How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle (10 page)

“Well, he isn’t cute. I maybe like his sincerity and such. Anyway, two nights ago, I went to bed before his shower with my door open. It was hot, and I was on top of the covers, on my stomach, pretending to sleep. He couldn’t not see me. And it took a while, but finally he came in. I could tell by the way the light changed on the wall. He stood there for a nice long time, and I murmured as if in my drowsy happiness and moved my legs apart.”

Cosgrove had outdone himself on the entrée, an entirely homemade
steak frites,
well-done as we all like it. J. embalmed his portion in salt and ketchup and cut into it without as much as an Oh, look.

“What tense moments as I waited in the dark on my bed,” J. continued, scarfing up the beef. “I could hear him breathing as he turned me over, stroking me all about, and I pretended I’d had a nightmare. I should have an Oscar for that moment, where I’m saying disconnected things and not quite awake. It’s a moment where I could be fucked, but he only asked if I wanted him to stay with me. I took his hand so tenderly and grateful, and I touched him in all strange places, so he wouldn’t know what it means. And I made him go back to his room.”

“It’s Hungry Love,” I said.

“Are we screening a video tonight?” Cosgrove asked J. over coffee. “Or listening to my exclusive underground tape of
Titanic?
”

“Didn’t that already sink?”

“No, the great new show about it.”

“I should get back to tend to Vince. He was threatening to make rice the hard way, where you have to keep stirring it, so who knows, there could be an explosion all over the kitchen.”

At the door, J. said, “I like this kind of food. Remember before, how it was always that stupid tuna fish and hot dogs?”

Door closed, Cosgrove said, “J. doesn’t love me any more. He likes me, but the deepness is gone, and once I would cry to say this, but now I see it as destiny.”

“Really?” I asked, leading him to the kitchen for a cleanup.

“Some relationships are very important forever, but some for only so long. That’s why straights have marriages—they have to force themselves to be together. With us, it’s more realistic. We don’t have marriage, because we know that people change their minds sometimes. Don’t you agree?—and also I’m very sorry I was rude to you yesterday about Dennis Savage and being a tyke. I was cranky. I was Cosgrove.”

I accepted the apology, resisting an impulse to pet him like a puppy. I don’t want to spoil him.

*   *   *

I
T WAS NEARLY SUMMER
now, and Peter kept urging a Pines weekend upon us. Dennis Savage and I have retired from that youthful scene, but someone did press upon us the use of his house in his absence, and Cosgrove wistfully remarked upon the Magic of the Island, and Dennis Savage expressed the desire to expose himself one last time at the Meat Rack. So off we all went at noon on the Friday after Memorial Day. We took one of the jitneys that load up at Fifty-third and Second, Peter and Lars Erich splendid and subdued and Cosgrove blissfully crossing over on
Titanic
for the millionth time, on his headphones. Who was the Greek who said, “Everything in moderation”? My family motto is “Everything to excess.”

Dennis Savage and I Talked Quietly Among Ourselves as we rode out of the city. He was interested in news of J., and when I commented upon the absurdity of J.’s setting out to seduce a straight man, he observed, “You know that boy never goes after what he can’t get.”

What Dennis Savage mainly wanted to discuss, however, was the gay chat rooms he’d been wandering in and out of on his computer—cruising them, in fact, for a new buddy.

“I’m tired of living alone,” he said. “I so miss having some cute guy do some mystifying and troubling thing, then suddenly turn to me with that Peter Pan bewilderment where they hold on for dear life.”

“You can have Cosgrove on alternate Thursdays.”

“What is it about those big domineering numbers that I never understood? Doesn’t everyone want young, cute, and hold-on-to-you?”

A bit of Long Island Expressway rolled past as we considered that.

“Well,” I finally said, “some see
themselves
as hold-on-to-you, so they need the domineering numbers.” Looking over at Peter and Lars Erich, I added, “Which of those is—”

“Oh, Lars Erich has Peter on a string. He’ll crush him in time. But Peter will rebound. I greatly admire him, you know. The way he fit right into gay life and started trying all its knobs. He makes the system work for him.”

“Tell me more about the guys you meet on your chat lines.”

There were fifteen guys in rotation, of whom six were special and three, he thought, extremely potential.

“Do they ask for a photo?” I wondered.

