The Passionate Attention of an Interesting Man (11 page)

Tom looked up. “She said that? Those words?”

“The young talk that way now.”

“Yeah? I’m young, and I don’t—”

“Well, the rich young. It’s the latest cool.”

“She better not talk that way around me.”

Putting the four plans back into the folder, Tom said, “Guess you can take off that coat now, which I would love not to see it again till Second Coming.”

Lloyd left his coat on his bed, and the two men went back through the house to Tom’s room. When they got there, Tom laid the folder carefully atop the Walther’s catalogue. Then he and Lloyd took an over-the-sink
washup and a tooth-brushing in the bathroom. Back in the bedroom, Tom poured water from his night jug into the glass and, as Lloyd came up to him, handed him the glass.

“Drink half,” Tom said. “You got your watch back for
okayness and now some water, which is to smooth you down from trouble.”

Lloyd was thirsty, in fact. He drank half the glass and gave it to Tom, who finished it off
. Then Tom said, “Understand me now, you have to be punished for your crimes or there’ll never be peace between us.”

“I know a really terrifying punishment,” said Lloyd. “You could tell me all is forgiven and we won’t mention it again.”

“The hell kind of punishment is that?”

Lloyd shrugged. “I thought it was worth a shot.”

“Hop into bed, now. And don’t let me catch you with a resistful look.”

On the contrary, Lloyd would probably have on something approaching his third smile, a thin line lightly wrinkled by a touch of that-was-close relief. The two undressed and went under the covers, and now Tom spoke:

“It’s like that day I caught you crying, isn’t it? Poor little thirty-six-year-old orphan, and he’s all out there with rich nobodies learning the arts of goofing off. Classic guy, right? But he can’t get a break, nobody to make sure that he’s home safe, care about him and such. Serving his apples-and-cheese combo to an ungrateful diner. Little boy wakes up in the huge darkness, and he’s scared, so he crawls into bed with his soldier dad, and you think I don’t know about that, don’t you? How that little boy feels. Well, sir, first thing tomorrow we’ll have one of those breakfasts you sometimes make, with all the trimmings. Eggs and biscuits. Juice fresh squoze. Bacon, coffee with special heated milk. Next I’ll take you to Shepherd’s and buy you a coat and scarf, so that’s settled about getting you warm for the winter. Then we’ll go to The Hardware and look at the trains. Make our first buy. Yeah, a transformer, and I already know which locomotive. We’ll take the Walther’s along, decide on stock. A few building models, too, keep us busy. But no rushing into it. We’ll make copies of your draw plans, take them along. Orderly. Long-range. Get it all home, start our layout, first day. That table is waiting for us, isn’t it? Sure. Then I want to take you out to dinner. One of those steak places where you get your potato baked in its individual foil just for you. Sour cream on it, classic. And then I’ll drive you back here and punish you for your crimes, because we’re going deep, us two. Believe I knew just what to do from the moment you came into my house that day. And you knew what was in store, right? Tuck you in, now, so we can both sleep easy. Blanket goes up to the ear and no farther, because that’s how my daddy used to do it. Catch on to it? You close your eyes now, Lloyd boy. We’ve got a big day tomorrow, and Tom is right here by your side.”

HOPELESSLY DEVOTED TO YOU

JASON:

Well
! The queens are still debating
just
when it all began—when our little jewel of Luzerne County in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania first stirred with the realization that we had been

Chosen!

For!

Immortality!

There are those who will try to tell you that it started with the opening of our very own gay bar, Mahantango Mary’s. Some called it posh, some poison—but to me and my friends it was a personal clubhouse loaded for a permanent Anything Can Happen Day. You oh so fashionable gays of the two coasts may be surprised to learn that we of flyover America have our chic drop-in salon, where the near-great meet the great to chin and gin.

Or it
might
have started when Mahantango Mary’s opened. It might have. But most of us will date the start of the action from the moment when Lyle Hickock, automobile mechanic to the stars and the hottest man in town, suddenly got that look in his eye and set off a-cruising for something steady in the romantic line.

