Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle (28 page)

“Hey, I don’t think my parents should hear about guys getting laid.”

“It’s not that kind of—here we are.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:

And now I view thee, ‘tis, alas, with shame
That I in feeblest accents must adore.
When I recount thy worshippers of yore
I tremble, and can only bend the knee;
Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy
In silent joy to think at last I look on Thee!

He loved that. “Does it mean anything?” he asked, as if what is beautiful need not be sensible.

“We’ll type it up,” I told him. “Then you can sign it floridly with two emphatic lines beneath your name, and they’ll—”

“You really know this stuff, huh?” he said, clapping his hand on my shoulder.

“It’s a skill,” I said, deprecating it as an angel or safecracker might downplay his expertise on
Oprah
, because the crowd loves not a showboater.

“Think this’ll work?” he asked, looking it over.

“Well . . . do your parents miss you?”

He blushed. “Of course your parents miss you.”

“Not of course. There are parents and there are parents.”

He looked at me for a bit, then said, “Guess I owe you one again. Come on, I’ll buy you a hamburger.”

He called another time, without a letter, and again, then I called him, and so we got to know each other somewhat. Unlike some hustlers, he never in even the subtlest way tried to edge me into giving him work, even when he was short of cash. He treated me like a friend, not like a john—but then, that’s how he treated all his johns. It’s why he was so successful.

It was an odd friendship, prone to last-minute rescheduling problems because of his “appointments.” Also, he never wanted to do anything. Dennis Savage gave dinner parties. Virgil took up rococo hobbies and planned theatre trips (especially—in fact, only—to
A Chorus Line)
. Carlo was always dragging one to the movies. Other friends wanted to go bicycling, play Monopoly, take pointless walks, try out a new restaurant. Vic just wanted to come over and talk; but that was fine with me. It was no fun playing Anyone You Want with him; he could already have anyone he wanted. But he did speak freely about sex, and I was always ready for such chat: Most of my friends felt as naked talking about it as they did having it.

“You know what it’s all about?” he would say. “It’s about Who Is That Guy? When they cruise you, which, you know, is always going on. They look and they like it, but they want to know who’s inside that skin. Not what are his interests, but what’s his
power?
Who Is That Guy?, they go, and they mean, Is he this awesome thing that’s going to take me over?”

“Everybody
thinks this?”

“Maybe.”

I had made us BLTs and tequila sunrises and had then persuaded him to join me in sampling the late-afternoon air. It was September and chilly; even the runners had bundled up. Sunday in the Park with Vic.

“What about all the tops?” I asked him.

“What tops?”

He’s laughing.

“Come on,” I say, “that’s the conventional gay irony, but it’s not that simple.”

“Okay, sure. Like me? I see some Mister Slim with the floppy dark hair I love, maybe parted in the center and a little too long in front. Maybe he’s tanned up,
real
tight little yeah waist, and there is no question then . . .” He halted, arresting my advance with a hand on my arm, and looked me straight on. “Then,” he said, “and no haggling, I’m going to have that young man’s butt. I know just what he looks like, see? Got a name picked out for him, too.”

“What is the name, Vic?”

“Keep telling you, call me
Mike
, huh? His name is Gareth. Cute, huh? Like from the old legend stories.”

Pause.

“Who is that guy?” I asked.

“Gareth? He’s the kind don’t ask questions a lot. Just gets along with you, rolls with it. He reads comic books jay naked on the bed, stomach downside, and you oil him up and slide in to see how long it takes him to push the comic book away and lay his head down. Cheek down on the bed, and Gareth loves you. Doesn’t ask for much, and I’m going to enjoy him from the inside out, like I could take him apart and put him back together with what I do to him.”

“Where’s he from?” I asked, as we walked on.

“Texas. Foster homes.”

“Does he love you passionately?”

“He loves easy. He’s not tense, he’s sweet. But, see, most gay guys don’t want Gareth.”

“They want you.”

“They want a guy in charge, expert and shameless.”

“Is that you?”

“Well . . . it isn’t the kid my parents raised, is it?”

“Who cares what you were?” I said. “All gays reinvent themselves. That’s what coming out
is.”

“Thought coming out was where you strip yourself open to the world.”

“I don’t think anybody does that ever.”

“Love’ll do that to you, maybe,” he said, considering it as he uttered it.

“Have you ever met a guy like that? Someone who just blew you out of the pool with . . . I mean, someone who made you strip yourself—”

“That’s enough walk now,” he said.

We parted at a subway stop, but I was to ask him about this matter at other times; he would joke, turn the questions back on me, growl at me. But it did happen that I would call and find him depressed because some boy friend had ditched him, and I couldn’t compute that. I would ask him, “Who would ditch Vic Astarchos?”

“Man, there is no Vic Astarchos. That’s pictures.”

“It’s you in the pictures, isn’t it?”

“What about Mike?” he’d say, pleading with me to see somewhat more—but I
was
seeing. His Mike was a reduction of Vic, wasn’t he? Vic is the one with the whole world wired down; Mike is just another struggling slob with rough manners, bad grammar, and an astonishing ability to get his feelings hurt. Gareths could make him weep with frustration; I believe that they wounded him in hopes that some of his extraordinary physical power would bleed out and enrich them, like primitive man eating a fallen warrior’s genitals. He would show up unshaved and morose, complaining that at home all he did was stare at the telephone trying to witch it into ringing; and it would, but it was just a client. He would recount, in helplessly fastidious detail, a Gareth’s latest outrage—a no-show, or ridiculing Vic . . .
Mike
. . . in front of Gareth’s “laughing faggy friends.” Then this—I had thought—impregnable man would actually drop a tear or two. To me, leaking eyes on that Stonewall Superman face were, like, they cut Bob Dole open and found a heart.

