by David Leite
I have no idea if it was my manager’s codependent relationship with Stoli on the rocks, or customers who sent back food because, among other things, there was eggplant in the parmigiana di melanzane, but I’d had it. One night I ripped off my apron and stormed out of a little Italian joint on Seventh Avenue in the middle of dinner. I have a vague memory of flipping double birds at everyone in the dining room, but that could be the story I told people to make me look a little more like Norma Rae.
With the help of an art-director friend, I eventually got a job as an advertising copywriter. For the next two years I worked for a kind, gentle Israeli who had no head for business, then for two years for a financial genius who had no clue for fashion. He sported a mullet, acid-washed soccer-mom jeans, and cowboy boots. In time, seduced by a hefty six-figure salary, I defected to another agency, which was how I could afford all that gold leaf.
During that time, life had slowly stitched itself back together. I’d become stronger and more resilient. Therapy, which I’d stayed away from since the train wreck that had been Kim Mueller of the Eames Chair back in Pittsburgh, helped. A lot.
David Lindsey Griffin, my new therapist, reminded me of Truman Capote—short and perennially boyish, with a shock of strawberry-blond hair. He was tough, fierce, irreverent, and gleefully iconoclastic, but he communicated with me in a way no shrink had before—the way of the Sisters of the Spatula. Like them, he joked, cajoled, and never passed up an opportunity to tease me, but it was always done with affection. And it worked. Unlike with Dr. Copley, I held nothing back from him, and he made deep and lasting sense, unlike Kim.
I hadn’t had any of those A-bomb explosions, which he’d diagnosed as panic attacks, in years. And without panic attacks, there were no periods of lumbering, weighty blackness that inevitably followed. Sure, I still had my moments when veneta got the better of me—mostly with cashiers at Fairway, bank tellers, and those frigging perfume pushers at Bloomingdale’s. But in time, that tension in my gut, like I was bracing for the next punch, relaxed. Life, I was beginning to believe, was good.
With one exception: I was chronically single.
I longed to be in a relationship—a real, loving mutual relationship—but so far it had eluded me. I couldn’t even cop to having had one. The longest time I had ever been able to cobble together with a guy was three months. I’d sit in David Lindsey’s office, mourning my single status.
“David Leite!” He always called me by my full name when he wanted to drive home an important point. “The only thing you’re going to pick up at a gay bar is a drink,” he’d say in his Southern accent. Then he’d pause theatrically and add: “And maybe the clap.” I figured that as a recovered falling-down drunk, he just might know a thing or two about the machinations of the bar scene, which were still new to me. “You’re going to meet your future husband in front of the dairy case at Zabar’s, or at tap-dancing class, when you’re having fun. Imagine that—you actually enjoying yourself.” He pulled on the word enjoying as if it were a fat piece of saltwater taffy. “Like when you were with Cameron.”
About a year before starting with David Lindsey, I’d met Cameron Lamott, himself a therapist, at Pottery Barn while shopping for a gift for a friend. Cameron always reminded me of one of those Ivy League wrestlers in vintage photos. He had Chiclet teeth, straight blond bangs, and a muscular build, with a low center of gravity that anchored him wherever he went. And there was something about his thick, hairy wrists that just did it for me.
Despite the fact he walked like a fullback, Cameron had a penchant for women’s high heels. He claimed it was a healthy fetish because he expressed it in a supportive environment, at his tea parties. I wasn’t so sure about that. A few times a year, a bunch of guys would sit cross-legged around the coffee table, their size-thirteen Guccis, Diors, Chanels, and Manolo Blahniks bobbling in the air as they reached for cucumber sandwiches and mini pavlovas. I had absented myself from their most recent festivities, which Cameron psychoanalyzed as internalized homophobia. (And, for what it’s worth, David Lindsey later agreed with him.)
