Where the Boys Are

by William J. Mann

  She looks a little uncomfortable. “Well, I had thought Jeff might come with you, and your other friend—Henry, isn’t it? And the friends I invited all canceled at the last minute.”

  “Oh.” I’m not quite sure what to make of that. Eva’s spoken of other friends but rarely gives any names. The only people she seems to spend time with are Alex, her AIDS buddy, and her late husband’s lawyer, Tyrone, who, Eva blushingly has admitted, is in love with her.

  “Don’t worry about me, Lloyd,” she says suddenly. “I’m good all by myself. Okay, so at midnight I had a little cry, remembering Steven, but it was good for me. I haven’t cried in a while. It actually felt good.”

  I smile. “Javitz wanted so much to see the year 2000. I remember him saying when he was a kid he’d figured out how old he’d be in 2000 and thought fifty-two seemed so old.”

  “To a kid, it would seem old. Not to me.” She sighs. “It’s young. Javitz should have seen 2000. So should have Steven.”

  We both sit in silence for a moment. “I want to tell Jeff about Steven, Eva,” I tell her. “Do I have your permission?”

  She reaches over and takes my hand. “Of course. It might make a difference for him, knowing that Steven was gay, and that he died of AIDS—”

  Suddenly, she begins to cry. That happens with her. She’ll be going along fine, and then all at once, whammo! Something kicks in and she remembers Steven and she starts to cry. I understand. It’s sometimes like that for me with Javitz. I reach over and pull her close to me. Her tiny hands grip my shirt and hold on tight, like a frightened child clinging to her mother. I pat the back of her head.

  “It’s so silly,” she says, breathing hard. “It’s been almost five years since Steven died. And here I still am, breaking down at the slightest mention—”

  “It’s okay to cry. It’s not good to put your grief in a box.” I take her by the shoulders and bring her up so I can look down into her eyes. “That’s what’s so wrong with everything today. Because so many people got well so quickly, suddenly we’re not supposed to show our grief anymore. We’re not supposed to cry out and curse and agonize over the hundreds of thousands who weren’t so lucky. It’s like we’re just supposed to stop talking about it. Like it was all a bad dream and it’s over now.” I laugh scornfully. “Well, fuck that. We haven’t finished crying yet.”

  My little speech seems to impress her. I have that effect on her. She’s always saying so, giving me credit for inspiring her and motivating her. But she’s done the same for me. It’s been Eva over the past few months who’s gotten me talking about my grief, who’s allowed me the space to share my stories about Javitz. Jeff sure as hell won’t do that.

  She takes both my hands in hers and looks me steadily in the eyes. “Tell me how he died again, Lloyd. Tell me the story.”

  The story. It feels good to tell it.

  I let out a long breath and look out the window. There are more lights on in the city than usual, people still awake and celebrating the coming of the new millennium. Yes, I’ll tell her the story. She takes power from hearing it. I take power from telling it.

  “It was the night of the hurricane,” I begin, the way I always begin. “I remember our neighbors buying plywood to nail across their large picture window that faced out onto the bay. People were staking trees and stockpiling water. Javitz had been declining for weeks and hadn’t spoken in three days. That afternoon he began breathing heavily, laboriously. The active dying had begun.”

  I settle back into the couch. Eva sits close to me so that our shoulders are touching.

  “As the evening went on, he seemed to grow increasingly agitated, as unsettled as the sky outside. When the first winds hit, he began making a low whine in his throat, and his hands were clenching and unclenching into bony fists. He was in a hospital bed by then, so it was difficult to comfort him. In his own bed, I could crawl in beside him and take him in my arms. But now there were those horrible aluminum guardrails separating us. I slid one down and managed to get in as close as I could. Outside, the wind slammed against the house. The shutters that I thought had been nailed down securely came loose and slapped madly against the windows. I worried the glass might break. We lost power. I lit candles and told Javitz not to be afraid.”

  I can’t continue. Eva squeezes my hands. “I’m right here,” she whispers.

