Where the Boys Are

by William J. Mann

  We’ve been feeling celebratory ever since Anthony’s HIV test came back negative. He’d been worrying ever since I talked to him about barebacking, so I took him over to Fenway to be tested. As his blood was drawn, he’d broken into a cold sweat, his face draining of color, as if the full weight of the Russian Roulette he’d been playing for the past several months had finally hit him. During the next few days we had major conversations, about the science, the ethics, and the politics of AIDS. Talk about feeling like Javitz! I found myself playing the wise old elder: “It comes down to responsibility. To others and to yourself.” Blah blah blah. I couldn’t wait to just move past it all, to hop on the plane and get here, to forget how anxious I, too, had become, waiting to find out Anthony’s results. I’m honestly not sure what I would have done—how I would have proceeded—had it not come back negative. I can’t even begin to think about it. Thankfully, I don’t have to. I can just have fun.

  And Philly’s a fun city. Small like Boston, with the same higher-than-expected ratio of cute guys—especially surprising given Philly’s proximity to New York. You’d think the big city would’ve drained off more of the A-listers. But Philly’s jumping with them. Still, I only have eyes for Anthony.

  We flew down as a little posse: Henry, Anthony, Shane, Brent, and I. Brent, of course, annoyed the shit out of me when he started pushing buttons on his cell phone as soon as we’d arrived, trying to get some crystal. “All he’s doing is reserving his place in line at the detox center,” I told Anthony.

  “I’ve never done crystal,” he said. “I was going to try it in Miami, but then the guy I was with said he couldn’t get any.”

  “Stay away from that stuff,” I insisted to him. “I’ve been there. I saw what was happening to myself.”

  “What?”

  “I was getting hard. Brittle.” I laughed. “And I don’t need any help in that department.”

  “But they say you get such an awesome feeling—”

  “Anthony, I’m telling you. Don’t go there.”

  “But you tried it, Jeff. I never have.”

  I gripped him by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Anthony. You just tested negative. Be glad of that. Be glad you’re alive and healthy. Tina would just mess all that up.”

  He sighed, nodding. “Okay, Jeff. If you say I shouldn’t, I won’t.”

  I smiled. He was learning his lessons well.

  The welcome party on Friday night was okay, but it was the overnight party at ShamBlue that really rocked. Brent, thankfully, disappeared with a couple of devoted Tina fans from across the river in Jersey. Meanwhile, Shane was a hit, delighting the crowd with his laser guns, strapped to his hips in holsters. He looked like Gary Cooper suddenly gone gay in High Noon.

  As we planned, we crashed at our E-mail buddy Rudy’s house on Spruce Street. I blushed to spy a Polaroid of myself on Rudy’s refrigerator, secured by a Judy Garland magnet. It was from the White Party, and I had my arms around Rudy, both of us shirtless and sweaty. I looked pretty twisted; I sure don’t remember that photo being taken.

  But if Rudy had thought this might be round two for us, he was mistaken. As pretty as I still found his eyes and his body, it’s Anthony who’s commanded all of my attention. As distractions go—since Henry still keeps insisting that’s all Anthony is to me, a distraction from Lloyd—he certainly is distracting. We slept in each other’s arms on the floor until nearly four this afternoon. Henry and Shane shared Rudy’s couch. Once, when they thought we-were asleep, I heard them going at it. I just laughed to myself. If Anthony was my distraction, then what was Shane to Henry?

  When we all had finally roused ourselves, I insisted we eat some bananas and protein bars, and filled everyone’s sports bottle with water. Henry complained that we’d be pissing for hours, but to survive a circuit weekend, you have to be savvy. You’ve got to keep nourished and well hydrated. I also took a long, hot shower, giving my chest and torso a good close shave for tonight’s party. Lloyd likes me better with some hair on my chest, but it tends to obscure the definition of my pecs and abs. Go ahead and call me self-absorbed if you want: I’ve worked hard for that definition. And besides, Lloyd’s preferences are not necessarily high on my list right now, even if I do keep thinking of him at the most unexpected moments all weekend.

