The Men from the Boys (14 page)

For the rest of the night, no one approaches me. I find pairs of eyes, but they move on, skipping past me, like stones on the surface of a pond. I buy a second beer, something I haven't done in a long time, feeling desperation rise from my shoulders like perspiration in a sauna. I look for the guy from the suburbs, the one in the knit shirt who dared to approach me. I fight twin demons: the condescension and self-doubt over why only such a one as he would approach me, and the desperation that sends me back to him. But it's a moot dilemma: he's gone. He either scored or was rejected, plodding now up Commercial Street to his empty room. The announcement of last call is made. I stay in the bar until the lights come on: a stupid move, given the wrinkles. I set my half-finished beer on the bar and push out into the damp night, falling into lockstep with the crowd as it moves towards Spiritus.

I know no one here. Five summers ago, there was a posse of houseboys and waiters who were my friends. We were the boys then; the boys who laughed and tricked and thought nothing about it. Now one of them is dead. Two of them closed their open relationship and never go out. The others I see from time to time, walking down Commercial Street. We nod to each other as we pass, but there are others on the steps in front of Spiritus now, others with more hair and fewer wrinkles and bigger, more youthful muscles. One member of my old group, who went from being a summer waiter to a year-round poet, gave a reading at the Fine Arts Work Center just the other night. I went, and he was covered with purple lesions. I asked him if he wanted to go out to the club, but he gently turned me down. Does anyone go out dancing with spots?

Now I feel foolish, even a little shameful, standing here on these steps in front of the pizza joint, thinking of my old friend. Who's to say he's so different from me? He's not: we dressed the same, we did the same boys, we danced the same dance.

I watch the crowd dwindle. “Desperation shows,” Javitz has said, and he's right. It
smells,
too: sour and fetid, and the boys here on the steps keep their distance from me. There are no eyes here at all. Try as I might—and still I try, even at a quarter to two—I make no connection. I watch as the boys leave in little pairs. I watch as men in leather chaps yank their chains and pull their slaves back to their guest houses. I watch finally as the pizza makers from Spiritus haul out their garbage and shut off the light.

I trudge back towards home alone, trying to banish the sound of the foghorn.

At least I hadn't seen Eduardo. At least he hadn't seen me like this. But if I
had
seen him, I wouldn't be going back to an empty bed and a scrotum heavy with unshot sperm.

I spy a man heading down the alley towards the pier. The rhythm of Provincetown goes like this: if you don't score at tea dance, you can score at after-tea. If you don't score at after-tea, you can score after eleven at the bar. If you don't score then, there's always Spiritus, and if even that fails, you head on over to the dick dock.

I have never been to the dick dock. Until tonight, I have never fallen this far down the food chain. Javitz has been there, of course, bypassing the bar entirely, but where hasn't Javitz been? I consider it, decide against it, and walk past the alley. Then I change my mind and turn around.

It's hard to see through the haze. Here, on the lip of the bay, it's like steam—appropriate, perhaps, for the activity that stumbles within it. I can't even see the water; I can only hear the steady slap of the surf against the sand. The harsh overnight lights from the wharf only magnify the density of the fog. They do nothing to illuminate the movements of the men under the pulpy wooden pier. I can discern just vague silhouettes. A flash of red, a tattooed arm. Finally I make out, not a foot away, a cluster of bodies, like a circle jerk among boys in their clubhouse. But in the middle of the circle is a man on his knees, moving with difficulty on the wet sand, cocks surrounding him like the spears of conquistadors—every faggot's dream, and don't let anyone ever tell you it's not.

