Can't Buy Me Love

by Chris Kenry

  Jane gave an exasperated sigh and fell back into her chair.

  “Rare!” she exclaimed. “Rare! You know what’s really rare these days?” she asked, not really wanting an answer. “Well, I’ll tell you. Being happy where you are. That’s rare. Everybody wants to be somewhere else, thinks that if they pull up and go somewhere else, everything will be different, better, ‘more exceptional and rare.’ Well, it won’t be. The dream is what you want, not the reality. The craving is always much better than the having.”

  “And you’re an authority on this?” Max asked smiling at her.

  “Yes,” she said. “As a matter of fact I am. I see it all the time, especially with my relatives. They spend years and years dreaming of coming to America only to arrive and pine away for their homeland. They make their own little Vietnam right here and then rarely, if ever, venture out of it. ”

  “Well, I won’t be like that,” Max assured her.

  “Of course you won’t,” Jane sneered.

  “When I arrive I intend to wallow in it! I’ll set my feet deep down in the French mud and let them take root.”

  Jane looked over at me and rolled her eyes. Then she looked back at Max.

  “And just how do you propose to finance your relocation?” she asked. “Or do I even want to know?”

  Max grinned when she said this. He leaned forward on the table and rubbed his hands together eagerly.

  “I’m glad you asked, Miss Nguyen,” he said. “Because I have a plan. A plan that could be very profitable both for me and for you, if—”

  “Oh, no!” Jane said, waving her gloves in front of his face. “I don’t want any part of it. Your schemes tend to go awry and I can’t afford any screw-ups right now. I’ve got my own means of financial salvation, thank you very much.”

  “But this is different!”

  At that moment a large black Mercedes rolled into view outside. Behind the wheel an elderly gentleman was leaning over, peering through the passenger window, trying to see inside the coffee shop. Jane gave him a little wave and stood up.

  “That’s my plan!” she said, collecting her gloves and nodding to the man in the car.

  “The Ogre?” Max asked, his voice filled with distaste.

  “You bet! He’s got more money than he knows what to do with and he thinks I’m the cat’s pajamas. I’ve got to go,” she said, adjusting her sunglasses and kissing Max on the head. “We’re having lunch at the family place with his mother.”

  “His mother?” Max cried.

  “Yes, she’s ninety-three today, the dear,” Jane said. “This is the first time I’ll meet her so I’m hoping to make a good impression. If all goes well, a walk down the aisle may be in my future, and you know what that would mean, don’t you?”

  “Years of sex with the lights out and a hope for a vivid imagination?”

  She scowled and slapped him playfully with her gloves.

  “No, silly. It means I’d be on my way to getting away from restaurant hell, away from the nail salon, away from all of the eligible Vietnamese bachelors that my father wants to hook me up with, and far, far, far away from my little booth in the bourgeois antique mall. A walk down the aisle would help get me comfortably installed in my own posh little boutique! And that’s why it is so important to impress Mrs. Geritol this afternoon. If she likes me, I’m a shoe-in with Percy. He told me she likes blue,” she said, smoothing her skirt and assessing her reflection in the window. “And I certainly hope so because I spent a mint I don’t have on this little Easter egg ensemble and it’s making me nauseous to even see myself in it. Blue really doesn’t suit me, does it? Anyway, wish me luck!”

  She kissed us both on the head and clicked toward the door. She paused when she reached it, turned, and called back.

  “Hey, I’m working at the restaurant Sunday nights. It slows down after eight. Why don’t you two come by? We’ll feed you, and I know my father would be thrilled to see you again, Max. Think about it.”

  Max nodded and blew her a kiss. She waved at me and went out to the waiting car.

  When she’d left we sat in silence while Max smoked and finished his coffee. Now that we were alone I wanted to ask him about what Jane had said earlier about him being gay, and about what had happened the day before with both Meredith and Serge and how I couldn’t really make sense of it. I was on the verge of speaking several times but was unsure how to start. Max sensed my frustration.

  “What’s on your mind, Dil?” he asked. I looked up at him and swallowed.

  “You know what you guys were saying earlier ...” I said my voice timid and low. The question was vague and he looked at me, waiting for me to continue.

  “You know,” I said, my face reddening. “About your being ... gay.”

  This last word was whispered and I had to look down when I said it. Max laughed.

  “Yes, why?” he asked. “Does it bother you?”

  “No! No,” I whispered, wishing he wouldn’t speak so loudly. “No, it doesn’t bother me at all. I mean, I, um ...”

