The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter

by Tom Mendicino

  “On stomach, please.”

  The man’s probing fingers find all the pressure points in Frankie’s muscles. The little gnome’s hands are surprisingly strong. His thumbs work their magic, releasing the tension in his neck and shoulders. Frankie marvels at how the man finds the energy to do ten, twelve, body scrubs a day.

  “Is good?”

  “Very.”

  He melts on the table as the Korean picks up his loofah and goes to town on his back and buttocks.

  “Too hard?”

  “No. It feels great.”

  Actually, it feels like a thousand tiny pinpricks and he winces as the attendant rinses his raw skin with the spray hose.

  “Turn on back, please.”

  He feels completely unselfconscious, lying here, his big floppy pecker fully exposed. He admires these Asians and their lack of modesty about their bodies. Men of every age and size, tall and short ones, bony scarecrows and roly-polies with sagging bellies, are going about their ablutions. Wrinkled, dimpled, creased, some surprisingly hairy, many of them shockingly smooth, they squat on overturned buckets, scrubbing, shaving, rinsing, and brushing their teeth with single-minded determination. Mariano had seemed embarrassed by all the naked flesh and was reluctant to remove the towel he’d wrapped tightly around his waist. He’d covered his crotch with his hand in the steam room and tucked his penis between his crossed legs in the soaking pool, shyly averting his eyes from the parade of phalluses on display. Not that there’s much to stare at—they’re Asians, after all—except for an impressively hung Russian, a heavily tattooed cement block of a man, who struck up a conversation with Frankie in the hot tub after Mariano was called for his appointment with the shiatsu therapist. He seemed like a friendly enough guy. His foot kept brushing against Frankie’s shin and his gap-tooth smile suggested the wildly inappropriate thoughts of an overactive Slavic libido.

  “Sit up, please.”

  The Korean wraps his arms around Frankie’s chest and squeezes tightly, cracking his back, then gives his shoulder blades a spirited thumping for the grand finale.

  “All done,” he announces.

  Frankie slowly lowers himself from the table and steadies himself on his feet before wandering off in search of creams and lotions to soothe his raging skin. He uses Crème de la Mer at home, but the economy moisturizers provided by the thrifty Koreans will have to do in a pinch. The lotion feels slick and oily on his face and arms; he slaps it on his chest and legs, but he needs Mariano’s hands to smear it across his back. As usual, he’s nowhere to be found when Frankie needs him. The attendant is padding around the locker room in his bare feet, collecting wet towels and emptying trash cans. Frankie has time for a shave while he waits for Mariano and retreats to the steam room to soften his prickly whiskers. A blast of steam sears his face as he opens the frosted glass door, surprising the Russian, who flashes a wicked grin, not knowing or not caring it’s Frankie’s boyfriend whose spit-slicked ass he’s enthusiastically fucking with his enormous cock.

  “Tight. Very nice,” the Russian says as he graciously withdraws and steps aside, inviting Frankie to take his turn.

  APRIL 6, 2008

  Every day’s a holiday in the Gayborhood, but this Sunday afternoon is even more festive than usual. The sunshine is glorious, no clouds in the sky, proving that God surely can’t hate fags, despite the insistence of the militant fundamentalist protesters marching behind police barriers with their Bible-quoting picket signs. The burly cops, working-class Irish and African Americans, eye the God-fearing marchers suspiciously, finding them even more freakish than the elaborately coiffed drag queens and leather-clad muscle bears celebrating the diversity of pride with a beery and boisterous street fair. Miss Bonnie Faye Crawford, a travesty of femininity in a size twenty-two sequined gown, takes the outdoor stage at Twelfth and Locust to introduce an eager pack of buff, shirtless bartenders who are gyrating and lip-synching to a fabulous new single called “Just Dance” by Mariano’s latest favorite diva. The crowd is squealing like teenage girls at the height of Beatlemania. Frankie didn’t know it was possible to scream ohmygod! at the top of your lungs for three minutes running without taking a breath.

  “Well, Francis, are you going to introduce me to your young friend?”

