Man About Town

by Mark Merlis

  “You got some sun,” Joel said, fatuously.

  “Yeah, I was off all last week.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “My backyard, mostly. I spent a couple days down with Kenyon’s parents, but then I mostly just hung out.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Florida. You know Silver Haven? It’s on the Gulf Coast.”

  “Uh-huh.” Joel didn’t know Silver Haven, but it had to be dreary. Andrew was an angel to go waste part of his vacation visiting these people.

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Just work,” Joel said. “Oh, Harris put his bill in.”

  “I know. Melanie had me make the last changes a couple days ago.”

  “Yeah?” Joel was a little hurt that he hadn’t been consulted. Why, to help perfect a nasty little bill that wasn’t going anywhere? Maybe he just didn’t like it that Andrew was already in on something he wasn’t. Last time they’d met, Joel had played the insider. Already the balance between them had minutely shifted.

  The waiter came. Andrew ordered a real drink, so Joel could too. No, they weren’t sure yet if they needed to see menus. Joel was sure.

  When the waiter had gone, Andrew said, “So how’s your love life?”

  Joel was startled. “Um. I— I was dating this guy, a librarian. A nice guy, but …” That just came out. A harmless fib, but he felt awful. Partly because it was crummy to have walked away from Richard and then invoke him. Partly because, if he hadn’t walked away, they might in fact have dated for a while; he would have had a little something instead of nothing. Mostly because he was already lying, just so Andrew wouldn’t think he was a loser.

  What, after all, was wrong with lying? He and Sam wouldn’t have got through fifteen years on sodium Pentothal. But he was in effect saying: if you knew about me you’d think me pathetic and unworthy. I have to be somebody else to be worthy of you, while you can just be your dazzling, deeply tanned self. “We … actually we just saw each other a couple times.” This was only off by one time, better than the higher if indefinite number implied by “dating.”

  Andrew nodded understandingly. Joel wondered what he understood. That is: he had formed some picture of things. Whatever image the word “librarian” conjured for him, then that image conjoined with Joel’s in whatever scenario “dating” would mean, and then whatever revisions he adopted when Joel added “a couple of times.” Not that Andrew was sitting there writing a screenplay, just that a few words from Joel must have left him with some fleeting impression. Every word Joel uttered must have made these pictures in other people’s heads; the people who seemed to know him really knew this movie they ran inside their heads and that had about as much relation to his real life as a Hollywood biopic.

  “And how’s your love life?” Joel said.

  Andrew shrugged. “Still hibernating. But lately I, uh …” He grinned. “I think about it. I mean, I look sometimes and I … think about it.”

  Joel smiled, too. “Think about it.”

  “Yeah. One-handed.”

  “Oh. I take two.”

  “Right.”

  The waiter came, sans drinks. “Excuse me, is one of you Mr. Crawford?”

  “That’s me,” Andrew said.

  “There’s a call for you inside.”

  “Oh.” He said to Joel, “I’ve got to take this, sorry. I should just be a couple minutes.”

  He scurried inside, leaving Joel wondering who he could have given the number to. Andrew wasn’t a surgeon or a deputy assistant secretary; there wasn’t any reason he’d tell people where he was going to be.

  Did he think of Joel, now that he was thinking? Enough to have called, anyway. There wasn’t much chance that, when he thought about it with one hand, the vision that came to his mind was of Joel. Still, he’d brought the subject up, all by himself. So it didn’t seem inconceivable that, when he was ready to emerge from his hibernation, he would …

  The waiter came with the drinks, finally Joel nursed his, he didn’t want to get too far ahead, and watched the people go by on Massachusetts Avenue. Staffers in their twenties, lawyers in their thirties, a couple guys Joel’s age—with the fanatical parts in their hair that betrayed them as fellows at the mammoth conservative think tank down the street. Those who had worked late were still in their suits or their Elizabeth Dole dresses; others had gone home and changed into the late June evening unisex costume of polo shirt, khaki shorts or the occasional atavistic madras, loafers worn without socks. As if it were 1964. This had to be the whitest few blocks in the city, or at least the whitest east of Rock Creek; Joel never went west of Rock Creek. These people saw only one another and thought they were America. Even the scattering of gay couples who passed by had a Republican look to them. Their legs, between the shorts and the loafers, so white.

