Where the Boys Are

by William J. Mann

  We push through the crowd, Jeff leading me by the hand. He turns all at once and says: “By the way, I think I know what you want to talk about.”

  “You do?” I shout over the music.

  He just nods and grins, continuing to lead the way.

  But how can he know? How did he find out?

  God, I hope it’s going to be all right. I hope this will only bring us closer, not pull us apart yet again.

  I close my eyes as we take our place. How I wish Javitz were here. Javitz would’ve known how to handle it. Javitz—brilliant, irresistible, impossible—knew how to handle anything. Me … well, I’ll let you be the judge of that.

  Henry

  I’m dancing with Shane when Jeff and Lloyd return to the dance floor.

  Shane, the Windex queen.

  “Weeeeell,” Shane says, bending his long body down to greet Lloyd. “Yet another cutie.” He waves the blue bottle in Lloyd’s face. “Want some?”

  This is where my own fun comes in. “Go ahead, try it,” I quip, looking over at Jeff and licking my lips. “It’s yummy.”

  Jeff narrows his eyes at me. “Your lips are blue.”

  “Are they?” I ask innocently. I grin and look up at Shane. “Gimme another shot, baby.”

  The lanky one complies, squirting a strong dose down my throat. Jeff and Lloyd watch, wide-eyed. “Sooo tasty,” I tell them, giggling.

  “You’re crazy,” Lloyd snaps. He looks at Jeff, aghast. “I’ve told you, Jeff. People lose all sense out here! The things they’ll do, just for a fucking high—”

  “Lighten up, Marge,” Shane chides. He thrusts the bottle under Lloyd’s nose. “Gatorade.”

  I crack up laughing. I love seeing Jeff and Lloyd flummoxed. Between them, they think they have the answers for the whole world. To fool them, to put one over on them, is pure heaven.

  Jeff huffs. “I knew it wasn’t Windex.”

  “A good gimmick,” Lloyd admits, laughing now himself.

  Shane shrugs, looking askance at all three of us. “You gotta have a gimmick out here if you don’t have bodies like you boys.”

  Bodies like you boys. It still boggles my mind sometimes to be grouped in with the beautiful boys. I just grab a hold of Jeff and we form a sandwich with Lloyd in the middle. I lick the back of Lloyd’s neck. The X makes me do it. The drug is sending warm shivers all throughout my body.

  Bodies like you boys.

  Can I just tell you how fucking awesome it is to hear that? For it wasn’t all that long ago that I’d felt like Shane: an observer, not a participant—an exile from the world of beauty.

  Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Henry Weiner, age twenty-eight. I’m not sure what Jeff has already told you, but don’t trust everything he says. He’s probably said that I’m in love with him or something. Jeff can be the most conceited, most infuriating, most incorrigible person in the entire world. He can also be the sweetest, most charming, most caring, most compassionate—oh, forget it. You’ll only start thinking that I am in love with him.

  See, Jeff’s my sister. We do everything together. Everything but have sex. Sure, we get gropey on the dance floor, but that’s only because of the X. No other reason. I could very easily have gone to Miami with Brent, but Jeff wanted to come to New York, and hey, sisters stick together. I knew all along there was a very large probability that he’d hook up with Lloyd and leave me on my own. I’m okay with that. Really, I am. Okay, so maybe for a few moments there I actually allowed myself to hope that Lloyd wasn’t showing up. But he did. Of course he did.

  It’s not that I don’t like Lloyd, or that I mind him joining us. I like Lloyd. Really, I do. It’s impossible not to like Lloyd. It’s just that he’s been around increasingly often these days, ever since he and Jeff reconnected last September. I remember the day Jeff told me that he’d seen Lloyd and they’d had sex and everything was, like, coming together. I told him great. I was happy for him.

  Really, I was.

  It’s just that now every time I turn around, there’s Lloyd. Jeff and I will be at Delux or over at the Galleria Mall in Cambridge, and suddenly Lloyd will just show up, and that’s that. The two of them start mooning and cooing at each other and calling each other those stupid animal names. Okay, whatever. They were lovers for a long time, and I can do the math. They’ll soon be moving back in with each other, if Jeff’s right in his prediction of what Lloyd wants to talk about tonight. Jeff feigns ambivalence about it all, but I can see the truth. He wants Lloyd back bad. He wants to live together again. I can always see the truth with Jeff. I can see things he can’t even see himself sometimes.

