How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle (20 page)

I did it on impulse only minutes before the dinner, upstairs at Dennis Savage’s place while Cosgrove coolly prepared his twenty-four-condiment lamb curry in our kitchen. It was still curiously warm for fall, and horribly dark out, almost black, with a promise of weather capable of anything. One thinks of people killed by a stroke of lightning, such as the twenties drag queen Bert Savoy, whose act Mae West adopted and made famous. Bert Savoy’s catchline was “You mussst come over,” and that’s what I said to Dennis Savage.

“Tonight?” he said. “For the weekly dinner with … him?”

“His roommate, Vince, will be there, too. I think you will find him congenial.”

“I will come. And, pardon me, but I’ve been meaning to tell you that I envy and respect your relationship with a fine young fellow named Cosgrove.” Looking outside at the strange gathering of clouds and anger, he added, “I musn’t envy, I know that.”

“You’ve had everyone,” I said. “You took cruising seriously, devoted yourself to the gym and mastered approach technique, and I admire that. You scored at your choice, conquering and plundering … I mean … Sorry, that didn’t come out right.”

He smiled.

“It’s the great gay democracy,” I explained, “in which anyone can become president. Only the president doesn’t rule, he scores. We defy rulers. We seduce their sons. We are their sons.”

A great thunderclap was heard outside.

“We defy each other,” I went on. “No—we amaze each other, so that Dr. Scott can pose for Colt under a mythopoetic working-class pseudonym and become the Man of the Age. It doesn’t matter if he’s gay or straight. What matters is the revolutionary act of being naked and stupendous. But this is a gay act in effect, because isn’t homophobia really a fear of nonconformity? Yes, it’s a fear that our independence rebukes their lack of imagination.”

Dennis Savage looked out the window again. Or, rather, gazed, taking it in.

“I spit at conformity,” I said, and there was a flash of thunder.

“The fathers are angry,” said Dennis Savage.

“Porn spits at conformity, doesn’t it? And it’s the great democratizer, because in porn everyone is a man and every man wants all the other men. There’s no real life in it. It’s utopia.”

“You don’t ever get intellectual about porn with me,” Dennis Savage observed. “You hardly ever mention it at all. Just today, suddenly.”

“In the future,” I told him, mistakenly trying to say nothing by waxing garrulous, “everyone will be a porn star for fifteen minutes.” I was afraid my silence would talk, so I was filling it with words, which can be disguises. “Do I dispute man’s inalienable right to live porn? Nay, I enthuse over it!”

“What’s got into you?” he asked. Then he almost jumped at a gigantic whack of thunder.

“They’re coming for us,” I announced. “We don’t have much time left.”

“You’re in too serious a mood to be joking,” he said. “You’ve gone too far and you’re trying to get back. Tell me what’s wrong. Is it romantic, social, or professional?”

“It’s cinematic.”

He went quite, quite still, then said, “You saw it, didn’t you?”

Boys and girls, I was not going down without a stall: “Saw what?”

“That porn thing I did.
Please, Sir, I Want Some More,
or something?”

“You made porn, did you?” I replied, trying to get a joke up. “
Academics Unleashed,
co-starring…” I trailed off.

“Is that what’s got you twisted up with speeches and the blurting out of innermost thoughts? Yes, I like it rough sometimes. So what?”

“That’s not why I’m upset,” I told him, though I was still haunted by the shameless expertise of that
“More! More!”
refrain. “And it’s called
Thank You, Sir.
”

“So you did see it.”

“Shouldn’t I have been already aware that under the bourgeois façade hides an alarming wild man?”

Outside, the weather gods let off the thunder as big as Moloch.

“One more of those,” he said, “and the dinosaurs will be extinct all over again.”

“I like you so much,” I told him.

Two beats. He reached out a hand and rubbed my forearm a bit, which meant, I guess, Yes, okay, don’t worry. Then, without changing expression, he said, “If you don’t stop acting like someone in a David Mamet play, I am going to turn you in to the gay stylemasters and…” Thus he, too, trailed off.

“The very jests evaporate on the tongue,” I helpfully put in, and he laughed.

“Actually, no one gets everyone he wants,” he said then, “which is how I ended up making that movie. The kid was straight, so that video was the only way I could get to know him. And he liked it rough, so don’t blame me.”

