Where the Boys Are

by William J. Mann

  “Oh. You noticed.”

  Jeff frowns. “Are you mad at me for something?”

  I sigh. “I’m not mad at you, Jeff. What would be the point?”

  “Oh, God, you are mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad at you. Go on. Before Anthony trots off with someone else.”

  Jeff smirks. “Not likely.” God, he can be such an arrogant fuck.

  I shake my finger at him. I don’t care if he calls me an old school-marm. “Don’t hurt him, Jeff,” I scold. “He’s still too JV to understand you.”

  “Look, Anthony may be a little junior-varsity, but he’s learning fast.”

  “Then how come he’s not savvy enough to see that you and Lloyd are still just as entangled as ever?”

  Jeff unscrews the cap of a bottled water and takes a slug. “I don’t intend to hurt Anthony,” he says seriously.

  “You never intend to hurt any of them.” I pause, looking away. “You just do.”

  “It’s over with Lloyd. Henry, I realized it that day at the opening party. He’s made his bed, and as far as I am concerned, he can now sleep with her and get it over with. He won’t even listen when I try to offer my insights into her. So it’s over. Anthony’s totally into me, and I should just be grateful for that.”

  “But you don’t even know the first thing about him.”

  Jeff begins ticking off points on the fingers of his left hand. “I know that he’s kind. He’s sincere. He’s smart. He’s compassionate.” He takes another swig of water. “He’s even dancing better, don’t you think?”

  “Haven’t been paying attention,” I lie. “Okay, so he may be kind and smart and all that, but he still disappears once a week. Who knows what’s up with that?”

  Jeff creases his brow, looking at me.

  “Don’t do that,” I warn. “Wrinkles.”

  “What’s going on with you?” Jeff asks. “Why are you trying to burst my balloon?”

  “I’m sorry. But have you ever found out where he goes when he disappears?”

  “I don’t want to know,” Jeff replies, but he doesn’t convince me. “Not until Anthony wants to tell me himself. You’ve got to trust somebody if you’re going to be in a relationship.”

  I try to smile. “It’s so easy for you, Jeff. You know that? Let me tell you something. This guy hires me last week. He was just forty. Not all that much older than you.”

  Jeff scowls. “Your point is?”

  “He was good-looking, smart, successful. But lonely, Jeff. So goddamn lonely. Do you know why he hired me? No worship scenes, no kinky stuff. Not even any sex. He hired me just so he could hold someone. That’s all we did for the hour. Just laid there and held each other.”

  “Two hundred bucks for just lying there?” Jeff smiles. “Give him my number.”

  “You don’t get it.”

  Jeff moves in close, nose to nose. “I do, Henry. I’m just trying to have fun. Why do you get all serious when we’re supposed to be having a good time?”

  I glare at him. “The guys who hire me are so much more in touch with what’s real than any of these guys here.”

  Jeff frowns. “Come on, Henry. The guys who hire you are closeted, scared—”

  “Real, Jeff. They’re real.”

  “The guy with the shoes, Henry. He was real?”

  I pull away from him. “Look around you, Jeff. Look at these guys. Guys who don’t want to grow up. I mean, come on, Jeff. Isn’t it a bit odd that thirty-year-old men know the lyrics to Britney Spears songs?”

  “You own every one of her CDs,” Jeff reminds me, poking me in the chest with his finger. “And Christina Aguilera, and let’s not forget Destiny’s Child—”

  “I’m including myself in this,” I insist. “I’m just tired off the immaturity. The narcissism.”

  “Uh, hello? Who’s made a career out of his own narcissism?”

  “That’s not what it’s about anymore for me. It’s changed. Jeff, what I want is something real. Some basic human interaction. Half of these guys here won’t talk to you, won’t say hello. It’s all attitude.”

  “That’s not so, Henry, and you know it. You’re just feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “It is so. Everybody’s so self-absorbed. ‘Look at me, look at me.’ Don’t deny it, Jeff. You’re caught in that same body image trap. You can’t have sex with somebody unless you feel your body is in perfect shape. That’s fucked, Jeff.”

  “I thought you felt the same way,” he says.

