How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle (19 page)

Glancing at the video screen over my shoulder, Ken said, “Being gay is irrevocable, so what’s the difference? Isn’t that your friend, though? The one in your building?”

I turned to the TV screen to find yet another film, this one in color. Dennis Savage, a cleric in a book-lined study, was apparently about to discipline an altar boy. Rehabilitation, in the form of a dramatic reading from Saint Thomas Aquinas, preceded punishment. As the good father bent over an impossibly vast volume sitting on a lectern, the younger man—one of those skinny kids who could be anywhere from eighteen to thirty—undressed him. This was performed ritualistically, in a series of sly, subtle, and very smooth maneuvers. I got it: the clergyman doesn’t realize that he’s losing his three-piece suit button by button. Accompanied by the almost inaudible droning of his lecture, the kid’s movements became hypnotic, as when he stood behind the older man to rub the lapels of his jacket before grasping the collar to gentle it off; or when he methodically edged the belt through its loops with a soothing pull before winding it up and setting it lovingly on the desk.

Dennis Savage seemed to be about twenty-five and at the height of his gym period. He looked wonderful. His stripping procedure was more direct, but of an occult nature, a worshiping in stages laid down by clan elders. He unbuttoned the kid’s shirt but did not remove it, pulled the kid’s pants down to the thighs, then pushed his shirt back off his shoulders. Junior immediately fell to his knees to shop the top man’s upturned dick, and after a short while the latter pulled the kid up, sat on a couch, and set the kid athwart the theocratic knee with his pants still around his ankles while reaching for a heavy wooden paddle with a long handle.

Our audience, given to hoots and commentary minutes before, was absolutely silent. Everyone knows that porn will comprehend the occasional paddling scene, but few of us have actually seen one and probably assume that it is faked or softened in some way. Not here. The
crack!
of wood on flesh was barbaric, and several times the camera stole close to catch the older man’s quiet rhapsody and the ambivalence of the kid, who hadn’t been careful what he wished for. When it was over, the top turned the bottom over and began inching down his trousers, got them off at last, saw to the socks and the shoes, and then took a questing little tour of the student’s skin. The older man’s face bore no expression throughout this operation, even when he pulled the boy close to cradle him.

They posed thus, as the lights faded. When the picture came back on, the performers were already on a doggy date. It was a violent one, reaching a high point when the kid shouted, “You’re going too hard” and his master yanked the kid’s head back with a handful of hair to shout, in turn,
“More! More! More! More!”
They came right after, it appeared, their faces aligned in a mien beyond even the customary gasp of the divine. One last thing: the camera closed in on the kid for a head shot, and, moist and spent as he was, he lazily curled out a “Thank you, sir.” There the film ended.

After a short silence, Davey-Boy got up to retrieve the tape. He looked thoughtful, and didn’t cue anything else up.

“The top is a friend of yours?” Harlan asked, as stirring filled the room. Crispin went to the fridge for beer refills.

“Would you call that,” said Tom-Tom, “a representative sample of your friend’s tricking style?”

“In his wild youth, perhaps,” I said, examining the tape’s packaging to learn the title of that arresting little sketch. Oh, of course. “He’s quite reformed today, I believe.”

“That’s another thing,” said Wilkie. “Do we include the rough stuff?”

“Fetish is trendy,” said Davey-Boy.

“‘Thank you, sir,’” Tom-Tom echoed, infusing it with fear and wonder. He has the sweetest heart of all the Kens, and arouses protective instincts on his behalf in a surprising variety of types. His feelings are almost as big as his arms.

“No, Tom-Tom,” I said.

“What no?”

“That’s not how he said it, Tom-Tom.” I like to use his name a lot; it’s like stealing kisses.

“How did he say it?”

“Like a pro.”

“We should include a lot of scenes with guys in authority like that,” said Crispin. “Commanding officers and cops, you know? Or even diplomats on a trip. You’re sharing a room, far from your wives.” He turned to Tom-Tom, who was still going over his recent exchange with me and wasn’t ready for Crispin’s hand when it touched the back of his neck. Tom-Tom jumped; and Crispin, getting into his part, calmed him with caresses. “No one has to know,” he purred to Tom-Tom. “And you want that peace treaty, don’t you?”

