Where The Boys Are (33 page)

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Authors: William J. Mann

BOOK: Where The Boys Are
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I hit STOP. The video has the opposite effect on me. It soothes me, comforts me. It lulls me into a place of memory, a time when I was happy. I feel very drowsy suddenly, slipping down among my pillows, falling asleep, dreaming of Javitz and Jeff and me, playing Frisbee on the beach . . .
“Go get it,” Javitz is urging me.
I turn around. The Frisbee has landed in the water and is floating out to sea.
“Go get it,” Javitz tells me again.
I look out at the waves. Jeff is out there, trying to get the Frisbee.
“Go,” Javitz insists.
But I hesitate. I put my foot into the surf. The water is cold.
All at once I sit up. My dream fades from my consciousness even as I try to hold on to it. I blink my eyes. I look over at the clock. My little nap has lasted for an hour and a half! It’s now ten minutes past three. I hop out of bed. I have just enough time to shower and ride my bike over to meet Jeff.
I begin to whistle as I wash. For the first time in weeks, I feel happy. I’m very glad I’ve gotten a little sun, too.
Jeff can’t fail to appreciate that glow
, I think to myself as I give myself one final check in the mirror.
I put my hand on the doorknob, cocky as a jaybird.
It won’t turn.
I try again. It won’t budge.
“What the fuck . . . ?”
It’s
locked
.
From the
outside
.
But that’s crazy. The only way to lock the door from the outside is with the key I bought.
And the key is on my key ring.
And my key ring is ...
Downstairs on the kitchen counter.
I bang on the door. “Hey!” I bang harder. “Eva! Eva! Are you out there?”
I look at the clock. It’s twelve minutes to four.
Meanwhile, at Herring Cove Beach
Henry
“S
o it’s over.”
I rub the lotion into Brent’s back. It sure is a nice back, I admit to myself. Hard, rippled, defined. Even with the sprinkling of acne, it’s a back I enjoy touching, especially given the kinds of bodies I
have
been touching for the past several months. It almost doesn’t matter whether Brent uses roids or not to build it. It just feels
awesome
to run my hands across it.
“I’m sorry, Brent,” I tell him. “Really I am.”
Just as I’d predicted, his relationship with Jorge didn’t last. Brent’s “perfect” union didn’t even endure as long as some of his “imperfect” ones. He’s been lamenting it ever since I picked him up to drive down here to Ptown.
His back lifts in a long sigh. “It’s just that I thought Jorge was the one. He seemed so
perfect
.” He turns his head to look up at me. “I even didn’t mind not going out to Avalon on Sunday night. Can you imagine? Me! I actually
liked
staying home and watching
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
? Do you know it was the first time I’d ever seen it?”
I just smile, keeping my hand moving on his back.
Brent puts his head back down. “But it was too good to last, I guess. Do you know what he said, Henry? He said he just didn’t have
those feelings
for me. What the fuck does that mean? What are
those feelings
?” He covers his head with his hands. “Guess I
am
going to end up that tired old queen I was so afraid of becoming, all by myself.”
“No, you won’t, Brent.”
“I will. You know, it’s not very PC to say this, but at least all those guys who died young from AIDS will never have to face growing old and irrelevant. You tell me which is worse.”
“Brent, you’re being ridiculous.” I knead his shoulders. “It may be an old cliche, but there
are
other fish in the sea.” Not that I believe it much myself, but what else do you say in such a moment?
Brent isn’t listening to me. “Yet again,” he cries, “I strike out.”
I stretch out beside him on the blanket. “
He’s
the one who struck out, Brent. Not you.”
Brent turns to look at me. “Hey, thanks, best friend. What a nice thing to say.”
I just laugh.
The late-afternoon sun is still strong and full, and it feels wonderful on my skin. Damn the sunblock; another hour won’t hurt. Herring Cove is packed, although by now, one by one, people are leaving, giving themselves plenty of time to freshen up before Tea Dance. Brent and I have decided to forego the tea dances today, saving our energy for tonight. It’s a long weekend, after all. Why not take advantage of the sun? The summer has been so rainy so far.