  “I’m thinking it’s time I wake up. This scene is all about guys with too much time and too much money on their hands. Privileged white guys who can afford to jet-set around the continent—”

  “Hold on just a fucking minute, Henry.”

  Okay, I know I’m tapping a nerve here. So much nasty stuff has been written about circuit boys and circuit culture that Jeff has long had an immediate, visceral, defensive reaction.

  “These are not all white guys here,” he snaps. “And yes, I wonder sometimes about priorities, too, about how I’m spending my money. And yes maybe our body image has gotten fucked up. Maybe we can be narcissistic posers at times. I’ll look at that about myself, Henry.” Jeff pauses. “But don’t assume all these boys were born to privilege. I wasn’t. You weren’t, either.”

  I stand my ground. “But we’re privileged now, Jeff. Even if we struggle, we find the cash for airfare, for hotel rooms, for drugs.”

  Jeff has no reply. I know I’ve stumped him with that one. Jeff’s always been so sensitive to class stuff. Especially now, with the bank account Javitz left him. I keep going.

  “And everybody pumped up with X or K or G or whatever they use. Ambulances routinely parked outside clubs. Is that craziness or what?”

  “I say it’s taking realistic precautions. Like passing out condoms.” He’s being stubborn.

  “What goes up,” I warn, “must come down, Jeff.”

  He looks at me with concern. “Is that what this is all about? You did some K, didn’t you? You’re going into a K-hole.”

  I just sigh impatiently. “Jeff, I’m going back to the hotel. I’m tired of coming to these things and not meeting anyone. At least when I escort I connect with someone. There’s contact. There’s intimacy.”

  Jeff puts his arms around me. “You just need to come out and dance, buddy.”

  “Yeah, for what? So that some guy can paw me and we can suck each other’s tongues and then once the drugs wear off we’ll each go home alone and realize our Prince Charmings were just fucked-up, nameless party boys?”

  Jeff rests his forehead against mine. “You want to get all cerebral here, buddy?” he whispers. “You want to talk culture and theory here on the sidelines while they’re mixing in Pepper MaShay out on the dance floor? Okay, Henry, let’s do it, then. I’ll go there with you. I’ll admit to you that gay culture celebrates the ephemeral while always yearning for the eternal. But one does not necessarily nullify the other. Maybe it’s just fleeting, and maybe a lot of it does have to do with the drugs, but you know as well as I do that what happens out there on the dance floor is just as real as anything you’ve experienced with your johns. Go ahead and lump all circuit boys into one big, fleshy mass just because you’re feeling lonely. But you know it’s not true. You can either stand here and feel sorry for yourself or go back to the room and jerk off to a Falcon video, or you can come back out to the dance floor with me and get back into the swim.”

  And then he kisses me. Mouth to mouth, lips to lips, even a little tongue—Jeff kisses me. He’s never done that before. The X must be really having an effect on him. I blink back my surprise.

  He pulls back, staring at me. “Well, what’s it going to be?”

  I have no idea. I have no idea why suddenly I’m so depressed. Maybe I am having a bad reaction to the X. It happens sometimes. Maybe Jeff’s right: I am out of the swim, out of the loop, having spent too much time standing on beds while my clients adored me.

  “Come on, buddy,” Jeff wh
ispers, encouraging me.

  I smile. I allow him to lead me back to the dance floor. For a song or two, Jeff remains attentive, even grinding his crotch into my butt, holding me from behind—but eventually he pairs off with Anthony again. Whatever. Across the dance floor, I spy Brent lip-locked with some hunky Asian guy. I try to pretend I don’t mind dancing alone, but I’m very glad when Shane sidles up alongside me, dousing me with a blast from his Uzi.

  “Still the sexiest guy on the dance floor,” Shane tells me.

  I pull him close, running my hands up and down his wet, shapeless torso.

  “Oh, I see where this is leading,” Shane says.

  “Oh, yeah?” I ask. “Where?”

  “Right back to your hotel room.”

  I laugh.

  Shane bears down on me. “What’s the matter, Henry? Giving up so fast on all these hunky Montreal boys? Thinking it’s going to be a dud of a night, so you might as well grab me? Just like in Philadelphia.”

