Where the Boys Are

by William J. Mann

  In my room, I dig under my bed for the Javitz video. I need to see it again, to hear his voice, to see his face, to magically transcend time and once again be the young boy with a thick head of hair out on the deck goofing around with Javitz and Jeff. I feel mushy and foolish, as if Bar bra Streisand should be on the sound track singing “The Way We Were.” “Was it really all so simple then?” Or has time rewritten all the lines? However those lyrics went, that’s how I feel. That life was once so easily understood, so uncomplicated—even if, in truth, life has always been complicated, that even as we cavorted on the deck that glorious summer day, we were struggling with complexities and ambiguities now forgotten, obscured by the giddy shimmer of memory.

  I pop in the video and settle back into the pillows of my bed to watch. Several seconds tick by, and the screen remains black. I’m puzzled. “It should be playing by now,” I murmur to myself. Then I laugh, realizing I must have forgotten to rewind it the last time I watched it. I hunt around on the side table for the remote. It must have fallen to the floor, maybe under the bed. I lean over, pushing around books and videos and my bottle of lube. A couple of dust bunnies scamper off across the floor. Where is the damn thing?

  All at once I hear a crackle from the video screen. I look up. An image is forming there. There’s something else on the tape—something beyond the point I’ve always assumed to be the end.

  It shivers into view. My mouth falls open as I watch in wonder.

  The Next Day, The Beach in the East End

  Jeff

  Once, years ago, I met an old man on this beach. A painter who taught me a little lesson about life. About how precious it is, how mysterious. How it can sneak around from behind and surprise you, catch up with you and make you rethink everything you’ve ever believed. “After living on the same beach for thirty years,” the old painter told me, “watching the seasons come and the seasons go, watching the gulls eat the sand crabs and the cats eat the gulls, there’s only one thing I don’t believe in anymore.” His rheumy old eyes tried to focus on mine. “And that’s coincidence.”

  It was no coincidence that I’d met that old painter that day, just when I needed him most, and no coincidence that I’ve come to this same place again today. Somehow I knew to come here, out along the beach at low tide, strewn with seaweed, the sky sharp and blue. There’s a bite to the wind, a promise of winter. They’re predicting more snow this week. How fast winter has come around again.

  I knew somehow I’d find him here. He’s walking ahead of me, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of the leather coat I’d bought him, his backpack slung over his shoulder. It’s no coincidence that I knew to come here, just as it had been no random meeting that night on the dance floor last New Year’s Eve. There was purpose in my discovery of Anthony, in his finding of me, in the love that developed between us.

  He turns, as if expecting me.

  We say nothing at first. He still looks the same. Why would I think he’d look any different? He still has that glow to his skin, a tan that hasn’t faded. His eyes are still soft and blue, wide and entreating. He has the same majestic taper to his torso, the same broad shoulders and the same gait to his walk. But still, he’s different. As much as I hoped he wouldn’t be, he is.

  “I can tell by your face that you know the truth,” he says at last.

  I struggle to find my voice. “I only know facts. What I don’t know are feelings, Brian.”

  He makes no reaction to hearing me call him by his real name. He offers neither confirmation nor denial, but there’s no point, really. The truth is now plain. He’s no roommate of Robert Riley, no lover or son of a lover. He’s the man who killed Robert Riley. Or rather, the boy.

  “What is it you want to know?” he asks at last.

  “Tell me why you took Anthony Sabe’s name.”

  He doesn’t respond right away. He just gazes back over the sea, the waves crashing only a few inches from his feet.

  “I’m not sure,” he says finally. “Maybe because I wanted him to live.”

  I watch as he slips off his backpack and unzips the front pouch. He withdraws a folded sheet of yellow legal paper and hands it to me.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  “Read it.”

  I open it. It’s a handwritten letter, dated November 30, 1994. Almost exactly six years ago. It’s written in scrawled blue ink that has smudged in places. The paper is crinkled, a sign of being well read, and it’s signed “Anthony.” I know without inquiry that its author is Anthony Sabe—the real Anthony Sabe, not the boy who lived with me all those months, but Anthony Sabe, the lover of Robert Riley, who’d died of AIDS. And it was written only about a month before his death.

