by Marc Acito
“You have no idea how hard this show is,” she says on the phone. “Every day grown men cry. One of the guys is a vet, and he says it’s harder than Vietnam.”
That should be on the poster: Tougher than ’Nam!
My only outlet is helping with the Coup d’État Group’s The Music Man?, which has run into trouble. Not only has the cast not been available for rehearsals, but Marcus had to fire the Marian. It turns out she wasn’t blind, just nearsighted and desperate for the role.
I enter the Church of the Holy Redeemer through the side door next to the lady chapel, stomping the snow off my feet. Paula and Marcus stretch on the floor.
“Well, look at chew,” Paula cries, suddenly Southern. “You’re just covered with God’s dandruff.”
“Let me guess. Juilliard’s doing Summer and Smoke.”
“Oh, you are a caution,” she drawls. “Marcus, isn’t he a caution?”
Marcus gives me a look like, He’s something, all right.
“As a mattuh of fact,” Paula says, “we’re performing anothuh play by Mistuh Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
“Congratulations,” I say. “Who are you playing?”
She clears her throat. “Big Mama. I know, I know, heyuh I am—poised to graduate from the finest institution for the dramatic arts in the nation—and I have never once played someone mah own age. It’s a disgrace.” She fans herself like she has the vapors.
“You got robbed,” Marcus says, doing a stretch that makes him look like a swastika. “You’ve got more talent than the others.”
“Well, apparently, there’s some rule in Mistuh Aristotle’s Poetics that the fat girl has to play the mothuh.”
“You’re not fat. You’re juicy.”
“You lie so prettily. If I get any larger, you could take your exercise by sprinting around my perimeter.”
He rises. “Baby, I’m not going to let you starve yourself to fit into some narrow, commercial concept of beauty. You’re gorgeous the way you are.” He kisses her and starts jogging around the church.
Marcus.
Paula sighs. “Ah wish ah could believe him, but how can you trust the opinion of someone who casts a musical with a deaf man?” She flops onto a kneeler, leaning her head on the pew in front of her, her ringlets hanging like vines. “Do you know how Mistuh Tennessee Williams describes the charactuh of Big Mama? Like a Japanese wrestluh. One of those sumo people decorously draped with a napkin. I tell you, it’s positively galling.”
I put my arm around her and rub her shoulder. She places a tiny finger under each eye to stop the tears. “I just wish the good people at the FDA would hurry themselves up and approve that new diet pill.”
“What new diet pill?”
“The one that company is developing. Pharmisomething. Didn’t Nathan tell you about it?”
“Uh…no.”
“Ow,” she says, breaking character, “you’re pinching me.”
“Sorry.”
She resumes her mint julep drawl. “I’m surprised he didn’t inform you. Mistuh Nathan’s positively absorbed with matters of commerce. These Pharmipeople are developing a revolutionary new diet pill that allows you to eat whatever you want without absorbing the fat content. Isn’t science miraculous? Naturally, the innovation has financial implications, and Nathan has been kind enough to invest mah little nest egg. Why, Edward, don’t gawk at me like that. If our little theatrical endeavor is going to survive, it requires seed money. We have to rent space, run advertisements….”
“How much did you give him?”
She glances over her shoulder. “Five hundred dollahs,” she whispers. “Don’t tell Marcus—he doesn’t even like taking the number four or the number five train because they stop at Wall Street.”
“Mendacity, mendacity, mendacity,” I say.
“Oh, shut up.”
Gavin arrives and we commence another grope session in the back of the church, a privilege usually reserved for altar boys. As he caresses my neck and jaw, I sort out how I feel about Natie investing Paula’s money. I suppose there’s no harm. Clearly he didn’t mention me or Chad, so why not spread the wealth?
Let’s see. With $500 she can buy options for two hundred and fifty shares at $2 apiece. With $25 profit per share that’s…two hundred and fifty times twenty-five, carry the two, then twelve-fifty, carry the one…that’s $6,250. All for a good cause.
