Where The Boys Are (31 page)

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Authors: William J. Mann

BOOK: Where The Boys Are
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“I thought you didn’t want to settle down until you were thirty-five.”
“When did I say that?” He looks at me intently. “You know what my biggest fear is, Henry? Ending up an old queen, all alone. You know the type. Every gay movie they make these days has the middle-aged guy whose sole reason for being in the film is to console and counsel the younger set. He’s usually fat and queeny and wears lots of rings. Oh,
God,
Henry. I do
not
want to become
that.”
He secures his locker and checks himself in the mirror.
“Thankfully, now I won’t
have
to!”
He grins like an idiot. “Have fun wherever you’re going, best chum of mine! Will you be the maid of honor at my wedding?”
Thankfully, he’s off into the gym before I can answer.
Outside, it’s started to rain, a light, warm, spring drizzle that brings that ripe, earthy smell up from the park. I pop open my umbrella and make my way across Tremont and then up Dartmouth. I want to be happy for Brent and not take solace in the fact that I’m quite certain that this one will last no longer than any of the other “husbands” Brent has thought he’d corralled.
But what if he does last? What if Brent has indeed found lasting happiness with someone who will love him until the end?
Waiting for the WALK sign in Copley Square, I think about Jeff and Lloyd. For the first time, I think maybe I understand why they’ve invested so much time, energy, and passion in that frustrating, maddening, back-and-forth relationship of theirs.
Because they’ve tasted it,
I think.
They know what it can be like.
And they know it’s worth fighting for.
In one week, I’ll be twenty-nine. The last year of my twenties, and no sign of a husband. Here I am, off to pose in my Calvin Kleins for some rich guy on Comm Ave, and I’ve never had a real boyfriend.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
It’s raining harder now. I cross Boylston and then Newbury in a funk. Maybe I should’ve called a cab. I pull in tighter under my umbrella. Crossing Marlborough Street, I almost get hit by a Volvo. I give the driver the finger.
Yeah, a dog isn’t such a bad idea. At least I’ll have someone waiting for me when I get home.
I ring the bell at the guy’s building. “It’s Hank,” I call, and the buzzer lets me in. At least the guy’s rich. Maybe he’ll give me a good tip. It’s a fashionable brownstone, with a majestic staircase and gilded banister. The guy is on the second floor. I knock.
My jaw drops. The guy who opens the door must weigh four hundred plus.
“Are you... Maurice?” I stammer.
The guy nods and motions me inside. I step around him, which is no easy task. The apartment is a mess, piled high with newspapers and magazines and a couple of empty pizza boxes. The furniture is tacky, and there are no curtains on the windows, only dirty Venetian blinds. But this is Comm Ave! The guy’s supposed to be
rich!
Maybe he is. But he’s also a
slob.
It looks as if he hasn’t washed his hair in weeks. There are stains on his shirt.
“Did you wear the Calvins?” he asks.
I nod.
“Let’s see.”
Good,
I think.
Let’s just get down to business so I can get out of here.
The place has the unmistakable stench of boiled chicken. I feel a little nauseated. But Maurice doesn’t seem to pay any attention to the body I’ve just revealed to him. He simply takes off his own clothes—a sight to see, let me tell you. He struggles out of his pants, grunting and sweating. By the time he removes his dirty shirt, he’s breathing so heavily I think he might have a heart attack.
Pass no judgment,
I tell myself.
He needs love. Like all the rest of them.
I’ve given affection to others who have been less than the physical ideal. I can do it again.
Yet I can’t even see Maurice’s genitals behind the enormous barrel of stretched, hairy gut. A distinct wave of body odor strikes me. I close my eyes. No amount of Viagra will help me now.
“Come here,” Maurice orders, suddenly pulling me roughly to him, gripping my head with his hands and pushing it deep between his moist, sagging pectorals. I stiffen instinctively. “Don’t resist me, man. Go for it. Suck my tits.”
I swallow hard. “I... can’t... breathe,” I manage to say.
Maurice lets my head go but immediately replaces his hands on my shoulders, pushing me down to my knees. “Then suck my cock,” he barks.
I open my eyes to see a small, flaccid, uncircumsized penis tucked in the shadow beneath the man’s heavy stomach. I open my mouth and place my lips around it.
Give him love,
I repeat over and over in my head, like a mantra. I begin to run my tongue over the sweaty hood of his cock.
“That’s it, suck it,” Maurice moans.
But I can’t get past the terrible cheesy smell down there between his legs. And the
taste
—gritty and bitter. I feel myself close to retching.
“Come on, suck it harder! I’m paying for this!
Suck!”
Something foul passes from his penis into my mouth. I spit suddenly onto the floor.
“Suck it!”
he commands, angry now.
I pull my face away from the revolting thing. “I can’t,” I say.
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I just... can’t. I can give you a hand job.”
