The Last Lovers on Earth: Stories from Dark Times

by Charles Ortleb

  I was thankful that I had buried a bottle of vodka in the backyard. I went outside, dug it up with my bare hands and went into the kitchen and made the biggest and strongest screwdriver that has ever been made in violation of the sobriety rules of Ex-gayville. I was risking the total loss of control that they were always warning us about in the town meetings of Ex-gayville, but I didn’t care. I drank the screwdriver like it was my first mother’s milk. I didn’t know what was going to become of me. Could I be an ex-gay without an ex-lesbian wife? Would I be asked to leave Ex-gayville? It was a forgiving community, but it had its rules. As I pondered my future, the screwdriver took my mind down a dozen different paths.

  I guess I should have been sitting there fretting about Beth, but I suddenly cared only about myself, and that was making me feel surprisingly happy. I don’t know what made me do it, but I gave in to a spontaneous urge to take off my clothes. I took them off, all of them, and threw them all over the room as if they were bad, evil things. When I was completely naked I started dancing around the living room. Wally wasn’t dancing naked in our home, I was. I felt freer than I had in my entire life.

  I made myself another drink and chug-a-lugged it. I was utterly alone, but I felt totally alive. I didn’t know what to do next. I started walking around the house. I paced and paced, faster and faster, from room to room. I raced throughout our home like an animal on fire in a cage. Then I did something incredibly reckless.

  I walked from window to window and stared out. I was completely nude. It was crazy and dangerous, but I couldn’t help it. I stood in the nude at each window and stared out into the darkness of Ex-gayville. Anyone on the block could have seen me standing in my glorious altogether at the window.

  The really surprising thing was that I was not alone. I could see Joe standing across the street at his window, nude. And when I ran to a window on the side of the house, I could see that Ted was standing naked at his window next door. Up and down the street I could see a naked man standing at a window in every home. In the shadows of Ex-gayville, a couple of them even appeared to have erections. Their faces were contorted, and they all looked like they were screaming or roaring soundlessly through the double panes of glass. I thought, my God—could this really have been going on every night since we moved here?

  It was the most uncanny thing I had ever seen, all the men of Ex-gayville standing in the nude at windows, peering desperately into the distance, searching the overcast sky for the moon, or a star, or a hand, and finding nothing, nothing at all.

  Bruschetta on the Beach

  The city glistened in Eddie’s eyes like the gates of heaven. He was seeing it for the first time through tears of relief and joy. What was left in the trail of dark and sickening smoke behind the Greyhound bus was not just the industrial countryside of New Jersey, but two very difficult formative decades that would probably have discouraged hope in Pollyanna herself. But not Eddie. He would never have made it this close to Oz without his own persistent and mysterious inner reserve of optimism. You would never know that behind him lay twenty years of not being wanted or loved.

  There was nobody and nothing waiting for Eddie in New York City. His only real possessions were his dreams and his willingness to work hard and earn his way into a gay community that he hoped would heal every hurt, and correct every injustice in his past. He knew that he could find himself and be himself only among his own people. They would be the supportive family he never had.

  As the bus emerged from the Hudson Tunnel, he waved to total strangers on the street as though they had been waiting for him to arrive all their lives.

  Even though he had little money and only two years of junior college to his name, the high spirits of the late Seventies effervesced inside Eddie. It seemed like the best time in history to be gay. He practically expected the streets to be paved with beefcake. Eddie looked around the Port Authority terminal as though he anticipated some kind of immigration committee to greet him with gay clothes, a gay job, and gay housing. But not a soul seemed to take any interest in the fact that the gay population of Manhattan had just been definitively increased by one. Even though there was no gay Welcome Wagon awaiting him, Eddie never stopped smiling as he found his way to a cheap hotel. He was full of the zest of one who has just liberated himself from dark times.

