lawn as Nelson’s roommate. Like they’re twenty years old and live in a dorm.”
“Hunny, according to some of these blackmail attempts,”
I said, indicating the bundle of computer printouts the three men had brought along with them to my office, “a number of the things people are saying about you go beyond questions of taste. Lowbrow high-spiritedness is one thing, but some of these people say they have proof that you’ve done things that are illegal. For instance, serving alcohol to minors. The law takes that seriously, as I’m sure you know. And you’ve had phone calls now from — how many? seven? — young men who say you got them drunk and had sex with them. Are any of these guys telling the truth?”
Hunny snatched a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket and lit one with a butane lighter. “Now, lookie here, girl,” he said, shooting smoke and spittle my way, “I am not now and never have been into serious chicken. A boy has to be old enough to know better, or I’m not interested. Well, interested maybe. I’m only human. But I don’t ever mess around with some youngster’s emotions. It’s fun I want, and I want a boy who’s old enough to know what he wants, especially if what he wants is just to have some fun. It’s true that sometimes a twenty-one-year-