I much preferred our times alone after work. He enjoyed cooking, too, and we spent evenings in his spare, starkly lit kitchen in the West Village. Guy food was his thing, so we made hearty dishes: minestrone soup, meaty pastas, steak, pulled pork, meatloaf topped with a woven cap of bacon. Every once in a while, he’d come up behind me at the stove, pull me close, and nibble on the back of my neck, making me almost buckle. It was as if every nerve ending in my body had decided to move crosstown and gentrify the real estate back there below my hairline. I’d stand wrapped in the hardness of his arms and feel safe, grounded, like him. Nights in that bright kitchen gave me my first glimpse of domestic life with a man. Until then it had only been an idea, a concept whose possibility was far from certain. But suddenly, there I was in my sweatpants and a cruddy T-shirt, reaching across him for garlic or Parmigiano-Reggiano or a spatula, as he poured wine and argued with me about my chintzy hand with butter. He didn’t have a swinging kitchen door with a round window, but other than that I had a real TV-worthy relationship.
My participation in Cameron’s high-heel tea parties could have been negotiated. Hell, I would have been willing to teeter around in Judy’s ruby slippers, for crissake, if he hadn’t pushed away his dinner one night and said, “I just wish I’d get AIDS and be done with it.”
“What are you talking about?” Until then we’d never really discussed AIDS, even though he had lost so many friends.
“If I got it, I could finally stop worrying.” I must have looked horrified, because he began jabbing the air with his finger. “Don’t judge me,” he snapped. “You weren’t living in New York when it all started. You have no idea what it’s like waking up every morning for years and thinking today’s the day.”
“Cam . . .” My voice was soft. I walked around the table and wrapped my arms around his wrestler’s shoulders, but he broke my hug, throwing me off like a cape. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I shouted.
He swiveled toward me. “Don’t pity me. Don’t ever pity me.”
“I’m not. I just—”
His fear and anger must have emboldened him, because on his way to the kitchen he turned around, a plate in each hand, and admitted he hadn’t been exactly faithful, or safe. The look on his face screamed, And don’t say a fucking word about it.
“So you put me at risk, too?”
“Well, we’ve been safe, haven’t we?” His voice rumbled with derision. “You’ve always demanded it. So you have nothing to worry about, do you?” I couldn’t tell if he was angry or jealous.
The truth was that he pushed the envelope when it came to safety. Once, he’d found these mini condoms that covered just the head. When he strutted naked out of the bathroom, thinking I’d be as delighted as he was with his discovery, I horse-laughed. “You gotta be kidding me. That looks like a shower cap for your dick.” He and his junk visibly deflated. Trying again, he crawled across the bed to me with that silly shower cap swinging. I made it clear: “You are not putting that thing anywhere near me.” For the rest of that week he was too busy with patients to see me.
When I tried to take the plates from him, he yanked back and threw them in the sink. “Please, go.” I stood there until I realized he wasn’t going to turn around. I grabbed my coat and left.
The next morning, I fidgeted in a chair at a health clinic, getting tested for HIV. Again. I was tested about every six to eight weeks, whether I had had sex or not. It got so the staff of the clinic would grill me as to why I felt the need to be tested if I’d been safe or abstained. I tried to explain that ever since I was a kid, I’d believed that if I worried about something—earnestly, punishingly worried—I’d always be okay. Nothing bad could happen, because I’d been vigilant. But the minute I stopped worrying, when I dropped my guard, that’s when a door would open and let in a landslide of shit.
“You’re what we call the Worried Well,” they would tell me.
&
nbsp; “Nice to meet you,” I’d say, rolling up my sleeve and sticking out my arm. Some were better than others at hiding their anger and frustration. In time, instead of trying to be talked out of the test, I just rotated clinics throughout the city. And when the tests came back negative, as they always did, I’d relax for a few days, until I began jabbing my lymph nodes in my neck or groin so hard they began throbbing, and I invoked my Mantra of Worry for protection.
Cameron was right, though. I hadn’t been around when it all started, and, as I’m sure he suspected, I’d purposely kept myself off the front lines. I’d been so brutalized by Aesthetic Realism that getting caught up in the rage and power of ACT UP, or even the compassion over at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, would have broken me. Back at Windows on the World, when I came out for the last time, all I wanted was to buy matching flannel pajamas and gold-rimmed china from Macy’s.
