How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

by Acito, Marc

  “Which way is Mecca from here?”

  “Down the hall and past the bathroom,” she says.

  “You share a bathroom?”

  “You get used to it. Oh, Edward, living here has done so much for my acting.”

  “Sure, if you ever play a Muslim drug dealer.”

  “Don't be so provincial. Ooh, look at the time,” she says, glancing at her ankle. “We've got to meet Gino downtown in half an hour and he hates it when I'm late. Do you need to use the bathroom before we go?”

  I peek at the room with the rusty plumbing, the cracked tile, and the peeling paint. I'd rather get toxic shock.

  “I can wait,” I say.

  Paula and I take the subway down to the Village to have dinner with her boyfriend, the pasta-monikered Gino Marinelli. We arrive at a Greek diner fifteen minutes early, then wait forty-five minutes for Gino to arrive.

  “There he is!” Paula squeals finally. I look across the room but don't see anybody who could possibly be a Gino Marinelli.

  “Where?” I ask, but Paula has already leaped up and bounded across the restaurant to grab what appears to be a pile of hair with a person attached. With a name like Gino Marinelli I've been expecting a dumpy meatball of a guy, but this Gino looks like a bass player for a heavy metal band. He's got long, skinny legs shrink-wrapped in the tightest of stone-washed jeans and wears a leather jacket with shoulder pads the size of a linebacker's. I can't see his face, partly because of all the hair, but also because he gives Paula a long, sloppy tongue kiss without actually touching her lips, the way you'd imagine Mick Jagger would kiss Gene Simmons. He grabs her big, soft butt with both hands and dry humps her right there until she finally extricates herself and points to me. She takes him by the hand and leads him across the restaurant while he struts behind her.

  “Edward, this is Gino. Gino, Edward.”

  I reach out to shake his hand and he does that thing where we're supposed to knock fists, whatever the hell that's about. He slides into the booth and appraises me from under his bangs.

  “I'm so thrilled you two are finally meeting!” Paula crows.

  Gino narrows his eyes at me and I can tell immediately he doesn't feel the same way.

  I paste a grin on my face and try to keep it there. “Paula tells me you're a film student at NYU.”

  “Gino's going to be a brilliant filmmaker,” Paula says. He shoots her a sideways glance and she flushes. “I mean, he is a brilliant filmmaker. Tell Edward all about your student film, honey.”

  Gino flips open his lighter and stares at it as he flicks it on and off. “Nah, you tell him,” he says, leaning back in the booth. His voice is barely audible, like it's too lazy to bother coming up out of his throat.

  “Well, it's about this woman—that's me—who loses her shirt and wanders all over New York half naked looking for it. Eventually she gets bludgeoned to death in front of the Stock Exchange. There's going to be a lot of blood—it's very Scorsese.”

  “You're going to go topless?” I say.

  “Yes, but it's very artistic,” Paula says. “She loses her shirt, get it? It's a metaphor for the plight of the neglected urban poor.”

  “Plus she had the biggest jugs of anyone who auditioned,” Gino says.

  “Isn't he funny?” Paula squeals and covers his face with kisses, what little of his face that shows, that is. How he can possibly see through a camera lens with all that hair, I'll never know.

  He shrugs her off and says, “I gotta take a leak,” as he skulks away. Paula leans across the table. “So what do you think of him?” she says, flapping her tiny hands in excitement.

  What do I think of him? He's horrible. He's all wrong, wrong, wrong. Give him a bath and a haircut before he takes all your money and dumps you for somebody else. He's a disgusting lowlife pig and you could do so much better.

  “He's great!” I say.

  Wuss.

  Gino comes back and orders a plate of mashed potatoes and gravy. I learn through various reluctant monosyllabic responses that he lives in Brooklyn with his parents and that he has an uncle who knows Robert De Niro, but otherwise it's Paula who works to keep the conversation afloat. Gino's only interested in one thing, or perhaps I should say two things. He leans in and whispers to her.

  “Not tonight,” Paula giggles. “I've got company.”

  Gino sticks his tongue in her ear and I see him reach his hand into her lap. Paula closes her eyes and gives a little moan. I tear my paper napkin into tiny pieces and try to pretend I don't know he's fingering her right in front of me.

  He leans across the table and smiles at me for the first time. Suddenly, it's like he plugged in the sun and I can begin to understand what Paula might see in him. “Hey, Ed,” he says, “you can entertain yourself for an hour or two, can't ya'?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Make it three,” Paula whimpers.

  They leave me with the check. I finish Gino's mashed potatoes and trudge out into the cold, damp streets of Greenwich Village. I figure maybe I'll catch a movie, but I'm too nervous to sit still. So I roam around, squinting at brownstones and trying to imagine the Greenwich Village of Henry James's time when I see a sign in a window that says WE'LL PRINT ANYTHING . . . SO LONG AS YOU LET US KEEP THE GOOD ONES, and I realize I'm standing in front of Toto Photo, the place where we transformed Natie from a small, homely guy into an even homelier girl.

  I must be near Something for the Boys.