  I know I’m coming across like I resent Lloyd. Okay, so maybe I do. A little. But I don’t dislike him. Yes, he can be a bit lofty at times, a bit high-handedly spiritual, as if he alone understands the fate of the world—both this one and the next. But you know what? His presumption is truly tempered by a genuine compassion. Here’s an example. It’s five minutes to midnight and Jeff has managed to pull Lloyd off by himself, and suddenly I’m dancing alone. So what does Lloyd do? He opens up a space between him and Jeff and draws me in. Now that’s a kind gesture. He didn’t have to do it. Jeff certainly wouldn’t have initiated it.

  But, in truth, I wasn’t really dancing alone. I was dancing with Shane, and now he’s the one who remains unattached as the midnight hour draws close.

  “You guys,” I say, surprised at the sudden pang of guilt I feel. Maybe I’m remembering another guy who once danced alone, apart from the beautiful boys, and not so long ago. “This is Shane. He’s from Boston, too.”

  “You are?” Jeff asks. “Then how come we don’t know you?”

  Shane makes a face. “’Cuz boys like you never know boys like me.”

  “Oh, come on, join in,” Lloyd says, opening up a space between himself and me. Shane twinkles, wiggling his tall lanky self in between, careful not to drop that damn bottle of Windex.

  Plastic champagne glasses and a bottle make the rounds. We break free of our little daisy chain but remain with our arms around each other’s waists, watching as the countdown ticks off the last few seconds of the century. Weird, huh? The twenty-first century. It seems so … so Jetsons. Like we’ll all head out of here and instead of hailing cabs we’ll strap on our jet packs and zoom up into the night.

  Five, four, three …

  I look over at Jeff and Lloyd, who’ve pulled back a little, with eyes only for each other. I vow to myself that next year I won’t be alone, that I’ll be welcoming in the New Year the way they are. Together.

  Happy New Year!!!!!!!!

  The lights don’t go out. Everybody around me starts jumping and hugging each other. Some stranger kisses me, tasting like cigarettes. When I look around, I can’t spot Jeff or Lloyd in all the commotion, so I settle for an embrace and a quick kiss with Shane.

  “Where’d your friends go?” he asks.

  I laugh. “Who knows? They’re supposed to be having an ‘important talk’ tonight.” I can’t help being a little sarcastic.

  Shane snorts. “Not very nice of them to not even say Happy New Year.”

  I just shrug. “You learn to put up with things.”

  “Look,” Shane says, leveling his eyes down at me. “I’m just gonna lay it on the line with you.”

  I look up at him quizzically.

  “I find you way hot,” Shane tells me. “And I don’t want to spend the first night of the new millennium alone. Any chance you’re going to come back with me to my hotel and fuck my brains out?”

  I laugh awkwardly. “Well, I admire your direct approach.”

  Shane smirks. “I’m just a little emboldened by the chemicals. I came with a bunch of losers who didn’t even stay till midnight.” He pulls in close. “I don’t often have a chance to make it with studs like you, so I’m just putting it out there. What do you say?”

  I’m dumfounded. “Shane, I’m not really—”

  “Attracted to me?” He laughs. “Of course you’re not. I
f it hadn’t been for that Windex bottle, you’d never have even noticed me.” He leans down even closer. “But I’ll pay you. What do you say to that?”

  I gulp. Really, I frigging gulp. Wouldn’t you?

  “You’re fucked,” is all I can manage to say. He laughs then, and I laugh back.

  Was he serious? I don’t want to know. So I use Jeff’s line. “Hey,” I tell him. “No talking on the dance floor.”

  All I want to do is get away from him. I mean, here’s some freak offering to pay me to have sex with him. Meanwhile, Jeff and Lloyd are nowhere to be found. Thank God I have the key to the hotel room. I look around, desperate to shake Shane and find some A&F to go home with—you know, A&F, for Abercrombie and Fitch. It’s Brent’s term for young, smooth, lean, cute boy. That’s not such a lofty goal, is it? I can do it. I’m hot enough. Hey, Shane would have even paid for the chance.