  I look up at him. “Shane, it’s not like that—”

  “Yes, it is, sweetie. Come on. We don’t lie to each other, remember?”

  He’s right. We’ll have sex and it’ll be good, but there’s no getting around the fact that I’ll be using Shane because I’m lonely.

  I let him go.

  “That’s okay, stud muffin,” Shane says, grinning. “I didn’t mean that I didn’t want to go home with you. I was just being honest. Anytime you’re ready to go, I am, too.”

  I look at him. I feel as if I might start bawling right there on the dance floor. Shane just pulls me close, pressing my face into his chest. We slow-dance that way for a while. Then, hand in hand, we go back to the room.

  A Few Days Later, A Town Outside Hartford, Connecticut

  Jeff

  “Unca Jeff! Unca Jeff!”

  The top half of Little Jeffy’s face suddenly appears over the library’s computer terminal. His big brown eyes and bushy dark hair make him took like a Muppet. I can’t help but laugh. “I thought you were going in for Storytime,” I say to him.

  “It didn’t start yet.” The five-year-old scurries around to the front of the computer. “Whatchadoin’?”

  I help him up onto my lap. “I’m ordering some flowers to be sent to my friend. You remember Henry, don’t you?”

  Jeffy nods. “How come you’re sendin’ him flowers? Is he your sweetheart?”

  I smile. “He’s my friend, Jeffy.”

  “That’s right,” the boy says. “Unca Lloyd is your sweetheart. My mommy told me.”

  I sigh, saying nothing.

  Jeffy presses his nose up against the computer screen. “So how come you’re sendin’ Henry some flowers if he’s not your sweetheart?”

  “Because the last time I saw him,” I explain patiently, “he was feeling a little bit sad. Move out of the way, Jeffy, so I can see what I’m sending.”

  “Why was he sad?”

  I tousle the kid’s hair. “I don’t really know, kiddo. He just was.”

  “Will the flowers make him happy?”

  “I hope so,” I tell him, clicking the SEND button after typing in my credit card. “I really hope so.”

  When we dropped him off at his apartment after getting back from Montreal, Henry still seemed so gloomy. I wished I could have done something, said something, fixed whatever it was that was bugging him. I know I don’t show it often enough, but Henry’s my best friend in the whole world, and I love him. More than I’ve loved any other friend since Javitz. And though I try to play Javitz to Henry’s Jeff, I’m doing a pretty shitty job of it. Javitz would’ve done far better for me than I’m doing for Henry. Javitz always knew how to discern exactly what was going on for me when I was down. He would have zeroed in on the problem and teased it right out of my system. He’d have done a whole hell of a lot more than just send me flowers. But for the moment, it’s all I can think to do.

  Henry’s been on my mind all day, even as I drove down to Connecticut for my regular outing with Jeffy. It’s been fun, as always. I took Jeffy and his mom, my sister Ann Marie, for lunch at the Big Boy, then we headed over to the mall, where I bought Jeffy a new pair of sneakers and some glow-in-the-dark monster stickers. In the car, NSYNC blasted from the radio, and Jeffy just loved that I could sing all the words of “Bye Bye Bye” along with him. Ann Marie laughed. “As if any of my boyfriends could ever do that,” she said.

  See, Henry? Knowing teenybopper lyrics is good for something.

  Now we’re at the library for Storytime. They’re on the final chapters of Charlotte’s Web. I love this old library. It has the hush that all libraries have, an enveloping stillness I treasure. Some of my best articles have been researched in libraries like this all across the country, from small-town repositories to the grand, gargantuan Library of Congress in D.C. I know all of their secret hiding places, their little cubbyholes: the alcove at New York Public where you can sit for hours without anyone ever walking by; the quiet burrow in the basement of Boston Public where they keep the old city directories; a study room on a top floor of the UMass library, where students do a lot more than study.

  This one’s the most special, however, for this is the library of my hometown, where as a kid I spent many an hour hidden away in the stacks, reading about black holes in space or Perseus slicing the head off Medusa or the early film career of Barbara Stanwyck. My parents thought I was playing softball with the neighborhood boys, but I was really lost in a world of fantasies and dreams. Such a devious little fag boy I was, and with such eclectic tastes! I checked out books on Greek mythology, old-time radio, and the Charles Manson murders all at the same time. I once photocopied every single page of Agnes Strickland’s five-volume Lives of the Queens of England. Like anybody who saw me couldn’t figure that out.

