Attack of the Theater People

by Marc Acito

  “Whatever she is, she wants to talk about the gig at the Waldorf.”

  Doug hands me the six. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”

  “Tell her I say hi.”

  Doug’s bedroom is decorated in Early Squalor. There’s a mattress on the floor, a stereo, two guitars, and a beat-up TV with an antenna encased in tinfoil. A few posters of Bruce decorate the dingy walls, and I’m struck again by how much he and Doug look alike—if you squint. The room smells like Doug, a musky scent that instantly makes me harder than the New York Times crossword puzzle.

  I crack open a tallboy and look around.

  Doug keeps his belongings in a wall unit fashioned from stolen milk crates, although his books and albums are on a shelf made of bricks and boards. I kneel down, resisting the urge to sniff his clothes, and instead try to solve the Mystery of the Smudged Postcard. On the shelf sit a bunch of nonfiction books on rock ’n’ roll, a rhyming dictionary, a couple of “Doonesbury” collections, and some titles I don’t know: The Dharma Bums. Howl. Naked Lunch. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I pull out a tattered copy of one book I do know: John Knowles’s A Separate Peace.

  I open it and see that it says, Property of Wallingford High School English Department.

  Because I took honors English throughout high school, I didn’t read A Separate Peace until the summer after I graduated. That was when Paula and I worked as singing waiters at the Jersey shore. We lived above an ice-cream parlor in a rickety apartment with crooked floors, and I found a weathered paperback copy on the bookshelf next to the couch you sank into like quicksand. I read it in one long day on the beach, lingering under the lowering sun, lost in the fierce friendship of its prep school protagonists. As a result, I can’t think of A Separate Peace without hearing waves and feeling the salt sting of the ocean breeze, remembering my own separate peace when life seemed so full of possibility, that magic time after I got the money to pay for Juilliard and before it all went horribly, horribly wrong. Paula and I would sit on the roof at night, singing “Our Time” from Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, harmonizing about the worlds we’d change and the worlds we’d win, and being the names in tomorrow’s papers.

  It never occurred to me that name would be the Party Monster.

  It gives me a jolt to know Doug has a copy, because the book reminded me of him when I read it, though I couldn’t decide who was who. If you read it as a tale of sublimated homosexual desire then, of course, I’m the bookish, brooding Gene, so tormented by his infatuation for the carefree, charismatic Phineas that he wants to destroy him. Yet, in a way, I’m also Doug’s Phineas, enticing him to break the shackles of conformity and express himself.

  What’s more, I also stole my copy.

  But is this the book that reminded him of me? I pull the postcard out of my pocket. It’s got too many letters to fit.

  I rise as Doug clomps through the door. “Ziba said to give you this,” he says, then tickles me under my chin. A shiver crosses my cheeks and down my neck, making the hair on my arms stand on end.

  “So you’re okay with our plan?”

  “Sure,” he says, cracking open a tallboy. “I’m just bummed the Almost Shah’s not coming.”

  “How’s the rest of the band feel?”

  “They don’t care about him.”

  “No, I mean about pretending to be the E Street Band.”

  He takes a sip, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “They weren’t sure until I told ’em how much we’re making.”

  I’m about to instruct Doug in act two of his Bruce impersonation when he looks down at my hands. “Hey, that’s the postcard I sent,” he says.

  “Yeah, it’s been driving me crazy for three months.” I hand it to him.

  He reads it, giving a shy smile when he gets to the end. “I guess I wrote this next to the pool.”

  “So?” I say. “What was it you read?”

  He turns and retrieves a paperback from his nightstand, or I should say the milk crate that serves as his nightstand. He holds the book up for me to see.

  It’s On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

  I take back the postcard. “Well, in answer to your question, no, I haven’t read it.”

  Doug flops onto the mattress and props himself up against the wall. “Oh, man, you’ve gotta. It’s like Kerouac sat down and wrote a book especially for me. Everything I think and dream about and believe—it’s all in there.”

  I sit on the edge of the mattress. “So why did it make you think of me?”

