Where the Boys Are

by William J. Mann

  “Lloyd,” Henry says, nudging me. “Look who’s coming now.”

  My eyes move down the parade. Here she comes: Mae West, cooing and posing and shaking her padded hourglass figure for the delight of the crowd. Candi’s there, too, and I can see her more clearly now, in her black Lycra and fishnet stockings, purring like Eartha Kitt, cracking her whip at the crowd. There are other young dykes surrounding Eva, too: one dressed all in silver lame, another in leather. They form a moving ring around her. Miss West’s bodyguards.

  “She’s awesome,” Henry says, sitting up at attention. “Lloyd, you have to give Eva credit. She did what you asked. She found a niche for herself, her own group of friends.”

  She doesn’t even look over at me as she passes by. To Henry she blows a kiss, but to me she gives no glance, not even an awareness that she knows I’m here.

  Henry turns to me. “Shane says Eva’s having an affair with some woman named Candi, who works at the sex shop. Shane talks to Eva a lot, and he says they’re hot and heavy.”

  I scoff. “I’m sure it’s not sexual. Eva’s not gay.”

  “Which one is Candi?”

  “The one in the fishnets.”

  Henry looks at her and raises his eyebrows. “Very hot.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I guess she is.”

  “Shane says Eva’s been hanging out at Vixen, the lesbian bar, that she’s discovering her true queer self after all these years.”

  It seems ludicrous to me. “Well, she did chop off all her hair,” I say. “You can’t tell because of that Mae West wig, but underneath it’s short and spiky.”

  “A lesbian rite of passage, I guess.”

  “She’s no lesbian,” I grumble.

  Henry shrugs. “Lloyd, if she’s eating pussy, she’s a lesbian.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing. She’ll do anything, be anything, just so as to not be alone. It’s really very sad.”

  I look at her now, basking in the crowd’s adulation, her dyke cohorts surrounding her. She sure doesn’t seem sad. She seems defiant, smug.

  I’m the one who’s left with an overwhelming sadness. I think of the photograph of the two of us, smashed on my floor. I remember the talks we once had, late into the night, how present she had been, how involved she’d been in my grief. Had it all been a ruse? Had I merely been a preferred substitute for Alex, who had been standing in for Steven, who himself had simply been a replacement for the father whose love she craved?

  Still, no matter what, none of that can take away how she helped me. How she showed up when I needed someone most. How she was there to listen, to suggest, to advise, to comfort. I miss that person. Miss her terribly, especially with Jeff once again in a deep funk.

  I know what you’re probably thinking. Be careful what you wish for. I’d wanted Eva to find a life of her own, and she did, disappearing for entire evenings sometimes, whole chunks of the day. Yet if I sound like sour grapes, consider this salient little fact: because of her absences—because of the time she spends discovering this new “life of her own”—I’m frequently left to do the majority of the work at the guest house. Once, she would rise early to arrange the fresh flowers, to make up a tray of muffins, to set the coffee perking. Now I’m lucky if she manages to saunter in during the afternoon to help with the laundry. Peak season having passed, we’ve let our houseboys go, and we’ve resumed doing the work ourselves. Except it’s been mostly me doing the work.

  “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” she’s asking some muscle stud in the crowd. The gay boys cheer her, and she saunters away, one hand on her hip, the other pushing at her wig.

  Then, behind her, I note someone dressed as Darth Vader. All black cape and heavy breathing, no sign of a face. I imagine it’s another of her lesbian friends, because Eva keeps turning around to make sure Darth is behind her. At one point she even takes its hand.

  “That’s one big dyke,” I say.

  All at once Darth Vader turns to look at me. The creature stops its march down the street and locks its vision onto me sitting there on the curb. For the second time tonight, I feel my blood suddenly run cold.

  Henry notices it. “Ooh. She thinks you’re Luke Skywalker.”

  Eva’s urging Darth Vader on, tugging at its hand. Reluctantly the creature obeys.

  “That was creepy,” I say.

  “Whoever it was,” Henry says, “it seemed awfully interested in you.”

  It sure did. Was this another lesbian avenger I’d have to watch out for, another one Eva had turned against me?

