“Well?”
I blink. Who is this boy sitting in front of me, peering up at me again from under those damn long lashes?
I thought you were hot, and so when I saw you today I had to make a move.
I want so much to believe him. I want so much to believe he’s telling me the truth.
“Well what?” I ask.
“Can we hang out again sometime?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess so.”
“Excellent.”
Why don’t I just tell him it’s over? I should just thank him for the hot sex and then get the hell out of here. Why am I keeping this charade going on any further?
But then I look over at Luke lighting another cigarette. He glances back at me again with those eyes.
“Here,” Luke says, tossing me one of his clean T-shirts. “I dribbled peach juice all over yours.”
I pull his shirt on over my head.
“We might have time for one more dance downstairs,” he says.
“No, thanks,” I respond. “I’ve got to get back to the guesthouse. I’m supposed to meet somebody there.”
“Okay.” He blows smoke over his shoulder. “But can I call you sometime?”
“Sure.” I give him my number, which he punches into his cell. Then I make my way outside, back into the daylight.
Luke follows. After he closes the door behind us and we’re heading back down the stairs, I realize I never grabbed my slimy T-shirt off the floor.
I wonder if it’s one more that I’m going to lose.
ABOVE THE NIRVANA GUESTHOUSE
Back home, I pop open the refrigerator door and stare inside, contemplating dinner. There’s one thing, at least, that I can be grateful for.
There will be no more green peppers in the tuna fish.
I don’t like green peppers. Or peppers of any color for that matter. Why anyone would want to put green peppers in tuna salad is beyond my comprehension. But Joey did, and when Joey made my lunch I always had to pick them out or swallow them whole with my milk.
Now that I’m alone, I make my own meals. Every single one of them. And most of the time, I eat them alone, too.
I remove a bowl of tuna salad—pepper free—and start picking at it with a spoon. Alice in Chains’ Dirt is playing on my stereo. A paean to isolation, in my opinion, and therefore rather fitting for my mood.
Outside, below my window, I hear a gaggle of boys heading back to their guesthouses after Tea Dance. Cautiously, I peer down at them. They’re a little drunk—or tweaked—or maybe just high on life, laughing in that way only gay boys can laugh when they’re together in their little posses. Testosterone-driven girlishness, if such a thing is possible. Their laughter is high-pitched, grating and giddy, but aggressive and sensual, too, their eyes bouncing off passersby like rubber balls. One of the boys, a shirtless dark Latino with a goatee and abs for days, catches sight of me eating my tuna fish at the window. I look away quickly, letting the curtain fall back in front of me.
I lied to Luke. No one was waiting here for me to meet. No one but my bowl of tuna salad—which will serve as my dinner this Saturday night, when most everyone else in Provincetown is heading out to fabulous meals at fabulous restaurants looking absolutely fabulous. As for me, I’m happy to be able to call it an early night—one of the benefits of tricking in the afternoon. I’m able to curl up on the couch and watch Leave it to Beaver and Bewitched on TV Land.
The problem with such early evening hibernation, however, is the sun. If only it would get dark, I could pretend it was just a Tuesday night in March, a night when you can go to bed early and alone without feeling you’re missing out on the party. But here it is, the hands on the clock already passing eight, and the sky remains defiantly bright. I can’t escape the fact that the night is young, very young. But not for me.
There was a time, and not so long ago, that I’d be out there with those boys, laughing in that same high-pitched way, ogling passersby and gearing up for adventures to come. But ever since Joey left, I just haven’t had the drive, the spunk, to get out there and play the game. Neither have I had the body. Already I’m thinking about that half-eaten carton of Chunky Monkey ice cream in the freezer, the tuna salad quickly losing whatever minimal appeal it may have had. That’s how I’ll spend my night, eating ice cream and mouthing along as Endora casts campy spells on Bewitched.
Alone.
All my friends tell me I’m so young and that being alone for a while after a breakup isn’t fatal. It might even be a good thing, they say. But they don’t understand that just when you think you’ll never have to be alone again, and then suddenly you are, no amount of reason can blunt the shock of seeing one toothbrush in the bathroom.
But it’s the middle of the night that’s the worst part. Those moments when I wake up at four a.m. and wonder in the stillness what it is that’s wrong. And then it hits me.
Joey’s gone.
Fuck, they’re all gone. Joey and Daniel and Shane—and though Lloyd might be right downstairs, he’s gone, too.
Every time I have fallen in love, I’ve been convinced it would last forever. That this would be the man with whom I’d buy a house, make out a will, take my last breath. We’d die just minutes apart, holding hands in the same bed. How romantic would that be? And of course, we’d be buried side by side. HERE LIES HENRY WEINER AND HIS HUSBAND, THEIR HEARTS UNITED TOGETHER FOREVER.
