I'm silent. I move over towards the window, finger the stub of Javitz's cigarette in the potted plant. Down below on the sidewalk two boys bundled up in red parkas pass by, holding hands. Lloyd comes up behind me.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
“About my aunt Agatha.”
“Who?”
“That, and the sustaining power of three.” I turn around to face him. “It was supposed to last.”
He seems speechless, so I continue, regaining my composure. “Oh, Lloyd, I can't claim to know the answers. I'm not even sure I understand the question. But I do know that we're both struggling, both trying to find our way in a world that no longer makes sense, where everything seems so unfamiliar and strange. We're heading into uncharted waters. And Javitz getting sick this winterâand then his moveâhave just driven home the fact that he won't always be around to help us navigate. I keep hitting my head against the wall as I struggle to find my way out of the mazeâbut
you,
Lloyd, you keep thinking you've
found
itâthat this psychic or that guru will show you the way. And when you end up still unsure, still dissatisfied, you blame yourself, that
you've
failed to find the true path. Might it be that it's right in front of your eyes?”
Lloyd's quiet for another moment; then he looks up at the ceiling and takes a long breath. I notice the curve of his earlobes, how they seem to lift upward, that adorable little quality that breaks my heart. “Oh, Jeff,” he says, “maybe I am always searching. Maybe all my journeys
do
lead me around in circles. But at least I'm moving. At least I'm not settling, holding desperately to the status quo.”
“Is that what you think I'm doing?”
“Actually, no,” he says. “Oh, Cat, I want this to work out for us. I really do. But I don't think even you believe the path we're on is where we're supposed to be.”
I look at him.
“If you did, if you
really
did, Eduardo would never have become so important to you.” He reaches over, strokes my hair, runs a finger along the line of chin. “What attracted me to you at the very beginning was how stable you were, how nurturing you were. You grounded me, gave me a sense of place, a sense of home. But don't you see, Jeff? It's not that we don't have sex anymoreâor that we've given up going to the Morning Party or trying to learn to water-ski. None of that matters, not really. I
love
our nights together, baking brownies and watching videos and sitting out on the deck with Javitz like three pompous old stooges. I
love
all that. Butâ”
“But
what,
Lloyd?”
“It's just different, that's all. It's not what I thought it'd be.”
And he's right. Even now, in my terror, I have to admit that he's right. It is different, far different than I ever imagined it. Now the very qualities that had initially attracted us to each otherâLloyd's spontaneity, my nurturanceâare what push us apart. My nest threatens to entrap Lloyd's wings; his need for flight leaves me terrified that I'll be left behind. Is that why I long for Eduardo? Or might it be for the reason Lloyd suggests, that I too crave to find what else is out there, what else might lie ahead on my own particular path? Whatever it is, I cannot deny the difference of which Lloyd speaks, cannot deny that I fall asleep with thoughts of Eduardo uppermost in my mind, despite the steady reassurance of Lloyd's breathing beside me.
“The difference frightens me,” Lloyd admits. “Frightens me very much.”
I want to comfort him. I want to reach over and caress his face the way he caressed mine. I see the pain and the fear in his eyes. He is a good,
good
man, I realize, as if for the first time. How much he loves me, and how well he knows me. But I cannot bring myself to touch him. To do so would not change the way he feels, would not persuade him to stay by my side, to never again talk about leaving. I curl my hands into fists to keep them from reaching out to him.
He seems to feel the rejection. He moves away, and whatever moment there might have been between us is over. “Lloyd,” I say, sounding hard, “if you want me to apologize about my affair with Eduardoâ”
“No,” he says. “I don't want you to apologize.”
“Well, then, I'm not sure what else to say.” I pause. “Except that Mr. Tompkins stays with
me.”
“I would want him to,” he says without emotion.