  Henry leans into me. “You’re not into going dancing tonight, are you, Lloyd? I know how much you don’t like crowded clubs.”

  “That’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s Halloween. Let’s go in and see who wins the prizes.”

  Crowded isn’t the word for it. It’s hotter in the A House than it is on the beach in the middle of August. How some of these folks keep their costumes on, I can’t fathom. Shane and Miss Izzy command the dance floor, taking up more than their share of space, each with their gargantuan Glinda hoopskirts. They make faces at each other, sticking their tongues out and rolling their eyes. At one point they have a hissy fit, like two cats on a fence, and it takes four guys in gold mesh to separate them.

  Shane, in a sulk, beckons to Henry to join him on the dance floor. But Henry declines, preferring to stay at my side, leaning against the bar. I see the disappointment on Shane’s powdered face, the way he turns away to hide how he’s feeling.

  “Go on and dance,” I tell Henry. “I’m fine here.”

  “Naw,” he demurs. “I’d rather stay with you.”

  I notice something in his eyes that makes me just the slightest bit uncomfortable. Sure, our time together has been incredible, the intimacy between us empowering and rewarding. But just what is happening between us? I recall how Henry backed out of going with Shane to the Black and Blue Party in Montreal, which, I gather, is one of the premier events on the circuit. He’d asked if I wanted to go, but I said no; Sundance had been fun, but I really couldn’t get any more time off. So Henry declined Shane as well, choosing to come down here to Provincetown instead, where we bought pumpkins and decorated Nirvana for Halloween.

  “Maybe you can come to my mother’s house with me for Hanukkah,” Henry says now, leaning into me. “I really wished I’d had someone to bring home on Rosh Hashanah. My mother keeps telling me that if I ever meet anyone, she’d like for me to bring him home.”

  Oh, God. As if all our dramas aren’t complicated enough, now Henry wants to bring me home to meet his mother. I just smile, making no commitment.

  I decide to leave once Miss Izzy is announced the winner of the Best Costume contest. I figure Henry will want to stay and console Shane, but he comes with me, agreeing that it’s too hot in the bar to enjoy himself. I doubt he really believes that. Had a club ever been too hot for him and Jeff? Wouldn’t they have merely peeled off their shirts and slipped into the crowd, reveling in the sweat and the huddled masses, groping and being groped?

  We walk out onto the street where an orange autumn moon rides high in the black sky. The sounds of the music from the bar fade off as we head out to the bay, the moon reflecting off the water. There are a few revelers out here, some still in costume. Their drunken laughter tumbles across the sand.

  “Henry,” I say, “do you understand the problem between Eva and me?”

  “I think so.”

  “What are they?”

  He looks at me, unsure why he’s being tested. “Well, she just got too caught up in your life at the expense of her own.”

  “And?”

  He looks puzzled. “Well, I guess she had too many expectations of you. Wanted you to be something to her that you couldn’t.”

  I nod. “Does that sound familiar to you at all?”

  He makes an odd face, then looks off in the direction of the revelers down near the shore.

  “That’s Eva,” he says.

  I smil
e. “Yes. That is Eva. But maybe, Henry, maybe can you see yourself, too?”

  He looks at me. “Lloyd, I meant, that’s Eva. Over there.” He nods toward the group of giddy partiers across the sand.

  I turn quickly. He’s right. It is Eva. In the moonlight, I can see her removing her big blond wig. She accepts a plastic cup from Candi, who holds a bottle of wine. Oh, great. Now they’re drinking in public. That’s all we need. The co-owner of Nirvana arrested for public intoxication and getting her name printed in The Provincetown Banner.

  But then something else catches my attention. I think Henry notices at the same time.

  Darth Vader is with them, too.

  Except without the mask.

  Even at this distance, even with just the moonlight to illuminate the face, I can make out who it is.

  “Holy shit,” Henry says.

  “Is that who I think it is?” I ask incredulously.

  He shakes his head in wonder. “None other.”

  “But how?” I ask.

  And—perhaps more important—why?

  Meanwhile, in Boston

  Jeff

  I can’t believe how much I miss him.

  Good God, Jeff, you’re fucked up, I scold myself. You are so fucked up.

  I’ve been talking to myself like that for weeks. Every time I come back into this apartment, I start missing him again, and I have to yell at myself.