Doing math helps keep my mind off the fact that I’m in a man’s arms singing “Till There Was You,” this time without a condom between us. As I stare into his wide, wistful eyes we work on the last note over and over, our mouths you-ing and you-ing just inches away from each other, his breath caressing my cheeks until there is no you and you any longer, just we, inhaling and exhaling as if we were one.
It’s so fucking sexy I could break boards with my cock.
Finally Gavin lays his long, slender fingers on my chest, and I can’t stand it any longer. Like someone slipping a spoon into a lush and creamy dessert, I kiss him.
His soft, plump lips cushion mine, as if to break a fall, but he pulls away.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“No, it’s—”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay. I just can’t…I’ve got…” He hesitates.
No, it can’t be. He has AIDS. I just got the kiss of death. How could I be so reckless, so stupid? I have to get tested and…Wait a sec, can you get AIDS from kissing? They say you can’t, but are they sure?
“…a boyfriend.”
Respiration resumes. “Oh.”
His head droops like a sunflower, his floppy curls casting a shadow across his face. “I would if I could. But I can’t.”
Why am I only attracted to guys who are unavailable to me? First Doug, then Chad, now Gavin. Does my subconscious actively seek them out because of some kind of internalized homophobia? Or self-loathing? Am I not worthy of love?
Or is it self-preservation? After all, in the age of AIDS, rejection keeps you alive.
I console myself with that thought as I spend New Year’s Eve alone reading about Eddie Sanders’s libidinous, preplague sexcapades. It was just ten years ago, but gay Manhattan in the 1970s seems like a land before time, a paradise lost, a coke-infused fantasy with a cast of thousands fucking to a disco beat. And I’m mad as hell that I missed the party, that by the time I arrived love was wrapped in plastic like leftovers. I’m young. I’m alive. I want to dive into another man’s body and never come up for air.
Instead, I’m going to spend my twenty-first birthday with my friends, channeling my sexual frustrations into full-throated renditions of show tunes at our favorite piano bar, Something for the Boys. After so many years of drinking there illegally, I guess it’s appropriate, but, for a gay bar, Something for the Boys feels awfully…I don’t know…dickless.
The night of the party, I’m just stepping out of the shower when the phone rings. I hop across the apartment the way you do when you don’t want to drip on the floor. Not that it works.
The phone slips out of my hand and lands with a clunk.
“Hold on! Hold on! I’m here!” I shout. My towel falls off as I reach for the phone, which shouldn’t matter because Natie’s still skiing with Ziba, and why should I care if I’m naked in front of him, anyway? I guess I have body issues.
I place the phone against my ear and begin the conversation. “Sorry.”
“Edward? Chad.”
Funny, the last time we talked he was wearing a towel. It’s kismet.
“Have you heard the news?” he says.
“What news?”
“The Hibbert and Howard merger went through and the stock closed today at fifty-eight.”
“Is that good?”
“Considering I bought it at twenty-two this morning, fuck, yeah. How about that dinner I promised?”
“Sure! When?”
“I’ll see you at eight o’clock. Do you know Caprice?”
“No, but if you hum
a few bars I can fake it.”
I love making him laugh.
“It’s on Seventieth and Lexington. I know the chef.”
It amazes me how he automatically assumes I’m not doing anything, like I’d just drop everything for the mere privilege of sharing molecules with him. But I can’t just blow off my friends for the possibility of a cash bonus and an after-dinner tryst.
“Eight it is,” I say.
Twenty-two
Okay, one drink. Maybe an appetizer. Then I’ll leave around nine, which’ll get me downtown for a fashionably late entrance by 9:30—9:45 max. I mean, it’s not like any of my friends will be on time anyway. I call Paula to let her know I’ll be late, but I get the answering machine.
I’m uncharacteristically early for my sort-of-maybe-not-sure-if-it’s-a-date with Chad, so I wait in the bar and watch the dining room, which is full of blond wood and blond women, both polished to a shine. You’d think that after all the society parties I’ve worked I’d feel comfortable in these surroundings. But repeated exposure to the lifestyles of the rich and fatuous has made me keenly aware of my lowly station in the world: my cheap haircut, my scabby cuticles, my genuine fake Rolex I bought on the street. In my neighborhood, the locals look at your shoes and want to kill you for them. Here they look at your shoes and you want to kill yourself.