Maurice glowers down at me. “I don’t want a hand job. You said you did oral.”
“Yes, but...” I stand up. “Maybe if you showered...”
“It’s what
I
want, not you,” Maurice says, stabbing a finger into my chest.
“I’m
the one paying
you,
buddy.”
I take a step backward. “You know what?” I say all at once. “I don’t want your money.” I begin pulling on my jeans. “I just want to go home.”
Maurice takes a step closer to me threateningly. For the first time in all these months of escorting, I feel fear. My mouth goes dry.
“You’re nothing but a little whore,” Maurice says. “And you have no idea who I am, how important I am.” He motions over his shoulder. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Gladly,” I say.
I run out with my shirt and shoes in my hands. My socks are still crumpled up somewhere on the guy’s floor. Maurice slams the door behind me, and I’m left in the hallway to pull on my sweatshirt and slip my bare feet into my shoes. An elderly woman coming out of an apartment across the way spots me, shakes her head in disgust, and hurries off. She’s evidently become used to seeing a parade of trash in and out of that place.
Trash.
I just thought of myself as
trash.
I practically stumble outside onto the sidewalk, the torrential rain quickly making me realize I left more than my socks in Maurice’s apartment. My umbrella’s still in there, too. I walk back home in the driving rain. It’s better that way, I think. With the rain coming down all over my face, and my hair plastered down in front of my eyes, no one can tell I’ve started to cry. All I want in that moment is to find Jeff and to have him hold me, to have him make me feel better—to make me feel as good about myself as he had that day he’d first invited me to dance with him. That’s all I want. I want Jeff.
But Jeff has never looked at me that way, never seen me even for a moment’s consideration as more than a sister. He’s never loved me the way I’ve loved him.
“Well, fuck you, Jeff,” I say into the rain. “Fuck you.”
I’ve never come this close to admitting to myself the truth of what Brent and Shane and so many others have always insisted. Okay, so I’m in love with Jeff O’Brien. I can’t deny it anymore. I’m in love with Jeff and I’m a fucking whore.
Trash
kicked out of apartments on Comm Ave. What the fuck has happened to me?
I get home a blubbering mess. The silence of my apartment overwhelms me.
I pick up the phone and punch in his number. He’s home.
“Shane?” I croak into the phone. “Can you come over?”
And of course, he does. He makes me dinner and massages my shoulders, and I find the Viagra is still working. He goes down on me, and I do my best not to pretend it’s Jeff. Afterward, we lie awake on my bed for a long time, looking up at my skylight as the rain hammers a steady beat against it. Shane reaches over and begins outlining the features of my face with his finger. First my eyebrows, then my eyes, then my ears, then my nose.
By the time he reaches my chin, I’m asleep. He apparently lets himself out then, or some time soon after, for when I wake up in the morning, he’s gone.
I wonder why he didn’t spend the night.
That Weekend, Walt Disney World
Jeff
T
hey call it “The Happiest Place on Earth,” and Anthony sure seems to agree. I can see it on his face and hear it in his voice: the way he laughs at the campy antics of the Incredible Tiki Birds; the way he throws his arms into the air as we come speeding around the corner on Big Thunder Railroad; the way he lets out a whoop as we plunge from the top of Splash Mountain; the way he befriends every gay man and woman who passes by us wearing the telltale red shirt.
“Hey!” he’s yelling to a group of red-shirted fags ahead of us in line on the way to the Epcot monorail. “Where you guys from?”
“Baltimore,” one of them, a tall blond muscle boy, calls back.
“Boston here!” Anthony shouts. “Happy Gay Disney Days!”
I smile, looking over at him. “Are you
sure
you didn’t do any X?”
Anthony beams. “I’m totally straight, Jeff.”
I smirk. “Now
that’s
a misnomer if I ever heard one.”
“I love Disney World!”
he shouts, throwing his arms into the air.
He’s such a kid in some ways. True, I’ve never been able to resist the Disney magic myself, especially during my first visit here with Lloyd and Javitz some years ago. I still have the photos somewhere: Javitz making faces with Goofy, Lloyd posing with a hunky Alladin, all of us perched atop the slide at Typhoon Lagoon. It’s a trip I’ll never forget, and as much as I enjoy watching Anthony’s spirited reactions, there’s a little cloud of melancholia following me around, as I keep remembering how Lloyd and I kissed all the way through the Haunted Mansion and how Javitz lost his baseball cap in the wind tunnels of Space Mountain.
But this is my first time being so overtly gay here at the Magic Kingdom, and I can’t deny the excitement at seeing so many red shirts throughout the park. It’s the agreed-upon code to identify all us queers, as if that’s even really necessary. We’re
everywhere.
