And although Brando respectfully acknowledged the lady’s glance and the gentleman’s suggestive nod, he could not help but chuckle inside, wondering what it was about himself that made men smile only from a distance.
A block away, on that tiny grassy island known as Leimert Park, the half dozen drummers began their performance, their weekly ritual that soothed and reminded that this was the African Village.
Chapter Six
At Crenshaw and Jefferson boulevards Brando slowed down and stopped to let a sea of elegant church folk cross. Service had just let out at West Angeles Cathedral. A little girl with glistening burnt-red dreds and delicately dressed in the Westernized garb of a Ghanaian princess smiled at him, as did her stunning mother, who held her hand and led the way to Stevie’s on the Strip across the street.
Miss Zara singing at the Catch this afternoon was a treat Brando did not want to miss. Omar was supposed to join him, but had booked a last-minute booty call.
Brando thought about what Omar had said—that he was a prude. He then dismissed the thought. Then Collier came to mind, something he said during one of their rare verbal sparrings shortly after the breakup.
“Why did we spend ten years together?”
“I thought because we loved each other.”
“I loved you, Brando. You liked me. Liked. Not loved.”
“I saw it differently.”
“Did you? You saw it the way you see everything. I mean, why did you switch to entertainment law when your aptitude for criminal law is at genius level? You’re like a brilliant brain surgeon who can’t stand the sight of blood.”
“That’s not true, Collier, and I resent you saying that,” Brando snapped.
“It is true. You can’t stand the sight of life, Bran. You’re your parents’ perfect son, Omar’s perfect friend, some diva fag hag of the future’s perfect gay running buddy.”
“Why are you saying this to me?”
“Because I loved you. I love you, Brando. God, how I missed what we could’ve had. Did you know that in ten years you never once said that you loved me?”
And that was the most painful blow of all. He knew that Collier had to be wrong. He wracked his brain to recall one time, one moment—on a birthday, at their commitment ceremony, during sex, at the dinner table, in a darkened movie theater—and feared that Collier might be right.
He continued the drive down Crenshaw Boulevard, thinking, if only he had it to do all over again.
He turned right onto Pico and then after two blocks made a left into the driveway of Jewel’s Catch One. Jonestha, the butch-elegant security guard, threw him a tough smile and a high five when he pulled into the packed parking lot. Out on the patio, smokers, banished like lepers, fed their addiction quickly, dowsing half-smoked cigarettes as the band striking up inside the club alerted them to their mission on this very special afternoon.
Miss Zara’s fans were like picnic ants. They came in well-formed droves when they got even a whiff of a rumor that she would be singing.
Brando walked through the door with his usual warm smile that hid thoughts of Collier and his own inadequacies. His public, unassuming demeanor made brothas hot full of dreams and lesbian couples friendly in hopes of scoring quality DNA.
Lucian, the Belizean straight boy who loved hanging out with the gay boys because where gay boys gathered, phine-ass straight girls hung, was tending bar along with Eddie and Carlos, a couple since high school.
The stool, center bar, Brando’s stool, was somehow, and as usual, unoccupied in this packed room, so he slid coolly onto it with the ease and the familiarity that warmed him to all those who sat around him and seemed to know and adore him. Someone sent him a drink.
Miss Zara, the grand, vintage transgender diva, then took the stage and the house went up and shook with screams, applause, and whistles. It was then brought to a sudden hush when she threw back her flawless Korean 100 percent human hair weave and, in a voice as rich and as natural as her flawless beauty, she gave it her all and sang “I Who Have Nothing.”
To those from the old school, Miss Zara was Sir Lady Java with voice. No lip-synch here. And what a voice. The biological maleness beneath the feminine contributed a bass that made what would have been pure female contralto bourbon gold. And not one shaky note. She had vibrato, a hypnotic vocal shimmy that played with you like a tango, that made you touch yourself and pinch your nipples, then tossed you away when you tried to lick it. She was more than a mere drag queen supreme. She was pure Kabuki soul.
