Men Who Love Men

by William J. Mann

  He’s out the door before I have a chance to say anything else.

  I return to my office.

  I sit there for several minutes, feeling horrible.

  Finally I pull open my top drawer, and tape the photo of Joey back up on my in-box where I can see it.

  11

  TEA DANCE

  “So tell me I’m not a shit,” I beg Ann Marie.

  She’s handing me a cosmo that’s she’s just brought back from the bar. “You’re not a shit,” she replies obediently.

  I take a sip of my drink. “Yes, I am. Here I am, feeling sorry for myself that Gale never called me back and then I turn Martin down when he asks me for a date.

  ” It’s the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. The last great hurrahof the summer. The Boatslip’s deck is jampacked with guys—another tasty sampler of nuts, mints, and crèmes. The music is thumping, the sun is shining, but I’m feeling as sour as a carton of yogurt left in the backseat of a car for a week.

  Pesky thing, a conscience.

  “Martin’s a guest,” Ann Marie reminds me. “And you have a policy about guests…”

  I frown. “If I were a niceguy, I would have told him I’d have dinner with him after he checked out.” I take another sip of my cosmo. “But I’m not a nice guy.”

  “Henry,” Ann Marie says, “why are you beating yourself up over this? He’s not your type. He’s a lot older than you are.”

  “Not that much older when you think about it.” And believe me, I’ve been thinking about it. “Martin is forty-five. I looked at his driver’s license when he registered.”

  “So that’s twelve years older than you are!”

  I smirk. “Which is pretty much the same difference between Luke and me, except in the other direction. So how come I jumped at that? Why does scoring a younger guy always seem like such a goddamn prize?”

  “There’s no crime in liking younger guys,” Ann Marie says.

  I look at her plaintively. “That’s just it. I don’t like younger guys. Not as a rule, anyway. If a guy’s hot, he’s hot, no matter what the age.”

  It’s true. I’m not one of these chicken hawks who automatically salivate over the sight of cheeks that have never sprouted whiskers. I like men, not boys—men with some muscle, some experience.

  Then why is it that my tricks are always younger than I am? Why do I never cruise an older guy? Why is that the guys I look at, who command my attention, are always my juniors? Gale must be at least five years younger than I am. Joey was seven years younger. And if Lloyd is right that I’m still hung up on Luke, I suspect it’s his very youth that fascinates me—so attractive, so confident, so unlike what I was at his age.

  Maybe, in fact, that’s what fuels the prevailing youth obsession among so many gay men. Even when I was in tip-top shape, I could immediately lose the attention of some potential trick if a skinny little twinkie walked into the bar. Many nights I’d feel frustrated and angry when some guy, after flirting with me, suddenly hurried away to follow after some chicken, preferring his scrawny little arms over my well-rounded biceps—and all because they were a decade younger.

  “I think,” I say to Ann Marie, “that gay men are always trying to capture the youth they didn’t have. And I’m including me in this.”

  She eyes me over the plastic cup of her cosmo. “Are you going all philosophical on me again, Henry?”

  “I mean it. I think we feel that if we can get a young guy, it will prove we’re still players. That we aren’t over the hill yet. But even more than that—” I lower my voice and draw closer to her, as if I don’t want anyone to overhear. “Lots of young guys are living lives of far greater freedom and self-confidence than we ever did, and I think we feel that if we can capture one of them, we can maybe taste a little of that for ourselves. We can imagine we’re still young and as open to possibility as they are.”

  “So answer me this, Henry,” she says, looking eerily like her brother. “What’s the cutoff age for Mr. Right? Thirty? Thirty-five? Forty?”

  I smile. “I’d like to think there was no cutoff age, but I guess my rejection of Martin proved there is.” I knock back the last of my cosmo. “And I’m not proud of it.”

  “I don’t think it’s anything that requires either pride or shame,” Ann Marie says, finishing her drink as well. “I think we have a picture in our minds of Mr. Right and it’s just hard to accept anything else.”

  “So what does your Mr. Right look like?”

  She smiles. “Big. Football player build. Long hair. Maybe a beard. A leather jacket on his back and a Harley Davidson between his legs.”

  I give her a wry grin. “I’m assuming you mean a motorcycle.”

  “Oh, that too.”

  We laugh.

  “And you, Henry? What does Mr. Right look like for you?”

  I consider the question. My boyfriends have been quite the varied lot. Joey was a short, slim, tight-bodied Asian boy. Daniel was a tall, freckled, slightly stocky Irish boy. And then there’s Shane, who I suddenly remember is arriving in town today.

  I smile without even realizing it. “Shane,” I say out loud.

  Ann Marie laughs. “Your Mr. Right looks like Shane?”

  “No,” I reply automatically. “I just remembered that Shane might be here. He’s coming down this weekend.”