  I don’t often have a chance to make it with studs like you.

  Boggles my mind, I tell you.

  “Hey, buddy.”

  I turn. It’s Jeff. I breathe a silent sigh of relief.

  “I lost you at New Year’s,” he says.

  “Yeah, I looked for you,” I tell him.

  “Happy New Century,” Jeff says, giving me one of those smiles that just turn me into mush. He pulls me tightly to him. I catch Shane’s eye over Jeff’s shoulder and grin. See? He didn’t forget me.

  “Happy New Century to you, too, Jeff,” I say, and I’m surprised at how thick with emotion my voice is. The X, I guess. It can really dry out your mouth.

  Lloyd taps me on the shoulder. “Actually, Happy New Millennium,” he says, and kisses me on the lips.

  I smile. “Actually, I’ve heard it’s not until next year that the millennium begins.”

  “I don’t know, buddy,” Jeff says, sliding in behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist. “This feels like the beginning of a whole new ball game to me.”

  I don’t want to ponder too hard just what he means by that. Has Lloyd told him he’s moving back to Boston? Are they really moving in together? I close my mind down and let the X take me for a ride. A new mix begins breaking out of the old. The energy of the house pulses even higher.

  “What is this?” I shout to Jeff. It’s a little game we play: guess the song before it starts, a gay name-that-tune. “I think I recognize it, but I’m not sure.”

  It’s a Thunderpuss remix of Sister Sledge’s disco classic “We Are Family.” Jeff pegs it, of course. He always does. I laugh, feeling all horny and happy and hilarious, and it isn’t just the X. I even pull Shane back into our little group.

  “I got all my sisters with me!” I sing out. Shane begins squirting Gatorade in time with the beat.

  The crowd goes wild.

  Jeff

  It doesn’t get much better than this. This is it—the heart, the soul, the center of gravity. This is where I come alive. This is what saved me. This is what brought me back. I love it all. I love the heat; I love the sweat; I love the steam that rises from a huddle of torsos grinding together. I love the way the music can transform even the most jaded muscleboy into Patti Lupone on a balcony. I love the silly banter, the sloppy tongues, the roaming hands. I love these boys who surround me, this manflesh that pulses and throbs and breathes as one.

  There’s a moment out here on the dance floor that rarely fails to find me: a moment of transcendence, when it’s no longer a sea of disparate individuals but one big collective soul of queer humanity. Lost in the music, it isn’t the drugs but a far more intrinsic high that takes hold of my mind and my body. I feel connected to every man on the dance floor, to every man who has ever been here, and to all who are still to come.

  “Aw, man, someone just cut a fart,” Lloyd groans.

  “It wasn’t me,” I say quickly.

  “Or me,” Henry adds.

  “Don’t look at me!” Shane bristles.

  Okay, so the dance floor can have its downsides. It can stink. People cut farts. Poppers reek. And it can get a little slimy, with beer and vodka spilled on the floor or down the back of your pants. Occasionally, some idiot has been know to puke right there in front of you just as you’re about to spin off into lala land with Hex Hector’s remix of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” But you learn to disregard these things. For where else are you really so part of everything around you, so connected?

  So now for a little background on me. There was a period of time where I had a little bit of a problem. Nothing I couldn’t handle. I proved that. I didn’t need detox or anything to get over it. One day I simply looked across the dance floor and caught eyes with some guy. What I saw wasn’t pretty. He was looking back at me, but I knew right away we weren’t cruising each other. There was no love in his eyes. Just a hardness so fierce and shiny that I could see myself reflected from across the floor. My hand went instinctively to my jaw, and I felt how hard and clenched it was. Just like his.

  The truth was plain, at least to me. Our girlfriend Tina had overstayed her welcome at our house. Oh, she was handy to have around when the place needed a good cleaning, and she certainly kept me going from one after-hours to another, but I’d seen too many guys end up in the trash because of her, and I was suddenly determined that wouldn’t be me. I’m not sure the guy I was looking at ever came to that same conclusion, but I did. Then and there, and just like that. I get impatient with guys who are so trapped by crystal that they can’t stop. They can’t even see it. Don’t they understand that it’s a real buzz-crusher when you watch somebody overdose on the dance floor? Lloyd says I’m being hard, that addiction is an illness, with no blame to place. Maybe that’s so. But that was the last time I ever did crystal, and I’ve kept Henry as far away from it as I can.