  Dear Brian,

  I’ve read your letter over and over again. I have it beside me, where I can see it. Thank you for it.

  You have your whole life ahead of you, Brian. Someday you will be free and I hope you will remember all I’ve told you. Don’t set limitations on yourself, or on those you love, because you’re always going to surpass them. Don’t let others tell you how or what you’re supposed to be. Be true to yourself and to nobody else. Be who you are.

  There are not enough words to describe how we are to be fully human, Brian. Remember that, and you will always be free.

  Anthony

  I look up at him. I recognize the words. He had spoken them to me, that first day, on Ninth Avenue, when my heart had first melted toward him. I know right away they’re words he’s memorized, words he lives by, words he repeats to himself every day.

  “I wrote to him from prison,” Brian Murphy explains, looking again out over the waves. “I wrote to him to ask his forgiveness. For killing Robert. For all I’d done that night.” His voice tightens. “That horrible night.”

  “And … he did? He forgave you?”

  “Yes. He forgave me.” The tears are silently running down his cheeks. “We wrote back and forth for a few months.” His voice trails off. “Then he died, too.”

  I try to focus my gaze on him but find it difficult. I’ve known the truth ever since my trip to Hartford, but now, facing him, hearing him speak it is devastating. His confession keeps coming back to me. “I tackled him to the ground. I punched him in the head and told him to shut up.”

  “Anthony Sabe forgave you,” I repeat, more to myself than to him.

  He looks at me boldly. “Is that such a radical notion for you, Jeff? Yes, he forgave me for killing his lover. For taking the one man he’d ever loved, the one man he’d hoped to spend the rest of his life with, the one man who should have been there, taking care of him as he grew sick and died.” His jaw quivers as the tears come harder and faster. “He forgave me. And he left me these words, the words that finally gave me the courage to face who I am, what I am, and why I did what I did.”

  I can’t say anything.

  “And you can tell Mrs. Riley he forgave her, too.”

  He takes the letter from my hand and replaces it in his backpack.

  “It was always here, Jeff,” he says, a little bitterly. “You could have found it anytime. Just unzipped my backpack while I slept.”

  I’ve started to cry, too. “Please. You’ve got to understand that I only wanted to find out the truth because I cared about you.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe, in the beginning. But I became a story to you. An investigation that got your blood pumping again after so long.”

  “No, Anth—no.” I can’t talk. I can’t make words.

  He looks at me with hard eyes. “Aren’t you pleased with yourself? You took my challenge and you met it. You’re still the same old good reporter you’ve always been. Isn’t that what you wanted? You finally know the truth.”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t know the truth. There’s still so much I don’t know.”

  “What details are left outstanding?” he asks, a sarcastic, angry kid I don’t recognize. “What more do you still want to know?”

  “Please,” I say, trying to take his h
ands, but he pulls back.

  “Twelve years, Jeff. Twelve years I sat in prison. Do you know how long that is? What were you doing for those twelve years, Jeff? It encompasses your whole time with Lloyd, doesn’t it? In those twelve years, you met Javitz, you loved him, and he died. All the while I sat in prison.”

  I just stare at him, unable to speak.

  “And yet it’s no time at all, really, not when you figure Robert’s never coming back. But it was long enough for me to think about why I was there. Why my youth had been taken from me. No—why I’d thrown it away. Why I had no family, no true friends.”

  He picks up a stone and tosses it out onto the waves. “And I came to accept the fact that what they’d implied about me in court was true. I was homosexual. I was acting out my repressed feelings when I went with Frankie and the others down to the Chez Est to beat up gay guys.”

  I seize a thought. “It was Frankie who was the ringleader. He was the instigator.”

