Where the Boys Are

by William J. Mann

  “Lloyd,” she says, and her voice has taken on that all-too-familiar shaky, teary cadence, “please don’t see him today. My nerves are shot. I’m so overworked and rundown. If something were to happen …”

  I spin on her. “Are you saying I can never leave the house? That I’m trapped here just because you’re afraid you can’t handle a crisis on your own?”

  She recoils from my words. “Please don’t yell at me,” she says in a tiny voice.

  “I’m not yelling,” I say, sighing, closing my eyes, leaning against the refrigerator.

  So it’s come to this: sniping and shouting. The rift between us has only grown in recent weeks. I’ve become increasingly distant, finding that when I’m with her, all I do is analyze her every word, her every action. It’s not fair to her and it’s also driving me crazy, so I just retreat to my room as early as possible, plug in my earphones, and get lost in my music. Sarah McLaughlin. Alanis Morrisette. Jewel. A couple of times Eva has told me she’s knocked on my door but I haven’t heard her. Which is exactly how I intended it.

  Oh, this is not what I imagined Nirvana would be. This isn’t why I got involved in this venture, followed this path. Believe me, I’ve tried talking it out with her. I asked her point-blank if she was in therapy, and she became evasive, finally admitting she hadn’t found someone she “clicked” with. I tried getting her to level with me, to admit to her insecurities, to face them and deal with them. I tried to get her to disclose the incident Ty had told me about, to explore what had motivated her, how her loneliness and grief can sometimes cause her to do unwise things. But nothing. She just started to cry.

  A week ago, I sat her down and asked if she was happy. She insisted she was. I told her I felt she needed to make some friends on her own, that she couldn’t rely only on me as support, or simply co-opt my friends. I explained gently that I needed more space from her, that given how stressed we both were from running the guest house, I really, really needed some quiet time, all to myself. She assured me that she completely understood.

  Yet the very next day she developed a terrible headache, weeping and trembling, and begged me to sit next to her on her bed and hold her hand. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she lamented. “I feel so depressed.” She fell asleep with me holding her hand. I felt as if she’d conned me, yet again, into giving her what she wanted.

  After episodes like these, I distance myself from her. She’ll attempt to reel me back in with little gifts: candles and incense and hazelnut chocolate and even a pair of boots I admired at one of the leather shops in town. But the more she tries to buy back my favor, the more I resist being bought. And so it continues.

  The topper came just yesterday, when, retreating to the sanctuary of my room, I detected the unmistakable fragrance of Eva’s perfume. Lilacs. She’d been in my room. The aroma lingered strongest among the sheets of my unmade bed. I actually felt violated.

  I went right out to Land’s End hardware and bought a new doorknob lock, the kind I could secure with a key from the outside whenever I left the room.

  I know this is no way to run a business together. Yet confronting her seems to do no good.

  Unless she’s in therapy, working on these issues, I don’t know how we can continue. I told that to her. She promised she’d find someone. But it’s a promise she made once before and failed to keep.

  I can’t help but wonder just what it was that Ty had twice tried to tell me. I can tell you things that would make your hair stand on end. What insights into Eva’s character, into her past, have I refused to hear?

  So here it is Fourth of July, and I’m at my wit’s end. I pass the rest of the day doing my best to avoid her and concentrate instead on seeing Jeff again. The return of the sun assures that all of our guests are quickly out of the house. Once the beds are made and the laundry complete, I let the houseboys go for the afternoon and take an hour myself to lie in the sun on the deck. Eva, thankfully, is nowhere in sight.

  In my room, I decide to nap before seeing Jeff. I want to be fresh and energized for him. Flopping down onto my bed, I think about Jeff and Javitz and me, how long ago those days seem now. I’ve been feeling so alone these past few months, despite the steady crush of guests and Eva’s ubiquitous presence. I’m consumed suddenly with the desire to see Javitz physically, to hear him once again. I reach down and fumble under my bed through my videos. I have quite the porno collection—necessary for getting through the bleak isolation of a Provincetown winter—but I’m not looking for Tom Chase or Cole Tucker. I’m looking for David Mark Javitz. And I can tell simply by touch which video is him.