But this: Mike would always recover. You know how you fall in love maybe once every ten years while some of your friends seem to be able to break up with one boy friend and find another within eight minutes, tops? Mike could rebound like a Spalding, and as soon as his new partner found out how he lived, Mike would introduce
him to the business—all his lovers became hustlers, at least for a while.

“So they don’t get jealous and all,” Mike explained.

I was full ears and Mike was an expansive talker. He welcomed questions from the floor, especially twisted ones.

“Describe your best-looking client ever.”

He didn’t even have to think about it. “It was a hotel date,” he said. “Really
top
hotel. Door opens, guy’s in a suit, but you can see that he’s in good shape for his age, which is already probably not forty. Clothes off—he’s not in
good
shape, he’s
true hot
all the way across, really smiling butt and great kisser. Fucked him four times, and when I staggered out of there he’d talked me down to ten bucks. For a whole night’s work! But what a lay. Spanish, too.”

“Did you ever back out on a gig?”

“Once, yeah. Door opens. Guy’s not only eighty, but in a wheelchair. I go, Sorry, no can do.”

“Who was the love of your life?”

He looked annoyed. “The fuck kind of question is that to? How should I . . . What are you up to here?”

“I just wondered who would be . . . who would have the power to capture your—”

“Well, nobody’s going to capture me, okay?”

“Who would be good enough for you,” I finally got out; and he: “Who says they’re good enough for anyone? Sure, when you meet them they’re all amazing. But then it’s after, right?”

“What’s after?”

“You come with me. Come on, get your coat now, it’s windy out.”

He took me way down to his apartment. I’d never been there before: a startlingly small square of space, the bed within inches of the kitchen sink. Out calls only.

“You just look a little at some of this stuff,” he said, fishing around under the bed. “It’s here somewhere.”

It was a box of photographs—studio poses, snaps, four-for-a-buck strips from arcade booths, black-and-white and color.

“I can show you who is good enough,” he said, handing me pictures. “How about this guy? Beautiful fuck, even if he had a dictionary of about six words. Dictionary?”

“Vocabulary.”

“Here’s one. Lovely as hell, right? Stole me day after day. Dipped into my wallet—or here’s Claudio. Cute? We admit it.”

“Very.”

“That long dumbboy look, huh? And the see-through skin. Goes drug-crazy, police come in shoving the world around, you don’t want to know.”

Pictures, pictures. Everyone’s beautiful, and everyone’s unfit to be Mike’s boy friend. Unworthy.

“Here’s all the models,” he concluded, spreading the photos out before me. “Lush as lush could be, but why were they so mean to me? Say I’m a dumb ox, but what are they, Oxford professors? Oh, here,” he said, pointing out a Polaroid of a working-class man, older and less grandly groomed than the rest of Mike’s harem, posed in a celebratory manner by a burgundy Mercedes.

“Jerry,” said Mike. “Now, this guy was different. Car isn’t his, though. He was a plumber. Drains and leaks, like. Met him one Saturday ringing in for a baseball team. You know, where the Broadway shows play each other in the Park? Think of it, actors and baseball. So they get a few guys like us to come in and show a little class, you might say.”

Staring at the photo, Mike smiled—grimly, I thought—showing it to me again and tapping it with his finger.

“Yeah, Jerry,” he said. “Him and me spotted each other for like-headed guys by about the second inning, and we’re getting friendly, talking pretty straight, I’d say. So he decides to get confidential, tells me about his girl friend Luna, how he likes to donkey-fuck her.
Come again?
Well, it turns out it’s ass-fucking when first you really heat her up with kissing and body-tonguing because she doesn’t like getting ass-fucked. So you have to work her up, and there’s this whole way of greasing up her chute so she gets the donkey flops.”

I must have had this look on my face, because Mike said, “What, I’m shitting you or something?”

“How come he’s telling
you
all this?”

“Well, that’s part of the story, and if you want to come on and grab a burger deluxe, I’ll fill you in, because you like a good story and Mike’s not a guy to let a pal down.”

Burger deluxes were Mike’s idea of dining out, along with pizza and, on your birthday, a trip to the Belmore Cafeteria.

We went to the place below the Sheridan Square Gym, claimed a booth, ordered without looking at the menus—who reads greasy-spoon menus?—and Mike kicked into first gear.

“Okay,” he began. “Jerry and Luna. Donkey-fucking. That’s the topic, Saturday after Saturday. Getting to be good summer buddies, us two, so he’s giving me all the details. Like the technique for greasing Luna up. Here, give your hand over.”

I thought he was going to read my palm, but instead he pressed my thumb and index finger together in a rude circle, then began sliding his fuck-you finger between them. I started to pull my hand back, but he held it firm, saying, “So what? No one’s looking.”

“I just don’t want to be—”

“See, it starts with the Circle, where you go all around the hole, bit by bit, hotting it up. See that? This is how he showed me, right there in the bleachers while our team’s at bat. Then comes the Probe. See? It goes slow and deep, working away till it’s sending tingles all through her body. Yeah, see that? Calm down, it’s okay. Look up a little, so you can see me. Come on, eyelock. Right. It takes two to do this. Now you work two fingers in there and you rub them together. . . . That’s the Wiggle. See?”