Men Who Love Men

by William J. Mann

  Lloyd and I both watch him scamper away with his dust mop.

  “You’re not being fair to him,” Lloyd tells me when the kid is gone.

  I frown. “You’re smitten with him.”

  “I think he’s a lost soul who needs our compassion.”

  I laugh. “It wasn’t his soul you were ogling earlier.”

  Lloyd crosses his arms over his chest. “What do you have against him? Suspicion doesn’t become you, Henry. You’re better than that.”

  “Better than what? Of being able to see things clearly?”

  Lloyd just shakes his head. “Henry, your discontent about your love life is making you hard. You’re letting bitterness change your character, and I’ll be honest with you. I don’t like it. This is not the Henry Weiner I’ve called my friend.”

  He turns and walks out of the room.

  For one long moment, I stand there not thinking.

  Lloyd’s words sting. There are precious few people whose opinions I value as highly as Lloyd Griffith’s. I don’t know if his words are accurate, but they hurt nonetheless. Have I really become a bitter old queen?

  I need air. I need to get outside. I need to breathe the way Evan described it, breathe the pure air in, breathe the stress out. I put the computer to sleep and head out the front door.

  The air is warm and fragrant. The screen door slams behind me, startling a couple of finches who are perched on the eaves. The birds flutter into the sky, resettling on the branch of an old elm tree. I move my eyes from them to the path that winds its way to the street, lined with butterfly bushes. Flitting around the purple branches are monarch butterflies, lively little specks of orange. I watch the butterflies as if mesmerized. My pace slows, and I inhale deeply, once, twice, three times. I take a seat on the bench and watch the world go by.

  Everyone seems to be in pairs. First a man and a woman, mid-forties, hand in hand. Then two women pushing a stroller, their wide-eyed toddler a symbol of their union. Then two young guys, their whole lives ahead of them, who stop to kiss not three feet away from me.

  I understand that the desire to mate is instinctual. Cats and dogs, those finches in the tree—they suffer from it too. Yet if only it were that simple. What drives me is not just adrenaline or hormones. I am not merely hungry or horny. I am incomplete. Sitting here, I realize it’s the only description that truly explains my state of mind. I am incomplete. Not whole.

  I feel as if I lack one arm and one leg, that I have only one eye, and I am impatient for the missing parts to be delivered. When I was a boy, my sister had a book of paper dolls that fascinated me. On the last page was the figure of a bald woman, clad only in a flesh-toned one-piece bathing suit; ahead of it were sheets of transparent plastic, complete with hair, clothes and shoes. Only by layering the plastic sheets onto the figure would the woman spring to life, become complete. This is what I am waiting for: for someone to layer the rest of my life onto these bare bones.

  You should be complete by yourself. Lloyd’s words. He’s said them many times. You’ll never find someone if you aren’t truly happy with yourself first.

  “Fuck that,” I whisper. I’ve heard it all before, and I don’t buy it. We are meant to be coupled. The human instinct to mate goes beyond a simple urge to reproduce. As gay people prove, it’s not just about procreation. We seek our own completion with another person. It’s a feeling far more intense than any hunger pang I’ve ever known, and as I get older, it only grows more acute. The sands in my own personal hourglass are running low. A glance out on the street confirms it: what I see now are not pairs of happy lovers, but a single man, maybe fifty-five, walking by himself. He moves slowly down the street, not looking at those who pass him by. His shoulders are hunched, his head lowered. His feet take tiny steps, his knees barely bending.

  “Buddy.”

  The word is whispered into my ear, so soft that it seems at first like the flutter of wings from those monarch butterflies. But then I realize Jeff has quietly sat down beside me. So lost in thought have I been that I didn’t even hear him approach.

  “Hey,” I whisper back.

  “You seemed very far away.”

  I nod. “I was. Do you see that man there?”

  “Which one?”

  “That one. The one by himself. Does he seem sad to you?”

  Jeff considers him. “Yes, I think he does seem rather sad.”

  “That’s me, Jeff.”

  “Henry, that man is approaching sixty.”

  I shrug. “How many are like him? How many middle-aged men, single and alone, move into old age without ever finding Mr. Right?”

  Jeff folds his arms across his chest. “Maybe he did find him, and maybe he died. Maybe that’s why he’s sad.”

  I shake my head. “It’s a different kind of sadness. Look at him. It’s obvious. It’s not the grief of losing a loved one. It’s the sadness of never having had one in the first place.”

  Jeff looks at me kindly. “Henry, why is this so hard for you?”

  I feel the blood rush into my face. “Because I am so goddamned tired of being alone!” I sit back on the bench and close my eyes. “But I’ll tell you what I’m even more tired of, and it’s the goddamned dating game. It sucks, Jeff. It’s horrible. Heartless. Soul killing.”

  “You know what Lloyd would say.”