I feel a hand on my crotch. I turn, confronted by a face. It's not unattractive, but it's hard to categorize. Old, young, I don't know. Montreal, New York, Boston—who cares? For in moments he's on his knees and my dick is out of my jeans, and he's sucking as fast as he can. He's high on something, I'm sure. At one point he pulls off my dick and takes a hit of poppers. He offers them up to me, but I decline. He gets back into his work, and I turn my head, discovering the crowd we've attracted. The cocksucker from the circle has apparently been sated; now seven dicks point at this one. The men attached to these dicks have shuffled into a ring, closing in on the man in front of me, tempting him away. Some of them begin to paw at me with shaky, graceless hands. I feel fingers suddenly from behind, creeping up under my shirt and finding my nipples. The man in front of me on his knees looks up, the round whiteness of his eyes in the dark, and runs a hand over my chest. I'm glad I shaved. I imagine the slick smoothness he feels, and I tighten my stomach so he can feel my abs. My dick swells now, ready to shoot. I attempt to withdraw, but he holds me there, and I come despite myself, ejaculating down his throat, the way I once did, more than ten years ago, with Gordon in the front seat of his mother's car. I know the force with which I come, the force that sends my load across the room, and I imagine how that must have felt for him, taking it down his throat. Define “passion,” Javitz had dared. This, then: how he
swallows,
every last bit of it. Another man from the circle shoots: “Ah, yeah,” pumping out bullets of semen that land in globs on my chest. I stumble away, while the man on his knees moves on to the next.

It takes me a second to think, to quiet my heart in my ears. He
swallowed.
In ten years, that hasn't happened to me. I've always been so damned
good,
such a fucking role model, pulling out of the boys' mouths just before I came. That's how I was with Javitz, and Lloyd too: I have never tasted either's cum, and they have never tasted mine. Strange, isn't it, that this faceless man at the dick dock should have that part of me, and they don't? Maybe it's that generation thing again, that weirdness of being in between. Javitz laughs at me for my inexperience; Eduardo's friends simply disregard the warnings. But for me, for Lloyd: we came out at the same time as the virus did, and were immediately bombarded with those hellish “safe sex” pamphlets that told us:
Do it and die.

I think about the man on his knees. It was
his
decision, I tell myself. And besides, I'm negative. Or was, anyway, last time I checked.

What worries me more, as I walk home in the sticky night air, is the cum drying on my chest, a flaky confection that resists my attempts to brush it away. I shaved my chest tonight; I nicked a spot.
I bled.

When I get home, Javitz still isn't back. He and Ernie must be taking one of their long walks—or else he's gone to the dunes. I wish he were here so I could talk about what I'm thinking. Instead, I slip into bed and watch the mist seep into the room, like a vampire in one of its many forms.

Boston, February 1995

“He's
gaw-jiss,”
Javitz says when we get back home.

I roll my eyes. “He's not
gorgeous.”

Lloyd doesn't say a word. Javitz, of course, is talking about Drake. The two of them had talked intently for the last hour of the birthday party.

“He's part of a safe sex program at the hospital,” Javitz says, in awe. “He asked me to come and speak.”

“Really?” Lloyd asks. “What did you say?”

“I said of course.” He winks. “Providing dinner comes included.”

“Go for it,” Lloyd says, giving permission.

“Yeah, right, darling. So he can talk about
you?”

I decide to change the subject. “They're good friends, aren't they?” I ask.

“Who?”

“Chanel and Rose and Melissa and Tommy. It was such a nice time.”

“They're all your friends,” Lloyd says to me. “They all came because of you.”

This is one of Lloyd's issues. It pisses me off. It's true I knew them first. Chanel worked with me at the newspaper before I resigned. I met Melissa in a writers' workshop. Lloyd gets an attitude about this.

“Chanel adores you, and you know it,” I snap at him. “So do Melissa and Rose. And as for Tommy ...”

Tommy had a crush on Lloyd when we first started dating. He even had to stop seeing us for a while, in fact, the crush got so intense. Add Lloyd to the list of reasons for Tommy to resent me.

“I'll tell you something about Tommy,” Javitz says. “He barely said a word to me. He can't handle it. My health.”

This is
Javitz's
pet peeve. He thinks the only reason anyone wants to see him is because they think he's dying, and anyone who avoids him is doing it for the same reason.

“Tommy's just socially awkward,” I say, immediately aware of my condescension. “I mean, he's ... shy.”

“You had it right the first time,” Javitz snips.