  If Frankie had seen him approaching he would have grabbed Mariano by the arm and disappeared into the crowd. Seamus Ferguson is the nastiest bitch Frankie’s ever had the misfortune of encountering. A red-faced old drunk, his fat cheeks mottled by a lifetime of imbibing, he’s never really forgiven Frankie for being unable to conceal the appalled expression on his face when Seamus made a drunken advance at Frankie shortly after Charlie’s death.

  “And what might your name be?” the old queen asks Mariano.

  Frankie’s seen this act of Mariano’s too many times now. It’s lost whatever charm it once had: the feigned shyness, the fluttering eyelashes, the exaggerated look of deference as if Frankie were his lord and master and he’s the subject who needs permission to speak.

  “His name is Mariano,” Frankie says briskly, not trying to hide his irritation.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Seamus asks, hoping the lascivious twinkle in his eye might appear seductive. But Mariano’s already lost interest in the old ogre. His gaze is fixated on the glistening torsos of the dancers on the stage.

  “Looks like you’re going to have to keep this one on a short leash, Francis. Unless you two have one of those modern relationships, anything goes.”

  “I suppose,” Frankie says.

  He hadn’t expected a modern relationship when he asked Mariano to share his home. He’d never believed Mariano, a very young man with a strong libido, would be faithful. He’s older and wiser than when he’d met Charlie Haldermann and had expected a lifetime of unwavering monogamy. But Frankie is old-school and had expected discretion. Outside sexual activities were to be conducted in secret, never admitted or openly discussed. He doesn’t remember ever agreeing to an open relationship with Mariano, but he’s adapted quickly, even enthusiastically at times. You won’t hear him complaining when Mariano invites one of his pretty little friends to join them for a romp in their king-size bed.

  “Well, more power to you. I don’t know where you get the energy. I can’t stay awake for the late news anymore.”

  A gaggle of Mexican boys rushes up to embrace Mariano. They’re painfully effeminate, their eyelids streaked with eyeliner and lashes caked with mascara. They surround Mariano, deferential, as if he’s the alpha male or, more appropriately, the queen bee. They admire his tight Diesel jeans and polished Cole Haans, charged to Frankie’s American Express, and listen with rapt attention when he speaks. Frankie doesn’t know Spanish, but Mariano’s patronizing, grandiose tone of voice needs no translation. Mariano opens his mouth, showing them where he’ll be fitted for a bridge. They nod appreciatively, impressed by his ability to exploit the endless opportunities in the promised land. His friends plead with him insistently, tugging him by the wrist, trying to drag him away.

  “They are going to dance, Frankie. I want to go to the club,” he says petulantly, already having made up his mind to join them. Frankie gives his blessing, wishing that Seamus didn’t seem to be so thoroughly enjoying witnessing him being abandoned at the kid’s first opportunity to flee.

  “What say we old farts go for a quick drink?” Seamus asks, but Frankie’s already turned his back and is walking away. He sees a group of friends from the Charlie era, librarians and real estate agents who are counting down the years until early retirement, making monthly payments on mortgages on second homes in Rehoboth Beach, where they intend to live out their dotage, collecting pensions and Social Security. He hopes to escape his old posse without notice, but it’s too late to turn his back and disappear. His friends have sighted him and are shouting for him to join them.

  They share a haunted past, these men of a certain age. The ghosts of the victims of the virus will always walk among them. Survivors of the horrors of the eighti
es, they cling to their interrupted youths with stubborn pride, still wearing the clownish bright pastel polos and the designer jeans of the decade that defines them, though with wider waistbands and larger collars.

  “You know, bitch, I shouldn’t even speak to you. Don’t you bother to return phone calls these days?” his friend John, a proud alumnus of the Naval Academy, pouts in mock indignation. A barrel-chested six-foot-seven with a chin that should be immortalized in bronze or marble, he’s an impressive specimen of masculinity, even in his late fifties.

  Frankie’s been drifting from his friends for years, spending more time with Jack, feeling awkward in the midst of their insistent couple-hoods. He’s been actively avoiding them since meeting Mariano, knowing they would scorn the boy and talk about Frankie as an object of pity and ridicule, just another of those deluded old queens blindsided by the splendors of youthful beauty.

  “Where have you been keeping yourself? I was going to drop by the shop the next time I’m in your neighborhood to make sure you’re still alive,” John asks.