Tom-Tom suddenly started weeping, and Crispin held him. The Kens all get hard when Tom-Tom weeps, and they take turns holding him and stroking his hair. He’ll go home with one of them tonight.

I walked Ken the three blocks to his place, and at his door he asked, “Did you know that about your friend?”

Answering a different question, I said, “I’m not sure how I react to Davey-Boy’s idea.”

“You think it’s immoral.”

“It’s not immoral. But it’s worrisome.”

“I like that you’re looking out for me,” he said. We shook hands and I went home. I had a lot to think about, so I walked the whole way.

*   *   *

T
HE IMPLAUSIBLY WARM WEATHER
suggested to Lars Erich a ride in the Park; but I know he really wanted to talk about Peter.

“Of course, we must be breaking up at this moment,” Lars Erich told me as we pedaled over the rise of the big hill leading to the museum. “I will always love him, but we are not matched. He looked extremely handsome pleading with me not to part at last. But he is relieved in a secret way. He was thinking I would perhaps stalk him and create commotions.”

Lars Erich had showed up shirtless in Lederhosen, sneaks, and an Alpine hat, and what he was creating was accidents as gaping bikers lost control of their rides and narrowly missed crashing. Like a number of terribly effective physical specimens of my experience, Lars Erich takes no notice of his charisma. It’s all someone else’s problem.

“You’re too crazy to be a boy friend,” I said. “You’re fascinating company, and I bet you’d be a triumph in a lifeboat. But you’re too
very
for the everyday.”

“Yes,” he answered. “Yes, it is true as you say it.” We held off speaking as we rode up to the water fountains that guard the Fifth Avenue exit, Lars Erich naturally zooming up to brake at the last possible second, daring inertia to throw him. He pulled off his hat and thrust his head under the water, then shook his hair like a dog. As we started riding again, he said, “Even so, I am certain that I want excitement only. I am not interested in your everyday.”

“Would you ever appear in a porn movie?” I impulsively asked.

“It is a most unexpected question,” he answered, smiling.

“I mean, if an offer came your way, would you consider it, or do you think of letting strangers in on your action to be crossing a line of some kind?”

Thinking it over, he said, “What is the reason for porn? One is short of money. Or one feels somehow unrewarded in the world and must expose his best features to admiration. These are not my needs. So I have no reason for porn.”

“You wouldn’t do it for a kick?”

“Why is it a kick?” he countered, riding along no-hands like a circus stuntman.

“What I mean is,” I went on, trying to formulate the question that would yield Final Answer, “is there some moral position in this, or do you just not care?”

“It is not something I think about.”

We rode in silence again, cutting through the Transverse to the West Side, gaining the hill after, then sloping down to the next water stop. We said very little till we got to the benches outside Sheep Meadow, where we banked our bikes and rested.

“It’s sad about Peter,” Lars Erich more or less sighed. “The breakup is always sad. But he is not fun to fight with. He doesn’t need power over others. You are like him, too.”

“Live and let live,” I said.

The mild weather had brought out the runners, and we revered a few as they passed. One was notable, I thought: not so much handsome as very well made with interesting parts and a curious appeal in his almost ordinary face. In sneaks and navy blue running shorts, he was someone you almost dismiss in the first few seconds but before much longer prefer to Mark Dalton. And watch this: while the other runners ignored us with those thousand-yard stares as fixed as bayonets, this one slowed down and veered off the asphalt in our direction. He was still in motion, shifting his weight from leg to leg, as he planted himself before us to state that he lived nearby and Lars Erich was welcome to visit his apartment.

“I am with my companion,” said Lars Erich, indicating me. “It is also possible that I am too crazy to be a boy friend.”

“I already have a boy friend,” said the runner, still oozing from side to side, holding focus. “I just want a date. I’m here every weekday, if you feel differently tomorrow.”

And with that, he started off on his laps again.

“You have astonishing self-control,” I said as we watched the runner recede southward.

“Why have you asked me about this making of porn? Have you asked Peter? Or your amusing young friend in masks? Why is this a question for me?”

“It’s just that some guys of my acquaintance have decided to incorporate as a porn studio, and for some reason I am disquieted. Of course, there are hidden difficulties that may deter them. They might easily tape a scene or two, then drop the whole thing. But you might know something. I mean, because you’re so wild. I hope you’re not offended.”

