Where the Boys Are

by William J. Mann

  She stubs the roach out in an ashtray. “He hides it well, don’t you think?”

  I stand up, brushing off my pants, trying to cover my erection. “Hides what?”

  Eva smiles. “His feelings for me.”

  I shake my head down at her. “Eva, that man is as queer as I am.”

  She yawns and stretches. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She smiles enigmatically. “Nothing. Just—well, didn’t you once say human sexuality is a complex thing? That gay and straight are merely constructs?”

  “I didn’t say that. Javitz did. I merely repeated it to you.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about it. I think it’s very true. I think it’s true about Tyrone, and I think it’s true about you, too.”

  I frown. “You’re trashed, Eva. If it’s true for us, why not for you? Maybe you just haven’t found the right woman.”

  “Maybe I haven’t. Maybe you haven’t, either. Maybe Tyrone hasn’t.” She giggles, covering her mouth. “And maybe he has.”

  Ty’s come back into the room. He narrows his eyes at us. “What are you two conspiring about in here?”

  “Just deciding what color to paint this room,” Eva tells him, sitting up now on the couch. “I think blue. What do you think?”

  How well she covers up. How fast on her feet. She stands, extinguishing the candles we’d lit hours ago at dinner, now burned down to tiny stubs. It’s been a long day. A good day, bottom line. Ty answered a thousand questions about business law. Eva cooked us an excellent meal of wild mushrooms, risotto, and gingered string beans, and the bottles of wine Ty brought from a vineyard in upstate New York had been fabulous.

  “Tyrone,” Eva says, “your room’s all made up. If you need anything, just whistle, okay?”

  “Will do, love.”

  “You know how to whistle, don’t you?” she purrs, back in character. “Just put your lips together and blow.”

  “Wrong diva,” I correct her. “That’s Lauren Bacall.”

  She kisses Ty, then approaches me. “I know my divas, sweetheart,” she assures me.

  We kiss briefly on the lips. “You were very entertaining tonight,” I tell her, patting her cheek.

  “Ohhhh,” she purrs. “I always do mah best work at night.”

  She moves off, puttering around in the kitchen. She seems reluctant to go to bed. She washes wineglasses, puts dishes away, wipes down the counters. She’s clearly waiting until she’s sure Tyrone and I are also going upstairs—alone, to our separate rooms. A couple of times, Ty and I exchange those looks—those looks any gay man can recognize, looks that say, Okay, how are we going to manage this? There’s something unspoken about our flirtation: Eva shouldn’t know about it.

  Finally, after watching her practically rearrange the entire kitchen cupboards, I conclude sleeping with Ty is going to be impossible, at least for tonight, and that we may as well just surrender to the inevitable. Eva’s not going to go to bed, no matter how tired she gets, until she’s sure both of us are alone in our own quarters. So I say good night, climb the stairs, and close my door behind me.

  Once I’m alone, as always happens, I think about Jeff.

  Unbuttoning my shirt, I look out at the sky. The moon is full. I murmur a spontaneous prayer for Jeff, wherever he is. People do strange things under full moons. This is the weekend of that party down in Philadelphia. Damn circuit craziness.

  There’s a soft knock at my door. I open it to see Ty standing there.

  “I hope you don’t find me bold and brazen,” he whispers.

  I feel the grin spread across my face. “I like bold and brazen men,” I say, stepping aside so Ty can come in.

  We kiss. I feel the strength of the man’s body. I let my hands fall to his incredible ass. “We should be quiet,” Ty whispers. “I don’t think Eva would deal well with this.”

  “I don’t think so, either.”

  We kiss again.

  “She’s funny like that, you know,” Ty says, close to my ear. “When Steven was alive—”

  I put my hand up to his mouth. “You probably shouldn’t tell me anything.”

  He looks at me. “I only thought you might want my opinion.”

  “Opinion of what?”

  “Eva.”

  I make a face. “What do you mean?”

  He sighs. “Lloyd, I was tremendously encouraged to see her breaking out of her shell, doing her volunteer work after being a recluse for so long. I thought it was good, healthy.” He pauses. “But don’t you think it odd how she didn’t want to talk about Alex?”