Forever. It’s a fascinating concept. What’s forever for me, of course, would only be a heartbeat for the Galapagos land tortoise, which the Discovery Channel has taught me can live up to two hundred years. Given the number of boyfriends I’ve already had in my thirty-three years upon this planet, I must say I’m glad humans don’t have the lifespans of tortoises. There’s no way I could keep getting my hopes up for another sixteen decades only to watch them get dashed over and over and over again.
And yet, for a very brief time, I wasn’t alone.
Why has my short time with Joey become so imbued with the rosy romantic glow of nostalgia? I remember with such longing the day we met at Tea Dance, the euphoria after the first time we made love, the sense of future and forever in the air. When things started getting serious between Joey and me, I moved into his apartment on Commercial Street. I needed some space away from the guesthouse. I’m the manager here, after all, Lloyd’s right-hand man—and Joey knew that for a while, a brief and crazy time, I’d fancied myself in love with Lloyd. Obviously it wouldn’t do to go on living here, so instead, I moved in into Joey’s cramped little two-room apartment over a seafood restaurant in the center of town.
Yet no matter its limitations, I adored living at Joey’s place. The harbor, sunkissed and blue, was always sparkling outside our window, and I found I actually liked picking up Joey’s socks and underwear from the floor and depositing them in the hamper. I liked doing things for him. His laundry. His ironing and vacuuming.
But there was one thing Joey didn’t like about me. My dog. Back then, I had a little pug named Clara. She was so ugly she was adorable. She belonged first to my friend Brent, and I took her in after Brent died. But Joey didn’t like dogs, and didn’t want a dog running around his apartment, so I gave Clara away to a couple of lesbians who promised her a good home. It’s a decision I’ve never stopped feeling guilty about. I chose Joey over Clara. A boy I’d known for only a little over a month instead of my faithful companion of several years. I’m sure the lesbians made good on their promise to provide well for her, but a day hasn’t gone by when I don’t regret giving up Clara.
And what made it worse, of course, was that soon Joey was gone too. I’ll never forget the night it ended. I was making dinner. Joey entered sullenly, his jacket over his shoulder, tie askew, briefcase in hand. He’d been hired by a real estate company in town, and should have been a dazzling success. The market in Provincetown was at its hottest during that time, and Joey had big dreams. Yet so far he hadn’t even sold a single condo. Everyone else around him was raking in the cash, but Joey
kept coming up short.
Looking at him that night, I could see it had been a particularly disappointing day. I waited for the kiss, for the little nuzzle of his nose on my cheek to which I’d grown accustomed. But nothing came. Joey went straight to the bathroom to take a shower.
In the living room, I set up two folding TV trays and lit a candle. Joey came in, towel drying his hair, the smell of Ivory soap lingering around his body. His straight black Asian hair, electrified, fell into his eyes. He flipped on the television.
“Just for the news, okay?” he asked, seeming to want to keep conversation at a minimum. I nodded.
We talked little during dinner. Afterward, Joey washed the dishes. Usually if I cooked, he cleaned up. This time, I helped, scraping the plates.
Then we settled down to watch Jeopardy. It was just like any night. After the show was over, I expected that we’d have sex, and then maybe head out to the Wave bar to see who was around. Maybe we’d have a cocktail. Or maybe two, given Joey’s mood. But before the game show ended, Joey suddenly flicked off the set with the remote control. The abrupt silence in the room choked me. My toes curled up in my sneakers.
“I can’t go on,” he said, and I knew instantly what he meant. He didn’t mean his job, he didn’t mean this place, he didn’t mean anything but me—he couldn’t go on with me. It was as if, the whole time we’d been together, I’d just been waiting for this moment. It always came. It was inevitable.
Still, I tried to reason my way out of it. “Shouldn’t this be something we decide together?” I asked. In my first reaction to Joey’s decision, I was calm, rational, mature.
But all Joey did was shake his head and tell me he had fallen out of love with me, the cruelest phrase in the universe.
“So,” I said, my rationality beginning to crumble, “you want me just to pack my things and go?”
“You can stay here if you want,” he said, his eyes closed against me. “For tonight.”
He headed off to bed. I watched him walk down the hall. Then I placed myself stubbornly in front of the television set, snapping it back to life, refusing to turn it off until the early hours of the morning. It was as if by keeping the night going I could keep the relationship from ending. When I finally gave up and joined Joey in the bedroom, his eyes were closed, but his breathing didn’t have the usual rhythm of sleep.
Crawling into bed next to him, as I’d done so many times before, I knew I’d never fall asleep that night. I just lay there, feeling his warmth and watching the changing moonlight on the ceiling. I dreaded the sun, because then it would be over. All of this—our time together—over. When the first slivers of orange slipped between the Venetian blinds, making horrible stripes across the bed, I wanted to run outside, like a cartoon I’d once seen, and push the sun back down behind the horizon like a basketball.
Without a word, Joey got up. I reached over and pressed his pillow against my face, savoring his smell. I thought maybe that I’d just get up as usual, grind the coffee beans, bring in the paper, pour our juices. I’d pretend he never said what he did. Let him throw me out! But instead I rose, scuffed over to the closet, and gathered a few shirts and a pair of pants.