  I round the corner and stand across the street trying to decide whether to go in. What's the big deal, right? It's not like I haven't been before. But going into a gay bar with a group of friends from high school is very different from going in alone. Anything could happen by myself. Anyone could happen.

  What the hell am I waiting for?

  The place is only half full, and a number of guys look up when I come in the door. No one's performing, but a small group of men cluster around the piano singing “I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No.” It's really warm and I take off my big thrift-store overcoat. I try to affect a mature demeanor as I order a beer at the bar and then hover on the outskirts of the piano. Across the ceiling they've strung rows and rows of tiny white lights, giving the effect of a starry night sky. The guys around the piano keep pointing at one another as they sing, changing the lyric to “You're just a girl who can't say no,” and laughing. They seem completely at home and normal. Well, as normal as a group of grown men who want to play Ado Annie can seem. They finish and the pianist notices me. It's the same guy from last summer, the one with the happy Humpty-Dumpty face. He gives me a knowing smirk and launches into the introduction to “Corner of the Sky.”

  The music draws me to him like a magnet. “That's amazing,” I say as he vamps. “How did you remember that?”

  “Oh, honey, I'm lousy with names, but I never forget a theme song. Are you gonna sing or what?”

  I take the microphone and sing “Corner of the Sky” to the small but attentive audience. They all smile and beam at me and I feel very adorable. I work the winsome-youth thing a bit, like when I sing for the Wallingford Ladies Musical Society, and the reaction is pretty much the same, except the ladies don't flirt. Well, not as much.

  When I'm done, the pianist reaches over and gives me a little pat on my butt. “How old are you anyway, Corner of the Sky?”

  “Old enough,” I say. “How old are you?”

  “Too old, darlin', too old,” he says, and he begins playing “Time to Start Livin'” from Pippin.

  The whole crowd is too old, really, like at least thirty, but as I huddle around the piano in this little cave of a bar, I feel as if I'm being initiated into some kind of secret brotherhood, like the Masons, except everyone knows the entire score of Follies. Including the songs that were cut.

  An advertising executive with a fake tan and a Duran Duran haircut starts buying me tequila chasers to go with my beers, and it's not long before I'm feeling warm and happy and attractive. His name is Dwayne but he pronounces it D. Wa
yne, which makes me kind of hate him. I'm willing to overlook it, however, because he pays for our drinks with a huge wad of cash held together by a money clip in the shape of a dollar sign.

  I get a little melancholy as we sing “Losing My Mind,” thinking of Doug:

  I want you so,

  It's like I'm losing my mind.

  D. Wayne massages my neck, his long, thin fingers probing my skin. I don't really find him attractive—his face is the color and texture of a paper bag—but I don't care. After months of scheming and strategizing how to get into Doug's pants, to be touched by a man—to be wanted by a man—makes me feel complete.

  Eventually all those beers and tequila want out, so I stagger to the bathroom. There are two, one marked “Men,” the other “Gentlemen,” and I hesitate, trying to decide which I feel like being.

  I choose “Men.”

  I've just unzipped my pants when D. Wayne saunters in and steps up to the urinal next to me. He glances down at my dick and smiles a better-to-eat-you-with-my-dear smile, then pulls out his, giving a little tug on it as he does. I kind of hate him, but I still glance down to see what he's got and am relieved to see his is roughly the same size as mine.

  He doesn't pee.

  Fuck Doug. Why do I torture myself with wanting him when here in Manhattan there are rich men in bathrooms wagging their penises at me? As I'm standing there I begin to construct a new life for myself—Edward Zanni, kept boy. I see myself the favored male companion of some wealthy real estate tycoon, living in a penthouse apartment that has a big terrace with plants in clay pots.

  I can't pee now, of course, particularly since D. Wayne reaches over and takes me in his hand. His long fingers are cold and I flinch. “Don't worry, sweet stuff,” he says. “Daddy won't hurt you.”

  Ick.

  He pushes me up against the side of a stall and does this thing where he licks along my throat. His tongue is long and lizard-y, like his fingers. He rubs his hands over my chest and I feel ashamed I'm not in better shape. O, that this too too solid flesh would melt. “Relax,” he says, and grinds his crotch against mine.

  I'm not hard.

  Shit.

  I close my eyes and grip the cold metal handle on top of the urinal. Come on, cock, what's wrong with you? Rise and shine. Stand up and be counted. D. Wayne jabs his stiffy against my softy like he's trying to beat it into obeying. I sense his impatience.

  “I'm sorry,” I say, stuffing myself into my pants. “I can't.” I push past him and dash out the door.

  I lean against the wall outside the bathroom, trying to compose myself. What the hell is wrong with me? Old guys get impotent, not seventeen-year-olds. I was beginning to think not getting it up with Kelly meant I really was homosexual instead of bisexual, but if you can't get it up with men, either, then what does that make you? A can't-grow-sexual. A floppy-dough-sexual. An I-don't-know-sexual. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. D. Wayne brushes by me and I can almost feel the cold breeze as he passes.