  Eddie was industrious and within a week he got one of the first requisite jobs that gay emigrants obtain on their way to finding their water level in the city. He felt filled with possibility when he took a part-time position as a dog walker, but soon realized that he would not be able to survive on the meager wages. He then began a series of lateral career moves and dips through jobs like making feather boas and handing out flyers for gay bathhouses. He finally found a job that paid a living wage as a D.J. in a bowling alley. Disco was very big then, and Eddie thought that being able to play records carefully, dance energetically, and wave a tambourine enthusiastically in the air while drawing a paycheck was about as good as it gets.

  Eddie hoped that someone who owned one of the popular gay dance clubs would happen to stop in at the bowling alley and be impressed by his musical selections. But not too many club owners seemed to be into bowling in those days. People were taking so many drugs that they didn’t have time to bowl.

  Eddie found a little rent-controlled apartment on the Lower East Side that he could barely afford. It was a very run-down building. Some apartments had blankets hanging as doors. He fixed his place up so he wouldn’t be embarrassed to bring home a potential lover.

  To say that Eddie was ordinary looking would be considered a major compliment. God had kind of doubled up on Eddie, because not only was he a member of a much maligned minority group, but he was also as ugly as sin. Eddie knew that if he were to attract someone, he would have to win them over with something other than superficial beauty. He was no genius either, so he couldn’t expect to attract the type who love people for their minds. As he inventoried himself, Eddie decided that his most valuable asset was his smile. While it couldn’t be described as winning, his smile was overwhelmingly optimistic. Eddie hoped that there was someone out there who desperately needed encouragement, for emotional support was what Eddie knew he could offer a lover night and day.

  Eddie cleaned his apartment very carefully every evening before venturing out into the bars to look for Mr. Anybody. He knew that enough in life was stacked up against him without him bringing home a stranger only to have him discover that Eddie was a major slob. Maybe someone would be attracted to him because he could see that he would be an excellent housekeeper. Before he left for the evening, he also made sure that there were plenty of impressive snacks, wine, and beer in the refrigerator. He could keep the right guy well fed.

  It didn’t matter how clean Eddie’s apartment was, or what was in the fridge, because night after night, he trekked home alone. This was the time when people were sleeping with anything that wasn’t tied down, and some things that were. But not Eddie. Some invisible hand in the universe kept sex and love at a constant distance from Eddie. Even New Year’s Eve of 1979—when virtually everybody in Manhattan got drunk and slept with a stranger—found Eddie in bed alone as he greeted the new decade. There was an expression used in the bars and discos that year, "The It Boy," which described the lucky kind of fellow whom everyone wanted to date at that moment. In many ways Eddie seemed destined to be "The Not-It boy," of his era. But he never lost hope that his luck would change. He just kept smiling.

  People didn’t avoid Eddie completely. Many gay men actually befriended him because he looked so helpful. And he was the kind of person you could always talk happily to at the bar because he never contradicted you. And his optimism was infectious. He always told everyone how wonderful they looked, and he insisted that they would find a lover that night. Eddie polished everyone’s ego without asking for any reciprocation. If your face was wizened and dripping with bronzer, Eddie would tell you that your complexion was flawless. If your toupee was on backwards, Eddie would
coo high praise and demand the name of your hairdresser.

  The other great thing about talking to Eddie in the bars was that if you suddenly had to abandon him mid-sentence because you saw somebody cute enter the bar and you had to do some emergency cruising, he never held it against you. He was the most understanding man in New York City. And Eddie would run errands for people in the bars. He would buy them drinks. He would offer people pen and paper so they could exchange phone numbers. He would encourage the most unlikely people to go after the best looking men in the room, and some of the most surprising liaisons occurred. But never for Eddie.

  Eddie did make what he thought was a wealthy friend named Dieter who needed help at his elaborate gay parties. Eddie often was assigned the task of guarding the coats at Dieter’s parties, which meant sitting in a bedroom on a bed full of leather jackets, sipping a drink and trying not to spill any on the mountain of leather.