He moves silently into the kitchen and begins clearing away the dinner plates. I sit there on the couch while he stacks all the dishes in the dishwasher and turns it on. I sit there long after it's finished running, the steam seeping out the edges of the door. I sit there long after Lloyd has gone to bed, without saying good night to me. I sit there, in fact, until I wake up the next morning, sun streaming in through the skylights, Mr. Tompkins pawing at my chest, wanting food, wanting nurturance. Around me the afghan from the bed is draped: Lloyd must have covered me during the night so I wouldn't get cold.
Provincetown, August 1994
Javitz is talking about baskets and buns, how people don't seem to talk about them much these days. “Nobody says ânice basket' anymore,” Javitz grumbles. “All they talk about are pecs and biceps.”
What's gotten him riled up is Mitch, a bartender at tea dance. “Look, he wasn't worth this much aggravation,” I tell him.
“It's not him,” Javitz insists, but he has rarely been so transparent.
Here's what happened: Javitz, Eduardo, and I went to tea dance this afternoon. There's this bartender, Mitchâsix foot, big shoulders, big pecs, big arms, blond, blue eyes, naturally smooth, great smile, incredible butt. He's also HIV-positive. He gave an interview to one of the local gay papers about it. “I just want the world to know,” he said, “that PWAs can be as buff and attractive as anyone else.”
He and Javitz met at the Collective. “Come on by tea dance,” Mitch had told him. “I'll give you a drink on the house.”
So we went. Javitz wore his hot pink shirt (“I look my best in hot pink”) and super-short white cutoffs. Now, Javitz doesn't normally go to tea dance. There aren't many with legs as thin as his who dare venture through the gates. But Mitch was there, behind the bar. He beamed when he saw Javitz approach.
“I thought you wouldn't come,” Mitch said, grinning.
Javitz smiled coyly, actually batting his eyelashes a couple of times. Eduardo and I looked at each other. Javitz as coquette was not a sight we thought we would ever see. “I'd never decline a handsome man's invitation,” he cooed, and I could've sworn there was trace of a southern accent.
“Oh,
please,”
I muttered under my breath.
“Well, I'm really glad you came,” Mitch said.
Javitz grinned over at me. That grin spoke for itself. It said: “See? You're not the only one who can get cute ones.” It said: “See? I can still play the game.”
The truly sad part was, Javitz has always disdained the game. But the moment he thought he could
play
âwell, that's why I'll always despise Mitch.
He handed Javitz a rum and Coke, on the house. “I really wanted you to come because I respect you so much,” he confided. “I respect you for how up-front you are, how you speak your mind and change people's opinions about PWAs.” He dropped a big arm around Javitz's shoulders. “I thought maybe you could help me out.”
“Help you out?”
“Yeah. See that guy over there?” Mitch pointed with his chin.
Javitz stopped grinning. “Yes?”
“The one with the abs? Isn't he gorgeous? Name's Albert. We call him Abs Al around here.” His voice turned serious. “But he's scared, David. About the HIV shit. I thought maybe you could talk to him. I'd really like to ask him out, and you're so good at making people feel comfortable ...”
I wanted to toss my beer in the asshole's face. But Javitz just resumed smiling. He looked back and forth between Abs Al and Mitch. “I'm surprised, Mitch,” he said at last. “I would have thought your shining example would have been enough to convince him that not all PWAs were sickly, spindly creatures like me.”
Mitch, big dumb brute that he is, didn't get the sarcasm. “No, I haven't been able to convince him.” He tightened his arm around Javitz's shoulder. “Hey, we should get you in a workout program. Build up those pecs. I don't think it's ever too late.”
“What is so goddamn wonderful about
pecs?”
Javitz asks now, hours after the experience. “Why have we become obsessed with a part of the male anatomy that serves absolutely no function?”
“Breast envy?” I suggest, trying to lighten things up.
“Today we accentuate those areas that are sensuous, but not sexual,” Javitz continues, oblivious to my humor. He's on a roll. The sun has just set, and we're out on the deck, one of our usual sessions debating the state of the world, except that Eduardo occupies the chair where Lloyd usually sits. “All you hear about these days, all you see practically, are pecs, biceps, triceps, and washboard stomachs.”