  Later, pumping up at the Twelfth Street Gym, Anthony must have picked up on something. “Do you wish Lloyd was here, Jeff?” he asked.

  He was spotting me as I bench-pressed my max weight, two hundred pounds. I looked up at him from under the bar. “Lloyd never comes to circuit parties,” I told him.

  Anthony just shrugged as I proceeded to do eight reps, stepping in to help me with the ninth and tenth. I let the barbell clang back into place and sat up. I could see Lloyd wasn’t the only thing making Anthony anxious.

  “Why do you keep looking over your shoulder?” I asked.

  “I’m worried about Brent. Where is he? We haven’t heard from him since we got here.”

  “If he’s not here at the gym for his party pump,” I reasoned, “he’s really twisted.”

  That’s when some guy walking by made an obnoxious comment about all the circuit queens taking over “his” gym.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, going from zero to six thousand on the anger scale in the space of a microsecond.

  The guy shrank back but still managed to give me a sneer. “What’s the matter? Roid rage?”

  “I don’t take steroids,” I snarled.

  The guy sniffed. “You guys come down here and just take over. Every goddamn restaurant, every fucking cafe. It’s the height of winter, but guys are walking out of the gym without their shirts on.”

  “And what’s so wrong with that?” I asked. “Why are you so offended?”

  The guy just huffed off.

  Brent never did show up, and all night Anthony’s kept an eye out for him. I’ve come to realize that’s just the way Anthony is: fiercely protective of anybody who comes within his sphere. He’s truly as compassionate as he is sexy. The other day in Boston, his eyes had misted up when he saw a dead cat in the road. I found his tears endearing. I could see how Anthony might become much more than simply a distraction—if it weren’t for the fact that he continues to disappear for one night a week, and that he still refuses to talk of his past.

  “Na-ked,” he’s chanting now, along with Taylor Dayne. “Na-ked!”

  I keep my arms tightly around his waist. There’s one other thing that hasn’t changed about Anthony as well: he still can’t dance. Janet Reno could manage better than he can.

  Some guy sidles up beside us. “You two make a fabulous couple,” he says.

  “Hey! Thanks!” Anthony’s face lights up.

  I smile, too, but instantly wish the guy hadn’t said it. It’s what people used to say when they saw Lloyd and me together—and now suddenly Lloyd’s right here again, squeezed down into the infinitesimally small space between Anthony and me. Damn. And I was doing so well. I hadn’t thought of Lloyd in over an hour.

  “I love small-waisted guys,” the guy-with-the-compliments is continuing. “Awesome abs, too, dude.” He actually has the audacity to run his hand down Anthony’s stomach. Anthony doesn’t flinch or push him away. He just grins.

  The guy’s obviously hoping for a three-way. He punches both hands against my chest in that primal gesture that gay men use on the dance floor: sizing up the meat, inspecting the merchandise, a tribal mating ritual. But I’m not interested. Suddenly I want Anthony all to myself. I maneuver my back to the intruder, putting Anthony out of his reach. The guy’s hot enough, but he’s wearing one of those heavy chain-link necklaces that are so last year. So two years ago, even.

  Packing to head here to Philly, I laughed when I opened my top drawer. It looked like a dragnet through partyland: love beads, freedom rings, ticket stubs, whistles, pacifiers, glow sticks, armbands—even the same clunky chain-link necklace the guy’s wearing. Even as I bought the damn thing, I knew it would eventually end up there
, along with the rest of the debris. But I can’t bear to part with any of it. Each of the trinkets holds some memory. Javitz bought me the leather armband. The whistles hail from the days of Doc Martens boots and sideburns down to my jaw when we marched through the streets with Javitz shouting until our voices were hoarse. More embarrassing are the kitschy freedom rings I wore in my very first Gay Pride parade in Boston. The love beads date from the summer of ’91 or ’92, when Lloyd and I spent nearly an hour trying them on together, picking out complimentary colors.