Facing out onto the bay instead of the ocean, Herring Cove isn’t nearly as impressive a beach as Race Point, but it’s
ours
. Everyone knows it’s the gay beach. Over near the parking lot, you might spot a few families, but as soon as you walk in just a few yards, you notice a distinct absence of men among the hundreds of women, and then, a little farther down, not a gal among the hundreds of guys. At the very farthest point, you notice something even more obvious: a mix of men and women without bathing suits. The nude beach isn’t officially sanctioned, so you have to keep watch for rangers, but I’m not interested in taking off my Speedo anyway. I like a tan line, and so do most of my clients.
Not that I’ve done any escorting since that disaster on Comm Ave. E-mail from my Web site has gone unopened, and I turned off my cell phone. I just can’t bear it right now. I feel as if my whole life has been turned inside out. At work I’ve sat through
six different interviews
hoping for this goddamn promotion. It was supposed to be a shoo-in, but instead I’m left ragged. Then, when I went home last week for my birthday, my mother, in an attempt at being supportive, asked if I was dating anyone. “You should feel free to bring anyone home with you, Henry,” she said. It only made me feel worse—because I
have
no one to bring home.
The crowning indignity, however, is the fact that Jeff forgot my birthday. Sure, I know he’s caught up with all the Anthony drama, but isn’t that always the way?
Jeff gets wrapped up in his own life and only calls me when he needs something
. Yes, he sent me flowers a few weeks ago, a lovely gesture. But it’s not enough. Not anymore. I’ve settled for too little too late far too often.
I sit up, resting my arms on my bended knees. In front of me, each lap of the waves brings the sea farther up the beach. The water is a murky blue-green with considerable foam, leaving thousands of sparkly little stones along the sand in its wake. I let out a long, relaxing breath and scope out the beach. So many men. Big men and little men, hairy men and smooth, young and old, beautiful and plain. How many of them are having conversations just like mine and Brent’s? Lamenting their singlehood and misfortune in love? Other than Cher and Madonna, it sure seems to be the favorite topic of gay men.
At the next blanket, a quartet of middle-aged queens are drinking mimosas. They seem to be lamenting something, but I can’t make it out. On their portable CD player the Backstreet Boys are playing too loudly for me to hear anything else. I notice that Brent is quietly singing along: “
And that makes me larger than life
. . .”
I smirk, correcting his lyrics: “Makes
you
larger, not me.”
“That’s what I said.”
I laugh. “Forget it.”
Brent sits up on an elbow. “So, Henry, if we’re going to be best friends, we’ve gotta know something about each other.”
I squint down at him. “What’s that?”
He looks at me with all seriousness. “NSYNC or the Backstreet Boys?”
I roll my eyes. “Well, I guess I’d have to say Backstreet, just because of Kevin Richardson. How hot is he?”
Brent makes a face. “You mean you have no opinion in the great NSYNC debate over who’s cuter, Justin or JC?”
I shake my head. “No. I admit I haven’t pondered the ramifications of such a profound conundrum.”
“Well, for
my
money,” Brent says, reaching for the sunblock, “I’ll take 98° any day.” He squirts the lotion over his chest. “They’re
all cute
, except for scary Justin. And have you noticed how often they put those boys in tank tops? Nothing like those wispy other bands. These guys are
built
. They could be gay boys.”
I smile. “Aren’t they?”
Brent sighs. “No. Not yet, anyway. I say, give all these boy bands a few years. Look at what happened to the New Kids on the Block. Don’t a couple of them live in the South End now, hanging out at the Eagle late at night for last call?”
“That’s the rumor.”
Brent lies back down. “I’m sure even Ricky Martin someday will settle down with a nice guy, and the world will simply shrug and say, ‘Big deal.’”
“We can only hope.”
“By the way, Henry,” Brent announces, keeping his eyes closed against the sun. “I’ve got some really good party favors for this weekend. I just want to get blotto. We can forget
all
our troubles and really have fun.”
Forget all our troubles
. I smile to myself. I need to keep a balance here. They’re killing each other again in the streets of Jerusalem; it’s pretty audacious of me to think of
my
life as being troubled.
But
still.
I’ve heard from the grapevine that Jeff is in town. I should’ve suspected he’d be here. He doesn’t come to Provincetown all that often anymore, but this is Fourth of July, Ptown’s only real circuit party weekend. He wouldn’t miss this. I wonder where he’s staying, if he’s going to try to see Lloyd.
