How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle (29 page)

“The pathetic little femme gays like marriage,” Davey-Boy went on, “because then they can be what they really wanted to be all along: women. Oh, yes, my boys! Who else, we ask? Hetero businessmen want it, because then they won’t have to offer us partner benefits—we’ll have to
marry
to get healthcare. And divorce lawyers want it,” Davey-Boy husked out, sweeping the table with his smoothly blazing eyes, “so that decent, hardworking gay hunks like me can go bankrupt.”

He paused, as Ken made his way back to the table. “Have you scoped those silly drips lining up to get married—just like
real
humans do, Mommy! What meager specimens they are! And even, what
is
gay marriage? It’s spending all your time together. You never go out, except to work and to attend your own funeral. No, marriage is staying in, because your wife controls you. You catch videos. You cook muffins. You secure the flowers and wine for those intimate … Tom-Tom, you’ll have the term.”

Tom-Tom filled in with “Ces dînettes en fag,” while all stared at the couple of honor, then at Davey-Boy, then back, as stabilized as a line of Tiller Girls. Ken’s face could not be read; believe me, I checked. Nor could Jim’s, even when Davey-Boy came to “Losers is what they are. Not because of bad luck or they chose a wrong path on their map. They’re losers because they deserve to be. Because gay marriage is for twerps who don’t want to do anything with their lives.”

Davey-Boy has huge hands and long, spidery fingers. He likes to show them off, extending the palms out at one as if bearing treasure: the portrait of Davey-Boy in cameo, or notations on his Pilates routine, or his beating heart.

I’d no idea that Davey-Boy cultivated a political viewpoint. All I’d ever heard him speak of was people he knew and feelings he had, and his gay sociology never abandoned physical taxonomy and seduction technique. Davey-Boy isn’t an intellectual; Davey-Boy is performance art, and now he thrust his right hand onto the top of his vest and flipped open the buttons in one ceremonious drop. Then he pulled the vest off of his skin like an adventure hero in the final reel, because sometimes he is nothing less than the movie of Davey-Boy and must stand before you, magnificent.

Ken, you are with the wrong man, I thought. I know that Davey-Boy’s a show-off, but there are worse things to be. If heaven does await and I get to it, the first one I want to meet is Beethoven. Or … no.
First
I want to meet the Dolly Sisters. The
next
one I want to meet is Beethoven; and I have the fantasy in my mind that, through the vast holy ooze of the Beyond, he’s going to seem like Davey-Boy.

Did my mind wander? Davey-Boy had finished, though he was still on his feet, staring at Ken and Jim. The latter was rubbing the back of Ken’s neck, concentrating on him, tuning the rest of us out, ready for their private video-and-muffins evening.

And everybody else was looking at me again; it was my turn to discourse on the thing that gay life most desperately needs. “‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,’” I began: because I’ve no idea what gay life needs. But Davey-Boy wasn’t finished, after all. He cut in on me with “Only faggots like that one want gay marriage.”

“That one” was of course Jim, who rose to complete the confrontation. Immediately, Ken got to his feet and grabbed him, calmly saying, “No, we’re going now.”

Davey-Boy again hiked his shoulders up and dropped them. A muscle thing, terse, defiant. Like an animal rivalry in the forest. I
will.
I
am.

I have to say, Jim Streeter was not intimidated. Maybe he’s used to this; I have since heard that he only goes with men whom third parties regard as already taken. Among his confidants, he calls this “cheatsex.” I’ve
even
heard that Jim can’t get off unless he’s cheating.

But I digress with pleasantry. What happened was that Jim tried to defuse Davey-Boy’s anger with a shrug, and Davey-Boy told him, “You’re a wife, you stinking squish.”

So we had jump up and pull them apart, which was easy because the dinner table stood between them. Still, there was some real danger for a bit, because neither Jim nor Davey-Boy wanted to be seen pawing the ground and bellowing yet securely held back. They really needed to fight.

“You want some, Topless Pete?”
Jim cried at Davey-Boy. To the rest of us, he added, and none too gently,
“Let me get to him, that’s what I ask!”
And he was grinning all the while—not a joker’s grin: a killer’s. He even shook off his guard momentarily and tried to crash over the tabletop—“Allons-y, les gendarmes!” cried Tom-Tom, charming to the nth degree—but the standoff was immediately reinstituted.

“You
loser!
” Davey-Boy shouted.