  I do, but something keeps me from admitting it to Ty. “I imagine she’s feeling a little guilty about leaving him behind,” I say. “I’m sure she’ll make it a point to get down and see him soon.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Ty takes my hands in his. “But I’ve been watching her with you, and I’m reminded of the days with Steven, and I wonder how much she’s told you.”

  I shake my head. “Whatever it is you’re thinking she needs to tell me, we need to let her do it on her own. I owe her that much. We shouldn’t talk about her, not without her present, not about things she should tell me herself.”

  Ty looks surprised. “It’s just that I think you should know—”

  “No. It’s not fair.”

  “Maybe, but—”

  I put my hand back up to his lips.

  He shrugs. “Okay, Lloyd. Whatever you want.”

  “I want you to kiss me,” I tell him.

  Ty smiles. “You referred to a partner a couple times tonight. Jeff. This is cool, then?”

  I look at him. “There are probably a hundred reasons why we shouldn’t do this, Ty. Are you going to recite them all?”

  “I’ll quit talking,” he says.

  “Good.”

  I kiss him hard. He responds. I unbutton his shirt, slipping my hands across his hard, smooth chest. He bites my neck. It feels incredible. We make love, falling onto my bed with a passion that fills my entire being. My hunger is being satiated. I bite his nipples, and he grabs at my sheets and growls. He takes my dick into his mouth. I let out a sound of shattering relief.

  Not until the sun is coming up does Ty go back to his room. And it’s only after I watch him gently close his door that I smell the coffee brewing downstairs. At first, I don’t think anything of it.

  Then I remember something.

  We don’t have an automatic coffeemaker.

  Somebody has to be downstairs brewing it.

  Eva is up. And I know somehow that she never went to bed.

  Valentine’s Day, the Red Roof Inn

  Henry

  This one has a foot-and-shoe fetish. He told me so on the phone. I have no idea what to expect.

  I check my watch. It’s three minutes to four. Three minutes to showtime. Only briefly do I reflect on the irony of the date, on the fact that here I am, sitting in the parking lot of some motel, on Valentine’s Day. Here I am, selling myself to a stranger, while all over the world sweethearts are opening boxes of candy and popping bottles of champagne.

  I laugh a little to myself. In a few months I’ll be twenty-nine years old. I’ve never had a boyfriend last longer than a few months. My record-holder is Sean, an Irish boy with red hair from South Boston, who’d stuck around for four months and sixteen days. Sean’s pubes felt like a Brillo pad, and he had a disgusting addiction to Cheetos. His lips glowed a perpetual orange. After polishing off a bag, he had the rankest breath I’ve ever encountered. I wonder briefly how Sean is celebrating Valentine’s Day, then conclude I really don’t really care.

  I pop a mint into my mouth and step out of my Jeep, lifting a heavy black traveling case from the backseat. I don’t feet lonely, or depressed, or sorry for myself—not with my dick already lengthening down the leg of my jeans. Not with the prospect of some guy paying me big bucks just for the privilege of being with me.

  The guy told me he’d be in room 215. The motel is U-shape
d, with an outdoor staircase leading up to the second floor, where the rooms are accessed off a wraparound landing. An elderly couple passes me on my way up the steps, the wife looking at me oddly. And why not? My jeans are practically spray-painted on, I wear a silver latex tank top under my leather jacket, and just what, she must be thinking, is in this case?

  I can hardly suppress a smile. This is all just so totally unlike me. At least, so unlike Henry Weiner, insurance claims specialist, who just this morning sat glassy-eyed through his weekly staff meeting, attired in his usual tweed sportcoat and Bass Weejuns. Every five or six minutes I looked at my watch, chewing idly on my pencil as my supervisor droned on about projected earnings. When it came time for me to give my weekly report, I straightened my papers against the table, cleared my throat, and read off my figures in my usual efficient monotone. To my coworkers, I’m a reliable, competent, even skilled claims manager, whose drab clothing and serious demeanor merely reflect a studious commitment to my work.