  It’s good that he’s gone! It was a dead-end relationship! You were going to end it anyway!

  I sigh and switch on the light. Mr. Tompkins makes a mad dash for his dish, and I shake some food into it. I’ve just gotten back from Connecticut, where I took Jeffy trick-or-treating around my mother’s neighborhood. He went as Batman. Every time someone opened their door, instead of “trick or treat” he’d say “I’m Batman” in a surprisingly good imitation of Michael Keaton. His performance usually earned him an extra Milky Way or roll of Smarties.

  My voice-mail light is blinking. As usual, my heart races. Maybe he’s called. Maybe it’s him. Picking up my phone, I press my code for messages.

  But it’s just Lloyd. “Jeff,” he says. “If you don’t get in too late, give me a call.”

  I hang up, angry with myself. Just Lloyd. How fucked up was that? A couple of months ago I was pining for Lloyd. Now we’re in regular contact and I’m missing some mystery man who ran out of my life.

  A mystery man whose smile used to melt my heart.

  Who once sang me a silly love song on the street.

  I look over at the clock. Is 11:30 too late to call Lloyd back? I know he usually goes to sleep early, since he gets up at the crack of dawn to make muffins for the guests. But it’s Halloween, after all, and Henry’s in Provincetown with him. He and Henry do everything together these days. How nice for them. Maybe Henry got Lloyd to go out to the A House, and now they’re dancing shirtless together, maybe even on X.

  I hope they’re having a fabulous time.

  All I really want to do is go to bed. I’m beat. I’m late getting back because Mom had insisted I stay for supper, Jeffy seconding her with an energetic refrain of “Please, Unca Jeff!” So I gave in. Mom whipped us up some tuna fish heavy with mayonnaise, Campbell’s baked beans, and instant butter-flavored mashed potatoes. We sat around the same kitchen table where, as a kid, I’d consumed many similar nutritiously suspect meals. Still, it tasted yummy.

  But her comfort food offered no palliative for what ailed me. If anything, my time around Mom’s kitchen table left me even more depressed, for it pointed up the absence of any real family in my life. As much as I loved Jeffy and Ann Marie, what was missing were people with whom I could be real. People with whom I could be myself. People who knew my history, my culture, my life—and understood it. Driving back to Boston, I cried, for maybe the tenth time that week, thinking about Javitz. Odd, isn’t it? I’ve been crying more about him in the last few months than I did for the entire first three and a half years after his death.

  Lloyd says I’d been repressing my grief. Holding it back. Pretending it wasn’t there. I’ll tell you one thing: it sure as hell is a lot easier not to cry than to actually do it. Crying takes guts. I’d always heard you felt better after allowing yourself a good, long cry. Well, that’s bullshit. Each time I cry I feel worse. The memories, the pain, the guilt. The tears bring the emotions to the surface, where they get all wedged up in the bottleneck between my chest and my throat.

  Sometimes I feel as if I’m having a heart attack. Or at least heartburn. Driving back to Boston, I had to pull over on the Mass Pike and buy some Maalox.

  But I don’t want you feeling sorry for me. Please don’t go there. I’m very aware that it’s not a pretty picture that I’m painting, and if you’ve figured anything out about me by now, it’s that I have a decided preference for pretty pictures when it comes to myself. Yet there’s not much I can do to beautify the situation. Ever since coming back from San Francisco, I’ve been a mess. My friendship with Henry is over. I’d fucked up with Anthony. And my feelings about Lloyd are all jumbled in my head all over again. You’d think on some level I’d be glad that Anthony’s gone. That sure, I’d feel some compassion for him, and hope that he’s okay, but by bolting out of my life, he’d made things so much simpler, allowing me to concentrate on rebuilding my relationship with Lloyd. After all, that’s what I’d really been wanting all along, wasn’t it?

  Wasn’t it?

  I think of Lloyd and Henry together at the Russian River. I picture them chest to chest on the dance floor in Provincetown. Is this simply one more episode that demonstrates Lloyd’s long-standing phobia of commitment? Had he, just as we were reconnecting yet again, suddenly made a jump to Henry, just as he’d once jumped to Drake, and then to Eva? And if so, how ironic is that? Lloyd’s presence was certainly as much of an impetus for Anthony’s beeline out of my life as any revelation I’d made about Mrs. Riley.

