William J. Mann
Page 11
I don’t get the gesture at first, then it hits me. “Ah,” I say. “Michigan is shaped like a hand.”
“Well, like a mitten actually, with a separate thumb.” He’s looking at the menu. “What are you going to have?”
“I think just a cheeseburger.”
Gale lifts his thickly-lashed eyes over his menu. “But isn’t Weiner a Jewish name?”
I smile. “Yes, but I’m far from kosher. There’s really very little that’s Jewish about me except for my last name.”
“Oh, I don’t think one can be something other than mainstream heterosexual, white, and Christian, and not have it inform one’s identity.”
I smile. He’s deep. I just give him a shrug.
The waiter has arrived. I order my cheeseburger, medium-rare, with fries. Then I change my mind and ask for a salad instead of the fries. The waiter nods knowingly. He must get a lot of gay men conscious about carbs and fried foods.
Gale, on the other hand, orders a hummus plate, with a side of greens topped with tahini sauce. “I’m a vegetarian,” he informs me. Immediately I feel like a big fat sloppy politically incorrect carnivore.
“Hey,” I say, suddenly remembering something. “Didn’t I see you eating a hamburger yesterday?”
“It was a veggie burger,” Gale tells me. “They make good ones, and good ones are very hard to find.”
“How long have you been a vegetarian?”
“Since a summer I spent working on a dairy farm and saw how they mistreated the cows and the chickens.” He shudders.
I so wish I’d ordered pasta. I manage a small smile and take a sip of my water, trying to think of something to say. “So what do you do?” I try the oldest conversation-starter in the book.
“Nothing at the moment. I was working as a house painter for a while, now I’m just looking around for odd jobs.”
I nod. What do you say to that? Evidently Gale knows what I do, because he doesn’t ask. We sit without speaking for a few awkward seconds.
“My father was Jewish,” Gale says, making his own attempt to jump-start the conversation. “But that doesn’t count, right?”
I shake my head. “It comes through the mother. But I guess if your father was really into Judaism—”
“My father left us when I was three. But still, I always knew I was part Jewish, that I didn’t really fit in with what was supposed to be the rest of the world.”
I nod. “I know what you mean. I felt similarly.”
“My mother took us kids to Rhode Island and then got remarried to some swamp Yankee. And then after that divorce, she married again to a high Episcopalian, so I guess I’m just a mutt when it comes to religion.”
I smile. Good, we’re talking.
“The only time I ever went to the synagogue as a kid,” I tell Gale, “was when my grandfather or some friend of the family’s died. I hated putting on those skull caps. I felt like an idiot.”
“So you weren’t bar mitzvahed?”
“Nope. My parents were pretty ambivalent about all of that. We had a Christmas tree every year. I believed in Santa Claus. But still they always reminded me that we weren’t Christian, and that as Jews we were God’s chosen people.”
Gale smiles. “I think that’s what every religion believes.”
“I suppose so.”
“The root of all evil, too,” he adds. “The belief that we’re right, and everybody else is wrong. God is on our side. It’s the core of the fighting in Israel and Palestine. It’s what fuels Islamic terrorism. It’s the corrosive force that’s destroying American politics.”
I’m not sure what to say. Five minutes, and we’re already into a heavy conversation. I’m not good in heavy conversations, certainly not heavy political conversations. Now if this were Jeff sitting here instead of me, he’d be fully engaged and passionate, able to reply to Gale with an equally astute and powerful comment. Very quickly they’d be engaged in a lively, blood-pumping dialogue—one that, no doubt, would lead to some very hot sex after dinner. “Passionate conversations,” Jeff has often said, “are the best foreplay.”
But I’m not Jeff. “Yeah,” is all I manage to say. “Things are bad in the world.” Even before I finish the sentence, I know it’s lame. And so more silence descends over our table.
“So,” Gale says, searching for yet another topic, “how long have you lived in P’town?”
“About five years full time. Ever since Lloyd asked me to come work as manager of Nirvana.”
“And you just chucked your previous life good-bye?”
“I was pretty unhappy in my job.” I fill him in on all the boring details. Leaving the insurance company, moving here, working as a massage therapist. I leave out the escorting part. No need to scare him off further. He already thinks I’m an animal-hating dim bulb. Why add whore into the mix? So I finish up with some positive spin. “Since moving here,” I tell him, “I’ve really come to love the place. I feel a real spiritual connection. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
“Even in the off season? This will be my first winter coming up.”
“Well, it can get pretty desolate, but that’s okay. I just think back to my old life of drudgery getting up at five-thirty in the morning and taking the T to work, all knotted up in my suit and tie. Now when I wake up, the first thing I do is take a walk along the beach, thinking about all the schmucks back in Boston schlepping to work.”