I know he’ll think me a jerk for hanging out with Brent. But it’s been fun. I can’t deny that. It all started at Gay Pride, where I ran into Brent at the Block Party. He was calling me “best friend” and everything and we started hanging out. We did a little K and we danced our asses off. He did a bump of crystal, too, though I declined. “What are you afraid of, Henry? Tina is a good girl. She won’t hurt you.”
But Jeff’s words still made me anxious: “
I could have had a bad problem, Henry. I caught myself just in time. You stay away from crystal. It’s not worth the risk
. ”
I don’t know what to think. I know lots of guys who’ve been able to manage a casual use of crystal meth, but I also know some spectacular fuckups. But Jeff’s rigid admonition to keep away from the stuff suddenly feels controlling to me. Like he always knows better, and I can’t find out anything on my own. I have to admit I’ve been enjoying hanging out with Brent. As dippy and druggy as he is, at least it’s just been him and me. Not the way it is with Jeff. There’s no Lloyd, no Anthony to obsess over. Just the two of us having fun.
“Hey, Brent,” I say all at once. “I’ll race you to the water.”
Brent makes a sound of disbelief. “Go in the
water
? You crazy? I just slogged all this lotion all over me.”
I leer at him. “But think of how good your square cut will look all wet and clinging as you walk back up to the blanket.”
His eyes dance. “Last one in pays the cover at the A House!” He leaps up and makes a mad dash across the sand.
I hoot out loud and follow him in.
Meanwhile, Only a Few Yards Away, at the Breakwater
Jeff
I
look at my watch. It’s 4:40. Could Lloyd be standing me up?
I’m dangling my feet in the water at the spot where we scattered Javitz’s ashes. Remembering that day isn’t something I do very often. I watch the little ripples my toes make in the water, and recall the way his ashes swirled around and around, a beautiful sparkling spiral, before they headed out with the tide. Touching the water gives me a surprising sense of comfort: it makes me feel connected to Javitz. His
atoms
are here. Simply breathing in the air brings Javitz inside me. I understand finally why this place has been so healing, so
sacred
, for Lloyd.
“I’m sorry, Javitz,” I whisper, probably for the five-thousandth time in four years.
Why didn’t I come down that night, the night he died?
There was a hurricane
, a voice inside me tries to rationalize.
You would have been a fool to risk it.
Yeah, that and the fact some hunky Russian flight attendant was in my bed.
I think back to the morning we scattered the ashes. It was warm, warm like the mornings of our happiest memories, mornings when Javitz and Lloyd and I would get up early and walk through town, solving the world’s problems if not our own. The smell of fresh-baked Portuguese bread would be wafting through the air, braiding with the fragrances of fudge and a briny low tide. We’d stop for coffee and look out at the bay, laughing about something, anything, everything.
We’d end up at Tips or Cafe Heaven for breakfast, where Javitz—the Jew—would always make an outsized point of ordering sausage and bacon, to the exaggerated horror of Lloyd, the vegetarian. Oh, yes, I smile to myself: those were the mornings I prefer to remember.
But sitting here on the breakwater, I force myself to recall another morning, the morning we carried the urn containing Javitz’s ashes all the way down Commercial Street, past the shops and the cafés and all the pretty tourist boys, past the houses we had rented all those summers, past the dick dock and the Coast Guard station and all the way out here, one last walk for the three of us. That day there were no tears. We’d shed them all at the memorial service, and by now our eyes were dry. In fact, I’ve hardly cried at all since. It’s easier not to cry.
Okay, so maybe it’s time. Maybe I ought to finally tell you what Javitz meant to me. Maybe you’ll understand all this better if tell you that I met Javitz when I was just twenty-two, a wide-eyed, eager young grad student. Javitz was the wry, caustic college professor more than a decade older than me. He was a big-time gay activist, too, who quickly embroiled me in a world of civil disobedience, direct actions, and ACT UP rallies. It was the Eighties; it was the way gay men lived back then. We were lovers for a time, Javitz and I. His HIV seemed merely a fact of existence, the thing that inspired us to fight, but somehow it wasn’t
real
. Though we might discourse endlessly on its ramifications, not once—at least not in the early days—did I ever imagine him actually
dying
.
But he did. He died and I wasn’t there.