  Eddie sometimes got to tend bar at an occasional party, usually late in the evening when the original cute bartender had begun to do coke or stopped making drinks early because someone at the party (sometimes Dieter himself) had taken him off to a spare bedroom. Eddie found his tasks at Dieter’s parties a bit tedious, but he never lost his optimistic smile because he thought Dieter’s parties would be great opportunities to meet people, which they were for everyone except Eddie. Eddie was particularly helpful during one of Dieter’s parties at which twenty people OD’d. Eddie didn’t leave Dieter’s until he had helped the host put every single disabled guest into an ambulance. Dieter thanked Eddie for his help and showed his gratitude by giving him some coke and quaaludes.

  During his first several years in New York, Eddie tried changing his look several times. He shaved his head. He grew sideburns. He let his hair grow and tied it in a ponytail. He dyed it several different colors and even tried going out at night with sequins in it. But nothing did the trick. He grew a moustache, then a goatee, and then a full beard. He tried selling himself as butch, and then femme. It was all to no avail. Every night he went home from the bars alone. Eddie had the sex life of a gay Job. But Eddie never gave up hope that he would find the right look and that his luck would change.

  Eddie even toyed with becoming a drag queen for a while, but his efforts to adopt that lifestyle resulted in a severe talking-to by a delegation of the city’s leading transvestites. He was told that his efforts were giving drag queens in the city a bad name, and he was asked not to buy another false eyelash or piece of lingerie ever again. Eddie hoped that he hadn’t really offended anybody because that wasn’t what he had been put on earth for.

  No matter what Eddie did to his looks, he could never get into Studio 54. The bouncers there liked him, but not enough to let him in. They did ask him to go to the deli to get them coffee and sandwiches. In appreciation, the bouncers let Eddie stand in line with the beautiful people, but that was it. They were afraid that they would be fired on the spot if they ever let Eddie inside. One night he gave an attractive young man a camera to take pictures of the inside for him, but the young man left through another exit with the camera, and the interior of Studio 54 was left to Eddie’s imagination.

  Although Eddie spent a great deal of time looking for companions on the beach at Fire Island, no one ever asked him to stay over, and he certainly didn’t have enough money to rent a house from what he earned spinning records at the bowling alley. Some citizens of Cherry Grove thought that Eddie must be a celebrity’s butler or gardener, because he was out there so often. But never overnight. He was the ultimate day tripper. He went out there so often that the conductors on the Long Island Railroad knew his name and Eddie knew the names of their children and grandchildren. When Eddie had a week off during the summer, he commuted back and forth from Manhattan to Fire Island every day. On the train ride out there, he would sometimes pretend to be reading publications like The New York Review of Books so that he would look more interesting.

  One day on the train, Eddie was looking through a sophisticated cooking magazine when he saw a story about a rich bachelor who lived in a huge beach house where he cooked colorful gourmet meals for his friends. There was a photo of the bachelor sitting on the beach in a skimpy bathing suit with another very striking man. The bachelor was handing his friend a luscious looking piece of bruschetta. Eddie just knew in his heart that these two men were more than friends. As the train neared its final destination, Eddie began repeating to himself, "I will eat bruschetta on the beach with a lover, I will eat bruschetta on the beach with a lover." Right then and there it became his permanent mantra, something he said over and over to himself whenever he needed to give himself encouragement.

  Eddie was out at Fire Island the day in 1981 that the panic first hit. It was a very hot Saturday in July, and the copy of the New York Times that was being handed around the beach in the Grove was a virtual cure for a hangover. It left many a gay man who had a deep tan suddenly looking ghostly white. A new, strange disease had suddenly broken out in some gay men who lived in New York City. Scientists did not know what was causing it, but the first ones to succumb were people who lived a rather fast-track life and had many sexual partners, two things that Eddie had been trying to do unsuccessfully ever since he arrived in New York.