Chad enters, Achilles freshly returned from battle and a celebratory fuck with his boyfriend Patroclus. The hostess greets him like he’s a movie star and leads us to his “usual table” in the corner.
Caprice is one of those places where the waiter gives a litany of incomprehensible ingredients so exhaustive it sounds like he’s under federal mandate to disclose them: “Tonight we have a vodka-infused portobello cake in a peanut–pine nut sauce, with charred chard and a persimmon risotto made by monks who’ve taken a vow of silence.” What arrives is a miniature tower of food so painstakingly constructed it’s obvious that someone’s hands have been all over it. The tower stands alone on the hubcap-sized plate, like a grain silo on a lonely prairie.
Chad orders a bottle of champagne. Champagne! I mean, to not finish the bottle would be rude. I wonder if I should just slip away for a moment and call Something for the Boys, but I’m afraid to leave this table. First off, I can’t imagine that anyone answering the phone at a gay piano bar would be able to hear over a chorus of men belting out, “I Enjoy Being a Girl.” More important, I don’t want to do anything that will break the spell.
For Chad is charm personified: attentive, relaxed, and real. He wants to know all about me, laughing at my exploits as Eddie Sanders and Eddie Zander, asking question after question about my past and planning our bright future together—professionally, of course, but who knows where that might lead? Like a detective searching for clues, I parse fragments of what he says to make my deduction:
“I feel like we understand each other” + “It’s hard to find someone you trust” + “That suit looks good on you” = “I want you. Let’s have sex in the bathroom.”
We don’t get nearly that intimate, but I do get drunk enough to ask about his crooked nose. Did he break it in a fight? An accident?
Chad replies by sticking the tip of his thumb in his mouth and hooking his finger over the bridge.
“Thumb sucker,” he says. “Until I was seven. Don’t tell anyone.”
It makes me adore him all the more.
It’s after eleven when we finally stumble out of the restaurant, laughing at nothing as we share a cab downtown, which gives me less than twenty blocks to figure out how to make him love me.
As we turn onto Sutton Place, Chad arches to reach his back pocket, his knee grazing mine, sending a little shudder up my spine. He pulls out his wallet and hands me a wad of cash.
“For a job well done,” he says. The bill on top is a hundred and there appear to be four more underneath.
“Wow. Thanks.”
The cab stops.
“I’d invite you up, but the doorman…”
That’s it. I’ve had it with him and his nosy doorman. What is the point of living in an expensive apartment if you can’t invite a horny twenty-one-year-old upstairs to have sex?
“I understand,” I say.
Wuss.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s just that, in my business, I can’t afford to be…well, you know.”
But that’s exactly why we should be together. In a world of AIDS and Bowers v. Hardwick, Chad’s repressed sexuality and my celibacy are a perfect match. It’s safe, contained. And all I’d ever need.
But am I all he’d ever need? Maybe he’s not inviting me up because he’d rather date someone whose abs aren’t insulated by a protective layer of fat, nature’s bubble wrap. I disgust him. That’s it, starting tomorrow I’m going macrobiotic.
Chad smiles, and I feel the earth turn toward the sun. “Listen,” he coos, “you keep finding winners like this and I’ll take you to the Caymans with me. You got anything coming up?”
Yes, in my lap.
“The bash mitzvahs start again next weekend,” I say. “And we’re doing your firm’s Super Bowl party, but I’m just working the door. You guys only wanted female motivators.”
“I’ll see you there, then,” he says. “In the meantime, keep your ears open. Even if it turns out to be a dog like Pharmicare.”
My vision goes into freeze-frame. “Pharmicare? What about Pharmicare?”
“Didn’t you hear? It was in the paper. The FDA didn’t approve that diet drug.”
“What? Why?”
He laughs.
“What is it? Tell me.”
“It caused ‘excessive anal leakage.’”
“What the hell is excessive anal leakage?”
“Gas followed by mass.”