“How can he be straight and like it rough? He shouldn’t like it at all.”

Putting a hand on my shoulder, he asked, “Are you all right now?”

“No.”

“Good,” he said, moving toward the bedroom. “Help me pick out a…” He stopped and turned back to me. “You’re
still
not all right?”

“I’m all right, but I’m confused. And Mamet isn’t correct. It was more like Chekhov played in the style of Pixérécourt. And don’t bother changing. It’s just my cousin and Vince Choclo.”

Dennis Savage nevertheless decided to put on a more adventurous shirt, and I followed him into the other room, to further sound effects in the heavens.

“Whatever happened to Cosgrove’s mildly arresting Hispanic friend?” he asked.

“Nesto. He’s still around.”

“Could he possibly be asked to the next party?” Pulling on a thin cotton turtleneck in navy blue, he tacked on “I’d love to have a second look at him.”

“I’ll speak to the chef. You might as well score Nesto and complete the set.”

“Of what?”

“Men on the planet earth.”

*   *   *

T
HE THUNDER HAD GROWN
so intense by the time we got downstairs that Fleabiscuit was shivering under the couch. Dennis Savage went right to the kitchen, there to spend freely of advices and queries, and when he finally got around to the taste test he was like the Curies discovering radium.

He also discovered Cosgrove’s new abs, for when I joined them he had the front of Cosgrove’s shirt pulled up and was admiring the emerging outline of muscle.

“When did this happen?” Dennis Savage asked.

“Bud’s cousin inspired me to try a lifting program all my very own.”

“With what?”

“You’ve seen those weights in the bedroom a thousand times,” I said, helping myself to the curry taste test. Well, actually, all I did was scarf up one of the twenty-four condiments, shredded coconut.

“Hey!” said Cosgrove.

“Those are working weights?” Dennis Savage asked me. “I thought that was a stabile.”

“He’s made me his love-slave muscleboy,” Cosgrove went on rather chattily. “I have to bulk up or face life on the street.”

“I expect someone or other would take you in,” Dennis Savage observed. “Someone to teach you the meaning of the word ‘Daddy.’”

And the heavens gave way with a wallop, my friends. You have never heard a storm crack open with such … I almost wrote “finality.” Fleabiscuit yipped and ran into the bedroom to find his security blanket, and Dennis Savage once more raised Cosgrove’s shirt to feel the proud divisions.

“My,” he said.

“No,
my,
” I told him.

“Now I
know
you’re all right.”

“J. has a family emergency,” said Cosgrove, shredding more coconut. “He’s back in Cleveland. So it’s just Vince.” To Dennis Savage, he added, in meaningful tone, “Vince
Choclo.
”

Dennis Savage was disappointed to miss J.; but there are Thursdays to come.

Back at the window, I said, “I hope the two guests don’t get caught in the wet. That downpour would cut right through an umbrella.”

The buzzer rang from downstairs, and the doorman announced Vince Choclo just as Fleabiscuit returned, clasping in his teeth the red blanket he takes naps on and sometimes just carries around as a conversation piece. Cosgrove says that Fleabiscuit especially likes the snazzy green racing stripe that runs along one edge.

“You’ll enjoy Vince,” I told Dennis Savage. “He’s a real character.”

“‘Enjoy’ in what sense? As in ‘think he’s hot,’ perhaps?”

“He’s more the jerko galoot sort, I’m afraid. But he’s rather endearing in his own strange way. Like a bear riding a tricycle in a Russian circus.”

The doorbell rang.

“Come and see,” I said; but when I opened the door we saw a stranger: about five foot eight with a redhead’s coloring and a clownish smile and the most astonishing physique ever stared at. And we did stare, right through the white T and cotton drawstring-sweatpants, drenched to see-through.

“I’m not really Vince,” he said, dripping away in the sixth-floor hall. “He had to take his mother to the clinic.”

And there he stopped, smiling broadly, as if that explained it.

Dennis Savage and I just stood there, so he added something. “Your guy at the door was like a general. I shoulda saluted, huh? I give it to him that I’m Vince ’cause that’s how you’re expecting me.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Like I said, Vince couldn’t make it, so he asked me to come in his place and be neighborly. He don’t—”

“Red,” I said. “Backhaus, right?”