Joey cried only once. I stood in front of him, slowly removing his keys from my key ring. One by one I handed them to him. The apartment key, the downstairs door key, the laundry room key. When he had them all, he began to sob. I walked out.
For a moment, I was afraid I’d handed him my car key, but then I found it, still safely on the ring. The ignition started my tears again, and I drove back here, to Nirvana, and let myself in. I expected Lloyd, but I found Jeff, and I made sure I’d dried my eyes when he saw me. Still, I never could fool Jeff.
“What’s wrong, Henry?” he asked.
I told him it was over with Joey. His face wrinkled in compassion for me.
“Are most of your things still back there?” Jeff asked.
“My whole life is still back there,” I told him.
He scolded me for being melodramatic. But still he wrapped his arms around me, and I was grateful for them.
And so I moved back in above the guesthouse. When I found one of Clara’s toys under the refrigerator, I sobbed for two days.
I should have known I’d end up back here.
It’s where I always end up.
Back with Jeff and Lloyd.
When I lived in Boston, some of the guys in the clubs would call me “Henry O’Brien,” because they didn’t know my real last name and because, after all, I was just an appendage to the popular Jeff O’Brien, traipsing along behind him on the dance floor, always to be spotted somewhere hovering in his backlight. Here in Provincetown, some of the townies even today know me only as “Henry, Lloyd’s manager,” because, after all, that’s who I am here, the manager of Lloyd Griffith’s popular guesthouse.
Without Joey, Henry Weiner exists only in reference to Jeff or Lloyd.
The siren song of the Chunky Monkey in the freezer finally wins out. Without even thinking about it, I’m lured over to the refrigerator, and it’s with the first spoonful into my mouth that Jeff catches me. He barges into my apartment without knocking.
“What are you, Kramer?” I ask, annoyed. “What if I was in here with a trick?”
“From the looks of it, your only tricks tonight are named Ben and Jerry.” Jeff’s all smiles, as if he has good news. “I thought you were trying to lose weight.”
I toss the ice cream into the sink. It was getting crystallized anyway. “For your information, bucko,” I tell Jeff, still a little pissed, “I already tricked today. A very hot boy I met at Tea Dance. Ask your sister. She saw him.”
“Yeah, yeah, she told me. Good for you. But come downstairs, okay? Lloyd and I have been waiting for you to get back. We have something to tell you.”
I look over at him. What is it about Jeff O’Brien? He’s forty now, maybe even forty-one—he’s always been cagey about his age—but people still sometimes think he’s younger than I am. That’s because, unlike mine, Jeff’s hair hasn’t started to recede. Nor does any fleshy excess mar Jeff’s middle. He maintains the same strict gym routine we both kept during our days on the circuit. Of course, Jeff has always known a few shortcuts to looking good. He buys his T-shirts one size too small and has his jeans taken up in the seat to make his butt look more perky. And I suspect an occasional injection of Botox from Ann Marie’s dermatologist boss might explain why Jeff’s forehead is still as smooth as a nineteen-year-old’s. He argues that he keeps up appearances simply because a hot author pic sells books. Who am I to question success? Certainly I’m no expert at it.
I think again about Luke, and the copy of Jeff’s book under his bed. I decide against telling him.
“What’s the big news?” I ask.
Jeff winks at me. “We’ll tell you when you come down.”
He’s back out the door. I can hear his steps on the staircase, fast and happy. He’s probably signed another book contract. Good for him. The bounty never ends for Jeff O’Brien.
I turn to the sink to rinse the ice cream down the drain when my cell phone rings. The caller ID shows a wireless number with an area code I don’t recognize. Normally I just let calls I don’t recognize go to voice-mail—but for some reason I answer this one.
“Henry?” comes the voice at the other end.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, it’s Luke.”
“No way,” I say, smiling despite myself, my words ahead of my brain. “I was just thinking of—”
Bad. Very bad. Never admit right off that you were thinking of somebody. I learned that much from Jeff. Play aloof. Make them do the work.
Luke seems pleased. “Of me? Really? You were thinking of me?”
“Well,” I explain, “of my shirt. I left my shirt in your room.”
He laughs. “Isn’t the fact that you’re wearing mine an even exchange?”
“It’s not really a big deal—”
“We can make the switch tomorrow.” I ca
n hear Luke blowing smoke from his cigarette. “I was thinking maybe we could hang out.”
So you can meet Jeff. “Well,” I say, regaining my stride, “tomorrow’s kind of busy for me…”
“I really enjoyed meeting you, Henry. Can I call you in the morning?”
“Like I said, tomorrow is kind of busy…”
“But can I just call and see if things lighten up for you? I’d really like to see you again, Henry. Maybe we can just, you know, get together for a little while?”
Men Who Love Men Page 3