  Max grinned, again waiting for me to continue and offering no assistance.

  “I mean, I ... I think I might be, too. Be that way, I mean. Do you know what I mean?”

  I’m sure my face was the color of a brick.

  “Yes,” he said, and gave a little wink. “I know.”

  “And it’s ... okay?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course!” he laughed. “Why wouldn’t it be? In fact, in some ways you’ll find it can be a real advantage. You’ll see. But in the end it’s not really a big deal, remember that. You’re young now, but by the time you’re my age, you’ll be able to fill a book with the names of all the people who will tell you it’s bad and that you’re bad. Well, take it from me, it’s not, and you’re not. You heard it here first. You like boys. That’s it. No good or bad about it. It just is.”

  I heard what he said and yet I almost couldn’t believe it. For years, my whole life, really, I had kept my desires a secret. I’d kept them hidden for so long that when they were brought out into the open that day, in such a matter-of-fact way, and with no shame, I could not really believe it. It had the unreal quality of a dream from which I felt sure I would soon wake up.

  I thought back to the church, and the hours of “We renounce him” that they’d subjected me to after Lana had found my catalogue stash, and I realized that the whole point of that exercise had not been to save me, but to shame me, to show me that what I was doing was bad and wicked and evil. And yet, in my heart, in the core of myself, I’d known they were wrong. I’d resisted. And that was why they were so persistent. Enough drops of water on a stone will dissolve it to nothing, and they poured buckets on me everyday. But Max had arrived, and suddenly I had the reinforcements I needed for my side of the battle. In him I found the one person who confirmed what I already knew: my desires were not wrong; the way I felt was not wrong; I was not wrong.

  “When did you ... know?” I asked, my voice, again, barely above a whisper.

  “When did I know what?”

  “That you were ... gay?” I said.

  He thought for a moment, raising one eyebrow and gazing off into the distance.

  “Oh, I guess I thought about it the first time when I was six or seven,” he said. “I was over at a friend’s house and we were down in the basement playing one of those kid’s games: Truth or Dare, or Spin the Bottle, something like that. There were girls and boys, and I remember wanting to kiss all of them and see them all take off their clothes.” He paused and laughed at the memory. “I guess I knew I was different then because although the girls didn’t really seem to mind kissing each other; none of the boys wanted to let me kiss them.”

  He lit another cigarette and puffed on it a while.

  “But I guess I really knew when I was about your age. There was a neighbor kid, and, well, another guy I used to play around with. It was fun, but we should have been more careful. My parents found out and, well,” he said, shaking his head and crus
hing out his cigarette, “they weren’t happy.”

  “They found out!” I cried, remembering my own dismal stay with my grandparents.

  “Yes,” he said. I waited but he offered no more.

  “What’d they do?” I asked, imagining that their reaction must have been even worse than Lana’s.

  Again, he looked off into the distance, but this time his eyes narrowed.

  “What did they do ...” he repeated. “Some things that were not very nice. I guess their names were the first I entered in the book of people who tried to tell me it was wrong.”

  He smiled, reached across the table and gave my hand a squeeze.

  “But don’t worry, Dil. You’ll be fine. I can tell you already know what’s true and what’s not. You already know when to trust yourself. And that’s a lot. That’s a lot ...” he said in a wistful tone, gazing down at the table. Then he looked up and his tone became serious.

  “Just be careful when you do experiment, and I don’t mean just about getting caught. I mean about AIDS.”

  AIDS. That was another word I could barely say above a whisper. It was a threat as frightening to me as any Lana could dish up, all the more so because I knew so little about it. So little, that is, except that it killed gay men.

  “Do you know what to do so you don’t get it?” Max asked.

  “I think so, yes.”

  I really had no idea, but the frankness of the conversation was becoming almost too much for me to take.

  “Hmm, that’s not a very good answer,” he said. “Do you or don’t you?”

  I looked down and shook my head.

  In an unashamed and unhurried way, Max then went on to explain, in graphic detail, all that was involved in man-to-man sex. He told me what men did with their mouths, and what they did with their cocks, and what they did with their asses; how to use condoms and common sense to protect myself. In short, he gave me a primer on all the techniques and tools that were needed to have sex safely.

