Men Who Love Men

by William J. Mann

  “Jeff, I was always excited for you guys. I’ve just been going through—”

  But before I have the chance to tell him about Gale, I notice Luke across the way, standing in the gate that leads to the guesthouse. And he’s staring at Jeff in his Speedo.

  “Hey,” I whisper, leaning in toward Jeff. “You really did a number on Luke’s head, telling him his writing was no good.”

  Jeff looks at me oddly. “I said no such thing. In fact, I told him he showed a lot of promise, and encouraged him to keep going.”

  I shake my head. “That’s not the way he heard it.”

  Luke’s approaching us now, and I notice how he keeps his eyes glued to Jeff’s Speedo bulge.

  “Henry,” Luke says, finally lifting his gaze to me. “I’ve finished all the rooms. I was thinking of going to the beach for the afternoon. Do you need me for anything else?”

  “No,” I tell him. “You can go.”

  He nods and heads back over to the guesthouse. Not a word to Jeff. No gushing as he usually does.

  “I’m sorry if he can’t take criticism,” Jeff says, standing up. “I really did tell him he had talent, but there were a few areas where I thought he was a bit too…intense. I suggested he rethink some of that.”

  I agree, but I don’t reveal that I’ve sneaked a peek at Luke’s work. I’m not very proud of myself for doing so.

  Jeff peels off his Speedo, his dick flopping free. Even though I’ve seen Jeff’s cock a million times, I divert my eyes automatically. We’re sisters, after all. He drops the bathing suit back on the chaise and then steps carefully into the hot tub. “Join me?” he asks.

  “Sure,” I say, doffing my clothes in a hurry and immersing myself into the tub’s steaming hot waters. I let out a long sigh. It’s just what my aching body needs.

  “You know,” I tell Jeff, “I met an old friend of yours the other day.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Eduardo.”

  It takes a moment for the name to register for Jeff. “Eduardo?” he asks. “My Eduardo?”

  I give him a face. “Jeff, he’s not yours anymore. And hasn’t been for a while.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “Brace yourself.”

  “Okay. Braced.”

  “He’s dating Shane.”

  It takes a good half-minute before any emotion shows on Jeff’s face. But then he smiles, settling back against the side of the tub. “I never would have predicted that particular twosome.” He seems to think about it, imagining the two of them in his mind. “Eduardo was always good at seeing beyond superficiality. He clearly sees something in Shane others may have missed.”

  I smile. “Like me.”

  “Well, I hope he’s happy.”

  “You mean that?”

  Jeff smiles. “I do. Everyone deserves to be happy.”

  I shrug. “Well, he seemed to be. And so did Shane.”

  “Well, then, good for both of them.”

  “I guess.”

  Jeff makes a face as if he doesn’t understand my hesitancy on the subject.

  “It’s strange,” I tell him. “Part of me always felt a little better imagining that Shane was still out there somewhere, pining for me.”

  He smiles kindly. “I suppose I once felt that way about Eduardo.”

  “But no you want him to be happy, even if that’s apart from you.”

  Jeff nods.

  “I hope Shane is happy, too,” I say.

  “It’s okay to feel a little bad, Henry.”

  “No,” I tell him. “I’m tired of feeling sorry for myself. I want to feel happy for Shane, and so I’m going to make sure I do.”

  We sit in silence for a few minutes.

  “How are your bruised legs from the bike accident?” Jeff asks.

  I smile. “Better now. This spa works wonders.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Wish it could soothe all the rest of my ailments.”

  “You mean the heart-and-soul kind.”

  I nod.

  Jeff looks over at me with concern. “Lloyd are I are worried about you, buddy.”

  But I meant it when I said I was tired of feeling sorry for myself. Suddenly I don’t want to talk about my problems ever again. My problems bore me. Bore bore bore!

  So, instead, I just smile. “Look,” I tell Jeff. “These next couple of weeks should be about you. I really want to do whatever I can to make your wedding a great success.”

  Jeff smiles back at me. “I’m glad you feel that way, buddy.”

  “As the best man, I get to make a speech, don’t I?”

  “You sure do.”

  “I’ll write a good one.”

  “You’d better.” Jeff winks at me. “But remember, my mother’s going to be there. Nothing too salacious.”

  I laugh. “You mean I can’t talk about the six-way you and Lloyd had in this very tub?”

  “You mean the one where that guy was chewing gum and lost it up Lloyd’s ass while rimming him?”

  I laugh even harder. “You mean there have been other six-ways in here?” I look down at the water and wrinkle up my nose. “Christ, I hope you use a lot of chlorine!”

  We both laugh.

  And then Jeff’s cell is ringing. He leaps out of the tub to answer it. “Yeah yeah yeah,” he’s saying, motioning to me that he’s sorry, that he has to take this call. He mouths the words Kimberley Locke. I signal for him that it’s okay to go. I watch him wrap a towel around himself and go inside.