  Andrew came out and strolled toward their table. Trim and bronze. Joel thought, a little chilled: he’s working on his tan because he’s planning to go out this summer.

  “Sorry.” Andrew frowned. “Kenyon’s parents.”

  “They called you here? Is something going on?”’

  “Not really. They’re a little worried about this one hospital bill their HMO isn’t paying. See … um, Kenyon’s dad had this fall, and he went to the ER and it turned out everything was OK, and now the HMO says it wasn’t an emergency and they’re not going to pay for it.”

  “Oh. I thought it might be something urgent.”

  “No. They get upset if they can’t get hold of me. So I usually—I mean if I’m going to be gone more than a couple hours, whatever, I let them know where they can reach me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I should get a cell phone.”

  “Maybe so,” Joel said. They were quiet a minute. Joel couldn’t think of any way of steering the conversation back to the exciting subject of Andrew’s hand and the object of its attentions. So he said, “You’re very close to Kenyon’s parents.”

  Andrew nodded. “We used to go down to Silver Haven alternate holidays, Kenyon and I. I mean, Kenyon went every holiday, he even went home for Easter, but sometimes I had to go to my own family. But I’d be at Kenyon’s either for Thanksgiving or Christmas, it would just be the four of us, Kenyon and me and his parents.”

  “That’s kind of neat. Like you’re family.”

  “Yeah, it’s funny. I mean, Kenyon and I were together for years before I even met them. You know, he’d never actually had the discussion with them. They knew they had a forty-year-old son who had never so much as mentioned a girl. They knew I sometimes answered the phone when they called Kenyon—which was a couple times a night, they’ve always been this way. If we ever went out there’d be this worried message on the answering machine, he should call whenever he got in, no matter how late, just so they’d know he was okay.

  “They knew I answered the phone, but it was just, ‘Let me get Kenyon,’ or ‘He’s out for a second, he’ll call you right back.’ They had to know what I was doing there, but it was a whole nother thing for me to just show up there in Silver Haven, Exhibit A. I didn’t want to go at all. And when we got off the plane, when we got off the ramp thing and there they were, I just felt naked. Like, look, here’s the man your son has sex with. Why don’t we give you a little demonstration right here in the airport?

  “They hugged Kenyon and shook my hand, like I was just someone who happened to have been next to Kenyon on the plane, and we went to the car. And the whole way to their place they talked like I wasn’t there—about their ailments and Kenyon’s father’s golf game and the problem with the roof and the news about somebody Kenyon had gone to school with. No, not like I wasn’t there, they’d pause a second to explain who Mabel was, like that. They were just perfectly natural, just catching up with Kenyon about things. And they went on talking that way straight through dinner. Maybe they asked me one or two things about my job, whatever, or if my parents didn’t mind my being away for the holidays. I said we were a big family, they’d probably
lose count. And they said, ‘Well, we just have Kenyon,’ and then turned back to him, to tell him something else that had gone on in Silver Haven or, before that, Buffalo, where he grew up: ‘Remember the time we …’

  “Then Kenyon and his father and me went to watch TV in the family room while his mother did the dishes. We didn’t say anything at all, just watched some cop show. When it was over, his father stood up, turned off the TV, and said, ‘You boys must be tired. You’d better be getting to bed.’ Just as casual as that, ‘you boys.’

  “Well, this was the big moment: where were they going to have us sleep? Kenyon got our bags from the front hall and led the way upstairs and into his room. There were twin beds, each with one corner of the covers turned down. Now, there were lots of rooms upstairs. I mean, I could see there was a guest room right down the hall. Kenyon said, whispered, ‘They just put these beds in.’ I whispered back, ‘What?’ And he said, T always had a double bed in here. They must have just gone out this week and put these beds in.’

