The Men from the Boys (31 page)

When the movie is over, he turns to me and says, “Thank you.” I assume now we'll make love. We do, but we don't have sex. We fall asleep in each other's arms right there on the floor, while the video rewinds above us. When Javitz comes home, he has to turn off the TV and step over us to go to bed.

BEAUTY

Boston, April 1995

I'm finishing an article on the rise of gay conservatives that will run in a national gay magazine. They're paying me close to two grand, so I've been putting a lot of work into it. When I got the assignment, I thought it would be difficult. I mean, come on. I'm this old-time Queer National who once threw red paint all over Pat Buchanan's primary headquarters in New Hampshire. I own a total of two neck-ties and not one blue blazer with gold buttons. But I've been having fun.

The first Log Cabinite I interviewed was very cute. So was the next one. And the one after that. They're all so well put-together: great haircuts, sharp clothes, gym bodies to die for. With one guy, I even exchanged numbers. So what am I going to do? Trick with a Republican? I wish Javitz were around so I could process that one. But how do I know I already haven't? The South End is
crawling
with them. This is their fucking
birthplace,
for God's sake, what with so many gay boys creaming over Governor Bill Weld just because he smiles pretty and says nice things to them.

I type: “We have reached a point in our history where identity has taken on many permutations, where old notions of who and what we are have become irrelevant, anachronistic.” I sit back and stare at the words on my computer screen. What the fuck does that mean? It sounds like one of those grand pronouncements Javitz would make out on the deck, late at night. I imagine myself saying such a thing to my Republican trick. He'd look at me strangely, I'm sure. What I'd be saying, of course, was that it was okay for us to fuck.

Eduardo once said to me, “Do you always talk the way you write?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean that you're always using these big socio-cultural explanations for everything.”

I shrugged. “I'm a journalist. I like to put things in perspective.”

But now, staring at my computer screen, surrounded by boxes crammed with the remnants of my life with Lloyd, having thought of Eduardo yet again, it feels as if there is no perspective, none at all. I hit the delete key, determined to start over. But nothing comes to me, so I turn the damn thing off.

Why is it that I can figure out the root causes for the rise of gay conservatism, even coming up with a rationale for sleeping with Republicans, but cannot do a damn thing to explain—let alone fix —what's happening in my own life? I decide not to try to think of an answer for a change. Instead, I just pull on my sneakers and go outside for a walk.

It's a beautiful day. Spring has finally arrived. I can smell the sweet aroma of thawing earth, the crispness of new buds on trees. It will rain this month—it always does in Boston in April—rain so much it will feel like a biblical plague. But today is dry and warm. The sun even manages to break through the gray haze of the sky every now and then. As I walk, my shadow plays with my feet, sometimes there, sometimes not.

There's Lloyd, across Tremont, in front of the video store. He's on his Rollerblades, having hauled them out of the box I'd packed, overcome suddenly with the need to skate. He's even wearing shorts it's so warm, and his calves strain sexily as he pushes down the street. He lifts a hand to wave to me. I just raise my chin in greeting.

I've been sleeping on the couch since he told me he wants this temporary separation. Maybe I'm acting out, but it just seems too incongruous to slip into the breathing position when he's feeling this way. It's as if I don't know him anymore. Last night, he came home with his head completely shaved, and he's growing a goatee. I thought he looked hideous. “It's a way to deal with thinning hair,” he said, shrugging his shoulders when he saw my lack of appreciation.

Now, on his Rollerblades, I admit, he does look rather hot, in that sharp, buzzed, rough kind of way. Javitz will adore it, I'm sure—but Javitz isn't here anymore to comment on it. This is the first weekend of the post-javitz era. Last weekend, we moved him up to Provincetown, renting a truck and cramming our cars with boxes of books. On the way up, I rode with Javitz; on the way back, trapped with Lloyd for two hours, I slept in the backseat. Or pretended to, anyway.