He didn’t appear to be. “Is it a classic form or romantic?” he replied. “Classic is about knowledge. Romantic is about emotion. I always ask this first.”

“I don’t think porn is either.”

“Everything is either. Say this—what do you see in these visions of men having sex?”

“I see freedom from straights.”

He considered this.

“Because,” I went on, “all the characters are available men. Even if we’re supposed to think of any of them as hetero—cops, or whatever—or even if the actors themselves are marketed as hetero, they’re still having sex with other men. So straight is in effect expunged from the world.”

“What is such an English word, ‘expunged’?”

“It means No More Fathers, and boys just get to have fun.”

“It is wonderfully alarming. Maybe I make some porn after all, for this political statement. I am called Eberhard Kokk, and everyone rumors that I am a video star to get over my sad romance. It is said that I make classic porn, a sexual instruction. But my heart knows it is romantic porn, about the sorrow of love. And yet we see that man before, running, and then he comes up. So there is always more love.”

“That’s the message of porn, isn’t it?” I said. “It’s the ideal gay condition—no one gets turned down.”

“I think I have been turned down,” he told me. He let out one of those little exhalations of bemused resignation. “Because I am too crazy,” he said.

*   *   *

K
EN LIKES TO CONTEMPLATE
Beethoven now, usually an overture but sometimes an entire symphony. “It’s like Meeting,” he pointed out, “because you just sit there wondering for forty minutes.”

One day, after Wilhelm Furtwängler’s reading of the “Pastoral,” he said, “Tom-Tom likes you. He says he comes to visit here. What does he do?”

“Listens to music and talks about you.”

Ken nodded.

“Well,” I went on, “and his family. His new job downtown. You know what’s funny about your gang? You’re all very, very close, but it’s sex close and style close and sandwich-brunch close. And now it’s to be porn close. But at least some of you are looking for someone to be honest with. Don’t you … like, trust each other?”

“He’s closeted, you know. Tom-Tom. Perhaps it bothers you, being so defiant yourself. That Stonewall thing. Down with straights.”

“I’m too lazy to be closeted. It takes so much energy.”

“Tom-Tom hopes you’ll get political on him and coach him in how to…” He performed this little act he has invented: he mimes pressing a button on a remote and makes a fast-forward
zzzt
noise. He skips the boilerplate.

“It’s really none of my business,” I said.

Ken slowly shook his head. “You’re so … pure. So way what you are.” He wasn’t admiring me, just trying to find the word that means Maria. So I gave it to him:

“‘Independent.’ I trust in Beethoven and liberty and not making excuses. I trust in the West and its belief systems, which gave us a civilization known by art so abundant that it breaks into vast groupings of elitist, bourgeois, and pop. I trust in music and theatre. I trust in gays, who have their own vast groupings yet to be charted. I trust in the holy Western trinity of Dante, Goethe, Streisand. I trust in myself.”

“I can see why Uncle Edgar and Aunt Beatrix can’t handle you,” he said, amused.

“Can’t control me, rather. Because gays are as independent of fathers as art is independent of the state.”

So that put a button on it, and we paused to start the next topic. “Tom-Tom talks about me?” he asked.

“You’re his Beethoven.”

He got up, crossed the room, and examined the jewel box of the CD we’d just heard. “‘Wilhelm Furtwängler,’” he read out, pronouncing it so badly it rhymed with “Beetlejuice.” He fingered the booklet as if looking for a visual, his key into everything. What does music look like? Was Beethoven tall? Laying the pages down, he said, “My friends? Why do they…”

“Look up to you?”

“Yes.”

“I think it’s because you are paying no price, and they want to learn from you how it’s done.”

“No price?”

“No cross to bear. No problems.”

“So I’m carefree?”

“Aren’t you?”

After saying nothing for a long time, he told me, “I want my friends to like each other, but not too much.”

*   *   *

I
N NO TIME AT
all, it seemed, it was another Thursday dinner with J. To make it interesting, we asked him to bring Vince along, and I decided to add in Ken for that piquant mix of types that makes a party all the go. And, on a hunch, I asked Dennis Savage if he’d like to socialize with his ex after all this time and get a load of the boy friend.