I look at my watch. Where the fuck is Lloyd?
See, what I’ve never been able to let go of is the idea that I failed Javitz. Let him down. Oh, sure, I helped take care of him when he got sick, sitting up all night outside his room on the really bad nights, in case he tried to get up and walk. He had no balance and no strength, and the dementia kept him from understanding those two salient facts. I did my part wiping his ass, feeding him cold chunks of watermelon, holding an unlit cigarette to his mouth so he could think he was smoking. The saddest thing was to watch him, out of ingrained habit, lift two empty, tremulous fingers to his mouth. As much as I’d cursed those damn cancer sticks when he was well, I’d have given anything to smell their tar and nicotine again.
But despite all I did, in the end I failed him—when he had
never once failed me
. He had
always
been there, whenever I needed him, for almost the entirety of my adult life. And now I find myself playing Javitz to Henry and Anthony, pretending to be the man with the answers, the wise old sage. But I’m a
fraud
, and I’m certain Javitz knows it. He’s watching me. He’s keeping track.
Javitz would be so disappointed in you.
Chanel’s right. I knew it even before she articulated it.
Javitz is disappointed in me
. I wasn’t there at the end as I’d promised him I’d be, and now all of the lessons he taught me are proving pointless. Because I can’t pass them on. I bounce from party to party dispensing bad advice to boys whose lives are as fucked up as mine. Henry avoids me, and Anthony is impossible to reach. And look at the mess I’ve made of my relationship with Lloyd. To top it all off, I’ve stopped writing.
Javitz is disappointed in me.
The sun is lower in the sky. It’s now almost five o’clock. I lift my eyes toward shore. What could be
keeping
him?
I spot someone approaching. No, two people, actually. I peer at them as they get closer, realizing it’s not Lloyd. It’s two twenty-something gay men in khaki shorts and Abercrombie T-shirts. I catch just a snippet of their conversation as they pass.
“... tired drag queens.”
“Yeah, I’m so over them.”
“I hate gay culture. It’s so . . .”
They pass out of earshot. I can only imagine the adjectives he was about to use. I want to yell after them, “
So what are you doing here in Ptown? Why not vacation in Biloxi, Mississippi? Or Laramie, Wyoming
?”
I shake my head. No matter where you go, there’s always somebody ready to jump on us. Sometimes it’s even our own kind. Javitz’s words are in my head. “They’ve bought the line. They’ve actually bought the line that gay is bad.”
I let out a long sigh. Where the fuck is Lloyd?
So you’re no doubt wondering what prompted me to break down and call him, especially after he hasn’t answered my E-mails in so long. It’s simple.
I miss him
. I miss him something fierce.
Especially these past few weeks, ever since Anthony and I returned from Disney World. You see, Anthony’s become a body without a name, a face without a history. I’ve pulled away from any kind of intimacy with him, stung by his lack of trust. Yet he seems almost oblivious to my distancing; perhaps he’s just glad I’ve stopped asking questions. At our hotel in Orlando that next morning, he’d shown up with bags under his eyes and baby-fine stubble on his cheeks. I’d just returned from Drake’s, but neither of us asked what the other had done all night. He just came into the room, hung his face like a sad puppy, and we moved on from there.
But it can’t go on like this—not with such a vast cavern of deceit gaping between us. Anthony wants us to be lovers. A month ago, when he started to share my bed, I maybe considered the same thing. I was melting, and his soft, innocent eyes had been so easy to fall into. Yet how can I look at him that way if he won’t share the most basic facts of his existence?
Just what to do about it, however, remains the dilemma. For now, I just feel too inert to make any kind of a move. Except call Lloyd.
That
I found the strength to do.
“Jeff!”
I turn. It’s Lloyd—
finally
—bounding over the rocks of the breakwater. I look at my watch. It’s ten minutes past five.
“Thank God you waited!” Lloyd exclaims, out of breath, face flushed, grabbing me by the shoulders and kissing me spontaneously.
“I was just sitting here thinking about Javitz,” I say. “Guess I got lost in thought.”
Lloyd sits down next to me. “Javitz kept you here until I arrived. I know he did.”
I look at him suspiciously. “Why were you so late?”
He scowls. “I was locked in my room.”
“
What
?”
