by Michael Nava
“I love your voice,” he told me one night, suddenly. “The way it sounds.”
“I love your voice, too.”
He laughed. “No, I have a gay voice.”
“You have a soft voice, if that’s what you mean. It’s soothing and— sexy.”
“Um, sometimes I get hard just listening to you. I don’t even have to touch myself . . . . Henry, are you still there?”
“Yeah,” I said roughly. “I’m still wearing my boxers. I had to adjust myself.”
He whispered, “Take them off and I’ll tell you how to adjust yourself.”
On another night, when we’d both had long, wearying days, the conversation was forced and was punctuated by awkward pauses. I was about to end the call when he asked me, “When you were first coming out, to yourself I mean, when you first knew you were,” a soft chuckle, “not like the other boys, did you wonder or worry that maybe you would never . . . find someone?”
I had closed my eyes and thought for a moment. “You mean, was I afraid I’d never be in love?”
“With someone who loved you back.”
I was sitting up in bed. I smoothed the sheet covering my legs and remembered how it had felt to be a sixteen-year-old with a secret.
“I thought about it a lot. I wondered if I was the only boy like me and if I wasn’t, I wondered where the other boys were and how I would find them.”
“Me, too,” he said. A pause and then a tentative, “Have you ever been in love?”
“Once,” I said. “It didn’t last long.”
“You broke up?”
“He died.”
“AIDS?”
“No, he was killed.” I tipped my head against the pillow and pictured Hugh, my beautiful, fucked-up lover. I realized he and Josh were physically similar, same height, same build, but Hugh had been a golden blond whereas Josh was olive-skinned and dark-haired. “That’s a long story for another time. What about you? Have you been in love?”
“No,” he replied. “I’m still trying to work through everything that’s happened to me since I came out.”
“Like what?”
After a moment, he said, “That’s also a long story for another time.”
The sadness in his voice when he spoke moved me and, in that moment, he became real to me— not simply a good-looking guy I flirted with over the phone but someone substantial enough to cast a shadow.
“Will you tell me that story someday?”
“If you’ll tell me yours.”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know about me, Josh, and I’ll never lie to you.”
There was a long silence. “Thank you, Henry,” he said. “Good night.”
The inflection in his voice when he said good night made me think I’d said something wrong.
••••
When Josh told me the name of the bar, I thought he was joking but painted on the blue canopy over the entrance were the words “Bar None.” It was wedged between a deli and a manicurist, on an unglamorous block of Santa Monica Boulevard. I stepped past a couple of collegiate-looking guys standing outside the entrance smoking a joint and went inside.
The front room was a long rectangle with the bar running the length of it. In the center of the room was a narrow table with barstools on either side. Along the far wall was a shelf and beneath it cases of beer. The bar, counter, shelf, and floors were made of the same dark, varnished wood that showed signs of age and wear. Above the bar and along the center of the ceiling were rows of small recessed lights, white above the bar, red above the ceiling. The air smelled of cigarettes, beer, cologne, and the hopeful musk of men on the prowl. From overhead speakers Dolly Parton sang “Jolene,” and in every corner mouths moved, singing along with her.
There were guys in suits and guys in flannel shirts and jeans, guys in glittering unisex tops and guys in crew neck sweaters, most of them probably between twenty-five and forty but with a scattering of gray-haired daddies and barely legal twinks, not necessarily together. Guys with biceps like grapefruits and thighs stretching the seams of their 501s and skinny guys who looked like they never lifted anything heavier than a cocktail and all shapes and sizes in between. Like the sign outside said: Bar none. The vibe was friendly and familiar. Nothing like the desperate dives where I’d spent the final days of my drinking career with a handful of other drunks, grimly drinking ourselves into early graves. I had a clear and visceral enough recollection of those days that, even here, in these relaxed surroundings, I hadn’t even the faintest impulse to drink.
I wandered through the bar into a poolroom where I spotted Josh on a barstool next to a chalkboard that listed the order of players. He wore jeans and a white button-down shirt. His glasses dangled from his shirt pocket; a red sweater was spread across his lap. One hand held a cigarette, and the other grasped a long-necked bottle of beer. He was watching the game, a slight smile curving his lips and revealing the gleam of straight, white teeth. His gelled hair had come undone in the humidity of the bar and fell in curls around his neck and across his forehead. His olive skin, illuminated by the green-shaded light above the pool table, had the sheen of a light sweat. He pressed his slender body forward to watch the bearish, bearded player set up his shot.
I want you, I thought, and as if I had spoken the words aloud above the din of the music and the male chatter and the click of one ball striking another on the felt, he looked up and our eyes met. His smile faded, and he drew a breath so deep the fabric of his shirt moved as his chest expanded. He exhaled and so did I, not aware until that moment that I had been holding my breath. The smile returned. I crossed the room and put myself in front of him.
“Hey there,” I said and, with a second’s hesitation, kissed him lightly on the lips.
“Hello, Henry,” he said.
“Is there somewhere quiet we can talk?”
