Men Who Love Men

by William J. Mann

  The image of the two of them, holding each other in that way, is one that I know I will treasure all of my life. There’s no envy—a refreshing change. All I feel is happiness.

  I’ve said I’d never want a relationship like Jeff and Lloyd’s, with its all amorphous boundaries and definitions. Yet, in so many ways, what they have is exactly what I want. A relationship so strong and so devoted that nothing can possibly shake it. A relationship defined by who they are, and how they love. A relationship that fits. That works. That will endure.

  I know it wasn’t always easy for Jeff and Lloyd as they made their way to this point. A great deal of heartache and confusion and just plain hard work has transpired along the passage from there to here. But they made it. And in two weeks’ time, they’ll stand up and declare to the entire world that they made it.

  I feel like crying. I know it sounds corny, but my heart is just ready to explode with happiness for my two friends.

  Maybe I’m not yet so over the hill that I need to give up all hope that someday that might be me, as well.

  But with who?

  I think about heading back into town, yet for some reason, I feel the need to be by myself—kind of like my father in his basement room. But I’m not depressed. Far from it, in fact. I’m just in the mood to hang out with Henry. I’d forgotten he could actually be fun to have around.

  So I pop a big bowl of popcorn—no butter—and stretch out on the couch in front of the TV. The Facts of Life is in its last five minutes. It’s one of the later episodes, after Cloris Leachman had replaced Charlotte Rae, and Jo is trying to save somebody from jumping off a building. I’m completely befuddled by the plot, but it doesn’t matter. Natalie makes one of her typical wisecracks and the laughtrack responds, cuing the end credits. I settle in for a night of great old TV, happy as a bedbug. Up next, I’m told, is Growing Pains. And after that is The Golden Girls.

  “The answers to every problem in life.” I tell the TV in between handfuls of popcorn, “can be found by watching Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia.”

  But first: Growing Pains. It’s one of the Leonardo DiCaprio ones. I always enjoy spotting movie stars in supporting TV roles before their careers took off. I remember Leo on the show. He was one of my first crushes, in fact. My sister Susan used to have a poster of him on her wall, except she always referred to him by his TV character’s name, Luke—

  My hand stops its delivery of popcorn to my mouth.

  I sit up, staring at the TV.

  As the episode opens, DiCaprio’s character is calling his stepbrother, played by Kirk Cameron, “Mike.”

  Holy fuck.

  I stand up, knocking some of the popcorn out of the bowl. What did Luke say his stepbrother’s name was? The one he supposedly had sex with? Mike! I’m sure of it!

  A stepbrother who became a born-again Christian.

  Just like Kirk Cameron.

  I look back at the screen. Leo is teasing Kirk. They’re roughhousing in the bedroom. How many gay guys of a certain age used to fantasize about those two hotties getting it on?

  It’s just the way Luke described it.

  And what did he say about the guy who adopted him? He was a lawyer! Just like the father on the show! And where was Growing Pains set? Long Island! Where Luke claims to come from!

  I’m immediately at my computer, Googling Growing Pains. Yes, here it is: character profiles. I click on the one for “Luke.”

  “Holy shit,” I say to myself as I read what’s written there.

  In his last appearance, “Luke” was depicted as going off with his real father to run a truckstop in Tucson. Exactly what our Luke claims for himself! And the cincher is the character’s last name, Brower. Though we’ve known him as West, he’s admitted it was a made-up name—and somehow Brower is ringing a bell for me. I dig out Luke’s binder of short stories from under a pile of papers. Sure enough, in that piece, the narrator’s last name is Brower.

  Can it be possible?

  He’s taken on the identity of a character from an old TV show!

  But he’s also given him considerably more backstory—with all that talk about an uncle who looked like the Penguin and the lecherous guys who gave him rides when he was hitchhiking.

  I sit there at my desk staring out the window. The sun is setting in a dazzling display of reds and golds and greens. What was in this kid’s head to imagine himself as a television character?

  Sometimes, he once told me about the people he saw on the screen, it seems like they’re your best friends.

  In that one instance, at least, I believe he was speaking the truth.

  21

  ON THE PIER

  “I wasn’t sure you’d call,” Luke says to me.

  We’re sitting on the pier, in the same place we sat several weeks ago, not long after we met. It seems a lifetime ago. Luke looks smaller today, younger, huddled in a dark blue hooded sweatshirt. It’s cold out here on the pier. The wind whips in off the harbor with a chilling force. Summer is definitely over. Winter is whistling down the road.

  “I wasn’t sure I would either,” I tell him.

