Where the Boys Are

by William J. Mann

  “You want to join us?” I ask. “We’re heading over to Club Cafe.”

  He rolls his eyes. “To watch Madonna videos? I don’t think so.”

  Suddenly I remember his name. It’s Jason, and we did sleep together, and we had a huge fight because he took one look at my video collection and launched into a tirade about gay culture. “What is this fascination with Bette Davis and Marilyn Monroe and all these dead movie actresses? Gay culture is so tiresome. Recycled hetero pablum, in my opinion.”

  I got defensive. “We’ve reclaimed it and made it our own.”

  “But it’s not ours,” Jason had said. “Once, gay people adored literary genius. Oscar Wilde. Edward Carpenter. Dorothy Parker. Now it’s Cher. What a pitiful state gay culture has devolved into.”

  Oh, you can be sure I did not allow him to spend the night. I look at him now, with his sour expression and the joyless way in which he passes out fliers to people on the street.

  “I haven’t been to Club Cafe in ten years,” he tells me, as if he’s proud of the fact, as if it’s some kind of achievement. Suddenly I find Brent’s prattle infinitely preferable, and I get us away from Jason as quickly as I can manage.

  “He’s toxic,” I tell Henry, settling myself at the bar so I can see the video screen, where Shania Twain is telling the boys they don’t impress her much. “Why do some gay people hate gay culture so much?”

  Henry shrugs.

  “I mean, old Bette Davis films speak to something for us. Marilyn’s story has relevance. Judy Garland, too. And so on, all the way up to Princess Diana. It’s archetypal.”

  “Maybe they think it’s stereotypical,” Henry says.

  “So what? Behind every stereotype, there’s truth. Gay men do love old dead movie actresses. And larger-than-life divas. What’s so wrong with that? Why do some gay people act like it’s a bad thing?”

  Henry doesn’t appear to be listening to my rant. I remember that he wanted to talk to me about something. But now my attention is drawn back to Brent, who’s cornered Anthony, talking at him intently only a few inches from his face. I can’t hear what he’s saying; the place is packed and the noise level is too loud. Many of the guys are still in their suits and ties, the grown-up costumes they wear in their offices downtown or in the Prudential Center. Brent’s the only one not to loosen up, however, even after he starts getting trashed. His tie always remains tight to his throat, the knot projecting from his tab collar almost perpendicular to the floor.

  He’s trying to regale Anthony with sloppy wit. I catch a snippet of their conversation. “Now, don’t believe what you hear about Boston boys, Anthony. We don’t all have attitudes.”

  “I know,” Anthony says earnestly. “I’ve found everyone very friendly.”

  “I’ll bet you have,” Brent says, eyeing him over his cosmopolitan.

  I order a Rolling Rock. Brent’s definitely hitting on Anthony, and Anthony seems not to be objecting. He’s listening to Brent’s every word, laughing at his every so-called joke. Oh, Brent can be dazzling, no doubt about that. He holds some big job in some high-rise—I can never remember exactly what it is that Brent does—and he’s always dressed real sharp. But already he’s starting to slur his words.

  “You’re seething,” Henry says, leaning in toward me. “You’re letting Brent move right in on Anthony.”

  “I’m not seething,” I say, watching Brent get closer and closer. Every few seconds or so, he’ll touch Anthony’s chest, laughing at something. “Anthony can do what he wants. Isn’t that what you said?”

  Henry shrugs, turning his back to them. “They look like a couple of Ken dolls,” he sniffs. “You know, Jeff, you really ought to put a time limit on his stay with you.”

  It’s my turn to shrug. “He intrigues me. There’s a mystery underneath that boy. I don’t buy his ingenue act.”

  Henry squints at me. “You think he’s a schemer?”

  “No. Not a schemer.” I watch him interact with Brent. He seems genuinely interested. As if he really wants to get to know Brent—all of them, anyone he meets.

  I like people who really ask you stuff. That’s how I want to be. If I’m going to talk to you, I want to get to know you. There’s so much more to somebody than just what they show outside.

  Henry gives me one of those looks that indicate he’s about to say something profound. Or try to, anyway. “Are you sure you’re just not looking for a quick, easy replacement for Lloyd?”