  I don’t stay in the tub much longer. I’m feeling edgy, like I need to be doing something more productive than just sitting here. As I’m drying off, I look over at the guesthouse. Luke is standing at one of the upper windows. I immediately feel creeped out. Was he watching us? Spying on us? I thought he said he was heading to the beach. I get dressed quickly, leaving my wet towel on the chaise next to Jeff’s Speedo.

  I think about calling Gale, but I reject the idea almost as soon as it enters my mind. That relationship is over. Done. Kaput. It’s no use going anywhere near there again. But Gale’s words do come back to me: Let me know if you ever figure out what’s the most important thing you need in a lover. What the hell did he mean?

  I spend the day by myself. Something draws me back to Luke’s writing, which I pick up from the floor. I hold the binder in my hands, staring down at it.

  “Darryl’s Story.”

  Gale seemed to think my answer to his question wasn’t enough. But honesty is what I want. Truth. That’s what obsesses me about Luke. I want to know who he is. Why the truth of his story matters so much, I’m not sure. But I want to know.

  I read the second story in the binder.

  This is how my dream begins: the sound of shovels, the stabbing of earth.

  A dark blue night. The moon as odd voyeur, its light glinting off the blades of the silver shovels. It is the eye of the sky, a hole into the heavens, perchance the passageway from which he might return.

  I have had the same dream over and over ever since he died: I peel away my sweat drenched sheets, placing my feet against the cold of the wooden floor, feeling my soles stick. I push myself to stand and pull on a pair of jeans, plunging head first into the blue of the night. And once there, embraced by a sweet, damp, blue fog that cools my skin, I dig up his grave, and pull him out of his coffin. He is dressed in a blue jacket and white shirt and red tie, the clothes we buried him in, clothes that smell only a trifle musty now, like the old hand-me-downs my mother would keep in her hope chest, in our basement that flooded every spring. I shake him as if he might wake, and I am not surprised that he has not decomposed: he is perfect, in death as in life.

  Finally his eyelids begin to flutter, like little moths.

  When I awake, which I always do precisely at that moment, I feel neither disappointment nor relief. It is just the endless rush of nothing that I feel, and I am always conscious of how wet my sheets are.

  Was this how they found Marilyn? Nude? Dren
ched in her own sweat?

  I lie here, like Sebastian Venable, my flesh eaten from my bones.

  I feel sick. I can’t read anymore.

  Is he writing about Darryl—or himself?

  I hide Luke’s manuscript under a pile of papers. I need to get it out of my head. All those disturbing images. Cockroaches, people screaming, suicide attempts, dead bodies, digging up graves.

  What lives inside that boy’s head?

  Suddenly all I want to do is wrap my arms around him. I want to tell him everything’s okay, that the pain doesn’t have too be so bad, that I can make it go away for him, if only he’d let me. I ache to feel his body next to mine, my lips pressed against his ear as I whisper soft reassurances and promises of love. I want to taste his sweet skin, inhale deeply the fragrance of his hair. I want to make everything right for him, and in the process, make everything right for myself.

  But how crazy is that? Why should I be feeling this way about Luke? Why has he so gripped hold of my emotions?

  Because I was scared and confused like him once.

  I remember another young boy, trying to find his way in the world. I remember another scared kid who tried to make his way in the world of adults. It was little Henry Weiner, crying in some stranger’s Trans Am after his first night at a gay bar. Little Henry Weiner from West Springfield, unsure of who he was or where he was supposed to be.

  But if Luke’s writing is any indication, what he went through was far more traumatic than anything I ever experienced.

  I go about my day trying not to think about what I’ve read. In the early afternoon, Jeff and Lloyd drive up to Boston to meet with their friend Naomi, who’s going to be marrying them. They’re planning to go over their vows and the order of the ceremony. As their best man, I offer to go with them, trying to stick to my promise of being supportive. But we have a new guest checking in this evening, so I need to stay behind.

  Of course, the other reason I need to stay here is that Ann Marie doesn’t get back until six, and we can’t leave J. R. alone, no matter how adamant he gets that he’s old enough to look after himself. We’re all still worried about the kid, in fact, who remains sullen and withdrawn. No matter how often we try to cheer him up, he resists our efforts. School has started again, and on his first two papers he brought home Ds. Lloyd worries that the boy may be clinically depressed, and there’s been talk of J. R. seeing a family counselor. Poor kid. I wish I knew what to say or do to get through to him.

  Since the day is so beautiful, I wait outside for our new guest, who arrives around four, a dithery redheaded woman with six large suitcases and a very prominent Bronx accent. I check her in, give her some maps and restaurant guides, and decide then, free at last, to get the hell out of the house. With Ann Marie home, I’m suddenly at liberty—and in that moment, a walk along the beach at sunset with my Walkman playing some classic nineties grunge seems mighty appealing. What better way to crowd out all my confusion of the past few days?

  “Yeah,” I murmur to myself. “Smells like teen spirit to me.”

  I grin, gathering up my CDs. A walk on the beach listening to Nirvana. Perfect. It’ll be like I’m back in college, when my whole path was still in front of me, when I still believed I’d be happily partnered and settled down by twenty-five with a man named Jack.

  But if the Walkman is going to play, I need batteries. I find none in the drawer in the kitchen, so I head into the basement, where I notice a light is on in Luke’s room. His door is ajar; usually he keeps it closed. I’ve told him many times to turn the lights off when he leaves; the electric bill is already too high. I approach, intending to shut it off.

  But what I see inside stops me in the doorway.

  Luke is on his bed, lying on his stomach. He’s humping a pillow.

  And he’s wearing Jeff’s blue and white Speedo.

  In that instant, all my sympathy for him vanishes.

  “You perv,” I say, before I even have a chance to think.

  Luke sits up at once. He glares at me.

  “Why am I a perv for jacking off?” He’s angry, belligerent. “Don’t you jack off, Henry?”

  My lips are curling in disgust. “Not in Jeff’s bathing suit, I don’t.”

  “This isn’t Jeff’s,” he insists, acting outraged at the suggestion. “It’s mine.”

  I glare at him. “I saw Jeff wearing it today. He left it outside. That’s his.”

  “It is not!”

  “You are one fucked-up kid,” I say, turning to leave. Suddenly all those weird images from his writing repulse me. No longer do I want to comfort him, tell him everything will be okay. I want to get as far away from him and his warped mind as possible.

  But Luke is on me from behind. His arms snake around my chest and he pulls me into him. His lips are on the back of my neck.

  “Don’t go, Henry,” he whispers urgently. “Make love to me again. You don’t know how much I want you, how much I’ve wanted you ever since I first laid eyes on you.”

  “Fuck you, you liar,” I say, but I make no effort to extricate myself from his grip.

  “It’s true, Henry,” he’s whispering in my ear. “It’s you I want. Fuck this job. I’ll give it up if it means I can have you again.”

  I turn around. I’m intending to tell him to fuck off, to push him away from me, hard and fast.

  But instead, I kiss him.

  Gripping his waist, I force Luke back down on the bed. Into the air I roughly lift his legs, yanking off Jeff’s Speedo in the process, tossing it onto the floor. Meanwhile Luke’s undoing my shirt, and with my free hand I’m dropping my pants. Naked, I crush down onto Luke’s body, forcefully bringing his head up to meet my chest, where he sucks on my nipples. “That’s it,” I tell him fiercely. “Get me rock hard.”

  I assume he has condoms and lube in the drawer of the table on the side of his bed, and I’m right. For the briefest of seconds I imagine who else Luke’s had down here, but thoughts don’t last long in my mind. Except this one: I want to fuck Luke. If I can fuck him, some crazy part of me believes, everything will be better.

  And so I do. It’s the first real sex, I realize, that I’ve had since the last time I was with him. Gale has always stopped me before our pants were off, I never orgasmed with Evan and his crew, and I just can’t count Martin’s blow job at the dick dock. So once again: it’s Luke.

  Luke—who I flip over onto his stomach and whose legs I spread apart roughly, who gets no foreplay, no tender affection, and inside whom I finally climax, my semen filling up the condom. The sheer sensation of my orgasm seems enough to make Luke shoot as well, as suddenly the sheets beneath us are covered with his own slimy goo.

  I remain on top of him, silent, immobile, for several seconds.

  “Don’t leave, Henry,” Luke suddenly whispers, our hearts beating in unison.

  I look down at this boy beneath me. I should leave. I should get out of here right now, as fast as I can. This is wrong—on so many levels—wrong, wrong, wrong. But something in Luke’s voice compels me to stay.

  I do what I imagined earlier. I wrap my arms around him. In his ear I whisper, “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  He says nothing, so I repeat the words.

  He simply folds himself into my embrace, and I pull him as close to me as possible.

  I’ll protect you, I’m thinking. I’ll protect you from the screams in the night, from the dark shadows that creep through your life, from the memories of that horrible father who hurt you so badly.

  But no further words are exchanged. I am left with only my thoughts, and the sweet scent of Luke’s hair in my nostrils.

  Not until the next morning do I finally leave his bed.

  And by that time, my whole word has been turned upside down.

  16

  THE BREAKWATER

  We’re sitting here, Luke and I, on a rock halfway out across the harbor, part of this majestic bridge of granite that keeps the waters of the Atlantic from destroying the fr
agile final finger of Cape Cod. The sky threatens rain, and out here in the middle of the harbor the breeze is a good ten degrees chillier than on shore. Luke and I huddle close to keep warm.

  “I’m glad we’re friends again, Henry,” he says, close to my ear.

  I smile, kissing his cheek. I suppose hard, intense sex, followed by a dreamy, sticky night in each other’s arms, would tend to smooth over whatever hostilities had existed between us. As soon as the sun was up, I’d slipped upstairs, not wanting to be discovered in Luke’s room by Lloyd. But not before we made love again, this time going more slowly, savoring every moment. I kissed his neck, he licked my nipples. He buried his face in my armpits, I made slurping noises on his tight, flat stomach. And I fucked him again, gentler this time, but with just as shattering a climax.