  But I did. I called and asked him to meet me here. Lloyd was right. I needed some kind of closure. I don’t know what to expect—even if I should be expecting anything at all. Still, I’ve made love to this young man. I’ve read his words, glimpsed into his soul. Might there still be a chance to find out who he really is?

  Sitting on the bench beside Luke, I stuff my hands deep down into my pockets. I don’t say anything else for the moment. I want him to take the lead. I want to see where he goes.

  “Well,” Luke says, possibly a bit unnerved by my silence. “I’m glad you called, Henry. I hated thinking that I had totally fucked it up with you.”

  “Gee,” I say, a small smile cracking the edges of my lips, “whatever would make you think that?”

  Luke gives me a very earnest face. “Henry, you’ve got to believe me. I was upset because I was sure Jeff had told you what happened, about how I tried to…” His voice trails off. “How I humiliated myself in front of him. But I didn’t care about that. What I cared about was the possibility that I might have lost you forever.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, it is. So, you see, I was quite upset, and it was all about you, Henry, and that’s when Lloyd tried to comfort me and—”

  “I know the rest,” I tell him.

  He looks at me with those imploring eyes of his. “All along, my real feelings have always been for you, Henry.”

  I look at him kindly. “I’m not sure you know what your real feelings are, Luke. Or if they’re even yours.”

  He looks at me oddly.

  “Maybe they’re Becky Sharp’s,” I say. “Or some other character from a movie or a television show.”

  He stiffens. “I’m being honest with you about how I feel.”

  I shrug. “Maybe you are. But still, that doesn’t tell me what I want to know.”

  He makes a face. “What do you want to know then?”

  “Let’s start with your real name. You’ve admitted you made up ‘West.’ Did you make up ‘Luke’ too?”

  He laughs. “What are you driving at, Henry?”

  “I want to know who you are. Who you really are.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” I admit. “Maybe because I’m tired of living with dreams and fantasies. I’m tired of not knowing who people are, or how they feel, or why they’re in my life.”

  He gives me an arrogant smile. “Maybe you’re tired of not knowing who you are, Henry, or how you feel.”

  “That too.” I’m nodding my head in agreement. “Definitely that too.” I narrow my eyes at him. “But at least I haven’t pretended to be a character from some Eighties sitcom.”

  He looks at me sharply. “How did you—?” Then a small smile creeps across his face. “I see you’ve been watching TV Land.”

  I smirk. “It’s one of my favorite things to do, though I do
n’t claim to have the encyclopedic knowledge of television classics that you do.”

  His smile grows. “Okay then. How about if I told you my name was George Burnett? Or David Healy? Or Joey Russo?”

  I shake my head. “I wouldn’t buy it. I’m not sure exactly who played them or where, but I’d wager, if I searched hard enough, I’d find all of them on the Internet Movie and TV Database.”

  Luke laughs. “That you would.” He laughs again, harder. “And every one of them, I can assure you, is far, far more interesting than Frank Hall of Lewiston, Maine.”

  “Ah,” I say, extending my hand. “At last. Hello, Frank. My name is Henry.”

  We shake.

  “And I suspect,” I add, still shaking his hand, “that Frank Hall’s life is far more interesting than you think.”

  He drops my hand. “And what makes you suspect that?”

  “I’ve read your work, Frank. I know the hurt you carry around with you.”

  “Oh,” he says, eyeing me. “You do?”

  “Yes. And if you’d allow it, I’d like to know more.”

  He’s still looking at me strangely. “Know more about what?”

  “Your health, for one.” I reach for his hand, but he moves it to his face, deftly avoiding contact with me. “You write about Darryl being sick, but I think it may be you.”

  He says nothing. He just keeps staring at me.

  “And your father,” I say. “That was perhaps the most disturbing suggestion of all in your work…”

  “Henry,” Frank Hall says to me.

  I look at him, listening.

  “I made all that shit up.”

  It’s my turn to remain silent.

  “Really,” he says, smiling again. “I did. I figured this was the kind of shit the sells. Pain and death and parental abuse.” He lets out a whoop of a laugh, one that frightens me, causes me to sit back on the bench. “It’s what they call ‘literary fiction.’ Not like that commercial puke Jeff puts out.”

  “Don’t start degrading Jeff’s work again,” I tell him.

  “Look, Henry, all you need to know about me is that I’m in love with you. Isn’t that enough?”

  I look at him for a long time. How long I’ve wanted to hear those words from someone. I’m in love with you, Henry.

  But I look over at him and say, “No. It’s not enough.”

  “Why not?” Luke—or Frank—seems exasperated. “I’d have thought you’d say that was the most important thing to know about someone.”

  I shake my head. “Maybe a week ago I’d have said that. Not anymore.”

  “I don’t understand you, Henry.”