  Of course, back then, the library had no bank of computers, and the ugly drop ceiling that now obscures the magnificent marble dome had yet to be installed. But the brownstone walls remain, and the high stained-glass windows. As a boy, I came here for Storytime, too, and Charlotte’s Web was my favorite tale. I remember staring up at the blue glass of the windows and imagining Charlotte up there, spinning her web. When Miss McGeowan got to the part where Charlotte dies, I bawled so hard my mother had to take me into the bathroom to calm me down. That book is still the saddest one I’ve ever read.

  It’s funny. Sitting here with Jeffy on my lap, my mind makes a sudden leap. I wonder all at once if Anthony has ever read Charlotte’s Web. As much as Henry might be on my mind, Anthony’s there, too. These past few weeks have been a blur of emotions, and, as I predicted might happen, Anthony’s come to mean a whole lot more to me than just a leftover New Year’s Eve trick. Am I falling in love with him? Sometimes it feels that way, when we sit together on the couch, him nestled between my legs, sharing take-out Chinese food and watching Bewitched. Sometimes it feels that way, when I introduce him to all the Gay 101 he missed—Bette Davis movies, Broadway soundtracks, John Waters, Barney Frank, Armistead Maupin, Harry Hay—and he beams with such gratitude. But how can I fall in love with anyone when my feelings for Lloyd are still all jumbled up inside me?

  Still, there’s no question that for the past few days, all sorts of silly questions have been popping into my mind about Anthony. Has he ever been to Disney World? Did he watch The Electric Company when he was a kid? Did he go to his prom? What kind of Christmas tree did his family have—real or artificial? All the little things you’re supposed to know about someone you live with, someone you might want to stick around for a while. I know all of those things about Lloyd. But it feels as if I’ll never know them about Anthony.

  Little Jeffy is getting fidgety. “Unca Jeff, can I send my sweetheart some flowers?”

  I laugh. “Your sweetheart? Who’s your sweetheart? Your mom?”

  “No. Michael.”

  I laugh even harder. “Michael! Who’s Michael?”

  “He’s in my kindergarten class.”

  I can barely contain my mirth. “A
nd have you told Michael he’s your sweetheart?”

  Jeffy nods, pressing the space bar on the computer keypad. “Yup. Hey, Unca Jeff, are you a top or a bottom?”

  I almost drop the kid on the floor. “Where did you learn about that, mister?”

  “On Will and Grace,” the boy replies.

  My sister Ann Marie has appeared on the other side of the bank of computers. “Jeffy. Come on. They’re starting Storytime.”

  I look at her, wide-eyed and grinning. “Do you know what this child just asked me?”

  She makes a face. “I shudder to think.”

  “If I was a top or a bottom.”

  “Well,” the boy persists, “which are you?”

  “Jeffy,” his mother says sternly, “Storytime.”

  The child climbs down off of my lap. He looks back at me. “Michael’s a big old bottom,” he tells me before running across the lobby to the children’s section. I just took over at my sister and burst out laughing.

  Ann Marie gives me an exasperated smile. “I let him watch the show because I think it’s important for him to see gay people and straight people together.”

  “You’re a good mom,” I assure her. “Oh, and by the way, speaking of Moms. You won’t tell her I came down, huh? She’ll start in about the fact I didn’t come see her.”

  “My lips are sealed,” she promises. She sits down at the computer next to me. “Jeff, I’ve been wanting to talk with you. We haven’t seen Lloyd in a while. Can I ask if there’s a problem?”

  I sigh. “Problem? No, there’s no problem. Not if I just accept the way things are. He’s consumed by his guest house.” I pause, looking away. “It’s his choice.”

  “Well, couldn’t you spend more time there? You’re not working.”

  I frown. “Ann Marie, you don’t understand the situation, and I really don’t want to get into it, okay?”

  “Okay. I’m sorry for asking.” She can be just like me, quick-edged and dismissive. “It’s just that I thought the two of you were getting back together. I love Lloyd. So does Jeffy.”