  I pop it into the VCR at the foot of my bed. It’s a video we made one summer seven or eight years ago, Jeff and Javitz and I, with a videocam borrowed from Javitz’s friend Ernie. Just a goof, really, just playing around. There are about sixteen minutes of banter, the three of us on the deck of a rented summer house off Commercial Street. It was a glorious sunny day, much like today. I settle back against my pillows and hit PLAY on the remote control.

  After the blue lead, the video crackles into life. “Is it on?” Jeff’s asking.

  “I think so,” Javitz replies. He’s behind the camera. “Though I can’t claim videography to be one of my many talents.” He laughs unseen, that raw, throaty, smoke-chewed laugh of his I miss so much.

  The camera trembles as it focuses on Jeff, sitting on the deck, squinting into the sun. How young he looks. No lines on his face. Then it pans over to me. I wave. I cringe watching myself, as I always do. Why do people always wave at the camera in home movies?

  I haven’t watched this in a long time. After Javitz first died, I watched it often, desperate to keep his image in my memory. I didn’t want to forget. I wanted to remember every little detail of him, keep them burned into my brain: how he moved, how he sat in a chair, how he held his cigarette.

  In the video, Jeff is standing up, insisting Javitz give him the camera. “You’re going too fast,” he scolds, in the way only Jeff can scold. There’s a blip of darkness, then suddenly a close-up of Javitz fills the screen. What a star entrance. It always takes my breath away.

  “Is this my best angle?” he’s asking as Jeff pulls back to take in a full-length shot. Javitz poses like a pinup girl in a little black Speedo, showcasing his long, thin body. He puts a hand on his hip and sashays across the deck, shaking his shoulder-length curly black hair. It makes me think momentarily of Eva as Mae West. But Javitz isn’t imitating anybody. He was way too much of an original to do imitations.

  “No,” I’m saying, moving into the frame. “Here’s his best angle!”

  I grab Javitz around the waist and bend him forward, so that his ass sticks up straight. Jeff zooms in until everything is out of focus. All you can hear is Javitz’s laugh. “Haw haw haw haw!”

  Darkness again. We set the camera on a tripod, and now there’s a long shot of the three of us, grinning ridiculously, our arms around each other’s shoulders. It’s not just Jeff who looks young, it’s all of us. How old was I then? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven? Such babies. So full of life. Even Javitz. Thin, but not with the wasting that came later. His face is round and full. Jeff isn’t nearly as muscled as he is now. And all that hair on my head!

  Another little blip of darkness, and then there’s Jeff’s voice back behind the camera. “Okay,” he’s saying. “Just wanted to get it for posterity. Javitz was about to say something profound.”

  Javitz arches an eyebrow at him and exhales smoke over his shoulder. I can smell it.

  “Go, ahead,” Jeff’s saying, unseen, the camera framing Javitz and me at the table, the sparkling blue bay behind us. “Keep talking. Forget I’m here. I’m just playing a little cinema verite.”

  “You don’t even know what that is,” Javitz growls, arching an eyebrow.

  “Do, too. I’m a film buff, remember?”

  Javitz rolls his eyes. “Bette Davis never made any cinema verité.”

  “Cat,” I’m saying, “turn it off
. We’re having a conversation.”

  “No! Javitz, finish what you were saying.”

  “What I was saying, Lloyd,” he says, turning away from the camera as Jeff zooms in for a close-up of his profile, “is that when the three of us are together, when we’re sitting around the wood stove at your place, or up here on the deck in Provincetown, and we’re talking, talking about the world and what it means and how we could make it better—when we’re like that, and you settle back into my arms and Jeff comes out with hot chocolates for all of us, when we get so tired we begin to fall asleep on each other’s shoulders—in those moments I have the greatest passion of my life.”

  I can feel his breath. I can see the little red lines in the whiteness of his eyes.

  That’s when the video stops. I think Jeff felt it was a little too intrusive and turned the thing off. But how glad I am now that he captured that moment. How often I have watched it, over and over. I have it memorized, every scene, every word. How happy we had been then. All of us.