  “And I figured out how they’d been treating me: like a sleepover, like some friend of Kenyon’s from junior high who had come for dinner and was spending the night. That was how they’d decided to handle the fact of me.

  “It was the kind of house where somebody in the basement could hear somebody fart on the second floor. So we couldn’t put the beds together, too much noise. And Kenyon was a big guy, there was no way we were going to squeeze into one twin bed. So we slept apart, the two boys. The next time we went, we did work up the nerve to move the beds together. But we’d get up and move them back before breakfast.”

  He chuckled. “We’d move them back and go downstairs and his mother would say, ‘I hope you boys are hungry.’”

  Joel said, “So they never did have the discussion.”

  “I guess they didn’t need to. They were just happy Kenyon had somebody.”

  “Well, that’s nice. And you’ve gone on seeing them. Since …”

  Andrew took a fairly big slug of his drink. “When Kenyon died, we had a service up here. You know, all his friends were here, the people we worked with. I arranged a service here and they didn’t come, his mom was having some kind of problem, I can’t remember what it was, probably her arthritis. I wound up flying down there with his ashes. I stepped off the plane and there they were in the waiting area, greeting me alone this time. They hugged me, not all teary or anything, just like, ‘Good to see you.’ In the car they talked about the usual stuff, the house and golf and stuff. Nothing about Kenyon. And when we got to the house, Kenyon’s father said, ‘Why don’t you take your bags up to your room?’” He shook his head. “I had his ashes in one of those bags.”

  “Do they … they don’t think you’re …”

  “They’re not senile or anything, or crazy. They just— I mean, Kenyon let them, his whole life he let them rely on him for every little thing. Should we have the roof fixed? Should we let our T-bill roll over? He never let a night go by without their hearing from him, they could call him about anything. They just depended on him, you know.”

  “So now they call you.”

  “It’s like when he was gone they just… I don’t know, transferred it.”

  “And you let them,” Joel said. Neutrally, he hoped, though there was really no way of pitching those words without at least hinting that Andrew was a spineless schnook.

  “What can I do? They’re pushing eighty. I can’t just cut them off.”

  Sure he could, Joel thought. He could get an unlisted phone number. In which case they’d probably have the police hunt him down. “Huh. I guess it’s hard.”

  “I’m trying to … you know, wean them a little? Not cut them off but ease them down a little.”

  “Like by telling them you were coming here?”

  “Well, they’re upset today. You know, this thing about the bill.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Hey, you know a lot about health care. Maybe you could help them.”

  “Um.” Right. As if Joel were going to get involved with these loonies. Next thing, he’d be going down for holidays. He and Andrew would get the twin beds. “Why don’t you get the details from them and then maybe I could help you out?”

  “Great.”

  “They … it’s a Medicare HMO, right? They can appeal it, they have federal appeal rights. I can call around, find out what you need to do.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  The waiter came by with menus. “No, just the check, please,” Andrew said. Then to Joel: “I’m sorry, but I really better get home and call them. You know, let them know I’m going to try to take care of it.”

  “Sure,” Joel said. “Maybe another time.”

  “Absolutely.” He looked out at the street, then back at Joel. He said, very softly, “One of the reasons I’ve been kind of taking my time—about going out again? I know I need to fix this. I mean, I know I can’t expect … if I start seeing somebody, I know I probably can’t expect them to deal with this.”

  Joel might have answered: I could deal with it. Applying for the hypothetical future job vacancy for a somebody. Maybe the application was even being solicited, maybe Andrew understood their aborted dinner-if-they-felt Tike-it to be the first in a possible chain of encounters that might eventually add up to seeing Joel.

  On the sidewalk, people were moving more briskly. It was dark, everybody had to scurry home to their townhouses and turn on their alarm systems. These streets belonged to them only until it got dark.