Gale smiles. “You walk on the beach even in winter?”
“Sure. Winter’s the best time.” I don’t tell him that lately I’ve turned into a big fat lazy dog, sleeping in the extra fifteen minutes instead of taking my walk along the beach. Better to paint a more romantic picture, especially since I’d seemed so lame moments before. “The wind howling,” I say, “the salty air really fresh and alive…”
“I hope I make it through the winter,” Gale says. “I’m a little worried about the isolation, but after the past year, I’m looking forward to a little peace and quiet.”
That’s the cue for me to ask about him, to inquire just what made this past year so intense that he’s looking forward to some isolation. But something in me can’t frame the words. I look over at him taking a sip of his water. Gale is so unbelievably handsome, more so than I’d realized. His brown eyes are so vital, so alive. The lines of his face are extraordinary. His lips are full and red. Suddenly I feel my cock fill up with blood. I have this vision of kissing him, and I feel my face burn.
Fortunately, at that moment, the waiter brings our salads. We eat for a few minutes in silence. Then Gale says, “I really liked that you said you believed in monogamy.”
“Well, for myself anyway.”
He smiles. “Well, that’s all we can believe in, isn’t it? What’s right for ourselves. As soon as we start imposing our beliefs on others, we wind up like—”
“Like the rest of the world,” I finish, “engaged in all their petty warfare over religion and their brand of truth.”
A wide grin stretches over Gale’s face. I’ve scored a point. Maybe the first one all evening.
“Precisely,” he says. “All we can own is our particular truth. And for me, I want to explore being one-hundred-percent faithful to someone. And I don’t mean just sexually. I mean emotionally, intellectually, spiritually…”
I pop a cucumber into my mouth, really craving some French fries and ketchup. “All of that?”
“All of it.” Gale’s eyes are even more passionate now than they were when he was talking politics. “I want to really find my soulmate. To reserve all my passion, every last drop of it, for him and him only.”
“But intellectually?” I ask. “Spiritually? You mean you wouldn’t be able to have a deep conversation with a friend?”
“That’s what I mean,” Gale says. “I know it sounds extreme, but I want to see if it’s possible to really find one person who will satisfy every need.”
I make a face. “Well, don’t you think that’s a bit unrealistic?”
“Well, I, yes, but—”
“So why not in other areas of our lives too? Why should sex—which I don’t even think is the most important expression of intimacy between two people—be the one thing we reserve as special?”
Again I’m at a loss as to what to say. Thankfully I’m rescued once more by our waiter, who clears off our salad plates and replaces them with our entrees. I look down at my hamburger bleeding on my plate. I wish I’d at least ordered it well-done.
“Bon appetit,” Gale says, dipping his pita bread into his hummus.
I take a bite. Gale’s words actually make some kind of sense—but it’s warped sense. Does a true monogamous relationship really mean we forego all other close friendships? Certainly I know couples that have done so—usually to their regret when they break up later on, when they find they’ve alienated all their friends and have no support system left. As much as I might long for a sexually monogamous relationship, I can’t see cutting off intimate talks and feelings and expressions with good friends. I can’t imagine losing Jeff and Lloyd just because I find a boyfriend.
But Gale raises a good point: why should we single out sex? I agree with him that sex isn’t the most important piece of intimacy between two people. Commitment and consideration and trust and understanding and companionship—those are the things that ultimately matter more than rolling around between the sheets. So why is it sex that we make exclusive and not those other things—emotional things, intellectual things, spiritual things?
I can almost hear Lloyd’s voice answering for me: “Because it’s sex that most people have hang-ups with.”
“Good?”
I look up from my plate. Gale is smiling over at me, but I wonder if there’s accusation in his voice as I chew my ground-up dead cow. I nod and wipe my chin with my napkin.
Thankfully our conversation gets lighter as dinner progresses. We talk about what shows we’ve seen so far this summer. We both love Varla Jean and Ryan Landry’s Showgirls, but split over the new lesbian comic at the Post Office Café. I liked her, but Gale isn’t so sure. We agree to see her again together and make a decision.
Heading out of the restaurant onto Commercial Street, I’m surprised when Gale takes my hand. I don’t resist. We walk for a while in silence, the sun having nearly set but still casting a soft pink light across the white clapboard shops. I smell the salty air that blows in from the harbor.
“Do you want to get an ice-cream cone?” Gale asks.
“Sure,” I say automatically, then think better of it. “No, actually, I’m trying to cut back.”
“Why? You look great.”
I pat my belly with my free hand as reply.
“You gay boys and your body image,” Gale says, laughing.
“Hey, you act as if you’re not one of us. You can’t fool me. I’ve seen you at the gym.” I smile. “Flipping over the bar. Showing off those calves of yours. You spend a lot of time keeping yourself looking good.”