  “If you need to believe that, Jeff, go ahead.” He smiles sadly. “Sure, Frankie was the one we all looked up to. He was the coolest. But I can’t back off from my own responsibility. I was there. I could’ve said no. I could’ve tried to stop it. But it was me who tackled Riley. I got him down on the ground so Frankie could hit him with the log. And not just Riley, either, Jeff. There were other guys I tackled, punched, beat up. Gay guys, Jeff. Like you.” He pauses. “Like me.”

  It’s almost too much to listen to. I make a sound in my throat and turn away.

  “Sitting there in prison, I thought over and over again about how Frankie had gone upstairs with Riley, and I couldn’t deny what had been going through my mind as they were up there. That I wished it was me. That I wished it had been me who Riley had asked to go upstairs with him. I knew what happened up there. Frankie later tried to make it seem as if Riley had just made a pass, but I knew there was more. Frankie was hiding his own truth, though I doubt he admits it, even now. But the moment I acknowledged to myself that I wished it had been me that Riley took upstairs, everything became clear.”

  I look at him. “How did you ever … I mean … how could you … in prison?”

  He shrugs. “It’s surprising what you can find in the prison library. I began reading articles. Watching television. Remember that degree I told you I got? I got it in prison. See, I was determined not to sink to the depths that I saw all around me. I tried to isolate from the bad stuff as best I could. I learned to defend myself. I had to, Jeff. I was sixteen when I was locked up. Sixteen.” He pauses, looking at me. “Fresh meat. Chicken.”

  I make another sound in my throat.

  He looks down at his feet, scuffing his shoes in the sand. “I worked out at the prison gym, for hours at a time every single day. I made myself strong. I got involved in none of the bullshit of prison life.” He looks up at me. “See, I was remaking myself, Jeff. I was focused on one thing and one thing only: on getting out. I literally counted down the days until I could be free, until I could restart my life. I made a calendar, little boxes representing all four thousand-plus days of my confinement, and every day I’d check them off, one by one. Finally it got so that I’d checked off more boxes than were left, and I still remember crossing off the last one. That’s when I knew Brian Murphy was gone, and that Anthony Sabe lived.”

  “It was your parole officer,” I manage to say. “That’s where you disappeared to once a week.”

  He nods. “Very good, Jeff. Yes, I reported in once a week to the parole board in Hartford. I’d sleep the night in the bus station. I never missed one appointment. I was determined to finally get a clean slate. And this fall I was finally free. The year was up. I’d done my time. The whole thing was over.”

  “But you had to travel so far,” I say. “First from New York, then from Boston. Why did you go so far away when you had to check in once a week in Connecticut?”

  He lifts his eyebrows. “Didn’t you talk to any of the gay activists in the case, Jeff?”

  My face betrays that I have.

  “I thought so. Then I’m sure you found out how they protested my release. Surely you read the things they said about me, that I should have gotten the same sentence that Frankie got, but that the judge went easy on me because I was a privileged white boy. They hate me, Jeff. No, there was no way I could have stayed in Connecticut.”

  “But your mother …”

  Only for a second does any surprise register on his face. Then he smiles. “Well, very, very good, Jeff. I am impressed. You managed to talk with my mother. That will be a great addition to your story.” He laughs. “Well, then you know I was hardly privileged, and you can maybe also figure out the other reason I didn’t want to stay in Connecticut. My mother has no use for a gay son. She said I must have been raped in prison and brainwashed. She said she’d rather have a murderer for a son than a queer. Yes, she actually said those words.”

  Astrid Murphy’s face is in front of me. “Is it any wonder Brian’s messed up? Become this—thing?”

  He’s looking at me. “My mother always contended that Riley simply got what he deserved, trying to pick up two underage boys.”

  I put my hands to the sides of my head, staggered by the onslaught of information. I feel weak, as if the wind that whips down the beach will simply knock me over face first into the sand.

  The images begin flooding through my mind: Anthony—Brian—in New Orleans, in Montreal, in Palm Springs, in my arms, in my bed, looking over my shoulder wistfully at my drawer full of gay trinkets and mementos.

