“Wearing?” Bill queried. Why whales would be wearing anything? Or getting out of a van, for that matter.
“Grateful Dead T-shirts, blue jeans with big expanses of fleshy whiteness in between, and then, quel statement, work boots! At the beach. From behind, they looked like ninja mutant turtles.”
Bill, who figured out what his friends were talking about, asked why “baleines” would be their word for “lesbians.”
“Whales, my dear, whales. In the French tongue, our native language. And it does not refer to lesbians—only the fat ones.”
“What do you call fat gay men?”
Lou stared at Bill for a moment before answering. “HDs.”
“Because?”
“Because, sweetcakes,” said Lou as he half-rose from his chaise in order to hand David back his paper, “all the King’s horses, all the King’s men, et cetera,