“Others did, not these. I would just say I had a bad experience letting my image loose in the interzone. Many people then said sayonara, and that’s fair enough. I suppose I would have myself, once. No, of
course
I would have. But my fifteen—I think—didn’t want a photo, even if they asked for one. They were afraid to have their concept of me compromised.”

“It’s a blind date without the date.”

“Without the anxiety,” he corrected.

“But, surely, someday you must meet, no?”

“‘I have danced with the first class, Edgar,’” Cosgrove quietly sang.

“Define ‘someday.’”

*   *   *

I
FELT BAD FOR
my friend. He had been sage: got all the appetite out of his system in his twenties and then sought love. He found it, lost it, and now had a right to more. But how can anyone over a certain age fill out a chat-room profile? There’s nothing wrong with being over a certain age, mind you: but I’m the only one who thinks so.

The Pines house, a bit to the west between the boardwalk and the ocean, was pleasant and roomy but no showplace. It took us forever to get there, with Lars Erich gleaming and exhibiting himself to every beauty who passed; in the Pines, one passes plenty. His shirt and Lederhosen had come off on the ferry, leaving him ultra-ready in a Speedo, and though Cosgrove countered this gambit by donning his paper-bag head, nothing distracted the passing gaze from Lars Erich. He was grinning at his fans, winking and flexing, all but signing his phone number to them in guide-dog training speak. When we passed one bright-eyed little number walking his white Lab off the leash, the dog leaped joyfully at Lars Erich as if he were one of those puppies raised by the Blüchers.

“These certain dogs will always love me,” Lars Erich observed, kneeling to rub the gamboling animal’s neck. Cosgrove took the opportunity to let Fleabiscuit out of his so-called (at least by Cosgrove) “executive” travel box, but still no one paid attention to anyone but Lars Erich.

“Does one not love these dogs?” Lars Erich asked, smiling at the dog’s owner. “See what energy and love is here.”

Perhaps taking that for a come-on, the owner ran his hand up Lars Erich’s arm and called him “hot stuff.”

“I have these friends, as you see,” Lars Erich told him. “Perhaps later.”

“See you at tea,” said the dog walker.

It was like that all the way along: beauty approaches, Lars Erich flirts, nothing happens … yet.

“How is one to come to this place of the hübsche Dinge and not acknowledge?” Lars Erich said, quite softly, to me in the middle of all this.

“Peter is your boy friend,” I replied. “What’s he supposed to think while you pick up—”

“I were his love slave?” he asked, menacingly. “As
if?
”

“Okay, one half of you is smart and fascinating,” I said. “You know what the other half is?”

“Were you looking for this?” Cosgrove asked, bustling up with the Signet Classics
Pickwick Papers
I’ve owned for decades and had planned, this weekend, to read.

“I wasn’t.”

“There it is, anyway.”

That made a space, and Lars Erich occupied it by moving on. I suddenly realized what Cosgrove had done. He smiled and said, “He will never like it when you defy him.”

“You’re getting wise,” I said.

“I have these coaches, you know.”

*   *   *

T
HE HOUSE BROKE UP
into diverse entities that first evening. Cosgrove and I went to dinner with old friends of mine while Fleabiscuit enjoyed a play date with Old Boy, the cocker spaniel next door. Peter and Lars Erich went to tea, ate out, and then went dancing. Dennis Savage saw to the groceries and went off on his own as mysteriously as possible.

Came then the morning, and “What am I doing here?” I asked Dennis Savage as he lazily started breakfast and I glopped up coffee in one of the house mugs, a commemoration of the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Di. “This place is all for youth. Beyond that, it’s nothing but sand and poison ivy.”

“How about a bracing swim in the surf?”

“What are you cooking?”

“Raspberry-peach whole-wheat pancakes and Swiss sausage, paper garlic toast, and—”

“That really thin bread with the … How come some cute guy hasn’t moved in with you just for the food?”

“Sounds good to me,” said one of the most beautiful naked young men you have ever seen. Dennis Savage and I just gaped.

“Hi!” he said, smiling through unforgivably big even white teeth and thrusting his dark hair out of his eyes. “Jim Burmeister.”

He and I shook hands; Dennis Savage excused himself because of Cook’s Palm.

Pulling on a Speedo and sitting on the stool next to mine, Jim asked, “Is there any—,” but Dennis Savage was already setting down a mug of coffee before him (this one a souvenir of Iowa, with a map and an ear of corn) complete with honey pot and creamer.