He shakes his head. “Jeff, the door was locked form the
outside
. I’d just bought a door lock with a key, so that I could seal off my room when I wasn’t in there.” He removes his sneakers and slips his feet into the water beside mine. “The only way it could be locked was for
someone to use the key
.”
“So who locked you in?”
He shivers slightly. “There was only one other person in the house.
Eva
.”
“Eva? You think Eva locked you in your room? On
purpose
?”
He sighs. “All the guests were out. I had to bang and holler for over half an hour. I couldn’t go out a window because the drop is too steep. I didn’t have the phone in my room, so I couldn’t call for help. Finally, I spotted one of the guests coming back up the walk, and I shouted for him to get my keys on the kitchen counter. He was the one who let me out.”
My jaw is nearly down on my chest. “But . . .
Eva
? Why would she lock you in your room?”
He looks at me. “Because I was coming here to see you,” he says significantly.
I blink at the directness of his statement.
Lloyd
. . . talking this way about Eva? To
me
?
“Did you confront her?” I ask hesitantly.
Lloyd hangs his head. “Yes. She pled total innocence.”
“But you don’t believe her.”
Lloyd turns to face me plaintively. “Oh, Jeff.”
“Dog, this is serious.”
He sighs deeply. “She insists she was sound asleep the whole time in her room. But a lock like that couldn’t just lock by itself, could it?”
“Not likely.”
“It made me think of the last time I was heading out to meet you. Last winter, when you first came down to see the house. Eva tried to stall me then with her tears. I think maybe she hoped you’d give up and not wait for me. Head back to Boston without ever seeing the place.”
I consider it. “If I’d done that, things might have ended between us even sooner.” I run my hand through my hair. “And you think now she was hoping to prevent us getting together again?”
Lloyd just lets out a long sigh. He doesn’t have to answer. We look into each other’s eyes.
“This is serious,” I say again.
“I know,” he says. “I’ve kept hoping against hope that it would get better, telling myself that she was simply having some kind adjustment disorder based on her grief.” He looks so sad, so lost. “But I have to finally admit that it’s a far more serious diagnosis than that.”
I put my arm around him.
“I’ve missed you,” he tells me, taking my hand.
“I’ve missed you, too.” I try to smile. “So why haven’t you responded to any of my E-mails?”
His eyes open wide. “
Your
E-mails? You haven’t responded to
mine
!”
“I
have
. But the last one I got from
you
was well over a month ago.”
He looks at me queerly. “I stopped writing because I wasn’t getting any answers.”
I grip his hand. “Lloyd. Does Eva know your password?”
He seems to not to want to admit it, but finally he nods. “Yeah. I gave it to her a long time ago. She needed to go online and she didn’t have an account yet.” He moves his eyes back to mine. “She was deleting your E-mails.”
I just hold his gaze.
“I
trusted
her, Jeff.”
I touch his cheek. “You don’t want to talk behind her back, right?”
“I think I have to,” he says plainly, looking at me again. “I
need
to, Jeff. It’s gotten very difficult. If I don’t give her what she needs, she twists her ankle or has a fainting spell. If I talk to her about it, she gets all weepy or runs out of the car away from me into the woods.”
I squeeze his hand.
He looks at me sheepishly. “Aren’t you going to say ‘I told you so’?”
I laugh. “If I did, you could say the same thing to me.”
Lloyd studies me. “What do you mean?”
“Anthony.”
“What about him?”
I smile wryly. “Oh, well, he’s been known to run away, too, when I push a little too hard.”
Lloyd looks at me with concern. “What has he told you about his past?”
“That’s just it. Nothing.”
“
Jeff
,” he says, “you don’t mean to tell me you
still
don’t know where he disappears to? Or
anything
about his background?”
I sigh. “I know some, but not nearly enough, and what I know I found out on my own.” I fill him in briefly about Robert Riley. “Anthony was only a teenager then. I think the murder did a real number on him. Yet when I’ve tried to talk about it, he goes ballistic.” I shrug. “Now I feel trapped by this mysterious stranger in my house.”
Lloyd pulls me close. “Oh, Cat. How did we ever get ourselves in such situations?”
We watch the sunset, holding each other. Each without speaking it, we’re both remembering Javitz’s oft-repeated line about Provincetown being the only place on the East Coast where the sun sets over the ocean.

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