Our little family. A year ago, there were no splits—none that were obvious, anyway. Wendy and Chanel still seemed happy, before all that talk about babies came up. Melissa and Rose still ate dinner with them every Wednesday night, and all of us celebrated birthdays together without any strain. And Javitz and Lloyd and I —well, who could have imagined a day like today, each of us alone, none of us together?

I'm on my way to see Tommy. I woke up yesterday morning and realized what a shit I'd been the last few weeks, consumed by my own turmoil and completely forgetting my promise to be there for him. Eduardo or not, I reasoned, Tommy was my friend. And he'd just seroconverted. So I called and left a message on Tommy's machine that I'd stop by this afternoon. He never responded, but I figured I'd try anyway.

Tommy lives about twelve blocks away, so far that he's practically in Roxbury. It's a tiny, cluttered studio apartment, four flights up, in a largely African-American neighborhood. This is hardly the bourgeois gay ghetto in which Lloyd and I have found ourselves, but Tommy seems to like living here. So many ACT UP meetings were held here, dozens of sweaty, angry activists crammed shoulder to shoulder in Tommy's little space, he standing on top of his kitchen table to address the flock.

I ring his buzzer.

“Yeah?” his voice crackles over the intercom.

“Tommy? It's Jeff.”

He doesn't say anything. It's as if I can see right through the wires and up to his room. Eduardo's there. They're fucking. I want to turn and beat it off the step.

But then he buzzes me in, and I ride the rickety, closet-sized elevator to his floor. He's waiting for me in his doorframe. He looks anxious, sleep-deprived. “Hey,” I say.

“Jeff, look, I'm on my way to my parents'. I should have been out of here an hour ago.”

“Oh, okay. Well, I just wanted to stop by. I won't keep you.”

“Come in for a second,” he says. I step inside his apartment. Inwardly I sigh in relief: there's no Eduardo, and the place is too small for him to hide. I can smell soap and deodorant from the bathroom, where warm, steamy air still hovers from a recent shower.

“Today's the day,” Tommy tells me.

“The day?”

“When I tell my parents.”

“Oh shit,” I say. I look at him. His face is clean-shaven; what's left of his hair is combed down neatly, nothing like the tangled mat he usually sports. He hasn't slept in days, I imagine, worrying about his parents' reaction. They've always been hysterical types. Lutheran evangelicals out in Worcester. They're going to go nuts.

“Can I do anything?” I offer.

He shakes his head. “I just want to get it over with.” He glances around. “Look, I don't have anything to offer you—”

“No, that's all right. You've got to go. I just wanted to stop by because—well, because I haven't, and I said I would.”

He's quiet, avoiding my eyes. “Thanks, Jeff. I'm really all right.”

“Are you?”

He sighs. “I've turned over a new leaf. No sweets. All healthy foods. I'm getting into an exercise program. Eddie and I are going to the Y—” He stops, as if he shouldn't finish.

“That's great,” I say. “Do you want to join my gym? I can get you a discount—”

“No, thanks, Jeff,” he declines. Of course not. Work out with me in the room? What an absurd suggestion.

“Look, Tommy. I just wanted you to know that I was sorry for saying ‘fuck you' last month at Chanel's. It was stupid. And I should've come by to see you sooner.”

“It's okay, Jeff.”

“No, it's not. I let my own awkwardness—about Eduardo—” I look over at him. Maybe he doesn't know. Maybe he doesn't even know Eduardo and I had a relationship. But he says nothing. He just lets me continue. “The point is,” I say, taking in a long breath, “I care about you, and want to be here for you. I've been so wrapped up in my own shit—Javitz. leaving, Lloyd and I up in the air—I haven't given other people much thought. And that's been pretty selfish of me.”

“Don't worry about it, Jeff.” He gives me a weak smile. “I've got to go.”

“Sure.”

We both move out into the hallway. He turns and locks the door behind him. On the elevator, I ask him if he's going to try an antiviral. He says he doesn't know. He's heard Javitz's diatribes against them. “But there's something that may be out soon,” he says. “Protease something. I'm looking into it.”