  Two nights ago, as I was happily blanketed down on the couch for the evening watching The Golden Girls, I heard a muffled little ping from my computer. Glancing over at the screen, I saw I had a new e-mail. Never able to resist, even when it usually turns out just to be spam, I threw off the blanket and walked over to my desk. A smile stretched across my face when I saw it was from Shane—my ex three times removed, before Joey and before Daniel. He’s the only one I’ve managed to stay in any kind of contact with, though it had been months, maybe even a year, since I’d last heard from him. “I’ll be in P-town over Labor Day weekend,” he wrote. “Lunch? Dinner? Drink? Or…?”

  “Yes, to any or all,” I quickly replied. “Will be great to see you. Xxoo.”

  I was surprised at how much Shane’s e-mail cheered me. I was never in love with him the way I was the others. In fact, Jeff could never understand what had brought the two of us together in the first place, since Shane was far from my physical type. Shane took perverse pride in the fact that he hadn’t set foot in a gym since his junior year of high school. Tall and thin, he was apt to dress in drag whenever the spirit moved him, which was about every other month. Hardly the picture of the boyish Joey, whose only drag was Abercrombie & Fitch.

  But here’s where Shane was truly different from the others: Shane was in love with me. Head over stiletto heels, in fact. I can’t say that about anyone else in my life. Shane was there for me through some pretty tough times, especially when I was dealing with my convoluted feelings for Lloyd. So I decided, after months of friendship, to give a relationship with him a shot. But while we did our best, it just wasn’t meant to be. Our time together didn’t end so much as simply fade away. I moved to Provincetown, Shane started coming down less and less, and finally, mutually and amicably, we decided to part.

  But as I read and reread Shane’s e-mail, I found myself ensnared by the memory of him: the way his eyes would light up when I walked into the room, the way he would curl my hair around his fingers, the way he always knew just what to say to make me laugh, to make me feel good about myself.

  Impulsively I typed out a second e-mail to Shane. “You can stay with me if you need a place,” I tell him, knowing full well he usually bunks in with a friend in the West End. “I promise not to hog the sheets. Xxxxxxoooooo.”

  He never replied.

  “He must be here someplace,” I say, standing on my toes and scanning around at the crowd. “He never misses Tea Dance.”

  “You know, Henry,” Ann Marie says, “I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Shane as the picture of your Mr. Right.”

  “Oh, please,” I say, still searching. “He was hardly my physical type
.”

  “I know. But who says Mr. Right has to be?”

  I make a face at her. “So you’d accept some guy without a Harley Davidson?”

  “Maybe that’s why I’m still single ever since dumping the loser who, biologically at least, is J. R.’s dad.”

  “And here I was thinking that was a virgin birth.”

  She smirks. “The truth is, I’ve been waiting for somebody who’s just not going to come riding down the street. That’s the cold hard fact of my life.”

  We’re both quiet. I want to encourage her, to tell her not to give up. But I can’t. Not when I’m feeling the same way myself.

  “You want another drink?” Ann Marie asks.

  I nod. She heads back off toward the bar.

  I look around at all the guys here at Tea Dance. There’s a good mix of ages, everything from early twenties to sixties. Everybody seems to be having a grand old time, but I make a point to look at the eyes. Very few are focused on the person with whom they’re speaking. Instead, eyes are everywhere, glancing over the tops of heads, peering around shoulders. Everyone is looking for something else, something new, something fresh.

  Isn’t that why I’m here? Isn’t that why, after three days of moping around, depressed over Gale, feeling guilty about Martin, I allowed Ann Marie to convince me to come? In the back of my mind, beyond all my doubt and pessimism, isn’t there always the hope, forever springing eternal, that I might meet Mr. Right? That this will be the day? That if I sat at home, losing myself in another afternoon of TV Land reruns, I might be missing out on finding true love at last?

  Make no mistake: I gave up a lot to be here today. It’s a Facts of Life marathon that I’m missing. TV Land has started adding the great eighties sitcoms to its roster. The shows of my youth. I was eager to reacquaint myself with Blair, Jo, and Tootie, but instead I allowed myself to be dragged over here. I’m consoled by the fact that later this week comes Family Ties, Growing Pains, and Gimme a Break. But still, part of me wishes I were back in my apartment, safe on my couch, eating a carton of Häagen Daz and admiring a young George Clooney as Mrs. Garrett’s handyman.

  “That guy’s looking at you,” Ann Marie whispers, nudging me as she returns with our drinks.

  “Please,” I tell her. “Don’t start that again. Look how it ended up last time.”

  “But he is, Henry.”

  I glance in the direction she’s indicating as I take a sip of my cosmo. The guy is about my age, blond, handsome, muscular, wearing green cargo shorts and a gray T-shirt emblazoned with the words MUSSEL BEACH across the back, advertising Provincetown’s gym.

  “And he even looks like your version of Mr. Right,” Ann Marie says. “Muscles for days.”

  “You know,” I say, “I think he is looking at me.”

  “You see, Henry?” Ann Marie’s leaning close to my ear. “Not everyone looks only at young guys.”

  I laugh. “So now you’re calling me old?”

