The Sex Squad

by David Leddick

  There was a number by the door. I hesitated. Did one knock on a door at a winter resort? Or call out? Or just walk in? I knocked.

  Rex opened the door. He was wearing a kind of blue-and-white flowered cotton kimono. Probably came with the room, I thought. He did not act surprised.

  “Oh, hi,” he said, and opened the door wider. There was a large room with what they called a cathedral ceiling. The rafters supporting the room were exposed, with no ceiling.

  “Tudor kicked me out of the ballet,” I said. “All I could think of was to come find you.”

  “You’re not surprised, are you?” Rex said. He stood in place halfway across the room. I stood by the door. “Obviously you weren’t going to get that part without putting out. Everybody thought you already had. And were regularly.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” I asked him.

  “Who you sleep with is none of my business,” Rex said.

  I didn’t say anything. I thought it was his business. Shows how dumb you can be.

  “It’s okay. Forget it. He made a pass. You leaped up like a nervous Nelly and ran away and came here. What’s the big deal? Having his cock in your ass isn’t anything more than having your foot in the door.”

  Rex was skipping over the fact that I had found him at the Shibui when I should have been looking for him on the West Coast. History was rewriting itself under my feet as I approached him.

  I put my arms around him, dropping my bag at our feet. He immediately held me close. I could feel how warm his body was under the cotton robe. Suntan. The bulge of his crotch pushed itself against my leg as he kissed me. It was so stupid. Like the song about when he takes me in his arms the world is quite all right.

  I pulled away. “Where’s your mother?” I said.

  “My mother? In New York, as far as I know. Unless she went down to Baltimore to visit relatives.”

  I went over to the open door and looked in the bedroom door. Illy was sitting on the side of the unmade bed. His head was slightly down, his hands placed between his thighs, as was his large penis. He had obviously heard us. He looked up at me and said nothing. Clearly they had just made love. And Illy was taking it up the bum from Rex. A lot of messages flashed back and forth in the few seconds Illy and I looked at each other.

  The messages were:

  Me:

  “You were the macho guy who’s now got his legs spread for my boyfriend.”

  Illy:

  “You thought I didn’t know you were putting out for Rex and me at the same time.”

  Me:

  “You must have thought I was crazy, acting like I was in love with you when you knew I was sleeping with Rex. Maybe you thought I’d decided in your favor.”

  Illy:

  “You think I betrayed you when there’s nothing to betray. It’s all just about fucking. You felt like fucking with me. I felt like fucking with you. Now I feel like fucking with Rex.”

  Me:

  “What a complete jerk I am. I’m in love with someone who borrowed all the money I have. Lied to me about what he was going to do with it and spent it to go to the tropics and fuck the only other man I was interested in. They were both planning to come back and lie to me some more.”

  I snapped. I ran out of the house and stood for a moment on the porch that ran around the building under the overhanging eaves. Illy had never spoken. Rex came out and stood by the door.

  He said, “I want you to come back in. I want you to calm down. Change clothes. Go for a swim. We’ll go down into town later and have a nice dinner. You’re letting this thing get out of hand.” This thing was getting out of his hands, was what it was. He was using a tone of voice that calms down excited horses and dogs. Rex was used to throwing his sexuality across any situation, like a blanket over a fire. His voice was like a hand on my neck.

  “If you don’t come back inside now and just enjoy the rest of this vacation with Illy and me, it’s all over with us. I won’t be wanting to see you again.” This was serious. I walked back in calmly, so he would think I’d agreed. Bent over and picked up my little carry-on bag with my money and my ticket in it and ran out the door, up the path. Going where? I heard Rex say, “Get back here, you little bitch!”

  But he couldn’t follow me. Not in his silly geisha robe. I ran past the pool, past the reception building, down the curving drive, and out onto the road. There were no taxis, of course, nothing.

  I turned and ran down the road. Tarry, sand on the sides. I ran. I really ran. I somehow thought they were going to rapidly pull on shorts and T-shirts and run after me. They could have caught me. I’m not a great runner. What was more likely, I’m sure, was that Rex went back in, threw off his robe, and fucked Illy again. Just to make sure he’d have someone to have sex with for the remainder of his stay.

  A truck came down the hill behind me. I was quite out of character by this time. No one in Michigan would have done this. No one in Michigan would have tracked down a male lover in St. Thomas and then run off half-crazed down a mountain road. The truck stopped, so I went to the open window. “Can I have a lift down into town?” I asked.

  The very black driver reached over and opened the door. I jumped in. I must have looked like a maniac.

  “You okay?” he said, looking straight ahead.

  “Yeah. Sure. I’m okay.” My ability to lie easily had fled. “I just have to get back into town as quick as I can.”

  How old could he have been? I don’t know. Middle-aged by my standards then, fortyish. There was something reassuring and paternal about him. I had a feeling everything would be all right as long as I was with him.

  I noticed things going down the mountain I hadn’t noticed going up. The little wooden houses on stilts, painted bright blue, bright green, yellow, and red. Without windows, just wooden shutters to close out the night. Starved dogs wandered along the roadside. Chickens stepped high, picking here and there in the dirt under the houses. This is what it’s really like here, I thought. Not the Shibui. It’s really all flowers and dirt and cheap paint and no money.