  He leans forward, his eyes ablaze. “’Cuz it’s all about people who wanna get out there and live. Who aren’t gonna sit around watchin’ TV until they’re dead.”

  He sees me. Really sees who I am. The person I’m struggling to hold on to. “Is that what I’m like?”

  “Are you kidding?” he snorts. “When your dad told you he wouldn’t pay for Juilliard, most people woulda just laid down and died, but you said, ‘Hell, no,’ and did whatever you had to. And it worked.”

  “Yeah, I got kicked out.”

  “And still you went out and did something.”

  “Please. I got kids to dance at bar mitzvahs.”

  “It beats flippin’ burgers,” he says, “or workin’ in some office. Shit, my dad’s driven a Tastykake truck for twenty years. Whose dream is that?” He hands me the book. “Take it.”

  I thumb through the worn pages, which are full of underlines and margin notes. “But this is your copy.”

  He smiles. “Eddie, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have had the guts to get up onstage and sing. And now look what I’m doin’. I know this Almost Bruce thing is kinda dorky, but with the money I’m earning from Ziba’s party, I can record my own album. My own fuckin’ album. I’ve been writing songs like crazy; they just keep comin’ to me.”

  He reaches for his guitar. “Here’s somethin’ I’ve been workin’ on.” He tunes the strings, then gives a little cough.

  “It’s not done yet.”

  My face is a mask of eager anticipation. Dear Saint Jude, please don’t let it suck.

  He plays the intro, his long fingers working the neck while his other hand strums and beats time on the body. Some say that a guitar is shaped like a woman, but, as Doug’s hand slides up and down the neck, I realize just how much it resembles a penis.

  Funny, that.

  Doug starts to sing, not in the tonsillitis tone of Almost Bruce, but as himself, a clear, cloudless sound:

  Beer-spinned nights with parasites who tell me what I wanna hear,

  When the morning comes there’s just the crumbs from a midnight rocketeer.

  In the light of day there’s just no way to say what I wanna say.

  I feel the thirst, but I fear the worst and I’ve got to get away.

  I put my soul on the shelf,

  Then nine to five to stay alive.

  Put my soul on the shelf

  Get on the road

  And I’m running from myself.

  He stops and looks up. “Whaddya think?”

  His eyes are so blue—like bits of sky.

  “I love it,” I say. And I mean it.

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. The melody’s great and the lyrics are smart and honest. It’s a real step forward.”

  “You don’t think it’s too derivative?”

  “Not at all.” And I love that he used the word derivative in a sentence.

  Doug reaches into his guitar case and retrieves a baggie of pot. “C’mon,” he says, grinning like a randy stable boy, “let’s get wasted.”

  A friend with weed is a friend indeed.

  We talk and talk and talk late into the night, devouring each other’s company omnivorously, not only running over what he needs to do in our plan to trap Chad (Doug’s concerns about acting lessening with each beer), but also musing about music and theater, of the things we’ve seen and the great things we’ve yet to do. I tell him my sordid tale, relishing his laughter (I lo
ve making him laugh) and welcoming his sympathy. He tells me about his (numerous) shipboard romances, and I share with him my disastrous crush on Chad, which he listens to without a trace of discomfort.

  I study him as we talk, the veins in his neck pulsing, the muscles in the softballs at his shoulder rippling under his skin, and I want to inhale him, absorbing his effortlessly cocky essence into my bloodstream and letting him course through my veins, exhaling him, then repeating the process over and over, breathing him in and out twenty-four hours a day.

  “Y’know,” he says after we’re fully toasted, “I’m not lak thiss wid anyhbuddy elss.”

  Me, neither.

  We stumble to 7-Eleven and make the doobie-ous decision to buy Pillsbury chocolate-chip-cookie dough, frozen fried chicken, and Fritos. We microwave the chicken and eat the cookie dough raw, then return to his room and collapse onto the mattress, which bobs like a life raft on storm-tossed seas.

  I wake up feeling like the Marx Brothers tried to perform brain surgery. My mouth is sandpaper dry, and there’s a vise on my sinuses. The sun burns brown behind the roller shades, casting the room in a dull, dingy light. As I come to, I realize that my head is resting on Doug’s calf, the hair on his leg tickling my face. We’re sleeping head-to-foot, the accepted slumber-party position from adolescence, because nothing can dull the libido like the notoriously noxious stench of teenaged boy feet.

  Maybe it’s because I woke up this way. If I had been awake, I never would presume to reach over and touch his calf, but since it happened unconsciously, somehow this feels permissible to me. The muscles are long and fibrous, and they undulate beneath my hand. Barely awake and moving on instinct, I reach up to just above his knee to feel his thigh.

  Doug stirs and my heart elevators to my throat. I remain motionless, my hand gently cupping the chunk of muscle, which is hard to the touch, even though he’s relaxed. My breath stills, as if to compensate for the percussion solo of my heart. Then, at tai chi speed, I slide my hand up his thigh. I don’t know why I’m so emboldened, but it feels like such a natural thing to do, so inevitable.

  I’m halfway up when I feel Doug’s hand on top of my own, his long fingers like tentacles.

  He’s awake.

  He’s awake. He’s awake. He’s awake. My nerves are rubber bands, stretched to the point of snapping.

  Rather than swat me away with disgust, he gently moves my hand.

  Back to his calf.

  That’s right, back to his calf.

  The message is clear: Not so fast. Or Not yet. Or Not now. Okay, maybe the message isn’t clear, but it’s not Get away from me, you fag, so I’m encouraged enough to try again. Portioning his body in my mind like a butcher, I make a tactical maneuver, lifting my hand off his calf and placing it directly on his upper thigh. No creeping up this time, no fondling. Just lay it right there.

  And, once again, he moves my hand.

  To his lower thigh.

  We repeat the pattern. I place my hand on the inside of his thigh, he moves it to the outside. It’s like some exotic Balinese hand dance, a conversation without words. The tension is almost excruciating. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, I move my hand back to his groin and his thighs part, an invitation to continue.

  I reach up and rest my hand on the mound of his crotch.

  For more than three years I have been waiting for this moment. I’ve seen Doug hard before, during a rather frantic three-way with Kelly in high school, and I’ve touched a few other guys (okay, two), but nothing prepares me for the thick tube of flesh straining the fabric of his sweatpants. If it were a fish, you’d be proud to have caught it.

  Meanwhile, my own erection throbs, a tangible reminder that blood pulses through my veins, that I am alive.

  I grope the spongy mass, then reach up with my other hand to undo the drawstring of his sweatpants, Doug’s dick flopping against his belly with an audible thwack. I grip his cock in my hand, truly astonished. My thumb and pointer finger can barely touch. Later, when I relive this moment for about the gazillionth time, I will note that this is the same width as my wrist. Granted, I have dainty, delicate wrists, but still.

  Apparently the ancient Greeks disdained large penises because they thought they represented a lack of self-control. I can see their point. When it comes to large penises, I certainly don’t have any self-control.

  Neither does Doug. In one swift move he throws aside the blanket, grabs me by the back of the neck, and thrusts my head against his crotch, his hard-on nearly putting out my eye.

  “Ow.”

  “Sorry.”

  He needs to register this thing, like a gun.

  I regain my bearings and attempt to take him in my mouth, but his cock is like a Russian novel—long, hard, and impossible to swallow. Still, I’m full of longing. Unfortunately, I am also full of cheap beer and raw cookie dough. And am the kind of person who gags on a tongue depressor.

  Do not throw up, I think to myself. Nothing kills a romantic mood quicker than emptying the contents of your stomach onto your lover’s penis. I take a breather, working Doug’s dick with both hands like I’m trying to make fire. He arches his back, moaning, and I revel in the sheer voltage of making him happy. There is no place else on earth I would rather be, nothing I would rather be doing. No one I would rather be doing. I just wish I were better at it, and I instantly regret not having practiced on smaller, less important penises.

  I’m just diving in again when I hear voices in the hallway, followed by a banging on the door.

  Thirty-four

  It’s my worst nightmare. Okay, not my worst nightmare—that’s still the one about being chased by an angry mob, falling off a cliff, and hanging on by the tips of my fingers; but this…this is Bowers v. Hardwick. The feds come bursting into the room, guns drawn, hollering in that military bark to put our hands up where they can see them.

  At least, that’s what I imagine will happen as Doug and I struggle to untangle ourselves. Because the Supreme Court said it’s okay for the government to barge into the homes of American citizens and arrest them for consensual sexual acts.

  What actually happens is that the door flies open and our friends tumble into the room like circus clowns exiting a Volkswagen.

  Paula. Marcus. Natie. Willow. Ziba. Hung.

  “Dear Lord!”

  “Shit.”

  “Oops.”

  “Sorry.”

  “My God, you were right.”

  “You owe me ten bucks.”

  Doug fumbles to pull up his sweatpants. “What the fuck…?”

  Ziba hands Hung her purse and reclines on the edge of the bed like a Siamese cat. “Sorry to interrupt, darlings, but we had to talk to you.”

  I cover my lap with a pillow.

  “Paula’s had the most mahvelous idea,” Ziba says.

  Paula plops down next to Ziba like they’re at a pajama party and she’s going to paint her toenails. “Well, I couldn’t have figured it out without you.”

  “Still…”

  Willow joins me on my side, followed by Hung diving on top of us, shouting, “Everybody on the bed!”

  “Hey, watch your hands,” Doug says.

  Hung giggles. “Sorry. I thought that was your arm.”

  Paula and Ziba scooch in to make room for Marcus and Natie. Everyone’s here except Kelly, who’s got a Sunday matinee. I glance over at Doug to see how he’s reacting, but it’s tough to get a read. He’s pulled his knees up to his chin, his baby blues flitting from person to person to see how they’re reacting. Luckily, no one seems the least bit concerned, as if Doug and I being lovers were a foregone conclusion.

  Dear God, please let it be a foregone conclusion.

  “Well,” Paula says, “it all started when you didn’t come see Earnest.” (“In the beginning there was the word. And the word was wordy.”) “And it was abundantly clear to me something was terribly, terribly wrong. After all, we are the age when people can suddenly turn schizophrenic. Anyway, my first incl
ination after you told me what you’d done, rage and betrayal aside, was that you had to go to the SEC right away. But Natie made me realize that our best chance of keeping us all out of jail is to make sure the authorities understand who the real villain is.”

  “Wall Street,” Marcus says, jabbing a finger in the air. “You’re a pawn of the capitalist system.”

  “A willing pawn,” Paula says, laying a tiny hand on his knee. “And a rather stupid one, I might add, but a pawn nonetheless. However, I had a few reservations about your plan, so we consulted Ziba….”

  “And me,” Hung says. “And Willow.”

  Willow looks up from the copy of On the Road. “What?”

  “We consulted you,” Natie says.

  “About what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Anyway,” Paula says, “once we realized that the Almost Shah declined an invitation to Ziba’s cousin’s party, we saw an opportunity.”

  “To do what?” I ask.

  Marcus smiles, something you rarely see. “To send your friend Chad to jail.”

  We work out the details crowded into a booth at a diner, because that’s where you go in Jersey to work out details. Our new and improved plan is still risky, close to insane, but I feel fizzy and effervescent. I have the best friends in the world, a glimmer of hope for the future, and I’m wearing down the resistance of the man I love.

  As we walk back, however, Doug pulls me aside and says, “Listen, man, I can’t do this.”

  “But we still need you,” I say. “The plan won’t work without you.”

  “No, not that.” He looks down, addressing a crack in the sidewalk. “I mean…well, y’know. I don’t know what got into me.” He runs his hand through his messy hair and looks away, as if the answer lay in the empty lot across the street. “I musta been really wasted.”

  “This morning?”

  My head is going to explode. Right here, right now, my brain all over the Jersey City street. Once again he’s led me on, practically telling me I’m his soul mate, even doing the little Balinese hand dance under the sheets until I nearly ruptured my tonsils and now he rejects me? I can’t take it anymore. It’s thoughtless. And unkind. Cruel, even.