  “You know, Frank,” I say, “there was a time when I called myself a different name, too.” I lift my chin, puff out my chest. “Frank, meet Hank. Remember I told you I was an escort for a while?”

  “Sure.”

  I look off over the water. “I thought Henry Weiner wasn’t good enough, or interesting enough, or sexy enough. So I invented this character named Hank. He didn’t last very long. But still, there was always this belief way down deep that Henry just didn’t cut it. Henry was just not good enough.”

  “Not good enough for what?” he asks.

  “For everything!” I gesture around me. “For anything!”

  Finally—a bit of understanding, a trace of honest emotion on the face of the young man sitting next to me. The cocky smile slowly fades from his face as he joins me in looking out over the sea.

  “There’s not much to write about in Lewiston, Maine,” he tells me. “So I had this brilliant idea. I’d create a character and I’d live his life. I’d test stories out on people, and if I got a response, if people believed me, I’d know they’d work in my novel.”

  I’m nodding. “That’s why your stories always sounded like memorized passages from a book”

  “You always saw through me,” Luke says.

  “Not always,” I admit. “Because sometimes—sometimes I think you were telling us the truth, even when you were, in fact, not.”

  He narrows his eyes at me. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve really been as lonely as that boy you described meeting Darryl at a bookstore. You really did want to get out of your hometown as much as that kid with that cat-murdering uncle.”

  Frank looks back out over the water. “Even more…”

  “Lloyd is perhaps the best judge of character I know,” I tell him. “The fact that he always held out some hope for you says something.” I look into Frank’s eyes. “We’re not so different, you and me. We’ve both been telling the world stories about ourselves in order to distract attention away from who we really are.”

  “So who are we?”

  I shrug. “A couple of lonely guys, just looking for someone to wake up with every morning.”

  “Then don’t give up on me, Henry. If you believe the underlying truth of my stories, believe me when I say I really like you. And always have. That day when we first had sex, I treasure it.”

  Does he? I look at him. Maybe he does. Maybe, in this moment, he really believes what he is saying to me. Maybe, in fact, he really does like me.

  But then I have what Lloyd calls a “psychic moment.” I can’t explain it. It’s just there, a bit of knowledge in my head that I know to be irrefutably true.

  “Your name isn’t even Frank Hall, is it?” I ask.

  “Names don’t mean anything,” he tells me.

  “They do to me.”

  I stand up.

  “You don’t believe that I love you?” he asks, almost in a panic.

  “Actually, I do believe that,” I say.

  “Then goddamn it! It’s not enough?”

  “No,” I tell him. “It’s not enough.”

  “Henry,” the kid says, and there’s real panic in his eyes. “Don’t walk away from me! Please!”

  “I want a relationship, it’s true,” I tell him. “I’ve spent the last year of my life spinning my wheels as I looked for one. I was running after this one and that one, transferring my emotions as often as I changed my socks. I was willing to chase down anyone—anyone—if I thought maybe they might like me. But now…”

  The kid on the bench—whatever his name is—looks up at me, waiting for me to finish.

  “Now, I want something more than that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Something that’s real. Something that seems to be impossible for you, my friend.”

  The young man on the bench turns his face away from me.

  “Good luck to you,” I tell him. “I hope you realize that there’s plenty to write about in Lewiston—or wherever it is you really come from. More than you ever believed possible.”

  I leave him sitting there staring out over the harbor. I walk off the pier, heading into town, where I spot Ellie, the miniskirted transvestite street singer. Once, in another life, she was a fire-breathing Baptist preacher. Now she’s dragging her wagon, tottering on her high heels, and warbling: The record shows, I took the blows, and did it my way!

  Up and down this street, character after character passes, each one a brand-new creation. The middle-aged woman who dares hold her girlfriend’s hand in public for the first time. The leather-man who walks proudly, his enormous codpiece preceding him. The painter standing on the side of the road at his easel, who was told in art school he had no talent, but who flourishes here, liberated from the tyranny of rules and tradition. In this place that celebrates reinvention, our previous lives are immaterial. Here, we become who we want to be.

  If only the boy I’d just left could understand that. And trust it.

  Did he really make it all up? All those stories that haunted me? Those nightmarish images and dark scenarios?

  I realize all at once that it doesn’t matter anymore. It is a liberating feeling. I can’t stop the smile from pushing across my face.

  Walking past Ellie, I give her a hearty salute. She waves back in solidarity. We are new creatures, she and I. We have been re
born.

  I have not felt this good, this solid, since—well, I can’t even remember. I feel alive. I feel inspired. I feel—dare I say it?—complete.

  “Henry!”

  I turn. On his bike, heading toward me, is Jeff. He slows as he approaches and comes to a stop in front of me.