  As the article made the rounds, Eddie saw a couple of very disturbed men pack up their belongings and leave the beach. He never saw them again. In the weeks and months that followed, there were many such suspicious disappearances from the best looking section of the Fire Island Beach. Several houses were almost immediately put up for sale. One prominent Cherry Grove man suddenly married a woman who had been his maid. Eddie thought it would have been a great time to buy a house if he’d had any money. One of the reasons that Eddie wished he owned a house, besides not having to commute, was that he noticed that everyone who owned a house on the Island seemed to have a lover or two. Eddie often played the lottery in hopes of winning enough money to buy a house with a pool that would earn him a lover.

  While the epidemic—which only grew from that moment on—terrified everyone else in the gay world, it only increased Eddie’s hopes. The way he saw it, men who were extremely good looking, the ones who had been very successful in attracting partners, were now seen as major liability. It seemed to Eddie that his salad days might be coming soon. It was a great time to be ugly. Eddie thought he would be feted by men looking for pristine partners all over town. He was a gay vestal virgin, kept pure by destiny in order for love to find him during one of the darkest moments in the twentieth century. Eddie still went out enthusiastically to the bars throughout the epidemic, because he never gave up hope that someone needy would show up. He sipped his drink alone in bars, and whenever he thought his spirit was about to go south, he chanted to himself, "I will eat bruschetta on the beach with a lover." But once again, Eddie’s hopes were not rewarded. The plague had made people needy, but not that needy.

  At the very least, the epidemic did result in handsome gay men being kinder to Eddie. As the death toll rose in the gay community, more and more people accepted Eddie’s overtures for friendship. Especially men who were not well. They loved having Eddie around because his optimistic smile helped calm their worst fears. Eddie grocery shopped for them and was a good cook—even though it puzzled them that he seemed to serve bruschetta with every meal, even in the dead of winter. Plus Eddie always said kind and encouraging things. He told men they had never looked better, even when they were covered with lesions from the illness. He told them they were robust, even when they were barely skin and bones. He told guys on their deathbeds that they would live forever. Eddie was convincing because he had a good heart and he truly hoped that they would.

  Upon request, Eddie moved in with the sick, cooked for them, and did their laundry. He got on the phone and tracked down old lovers and the families of the dying. The ailing men that he helped always tried to show their gratitude by giving Eddie the recreational drugs they didn’t have the energy or time to take anymore. Eddie often went home a
t night to his own apartment with bags of marijuana, cocaine, barbiturates, amphetamines, PCP, ethyl chloride, and even poppers. It was the first time in his life that he felt that maybe people truly liked him. Eddie often told the sick men that they were being too generous, but they all insisted that he take the drugs. There were whispers in the gay world that these drugs were dangerous, but Eddie wasn’t worried. The AIDS counselors all over town said to be careful using drugs because one might forget to wear a condom and have unsafe sex under their influence. Since Eddie, to his regret, was never having sex when he was taking drugs, that wasn’t a problem. The sex that Eddie had while taking drugs was the safest and loneliest in the world. Usually, when Eddie was at home alone taking the drugs his sick friends gave him, he was chanting his mantra, "I will eat bruschetta on the beach with a lover."

  Eddie probably attended more funerals in the 1980s than the Vice President of the United States. Gay men tended to be nicer and more conversant at funerals than they were at bars, so Eddie thought that the chances of striking up a relationship while mourning might not be so terrible. He always tried to sit near the surviving gay companion of the deceased because that’s where most of the attention was directed at funerals. Sometimes it was hard for Eddie to choose between going to a bar or a service.

  As the epidemic and the lugubrious Eighties dragged on, Eddie began taking more and more of the drugs he was rewarded with for all the errands he ran, the funerals he accompanied people to, and all the encouragement he gave. At night, alone in his apartment, he would get high and dream of all the men who had never loved him. His dreams were replete with druggy versions of bruschetta, beaches, and men. One night in the waning weeks of the decade, after he had snorted some especially potent cocaine with a chaser of poppers, he sat down at his kitchen table with a calculator. After some very peculiar computations that only Eddie himself could explain, he figured that since he had arrived in New York, he had been rejected by 1.2 million men.