I’m going to lose it. Right here in the taxi. The driver will have to drive straight to Bellevue.
Chad continues: “After that, the stock went into a fuckin’ free fall. It’s gonna be years before it recovers.”
That makes two of us.
After he leaves I lie down on the seat, curling into a fetal position while I try to absorb the realization that I invested $1,500 in volcanic diarrhea, my Juilliard dream literally disappearing down the toilet.
Plus I have to pay for the fucking cab.
With its brick facade and arched doorway, Something for the Boys might have once possessed charm, but now it looks tired and battle scarred, the architectural equivalent of the frail, hollow-cheeked men who haunt these twisting streets of Greenwich Village. From the street I can hear the voices of men singing “I Am What I Am.”
The door opens and out springs Hung, arm in arm with a guy who looks a lot like me, except cuter. The upgrade has the unmistakably muscular frame of a gymnast or a dancer, his shoulders and thighs stretching the fabric of his leather jacket and tight jeans. If Michael Bennett were directing a musical about me, this is who’d he’d cast.
“Edward!”
“I know,” I say, “I’m so late.”
“What happened?”
“I had a…work thing.”
“Whell, Miss Paula’s furious. Kelly came all the way down here with bloody feet, y’know.”
“Shit. Are they inside?”
“No, everyone’s gone. You missed it. Some deaf guy sang ‘Till There Was You.’”
“That was so moving,” says And-Starring-as-Edward. “Even with a condom next to his neck.”
“Oh! Where are my manners?” Hung says. “Edward, this is Tom.”
“Todd.”
“Same alphabet.” Hung tosses his scarf over his shoulder. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to find out whether it’s better to be ribbed or tickled.” He kisses the air in front of my face. “Happy birthday, sweetie.”
I stand alone on the street, wondering whether I should still go in. The windows of the bar glow invitingly, but without my friends, I’d only be going in for one reason. And I just can’t imagine doing that. I mean, some of these guys are walking
time bombs. How does Hung do it? Does he ask if they have HIV? Or does he just assume they do? And what’s really safe, anyway?
I turn around and go home.
The days slush by. Everyone’s mad at me and I don’t blame them. Why do I do such stupid things? I knew there was no way I could meet Chad and get down to the Village in time but I still went. I couldn’t help myself. I’m like a big walking id. My brain ought to sue me for neglect.
What’s worse, Natie won’t be home until Sunday, and I have no idea how to contact him. Still, I’ve got plenty of party-motivator gigs coming up. Surely there’ll be more insider information to trade on, right?
Right?
My first chance comes that Saturday at the bash mitzvah of Tamara Katz. Given their surname, Tamara’s parents have decided on a Cats theme. A Katz mitzvah. They’ve even re-created the junkyard set in a SoHo warehouse. A very hard to find SoHo warehouse.
I come dashing in, panicked and panting.
“Where the hell have you been?” Sandra screeches.
“I—”
“Never mind, we don’t have time. Like I don’t have enough to deal with, with this new photographer. Here. Hurry up.” She tosses me a costume.
I’m not sure which feline I’m supposed to be—Pointlesstheater or Bourgeoispleaser—and I don’t care. The only thing worse than sitting through Cats is having to pretend you’re in it. There’s only enough time to draw on some whiskers, then take my place “backstage,” a curtained-off area next to an oversize prop stove.
“Nice of you to show up,” Javier hisses.
I pull my tail between my legs and wank it, just in time to notice the shocked faces of Leon and Nancy Katz.
Over the PA comes the announcement to which I’ve grown accustomed, as if it really were for me: “And now, La Vie de la Fête Productions is proud to present everyone’s favorite emcee, British MTV’s hottest new veejay, Eddieeeeeee Sanders!”
I enter, swinging my tail in a jaunty manner that hopefully communicates I’m aware how stupid I look, then leap onto the trunk of a prop car that sits beneath a marquee featuring the yellow-eyed logo with the word Katz. I notice immediately that the applause is less enthusiastic than usual, and, just as I’m about to crow Eddie’s trademark, “’Ello, America!” it starts: