Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle (26 page)

“That’s our hero—solid, easy, in control.”

“So
. The guy stands there with . . . you won’t believe this, with his hand on his hip, and he goes, ‘What’s
your
problem, Ermintrude?’ Vic ignores him, moving on down the hall. Then the guy gets
really
nasty—”

“Meaning
really
rejected, showing no grace, no pride—”

“No smarts, too, because everyone’s popping out of the rooms to watch.
So
, completely ignoring the fact that he is gazing upon one of the most splendid backs in the whole gay world, he shouts, ‘Hey, muscle faggot!’

“Well,” Kern went on, “Vic stopped, turned around—and I told myself,
You’re on
. I went, ‘Phone call!’ like a page boy. ‘Call for Vic Astarchos!’ and I planted myself in front of him and whispered, ‘Two hundred dollars if you come home with me. And he said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”

“Kern, my God, that’s . . . How did he look?”

“Like the living end.”

“You really did this? Just—”

“It was love or die.”

“Kern, I’m . . . I’m proud of you.”

“Anyone else and I would have shrugged and gone on my way. But
just once
, I thought, I have to know what it’s like to touch the godhead.”

“Two hundred bucks is awfully high, though.”

“This was not the time to hedge. This was a time to gush. Call it acceptance security.”

“So what was it like?”

“This man is unbelievable. He’s not just hot, he’s . . . nice. He’s a little rough socially, like those kids from the tough high school who were always in trouble with the cops. But he’s funny and even sensitive. He listens. That serious look on his face is what he’s marketing, but once the sex is over he’s like some old buddy of yours. Get this—his real name’s Mike Feinman. He’s Jewish! So of course we started comparing pasts, like summer camp color wars and the one aunt you have who figures it out before your parents do. Mine was Aunt Sarah, his was . . . Oh, but, you know, the thing is,
before
that, he was monosyllabic when he talked at all. As if . . . he wants to be able to contain whatever you need, so he doesn’t do any personality. When we got to my place, I was about to ask him if he wanted a drink or something, but he was already tugging his clothes off.”

“Sounds like he’s done this before.”

“Oh, he’s a pro, all right. He told me. He has this odd background. He dropped out of high school and then had to vanish—just disappear—to avoid the draft. The kids I knew stayed out of Vietnam by joining the Peace Corps or becoming doctors. This guy lives a road movie.”

He was talking a bit nervously now, quickly, staving off the lull and the question that was about to confront him. When it came, I moved in quick and deadly.

“What did you do?” I asked. “In bed.”

Silence on the phone. Kern knows I want to slurp up his experience, and he hopes to stay dry.

“Well,” he finally said. “I can’t, really. It’s too . . .”

“It’s the core of the report,” I answered. “It’s the true Vic.”

“You’ll just tell everyone.”

“I solemnly swear that I will never speak of this to a soul as long as I live.” (Note clever choice of verb, leaving open the possibility of
writing
of this to a soul; as herewith.)

More silence.

“Please?” I begged. “Don’t I
have
to know?”

Kern struggles. Yet he
wants
to tell. News is worthless till it’s
reported. The joy isn’t quite real till others appreciate it.

He said, “I told him, ‘You take charge. Just do whatever it is to me. Show me what you are. Rape me.’ ”

Now I was silent.

“I said that,” he insisted.

“And how did it go?”

“I’m telling you, the
living
end. By the way, he gave me his number. Do you want it?”

“Why not?” I replied. Casual. Nonchalant. In fact, I had it in the back of my mind that I should avail myself of the opportunity, but then I started stalling. Did I see dishonor in Paying for It? After all, I was into the second year of my gym era, though the elaborate program that the instructor had set up for me when I joined had dwindled into three curls and incessant lurking in the steam room. Did I feel shy about calling a stranger? Well, maybe: You never know what you’ll get. And did I fear to encounter the ultimate?

Yes: and that decided me.
No one
should entertain such fear. Enough of this, I say, and I’m dialing the number, still readying my rap when, after one ring, a voice as deep as the Grand Canyon picks up with a
“Yeah?”

Now it’s three months later, high Pines summer, and I’m tooling along the boardwalk when I come upon a man I had met at a dinner party six weekends previously. He was picking berries off a bush right there on the walk, and naturally I stopped to say hello. He was neither unfriendly nor especially forthcoming, and it finally dawned on me that he had no recollection of me whatsoever. What, after six weeks? The fact that he was a looker made it doubly annoying—we all want to have impact, but especially on lookers.

Granted, that dinner hadn’t proved one of my more sparkling nights, and I’ll be, if not the first, then certainly the eighth or ninth to admit that the moment when I put a lampshade on my head and danced the peabody all along the porch that surrounded the house probably did not enhance my reputation as a soigné raconteur. Still, you expect to be at least recognized after a mere month
and a half. So I was not having a good afternoon as I pushed on toward home.

Two walks later, I caught sight of something dazzling heading in my direction from the right. Cautious peripheral investigation through the dark glasses (I feel it’s okay to cruise promiscuously as long as no one actually can tell that you’re doing it) disclosed Vic Astarchos. Oh yes, it was: Who else had a neck the size of the Trylon? My heart surged—no, wait. What if Vic didn’t know me, either? What if he regarded the Pines as sacredly separate from his hustling? Because, I tell you, boys and girls, I was not about to be negated twice in a day.

I played it cool and kept moving, but then I heard “Hey, Bud!” called out behind me. I turned and waited.

He was shirtless in Speedos, carrying a little bag and smiling.

“If you’re heading for the gym,” I said, “it’s about forty miles to the northwest. Just follow the boardwalk and hang a right at Brooklyn.”

“They kicked me out,” he replied, as we shook hands.

“Who?”

“My host. That fashion designer.” He mentioned a Name. “Picked me up in Studio—the rush treatment, big plans for you, ever modeled? You know that stuff.” He shrugged. “Okay, I’m no fool. Fashion models don’t look like me, huh, do they?”

His chest muscles rose the slightest bit, to bring the point home.

“Still, I figure there’ll be something in it. Long-range? Who knows? But yeah. Take the seaplane out and all. So, next thing, this other guy shows up, my host’s boy friend. They had a fight, now they’re going to make up, Mister Fashion’s overjoyed. And suddenly him and his boy friend and all their yeah friends are looking at me like, The hell I need with this piece of trash? Okay. Mister Fashion ups to me and it’s ‘You—
out!’ ”

“Are you kidding?”

He shrugged again, and I marveled. Be there a queen with soul so dead that this if-nothing-else-spectacular-looking fellow was no
more than an extra man in a Pines weekend? And Vic was something else in any case. Because, after the first seven minutes, nobody is the living end on mystos alone.

“Yeah,” he said. “So I’m going to try tea, see can I cook up something else for tonight.”

“Work?” I asked, as we started walking toward the harbor.

“Too competitive to try to sell it out here. I’d as soon settle for a clean bed and a baloney sandwich. Mustard. Shredded lettuce.”

“Why don’t you stay with us? We’ve got four bedrooms and only two out this weekend.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said, I think a little surprised but refusing to show it.

“This way,” I said, turning left up the hill.

“You on the ocean?”

“One line back. But it’s a neat house. Ultramodern, and on three levels, so the living room’s like a theatre with the beach as a stage, and the rooms overlook it but they have privacy, too. We each have our own bathroom.”

“Brother, you made a friend. Thing I hate is those little bungalows where there’s just one bathroom right in the center of it and you have to take a crap like two inches from whoever’s around.”

We reached the summit, I pointed, and Vic paused.

“Okay, let me in on the secret,” he said. “You loaded, is that it?”

“Actually, I’m just an occasional guest. The other guy in the house is a guest, too. It’s the regular tenants who’re loaded, but they’re all away now.”

He nodded. “Just want to know how it stands, right?”

