Where The Boys Are (28 page)

Authors: William J. Mann

BOOK: Where The Boys Are

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“Come on, buddy,” Jeff whispers, encouraging me.

I smile. I allow him to lead me back to the dance floor. For a song or two, Jeff remains attentive, even grinding his crotch into my butt, holding me from behind—but eventually he pairs off with Anthony again. Whatever. Across the dance floor, I spy Brent lip-locked with some hunky Asian guy. I try to pretend I don’t mind dancing alone, but I’m very glad when Shane sidles up alongside me, dousing me with a blast from his Uzi.

“Still the sexiest guy on the dance floor,” Shane tells me.

I pull him close, running my hands up and down his wet, shapeless torso.

“Oh, I see where this is leading,” Shane says.

“Oh, yeah?” I ask. “Where?”

“Right back to your hotel room.”

I laugh.

Shane bears down on me. “What’s the matter, Henry? Giving up so fast on all these hunky Montreal boys? Thinking it’s going to be a dud of a night, so you might as well grab me? Just like in Philadelphia.”

I look up at him. “Shane, it’s not like that—”

“Yes, it is, sweetie. Come on. We don’t lie to each other, remember?”

He’s right. We’ll have sex and it’ll be good, but there’s no getting around the fact that I’ll be using Shane because I’m lonely.

I let him go.

“That’s okay, stud muffin,” Shane says, grinning. “I didn’t mean that I didn’t
want
to go home with you. I was just being honest. Anytime you’re ready to go, I am, too.”

I look at him. I feel as if I might start bawling right there on the dance floor. Shane just pulls me close, pressing my face into his chest. We slow-dance that way for a while. Then, hand in hand, we go back to the room.

A Few Days Later, A Town Outside Hartford, Connecticut

Jeff

“U
nca Jeff! Unca Jeff!”

The top half of Little Jeffy’s face suddenly appears over the library’s computer terminal. His big brown eyes and bushy dark hair make him took like a Muppet. I can’t help but laugh. “I thought you were going in for Storytime,” I say to him.

“It didn’t start yet.” The five-year-old scurries around to the front of the computer. “Whatchadoin’?”

I help him up onto my lap. “I’m ordering some flowers to be sent to my friend. You remember Henry, don’t you?”

Jeffy nods. “How come you’re sendin’ him flowers? Is he your sweetheart?”

I smile. “He’s my
friend,
Jeffy.”

“That’s right,” the boy says. “Unca
Lloyd
is your sweetheart. My mommy told me.”

I sigh, saying nothing.

Jeffy presses his nose up against the computer screen. “So how come you’re sendin’
Henry
some flowers if he’s not your sweetheart?”

“Because the last time I saw him,” I explain patiently, “he was feeling a little bit sad. Move out of the way, Jeffy, so I can see what I’m sending.”

“Why was he sad?”

I tousle the kid’s hair. “I don’t really know, kiddo. He just was.”

“Will the flowers make him happy?”

“I hope so,” I tell him, clicking the SEND button after typing in my credit card. “I really hope so.”

When we dropped him off at his apartment after getting back from Montreal, Henry still seemed so gloomy. I wished I could have
done
something,
said
something, fixed whatever it was that was bugging him. I know I don’t show it often enough, but Henry’s my best friend in the whole world, and I love him. More than I’ve loved any other friend since Javitz. And though I try to play Javitz to Henry’s Jeff, I’m doing a pretty shitty job of it. Javitz would’ve done far better for me than I’m doing for Henry. Javitz always knew how to discern exactly what was going on for me when I was down. He would have zeroed in on the problem and teased it right out of my system. He’d have done a whole hell of a lot more than just send me flowers. But for the moment, it’s all I can think to do.

Henry’s been on my mind all day, even as I drove down to Connecticut for my regular outing with Jeffy. It’s been fun, as always. I took Jeffy and his mom, my sister Ann Marie, for lunch at the Big Boy, then we headed over to the mall, where I bought Jeffy a new pair of sneakers and some glow-in-the-dark monster stickers. In the car, NSYNC blasted from the radio, and Jeffy just
loved
that I could sing all the words of “Bye Bye Bye” along with him. Ann Marie laughed. “As if any of my boyfriends could ever do
that,”
she said.

See, Henry? Knowing teenybopper lyrics is good for
something.