Lyle
Hickock. How to describe him, now…
yes
! You know the dreamy, thoughtful, poetic sort of beau? Well, that’s not Lyle. No, Lyle is lean, hung, and dangerous. Excuse me,
allegedly
! No one really knows
what
Lyle is, because he likes to date around in foreign parts, such as Wilkes-Barre, or even Reading. Well, that is…he
used
to date around, before he met—but I’m getting ahead of the story. Let me put it this way:
at this time
Lyle favored the one-night stand or the lost weekend (allegedly), but every so often he yearned for something lasting and local. And that is when Lyle made his debut at—as we took to calling it—Mary’s.

Of course, that prancing dynamo Alistair
Tessier was the first among our set to spot Lyle, who can be unassuming when he wants to be. Alistair had been trying to chat up a Wilkes College English professor who
clearly
found Alistair entirely too fizzy for his academic taste. (
Well
!) And that was when Alistair caught sight of Lyle,
right there in the bar
! So he gave up on the professor and came running over to us to lurk about in his smug Alistair way. Because he wasn’t going to waste his dish until
everybody
was listening. And when we had all presented him with an expectant silence, Alistair
finally
whispered, “Legend in the making, girls—Lyle Hickock has just walked in!”

“
No
!” we cried, to the last man.

“Yes,” he averred. “The saga has found its hero.”

And some do indeed claim that it all started that evening. Lyle’s First Night, you might say. But Lyle had to make more than one foray into Mary’s before he found what he liked. Those “I’m so
woof
they’re changing the word sex to my name” types can be v-e-r-y selective.

So I know better, and now it can be told: everything
really
began when our very own porn star came to town.
Yes
—the wonderful Jutter Flexx, famed in song and story, so special yet so basic
and
so masculine yet so impish, turned up out of nowhere, bartending in Mary’s. And, let me say: the
queens
were
flabbergasted
!

Now, this was
before
Lyle Hickock started coming in. So we of course presumed that, sooner or later, Jutter would hook up with Mary’s resident hunk, Todd Rifflin. You’ll know his type—one of those blond teases who says, “My straight friends think I’m gay and my gay friends think I’m straight.” Except he doesn’t have any straight friends. (But I digress.)  Of course, everyone tells Todd he should just zoom off to Cal and star for the Falcon Studio. I mean, doesn’t he have the
look
! But perhaps he prefers the “big fish, small pond” lifestyle. Some do, you know. They fear the competition of the gala places, where coming around the corner is someone as cute as you with two extra inches.

At that, Mary’s was filled with…well, not hunks, no. But what I like to call Personality Stars.
Yes
! Such as Phil Conroy, the wickedest queen alive! But never mind all that, because—without a
shred
of warning—there among us was the new Mary’s bartender…Jutter Flexx in person!

And may I say
? Jutter looked even better than in his pictures, with a toothy smile and an easy, affable nod when he took your drink order. He didn’t dress to show off, as you might have expected—just striped T-shirts and usual jeans. No muscle tops or denim gone wild. But then, here was a boy who could show off just by showing up. He was pure poster—the modernized clone, with his famous hairy chest and snazzy mustache, and the sleek muscles instead of the Superman measurements. Jutter seemed rather like the guy you might run into in the super-drug, allowing just a minute of friendly chat before he moved on with his life and left you amazed in the aisles. What I call hot but friendly.

And were the
queens
in a
state
! Phil Conroy’s At Homes were
completely
given over to discussions on how best to approach Jutter—because there he was, night after night, our new Mary’s bartender, pouring drinks and utterly garnishing away with those lemon doodads and chirping out thrilling little thank yous for his tips. Of course we splurged—who wouldn’t, to get a load of that smile? And yet. Why was he
here
, of all places? He had no local family that any of us knew of. And believe a queen—we would know!