“You
straight!
” Jim replied.

And somehow somebody got the indicated coats as Ken bustled Jim out into the hallway. It wasn’t over yet, though, because now Davey-Boy threw everybody off, pushing past those of us who were milling about or protecting the dinner things to get to Ken and Jim. Or no: to Ken. Angling around a corner, I saw that Jim had got locked outside on the far side of the door, while Ken held Davey-Boy special-close and whispered into his ear, four or five words at most. Ken caught sight of me over Davey-Boy’s shoulder, winked at me, planted a deep one on Davey-Boy’s hungry mouth, and left.

All the Kens now burst into applause behind me, as I slipped down the few feet to Davey-Boy. He had not turned back to the interior of the apartment, where the party was. Rather, he was just standing, facing the door through which Ken had just passed. I fancied seeing the door fly open for the entrance of a fantasy icon, something out of Tom of Finland or A. Jay. He would take Davey-Boy in his arms—or, wait, isn’t Davey-Boy his own fantasy icon? What does the icon need?

“Ken,” said Davey-Boy to me. “Why did he wink? Was it at you? You know something, don’t you?”

“Everyone’s dating,” said Tom-Tom rhapsodically, coming up to us with the entire party behind him. “It must be like spring in Franche-Comté, where the Cascades du Hérisson gush like a porn star in the money shot, and tourists gape at Le Corbusier’s chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut.”

The guys looked at him for a moment, then turned back to Davey-Boy.

“You won” was Wilkie’s opinion.

“No contest,” Morgan agreed.

“Although I question,” said Bradin, who has a somewhat academic way of expressing himself. “One must. We want tolerance from the straight world—should we not display tolerance among ourselves? And by this magnificent example—”

“You’re lucky Pajammy and Corndogger aren’t here,” I told him.

“I have to get to cousin Bud’s for a second dinner party,” said Tom-Tom.

“And me to make music at Matthew’s” was my rejoinder, as the Kens began to peel away to return to the main room. Tom-Tom offered to drop me on a generous detour to the West Side, though he was staring so hard at Davey-Boy that he may not have known what he was saying. Not yet cooled down, Davey-Boy had the fierce hot wetness of a prizefighter after the gong. One gets so used to the sheer style of the Chelsea Boy that one never knows how to take it when one of them gets real.

“Did I win?” Davey-Boy asked me. “You always know.”

“It was a great speech,” I told him. “I’ll be getting hate mail for months.”

“That guy Streeter—is he The One?”

“Don’t ask me. It’s your concept.”

“I wasn’t sure if I liked you before,” he said, putting a hand on my arm as if bucking me up. “But I almost do now.”

He did that shoulders thing again, as Tom-Tom made Hand Display Gesture at Davey-Boy’s square-cut pec line like a model on an old TV commercial presenting the advantages of a new refrigerator.

“He’s my irrepressible Davey-Boy,” said Tom-Tom, pulling a leather jacket out of the closet and handing me my dress coat, muffler, and the attaché with the sheet music. Tom-Tom and Davey-Boy enjoyed a major hug as I held the door, and Tom-Tom and I were all but gone when I stopped him and turned back. Davey-Boy was still there, that gleaming shirtless darkhair, still panting from the recent action, just there, just standing there.

Then he smiled at me, so I asked him where he was recruited.

“In the parking lot after a Christian League softball game,” he said. “The umpire.”

In the cab heading uptown, I asked Tom-Tom if he had programmed any resolutions. He said he had a few minor ones relating to his gym routine, but this very night he was putting a major resolution into action.

With a confidently understated determination, he said, “I’m going to have what no one else can have. Somebody’s going to take off more than his loafies tonight.”

*   *   *

M
ATTHEW’S PARTY WAS, AS
always, the highlight of my holidays; after the Sheri concert it gradually wound down to a little thissing and thatting: baritone Paul Whelan picked up some cute chick; a wondrous mezzo who has the honor to be the only person in all five of these books to remain nameless tried to decide if the charming twenty-three-year-old Puerto Rican waiter was straight; and I invented an act with opera director David Alden in which I put on a German accent and David was mute and referred to as “the Bar
on.
” We fooled conductor Christian Thielemann. I
think.
I told him the Bar
on
and I were heading to Hamburg for
Der Freischütz.

“Who sings?” he asked.

“The usual Nazis,” I replied, then, faking embarrassment, I changed that, in a confidential tone, to “Strictly local cast.”

The party always dwindles intimately down to Matthew, David and his twin brother, Christopher, and myself—the four of us college buddies—along with Sheri and a few kibitzers of honor. At length, the waiters split, the sun comes up, and I go home. I came in, very quietly, to the sight of Carlo dozing on the couch, Fleabiscuit nestled between his legs. The dog looked extremely partied back (as we used to say in the old days). His eyes opened as I switched on a light, but he didn’t move; his frame shuddered with a sigh and he went back to sleep. Now is the time when I gather up the Christmas cards and throw them out to start the new year.

Something stirred behind me, and I turned to see Cosgrove holding up a ssh finger.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, “Rip’s a heavy sleeper. How was the dinner?”

He smiled, and also whispered, “The perfect New Year’s special. Mr. Smith and Nesto served, and Red didn’t know what the food was and had to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on toast. Peter was quite amazed, I noticed. But, after all, it’s just your three main food groups. There’s your toast group. Your peanut butter group. Your jelly group.”

We shared a silent giggle, and he produced his own pocket comb, so I could neaten his hair.

“How is Red getting on with the guys?” I asked.

“Well, he’s sort of like Space Godzilla. Like, he hears his name and turns too fast, so his tail crashed into a building. But his heart is good, and his rap is so strange that he’s fun to listen to.

Nodding at Carlo, Cosgrove added, “I think Mr. Smith wants to give Red a spanking with a wooden paddle, but since Red’s with Tom-Tom, Carlo’s too much the gentleman to say so.”

I thought that altogether too advanced a concept for my traditional early New Year’s Day soothe-down, but before I could reply Tom-Tom came out of the bedroom wrapped in a blanket, and I did a take.

“You’re still here?” I asked, keeping the volume low.

“It was too late to go home. I felt like those people in…” Once again, he waved at some fabulous, even imaginary place. Eldorado, Metaluna, Bay Ridge. “You know. The ones who have to stay with you on Friday nights and they get affectionate and suddenly it’s more sex with straights, which seems to be happening a lot lately. No wonder the heteros think marriage is endangered. I told them about Davey-Boy’s action at the other party. Like in World War II: an
action.
” Tom-Tom went into a tremendous yawn, but he kept on talking with “Then we had a magazine…” till the yawn overwhelmed him. Shrugging like a little kid, he concluded with “a magazine party is what, with dramatic readings.”

I turned inquiringly to Cosgrove. “A mood of historical wonder descended upon the guests,” he explained. It sounded rehearsed, to say the least. “So we had a look at your old
After Darks
and read aloud from the interviews.”

“I loved it,” said Tom-Tom. “What’s an ‘actor-model’?”

I said, “Someone who charges one hundred fifty in and two hundred out.”

Peter now appeared; he was nude. “Everybody has a boy friend but me,” he merrily announced. “First, I attempted to create my own brand of … well,
niche
sex by turning the couples into threesomes. Finally, this spectacular specimen”—he gazed fondly upon Carlo, still sawing a log—“took pity on me. Laddies, I can turn straight at last. No—spare me your pity, for I’ve had sex with Zeus. Everybody watched, too. I feel like a porn movie.”

“Red put his hand over his eyes,” Cosgrove reported, “at the moment of…”

“Action,” Tom-Tom put in.

“You had an orgy?” I asked.

“Fleabiscuit and I didn’t,” said Cosgrove. “But those others…” He trailed off as Dennis Savage and Nesto joined us, one blanket enclosing the two of them.

“You perv,” I called Dennis Savage. “You bawd. You have turned my bedroom into a circus clown car, plus I can’t help but notice that everyone had sex and all I did was socialize.”

“You got to make music,” said Cosgrove. “You once told me that was the greatest pleasure of all.”

After all the kidding, that solemnly joyful remark silenced the room. Then Tom-Tom piped up with “I can’t wait to tell you, cousin Bud. Because I got sexually promoted tonight in my quest of Red’s heart and mind. Nous allons causer, mon vieux. But Red is embarrassed and won’t come out. The suspense is awesome. Could you…?”

“Why do I always have to be the one?” I asked.

Carlo had awakened at some point in all this. Still stretched out on the couch, he was petting the adoring Fleabiscuit. It struck me, right then, that some of us on this planet are simply loved. That’s all: loved. The rest of us are umpires.