How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle (22 page)

While he was guffawing, I cut in with “Red, is this porn or a Marx Brothers sketch?”

“The who?” he asked.

“If everyone would please let me do my piece,” said Tom-Tom. “Ahem.” He didn’t clear his throat, but rather uttered the word itself. “In my story, it seems that a rising young stockbroker’s assistant is coming back from a party when he sees a guy sitting in the stairwell of his brownstone. It’s someone who lives in the building. ‘What are you doing out here in the hall?’ ‘My girl friend kicked me out for bad attitude.’”

Red was nodding vigorously. “He probably didn’t get the flowers for her mother’s fucking birthday or something.”

“‘We can’t let a handsome fellow like you spend all night in the hall.’ So now they’re in the stockbroker’s assistant’s apartment at bedtime. His name is Fred.”

Tom-Tom paused, and Red asked, “When’s the chick? You know?”

“Jennifer’s not in this one, Red,” I told him.

“Is Ken in it?” he asked, perhaps just starting to catch on.

“No, I am,” Tom-Tom replied. “Did I mention that the other guy—his name is Darryl—is wearing nothing but overalls that show him off to a T?”

“‘Dude looks like a lady,’” Red quietly sang, recalling an old Aerosmith hit. He seemed rather calm, all things considered.

“Now, Fred is trim enough,” Tom-Tom continues. “But Darryl takes his physical fitness very seriously.” Tom-Tom dallied on the “very,” drawing it out with the sound of something creaking as it is pried open.

“What kind of story is this?” Red asked Tom-Tom. “A suspenseful mystery?”

“A big surprise,” said Tom-Tom, “is Darryl’s dick, which is long and fat, with veins as big as snakes. At the sight of it, Fred faints. Luckily, Darryl catches him.”

The phone rang.

“The tape’ll get it,” I said, as Fleabiscuit nosed out for a shoelace sortie.

“Look at the pooch,” said Red in a dreamy voice; then we heard Stanley saying, “Listen, you fucking traitor, you call me back or I’ll come and get you so help me Christ!”

“Du-hu-hude,” said Red.

“When Fred comes to,” said the dogged Tom-Tom, “he is under the covers with a wet hand towel on his forehead, and Darryl is sitting on the bed.”

Tom-Tom paused again, either for dramatic effect or to check the weather in the listening room.

“‘All set now?’ Darryl asks him, and Fred nods. Darryl just sits there, and finally he takes off the towel and says, ‘Can I come in with you?’ Fred says okay. They lie there for a while. Then Darryl says, ‘It’s lonely like this. Can I hold you for a bit?’ Fred says okay.”

There was a Luftpause as the three of us watched Fleabiscuit take out Red’s other shoelace.

“After a while, Darryl says, ‘I’m not getting too familiar, am I? You may not know about a husky guy like me getting on you like this.’”

“That’s a lovely touch, Tom-Tom,” I noted. “Dated but authentic. This is, what, 1958 or so?”

I might as well have been speaking in Urdu; Tom-Tom was concentrating on Red and would brook no interloping. His eyes said, Ken doesn’t need the way I need; he is a perfect life-form and a little not human.

Going on with his tale, Tom-Tom said, “Darryl wraps his legs around Fred. He says, ‘I’ve got a pretty hairy chest. That doesn’t bother you, does it? That I’m holding you and you can feel the hair on my skin?’”

“Does it bother him?” Red asked.

“He doesn’t answer. He’s listening to Darryl’s breathing. Then Darryl says, ‘Did you ever fuck with a guy, Fred?’”

And Tom-Tom waits. A long, long time.

“Did he?” Red finally asked.

Tom-Tom looked at Red. Yes, of course, he had in fact been doing nothing
but
look at Red. But now he shared his look, giving as well as taking. “Allons-y, mon bleu,” he said.

“Yes,” said Red. “But what did it mean?”

“‘Let’s get started, new guy.’”

Red thought that over for a bit, then told Tom-Tom, “Dude, you got
issues!
”

*   *   *

T
AKING IT IN PERSPECTIVE
, Tom-Tom had to admit that his scheme to “specify” Red (as he put it) had failed. But I did persuade Tom-Tom to confess his interest in Red to Ken, who I thought was being swindled. Oddly, Ken said it was better this way, because with two operatives trying to score Red, the project had what Ken called “outing security.”

This I found exasperating, not to mention mission: impossible. But at least Ken offered a half-plausible explanation for bisexuality in men. He said, “These guys are very turned on. Their culture wants them to be, but also they just
are.
So there’s all this something in them, and they don’t know what to do with it. They’re a waterfall of hunger—where does it land? And they have these nutty social needs egging them on to go wherever they’ll be liked.”