Brando sat there, all melancholy smiles, watching her, remembering her, remembering back to almost twenty years ago. The first time he fell in love with her. The first time he fell in love with him. And the first time he got his heart broken.
He was home during Christmas break from Howard University. The Fants, like Brando’s parents, were a part of the powerful liberal black, Jewish, and gay political coalition that dominated Los Angeles politics. In a city where only 11 percent of the population was African American, African American Tom Bradley, first elected mayor in 1972, served five unprecedented terms.
The Heywoods, eager to nourish their bright but shy son with hearty doses of community activism and liberal politics, brought Brando to one of the Fants’ well-orchestrated Sunday-afternoon mixers, a grassroots fund-raiser for Mayor Bradley, poolside at the Fants’ family home.
And there he was—Brando was transfixed—the beautiful church boy with the voice of an angel and a devil’s self-confidence, whose show-stopping performance urged many of the visitors to write checks larger than what they had planned. And the beautiful church boy was all smiles and pizzazz as he basked in the adoration of the crowd. Even Mayor Bradley, tall, cool, and straitlaced, had to put a hand on a hip and shake his head from side to side and let out a “Well-awright-now!” when the beautiful church boy sang in a voice that was almost profane in its power and brilliance.
Brando, far back in the crowd, was dumbstruck, smitten by the voice and the demeanor and the face and the light of the Fants’ only child.
And even as the beautiful church boy took it all in with a graciousness greater than his age, he did indeed catch Brando out of the corner of his eye, and they saw each other.
At eighteen, Earl-Anthony Fant was many things. His mastery of the keyboard matched the beauty of his voice, and at Gentle Spirit Holy Mother Church he was the undisputed star of the choir. People came from miles around to hear him perform. Even Jehovah’s Witnesses, forbidden by doctrine to enter other houses of worship, were found peeking through the doors of Gentle Spirit Holy Mother Church to get an earful of the gift.
That Earl-Anthony Fant was so beautiful, so pretty, so pretty boy perfect, and both sexy and sanctified was just a small part of what drew Brando to him. The spirit of the boy had so taken him that he had to sit down, catch his breath, and calm his racing heart. For a moment he had lost all sense of place and time. He was not aware that the words he heard in his head did not come from him. Someone else was speaking his thoughts.
“You are the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life.”
That’s what he heard. And that’s what he felt. And while Brando looked up and saw the beautiful church boy sitting across from him, smiling that beautiful church boy smile, riding on the echoes of his beautiful church boy words, words would not come to Brando. Only dumbness. Numbness. And the beautiful church boy understood.
“You really are the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life,” Earl-Anthony said once again, not caring what anyone in earshot could hear.
They became friends, Brando and Earl-Anthony Fant. But Brando was in love. Then again, everyone was in love with Earl-Anthony. Schoolgirls ripped the top of their blouses like Jewish widows whenever he passed. College quarterbacks begged for a sweet taste in the back of the locker room and privately dedicated touchdowns to him. He was Tut and Cleopatra before he was old enough to realize he could be both. He was the one that down-low brothas, too man to take dick, took dick fro
m.
And so Earl-Anthony Fant understood why Brando would take his “You are the most beautiful man I have ever seen” as a declaration of love as opposed to the routine flirtation of an incandescent male diva it was meant to be.
For the two weeks that Brando was home, they became Spartan fuck buddies, Earl-Anthony the teacher, Brando the shy and smitten charge. For Brando the pleasure of the lovemaking was overwhelming. It was different from anything he had ever experienced before. It was different from those middle school sleepovers at Jake Harlan’s where they compared dick size and he pretended to sleep while Jake sucked him off underneath the covers. It was different from the high school locker room circle jerks where he and a handful of questioning jocks pretended to get their rocks off by aiming for the Coke bottle in the center of their circle while fantasizing about the big-breasted cheerleaders few of them wanted. It was even different from that drunken encounter with Omar, when he stifled the first real feelings of love.
With Earl-Anthony, it was different. Brando’s feelings for Earl-Anthony became nakedly honest and obvious. He loved Earl-Anthony. He was obsessed with Earl-Anthony and understood why all who knew the beautiful church boy worshiped at his feet, on their backs, on their stomachs, on their knees.