  “Oh, Henry.”

  I smile at her. “So what about you, sweetie? The Mr. Right you describe ain’t gonna be found at Tea Dance.”

  She nods. “That’s for sure. But it doesn’t matter. I am so over men. I’d like to get up on the bar here and shout out to all these queens to quit while they’re ahead. Stop looking! He’s not out there! Mr. Right is a fantasy like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny!”

  “Gee, thanks for making me feel better.”

  She smirks. “J. R. is the all Mr. Right I need.”

  I notice the blond taking another look over his shoulder at me. It frightens me a bit. He’s too close to my ideal physical type for me to allow myself to hope. I try to concentrate on Ann Marie, to refuse to join this wandering army of eyes.

  “You know,” I say to her, anxious to change the subject, “I’m starting to share your worries about J. R.”

  Her face takes on a pained expression. “What have you noticed?”

  “He’s been so sullen and quiet, sitting on his bed, rarely removing his headphones. Jeff’s tried to get him moving, tempting him with activities he usually jumps for, like swimming in the Wellfleet ponds or off-roading through the dunes. But each time J. R. just grunts, shaking his head no. I ask him what’s wrong, but he won’t say.”

  Ann Marie sighs. “He won’t confide in me either. I’m starting to worry all this isn’t just a phase.”

  “Well, he was pissed that Jeff and Lloyd didn’t ask him directly to be their ring bearer, but instead went through you.”

  Ann Marie shakes her head. “That’s just a cover for something deeper.”

  “Well, you know, it’s tough to be a kid in Provincetown,” I tell her. “Sure, it’s great in summer, but what happens when stuff starts shutting down? The closest mall is an hour away. The one movie theater in town shows mostly arty independent stuff and not the big blockbusters. A kid can probably feel a little trapped.”

  She’s nodding. “But it’s more than all that, Henry. Did I tell you what happened at J. R.’s last basketball game a few months ago?”

  “No.”

  Ann Marie looks off over the water. She’s emotional as she remembers the day. “His team was playing an away game someplace down Cape—Harwich or Mashpee or something like that. I was sitting in the bleachers watching as J. R. and his teammates filed into the gymnasium, and all of a sudden a couple of kids on the other team held up a sign that read PROVINCETOWN FAGS. We tried to boo them down and some teachers threw them out, but still, all through the game the Provincetown players kept getting taunted with fag this, fag that.”

  I’m stunned. “You mean, just because Provincetown has a large gay population, the kids from its schools get called faggot?”

  Ann Marie nods. “And it really bothered J. R. You know how he idolizes his uncles—including you, Henry.” Her eyes are moist. “I think seeing the kind of hatred that’s out there really stung him. You know, J. R. grew up thinking gay was natural, just part of the diversity of the world. Now he’s discovering the world doesn’t always see it that way, and it hurts him. He won’t talk about it, but I know the experience that day at the game traumatized him. He’s been really quiet ever since.”

  “Is that why he doesn’t want to play basketball again next year?”

  “I think it probably is.”

  “Oh, man. Have you shared any of this with Jeff?”

  She shakes her head. “You know my brother. He’d go ballistic. He’d be down at that school, screaming for the coach to be fired.”

  “Maybe he should be.”

  “Maybe.” Ann Marie doesn’t seem to want to finish her drink. She sets it on a table nearby. “But I think to cause a scene at this point would make the situation even worse for J. R. It would draw attention to it. Right now J. R. just wants some time to himself.”

  I think about how pervasive homophobia really is, how long its reach. Even cool little straight boys can get hit with it sometimes.

  “You know,” Ann Marie says, her earlier light-hearted mood now completely gone, “I should really get going. I’m taking J. R. for lobster at Clem and Ursie’s tonight. It was the only offer that seemed to entice him out of his room.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I tell her.

  She manages a smile. “Oh, no, you don’t. You have that blond number to attend to.”

  I make a face. “Do you know how tired of the whole scene I am right now? I couldn’t bear meeting someone new.”

  “Henry, stop lying to yourself. What if he’s Mr. Right?”

  “I thought you said he doesn’t exist.”

  “He doesn’t. But deep down I want you to prove me wrong.” She gives me a kiss on the cheek. “And if not him, maybe you can find Shane. You know, of all your boyfriends, I liked Shane the best.”

  I smile. “I think maybe I did, too.”

  I watch her go. At least Ann Marie has J. R. to go home to. I don’t even have a dog. In that instant I miss Clara more than I’ve ever missed her before.

  I take a deep breath
and turn to face the blond guy in the gray T-shirt.

  Sure enough, he’s looking.

  What if he’s Mr. Right?

  I decide to approach. He’s with two friends, who seem oblivious to our cruising each other.

  “Hey,” I say to Blond Guy.

  “Hey,” he says in reply.

  I grip Blond Guy’s hand firmly.

  “Couldn’t help but notice you over there,” Blond Guy says. “Your friend leave?”

  “Yes. She has a son. Dinner time.”