  I find my voice. “We had morphine. I knew I could put a few drops in his mouth and that it would calm him, but I also knew it would hasten his death. I told him what I was doing. We’d had so many talks over the years, I knew he’d want me to. I gave him the morphine and then sat down beside him again.

  “And he did calm down. He was looking at me. All of a sudden, I remembered something he’d once said. ‘Be with me at the end and tell me about the wind.’ See, Javitz loved the wind. It was so perfect that he should die during a hurricane. So I took his hand and described the wind, how fierce it was, how powerful, and I told him that he was like that wind, just as strong, and that all he needed to do was become one with the wind and he’d be free.”

  My throat tightens but I continue. “I told him that I loved him, and he mouthed the words back to me. He hadn’t been able to communicate in days, but he died saying those words. At that moment, I saw the life just disappear in his eyes, like a light switch turned off. I sat there staring at him, his lips still wrapped around his final words, his eyes still open. And suddenly there was such a wind outside, so tremendous that I thought the roof would come off. Tables fell over and a vase in the living room flew from the mantel and shattered against the floor. I thought the house was collapsing inwards, but it was only Javitz, finally released from this world.” I pause, smiling. “Leave it to him to go out with a bang.”

  Eva’s crying softly. So am I. “How I wish I had known him,” she says. “Thank you for sharing that story with me. It means so much every time I hear it.”

  You need to understand how important it is to tell it. For three years I’d kept that story bottled inside. Jeff couldn’t bear it, and neither could other friends. But it felt good to speak it. It felt empowering to remember it. Javitz would want me to remember it, and to tell it often. And with passion, with him as the star. I smile. Javitz always loved being the star.

  And it took Eva, a woman he had never known, to become his most eager fan.

  She seemed to sense, right from the start, my need to talk about Javitz, and she’s continued to encourage me to do so. Even when I might not be thinking about him at the moment, she’ll bring up his name, ask me to tell her something about Javitz. It’s been the way to my heart. In the past three months, Eva’s become the closest person to me on earth.

  We met cute, as they say in the movies. At a seminar on psychic healing at New York’s Open Center, I tripped over her purse and sent a row of metal chairs clanging down like dominoes. Horrified that everyone turned to glare, including the speaker, I sat down beside Eva with my cheeks burning. She offered me a Tic Tac, and a friendship was born.

  I accompanied her that night for the first time to meet Alex. He’d wanted to attend the lecture himself, but had felt too weak. Eva bought a cassette for him and set it up where he could listen to it. When she inquired how he felt, Alex told her he was “taking baby steps back to life.” She seemed to love that line, and repeated it to me on the way out for coffee later.

  “That’s me, too.” she said. “My volunteering, going to the seminar—they’re my own baby steps back to life.”

  Me, too, I realized. We talked for hours that night about grief, about how to live with it, even make friends with it. She said I inspired her with such talk; I told her she was the true inspiration. In the ensuing months, we attended many workshops together, and I saw her brighten, emerge from her shell of grief and despair. She told me that my friendship was a beacon of light to her, offering her a direction, a promise that life wasn’t over.

  And she’s provided similar hope for me, too—especially a few nights ago, sitting in her living r
oom, musing about the future, when she was suddenly struck with the idea of a guest house, and I jumped on it. “Let’s do it, Lloyd!” she said. “You and me!”

  Does it really seem so impulsive? It doesn’t to me. It feels right. I think of Eva’s strength, her compassion, her wisdom. People come into your life for a reason, I truly believe. This is fate. We’re meant to do this together.

  All at once, she stands. “Lloyd! Come with me!”

  She takes me by the hand and leads me across the room. We climb the stairs to the second floor. “This was Steven’s room,” she says, opening a door at the far end of the hall. It’s the one room of the house I’ve never seen. I look around. A canopy bed with a very gay white veil. In a silver frame hangs an enormous photograph of a flower’s bright yellow stamen. I recognize it immediately as a Mapplethorpe original.

  “You and Steven had your own rooms?” I ask, and immediately regret the question. Of course they did—at least for the last few years, after he told Eva he was gay.