  Or rather, that’s what they think it reflects. But there’s another Henry Weiner, and you don’t have to scratch too deep to find him. This is the Henry Weiner who, as a horny teenager, regularly swiped Blueboy and Honcho magazines from the drugstore in my hometown of West Springfield, Massachusetts. I’d read them with a flashlight under my covers late at night, jacking off one, two, three times before falling asleep. This is the Henry Weiner who, as a University of Massachusetts student, was one of the loudest and most flamboyant members of my campus gay group, whose first sex with another guy was outside and in broad daylight, behind the student union. This is the Henry Weiner my coworkers don’t know. This is the Henry Weiner who takes chances. This is the Henry Weiner who had closed himself down, hidden himself under a guise of respectability—read, geekiness—until Jeff O’Brien rescued me and set me free.

  Few at my job suspect this other side. A few months ago, I brought a hip young secretary out to Avalon with me on Sunday night. Veronica’s a real fag hag. “I just know you’ve got muscles under that jacket, don’t you, Henry?” she’d gushed. I suggested she find out for herself on Sunday night. She agreed, and found out a lot more than that—though none of our other coworkers would believe her tales when she got back to work on Monday. She’d been astounded watching me on the dance floor with Jeff and Brent and the other shirtless boys, the transformation almost too drastic for her to comprehend. For the rest of the week, all Veronica could do was stare at me in my cubicle as I demurely processed claim forms.

  If she thought that was drastic, she should see me now. I laugh to myself as I head for room 215, lugging the traveling case at my side. I feel my dick swell almost to its full size.

  I rap on the door. A good, hearty man’s rap, no girly knock-knock. The door is opened by a man in his sixties: gray hair, glasses, thin, in white collar shirt and beige polyester slacks. He stands in his socks, about eye-level with me.

  “Hank?” the man asks breathlessly.

  I nod. I’d ditched the “Brick”—it just sounded too funny, making me want to crack up every time anybody referred to me that way. Instead I chose “Hank.” It’s a derivative of Henry, after all: my grandfather had always called me Hank, much to my mother’s dismay. As a boy, I’d never liked “Hank”; it sounded too much like “wank” or the sound you made when you blew your nose. But now it seems absolutely perfect: still a part of myself, but different. Manlier. Studlier.

  “And you must be Gilbert,” I say.

  The man nods, stepping aside to let me in. The room is standard motel fare: two full-sized beds against the wall, separated by a small table with a phone and a clock. On the opposite wall is a desk and a small bureau, above which hangs a large mirror. I set the case down on the floor.

  “Oh, your pictures don’t do you justice,” Gilbert says, falling to his knees. “You are a god, sir! Thank you for allowing me to lick your boots!”

  They’re Jeff’s. Old Doc Martens from his ACT UP days.

  “And you did bring the others, too, sir?” the man asks without looking up.

  “Open that bag,” I command.

  The man crawls over and unzips the case with his teeth. A nice little touch; I should’ve ordered him to do it that way. I do my best to stifle a laugh.

  “Oh, thank you, sir!” The man lifts a pair of beige work boots out of the case. They’re Shane’s. He told me he wears them to shovel snow. Shane has a size-twelve foot, and Gilbert had wanted the biggest shoe size I could find, even if my own foot was nine and a half.

  There are other goodies in the case. Dirty sneakers. Dirty socks. A pair of aviator boots (also Jeff’s) with the zipper up the side. A pair of shiny patent-leather tuxedo shoes which I’ve owned since high school, not worn since my senior prom. And finally, my Bass Weejuns from work. Gilbert had even wanted those.

  He kisses and caresses every single pair. “I want to worship your feet and your shoes, sir!” He presses a Weejun to his face, sniffing the inside.

  I fold my arms across my chest. “Yes, you will worship your master’s feet and shoes.”

  “Yes, sir. Oh, yes, sir!” Gilbert goes back to licking my boots.

  I can’t resist the smile that stretches across my face. My eyes move around the room. On the table, ten crisp new twenties are fanned out. I love it when clients leave the money in plain sight. It’s such a turn-on. I spot the man’s keys next to the cash. On the key ring I discern a Star Market value card, just like the one I have myself.