He hopped off the barstool, crushed his cigarette into a plastic ashtray, took my hand, and said, “There’s a patio. June gloom makes it too cold for most people. We’ll probably have it to ourselves.”
He led me out to a small fenced-in courtyard. In the center was a firepit where a low gas fire burned; the fire and the exit light above the door provided the only illumination. We sat on a bench beneath the feathery leaves of a jacaranda tree. Josh tugged his sweater over his head, made a valiant attempt to smooth his hair, and put on his glasses.
“Let me see your head,” he told me. I lowered my head and felt his fingers gently probe the spot where I had been cut. “It’s all healed.”
“I had a good doctor.”
“My dad would love hearing that.”
“He wanted you to go to med school?”
“As far as he’s concerned, if you’re a smart Jewish boy you got three options for work: doctor, lawyer or accountant. I went premed at UCLA to make him happy, but it wasn’t what I wanted and then . . .” His voice trailed off.
“And then?” I prompted.
“And then I couldn’t lie to myself anymore about who I was. What I was.”
“Gay?”
“Mmm,” he said. He thumbed the damp label on his beer bottle. “I knew for as long as I can remember, but with my parents, especially my dad, coming out wasn’t an option.”
The fire wasn’t enough to dispel the chill in the air. He leaned into me for warmth and I put my arm around him.
“I told them I was depressed,” he continued, “which, believe me, I was and dropped out of school. I moved to West Hollywood and went crazy.” He laid his hand on my leg. “This is the part of my story I couldn’t tell you on the phone.”
“Why?”
“I needed to see your face while I told it.”
“Because?”
He squeezed my leg. “Because people can hide their feelings in their voices, but not in their eyes.”
I nodded, locked eyes with him. “What happened after you dropped out of school?”
He slipped his hand into mine.
“I discovered sex and dr
ugs, and I couldn’t get enough of either. I partied very, very hard and in places that . . . well, when I think of them now, they were no place for a nice Jewish boy from Encino. They were . . . degrading. I did things I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell anyone.”
“Do you still use drugs?”
Wide-eyed he exclaimed, “Oh, God, no! No. I kicked.”
“On your own?”
“Theo helped me.”
“The tall guy from QUEER who started the fight?”
“Yeah, Theo Latour. We ran with the same crowd. I’d see him at bars and parties and in back rooms. He was protective of me, like my gay big brother. One night I was coked out of my head and about to head out of a bar with some very bad guys. He grabbed me and took me home and stayed with me until I came down. He told me, ‘You know, Josh, most guys party to feel good, but you party because you hate yourself. You keep it up and you’ll party yourself to death.’ I guess I was ready to hear it because after that I stopped. Started to pull myself together. Theo was there for me the whole time. Knew the guy who owns the restaurant and helped get me my job.”
“That doesn’t sound like the angry guy I saw at the center,” I observed.
Josh took a slug from his beer and delicately wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He tested positive, and it blew up his world. Theo does— well, he did— porn. He was making a lot of money at it. Once he tested positive, the studios dropped him; his boyfriend dumped him and threw him out of their apartment. His party friends treated him like he was poison. He showed up at my place with nowhere else to go and asked if he could stay with me. I had to think about it. I was afraid, too.”
“Afraid of what?”
“That I’d catch it from him,” Josh said. He peeled the paper label from his beer as he continued. “But I couldn’t say no, not after what he’d done for me.” Guiltily, he added, “I still wouldn’t drink from the same glass, though, and when I used the toilet after him, I wiped down the seat with rubbing alcohol. Stupid, huh?”
“In the beginning no one knew how the virus was spread.”
“Still,” he insisted, tearing off the label. “I was worrying about accidentally using his toothbrush when I should have been worried about what I’d done in the orgy room at the Melrose Baths.”
“Is Theo still living with you?”
He nodded. “Off and on. I told him he couldn’t stay with me if he was high, so when he’s on a run, he’ll disappear, but he always comes back.”
“What kind of drugs is he on?”
He set the bottle down beside him. “Amphetamines, mostly, Crack when he can get it. And something called crystal. I think it’s like super-meth. That’s the worst one.”
“Why doesn’t he move in with his boyfriend? The Latino guy.”
“Freddy? He lives with his family and he’s not out to them.”
“Is Freddy an addict, too?”
“No,” Josh said. “Freddy’s not into drugs. He’s good for Theo. Stable. When Theo goes off at a QUEER meeting, Freddy calms him down, and he keeps an eye on him when I’m not around. Theo would be in a lot worse shape without us. I worry that he’s going to end up killing himself.”
“He took his diagnosis hard,” I said.
“The doctor told him he had eighteen months to live.”
“How long ago was that?”
“That’s not the point,” Josh said. “Eighteen months, two years, it’s a death sentence.” He took a deep breath, met my eyes and said, “I haven’t taken the test. I don’t know my status. Do you?”
“I’m negative.”
“I’m afraid to find out.”
“Not knowing what your status is doesn’t change it,” I said. “My friend Larry said it’s better to deal with reality than to deny it.”