  “Yes,” she says softly, looking down at the bed and patting the blue velvet comforter. “We thought it best.” She takes a deep breath. “This is where he died. I sat here, in this chair, holding his hand.”

  She walks over to the closet and slides back the mirrored door. My jaw drops. There’s an array of leather jackets, some with shiny chrome chains on the shoulders. Next to them are dozens of pairs of blue jeans, all neatly pressed and folded over hangers. I can’t help but smile. Javitz pressed his jeans, too, and hung them up like that. The mark of a generation. Steven had been the same age as Javitz.

  “I want you to have Steven’s clothes,” Eva says. “My goodness, all this beautiful leather just hanging here untouched. Steven loved leather. He had jackets, pants, shirts, chaps …” She reaches in and pulls out a pair of black motorcycle boots. “And the footwear! My word! You did say you were a size eight-and-a-half, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but Eva, I couldn’t just …”

  She looks at me earnestly. “Of course you could. You’re the exact same size as Steven. This will all fit you marvelously.”

  I smile. “That’s very kind of you.” I can’t stop my smile from turning into a broad grin. “But Eva, you never told me Steven was a leather queen.”

  She laughs. “Oh, he wasn’t into sadomasochism or anything.” She’s blushing. “He just liked how he looked in leather. See?”

  She picks up a framed photograph from the bureau and hands it over to me. A dark-haired man with a walrus mustache in leather motorcycle jacket and cap, a harness and no shirt, chaps over his jeans.

  “Very Tom of Finland,” I observe. I noticed a cardboard box in the closet, a shiny flash of chrome from within. I bend down and extract a pair of handcuffs. “Not into S and M, huh?”

  She looks down at the cuffs. “I’ve never gone through that box,” she says in a small voice.

  I feel suddenly uneasy standing there with Steven’s photograph in one hand and his handcuffs in the other. I toss the cuffs back into the box and return the photo to Eva.

  “Steven taught me a great deal,” Eva says, carefully replacing the photograph back on the bureau. “When he told me he was gay, of course I told him he was free to go and find himself—and another man if he chose, someone with whom he could spend his life.” She’s gazing down at the picture but then turns quickly to focus again on me. “But he chose not to. He chose to stay with me. He loved me, Lloyd. He may have been gay, but he loved me.”

  “Of course he did, Eva,” I reply gently.

  “It was a great blessing, really, that Steven turned out to be gay. It meant no children, of course, but I learned so much about the human condition by getting to know Steven as a gay man. Oh, Lloyd, how I wish you could’ve known him.”

  “He sounds like a wonderful guy.”

  “Not any more wonderful than you.” She beams at me. “Here. Try on this jacket.”

  “Oh, I don’t know …”

  “Don’t be silly. It was his favorite.” She pulls a heavy black coat off its hanger. Long fringe dangles from its sides. I hate it immediately but obediently slip my arms into its sleeves. I look ridiculous as I stare into the mirror, but it does fit. Perfectly.

  “Well, pick out what you might want to take with you tomorrow,” she tells me. “I’ll have the rest shipped up to Provincetown.”

  She’s trying to do something kind. These clothes mean a lot to her—such an intimate connection with Steven. Idly I pull open a drawer from the bureau. Steven’s white brief underwear are still neatly folded there. I quickly shut the drawer. The man’s been dead five years.

  I look at myself again in the mirror and shiver. She’s been hanging on to his memory, I tell myself. I’m a psychologist; I know this isn’t healthy. But we all handle grief differently. By giving the clothes away she’s taking an important step toward healing.

  I replace the jacket on the hanger.

  Somewhere in the interior of the house, a cuckoo clock heralds five A.M. “We should get some sleep,” I say gently.

  “I’ve just been too excited to sleep these days, ever since we decided to do this.” She wraps her arms around herself. “This is our millennium, Lloyd. Ours.”

  I smile at her.

  She points out the window, where the purple sky is starting to fade into the first glow of dawn. “It’s a whole new chance for us,” she says. “Oh, Lloyd, I am just so consumed with passion for our project! Do you realize just how much you’ve offered me? How you’ve given me a life again—a life I never imagined I’d see? Can you possibly grasp how grateful I am, how honored I feel by your faith in me?”