  Jeff’s seen the video only once, right after Javitz’s death. He was overcome. He couldn’t even make it through the last scene, walking out of the room in tears. Ever since then, he’s refused every time I’ve suggested watching it again. He just can’t bring himself to see it.

  I hit STOP. The video has the opposite effect on me. It soothes me, comforts me. It lulls me into a place of memory, a time when I was happy. I feel very drowsy suddenly, slipping down among my pillows, falling asleep, dreaming of Javitz and Jeff and me, playing Frisbee on the beach …

  “Go get it,” Javitz is urging me.

  I turn around. The Frisbee has landed in the water and is floating out to sea.

  “Go get it,” Javitz tells me again.

  I look out at the waves. Jeff is out there, trying to get the Frisbee.

  “Go,” Javitz insists.

  But I hesitate. I put my foot into the surf. The water is cold.

  All at once I sit up. My dream fades from my consciousness even as I try to hold on to it. I blink my eyes. I look over at the clock. My little nap has lasted for an hour and a half! It’s now ten minutes past three. I hop out of bed. I have just enough time to shower and ride my bike over to meet Jeff.

  I begin to whistle as I wash. For the first time in weeks, I feel happy. I’m very glad I’ve gotten a little sun, too. Jeff can’t fail to appreciate that glow, I think to myself as I give myself one final check in the mirror.

  I put my hand on the doorknob, cocky as a jaybird.

  It won’t turn.

  I try again. It won’t budge.

  “What the fuck …?”

  It’s locked.

  From the outside.

  But that’s crazy. The only way to lock the door from the outside is with the key I bought.

  And the key is on my key ring.

  And my key ring is …

  Downstairs on the kitchen counter.

  I bang on the door. “Hey!” I bang harder. “Eva! Eva! Are you out there?”

  I look at the clock. It’s twelve minutes to four.

  Meanwhile, at Herring Cove Beach

  Henry

  “So it’s over.”

  I rub the lotion into Brent’s back. It sure is a nice back, I admit to myself. Hard, rippled, defined. Even with the sprinkling of acne, it’s a back I enjoy touching, especially given the kinds of bodies I have been touching for the past several months. It almost doesn’t matter whether Brent uses roids or not to build it. It just feels awesome to run my hands across it.

  “I’m sorry, Brent,” I tell him. “Really I am.”

  Just as I’d predicted, his relationship with Jorge didn’t last. Brent’s “perfect” union didn’t even endure as long as some of his “imperfect” ones. He’s been lamenting it ever since I picked him up to drive down here to Ptown.

  His back lifts in a long sigh. “It’s just that I thought Jorge was the one. He seemed so perfect.” He turns his head to look up at me. “I even didn’t mind not going out to Avalon on Sunday night. Can you imagine? Me! I actually liked staying home and watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Do you know it was the first time I’d ever seen it?”

  I just smile, keeping my hand moving on his back.

  Brent puts his head back down. “But it was too good to last, I guess. Do you know what he said, Henry? He said he just didn’t have those feelings for me. What the fuck does that mean? What are those feelings?” He covers his head with his hands. “Guess I am going to end up that tired old queen I was so afraid of becoming, all by myself.”

  “No, you won’t, Brent.”

  “I will. You know, it’s not very PC to say this, but at least all those guys who died young from AIDS will never have to face growing old and irrelevant. You tell me which is worse.”

  “Brent, you’re being ridiculous.” I knead his shoulders. “It may be an old cliche, but there are other fish in the sea.” Not that I believe it much myself, but what else do you say in such a moment?

  Brent isn’t listening to me. “Yet again,” he cries, “I strike out.”

  I stretch out beside him on the blanket. “He’s the one who struck out, Brent. Not you.”

  Brent turns to look at me. “Hey, thanks, best friend. What a nice thing to say.”

  I just laugh.

  The late-afternoon sun is still strong and full, and it feels wonderful on my skin. Damn the sunblock; another hour won’t hurt. Herring Cove is packed, although by now, one by one, people are leaving, giving themselves plenty of time to freshen up before Tea Dance. Brent and I have decided to forego the tea dances today, saving our energy for tonight. It’s a long weekend, after all. Why not take advantage of the sun? The summer has been so rainy so far.