  And, if I’m being honest with myself, how much of Lloyd’s jump to Henry was influenced by my own lingering attachment to Anthony, a reality Lloyd could not have failed to observe?

  I walk into the kitchen and flip on the light. On my refrigerator is the little card Anthony had given me months ago. I’d found it in my drawer on my first day back here after getting home from San Francisco. To Jeff, the card read. With thanks for taking me in. Happy V Day. Love, Anthony.

  I close my eyes. I can see him on the sidewalk of New Orleans, singing me that ridiculous song. I can see him at Disney World, his eyes all aglow, shouting “Happy Gay Disney Days!” to every faggot he saw. I can see him asleep next to me in my bed, the sheet rising rhythmically over his chest as he breathed, his full lips slightly parted, a speck of sleep stuck in his lashes.…

  “Oh, God,” I say, and the grief is physical again. I find the Maalox, gave it a shake, and swallow a generous gulp right from the bottle.

  I walk into my office and sit down at my desk. My face is reflected in my dark computer screen.

  We’re just links in a chain of sugar daddies, my friend. I’d advise you not to get too attached.

  Did I really mean no more to Anthony than Randy Phillips? Than that nameless guy from Albany? Than whoever he’s surely taken up with by now?

  “It can’t be,” I say aloud. Anthony loved me. He said so, many times. He wasn’t pretending. There was never anything insincere about Anthony. Never.

  I open the file on my desk. From my pocket I withdraw a piece of paper that I plan to add to it. Something I discovered today in Connecticut, at the end of a frustrating day. Yes, I’ve kept up the search. Something’s compelled me to do so. Anthony might be gone, but my obsession to find the truth is not. So I took advantage of being in Connecticut for the day, making my first stop at probate court. But Robert Riley’s will had proved of no help; he’d left everything to his mother, not naming Anthony as any beneficiary.

  So next I called the state’s gay advocacy organization, hoping somebody there could tell me something about the Riley case. But the yo
ung kid who answered the phone said he had been five in 1986; he knew nothing. He did give me the name of a veteran gay activist, and I’d left a message on her machine. But she’d never called back.

  It was at the State Department of Public Health that I finally found something, and looking at it again now, I’m still not sure how it fits. Anthony had said his father was dead. I’d already written to Lake Bluff, Illinois, which he’d claimed as his hometown, and found no death of any man there with the last name of Sabe from 1969 to the present. I paid quite generously for that search, too. Of course, his father’s last name didn’t have to be Sabe, but it was all I had to go on.

  Combing through the Connecticut indexes myself saved me some cash, but almost cost me too much time. The office was getting ready to close for the day when the entry finally jumped out at me: SABE, ANTHONY, died 1-5-95. I quickly paid for a copy of the record without really looking at it. I didn’t want to be late meeting Jeffy for trick-or-treating.

  It wasn’t until later, as Mom was whipping up her instant potatoes, that I had time to look at the document fully. And what I saw made me exclaim out loud.

  “What is it?” Ann Marie asked.

  I couldn’t answer right away. “Just something … I’m working on for a story.”

  “I’m glad you’re writing again, Jeff,” she said.

  I looked again at the words written in the space for cause of death.

  Pneumocystis, as a result of HIV infection.

  If this was Anthony’s father, he had died of AIDS.

  My eyes glanced up to the top of the document. Anthony Sabe. PLACE OF BIRTH: Lebanon. Hadn’t Anthony said he thought the name was of Middle Eastern extraction?

  But was it his father? The age worked: the guy was born in 1946, but he was also listed as “Never Married.” Was this Anthony Sabe gay, too? My Anthony had nothing good to say about his father. Was it because he was gay? How did all of this fit?

  A thought strikes me as I sit here. What if it’s this Anthony Sabe who lived with Robert Riley, and not my Anthony? Allowing for that possibility suddenly makes all the other pieces of the puzzle fit more logically. It explains better the relationship between the “roommates,” given that they were roughly the same age. It would explain Mrs. Riley’s apparent memory of the Anthony who lived with her son.