  “It’s mutual, Eva,” I tell her, and she suddenly rushes to embrace me. Her breasts wedge between us like large cantaloupes. She tucks her head under my chin against my chest.

  You’re thinking she’s a bit dramatic. Okay, I’ll grant you that. But see, I’m drawn to Eva for precisely that quality. I’ve been adrift, and the person once closest to me—Jeff—has made himself unavailable. Eva is demonstrative where Jeff is distant, and now, watching the sun come up, holding her in my arms and remembering how Jeff has pulled away yet again, I’m as glad to have her in my life as she’s glad to have me.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” she says, looking up at me from our embrace.

  I smile, a little sadly. “I was thinking of Jeff.”

  She pulls out of the embrace gently and walks back over to the window. She seems a little hurt. “Do you think he might want to live there eventually?” she asks, not looking at me. “Our guest house?”

  I sigh. “Jeff doesn’t share my passion for Provincetown, at least not since Javitz died. And besides, I just don’t know where Jeff and I stand right now.”

  She turns to face me. “For me, Provincetown is the most exciting part of all.” She’s hugging herself again. It’s a gesture she does often, I’ve noticed: a way of almost hiding her breasts. “Ever since Steven died, I’ve told myself that I wanted to leave the city and go somewhere where the air is pure, where there are long stretches of nothing but earth and air and sea, where I can find my soul.”

  It’s uncanny how closely our paths have converged. That’s exactly how I view Provincetown: that sandy peninsula where the land ends, crumbling into the sea. There I’ve found another way to live. I’ve become more aware of the sun and the stars and the wind than ever before in my life, reveling in the light that’s like nowhere else on earth.

  “We still haven’t decided what we’ll name our house,” I say quietly.

  “Nirvana,” she announces, suddenly looking up at me with wide, eager eyes. “Wow.”

  “It just came to me. What do you think?”

  I consider it. It feels a bit extreme, but I trust moments like these. “Nirvana,” I say, smiling. “Nirvana it will be.”

  New Year’s Day, Chelsea

  Jeff

  “This way, boys.”

  Our waiter is a harried queen covered in glitter. Whatever he touches, like my shou
lder, is left graced with a sprinkling of red and silver and green. A throng of gay men stands waiting for their tables, their eyes puffy, their cheeks shadowed with morning stubble. We pass through them, getting a whiff of the cold January air that still clings to their leather jackets and wool scarves. The poor waiter looks exhausted; he’s probably been showing people to tables ever since the restaurant opened at six A.M. Now it’s three-thirty in the afternoon, and we’re all still looking for breakfast.

  “Here you go.” The waiter hands us each a menu and gestures toward a table near the kitchen. The smell of bacon snaps through the air. “I’ll be back for your order in a minute.” Glitter sprinkles onto the table as he flits off to seat the next people in line.

  I take the seat next to the wall. Anthony sits opposite me, transfixed by the residue of glitter on the table. He presses his forefinger onto it, lifting his hand to show me. “Like sparkly snowflakes,” he says, grinning like a little kid.

  In the past twelve hours, I’ve discovered he’s filled with a wonder rare among gay men, usually so worshipful of irony and cynicism. Anthony gets excited by little, ordinary things, like the way the exhaust fan in the bathroom quickly evaporates the steam on the mirror, or the sight of kids with a puppy on a leash. With undisguised glee he gazed into store windows, ginning at their moving Santas and elves. He laughed without affectation at the antics of a street vendor and his pet monkey. He caught snowflakes on his tongue, something I would never, ever consider doing on the sidewalks of Manhattan.

  Looking across the table at him now, I observe the deep dimples that indent his cheeks when he smiles—a precious little detail I’d failed to notice in the darkness of the night before. I can’t help but smile myself as I watch him study his menu, his forehead scrunched up and his lips pursed in thought, as if choosing between eggs and pancakes were a life-or-death decision.

  “So what’s your last name, Anthony?” I ask, breaking the silence.