There were those who reasoned that he must be pumped full of Attitude. You know—that “I’ve had sex in Cal and you haven’t” thing. But if you make assumptions about a guy and snipe at him…well, isn’t he going to snipe right back? Alistair
Tessier grumped at Jutter because—so Alistair claimed—there was a peculiar savor in his Heidi Crush on the rocks. And of course one thing led to another, as it always does with Alistair. And finally the bar manager had to warn him that he was on his way to losing his customer rights in Mary’s.

Phil Conroy, now—Phil said, “Just wait till Todd
Rifflin makes his move.” Whatever that meant. Because who could guess what move Todd might make, multisexual curiosity that he is? Still, beauty does follow beauty. And in due course Todd made his entrance into Mary’s, and Todd scoped Jutter and Jutter scoped Todd. Then they did the flirt thing under the cover of “just a pair of cool straight boys talking.” Although, now that I mention it, nobody knew for sure if Jutter was a cousin or gay for pay.

Anyway, I didn’t get all that involved in the
Jutter Flexx Story just yet, because my best friend, Rick, had suddenly abandoned Manhattan and come to live in our town. How he and I got separated is a long story, and I’ll tell it some time—but when he was asked why he left New York, Rick would reply, “To look up a long-lost friend.”

Isn’t that sweet?

RICK:

Okay. In the first place, Jutter Flexx was not a porn star. He had done some modeling for Colt, and he did become one of their most exploited figures, with his own solo calendar. In the gay world, this is like being elected President of France. Still, Jutter Flexx never appeared in a video with a partner; I don’t believe he ever even soloed.

  This gave him a unique place in the hierarchy, because unlike the other visual icons of the day, like Ken
Ryker or Matthew Rush, Jutter had revealed nothing but his skin and his smile. Part of his attraction was that he was, however famous, absolutely uncollected—mysterious and intimate at once.

And he stayed that way, tending bar at
Mahantango Mary’s with an impenetrable amiability. Of course he struck up a mild acquaintance with Todd Rifflin. It was an alliance based on mutual self-defense, for Todd, too, had a lot to protect from nosy parkers, and much of the nightly “drama” in the bar consisted of various people trying to filch secrets out of various other people.

My pal Jason, I’m glad to report, did not indulge in this “
hotrodding,” as he and his gang term it. Jason has a sense of honor and even a respect for other people’s privacy. It’s unusual in a…well, yes. A queen.

Do you have a least favorite saying? Mine is “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” As in: you’re in some social situation, a party or whatever, deep in conversation with someone. Maybe a buddy, maybe someone new and pleasant. Suddenly, some jerk who simply will not leave anything
be comes butting in to introduce some stranger, wasting everybody’s time as the two of you then have to improvise cocktail-party fill.

What I ask is,
why
is there someone he’d like me to meet? Is it an eccentric millionaire who gives away fortunes at parties? Is it Hugh Jackman? Isn’t it, in fact, just a guy he’s using in order to puppet the rest of us around, which for some reason makes him feel important?

That’s been on my mind for a while, because ever since I came here I’ve been getting that introduction stuff to a painful degree. I once went so far as to ask one of these numbskulls just why he felt the need to interfere with my evening. In just those words. He looked at me as if I’d addressed him in Hindustani.

I was also getting a lot of my second least favorite saying, “I’ve heard so much about you.” Inevitable, no? Jason and I were best friends, after all, and when you’re that close to a gay man he tends to bring you up a lot. Like straight men always mentioning their wives. It’s that “other half” of you, the being who affirms or confutes your existence. Jason had pridefully told his circle my line about “looking up a long-lost friend,” so of course they immediately assumed that was just some pretext. One by one, privately—or as privately as possible in this coterie where everyone minds everyone else’s business—they asked me why I
really
left New York. I gave them each a different story. To Phil Conroy, the most self-important of the gang, I explained that once I hit thirty-five I couldn’t take the pressure to stay cute and built.