  “All those people who died of AIDS,” I told him, my voice harder and angrier than I meant it to be, “didn’t die just so we could all fuck it up some other way.”

  “Do you want to talk to me about Javitz, Jeff?” Henry asked. “Is that what this is all about? You never talk about Javitz to me.”

  Man, Henry can be such a nag. Talking is so overrated. When things got bad a few years ago, I found my answers on the dance floor. They say the “circuit” is over, passé—that it’s a phenomenon whose time has peaked and passed. Maybe so, but explain then the thousands who still show up for the White Party or the throngs of shirtless muscle boys who clog the streets of Provincetown at Fourth of July. Something’s still happening. Call it what you want, but there’s a whole subculture of gay men out there just waiting to dance their asses off for a weekend, to forget all their problems and turn whatever city they’re in queer for the duration.

  I laugh now to remember how convinced I was that my life was all over, that gay life ended at thirty. I was too old, I thought, for the youth-obsessed gay culture, and besides, I was alone and adrift, having just lost my lover and my best friend. But the guys on the circuit aren’t twinks. “Circuit Boy” is a misnomer, for most of the guys I know are in their thirties like me. The rest range in age from late twenties to mid-forties. Most of us share the same cultural references. When dance remixes of old pop standards start to play, we know all the words: “If You Could Read My Mind.” “I Say A Little Prayer.” “California Dreaming.” When a drag queen takes a shot at originality, showing up as Ann-Margret or Bea Arthur instead of the ubiquitous Liza or Barbra, we recognize them. When somebody makes a joke about Karen Carpenter or Jo on The Facts of Life, we get the punchline. Most of the guys I’ve gotten to know on the circuit have lived. They know about struggle, about heartbreak, about love and loss and death. They’ve survived a lot over the last couple decades. One whole hell of a lot. They’ve got a few wrinkles around the eyes, and I’ve come to find that sexy.

  Trite as it might sound, these are my people. Inspired suddenly, I break free of our little group, dancing on my own, my hands held up shoulder height, my body moving to the music. Anywhere else—say, dancing alone in front of a mirror—I would have looked ab
surd. But here—here—it’s hot. It’s sublime. I’m lost inside the music.

  I feel Lloyd’s arms snake around my waist, his lips on my ear.

  “Did you really do only one bump?”

  “Yes,” I assure him. “Don’t worry.”

  “I worry.”

  I turn around and kiss him. “That’s why I love you. But I have no intention of ending up a GHB on the side of some dance floor in Detroit.”

  “GHB?”

  “Girl Hardly Breathing.”

  Lloyd, smiles. “You make me laugh, Cat.” His face gets serious. “Can we talk now?”

  “After this song.”

  All right. So I’m putting it off. I’m both anticipating and dreading the talk. Look, I’m sure it’s going to be a proposal to move back in together again—to go back to the way things once were. In the back of my mind, I suppose, I’ve always kept alive the hope that such an occurrence might happen. Maybe that’s why the boyfriends over the past couple of years have never lasted very long. They were all fleeting, obviously mismatched: a Russian flight attendant, a college boy from Missouri, a leather daddy who wanted to put me in a sling. I was just waiting for what, in my heart of hearts, felt like an eventuality. Getting back with Lloyd.

  But it’s not as if we had any precedent to follow, any charted path. Coming out of two decades of plague, so much of gay literature and gay movies and gay magazine articles has focused on losing one’s lover, not holding on to them. In keeping the flame burning for Lloyd, then, I’ve had no blueprint, no game plan. It’s only been a dream, a hope, a trust.

  Still, if it comes to pass and we somehow find the course to follow, having Lloyd back will definitely shake up my life, and I have to admit to some ambivalence about it. I’ve gotten used to the way I live now. And I’m not exactly having a bad time. With Lloyd back, what will happen to those impromptu online hookups that lead to quickies at two A.M. on my living room floor? And how about my circuit schedule? I know Lloyd isn’t exactly thrilled with my jet set routine from Palm Springs to Chicago to Miami to Toronto. Yeah, my life will definitely get some shaking up.