Carlo was in the kitchen, his back to us, cutting up melons, strawberries, mangoes, and the like for the giant bowl of fruit cup he likes to sample on and off throughout the day. As we came in, I said, “Carlo, we have an emergency guest. This is Vic Astarchos. Vic—”

Carlo had turned around, grinning. Losing the knife and wiping
his hands on his trunks, he said “Who the damnhell is this, I truly wonder?” and started to advance.

“Yeah,
Rip!”
Vic cried, dropping his valise.

The two of them immediately locked in one of those boisterous bearhug tangos typical of former gringos who have not been fully acculturated into metropolitan gay life. I mean, when Kern and I meet after a longish separation, do we act like goons fanfaronading at a dogfight?

“Cut it
out
, you two!” I said. “You’ll
break
something!”

“You old Mike,” Carlo was saying as they finally stopped scuffling and barking and pushing and mauling and practicing wrestling holds and grab-assing and being noisy and getting on my nerves.
“Damn
, you look
sweet!”

“Now the whole place stinks of testosterone,” I was grumbling. “Someone fetch the Glade.”

“How’d we luck into the temporary ownership of this scoundrel, anyway?” Carlo asked, pounding his fists on Vic’s back. “He’s some scoundrel kind of guy, I know he is.”

“I’ll tell you,” I said, “as soon as the Wide World of Sports is over.”

“Shit, I got thrown out of where I was,” said Vic. “Bud found me like a wino in the gutter, handed me a Bible and a dollar, and promised I’d be saved.”

“Hot damn,” Carlo observed.

I interfered with a résumé of the tale Vic had told me, and Carlo responded, “Well, those famous guys are really rude.”

“Yeah, it was more than that,” said Vic, as we sat at the bar and Carlo poured the Perriers. (We took it macho-style: no lime.) “I just didn’t fit in there—like you’re in a T-shirt and they’re all in the button kind, open to like two buttons from the bottom. Okay, but
every single one
of them, like they got a costume guy checking before they leave their rooms? And they’re all looking at you with this sneer, like, Didn’t you get the club shirt?

“Or last night—yeah, put this in the
Guinness Book
, I swear—they got this video camera out, and everybody had to do a drag routine
on tape
. These men putting on dresses and beads and makeup? Took almost all afternoon, okay. Sure. And they’re
excited
, like they’re booked for Washington’s Birthday weekend at the Concord Hotel. Yeah, they’re opening for Sammy Davis.”

“The fashion designer, too?” I asked.

“Every ass in the place. I just went off to the beach. Dropped in on tea. Visited a few friends. Figured I must have missed the whole thing, right?”

He shook his head.

“They’re just getting started! Somebody looks at me, says, ‘Hey, Hercules isn’t ready.’ I go, ‘Listen up, you guys.’ ” He smiled like a drill sergeant about to administer such penalties as a thousand push-ups and midnight marches through snake-infested marshland. “‘Dresses and makeup’—I’m telling them this—’are what a woman wears. I’m a man. What I wear is pants and no makeup. I thank you.’ ”

Carlo was laughing. “You tell ’em, Mike boy.”

“Shit, the whole place was like a sorority house, see?”

“You’re better off out of there,” said Carlo.

“May have missed out on a dividend or two—I mean, those rich guys squeeze you for every last drop of cream, but when they pay they pay big.”

“Life’s so short,” said Carlo.

“I heard that,” said Vic, jabbing Carlo’s arm. “Yeah, so well at least I didn’t drag and scream around like those other queens.”

I said, “You should save that for your tombstone.”

Vic winked at Carlo and said, of me, “Who’s Mister Smartass?”

“It’s this sad story,” said Carlo, “where I’m working sixty-hour weeks to send him through medical school. He’s some little brother kind of guy that first you loved, but then he goes weak and decadent and I have to decide to dump him or save him.”

“Yeah, and I understand that I’m the wicked brother,” Vic put in, “who corrupts everything he touches.”

“Paramount, ‘36,” I said. “Carlo’s Randolph Scott and Vic’s Clark Gable, on loan from Metro.”