  I was staring down into the drawer when Anthony had appeared over my shoulder. I laughed and tried to close the drawer quickly, but he asked to see what was inside. I stepped back, letting him look. He reached in, lifting out the flotsam and jetsam of my life as if he were running his hands through buried treasure. He treated the trinkets with reverence, and even though he said nothing, I’d already become adept at reading his emotions. This could have been my stuff, Anthony was thinking. I could have experienced all of this too if I hadn’t come out so late.

  So why hadn’t he?

  It’s been almost a month now since Anthony came into my life, and still my hunky houseguest remains an enigma. He’s like a character in some sci-fi movie who’s just hatched out of a pod or thawed out from a hundred-year sleep. It’s as if he’d come to life on some mad doctor’s table—no childhood, no history, no family, no past.

  He’s taken a job with a local florist, delivering arrangements on foot to customers in the South End and Back Bay. He’s getting paid under the table, which he prefers. He gives me a few dollars toward food and assures me he’ll soon start looking for a place of his own. But I’m not pressuring him to leave. Okay, so Henry’s right. Although I miss my privacy, Anthony’s presence means I don’t have to think about Lloyd, about the fact that our phone calls have diminished, or that neither of us has made any plans to visit the other.

  Still, Anthony hasn’t made the move to sharing my bed. I just can’t go that far. He sleeps on the couch. No rule has been made about it; he just seems to sense that I prefer it that way. After sex, he shyly says good night and retreats to his spot in the living room. I never make the offer for him to stay, and he never asks.

  Yet while he hasn’t learned much rhythm on the dance floor, I have to admit that Anthony has been making progress in other areas. The sex is definitely getting better. I’ve noticed he copies little things I do, like the tongue in the ear or the slapping of the dick against the face. Either Anthony was telling the truth and he really never had gay sex before a few months ago, or he’s had very boring gay sex. When I press for details, he still insists there just isn’t much to tell. There’s been no one. He’s been alone.

  I just don’t buy it. I didn’t that first day we talked and I still don’t. One just doesn’t live almost thirty years without some relationship. Certainly not when one looks like Anthony.

  Finally, however, I’ve found a clue. At least what might be a clue. Three days ago, while Anthony was still asleep, I’d looked into his wallet. He usually keeps it zipped up in his backpack, and I vowed to myself I wouldn’t snoop. But this time the wallet was on the floor between the living room and the bathroom. He must have dropped it. Lloyd says there are no coincidences or accidents. Everything happens for a reason. That’s what I told myself as I picked it up. It fell open, and I couldn’t resist. Honest, that’s what happened. I chalked it up to the universe giving me permission to pry.

  Inside, there was no driver’s license, which I’d known about: Anthony had told me that since he’d always lived in cities with good public transportation, he’d let his license lapse. Instead, he had a New York State nondriver identification card, complete with what looked to be a recent photo. There wasn’t much info on the card, just his date of birth—September 30, 1970—and an address, the same Nineteenth Street apartment in Chelsea where we’d spent New Year’s Eve. He’d told me he’d only been there a few weeks, but clearly he must have considered putting down roots if he went for this card. That changed, I figured, once the guy started “liking him too much.” Weren’t those his words?

  I didn’t know what else Anthony’s wallet might reveal, but I looked inside. There were a ten, two ones, and three business cards: the florist’s, one from a local coffee shop with three purchases punched through it (with ten, you get a free cup), and Brent’s. Eeew. He must have given it to Anthony and said, “Call me.” I had to steel my hand against involuntarily pulling it out and tearing it up.

  But that was it. Nothing else.

  Except …

  At first I thought it was a credit card. But as I slipped it out from an inside slot, I saw it was a laminated newspaper photograph. The photo of a man about my age: handsome, smiling, and obviously gay. Not queeny or anything like that, but there are some guys you can just tell. I can’t describe it, and it wouldn’t hold up as proof for a demanding editor, but I can always make out something in the smile, the eyes, or the haircut. This guy was smiling a little too girly, a little too sassily, and his hair was foofy in the way no straight man would wear it. Too combed. Too perfect. Very eighties, in fact, and he was wearing a shirt and narrow tie, vintage 1985. It looked like a corporate headshot. The caption under the picture read: Robert Riley.