“There was a sign at the gym that read, âNo Pecs, No Sex,' ” Eduardo offers.
“Can you
imagine?”
Javitz says. “No pecs, no sex. You can play with somebody's pecs, but in my book that's not sex. At least baskets and buns deliver. Nipples do
not
deliver. They're
supposed
to be foreplay.”
“Well, it's very difficult for me, and it was even more difficult for me when I was a couple years younger,” Eduardo says.
“Is that possible?” Javitz asks archly.
“You watch it, mister,” Eduardo says, shooting him a look. “No, I mean it. When I was sixteen, seventeen, just coming out to myself, walking down Commercial Street, seeing all those guys with their shirts off parading out of tea dance, I thought, This is how I've got to look if I'm going to be considered attractive.”
“Well, don't you worry, Brad Pitt,” I tell him. “I like you just the way you are.”
Eduardo makes a face at me. He's said he could look like Brad Pitt if he worked at it. “He's thin like me,” he insisted. “I could be him.”
“Yeah, and I could be Jean-Claude van Damme,” I teased.
“Point is, all this focus on how we look has inhibited our activity,” Javitz is expounding. I turn my attention back to him. He's really wound up. Mitch has touched a very raw nerve. When Javitz gets this way, he reacts with his best defense: his mind. “The image has become
so
idealized, so unattainable, that we actually stop playing the game. We think we can't compete. We think we're out of our leagues.” He gives me that nose-and-eyes look. “Even you, Jeffrey. Don't pretend it's not so.”
“I admit these past few years have increasingly been a challenge,” I say, smiling.
“The image is so young and so white and so buff and soâ
clean
âfor want of a better word,” Javitz says. “That very cleanliness seems to imply there are certain limits with what one might do with that body.
Please
âMitch is a fucking antiseptic android. So clean, so safe, that it doesn't allow us to explore the limits of our fantasies.”
“I don't follow,” Eduardo says.
“In other words,” I suggest, “you wouldn't consider putting Mitch in a sling.”
“I wouldn't consider putting anyone in a sling.”
Javitz points his cigarette at him. “Exactly. You have not been encouraged to push your limits.”
“Oh, I don't know about that,” Eduardo says, looking at me.
“Of course,” Javitz goes on, standing now, tossing back his long hair, sweeping across the deck with the moon behind him, the steady rushing sound of the waves on the sand seeming to keep time with his steps, “it all comes back to one thing: fear of sex in the age of AIDS.”
I knew we'd get back to that. My head still hurts from this morning, when Chanel had practically accused me of attempted murder, or at the very least, risk of injury to a minor. But when I watched Eduardo's sinewy body move across the room, I wondered what risks we had really taken. My mind was still soft and tired from the talk with Javitz. Eduardo and I haven't really had a chance to talk by ourselves yet. We've avoided the topic all day. Was Javitz deliberately bringing us back to this point?
“It's a redirection of energy,” Javitz continues. “Instead of sucking and fucking, we're pumping. It's having your body exposed, and acknowledged, but in a safe way. In the sixties and seventies, there wasn't this kind of flaunting, this âlook but don't touch but make sure you look and look again' attitude. Sure, we took our shirts off in bars, but not on the dance floor merely for display. We took off our shirtsâand more importantly our
pants
âin the back room for sex.”
“Back rooms scare me,” Eduardo says.
Javitz has concluded his pontification. He's tired himself out. He merely sighs standing over Eduardo. “They should, darling,” he says. “They should.”
With that, he leaves us alone. He'll go into his room now, lick his wounds by himself. What a world, I think to myself. This whole scene. Strange what your dick can lead you to do.
Eduardo and I don't say anything for a while. We just sit here, looking up at the sky, listening to the surf and the occasional high-pitched call of a piping plover. Finally I ask:
“Do you want to get tested?”
He turns to look over at me. He reaches across the space between our chairs and takes my hand. “No,” he says. “Why, so I can take poison if I turn out to be positive?”