Now we’re at the library for Storytime. They’re on the final chapters of
Charlotte’s Web.
I love this old library. It has the hush that all libraries have, an enveloping stillness I treasure. Some of my best articles have been researched in libraries like this all across the country, from small-town repositories to the grand, gargantuan Library of Congress in D.C. I know all of their secret hiding places, their little cubbyholes: the alcove at New York Public where you can sit for hours without anyone ever walking by; the quiet burrow in the basement of Boston Public where they keep the old city directories; a study room on a top floor of the UMass library, where students do a lot more than study.

This one’s the most special, however, for this is the library of my hometown, where as a kid I spent many an hour hidden away in the stacks, reading about black holes in space or Perseus slicing the head off Medusa or the early film career of Barbara Stanwyck. My parents thought I was playing softball with the neighborhood boys, but I was really lost in a world of fantasies and dreams. Such a devious little fag boy I was, and with such eclectic tastes! I checked out books on Greek mythology, old-time radio, and the Charles Manson murders all at the same time. I once photocopied every single page of Agnes Strickland’s five-volume
Lives of the Queens of England.
Like anybody who saw me couldn’t figure
that
out.

Of course, back then, the library had no bank of computers, and the ugly drop ceiling that now obscures the magnificent marble dome had yet to be installed. But the brownstone walls remain, and the high stained-glass windows. As a boy, I came here for Storytime, too, and
Charlotte’s Web
was my favorite tale. I remember staring up at the blue glass of the windows and imagining Charlotte up there, spinning her web. When Miss McGeowan got to the part where Charlotte dies, I bawled so hard my mother had to take me into the bathroom to calm me down. That book is still the saddest one I’ve ever read.

It’s funny. Sitting here with Jeffy on my lap, my mind makes a sudden leap. I wonder all at once if Anthony has ever read
Charlotte’s Web.
As much as Henry might be on my mind, Anthony’s there, too. These past few weeks have been a blur of emotions, and, as I predicted might happen, Anthony’s come to mean a whole lot more to me than just a leftover New Year’s Eve trick. Am I falling in love with him? Sometimes it feels that way, when we sit together on the couch, him nestled between my legs, sharing take-out Chinese food and watching
Bewitched.
Sometimes it feels that way, when I introduce him to all the Gay 101 he missed—Bette Davis movies, Broadway soundtracks, John Waters, Barney Frank, Armistead Maupin, Harry Hay—and he beams with such gratitude. But how can I fall in love with anyone when my feelings for Lloyd are still all jumbled up inside me?

Still, there’s no question that for the past few days, all sorts of silly questions have been popping into my mind about Anthony. Has he ever been to Disney World? Did he watch
The Electric Company
when he was a kid? Did he go to his prom? What kind of Christmas tree did his family have—real or artificial? All the little things you’re supposed to know about someone you live with, someone you might want to stick around for a while. I know all of those things about Lloyd. But it feels as if I’ll never know them about Anthony.

Little Jeffy is getting fidgety. “Unca Jeff, can I send my sweetheart some flowers?”

I laugh. “Your sweetheart? Who’s your sweetheart? Your mom?”

“No. Michael.”

I laugh even harder.
“Michael!
Who’s Michael?”

“He’s in my kindergarten class.”

I can barely contain my mirth. “And have you told
Michael
he’s your sweetheart?”

Jeffy nods, pressing the space bar on the computer keypad. “Yup. Hey, Unca Jeff, are you a top or a bottom?”

I almost drop the kid on the floor. “Where did you learn about
that,
mister?”

“On
Will and Grace,”
the boy replies.

My sister Ann Marie has appeared on the other side of the bank of computers. “Jeffy. Come on. They’re starting Storytime.”

I look at her, wide-eyed and grinning. “Do you know what this child just asked me?”

She makes a face. “I shudder to think.”

“If I was a top or a bottom.”

“Well,” the boy persists, “which
are
you?”

“Jeffy,”
his mother says sternly, “Storytime.”

The child climbs down off of my lap. He looks back at me. “Michael’s a big old bottom,” he tells me before running across the lobby to the children’s section. I just took over at my sister and burst out laughing.

Ann Marie gives me an exasperated smile. “I let him watch the show because I think it’s important for him to see gay people and straight people together.”

“You’re a good mom,” I assure her. “Oh, and by the way,
speaking
of Moms. You won’t tell her I came down, huh? She’ll start in about the fact I didn’t come see her.”

“My lips are sealed,” she promises. She sits down at the computer next to me. “Jeff, I’ve been wanting to talk with you. We haven’t seen Lloyd in a while. Can I ask if there’s a problem?”

I sigh. “Problem? No, there’s no problem. Not if I just accept the way things are. He’s consumed by his guest house.” I pause, looking away. “It’s his choice.”

“Well, couldn’t you spend more time there? You’re not
working.”

I frown. “Ann Marie, you don’t understand the situation, and I really don’t want to get into it, okay?”

“Okay.
I’m
sorry
for asking.” She can be just like me, quick-edged and dismissive. “It’s just that I thought the two of you were getting back together. I love Lloyd. So does Jeffy.”

I try to smile. “Well, what did you think of that guy Anthony? Remember, the blond guy who came with us a few weeks ago? He played GameBoy with—”

“I remember.” Ann Marie looks at me plainly. “So is he the new one?”

“Well, he’s living with me right now....”

She nods. She doesn’t seem happy. “What does he do? Where’s he from?”

Perfectly appropriate questions, I acknowledge to myself, but questions for which I have no adequate answers. “Never mind,” I say. “It’s very much in the formative stages. I don’t know where it’s going.”

“But you like him?”

I nod. “I do. I do like him.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Because Lloyd isn’t available?

I make a face at her.

“Look, Jeff. I don’t want to sound like Mom here, lecturing you. But I’d give anything for the kind of devotion I’ve seen between you and Lloyd. I look at you guys and say, ‘Why can’t
I
find that?’ You guys have something special.”

I look away. “Thanks, Ann Marie. But I really
don’t
want to get into it.”

She sighs. “Okay. Well, I promised the reader I’d help monitor the kids today. Some of them start acting up during Storytime. Let me cook dinner afterward before you head home.”

I nod.

She smiles at me as she stands up. “You know how much it matters to Jeffy that you come down and spend the day with him like this. And to me, too.” She kisses me on the cheek.

I watch her walk away. Since she left Jeffy’s father, she’s had no one. No significant other. Oh, she dates, but they never last for more than a few weeks. No wonder Ann Marie wants to believe it can work out between Lloyd and me. It’s the same for Chanel, who’s broken up with Wendy more times than I can count and who—I’ve heard through the grapevine—is considering taking Gertrude and leaving her again. It’s the same for Henry, too, who’s never had a relationship in his life.
Everyone
wants Jeff and Lloyd to work out.

Except maybe Jeff and Lloyd.

But you like him?

I do. I do like him.

Because Lloyd isn’t available?

Is that it? Is that the reason I stick with Anthony, despite the mystery? Despite not knowing much more about him than I did on New Year’s Eve?

That’s when it hits me.

“Of course,” I whisper to myself.

Suddenly I know what paper that clipping came from. The photo of Robert Riley.

The Hartford Courant.
The paper I grew up with. My hometown Connecticut newspaper. That’s how I recognized the typeface. I saw it every day for the first twenty years of my life.

I stand abruptly, walking quickly over to the reference desk. “Excuse me?” I ask.

The woman looks up at me. It’s old Miss Crenshaw, the same woman who sat here twenty-five years ago. As a ten-year-old boy I’d stand in front of her requesting a copy of the atlas of the British Isles, circa 1600. She looks just as old now as she did then, her face a maze of leathery wrinkles, her small, round blue glasses perched at the end of her nose, her hair cut short and severe.

“Yes?” she asks.

“I wonder if you have an index to
The Hartford Courant.”

“What year?” she asks efficiently.

“Uh, well, I guess I’d need 1985 to 1988.”

She nods and reaches under her desk, rummaging around for a moment and then producing three thin, blue spiral-bound volumes. “Do you have a library card?” she asks.

“Um, well, I used to,” I say.

“Name?” she asks, hands poised at her computer terminal.

“Jeffrey O’Brien, but it was a long time—” She ignores me, typing in my name.

“Here you are,” she says. “Card expired in 1981. Care to renew?”

I smile. “Actually, I don’t live here anymore. I just want to—”

“And I see you never paid a fine on
The Films of Greta Garbo.
My, my, with interest building all that time, that adds up to ...”

She looks up at me from behind her blue glasses. I gulp.

Miss Crenshaw smiles. “Maybe I’ll grant you amnesty. You don’t think I remember you, do you, Jeffrey?”