I'd never heard of it. I wish him luck. We step off the elevator, and there's Eduardo.

“Hey,” he says, his eyes moving fast back and forth between the both of us.

“Hey,” Tommy and I both say in response, almost in unison, the awkwardness now cranked up a hundredfold.

“I thought you'd be in Worcester by now,” Eduardo says.

“I'm late. I'm leaving now.”

“I saw your car on the street. I wondered what was up.”

They look at each other sharply. It's a look that isolates me, cuts me off, makes me feel horribly outside. No matter that in Eduardo's voice I hear the same old accusation with which he once addressed me, discovering that I'd gone out to the bar when I said I was staying home to write. No matter that in his voice there's that same old pitch of censure, as if Tommy had been lying about planning to visit his parents. What stings me is the reminder that there exists between them enough connection for such a confrontation.

“Jeff came by for a minute,” Tommy's saying. “I've got to get on the road.”

“All right,” Eduardo says. “I'll see you tonight?”

“Sure.”

“Good luck,” he says. Tommy smiles wanly.

The three of us head outside onto the sidewalk. Tommy hurries ahead, down towards his car—a rusty blue Volkswagen bug—parked at the end of the block. I turn to Eduardo and raise my eyebrows.

“So,” I say. “Hello.”

“Hi,” he says, not looking at me, watching Tommy get into the car. He tries to start it several times. It rattles and chokes, finally turns over. Then he's gone, in a grinding of old gears.

“So,” I say again. “What brings you into the South End?”

“I wanted to go to the bookstore,” he says.

“No bookstores in Somerville?”

“I wanted the gay bookstore.”

“Oh,” I say, smiling. “Welcome to the ghetto.”

We walk a few steps before either of us says a word.

“Can we walk together?” I ask. “At least, until the bookstore?”

“Sure, why not?”

We're quiet again. He seems so comfortable, so completely at ease. As if he were just walking with an old friend of his lover's, somebody he doesn't know very well, somebody whose cock he'd never sucked.

“Eduardo?”

He looks over at me. “Yeah?”

“How are you?”

“I'm good. How are you?”

“I mean—about the test, Eduardo. If Tommy had it ...”

He looks away.

“Don't you think I have a right... ?” I ask.

“I'm negative,” he says.

“Well, that's good news at least.”

We walk for a while.

“I feel bad I haven't been in touch with Tommy,” I say. “But Javitz just moved away. That's been a big thing for me these last couple of weeks. I didn't realize how hard it would be for me. And Lloyd and I—well, we're going through some rough times.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Are you?”

Eduardo stops walking. “Why wouldn't I be?”

“I don't know.” We start walking again. “I guess I just feel a little funny, you know, meeting up with you again....”

“Why?” Eduardo asks, light and easy, as if he really had not a clue.

“Well, given last summer and all.”

He smiles. “Such fun times. What's the big deal?”

I stop walking and look over at him. “Guess I'm the one who's become the anecdote.”

Finally, his face shifts, the mask cracks. There's a flash of the old anger, just for a second, and despite its hostility, I love seeing it again—because it's familiar, it's real. Not like the friendly vacancy that was there before.

“Jeff, just let it rest,” he says, his face returning to calm. “It's better for everybody that way.”

We're standing on the edge of Union Park. A couple of lesbians stroll by us arm in arm. “No, it isn't,” I say. “Eduardo, how can you just act as if we meant nothing to each other? Why did you never return any of the calls I left for you? Why didn't you respond to my letter?”

“I needed to get on with my life,” he says calmly.

I'm not calm. I can tell my voice is loud. One of the women turns around and glances over her lover's shoulder at me. “I thought I
meant
something to you,” I'm saying. “I never
heard
from you again after you left. We went from passion to nothing.”

“Feelings change,” he says simply.

“I don't believe that. Maybe
we
change—”

“Jeff, I went back to school!” Now his voice comes alive, just enough to show a little of the fire that so aroused me months before. “I was finding my way. My life got crazy, school and work and friends...”