  I flipped it over. The photo had indeed been cut out of a newspaper, for there was a section of an article on the back. It read like gibberish, with the beginning and the end of the column cut off, but I considered the words as evidence—the way I’d once considered evidence as a journalist. What information might these words, as mangled as they were, reveal?

  You can always learn something, even if it’s merely learning what a particular piece of evidence doesn’t tell you. I studied the words carefully. From what I could deduce, the article on the back was about oil prices, and it contained the end of a quote from someone named “Herrington.” I also took note of the typeface. It seemed familiar, although it wasn’t the Globe or the Herald or the New York Times.

  I replaced the wallet on the floor where I’d found it. By the time I got out of the shower, Anthony was awake and the wallet nowhere to be seen. I made no mention of the photograph. How could I, without admitting I’d snooped? But later that day, I hauled out my almanac and discovered John S. Herrington had been secretary of energy under Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1989. That meant the photograph likely dated from that period. It fit with the guy’s clothes and hairstyle. So that means Anthony would’ve been between the ages of fifteen and nineteen at the time it was taken.

  Who was Robert Riley? It’s a question that’s been haunting me these last few days. I’m barely listening to Taylor Dayne, not even dancing very hard, just staring over into Anthony’s eyes. He suddenly reaches over and begins kissing me. I kiss him back.

  “You want some more water?” Anthony asks, pulling his lips free.

  The old Ecstasy dry-mouth. I reach around and withdraw the bottle I stuffed down into the back pocket of my jeans. It’s nearly empty.

  “Yeah,” I say. Anthony gives me one more sloppy kiss and heads off through the throng to the bar.

  I took over at Henry. “Wanta take a break?”

  He nods, following me off the dance floor while Shane glowers. “All he has to do is snap his fingers and there you go,” he bitches. Neither of us pays him any mind.

  Still, Henry looks concerned about something. “Should we be at all worried that we haven’t seen Brent in over twenty-four hours now?” he asks as we find a piece of wall to lean against.

  “Nah.”

  Henry raises his eyebrows. “You think he’s okay, then?”

  I sneer. “I think he’s probably lying in a ditch somewhere in a coma. But worry? I don’t think so.”

  Henry smirks. “Jeff O’Brien, you will feel so guilty if that turns out to be true.”

  I dismiss him with a wave of my hand. “So what do you think about Anthony’s dancing? Is there a school somewhere for rhythmically challenged gay boys?”

  Henry shakes that da
mn finger at me again. “That boy is in love with you, Jeff. I can see it happening.”

  I sigh, wiping my forehead with the tank top I wore into the club but which has been pushed down into the back of my jeans for most of my time here.

  “You just let it happen,” Henry’s scolding. “You knew it would, and you let it happen. Just like you did with that kid from Missouri. And Alexei, the flight attendant.”

  I shrug. “Ooops, I did it again.”

  He stands with arms akimbo. “Listen, Britney, you’re acting pretty smitten yourself.”

  “Okay, Henry.” I roll my eyes, tired of this. “Lecture’s over.”

  He meets my glare, nose to nose. “Look, Jeff. I like Anthony. But you still don’t know anything about him. Besides, there’s that little matter of that guy down in Provincetown …”

  “Who I haven’t heard from in almost two weeks.” I pull away. “I guess he’s too busy out buying drapes.”

  “Maybe you should call him. Did you send any flowers or anything when they closed on the house?”

  I look at him askance. “Why are you turning into Miss Manners all of a sudden?”

  “I just worry about you.”

  I laugh out loud. “This from the guy who’s a corporate honcho by day and a streetwalker by night.”

  Henry crosses his arms over his chest. “I do not walk the streets.”

  “No. Just the highways and byways of cyberspace.”

  “Is this your way of telling me you’re worried about me, too?” Henry smiles. “Aw, Jeff. You’re such a doll.” He reaches over and kisses my cheek. “But I’m fine.”

  I harrumph. “Guess you’ve been too busy to call me, too. I left you three messages this week and you didn’t call me back until we were getting ready to fly down here.”