  “Where you want me to drop you?” the man said. His voice was polite, but I don’t think my being white made any difference. He sensed I was distressed and wanted to be helpful. A good man. They are hard to find, as you well know.

  “Where are you going?” I asked him.

  “I can drop you where you want to go,” he said.

  “Oh, anywhere. In the middle of town.”

  “By the hotel?” he asked.

  “That would be fine.”

  He dropped me in front of the big, dark-red stucco hotel. Very Danish, with white trim, white porches, lots of flowers in pots and boxes. As I got out, I turned and shook his hand. It was warm and solid and callused.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said.

  Under the forepiece of his cap, his eyes were so black they were each like one large pupil. The same blackness as his face.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said.

  He probably would have been a good person to know. He’s probably there right now. Driving a different truck, certainly. With all the money that has poured into St. Thomas since then, he probably owns the hotel. I can only hope so.

  It was so stupid. I was hysterical and at the same time I felt like I was someone in a spy movie. Where to hide? Assuming they were going to look for me. I was on an island.

  In the hotel was a small tourist bureau. I calmed myself as much as I could and asked the young woman at the desk when the next flight left for New York. To give her credit, she made an effort, but it was hopeless. “It’s the height of the season,” she said. “The only thing you can do is go to the airport and try for standby.” I figured I was a sitting duck at the airport. I was just going to have to hang around Charlotte-Amalie until my flight the next morning.

  I’m not sure why I was so determined not to see Rex and Illy again. I guess the feel of that bulge under his robe pressed against my thigh was telling me something. I might just let my emotions do t
he talking and wind up staying with them and doing a threesome, which is what I’m sure Rex had in mind.

  Who was it that said, “Men like to give a nickname to their penis because they don’t like to take orders from a total stranger”? Somewhere in my subconscious I was trying to avoid taking orders.

  I went into the first café next to the hotel and sat in the back. It was dark and shadowy there, and I could see everyone passing by in the fading sunlight beyond the door. I ordered an iced tea. The sunlight was almost over; the sun set fast here in the tropics. That I knew. I just had to hope that there would be enough light in the streets that I could see if Rex and Illy passed by.

  I wasn’t hungry, even though I hadn’t eaten since the awful little tray on the airplane.

  I looked up. Rex and Illy were coming in the door. They wouldn’t be able to see, coming in from the sunlight, so I moved quickly towards the toilets in the back. I’d noticed they were moving in the direction of the kitchen. I pushed open the door marked Men. No lock. Kind of a swinging door with a shutter in it. I went into the toilet booth and squatted on the seat, locking the door. I held my bag on my knees. And sat. And sat and sat and sat. Someone came in and took a pee. That was all. Were they sitting out there having a drink? Maybe they weren’t looking for me at all. I came out of my squat, hardly able to walk.

  I looked into the café. It was empty. I thought of going out through the kitchen but didn’t quite have the nerve. I found a waiter and paid for my iced tea. They probably thought I’d skipped out on it. As I came out of the café, I saw why it was empty. Everyone was on the terrace outside under the hanging lamps. It was murky. And just as murky out on the street. I stood a good chance of going unnoticed. I walked the streets of Charlotte-Amalie, not really knowing what I planned to do. Trying to stay in the shadows. I probably looked like a ragamuffin, dusty and rumpled, dragging my carry-on bag with me. Just another boy looking for some place to stay for the night.

  I must have walked for hours. Stopping to sit on a city bench where there was one deep in shadow. Looking into little restaurants. I was beginning to get hungry but didn’t want to risk being seated at a table, not being able to escape if Rex and Illy were suddenly to stumble upon on me.

  A little Spanish-type place had a window on the street where I saw men buying tiny cups of coffee and sandwiches. I bought one of each. A ham sandwich on long French bread, except the bread was very light and almost nonexistent once it hit your mouth. The coffee revved me way up.

  After a while the restaurants and cafés were closing. If Rex and Illy were looking for me, we weren’t on the same circuits. One place, the Heavenly Blue, was full of people, and it was fairly obvious they were all men. The gay bar. I never went to gay bars alone in New York but decided to go in. Either I was going to run smack into Illy and Rex or they would never think of looking for me in here.

  The Heavenly Blue was full of older men in open-necked shirts and blazers and younger men, many of them black. I went to the bar and asked for a Coke and went deep through the crowd to a back wall. What I always hated in gay bars was the aimless pickup conversation. But tonight I welcomed it. I told everyone who came over to chat that I was waiting for friends. Yes, I had just arrived that day. Yes, I thought St. Thomas was great. No, I couldn’t go to another bar or to their apartment or house with them, because I’d miss my friends. I had promised to meet them there. Yes, I had a room, in a rooming house over in that direction. Indicating with my head. Sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. It was hell and it was endless, but I could see through the crowd pretty well. I was near the toilet, and if Rex and Illy were suddenly to show up, I could pull my hideaway trick again. Or try to. The bag between my feet was of course noticed by everybody, who figured I was really looking for someone to go home with but hadn’t found anyone I liked yet.