  I sigh. “Of course I know what Lloyd would say. I’ve been sitting here trying to convince myself that if only I could love myself more, maybe I’d be happier. But I’m not that strong, Jeff. I just can’t start loving myself so much that being alone will be okay. I’m just not that strong.”

  “Sure you are, buddy.”

  “I’m not.” I stand up, feeling too edgy to remain seated all of a sudden. I pace up and down along the walk. “And I think very few people are. In college, I remember reading this German philosopher. I can’t remember his name. But he said that humans are incomplete as individuals, and that we seek another person for completion in order to become a whole person. Together they bring to each other a kind of fullness. It’s mutual give and take, and this binds them together. This is what I’m craving!”

  Jeff stands, placing his hands on my shoulders, stopping me in my tracks. “I’m aware of all that, buddy, and it’s quite real. For years, when Lloyd and I struggled with our own relationship, I wrestled with the very same feelings you’re having. I felt incomplete. Now, being with Lloyd, I feel whole. I can’t deny that.”

  “And now you’re getting married.” The words crack in my throat.

  He nods. “Yes. Now we’re getting married. But we might never have gotten to this point. We might have fractured so badly during those difficult years that finding our way back into each other’s lives would have proven impossible. And do you know how we avoided that fate?”

  He leans in so close to me that the tips of our noses touch.

  “I’ll tell you.” He smiles, and his eyes, being so close to my own, seem to fuse together. “Since we’re talking philosophers, Henry, let’s consider Plato, because he’s the only one I’ve really read. Now, in his Symposium, quoting Socrates, Plato tells us that the only true path to love is to be the lover. That’s key. For years, my struggle with Lloyd was due to the fact that I wanted not to be the lover but instead the beloved—the one who was loved. I wanted to be the center, the object of desire. It was all about my needs, not Lloyd’s, a very selfish worldview. I wasn’t willing to love Lloyd just for who he was. I wanted him with me on my terms.” He smiles. “You remember that time?”

  I nod. It was during the period when Lloyd needed to go off and find himself, a time of personal and career transition for him, and Jeff just couldn’t understand what was happening. He was left feeling anxious and angry, resenting Lloyd for buying the guesthouse and not moving back in with him in Boston. I remember that time all too well, for it was me to whom Jeff turned most often to share his unhappiness.

  “But I changed,” he tells me now. “I’m not quite sure how I found the streng
th to do it, but your friendship certainly helped, Henry. You believed in me then the way I believe in you now.”

  “I did?” I ask.

  “Yes, you did. You were always there, boosting me up. And eventually I came around to understanding that Lloyd’s wander-lust—the very thing that I saw as tearing us apart—was actually part of the reason I loved him. I saw that our relationship wasn’t just about me, and that by giving up the need to be the beloved all the time and allowing myself sometimes to be the lover, loving Lloyd without expectation, I could find a fulfillment that had always eluded me in the past.”

  “But at least you had someone to practice all this with,” I argue. “I have no one.”

  “I wish you’d stop saying that,” he says. “You have us.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “I know it isn’t. But damn it, Henry. You’re wrong when you say you have no one.”

  I look into his eyes.

  “I think you still see yourself only as the beloved,” Jeff says. “You are waiting for someone to love you on your terms. You have this picture in your head, and if a guy doesn’t fit it, you just go on waiting.”

  I laugh bitterly. “I had that conversation with your sister yesterday, and I’m not settling for less than what makes me happy.”

  “I’m not suggesting you do. This isn’t about lowering your standards. It’s about a mindset.” He smiles. “We’re not good at waiting for what we want anymore.”

  “I’d wait as long as I needed to if I had a guarantee the waiting would be worth it.”

  “Let me tell you a story,” Jeff says.

  I sigh. “Is this going to be one of your writer’s treatises? The kind you try out on people before writing them down?”

  “Maybe.” He grins. “What’s my favorite movie of all time?”

  “The Wizard of Oz.”

  His grin gets larger. “You do know me well, Henry. Okay. So you remember when we were kids how we’d have to wait a whole year for The Wizard of Oz to air on TV? It came just once a year, like Santa Claus.”

  I shrug. “I never really watched it.”

  Jeff gives me a look. “You are one strange duck, Henry. What gay kid didn’t live to see The Wizard of Oz? All year long I’d carry vivid memories of it—those flying monkeys and good witches in their silver balls. Come to think of it, they were like the rare porcelain figures my father had brought home from Japan, figures that fascinated me because of their odd and delicate beauty, and with which only on very special occasions would I be permitted to play.”

  I roll my eyes. “Oh, this is so going to end up in some book.”

  “Just listen. It was that rarity of exhibition that made Oz such a special experience. When its annual showing was over for yet another year, I was faced with the enormity of the interim ahead. A whole year! So much changes in the life of a child in the course of a year. A new grade, new friends, a whole new way of seeing the world. All of that—and I wouldn’t see Oz again until it was over. A year’s wait.” He smirks. “Which, of course, was plenty of time to make it seem brand new once again.”