  Sitting there across from me that first morning at the Chelsea bistro, excited about blueberry pancakes and the glitter on the face of the waiter.

  “So what do you find so fascinationg about gay culture?”

  “Everything. I never imagined there was so much going on.”

  And then on the monorail at Disney World, his pit stains showing on his red shirt, which he’d insisted on wearing so that he could be identified as gay.

  “Jeff, I mean it. I owe all of this to you. And I don’t just mean you paying for my plane ticket. I mean, all of it. My whole life. My whole gay life.”

  I’m overcome. “Did you ever plan on confiding in me?”

  He looks away. “I thought maybe … maybe after it was all over. When I didn’t have to report to the parole board anymore. When I was finally free.”

  “If you had trusted me earlier …”

  He spins on me. “Why should I have trusted you, Jeff? Any of you? Those shouts from the gay activists standing outside the courthouse still ring in my ears. And you and Henry and Brent—don’t you remember what you called Matthew Shepard’s killers? Fucking self-repressed, self-loathing closet cases.” His eyes are blazing. “You called them scum. Brent said they should have been killed the same way they killed Matthew. Beaten and tied to a fence and left to die in the cold.”

  “But we disagreed with him,” I defend myself. “Henry and I both.”

  He closes his eyes. “Don’t you see, Jeff? A part of me felt Brent was right. That’s what was so bizarre about all of it. I agreed with him. I should’ve been put to death! Or rather, Brian Murphy should have.” He opens his eyes. “You see, I had become somebody new. I was gay. And a part of all the gay people around me. The tribe. The extended family you taught me about. I was part of something for the first time in my life. I loved you all. Even Brent.”

  “If you had only told me—”

  “You still don’t get it, Jeff. Part of me was glad you felt the way you did. It was the way I wished I could be, self-righteously hating gay bashers. That way I would really, truly be gay, really be a part of all of you. To tell you about my past would have allowed Brian Murphy to live again. And you wouldn’t have liked Brian Murphy very much.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Come on, Jeff. I remember what you said.” He looks at me. “I’ll quote you. ‘The bottom line is, they killed one of us. I suppose I wouldn’t have been sorry to see them fry.’” He narrows
his eyes, studying my reaction. “Isn’t that it, Jeff? Isn’t that what you said?”

  My words, back at me. I feel almost as if I might faint. “Yes,” I admit. “That’s what I said.”

  “And do you still feel the same way?” He draws closer to me. I can smell the soap on his skin, the leather of his coat. “Be honest with me, Jeff. Do you still feel the same way?”

  New images begin assaulting me.

  Mrs. Riley in her chair, staring out into her garden and calling her dead son’s name.

  Cynthia Cassell sitting across from me: “Some guy’s bludgeoned to death in his own home, and the killers are kids from a Catholic school, and all these church leaders come out to say what good boys these two really are, with no mention of the dead fag. Well, that just rubbed a lot of us the wrong way.”

  Brian sitting there reading a Far Side comic book while Ortiz went with Riley upstairs. “We were hesitant about ripping the guy off because we thought he was kind of cool. But since we were already there, we decided to go ahead with it.”

  My eyes flicker over to the man standing in front of me, the man whose body I’ve explored every inch with my tongue, who once sang a silly love song to me in a moment of spontaneous joy.

  “Frankie told me to tape his mouth and I did. I got blood on my jean jacket as I was doing it. Frankie picked up the log and hit him one more time in the head. The guy shook and made a noise. While we were driving away we talked about if the guy was dead or not. We decided to turn around and make sure.”

  “Well, Jeff?” he asks. “The last time you saw me, you insisted that no matter what, you did love me. Knowing what you know now, do you still feel the same?”

  I look at him. “I don’t know,” I say honestly.

  He smiles. “If you had said anything else, I wouldn’t have believed you.” He looks away. “There was a time when I allowed myself to dream. To imagine that I might have a life with you. That you could love me the way you love Lloyd, that the two of us could build a life together, a home.”