I tried to rationalize staying with Cameron: He was handsome and a good cook, after all. But I couldn’t ignore the fact he was sleeping around, willfully trying to get sick. One afternoon a few weeks later, a mundane disagreement ended with me standing in the middle of his living room, screaming, “This is over!” I considered picking up the blue satin high-heel shoe perched on his coffee table and winging it at him as punctuation to my point, but thought better of it. To this day, I Google his name, hoping to find him, hoping he’s still alive. Nothing.
Meeting Eddie Sheer convinced me David Lindsey was all wrong about bars. A friend and I were at The Works on Columbus Avenue holding up the wall and trying not to look desperate, when this beautiful blond man with a body that belonged on magazine covers caught my eye from across the room and smiled. I had that cliché movie reaction: I gave him a quizzical look and turned around, sure he was smiling at someone much prettier behind me. Considering all that was back there was the wall, I had no other option than to assume he meant me.
“Here we go again,” my friend said. “See ya.” He gave me a kiss and headed home. He’d been trying unsuccessfully for two years to make us a couple, and he was tired of watching my affections lock and load on everyone but him.
All that’s really important to remember about Eddie is his perfect build. His perfect, flawless build. Not that he wasn’t smart; he was. Probably the sharpest guy I’ve ever dated. And cultured. He had subscriptions to just about every ballet, opera, and symphony in the city. His body, which I was convinced had a lower BMI index than a tree frog’s, was the problem.
When I went to his apartment for the first time, he showed me around, and we ended up in his bedroom. He said nothing, letting me take it in. On the floor were free weights, neat stacks of fitness magazines, enormous containers of protein powder in the corner. On the wall was some sort of vintage poster of a boy feeling the ripped bicep of a body builder. It was creepy—not in a lecherous way, but close. Maybe he meant it to be ironic or nostalgic? Or maybe it was a comment on gay culture? Or he could be the kid in the poster, like Jodie Foster, who was the little girl in the Coppertone ad where a dog was pulling down her bathing suit. I looked back at him to see if I could get a read. He smiled sheepishly.
My gut went into overdrive when he asked me if I wouldn’t mind taking off my shirt and facing away from him. Still, I did as he asked.
“You know,” he said, surprise coloring his voice, “with a little lifting, you could be in great shape.”
“Um, but I do lift weights,” I said, facing his altar of manly adoration. “Three times a week.”
“I mean a real program with a trainer.”
I nodded and buttoned my shirt, unsure what had just happened. Was that a vote of confidence or a criticism?
“That’s so degrading!” Becca said when I told her the next day. She was so mad, she bugged me for his number so she could call and ream him out.
“You’re not going to do that,” I said calmly.
“And why not?”
“Because I’m seeing him this Saturday.” I told her maybe I agreed with him; maybe I could do with a little bulk.
She held out her arms and wriggled her fingers at me, her way of summoning me into a hug. “Oh, sweetheart, the only six-pack you need with me is Diet Coke.” I could feel her voice vibrating in my shoulder.
I planted my chin on her head. “Well, until you grow a penis, I’m out of luck.”
That Saturday night, after a long, frustrating time in bed, Eddie shared what he thought was a secret. My jaw, which had spasmed several times, and I were way ahead of him. He could only get it up for muscle boys. His room said it; his poster confirmed it. But, he said, they repulsed him intellectually. “Their nuts have higher IQs than they do.” Then he went on: “Men like you, on the other hand, are smart and funny and passionate . . .” I didn’t need my nuts to fill in the blanks.
Still, I continued seeing him. On weekends, we rented a car and took long drives through Connecticut in autumn, a state I’d always wanted to live in. To me, it was the epicenter of locked-jaw WASP-dom, where people wore tartan, swapped wives, and imbibed clear drinks with impunity. “I want to be a Connecticuter,” I said, walking down some Main Street speckled with yellow leaves. “Or is it a Connecticut-ite?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nah, sounds too much like Walter Cronkite.”
When I veered in the direction of a sweet ye olde ice cream shoppe, he glanced at my stomach—a look that said, Do you really need that?—and I demurred, slinking away from the window, empty-handed and full of resentment.
At night, we’d lie next to each other, his inevitable “I’m sorry” the last thing I’d hear as I fell asleep.