  A young black guy standing against the wall near me struck up a conversation.

  “Boring, isn’t it.”

  “It’s certainly always the same, wherever you go,” I told him.

  “My name’s Cedric,” he said, holding out his hand. He had a kind of English accent. I must have looked startled, curious. “I’m from Jamaica. I’m here working at Bluebeard’s Castle.”

  “As a waiter?”

  “Nothing that fancy. I help take care of the grounds.”

  We talked a little bit about this and that, which kept other men away from us. He offered to buy me another Coke. I agreed only if he took my money to pay for it, which he did. When he handed it to me, he said, “You’re not here to pick up somebody, are you?”

  I said, “Actually I’m here just waiting until I take a plane out of here tomorrow morning.”

  “You couldn’t find a hotel room?”

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “Broke?”

  “No. Not at all. I just don’t want to be any one place.”

  “Police looking for you?”

  “Not the police. Some people I don’t want to see.”

  “This must be a romantic emergency,” Cedric said.

  “You could call it that, I guess. I’m sorry. My name’s Harry. Harry Potter. It was rude of me not to give you my name before. It really is Harry Potter. I’m not a fugitive from justice.”

  “You’re a fugitive from love,” Cedric said, and laughed. Hard.

  I was beginning to feel better. “Look,” he said. “I have a really terrible little room at the hotel, but you’re welcome to come back there until it’s time to go to the airport. Your pursuer isn’t going to look for you there.”

  I looked doubtful.

  “You don’t have to put out,” he said, and laughed again. “I would like to do the putting out, if you’re interested. But somehow I don’t get the impression you are.”

  “I’m sorry. You’ve got it right. Could we go there now? I’m really exhausted.”

  “Of course. This place is dull at its best and it isn’t even that tonight. You’re the only handsome new face in the entire bar.”

  “How do we get there?” I asked.

  “I usually walk, if I’m going straight back. But we could take a cab.”

  “I’d like to take a cab if you’ll let me pay.”

  “It would be my pleasure,” Cedric said.

  Outside there were plenty of taxis roaming the streets, and we hailed one. In the brighter lights outside I could see that Cedric was quite handsome, about my height, wavy dark hair, and prominent nose. Something like a very dark Stewart Granger. I could have gotten very interested in Cedric, somewhere else, some other time.

  Pulling around a corner, I saw Rex and Illy heading down the street in the direction of the Heavenly Blue. My luck was holding. Now all I had to do was get to the airplane and get the hell out of St. Thomas. Or the hell off of St. Thomas. However you want to put it.

  Cedric did have a small room, in a frame building down the hill from the hotel. A long hall gave onto many small rooms, all their doors closed. Two-thirds of the way down was Cedric’s door. The hall was dimly lit and looked none too clean. Bandbox-neat Cedric in his sharply pressed gabardine slacks and white shirt looked more out of place here than I did.

  The room had one single bed, very narrow, a bureau, a chair, and a closet with no door. Cedric had obviously placed the small mirror on the bureau top, and the few clothes in the closet were neatly hung, with one pair of shoes on the floor beneath them.

  “This is home,” Cedric said in a low tone of voice. The walls were obviously thin. “There’s a bathroom down the hall. You can take a shower in the morning if you want to. It’s okay that you’re here. The hotel doesn’t encourage it, but many of the men have family stay over when they’re here. You take the bed.”

  “I couldn’t,” I said.

  “You’re the exhausted one,” he said. “I’ll take the blanket and lie on the floor. I’ve done that before when my father was here.”

  I accepted. I went down the hall to the bathroom and then lay down on the bed, taking off o
nly my shoes. Cedric neatly hung up his trousers and shirt. He had only Jockey shorts on underneath. A very beautiful body. He saw me looking at him.

  “I played a lot of sports back home. Football–not your kind of football, what you call soccer. And I am a really good cricket player. Wouldn’t you know? The one sport that they don’t play anywhere except England and its colonies, so I’ll probably never play again.”

  “You’re not going back to Jamaica?” I said.

  So we talked most of the night. Me lying on the bed looking up at the ceiling in the dark; Cedric propped up on one elbow, telling me how he hoped to get to the United States. Hoped to find some kind of work, be some kind of professional. Get his family to follow him.

  They were, of course, desperately poor in Jamaica, as they were on all the islands. He had a high-school-level education but wanted more. Cedric was older than I was, about twenty-two at that time, I’d guess.

  In the morning, Cedric had to go on yard duty, or whatever they called it. He explained where I could find a taxi after I took a shower and where to hide the key after I left the room. Dear Cedric. He’s in the United States now. In Detroit. We keep in touch.

  I took the taxi to the airport, and of course, when I went to check in, Rex and Illy were there. They were wearing different clothes than they had on last night, so obviously they had been back to the Shibui before they showed up here. I wondered if they had time to squeeze in a fuck.

  Rex was in a threatening mood. “You’re not leaving,” he said.