That was interesting. But if that’s all it took for a straight man to experiment, how come we don’t get a whole load of them crossing over?—and that’s what I said to Ken.

“How do you know there
isn’t
a whole load of them?” he countered. “They aren’t likely to speak of it. Besides, are we talking of straights or of 60–40s?”

It’s the one notion for which he has borrowed my terminology; they don’t have an equivalent in Chelseaspeak.

“I still find it amazing that you let Tom-Tom have a go at your dream man.”

He shrugged. “It’s because he’s getting such a bad time at his job, and we all have to…” Fast-forward. “It’s not because I fear his competition, because I don’t have any.”

And you know he never jokes. O brave new world, that has such people in’t!

*   *   *

T
OM
-T
OM REALLY WAS
getting a bad time at work; he had but to appear for Maureen to make a beeline for him, and none of his co-workers was helping him resist her sheer command of him. Indeed, according to Tom-Tom they delighted in creating ever more ludicrous excuses for her behavior.

I was serving Tom-Tom in my usual capacity as Good Listener while Dennis Savage reviewed the erotic fiction that J. and Cosgrove had been writing. None of the stories was finished; some were nearly complete and others fragments.

“Carlo’s been helping us with ideas,” said Cosgrove, giving the adoring Fleabiscuit a pat. “And those are the stories that are almost done.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Tom-Tom asked me. “Give up my job?”

“‘Frankenstein Gets Randy,’” Dennis Savage read out, picking up one story from the pile. “Is ‘Randy’ an adjective or a character?”

“Both,” said Cosgrove.

“‘The French Lieutenant’s Punishment.’”

“That one has the popular military motif.”

“‘It Happened in Bloomingdale’s.’ ‘Lou Ferrigno’s Excellent Adventure.’ ‘Geppetto’s Kink.’”

Dennis Savage looked at Cosgrove.

“That last one goes a little over the top,” said Cosgrove.

“Will somebody please help me?” said Tom-Tom.

I told him, “After that performance you gave the other day, recounting the adventures of Fred and Darryl, you don’t need help. You’re masterful, boy. You’re in charge.”

The phone rang.

“Yes, Stanley?” said Cosgrove into the air, as the phone continued to ring. “You want to do
what
to Bud?”

Dennis Savage laughed, and Tom-Tom made an irritated face; in fact, it was a business call. I took it, and when I got off, Dennis Savage, Cosgrove, and Fleabiscuit made leaving noises and began to disperse.

“Cool,” said Tom-Tom. “Because I want to tell Bud about my first date with Red.”

Dennis Savage, Cosgrove, and Fleabiscuit froze. Slowly they turned. After trading looks, they came back and arranged themselves in a pattern suitable for Listening To Major Dish.

My blurb was ready: I said, “He tells a good story, too.”

“It was the first time we were alone,” Tom-Tom began. “After all the music and socializing. It was at my place, and I was pouring out my heart to him about my troubles, when someone wants too much from you and won’t leave you alone. And was he bored! He cut in, all of a sudden, with ‘This one guy? He says, How much would I take to kiss another guy, smooch on the mouth. Me? Not for a thousand bucks. Says, Come on, you’d go for five hundred. Oh, would I? Five hundred? Well, maybe. Then he’s, like, So what about two hundred and fifty? What about one hundred? Keeps working me down ’cause he’s such a convincing dude, with his theories like a mad scientist.’”

“Where was this?” Dennis Savage asked.

“Can I use it in a porn story?” Cosgrove put in.

“Are you quoting him exactly?” was my entry. “Because it really does sound like Red. And I need to—”

“It was my place. We were sitting on the couch, listening to music. Ken lent me a CD to play because Red likes CDs. Ken says it’s because Red doesn’t ever know what to say, and with music on he doesn’t have to.”

“Ken advised you,” I said, “on how to steal his boy friend?”

“I’m not stealing unless they’re having sex, and Ken says they aren’t.”

“But did
you?
” Cosgrove asked.

“We were on the couch, very next to each other, and he will touch you as he talks. They do that. So Red goes on with his kiss bargaining: ‘Guy gets me down to five dollars. You do it for a five? Kiss a guy for five?’”

“‘They do that’?” Dennis Savage said. “And who is ‘they’?”

Hesitating, Tom-Tom finally decided on “The somethings. Like Red.”

“No more questions, just do it,” I ordered. “Guy gets him down to a five. Then what?”