  I wish I'd never come in here. I go to the bar and order a whiskey, down it and order another, just like tortured drunks do in the movies. Okay, I admit it, I've always wanted to do that. The whiskey tastes like turpentine, but I feel a warm glow spread across my cheeks and neck and I lay my head down and try to forget who I am.

  Then from the other side of the room a song pierces my consciousness like a beacon in the fog. I recognize the tune, but can't quite place it, and I flip through the catalogue of music-theater trivia in my brain to figure it out. The voice is familiar, too—a full, rich, professional-sounding baritone, someone I've heard on a Broadway cast album, maybe? The song surges and builds and pushes on my brain until suddenly I recognize it.

  What's wrong with wanting more?

  If you can fly then soar,

  With all there is, why settle for

  Just a piece of sky?

  It's the finale of Yentl, from the scene where Barbra stands on the bow of a ship (just like she does when she sings “Don't Rain on My Parade” in Funny Girl, by the way) and heads for a new life in America.

  It's a sign. I know it. It's a message meant just for me and I shove myself away from the bar and weave across the room, drawn by the beckoning sound, determined to see the messenger sent to inspire and fulfill me. The singer holds the last sustained note for what seems like an eternity and just as he finishes I push my way to the front, the crowd around me applauding like mad, and right then he turns and looks straight at me.

  “Edward?” he says.

  “Mr. Lucas?”

  Mr. Lucas's apartment looks just like him: neat, compact, bookish. The kitchen is no bigger than a phone booth, but there's a little terrace that looks out on a quiet courtyard. The room is boiling from the steam heat and Mr. Lucas takes off his sweater. It's the first time I've ever seen him in anything but a sports jacket and I'm surprised at how muscular his torso is, particularly for a guy who must be forty. The sleeves of his polo shirt are tight on his thick, veiny arms, undoubtedly made strong from years of dragging his legs around. He traipses into the bathroom.

  I've never thought of Mr. Lucas sexually before, but as I watch him I find myself wondering if his spinal cord injury prevents him from having sex. I flop onto the couch and spread my legs in what I hope is a seductive pose while I pretend to call Paula and claim to get no answer. You'd think that someone having erection problems would give it a rest, but hope springs eternal, I guess. Mr. Lucas returns with a glass of water and some aspirin. “Might as well get a head start on tomorrow,” he says, pivoting gracefully on one crutch.

  I must say he's handling the whole running-into-a-student-in-a-gay-bar thing rather well. Then again, it's not like I can tell anybody; otherwise I'd have to admit that I was there in the first place. So Mr. Lucas and I are now linked in our shared secret. We're both part of the brotherhood.

  “Izzit okay if I crash here?” I say.

  He gives me a withering Mr. Lucas look over his glasses. “Apparently you already have,” he says, tossing me a blanket.

  “Thanks.” I really want to take off my sweater, but I don't want him to see that I can't close the top button of my jeans. “Can I open a window?” I say.

  “This place is either too hot or too cold,” he says. “And the pipes clang all night, too, just like Marley's ghost.”

  Fuck it. I'm burning up. I get out of my jeans first, then peel off my sweater.

  “It's a good thing I came along,” Mr. Lucas says, looking the other way. “You can't be too careful nowadays. I assume you've heard about AIDS?”

  This isn't the sexy, precoital conversation I was hoping for. “Yeah, I've heard,” I mumble.

  Mr. Lucas touches me on the arm. “It's serious, Edward. Gay men are getting sick all over this city.” He moves his hand away and shudders. “It's scary.”

  All the more reason to have sex with someone I can trust, I think.

  “Well, you better get some sleep,” he says. “You've got a big day tomorrow.”

  “You sure gotta lotta books,” I say, stalling for time. I scan the meticulously alphabetized shelves, leaning on them so I don't fall over. There are a lot of authors I've heard of—Brecht, Shakespeare, Whitman, Woolf—but there are just as many I don't know—Isherwood, Lorca, Maupin.

  Mr. Lucas smiles at his books like they're old friends. “What are you reading these days?” he says. “For fun, I mean.”

  Fun. I haven't thought about fun since Dagmar moved in, let alone reading. “Nothin',” I say.

  Mr. Lucas frowns. “What's the last book you read that wasn't assigned to you?”

  I have to think about that one. “Catcher in the Rye,” I say finally. “I got pissed 'cuz all the other classes got to read it 'cept us.”

  “You don't have to assign The Catcher in the Rye to get teenagers to read it,” Mr. Lucas says. He leans on the arm of an easy chair. “What did you think of it?”

  “Salinger's an asshole.”

  Mr. Lucas laughs, something he doesn't
often do.

  “Don't hold back,” he says. “What do you really think?”

  “I mean, here's this guy, Holden Caulfield, that every teenager can, like, completely identify with, and what happens to him in the end? He goes nuts. Thazz not very encouraging.”

  “I'm not sure it's supposed to be.”

  “If you ask me, Holden's in a homosexual panic.”

  Mr. Lucas strokes his beard. “Is that so?”