I can sense we've started rolling. Happens every time.

“Melissa went on,
and on,
about that food,” Lloyd sighs. “ ‘Too much salt. How can they get away with this much salt?' I wanted to throttle her.”

I don't try to stop it. I actually jump in. “And did you get a load of Chanel's latest thing? All the personality of a wet piece of dust.” I sit down on the couch and take Mr. Tompkins onto my lap. He nips at my hand but I pet him anyway. If I pet him from behind so he doesn't see my hand coming, sometimes I can even get him to purr.

“Wendy was
much
cuter,” Lloyd agrees. “Chanel's losing her touch.”

“Getting old,” Javitz says.

“Poor Tommy, though, huh?” I say. “Just keeps putting on the poundage.”

“He said he's seeing someone,” Lloyd tells me.

I laugh. “He even said he'd bring him by. Guess he trusts me finally.”

“Well,
he'll
never learn,” Javitz says, eying me.

Mr. Tompkins manages to land a nasty bite on my wrist. My fault: he saw my hand coming. I let him go. Now he's frustrated, looking around for something else to bite. Javitz is too far away, so he decides on his tail, and spins around for a few seconds like a whirling dervish before collapsing in a heap. His little murmuring heart is surely high in his ears.

“Oh, you crazy thing,” I say to him, bending over him to stroke him while he pants. “Take it easy. Your heart can't take it. One of these days you're going to overdo it.”

“He'll outlast us all,” Javitz says.

That's when I decide to end our cattiness. “Listen to us,” I scold, “a bunch of stereotypical queens, backstabbing our friends just hours after partying with them.”

Javitz sighs. “That's what friends are for.”

“No. It's
not.”
So why do we do it? It's just like my family. “Oh,
hiii,
Auntie Loretta,” my sister gushes, embracing her beside the Christmas tree, hating the woman and her lofty airs. “Didn't think they'd
ever
leave,” my father used to grumble behind his smile as he waved to my brother and his three unruly children, backing down the driveway in their station wagon.

“Well,” Lloyd announces, “I'm going to bed.” He has to get up early: he has a real job, even if we don't. “Thanks for the party. Try not to talk about me too much after I'm gone.”

Javitz approaches. “Wait, Lloyd.”

We both turn. Javitz seems uncomfortable.

“I need to say something, just to get it off my chest.” He hesitates. “We can process it tomorrow if need be.”

“What?” I ask. I hate prefaces like this. I get up and stand next to Lloyd.

“It's just that I've been ... I've been thinking about what you said, Jeff, about not wanting to do Provincetown again.”

I feel impatient, pressured, guilty. “I haven't made a final decision. You asked me to rethink it, so I am.”

“I didn't ask you to rethink it,” Javitz says. “But I've been doing some rethinking myself.”

Lloyd and I are quiet.

“I've decided I'm going to
move
to Provincetown. For good.”

“For good?” Lloyd asks.

“Yes. Ever since going on disability, I've tried to visualize my life. What it would be like. What I would do, how I would live. I can't see doing it here in Boston. For over a decade, this city has come to mean dying for me. So many of my friends, the people of my generation, are gone. It has been one long preoccupation with my own mortality, and that's not going to change, not in the near future. I'm still kicking, still living—yet here, all I think about is death, how many have gone before me, how many times I've been to Beth Israel, how many workshops I've put together at Fenway. I want to do something new, take another leap while I still can.”

We're both silent.

“It's something I need to do,” he says, “and I just hope you both understand.”

We all stand there silently for several seconds, just looking at each other and not blinking. Then the clock chimes eleven over the wood stove.

“So,” I say, looking past him out the window, where it's started to snow again, “what you're saying is—
you
don't want to do summer in Provincetown.”

“Well, that would be one result of my moving there permanently. I think the place Ernie found can be rented year-round. I'd like to avoid a summer lease.”

“So that would exclude us?” I detect the sharpness in my voice.

“No, it wouldn't exclude you.” Javitz is talking in his steady, calm teacher voice. “But it doesn't necessarily
include
you, either.”