  “Henry, this is called happy hour. Happy. What part of that don’t you get?”

  “You can’t deny it, Jeff. I know you hoped—”

  “I hoped for nothing. And if I did, I was an idiot.” I take a sip of my beer. “Lloyd and Eva are like newlyweds, Henry. I should just accept that and move on.”

  “But you love him …”

  “Sure. And he loves me.” I look over again at Brent and Anthony. “But I’m not going to set myself up for disappointment again. It’s time for me to realize it’s never going to be the way I want it to be. It’s time for me to move on with my life the way Lloyd is moving on with his.”

  Brent’s leaning in over the bar to order new drinks for both himself and Anthony. Even in his suit pants, his butt looks round and hard, and his shoulders are impressive under his starched white shirt and suspenders. How did he ever get so pumped? I bet he does steroids. Anthony seems to take note of Brent’s body, too.

  Ah, so what? Why should I care if Anthony goes home with Brent?

  “Jeff, you’re seething,” Henry repeats.

  “I am not seething.”

  “Jeff, it’s plain on your face. You’re pissed Anthony hasn’t walked away from him yet. I know you, Jeff O’Brien. Anthony was yours. You found him.”

  I smirk. “Henry, if I pay you, will you go away and stop bothering me?”

  Henry flushes. “Jeff, that’s what I need to talk to you about.”

  I finish the last of my beer. “So Shane still wants to give you cash? Take it, baby. Take the damn cash and get it over with.”

  Henry seems to struggle with what he wants to say. “Do you ever think about it?” he asks me, lowering his voice. “Be honest with me, Jeff.”

  “About what? Getting paid?” I laugh. “Who says I haven’t been?”

  “You liar.”

  “Once. It happened once.” My mind flickers back to that day five years ago. I had no money back then, and the cash came as a surprise, the guy pressing it into my palm. I stared down at it in disbelief, then shrugged, folding it into my pocket. I used it to buy milk and bread on my way home. It came in handy. God, how Javitz had loved that story.

  “Yeah,” I say, smiling in spite of myself. “I discovered I could make money at what I’d been giving away for free.”

  “Exactly.” Henry laughs. “How much did you get?”

  “Twenty, just for getting sucked off.”

  Henry hoots. “Twenty! I could make ten times that much!”

  “So do it.”

  I notice the look I get back from Henry. He isn’t joking about this. We hold each other’s gaze until I reach over and draw my buddy’s face close to mine.

  “This isn’t Shane we’re talking about, is it?” I whisper. Henry shakes his head. “Somebody else offered you money?”

  Henry nods.

  “Hoo boy. How’d that happen?”

  “I created an escort screen name.” The words rush out of Henry’s mouth. “We talked online. I’m meeting him tomorrow at the Westin Hotel. He’s some business traveler from Des Moines in Boston for the night.”

  It takes several seconds for me to absorb the information. Then I grip the back of Henry’s neck and pull his face in even closer to mine. “Are you crazy?”

  “Jeff, look—”

  “You could get hacked up into a million pieces! You have no idea who this guy is!”

  “Jeff, he’s staying at the Westin, for God’s sake! It’s not like I’m meeting him at the Bates Motel.”

  I release my grip.
“Henry, he could be a cop.”

  “He isn’t. I asked him. If he was a cop, he’d have to say yes. You taught me that.”

  I frown. Yes, I did, and Javitz had taught me. It’s a way to avoid entrapment at rest stops or at the dick dock in Provincetown. You ask the guy if he’s a cop before you unzip your pants. He’s got to tell you the truth. I assume it works online as well.

  “Look, guys meet tricks online all the time,” Henry’s saying. “You’ve done it dozens of times. If I was standing here telling you I’d met a guy in the BostonM4M chat room and that I was going to hook up with him at his hotel, you’d be like, ‘Go for it, Henry.’ But just because of the exchange of money you suddenly think it’s dangerous.”

  I order another beer. “But why are you doing this, Henry? Do you need the money that bad?”

  “Actually, it can only help. This one guy in the Escort chat room said he made a thousand a week in his spare time. A thousand a week! And that’s tax-free. Do you know what a thousand a week would do for my cash flow? Even four hundred a week—two tricks, two hours!”