  “Okay, and your point is?”

  “I’m getting to it, Henry. God, we really have lost all sense of patience!” He shakes his head. “Today, Oz can be had for $19.95. Or less, if you just rent. Any old day or any old night. No waiting. Get it right now. Blockbuster stands ready, ruby slippers and all.”

  “I still don’t get your point.”

  “Henry, instant gratification is all well and good. I love being able to download songs on iTunes. But all this accessibility and convenience seems to symbolize something that we’ve lost.”

  “And what’s that?” I ask, indulging him.

  “It’s something that changed in my adolescence, when the whole world was changing along with me. I remember the giddy simplicity of a Pac-Man game in a pizza joint, of pinball machines and the Good Humor man. I remember the odd futuristic look television antennas gave to our roofs. I remember playing a favorite record over and over until the needle wore down. I remember the NBC peacock—when the words ‘in living color’ signaled some great event was about to occur.”

  “Gosh, you really are old,” I tease him.

  “Then listen to your elders, Henry,” Jeff says, and he almost sounds serious. “We can teach you a few things.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m listening.”

  “Today every whim can be immediately gratified,” Jeff continues. “Today stores and books and TV shows are designed to grab you, wow you, give you everything you ever wanted in one fell swoop. Technology has made waiting unnecessary.” He leans in to look at me. “So maybe we’ve forgotten little qualities like patience. That all good things come to he who waits.”

  “Thank you, Confucius.”

  “Hey, we used to take out personal ads in newspapers to meet guys. Now we’ve got Manhunt and MySpace and instant messages.”

  I suddenly think of Doug, and the crazy excitement of waiting to see if he’d call me after I responded to his ad.

  Jeff’s lost in his reverie. “Remember that old ketchup commercial that used Carly Simon’s song? Anticipation…is keeping me waiting.” He smiles as he sings the line, dragging out the syllables. “I miss waiting for good things, Henry. Anticipation makes us appreciate them even more. I would hold onto that final scene of The Wizard of Oz because I knew it was precious. I knew I wouldn’t see it again for a whole year. Until then, it would live only in my memories.”

  I wait to see if he’s finished. He’s not.

  “You know, today I own Oz on DVD. The extras are fun, but the movie…There it is at a switch of a button. Where’s the excitement in that?” Jeff makes a face. “Watching it, I know where all the commercials are supposed to be—but aren’t. I kind of miss those little blurbs for Dolly Madison cupcakes, when I’d run to the bathroom or grab another bottle of Coke from the fridge. Now I can just hit pause and take a phone call, or rewind back, or fast forward through the Lion’s boring ‘King of the Forest’ scene. Watching my own copy of The Wizard of Oz just isn’t the same as watching it on network television when I was a kid back in the 1970s. The world has moved on since then, and there’s no need to wait. Not for anything. Not even for Oz.”

  He looks over at me.

  “Damn,” he says, more to himself than to me, “that’s going to be one fine essay.”

  “Jeff,” I tell him, “I get your point. The waiting will make finding Mr. Right even more special. But that doesn’t mean I’m not fucking tired of waiting. You can’t deny that when you were a kid, you grew very impatient waiting for Oz to be back on.”

  “But you’re missing another point, Henry.” He goes nose-to-nose with me. “The waiting isn’t just about making the experience more special. It’s also there to get you ready for it.” He shrugs. “Are you ready, Henry? Really?”

  I start to rise to my own defense, to insist that of course I’m ready—when my cell phone rings. I try to ignore it, but there it is between us, clipped to my belt and screeching for attention.

  “Do you want to get that?” Jeff asks.

  I look down at the caller ID. It’s a local number but not one I recognize at first.

  “No,” I tell Jeff, not wanting to interrupt our conversation. But even as I say the word I realize who’s calling. “Oh, fuck,” I say. “It’s Gale.”

  “Get it if you want,” Jeff says.

  I bring the phone to my ear. “Hello!”

  “Henry, it’s Gale.”

  “Hey.”

  “I’ve been meaning to call. Do you have plans tonight?”

  My eyes find Jeff’s.

  “Go ahead,” Jeff whispers kindly.

  I feel rotten backing out of my plans with Jeff. But I tell Gale, “No, I don’t have any plans.”

  I look at Jeff with pleading eyes. Forgive me? He just smiles and nods.

  “Great,” Gale is saying. “I’d love to cook you dinner at my place. Want to come by at seven?”

  “Sure.�
��

  “Terrific. See you then.”

  I snap the phone shut.

  “Jeff, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, buddy.”

  I’m stunned that he called. I can feel a smile pushing at the edges of my cheeks. “Maybe ‘I’ll call you’ isn’t always a lie,” I say.

  Jeff puts his arm around my shoulder and starts leading me back to the house. I still feel bad about canceling our plans. Jeff’s down about J. R., and here I am, selfish Henry, bailing on him for some guy…