  I wish I could say I sat and listened attentively while he spoke, asking pertinent questions in all the right places, and making mental notes, but I did not. I squirmed and writhed in embarrassed agony. My palms were sweaty: my face was red; and I was terribly afraid that the other people in the coffee shop might overhear him. Nevertheless, I took in much of what he said and am, to this day, grateful to him for making the effort and taking the time. It might be a bit much to credit him with my still being alive today, but, when you think about it, who else in my unenlightened world would have done even half as much?

  “But enough of the free clinic for today, do you have any other questions about all things homosexual?” he asked.

  I had thousands but I was so embarrassed I shook my head, no.

  “Really?” he asked. “Nothing?”

  I looked around the coffee shop. The other patrons seemed intent on their newspapers or their books. I leaned in closer to the table.

  “What’s it like?” I asked. He looked at me, confused. I tried to clarify what I meant: “When you’re with a guy, and you’re safe, and all that, what’s it like?”

  He laughed, leaned back in his chair, and grinned at me. “That’s a hard one to answer.” He took another cigarette from the box and tapped the end of it on the table to compact the tobacco. He lit it, inhaled, and puzzled over the question.

  “What’s it like?” he repeated, exhaling and gazing up at the ceiling. “What’s it like? I guess it’s like anything, really; like food, or an empty canvas, or what you see when you look out the window. It’s what you make of it. It can be good; sometimes it’s bad; sometimes it just is. A lot of it depends on how much enthusiasm, and style, and imagination you put into it. But most of all, it depends on who you’ve got to work with. That’s important. I don’t mean you have to be in love with them, or anything, but there does have to be a spark, a fire. If that’s not there, then the love never really will be. Does that make sense?”

  I gave a halfhearted nod. What I’d really wanted to know was what it felt like to kiss another man, what it felt like to do all of the things he’d so graphically described earlier in the conversation. Max sensed my disappointment.

  “No? Well, that’s about the most I can tell you,” he said. “If I say any more it’ll be telling you what happens at the end of a book or a movie. Finding out is most of the fun.”

  “So you like being ... gay?” I asked. “I mean, you wouldn’t change it, if there was like a pill or something you could take?”

  “You know,” he laughed, “in spite of all the shit I’ve taken about it, I don’t think I would. Being different has its advantages, I’m sure you can see that.”

  But I could not see it, and my thoughts immediately returned to Aaron and the other kids at school, and how they sought, seemingly above all else, to stamp out anyone who was different. In my experience being different had a distinct disadvantage. I tried to explain that to Max, giving a synopsis of my junior high agony, but before I could finish he interrupted me.

  “That’s different. It was the same for me when I was your age. It’s the same for kids the world over. As you get older, though, you’ll see what I mean. Being different gives you a clearer view of the world and you don’t buy into as much bullshit. I’m sure, knowing that you’re gay, you don’t buy into all the stuff they feed you at church. You’re smarter than that, I can tell. Well, maybe not smarter, really, but being different has made you able to see. You see that a lot of what they say just isn’t true. You see that the message they preach isn’t the same as what Jesus said.”

  I nodded eagerly.

  “So being gay is a good thing,” I said.

  “Like I said in the beginning, it’s not good and it’s not bad, it just is.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t believe all that had happened that morning, even in just the past half-hour. I felt so relieved to know that I wasn’t alone. There were others out there. Others who had gone through the same trouble and had lived to tell about it. Max was one of them, and I felt grateful that he had appeared in my life.

  “But remember,” he added, “being gay is just a part of who you are. Do remember that. There’s no need to make a career out of it.”

  I didn’t understand this and looked at him questioningly.

  “Hmm, how to explain?” He took another long puff on his cigarette. “It’s like this, Dil: there are some people in the world who love to see themselves as victims. They get off on being martyrs. Does that make sense?”

  I nodded, but could not see where he was going with it.

  “Your mother is a bit that way, and your grandmother! Oh, how that woman loved to drag the cross around. Well, don’t you be that way, Dil, because a lot of gay people are. They wrap themselves in the rainbow flag and cry and whine about how tortured and oppressed they are. It’s a bit much. Don’t be that way,” he said. “That’s the best advice I can give you. Life might toss you some turds but self-pity, no matter how justified it may be, is never very productive, or, for that matter, very attractive.”

  I nodded, not really understanding all of what he’d said, but feeling glad he’d said it.

  “No, self-pity is not very attractive,” he repeated, and then stood and looked at himself in the mirror. “And neither are these clothes. What do you say we get out there and fix what we can, Dil?”

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  850 Third Avenue

  New York, NY 10022

  Copyright © 2001 by George C. Kenry III

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-5756-6846-8

 

 

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