  I take a gulp of beer. “Henry, if you’re that tight for cash, I can lend you some.”

  He smiles. “Underneath it all, you are a sweetheart, Jeff O’Brien. Don’t ever let anyone say otherwise.”

  I scowl. “Who says otherwise?”

  “Never mind.”

  I press my point. “But you’re going to have to sleep with trolls, Henry. How will you get it up for some old fat guy?”

  Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve had some great sex with old fat guys. But on command? Talk about performance anxiety.

  “That’s just it, Jeff. I put two key words in my profile. Muscle worship. Can you stand it? See, I don’t have to touch them at all. I just lay there, let them do the work. There’s a whole culture of guys out there who will pay to worship guys like us.”

  I pull back a little. “Whatever happened to the little Henry Weiner I met so long ago?”

  He laughs. “Oh, I don’t mean to sound so conceited. You’re the only one I can talk to like this, Jeff.”

  “Well, it will keep you motivated to stay in shape anyway.”

  Henry smirks. “You know I can’t have sex with anyone unless my body’s perfect.”

  It’s my line. He’s right: there aren’t many people we can talk to this way. It sounds fucked, and maybe it is, but it’s how I feel. If I’ve been away from the gym for too long or if my love handles have gotten just a teensy bit too squishy, Brad Pitt couldn’t get me into bed. It wouldn’t matter what he looked like; what would stop me would be my own self-consciousness about what I looked like. Sad, yes, but true.

  So I guess Henry’s little enterprise might be doable, after all, providing it’s his body that’s the focus of attention.

  “You’re really going to do this, buddy?” I ask. “Sex for Money?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I think I want to give it a try.”

  I shake my head, trying to clear it out. What’s happening to the people closest to me? Lloyd buys a house with a woman; Henry turns into a prostitute.

  “You know, Javitz would have loved you, Henry,” I say, laughing. “Selling your body. How scandalous.”

  Henry smiles at me. “You hardly ever mention Javitz. I wish you would, Jeff. I’d like to know more about him. It seems like you guys had an awesome friendship.”

  “We did.” I can tell Henry realizes that’s all I’ll say on the subject. He just sighs.

  Something makes me look around. Anthony and Brent have disappeared. I feel a stupid pang. Shit, how I hate getting attached to tricks. Never has it turned out well. Not once.

  Ah, so what? There are dozens more, hundreds more, just like him. I could pick up one of these boys here tonight very easily. I could bring them back home with me.

  But I’m not going to. I’m tired of it. Tired of that old game. I want something more, something I thought was possible—imminent, even—until Lloyd sprang his news on me. Sure, I could bring one of these boys back home, but I won’t.

  Because you know what? I love gay men. I look around at all the gay men in the bar. Pressed close together, their drinks in their hands, laughing and bitching and waving their hands to make their ridiculous points. I think of Jason, passing out his fliers, seemingly so committed to the advancement of his gay brothers. But he despises them. He hates the people he’s supposedly trying to help. What a pitiful state gay culture has devolved into.

  I won’t deny the triviality of much of what goes on in places like this. A couple of weeks ago, two queens actually got into an argument over whether or not Cher had had a rib removed. I’m serious. That’s what they were fighting about. One of them actually stormed off in tears. In tears! As if it mattered when kids were killing themselves in Roxbury over Nike sneakers. As if it mattered even if kids weren’t!

  Still, I love them. I love gay men. They’re my family, the only family I’ve ever really known. I love them despite their silliness, their bitchiness, their maddening reverence for the superficial. Sometimes I even love them for such things. Last summer, on Fire Island, I overheard a bunch of gay guys talking among themselves. “Poor Kate Hepburn,” one of them said. “She’s the next to go.” It was completely endearing. Once, over breakfast at Bickford’s after some late-night partying, Henry had asked me, in utter seriousness, who I loved better—Cher or Madonna—and I, with equal solemnity, had paused to consider the profound implications of the question. Our waitress may not have literally rolled her eyes as she tore off our check and placed it on our table, but I felt her bemusement nonetheless. Henry and I looked at each other and cracked up.