  “Well, you look good. But you always look good,” John’s animal-loving partner, Timmy, assures him. “Sophie, behave yourself or Mama’s going to have to take you home!” he snaps, chastising the mongrel tugging on his leash, another rescue dog he’s adopted to pamper with his nurturing personality.

  “We’re having an early dinner and you’re coming with us,” they insist, but before Frankie can accept, a wave of excitement rushes through the crowd. Oh God, it’s her! She looks fabulous! Get up closer, I want to meet her! Frankie strains his neck to see which remarkable diva is passing through their midst, wondering if this mysterious new goddess whose name Frankie keeps forgetting, Lady Goo Goo or something (“It’s Gaga, Frankie. GA-GA!”), is making an appearance.

  “Chelsea! Chelsea! Over here!” Timmy shouts, waving his frightened dog in the air, trying to get the former First Daughter’s attention.

  The big gorilla of a governor is guiding her through her adoring public and leads her over for a nice little photo op with the puppy. John and Timmy swear an oath of allegiance to her mother; they can’t wait to see Hillary’s gown for the inaugural ball. Chelsea asks the breed of their pet while tickling it under its chin. The camera doesn’t do the girl justice, Frankie decides; she’s much prettier in person. He hears his phone ringing and sees that Mariano’s calling, mostly likely needing to replenish the cash reserves Frankie had given him this morning. He hesitates, then hits ignore, and goes off to join his friends for a raucous and boozy meal.

  APRIL 7, 2008

  At first, Frankie thinks it’s 1978 again and he’s dancing shirtless, his smooth chest glistening with sweat, spinning, spinning, Donna chanting she feels good, she feels good, she feels good . . .

  But the heavy stomping up and down the staircase, the shrieks of laughter and pulsing bass lines, are an ugly reality, not a pleasant dream. It’s four in the morning, only a few hours until daylight. Yesterday’s revelries are still at fever pitch, having moved from some after-hours dance club to his living room downstairs. The Ambien has left Frankie woozy and he’s unsteady on his feet as he reaches for his bathrobe. He makes the descent slowly, carefully placing one foot after another on the steps.

  Every light in the house is burning brightly. Mariano’s being a gracious host, offering vodka and tequila to his guests. The windows are wide open and a breeze ripples the sheers, but a thick layer of smoke lingers in the room. Cigarette butts smolder in makeshift ashtrays and two boys on the sofa pass a small glass pipe between them, inhaling and holding the smoke in their chests. Dance music from Frankie’s youth, a track from I Remember Yesterday, is pounding through the speakers, not at earsplitting volume but loud enough to be heard by anyone who might be passing on the street below at this ungodly hour of the morning. The boys on the leather couch giggle and tussle, swapping spit as they work their hands into each other’s pants. Get a fucking room, a sallow, pockmarked blond snickers as he sucks on the pipe. Frankie knows him from the neighborhood; he waits tables at one of the spaghetti houses that cater to tourists seeking “authentic” South Philly cuisine.

  “Hola, Frankie. You want some vodka?” Mariano asks.

  “I don’t want any vodka,” Frankie balks, asking Mariano if he knows what time it is.

  “Is Monday. No work for you today,” Mariano reminds him disdainfully. “You go up to sleep now,” he says, dismissing Frankie as he takes the pipe from the blond.

  “What is that? Who told you you could bring that into my house?”

  “It’s chill, man. Don’t worry,” the waiter assures him.

  Enraged, Frankie snatches the pipe from Mariano’s hand and runs to the window, throwing it into the street. The waiter raises his hand as if he’s going to strike, but the usually passive Frankie picks up a heavy piece of crystal, brandishing it as a weapon.

  “Get the fuck out of my house. Tell them to leave, Mariano. All of them.”

  The boys on the sofa zipper their pants and, still giggling, scamper toward the back staircase. The waiter hisses at Frankie, calling him a motherfucker, and tells Mariano adiós.

  “Where are you going?” Frankie shouts as Mariano rushes to follow his friends.

  “I hate you, Frankie,” the boy spits. “I hope you die.”

  Frankie takes a deep breath, the crisis over. He gathers the smoldering ashes and flushes them down the toilet, then pours himself a vodka that he swallows in one long draft. He slowly climbs the stairs, wanting only to crawl back into bed, not caring that the extra Ambien he’s going to take will put him down until late in the afternoon.