  Facing out onto the bay instead of the ocean, Herring Cove isn’t nearly as impressive a beach as Race Point, but it’s ours. Everyone knows it’s the gay beach. Over near the parking lot, you might spot a few families, but as soon as you walk in just a few yards, you notice a distinct absence of men among the hundreds of women, and then, a little farther down, not a gal among the hundreds of guys. At the very farthest point, you notice something even more obvious: a mix of men and women without bathing suits. The nude beach isn’t officially sanctioned, so you have to keep watch for rangers, but I’m not interested in taking off my Speedo anyway. I like a tan line, and so do most of my clients.

  Not that I’ve done any escorting since that disaster on Comm Ave. E-mail from my Web site has gone unopened, and I turned off my cell phone. I just can’t bear it right now. I feel as if my whole life has been turned inside out. At work I’ve sat through six different interviews hoping for this goddamn promotion. It was supposed to be a shoo-in, but instead I’m left ragged. Then, when I went home last week for my birthday, my mother, in an attempt at being supportive, asked if I was dating anyone. “You should feel free to bring anyone home with you, Henry,” she said. It only made me feel worse—because I have no one to bring home.

  The crowning indignity, however, is the fact that Jeff forgot my birthday. Sure, I know he’s caught up with all the Anthony drama, but isn’t that always the way? Jeff gets wrapped up in his own life and only calls me when he needs something. Yes, he sent me flowers a few weeks ago, a lovely gesture. But it’s not enough. Not anymore. I’ve settled for too little too late far too often.

  I sit up, resting my arms on my bended knees. In front of me, each lap of the waves brings the sea farther up the beach. The water is a murky blue-green with considerable foam, leaving thousands of sparkly little stones along the sand in its wake. I let out a long, relaxing breath and scope out the beach. So many men. Big men and little men, hairy men and smooth, young and old, beautiful and plain. How many of them are having conversations just like mine and Brent’s? Lamenting their singlehood and misfortune in love? Other than Cher and Madonna, it sure seems to be the favorite topic of gay men.

  At the next blanket, a quartet of middle-aged queens are drinking mimosas. They seem to be lamenting somethi
ng, but I can’t make it out. On their portable CD player the Backstreet Boys are playing too loudly for me to hear anything else. I notice that Brent is quietly singing along: “And that makes me larger than life …”

  I smirk, correcting his lyrics: “Makes you larger, not me.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  I laugh. “Forget it.”

  Brent sits up on an elbow. “So, Henry, if we’re going to be best friends, we’ve gotta know something about each other.”

  I squint down at him. “What’s that?”

  He looks at me with all seriousness. “NSYNC or the Backstreet Boys?”

  I roll my eyes. “Well, I guess I’d have to say Backstreet, just because of Kevin Richardson. How hot is he?”

  Brent makes a face. “You mean you have no opinion in the great NSYNC debate over who’s cuter, Justin or JC?”

  I shake my head. “No. I admit I haven’t pondered the ramifications of such a profound conundrum.”

  “Well, for my money,” Brent says, reaching for the sunblock, “I’ll take 98° any day.” He squirts the lotion over his chest. “They’re all cute, except for scary Justin. And have you noticed how often they put those boys in tank tops? Nothing like those wispy other bands. These guys are built. They could be gay boys.”

  I smile. “Aren’t they?”

  Brent sighs. “No. Not yet, anyway. I say, give all these boy bands a few years. Look at what happened to the New Kids on the Block. Don’t a couple of them live in the South End now, hanging out at the Eagle late at night for last call?”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  Brent lies back down. “I’m sure even Ricky Martin someday will settle down with a nice guy, and the world will simply shrug and say, ‘Big deal.’”

  “We can only hope.”

  “By the way, Henry,” Brent announces, keeping his eyes closed against the sun. “I’ve got some really good party favors for this weekend. I just want to get blotto. We can forget all our troubles and really have fun.”

  Forget all our troubles. I smile to myself. I need to keep a balance here. They’re killing each other again in the streets of Jerusalem; it’s pretty audacious of me to think of my life as being troubled.