“Your friend who died,” he said, remembering that I’d spoken of Larry in our phone calls.
“Yeah, him.”
“I’m twenty-three years old,” he said. “I don’t want to be worrying about whether I’ll live to see thirty.”
I put my arm around his shoulder and drew him close. “Whatever your status is won’t make a difference to how I feel about you.”
He looked at me, about to reply, but before he could I kissed him. He hesitated a second when my tongue touched his lips, but then he parted them, and I tasted beer and nicotine and beneath that, wet warmth and flesh. I dropped my arm to the small of his back, lifted his sweater, tugged his shirt tail out of his jeans and slipped my hand beneath his shirt to touch bare, smooth skin. We half-turned to hold each other even closer, my free hand grazed his crotch, and I felt his cock pushing hard against the rough denim. He threw his arms around me, kissed me with increasing depth and passion, and a tiny spot of wetness stained his crotch. I felt a primal animal comfort in the weight of his body pressed against mine that I had not felt in a long time, my separateness dissolving as we seemed to breathe a single breath.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I asked, when we stopped kissing.
“Is it okay if we take this kind of slow?” he replied, a little breathlessly.
“As slow as you want,” I said.
“I mean,” he stuttered. “I want to go home with you. A lot. But—”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I want to be sure,” he said. “You know what I mean?”
I nodded. I wanted to tell him I was already pretty sure about him, but I knew it wasn’t me he doubted. He wasn’t sure about himself.
FIVE
She set down her glass and took another look at the photograph of the woman named Gwen. Now that she was over her first shock— Daniel’s lover was Black— she studied her carefully. Was it worse that Daniel had chosen a Black woman over her? She wasn’t racist, of course, but she was her father’s daughter and he considered miscegenation as much a perversion of God’s order as homosexuality. No, she assured herself, it wasn’t the woman’s race that wounded her. It was everything. Gwen. Even her name, blunt and astringent, pained her. Full-figured and, there was no way around it, rather beautiful even in hospital scrubs. She looked thirty but was, according to the investigator’s report, forty-two. Younger than Jess, but definitely not a girl.
The investigator had photographed her at a table outside the hospital where she worked, eating lunch out of a Tupperware container. Her eyes were sad and thoughtful, as if her mind was far away from the forkful of salad she was lifting to her mouth. Beneath that photograph was another, this one of Gwen and a teenage boy she was assisting down the steps of the building where they lived in San Francisco. His name, the report informed her, was Wyatt. He was nineteen years old and on his birth certificate, on the space for “Name of Father,” was the notation “Daniel Herron.”
••••
It had started with a phone call from Congressman Schultz’s wife, Marie.
After the initial courtesies were exchanged, Marie said, “I wanted to call you and personally tell you how sorry I am that John couldn’t help get Dan’s nephew into that drug study.”
There was something in the way she said this, a slight breathlessness, that put Jessica on her guard; the woman was fishing for scandal.
“That’s very kind of you,” Jessica replied neutrally.
“And how awful,” Marie persisted. “I mean, having AIDS in your own family even if it was caused by a blood transfusion.”
She tamped down the shock and panic and managed a curt, “Yes, it’s terrible.”
“I’m afraid we’re going to start seeing more and more of these innocent victims like your nephew,” she said, pronouncing “innocent” with a touch of doubt. “I do hope he’ll be all right.”
Jessica’s mind went blank. Without another word, she hung up the phone, went to the bar and poured herself a double. As she drank, she realized that by hanging up on her she had given the woman what she wanted, confirmed there was something scandalous afoot. Something to dine out on with the other twittering ladies in their common circle o
f acquaintances. Still, providing fodder for the gossip mill was the least of it.
There was no nephew with AIDS. There was no nephew at all. Dan’s two sisters— whom, in any event, they rarely saw— only had daughters. Perhaps, she thought, he had called the congressman on behalf of a church member, but if that was the case, why invent the nephew, why bring it so close to home? It. AIDS. For one horrifying moment she wondered if Dan had been calling for himself. She quickly rejected the possibility. It was too monstrous. Only slightly less monstrous was the possibility that the private investigator’s report now confirmed. The boy in the photograph, leaning against his handsome mother and looking tired and ill, stared at her with her husband’s eyes.
••••
Bob Metzger tidily stacked the pages of the report, aligning the corners perfectly, slipped them into the folder, and said, calmly, “This is very bad, Jessica.”
The windows of his Spring Street office framed City Hall, invariably reminding her of the police officer’s badge in the opening sequence of Dragnet, which had been one of her father’s favorite television shows. Her sense of her father ‘s presence was always powerful when she was with Bob, “Uncle Bob” as she had known him when she was a child. The lawyer had been her father’s closest confidant, and they had had in common troubled marriages with unstable women. Regarding their wives, both had adhered to a strict policy of denial— her father to his wife’s alcoholism, Uncle Bob to the profound depression that ultimately had led his wife to take a fatal dose of sleeping pills. Indeed, he had kept the manner of her death secret to all but her father in a conversation Jessica had happened to overhear.