  I forgive gay culture its indulgences because they’re sincere. I’m so tired of all this caterwauling and bitchery from the self-appointed critics of gay culture, who throw out words like tedious and childish and trifling. Sometimes gay people can be far more savaging of our own lives than any faultfinder of the religious right.

  “I never want to become so ironic and detached from the culture that I sound bitter and resentful of those who aren’t,” I suddenly blurt out to Henry.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m just thinking out loud. Our worship of divas, our reverence of pop culture, our veneration of the ephemeral, our obsession with dreams—in our very celebration of the cursory, we are in fact often being far more genuine than those who pontificate endlessly on the weighty and profound.”

  “I guess so,” Henry says, shrugging.

  “Of course it’s so. A gay man pining over the loss of a summer love can evoke the soul of a Shakespearean tragedy. There’s a realness to gay men that gives the lie to our superficial veneer. It’s the genuineness of children, passionate and honest in its sincerity.”

  “But can’t our childlike-ness become childishness?”.

  “I’m not denying that. But why must the pettiness of one be allowed to obscure the joy of the other?”

  “Sounds like an article,” Henry says, smirking. “You really ought to try writing it down, Jeff.”

  I sneer. “Don’t go there, Henry.”

  “Okay. Then let’s go to the Blue Ball in Philly instead.”

  I look over at him.

  “You love Philly, Jeff. What do you say?”

  I consider it. Why not? At that moment, being in the midst of a throng of shirtless gay men, their sweaty torsos pressed against mine, singing all the lyrics to a remixed Karen Carpenter song, seems mighty appealing.

  “I e-mailed Rudy,” Henry’s telling me. “You remember that guy we met at the White Party last year? He said we could stay with him if we came to Philly.”

  “Hmm. Rudy. I do remember. Pretty eyes.” I smile, leaning against the bar and lacing my fingers across my chest. I think about the small wooden box that I keep on my dresser, filled with little slips of papers and business cards, phone numbers, and E-mail addresses scrawled upon them. My extended gay family.

  “It would be nice to see Rudy again,” I say. “And Eliot and Oscar and Ada
m and Billy. They’ll probably all be there.”

  “I’m sure they will be.”

  “You know,” I say, feeling thoughtful, “they can blast circuit culture all they want, but there’s a real brotherhood, isn’t there? A real gay fraternity linked by E-mail.”

  “So that’s a yes?” Henry asks.

  Before I can answer definitively, however, Brent and Anthony are suddenly in front of us. “Well, well,” I observe, making eye contact with Anthony. “The prodigal returns.”

  “Are you boys having fun?” Brent chirps. “I’ve just been introducing Anthony to everybody. You can’t keep him sheltered down there on Shawmut Avenue now, Jeff. You’ve got to bring him up to the good side of Tremont Street once in a while.”

  “Hey,” Henry says suddenly. “Check out this video. Have you seen it? Melissa Etheridge.”

  We all look up. I have indeed seen it before. “Scarecrow,” I say. “Her tribute to Matthew Shepard.”

  “That’s the guy who was killed, right?” Anthony asks.

  “Yes,” Henry says. “It’s very powerful.”

  “Such a tragedy, wasn’t it?” Brent asks. “And poor li’l Matthew was so cute, too.”

  I move my eyes from the video screen over to Anthony. He’s watching intently. It’s the same gray-faced concentration I noticed earlier, back at the apartment during the PSA.

  Brent’s still gabbing. “Those bastards who killed him should have fried.”

  “I don’t know,” Henry objects, looking over at him. “I’ve been thinking about them. Matthew’s killers were probably gay, too. They just haven’t been able to accept it.”

  “Most gay-bashers are,” I say.

  Henry nods. “They’re fucking closet cases, but in a way, they’re victims, too.”

  “Oh, spare me that bleeding heart liberal crap, Weiner,” Brent says, shuddering.

  “No, seriously,” Henry insists, “think about it. What if Matthew Shepard’s killers receive counseling or something in prison and then realize they’re gay? Then what happens? Like they could ever be accepted by the gay community now.”

  “And why should they be?” Brent hisses. “They’re scum. Did you see them on TV? Scum. Gay-bashers are scum, Henry. They should have been killed the same way they killed poor Matthew. Beaten and tied to a fence and left to die in the cold.”