Before I could find a way to wiggle out of seeing him again, he pulled the plug when he found a guy he thought was the perfect mix of brains, abs, and ass.
“I never really liked him, anyway,” I said to Becca, holed up in her apartment, spooning into pints of Ben & Jerry’s as we watched TV on yet another Love Day.
“Yes, you did.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I did.”
“C’mere, baby,” she said, letting me put my head in her lap. “Someday the right guy will come along.”
“You think?”
“I do.”
Neither Peter Adler nor Gabe Newman was that guy. Peter was a dull dentist with hair plugs, eighteen years my senior, who, I found out several weeks into dating, like Eddie couldn’t perform. In his case, it wasn’t muscle boys that turned over his motor, but rather straight porn blaring from the TV.
Gabe was a short, compact podiatrist I met through a personal ad I’d placed in the Village Voice. It was early January, and we were on our second or third date—drinks and, if all went well, dinner. On our way to Temple Bar, we passed desiccated Christmas trees piled on slumps of filthy snow, waiting for the morning’s garbage trucks. In front of the bar, Gabe shooed me inside, telling me he needed a minute. Just as I settled onto a stool, a blast of cold air and commotion came from the door. Gabe was yanking a huge de-needled tree into the bar, probably the same tree the bar had just ditched. The room fell silent and stared as he dragged the tree across the floor and over to me, propping it up between us.
“I’d like a Scotch,” he said to the bartender, and then, pointing to the tree, added, “And one for my friend”—here he paused, to make sure the guy got the joke—“Mr. Tannenbaum.” He explained to the man that the tree was meeting its end the next day, and why not give it a glorious send-off before it faced the chipper?
I was burning with humiliation. “Are you serious?” I said under my breath.
“What?”
“A tree? In a martini bar? What are you, fucking twelve?”
The room slowly came back to life with low murmurs of disbelief. All eyes were on us; some, thankfully, were warm with sympathy. And that was when I needed to say, Enough. Enough of guys who have a grossly misguided notion that they’re hysterical. Enough of guys who can’t get it up or can’t keep it in their pants. Enough of guys who, pissed off that you broke up with them, call every
phone-sex line impersonating you, and give out your name and number—on your frigging birthday. Enough of guys who leave you alone in the emergency room with a painfully swollen thumb they dislocated in the name of gymnastic sex. Enough of guys who try to make you over in the style of their dead boyfriend, and then drop you when you try to be yourself. Enough of guys who insist you wear a condom just to cuddle. Enough of guys who fake an orgasm. Yes, apparently, it’s possible.
Enough.
26
GAY WHITE MALE SEEKS BALANCE
The first batch arrived from the magazine after a week. A fat manila envelope, full of letters from self-described eligible men. I dropped onto the couch and stared at the packet in my hands. I should be more excited, I thought. The last time I’d placed a personal ad, the one in the Village Voice, it had been a sideshow of gay oddities. It reminded me of Mystery Date, a board game I used to play with some of the girls on Brownell Street. In the middle of the board was a plastic door. When it was your turn to open it, fate would match you with a swimmer in sexy tight trunks, a dreamy Ivy Leaguer wearing a Baracuta jacket and carrying a bowling bag, a tow-headed skier in his lodge-appropriate sweater, or what I dreaded most: a bum. Filthy clothes and all. If recent history was any indication, my chances for a happy date had been better when I was eight.
Which is why I worked for days on this new ad. I approached it like I was one of the products I sold at the agency: IKEA, WordPerfect, IBM, President Bill Clinton. After many drafts, and reams of corrections from Becca, I sent this to New York magazine. It appeared in the September 27, 1993, issue.
Gay White Male Seeks Balance—This honestly handsome (33, 6', 185 lbs.) creative professional whose days are filled with deadlines, clients, and chaos is looking for another very successful, self-aware, caring man (35–48) for quiet autumn nights of courtship. Must like the beach in November, long walks, longer talks, antiquing, a good laugh over a good meal, car trips to nowhere, and anything subtitled. Caution: the confused, anxious, and intimacy-phobic need not apply. Send heartfelt letter with photo/phone.