When he was with Earl-Anthony, he did not want to let him go, so deeply had he fallen under the church boy’s spell. And when circumstances—singing engagements, choir rehearsals, servicing others—forced them to be apart, Brando spent his every waking hour with thoughts of him, profusely wacking off to visions of him. Sleep was filled with dreams of him.
Brando searched the city high and low, and finally, at the Pleasure Dome, a sex shop on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, found a meager surrogate when his need was inconvenient. The nine-inch dildo was the closest match he could find. It resembled Earl-Anthony’s beautiful nine-inch penis: perfectly cut, flared like a slitted, almond-colored mushroom, with thick veins like those that pulsated Earl-Anthony’s beautiful dick into action readiness.
“I love you, Earl-Anthony,” Brando said on their final night together, the night before he was to return to Washington, D.C.
“No, you don’t. You love what you allow yourself to be when we’re together. When you go back to school, you’ll look back on this as a wonderful chapter in your life that will help you explore your life more fully.”
“I want to just be with you.”
“You haven’t experienced enough, Brando, to know that this is it, that I’m it. I know I certainly haven’t. I’m in the process of exploring the world. I’m in the process of exploring myself. When I come to know me, more fully, then I’ll come to love me, more fully. And only then will I be able to love someone else the way they truly need to be loved. In the meantime, enjoy the journey. You’ll know your destination when you get there.”
Brando cried during most of the six-hour flight back to D.C., having lost his first great love before even possessing it.
He cried himself to sleep the first three nights back at the dorm. His roommate, Ted, panicked the first night, shook him the second, and on the third snatched him out of bed, threw him against the wall, and called him a wailing-ass bitch.
He got up that night and looked at himself in the mirror and realized that that’s exactly what he had become, a wailing-ass bitch. He wiped away the snot and put Visine in his eyes and apologized to Ted.
These feelings for Earl-Anthony had taken him over, and slowly he determined that he had to survive this, and take this as a lesson—a lesson he learned almost too well.
Brando now regarded love cautiously, with a near-icy deference. The wound healed over and the scab hardened. To avoid the pain of love, he did not allow himself to love deeply enough for love to breathe, rise up, and take aim ever again. Maybe Collier was right.
The things you remember. The things you regret. The things you forgive yourself for. The things you do not.
And now, as he listened to Miss Zara sing, remembering her as Earl-Anthony, Brando’s smile was filled with a sadness that no one else in the club would have noticed or understood. But he understood. It was about more than the sweet vision of Earl-Anthony, buried in Miss Zara’s performance, that conjured so wonderful and painful a memory of love experienced, flashed, star-crossed, then fizzled like a Fourth of July sparkler. It was about what he had become.
When he began to cry, no one really noticed. After all, that’s what Miss Zara did to people—made them cry and made them love her all over again.
Chapter Seven
On one level, Omar Stevens considered himself too old to hang out with all the young guys half his age in Griffith Park on Sunday afternoons, despite the fact that Griffith Park on Sunday afternoons was where the chickens of his carnal desire cooped. He did truly love the young, and they truly seemed to love him. He was as good a lay as any of them, and he was good with the gifts. He provided drinks, pricey dinners at chic Beverly Hills eateries, electronic gear, pocket change, weekend trips to Vegas, San Francisco, and Mazatlán, and a Caribbean cruise for the especially gifted. And they always thanked him in the very best ways.
So Griffith Park was where Omar hung on Sunday afternoons. And Griffith Park was where Omar met twenty-year-old Andrew several Sundays back.
Andrew was simply beautiful, a finely chiseled, thick-lipped, high-cheekboned thug prince. He always had his scowl fixed, his head cocked, and his pants down. Outside of his dress and demeanor, he looked like most of the boys Omar dated, just another variation of Brando.
Andrew lived across town in Silver Lake, right above Sunset Boulevard on Micheltorena. Omar figured he could knock that out real quick and still have plenty of time to get back over to La Brea and Rodeo Road in Baldwin Hills for his interview with Clymenthia Teager prior to her reading and signing.