“Many thanks,” said Jim.

He’s six five, by the way, just like Lars Erich.

It was Jim’s plan, he said, to poison his coffee with three spoonfuls of honey and then a lake of cream. Yet one taste and he treated us to a great corny “Wow!,” followed by “What’s the secret ingredient here?”

“Chicory,” said Dennis Savage.

Whereupon a second naked titan joined us, kissing Jim, shaking my hand, pulling on a pair of Everlast boxing shorts, and giving the coffee its second Wow. His name was Sean.

Spiritedly empty palaver about anything at all followed, till I tried to ascertain how Jim and Sean came to be here.

“We came back with…” Jim gestured at Lars Erich and Peter’s room. “Last night. I hope we didn’t—”

“Not at all,” I said.

Dennis Savage set before us one of the greatest breakfasts since the convening of the Congress of Vienna, to another Wow! from Sean and a Say! from Jim. Once we tasted, silence reigned as we three got into some serious eating. I want this known, boys and girls: if Dennis Savage ever opened a restaurant, Zagat would be forced to bestow the first 31.

We were on our seconds when Cosgrove banged in through the back door, wet from the ocean, also in a Speedo (and a
Steel Pier
baseball cap), followed by Fleabiscuit in the world’s tiniest straw sun hat.

“Where’d that come from?” I asked about Fleabiscuit’s headgear.

“Someone I know went to a fancy ball and saved one of the party favors, including this dainty sombrero from an iced margarita that brings Fleabiscuit into the height of fashion.”

Fleabiscuit posed, so we could admire the hat, while Cosgrove met the guests.

“It was the Harvest Moon Ball,” Cosgrove then went on, scooting onto a stool and accepting a plate with a look at Dennis Savage that read as … well, accepting. Dennis Savage accepted it. He even created a dish of tiny pancakes and sausage cuttings, lightly cooled in the fridge first, when Cosgrove requested a “children’s platter” for Fleabiscuit, who inhaled the whole thing in a millisecond.

*   *   *

“B
UT
I
DON’T WANT
to do foursomes,” Peter told me at the same kitchen bar much later that day. He and Lars Erich not only missed breakfast; they almost missed Christmas.

“It must have been a high quality of foursome,” I said. “Jim and—”

“When I was cruising, yes,” Peter said, a please-hear-me hand on my arm. “But I’m in love now. I want to concentrate. I know it sounds strange from me, after … I just don’t really see other men’s skins at this point.”

“Even when they’re six five?”

“Lars Erich picked them up. I was just dancing.”

“Why is everyone tall with you? You’re tall, Lars Erich is tall, those two are … The whole thing is big, isn’t it? I rule the world with
size.
”

“It’s not his looks,” Peter protested. “I mean, it’s why you notice him, date him. But then…”

“No, it’s power, that simple. As in the animal world. It’s antlers and fetlocks, markings, the killer’s leap upon the prey—”

“I swear
no
to you,” he insisted, another hand on my arm.

“I will never understand you,” I said, “because I know what tricking is and I know what romance is, but you have the idea that you can—”

“What a splendid thing it is, a sunny day at the beach!” Lars Erich shouted as he stormed in shining-wet, trailed by Cosgrove and Fleabiscuit.

“These great waves!” Cosgrove agreed. “You’re bigger than them, so you stand against them, but they come slapping you down, dousing you with their whole what-they-are.”

He made the sounds and mimed the effects of the ocean’s tugging power.

“You are swept away,” Cosgrove concluded, going to the fridge. “Yet one orange juice pick-me-up and everyone’s as good as new.”

Lars Erich was taking Peter in with one of those meaty smiles that made our German friend so interesting and disturbing at once, a world’s fair during a world war.

“Peter is not liking last night,” Lars Erich said, peeling off his swimsuit and grabbing a towel from wherever. “That Jim and Sean! What a worst thing to happen!” He had stopped smiling. “How much I love you,” he whispered to Peter.

“Prove it,” Peter replied, like a second-grader. “How much power do I have?” He got up and added, “What if No more sex with anyone else or we’ll break up?”

“Bravado,” said Lars Erich as Peter approached. Moving around Peter, Lars Erich took hold of him quite gently from behind as if to create peace between them, but he suddenly tightened his grip into a stranglehold.