“Red said, ‘Okay, smack a dude for five. Whaddaya know, guy pulls out the five, holds it in front of me. Says, “Well, big guy?” Even if I’m not so tall.’ And Red says that and waits, close to me, his hand on my shoulder moving the very tiniest bit. He waits and he waits.”

So did we wait.

Enjoying the suspense he had created, Tom-Tom at length got to “So
I
said, ‘I’ll kiss you for free, Red.’ Still he waited. It was almost comical, like an actor forgot his lines on opening night. But then he nodded and said, ‘Let’s kiss and see.’ It was the whole kiss, too—deep tongue and holding me and saying things. ‘That guy with the five has a chick who treats him right.’ Running all the words out between his mouth on me again. He says, ‘Dude shucks off his loafies and she fucks him with a strap-on, right on his back like a chick. Shoves his white tank top up to his shoulders and his pants down to his knees.’ See how he has it all described in his mind? And kissing me still, this is. He says, ‘But she don’t get his clothes off, because they like to fuck dirty.’”

Cosgrove’s mouth formed an appalled O at the failure of subject-verb agreement, and he covered the ears of Fleabiscuit.

I asked, “What are ‘loafies,’ for heaven’s sake?”

“He means ‘loafers,’” Tom-Tom replied. “That’s what he calls anything that isn’t boots or sneakers, even tie-shoes. He’ll say, ‘Tom-Tom, those are cute loafies you got on.’ And we’re pals now. He calls me ‘Pipsqueak.’ And my only dream is to fuck him. Of course, I want to fuck him dirty, though he’ll never consent. I could doggy him at best, because getting doggied means you’re just a guy who’s getting creamed out. But if you’re fucked dirty with your loafies shucked off, you might as well be a chick.”

“Tom-Tom,” I said, “I greatly fear we’re losing you, because I don’t know where you are going.”

“To the shithouse, to fuck dirty with Red, of course.”

“Tom-Tom,
stop!
”

“C’est cocasse.”

But now he did stop. We all stopped.

“Are you happy?” I finally asked him.

He blazed at me a bit. “Are you?”

“I was, till about four minutes ago.”

“Was Red by any chance…” Dennis Savage began. Then: “Was he talking about himself? Getting fucked?”

“I doubt it,” Tom-Tom replied. “He just obsesses about women fucking guys with those wear-me dildos.”

“Did you tell Ken about this?” he asked. “Shouldn’t he have this information?”

“I’m guilty about Ken. I’m guilty pleasure today.”

It was all a bit unhappy but also, as Tom-Tom noted, rather cocasse, which is to say “weird yet amusing.” Anyway, now it was over, and Dennis Savage went off to write and Cosgrove took Fleabiscuit for a walk, leaving Tom-Tom and me alone.

“I wasn’t making it up,” he told me. “But I think he’s straight, after all. He just likes to fool around and feel erotic and dangerous. That’s why Ken doesn’t really care that Red and I are friends. Ken doesn’t like straights, you know. He’s pure Chelsea. He’s never had sex with a woman; we call that ‘a thoroughbred.’ He resents that I’m closeted.”

“Tom-Tom, you are about as closeted as the plaster gnomes on Lane Fuller’s patio.”

“I mean to my family and at work.”

“Speaking of work—”

“Let’s don’t speak of it,” he quickly put in. “It just gets worse and worse.”

Then the phone rang, and the tape took it, and Stanley screamed at me some more.

*   *   *

O
N WHAT TURNED OUT
to be the last day of the Indian summer, I went walking through Chelsea with Ken after a lunch at Davey-Boy’s for more porn planning. Ken still hadn’t agreed to take part; he was, he said, “pondering the variables.” But I was ready to see that project collapse like a canasta table at a garage sale, because there’s too much porn in our lives as it is. There was porn in the way that Ken stared at Red all through dinner on the day they met. What a waste of intensity, for they had drifted apart and Tom-Tom had taken over.

“Wasn’t Red The One?” I asked Ken.

He shrugged. All about us on Eighth Avenue, local lads were voguing and fleshing, gazing and collecting.

“Did you ever meet The One, cousin Bud?”

“Yes. Beethoven.”

And right out of nowhere there came looming up at us yet another Angry Man Who Regards Ken as a Piece of Unfinished Business. It’s a genre. And let me tell you, boys and girls, it is not fun to be the impediment to their having an intimate conversation with the man they love to resent.

This one didn’t even say anything as he pulled in at Ken’s dock. He gave me a flick of a glance, then pointed at Ken in a meaningful way. Ken pointed back as he moved on around him. I braced myself for a scene, but the stranger merely fell into step with us and, in undertone, tried small talk.