  I sit down on the edge of the bed. I watch the back of Gilbert’s head as he licks my boots. I imagine him buying TV dinners and frozen pizzas and kitty litter for his cat. I don’t know if he even has a cat, but somehow I imagine he does. In our brief phone conversation, he’d told me he was a retired appliance salesman. Where had he worked? I wonder. Sears? Or possibly his own little shop, in one of those working-class towns of central Massachusetts. Maybe he’d been Gil the Appliance Man, the Washing Machine Guy, the Stove-and-Refrigerator King. Housewives from Gardner to Fitchburg knew they could count on Gil!

  I smile to myself. Why does this happen, every time? Why do I always imagine scenarios for every guy I meet? I wonder if all escorts do that, or if eventually they become so jaded every guy looks the same.

  It’s been with such remarkable ease that I’ve fallen into the escort routine. All so excruciatingly simple. My AOL profile had led to an online escort bulletin board with my own Web site, complete with several photos. Most nights now when I get home from work, I sign on, click my way into an escort chat room, then go about making dinner, doing laundry, watching TV. The ring of instant messages brings me back to the computer, and I’ll either tell pic collectors to buzz off or I’ll make a connection. Legitimate guys get my cell phone number, and we arrange our dates over the phone, sometimes for that evening, more often a day or two in advance. I’m insistent that I only make out-calls, for I remain uncomfortable about letting anyone into my space.

  Most of the guys meet me in hotels or motels, but a few take their chances and invite me to their homes. I shy away from any South End addresses, fearful I’ll end up hired by someone I know or recognize. I prefer guys from the suburbs, because I know practically no one out there. In the past few weeks I’ve traveled out to Woburn and Melrose and as far north as Methuen. A few inevitably turn out to be no-shows, but most come through. In all, I’ve made twenty-five hundred dollars, including tips—and every cent tax-free, with no overhead except for the gas in my Jeep.

  Jeff just laughs. “It doesn’t gross you out to see big rolls of flesh?” he asked. “Saggy tits? Little pink dicks that can’t get hard?”

  It is odd, I have to admit that. On the dance floor, if a guy has even a little bit of a fleshy overhang, I never took twice at him. Maybe that’s why you haven’t found a boyfriend, I think now, scolding myself. But as an escort, it doesn’t matter what they look like. It only matters what I took like.

  I can’t explain it. There’s just something happening for me, meeting these men and havi
ng sex with them. Every one of my clients seems so exquisitely satisfied when we’re done, many tucking an extra twenty or fifty or even a hundred into my back pocket. I’ve started getting repeat calls. Business, as they say, is booming.

  That’s it. That’s what turns me on to this whole enterprise. I’m not only good at what I do, but I enjoy doing it. For the first time in my life, I really like my work.

  Gilbert has by now removed my boots and my socks and is busy cleaning between my toes with his tongue. “That’s it, slave,” I say. “That is your purpose in life. To service my feet.”

  I lean back on my elbows on the motel bed. How did I learn it? How do I know just what to say? Instinct. I just fall into it naturally, as if I were born to do it.

  I can feel Gilbert’s warm, slippery tongue slide between and around my toes. It feels awesome. No circuit boy ever gave me a toe-sucking job like this.

  “Master, please put on these shoes now.”

  I lean my head forward to see what Gilbert is offering. Shane’s work boots. I nod and the man slips them on my feet. They feel enormous.

  “Walk in them, please, sir!”

  I oblige. The boots are so big, they nearly fall off my feet. I feel like Donald Duck flapping around the room. I can’t help but let out a laugh.

  “Tell me how big those feet are, sir, please!”

  “Size—twel—” I have to cover my mouth to keep from hysterics.

  “Please don’t laugh, sir,” Gilbert says, momentarily reminding me who’s paying the bill here.

  “I’m not laughing, slave.” I hide my amusement and summon Hank’s butch voice. “They are size twelve, you puny runt!”

  The man seems near faint. “Oh, they are bigger even than that,” Gilbert says, jacking himself now, looking intently at the oversized shoes. “They are even bigger than that!”

  I catch his drift. “Yes!” I bark. “They are size fourteen! No, fifteen!”

  “Ohhhhh!”

  The man falls to the ground, his mouth eagerly lapping at Shane’s scuffed boots. I picture Shane wearing them, shoveling snow off the sidewalk in front of his house.