  Under the streetlight Andrew’s brown face and gold-flecked hair glowed above his starkly white shirt. He and Joel shook hands; Joel was a little bereft that, this time, Andrew did not grasp his shoulder. They parted, Joel toward the Union Station Metro stop, Andrew to wherever he had left his car. So he could rush home to call these crazy people who had somehow conscripted him.

  “I could deal with it,” Joel might have said, if only Andrew had posed the question clearly enough. He might have said that, and it would have been a lie. He already felt himself pulling back. Andrew’s story was weird; he had to be a little fucked up to have let this happen to him. Okay, he hadn’t volunteered, he had been drafted, and Joel could see that it might be hard to cut those poor people off. To tell them they didn’t have a son any more, Kenyon was gone and they would need to get through the business of dying all by themselves. Maybe Joel was the weird one, he who would have changed his phone number.

  Andrew was just a decent guy who … had volunteered, Joel was sure of it. Had—not spinelessly but gratefully—allowed a must to enter his life. He must get home so Kenyon’s parents wouldn’t worry. Maybe he needed a must, some reason to get home after Kenyon stopped being the reason.

  Joel had no reason to get home. No one wondered where he was, no one would have missed him if he had spontaneously combusted. On the other hand, he found suddenly that he had a very good reason—one so compelling he took a cab instead of the Metro—to get to Zippers.

  Tonight he wasn’t just going to lower his standards: no, he was going to institute an open admission policy. First applicant gets the slot. Having been left alone on the sidewalk by a very decent guy, decent to the point of lunacy, he wanted just the opposite. An impersonal and mildly degrading encounter with some loser he would never see again. Just to get on with it. Sex was a bodily function, for God’s sake, not some kind of holy grail. Anybody would do, just any live body at all.

  Of course this resolution collapsed the minute he walked in and sat down. Not-a-chance to the left of him, out-of-the-question to the right of him, straight ahead not-if-you-were-the-last-man-on-earth. He wasn’t expecting somebody out of Men’s Health, but really …

  Really, what if that guy straight ahead, the fifty-five-year-old church organist with freckles and two spreading seas of dampness under his arms, had been the last man on earth? Presumably he had all the standard accessories, was equipped to perform any act in Joel’s limited repertory. Wouldn’t Joel, after some period of combing the depopu
lated planet for any alternative, have turned to him sooner or later? As a Hasid on the brink of starvation would, at long last, try just a taste of the shrimp salad? Sooner or later: why not now?

  The organist, or vice-principal, or whatever he was, smiled at Joel. Joel looked away, swallowed, looked back. It was just for tonight, he wasn’t going to marry the guy, he could just close his eyes and … Not if he were the last man on earth.

  On his way out Joel got the gay paper again. At home he skipped the non-mercantile categories of longing and went straight to Escorts. Not seriously considering it, not after one more dead night at Zippers, just curious about what could be had if he should ever be in the market.

  On the shelves just then were Ivy League, drill instructor, Euroboy. Some would share unspecified toys, others had repertories that were summarized in acronyms. Most of these indecipherable to Joel, but he could pretty well bet that activities involving acronyms were going to hurt. A few supplied grainy and ill-lit pictures of their torsos, never faces. The bodies were more or less interchangeable: arms with veins that looked like they were about to pop, abdomens formed into so many little quadrilaterals they might have been turned out at a quilting bee. About as erotic as a perfect SAT score. And who knew if the advertisers really used their own pictures? What if a guy showed up at the door and turned out to be … ?

  All right, he was seriously considering it. If he couldn’t bring himself to go home with the goddamn organist, or with Richard the librarian, or with anybody in his league; if he wasn’t going to settle for that, he was sooner or later going to have to take something out of his wallet. Besides the condom he had begun superstitiously carrying there. He could be one of those gentlemen who hung out at the guppy bar, Gentry, in search of a presentable young man whom they could take to dinner and who might eventually show some tepid appreciation for the occasional gift of a wristwatch or a fine briefcase. Or he could just cut to the chase—more accurately, cut to after the chase—and call up an escort. Money was what he had, not youth or muscles or any other currency. What was reprehensible about spending what he had?