He shrugs. “I try.”
“And succeed.” I lean into him. “You have an awesome body.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he says quietly.
“Why you’re still single, I’m not sure.”
Gale sighs. “I’m picky. As you may have gathered.”
“I like a man with standards.”
Something in what I’ve just said seems to inspire Gale. He suddenly stops walking and kisses me full on the lips. A hard kiss, lots of tongue, right there on the street.
“Wow,” I say when we finally pull apart.
“Want to go back to my place?” Gale asks.
“Yes,” I reply instantly.
Gale lives in the West End, in a small studio apartment carved into the attic of a nineteenth-century fisherman’s house. It’s dark and musty, furnished with only a mattress on the floor, a beat-up old couch, and tables made of milk crates and plywood. Books are everywhere, on the floor and on the mattress. An ancient refrigerator crouches next to an equally old gas stove.
“Sorry for the mess,” Gale says.
“It’s not a problem.” My lust is driving me now. I just want to get his jeans off and my mouth on that full ass and those shapely calves.
“I’ve got to pee first,” he says. I nod. I watch him as he heads into the small, closet-sized bathroom. “Pee shy,” he says, closing the door behind him.
I sit on the mattress and examine some of the books on the floor. The Male Couple. Gay Men and Sex. Exploring Same-Sex Relationships. Almost every title is about being gay or being in a relationship.
Gale has come out of the bathroom and is standing over me.
“In case you’re wondering,” he says, “I haven’t been out as a gay man for very long.”
I nod, a little grin playing with my lips. “So now that you’ve read all the texts, you’re looking for some real-life experience.”
“I suppose so.” He sits beside me on the mattress. Our thighs touch. “Henry, maybe I shouldn’t have asked you up here.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” He looks at me with those big brown eyes of his. “Have you been in many relationships, Henry?”
“I’ve had my share.”
“Were you monogamous?”
“Yes. For as long as they lasted, anyway, which was never all that long.”
“Which one was the most significant?”
I’m about to say Joey, but something stops me. Lloyd was perhaps more significant, but that wasn’t ever really a relationship. So instead I surprise myself by saying, “Shane.”
“And why was he the most significant?”
I consider the question. Certainly I was never in love with Shane in the way I was in love with Joey. There was no great pang at the end of our relationship. I accepted it and moved on. There was never any great yearning for Shane the way there was for Lloyd. But here’s what was different: I was friends with Shane before we became a couple, so all in all, I knew him longer than any of the others. And Shane was the only one of my boyfriends who was more in love with me than I was with him.
“Shane forced me to confront things about myself,” I tell Gale, realizing this myself perhaps for the first time. “He always knew when I was bullshitting, either him or myself. I think after my relationship with Shane, I knew myself better.”
“So until then you weren’t quite sure who you were?”
I smile. “Well, I had a few glimpses. But it was hard, you know. We were talking about being Jewish earlier. I never had any sense of myself as a Jew growing up, but I also knew I wasn’t Christian. So it left me kind of confused. Who the hell am I? And then when I came out as gay, I didn’t fit into that world, either. I felt really marginalized because I was skinny and nerdy and nobody talked to me at gay bars. I thought bars were the only place you could meet other gay people. So once again, I didn’t quite know where I belonged.”
Gale is nodding. “That’s how I felt growing up. I wasn’t like my brothers and sisters. I was the odd one out. And then, in the gay world, I still felt like an outsider.”
I smile. I like this guy. I’m really starting to like him a lot, even with all his vegetarianism and extreme views on relationships. He’s not so different than I am really—he wants to fit in, to be loved, to find the One.
“Maybe,” I say, “maybe here, in this place of outsiders at the end of the world, you won’t feel that way anymore.”
Gale smiles over at me. Such an adorable smile. Dimples even.
We kiss again. This time I take the lead, kissing him softly, then with more urgency. My hands explore his smooth, rock-hard arms before moving up to his face. I cup his surprisingly soft cheeks in my palms as I continue to kiss him. My cock is so hard it’s straining against my underwear.
We sit that way, kissing deeply, for several minutes. There’s something about a long, deep kiss that’s intoxicat
ing. You’re no longer breathing air, just pheromones. Time shuts down. You’re not just one person anymore, but a new creature with four arms, four legs, and one heart.
Inevitably we ease back onto the mattress, barely breaking our liplock. We kiss side by side for a while, then I gently move on top of him. Between us is wedged the rock-hard pole in my pants, and I expect to feel Gale’s own hard-on. When I don’t, I worry he might not be as turned on as I am, and I think maybe I’m moving too fast.
I break free of our kiss and look down at him.