Only the most tolerant or clueless straights have stayed in the park today; the whole complex is practically transformed into a private gay playground. All of the gay Peter Pans and Snow Whites who, for the rest of the year, have to smile and wave innocently at toddlers and their moms, can now indulge in winks and quips with the hordes of horny gay tourists, if you get them out of earshot of the Mouse.
Earlier today I made eye contact with one such “cast member,” an attractive young Filipino boy who snuck Anthony and me into the underground catacombs for lunch in the Disney commissary. There, Belle from “Beauty and the Beast” smoked cigarettes with a headless Donald Duck, who cruised Anthony up and down. After lunch, we all made plans to meet for the big party that night at Mannequins on Pleasure Island. I carefully stashed away their names and numbers in my wallet.
“I love this extended family you’re always telling me about, Jeff,” Anthony’s saying as we take our seats on the monorail. “It feels like a giant family reunion, with cousins you never even met!”
From another car, a group of queens are singing “Someday My Prince Will Come.” I look over at Anthony and nod. “That’s a good analogy,” I tell him.
He smiles broadly. “I could never have imagined such a thing a year ago. To have found all
this—man!
Jeff, you brought me in! I’d never have found my way if it hadn’t been for you.”
I wink at him. “I think you would have done fine, Anthony.”
He shakes his head adamantly as the monorail begins to move. “No, Jeff. I
mean
it. I owe
all of this
to you. And I don’t just mean you paying for my plane ticket here. I mean
all
of it. My whole life. My whole gay life.”
I give him a small smile and turn to look down at the passing scenery. Behind us, Cinderella’s Castle fades into the distance. We pass over the flat manmade greennness of Central Florida. It’s hot, very hot, and I’m glad I opted against the red-shirt uniform. My loose white cotton prevents those icky perspiration stains most of the other boys are doing their best to hide, including Anthony. Besides, I’ve put on a pound or two—in the wrong places—and the shirt does a good job covering it up.
I don’t doubt that Anthony is sincere in his gratitude. A year ago, I suppose, he was still a scared young man, unwilling to admit to his gayness, still traumatized by the murder that had taken place over a decade before. The killers of Robert Riley had claimed more than one victim that night. The fireplace log they’d used to beat Riley to death had proven almost as fatal to Anthony, even if it never touched him. Those two fuckers sent Anthony into a decade-long exile, causing him to miss out on what should have been the best years of his youth.
If only I could figure some way to get him to talk about it all, without having to admit I’d gone behind his back. I look over at Anthony now, chatting up a couple of gay boys with Southern accents, exchanging stories of Alien Encounter and Star Tours and the Tower of Terror.
“This is my first time to Epcot,” Anthony’s telling them. “Jeff’s been there before, so he’s going to show me around.”
I enjoy playing tour guide. I know that the best way to see Epcot is to work from the back to the front, so I take Anthony by the hand and lead him quickly under Spaceship Earth across the bridge to the World Pavilion. This way we’ll be going against the usual flow of the crowd, and can enjoy the different countries at our leisure.
Ahead of us I spot a couple of folks looking up toward the sky. There’s a small plane trailing a banner through the bright blueness. I strain to read it against the sun.
REPENT,
it says.
GIVE UP YOUR LIVES OF SIN AND COME TO JESUS.
“No matter where you go,” I grumble, “there’s always somebody.”
Anthony just stares up at the banner.
“Don’t look at them,” I say, taking his hand again as some in the crowd shake their fists up at the plane. “Don’t give them even that. We have countries to explore.”
I’ve been to the real England and the real France and the real Mexico, but Anthony has never been outside the United States (with the exception of our trip to Montreal), so he takes particular delight in seeing each national pavilion. In Norway we ride Maelstrom, then take a break to eat a couple of cream pies.
“You having fun, Jeff?” Anthony asks me.
“Sure.”
“You seem kind of distant.”
I shrug. “I don’t mean to be. How am I distant?”
Anthony has cream filling on his upper lip but doesn’t seem to realize it. “You just kind of are. Maybe it’s just that you’ve been here before and aren’t as excited as I am.”
“Maybe.”
He looks at me warily. “And maybe you’re missing Lloyd.”
I sigh. “Anthony, wipe your lip.”
He obeys. “Do you, Jeff? Do you wish you were here with Lloyd instead of me?”
“Anthony, why do you always ask such things?”
“You know why.” A little of the boyish enthusiasm seems to dim in his eyes. “Because I like you and want you to like me.”
“I
do
like you,” I insist. “You know that.”
He smiles. “I like that you’ve started letting me sleep with you.”
Now, that’s a surprise to me as well. It happened quite unexpectedly. We were sitting on my bed, watching MTV, as we often did, and Anthony fell asleep. But this time I didn’t wake him. I just pulled the covers up and slipped in beside him. The next night it happened again, Anthony falling asleep as we watched TV. Did he finagle it that way? Could he be as crafty as all that? I don’t care, because in truth, I enjoy having him there. It’s the first time I’ve ever enjoyed sleeping with anyone other than Lloyd.
“Anthony,” I say, leaning across the table a little, suddenly inspired by all this happiness around us, “don’t you think maybe it’s time to tell me a little more? About yourself?”
He pulls back a little, taking another bite of his cream pie.
I press on. “You promised that someday you would. You’d explain where you go when you disappear. You’d tell me more about your family... and your
friends,
Anthony.” I mean Riley. I want him to talk about Riley.
Anthony says nothing. He finishes the last of his cream pie, licking the filling from his fingers.
“No?” I ask. “There’s
nothing
you can tell me?”
He looks at me pleadingly. “Why
here,
Jeff? We’re at Disney World.”
“Why not here? It’s the Happiest Place on Earth, remember?”
Anthony says nothing.
I sigh. “Anthony, did you ever have a special friend? Someone who really mattered to you? Somebody you maybe looked up to? Maybe...
mentored
you?”
“Why are you asking me this?” he asks suspiciously.
“I’m just wondering, Anthony. I’m just wondering if maybe there’s ever been anyone else, any other man, who you came to care about.”
Anthony shakes his head firmly. “Jeff, there’s been no one. You’re the first man I’ve ever been in love with.” He tries to smile. “Believe me.”
“Okay, okay. That may be true.” I scratch my head. “But maybe there was someone who meant a lot to you, maybe when you were younger...”
“No!”
Anthony stands up suddenly. “Why are you going on like this?”
His reaction seems to rattle me, make me angry. “Because I want some
answers,
Anthony! You’re living with me. You’re sleeping in my bed. And still you disappear overnight once a week and still I don’t know anything about you. I
deserve
answers! And if you don’t tell me, then—well—I may just have to find them out on my own!”
Anthony just stares at me. He still has some cream filling on his face. His lips draw tight and his brow creases.
“Anthony?” I ask.
Suddenly he turns and shoots off across the pavilion. He runs as fast as he can into the passing crowd. He darts around a lesbian couple pushing a baby stroller and then disappears. I call after him, running a few feet, but quickly realize it’s ludicrous to pursue him. He’s gotten too much of a head start and the crowd is too large.
I sigh, shaking my head in disbelief. All I can do is go back to the room and hope he shows up there. I didn’t mean to push him over the edge like that, but you know what? Instead of guilt, I feel anger. What the
fuck
is he hiding? Why can’t he just
tell
me about his past? He claims to love me, but he sure doesn’t seem to trust me.
Back at the room, I flop down on the bed and start missing Lloyd like crazy. I begin thinking again about my last trip here, with Lloyd and Javitz, and how much fun we had. What am I doing here with some mystery kid who goes running off like a scared antelope?
And why hasn’t Lloyd responded to my E-mails? Is he really
that
busy running the guest house? I fall asleep hating my life.
I awake at ten minutes to eleven. The room is dark. I flick on the light and realize Anthony hasn’t come back. I grow a little worried, then tell myself to stop. Anthony’s a big boy; surely he just stayed in the park and fell into another group of gay boys. In fact, he’ll most certainly be at Pleasure Island, where we all planned to rendezvous. I hurriedly shower and change my clothes.
But he’s not at Mannequins, either. I stand on the revolving dance floor so I can scope out the entire crowd, and I don’t spot him. None of the guys we’d met have seen him either.
Then screw him,
I think.
If he thinks he can just run off on me and
—
“Hello, Jeff.”
I turn. It’s the last person I expect to see. Or want to.
“Drake,” I say, without much emotion.
“Having a good time?” he asks, with that little edge to his voice, as ever.
I look past him. “I’m just... waiting for someone.”
He feigns incredulity. “The famous Jeff O’Brien hasn’t been stood up, has he?”
I sneer. “If thinking that makes you feel good, then go for it, Drake.”
I’ve never cared very much for this guy. It’s not just that Lloyd dated him briefly when we first moved apart. It’s the fact that he’s an affluent, arrogant upper-middle-class snob, and what he’s doing at Disney World, I can’t imagine. I know he still carries a torch for Lloyd; that much was obvious that day at the guest house opening party.
Yet I have to admit that Drake looks awfully hot standing there, his silver hair offsetting his tanned face, his black tank top revealing surprisingly muscular shoulders and arms. A few years ago I’d never have looked twice at a guy his age. But I’ve become far more eclectic in my tastes. I can understand what Lloyd saw in Drake, at least physically. Suddenly the image of this man and Lloyd in bed together makes me horny, although I find myself embarrassed to admit it, even to myself.
“Jeff,” Drake is saying, “I was joking. I certainly didn’t mean to offend.”
“None taken,” I say.
“Good.” He smiles. “The friends I came with are a little too drunk for my taste. You, however, seem pretty sober, Jeff.”

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