“That’s me,” he smiled out. But he was starting to seem nervous and uncertain. So Dennis Savage and I got him inside and did the intros and Cosgrove came out to wave and Fleabiscuit did a little rolling dance with his blanket, subtly contrived to put guests at their ease.

Red Backhaus—Vince’s lifelong buddy whom he loves and teases, you’ll recall—was taking in the apartment. Dennis Savage and I were so busy reading each other’s signals that I don’t remember whether Red actually said, “Gawrsh.” It may have been “Nice place you got here.”

We steered him to the bathroom to get dry with the promise of fresh clothes to hop into. Believe it or not, we keep a drawer of old throw-me-outs (because of course you never see them again) for just this purpose, in an old suitcase way in the back of the bedroom closet. It took me a bit of a while to find them, and as I pulled out a set of sweats, Dennis Savage walked in with a grin on his face.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing. Except there’s a little excitement in the apartment.”

I heard the buzzer and called out to Cosgrove to pick it up. “What excitement?”

“Well … it’s not in the style of Pixérécourt.”

And just then Red came into view, completely naked and toweling himself off with gusto. He must have been extra thorough with his genitals, because he had wood on—and while I’ve seen this kind of mischief among old buddies out at the beach, I’ve never known it done before people you hardly know. And isn’t Red straight? But wasn’t Vince straight before he met J.?

“Good thing there’s no girls around,” said Red.

“That’s the club motto,” Dennis Savage replied, to a crash of thunder as punctuational as a
Tonight Show
rim shot.

I stepped forward to hand Red the dry clothes. Then I: one, heard the door slam; two, saw Cosgrove cross the living room toward the kitchen dragging the blanket with Fleabiscuit lying on it on his back, wurfing in ecstasy; three, took note of Ken efficiently pulling off the hooded sweatshirt that, with his vast plastic umbrella, had kept him dry; and, four, watched as Ken turned toward Red, Dennis Savage, and myself.

You need the visual, boy and girls: Red has one of those very hard-to-get layouts with no fat content or water retention. His is the body you see in medical charts: just muscles, really big ones in the arms and shoulders, with a long torso down to no waist and then operatic thighs and melodramatic calves. No hair except a blameless crew cut and a tiny patch at the place of sin. A shock right there in your apartment: who would have thought that dinner with your cousin starts with a view of The One?

Or so I read on Ken’s face as he and Red looked at each other. Dennis Savage and I, behind Red, could not reckon what Red might be thinking, but I definitely heard the building shake to the pressing of organ pedals pitched too low for tone.

“Who are you?” Ken finally asked.

I said, “He’s why fathers make death threats.”

And Red, without moving in any direction, said to Ken, with a tone of appreciation, “You got muscles.”

6

W
ILL
A
LL THE
S
TRAIGHT
G
UYS
P
LEASE
G
ET
O
UT OF
T
HIS
B
OOK
?

K
EN AND
I
ARE
listening to the only one of Brahms’ symphonies that is affable rather than dramatic: like Ken himself. It’s the Second, in D Major, and we’ve reached the third movement—the woodwinds whistling their docile melody over the plucked cellos—and Ken is smiling because he knows I am dying for the Red Backhaus story and he hasn’t said a word about it yet. He will, of course. He needs to go over it and learn more about it with me. He needs to confide, and only in someone who, like me, won’t sell his secrets to Chelsea Boys for a flirty lunch. He needs to stun the etiquette and just go on about himself for hours. But he wants me hungry first.

I already know most of it, if in abstract terms: how Ken started out as the champ of Chelsea with the run of the hall, and then got tired of what was known and Sought Mystery. Others join cults or get into radical politics; Ken wants to do something with a drunken sailor on the morning after. He hopes to know what else is gay besides gay.

The music ends, in that touch of Beethoven in the last brass statement of the fourth movement’s second theme. I button off the CD. I sit back down and wait. It’s time.

“Isn’t it funny when guys look to you for approval?” he asks. “As if they could pack on hit points with praise from you? Some of them are very intimate about it, and I don’t need that. But some can be easygoing. It’s a joke session to them. Tom-Tom, you know. And Red. They don’t snap at you if you’re not giving them the little attentions they want. They’re patient. Or sometimes they cry, it’s true. Tom-Tom’s such a little kid, despite his size. But Red? Can you see that bigster in tears? Is it amazing?”