  Marshall Culpepper’s mind is obviously elsewhere. Kit and Michael are barely seated before he announces he’s been rehearsing his performance of “nappy lord fauntleroy,” the signature work that won him the Langston Hughes Medal for Poets of Color Under Thirty. He reminds them he’ll be reading at an Obama rally on the Swarthmore campus tomorrow, just in case they’ve missed the many press releases. He doesn’t feel the need to pretend he isn’t bored to distraction reading adolescent analyses of Slaughterhouse-Five by the young scholars of the Charlotte Ingersoll School, the rigorous preparatory academy that has shaped the minds of generations of Morris-Pugh-Scott women. Come September, he’ll be three thousand miles away from such dreary obligations, living in Palo Alto, a Stanford Wallace Stegner fellow in poetry with no responsibilities but chasing his muse.

  Marshall’s narrowed the list to three candidates for the cash award to a graduating senior funded by the modest endowment established by Kit to honor the career of Miss Eleanor Peterson. Forever self-aware of the impression he makes, he tosses his golden dreadlocks as he reviews the accomplishments supporting each of their cases for being selected as the class’s most distinguished student musician. The New Yorker Talk of the Town correspondent who covered the Hughes Medal ceremony couldn’t come up with anything more original than café au lait to describe his skin pigment. He’s fairer than cinnamon, as pale as cashews, the perfect shade for a blue-eyed Hip-Hop Poet whose father is a direct descendant of the founder of a long-extinct shipbuilding company and whose mother, a former beauty queen and Bond girl of the Roger Moore era, is heir to the African-American beauty products empire started by her great-grandmother, a kitchen domestic from Durham, North Carolina.

  Michael despises this Tupac in J. Press at first sight. All these years later, despite his many accomplishments, the boy from South Philly is still self-conscious around the privileged elite of the storied clans who summer in Bar Harbor, winter on St. Simons and Sea Islands, and gather each December at the Assembly Ball. Kit says he’s being ridiculous, unfair even, but he knows they condescend to him, subtly of course. It’s part of their heritage, in their blood. A young male cousin of Kit’s, a junior at Bowdoin in dire need of a haircut, who spent his undergraduate summers touring the youth hostels of Europe, had once expressed shock that Michael had never seen the Tuscan countryside from atop the campanile of the Duomo. Her drunken brother
Henry had attempted solidarity by confiding he’d once gotten a great blow job from a South Philly girl during an Eagles game behind a fire door at Veterans Stadium. His future mother-in-law was unnerved the first time she saw the tarnished Saint Rocco holy medal he’s worn on a chain around his neck since the morning of his First Communion. To this day, they can still make Michael feel like a Tastykake—a Butterscotch Krimpet or a Peanut Butter Kandy Kake—in a box of patisserie pastries.

  “They all seem deserving,” Kit frets, unable to choose.

  None of the young women selected as a finalist is going to find herself on the wish list of the Curtis Institute of Music. One’s a pianist, one’s a cellist, and the third has a sweet, if slight, soprano.

  “What do you think, Michael?” she asks.

  “They all look fine to me,” he mumbles.

  “Marshall, can we have a moment? I’d like to speak to my husband alone,” Kit asks politely.

  “I have to take this,” he says, implying that his conveniently ringing cell phone is an urgent call and the Dean of Stanford is dying to speak with him. More likely, the video store is calling to remind him his new release rentals are a week overdue.

  “You offered to come along this afternoon. Can you please stop sulking over not getting your pound of flesh from that pathetic young man and try to muster up some enthusiasm?”

  Michael had been scheduled to make his opening statement this afternoon. But just as they were about to pick a jury, Arnie Strong had made a last-ditch pitch to persuade the zealous prosecutor he’d never convict his client of vehicular manslaughter. Michael finally conceded to the obvious and made a reasonable offer. The kid will do ninety days and be eligible for release after thirty, pay the maximum fine, and have his license suspended for a year. But it doesn’t seem like justice to Michael. The young man has a promising future. He’ll marry and have children and with any luck enjoy a long, happy, and prosperous life, while the ill-fated and long-forgotten college sweetheart he was supposed to marry rots in her grave.