Whenever Omar and Andrew got together they got right down to business. Omar would ring the doorbell. Moments later Andrew would snatch the door open and pose threateningly—the ghetto stance, the thick tongue licking glistening, half-parted lips, the low-hanging jeans held up only by a high-hoisted ass and a huge wad of dick. He would stand there long enough for Omar to take in the vision.
Then they would attack each other with hungry-man kisses and door slamming caused by the impact of twirl-grinding and groping and grunting and wrestling and tumbling toward the bedroom. They would leave a shambled trail of Reeboks and Florsheims and 501s and Armanis and wife beaters. Burberry briefs and cheap polyester boxers would be stomped off to the ground. They would suck on nipples like newborns, take to dick like the bottle. Hot breath would heat up both pairs of balls, and Omar’s tongue, with decades of experience, would play gently around the soft, trim hairs that circled the sweet smiling young pucker.
Young stallion legs would hoist up and spread young ass for old dick that now begged for a ride with a quiver, and young ass would oblige with the joy of the pain that only good, deep penetration brings.
Two dicks, hard, one bobbing and dripping with the joy of getting it good, the other a chocolate torpedo, almost too big for the ultrasheer Maxx condom, a beautiful blue-black hot dreamsicle, giving it with the greatest of ease.
Fingers scratched walls; eyes shimmied underneath fluttering eyelids. The young boy’s earlier scowl became an eye-bulging grimace of unbearable pleasure from getting slam-dunked with a swift steady rhythm. He oohed and he aahed and he moaned and he grunted with uncool abandon and glee.
“Oh shit, mothafucka!” he screeched, slamming himself on the dick that impaled him. “Yeah, daddy. That’s right! Git you that ass! Git you that ass! Get you that good boy-pussy ass, mothafucka! Ooh! Ah! Grrrr!”
Andrew had to confess that Omar was pretty hot for a bourgie Ladera Heights o.g. Omar knew how to wear the young ones out beyond satisfaction, leaving them begging for more. And Andrew wanted more. He knew that the first time Omar fucked him. But deep down inside he knew that all he could be to Omar was just another young piece, looking for dick, dollars, and daddy, and that was cool. It
would have to be.
“Damn, niggah, that was tight.”
“Omar. The name’s Omar.”
“Whatever,” Andrew said with a half chuckle. He then took a soothing drag off his blunt. “You wanna hit offa this?”
“Nah, man, I’m working today. I’m covering a book signing.”
“A what?”
Omar leaned over and answered him with a kiss. Oh how he liked them young, dumb, and full of cum.
Chapter Eight
Shane knew that he had no real reason to be pissed off at Omar. Omar had not really lied to him, and never made any promises to him except that they would have some fun times together.
Well, maybe that was the lie. Fun times together? Fun times with Omar had diminished ever since they decided to be boyfriends, ever since Shane insisted that their relationship be more than what it was and more than what Omar was at first willing to offer.
But Omar was as afraid of losing Shane as Shane was of being lost. Shane knew that much. He was Omar’s emotional security blanket, the one guy that would always love him, not just for the sex, not just for the trinkets, the trips, the wild times, but for those quiet times when Omar didn’t have to be “on.” Shane loved him enough to occasionally read his ass the riot act, tell him no, tell him things for his own good, things he didn’t want to hear but needed to hear.
Oh yeah, Shane realized that Omar was a dog. But at least he was an honest dog. An immature, sometimes selfish, often impetuous, mostly lovable dog. Omar had been totally up-front about the other guys in his life, his need for an open relationship, his need to have his cake and eat it too, and Shane thought he could handle it. They had even negotiated terms: absolutely no barebacking. Just as they had always used condoms, Omar would always use condoms with anybody else. And Omar would never bring anyone home to his place. Shane would be the only one to share Omar’s bed, and vice versa. That was an easy deal for Shane. For him, there was nobody else. And yet, it was not so easy.
Looker Page 3
