“After they come I throw them out,” Peter said, and when I heard that I turned back.
“What, no orange juice?” another friend, Robert, asked.
“Orange juice, hell. Fuck ’em and throw ’em out!”
“In high school—” I started.
“Can you remember back that far?” Terry interrupted, but I ignored him.
“In high school we used to call that the four F’s: Find ’em, Feel ’em, Fuck ’em and Forget ’em.”
“Except in his case he finds them and they fuck him,” Terry said.
“You’ve got that right!” someone else said.
“Why is it that because we’re gay we have to talk about what we do in bed?” I asked. “You’d never talk to a straight man about the way he has sex with his wife.”
“But we’re not straight,” Peter said. “That’s the greatest thing about being gay: You don’t have to be uptight about sex.”
“Sex is the only thing about being gay,” someone else said.
“You’re right there,” Peter said. “Like I said, after they come, throw them out!”
“You don’t know a man until you know what he does in bed,” Terry quoted.
“I can’t wait to hear you when you finally find the man you love,” I said to Peter.
“There goes Gene, The Romantic,” someone said.
“Fuck love,” Peter said. “Just give me a Puerto Rican boy with a huge cock.”
I saw a flashing light from the side and turned back toward the windows. A police car slowed and then stopped by the man across the street, who screamed a single long note when he saw it. Two people in uniform, a man and a woman, got out and approached the man from either side. They left the lights on the car flashing and the mirrors inside the bar caught the lights and spun them around the room. The man still screamed, and he backed up against the iron fence that circled the park and then took off his coat and held it in front of himself as a shield. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt, and I could see that his arms were extremely thin.
“Why can’t they shut off those fucking lights,” Peter said.
No one answered him. We were all watching the scene outside. It was like watching pantomime because we could not hear the words.
“I’m going to walk around,” Peter said, and he picked up his drink and went into the other room. There was a piano there, and he stood at the end of the keyboard and watched the pianist’s hands.
An ambulance with its lights spinning came down Seventh Avenue and turned by the bar. It stopped facing the wrong way on the one-way street; the police car and the ambulance were head to head and both sets of lights flashed spasmodically. Traffic moved very slowly around the vehicles and there was a cacophony of horns. A crowd was gathering, attracted by the lights and the noise, and I asked the bartender to watch my drink and went outside.
“I’m going to kill you all!” the man was screaming. “All of you!”
The policeman and woman and the men who had come with the ambulance talked quietly to the man, but he screamed, “I’m going to give you all AIDS!” and he rushed at them, holding his coat like a matador’s cape. There was a ripple of sound through the crowd when the man said “AIDS,” and everyone, the men from the ambulance, the policeman and woman, and the crowd, moved back quickly. The policeman and woman drew out their clubs, and I did not want to watch but I did. The policewoman stood in front of the man and slowly slapped her club against her palm and then carefully walked around the man’s side, and as she did the man turned with her until his back was away from the fence. Then the policeman handed his club to one of the ambulance men and jumped on the man from behind. The man screamed with rage and he twisted and tried to bite the policeman’s hand, and when he did that the rest of them all jumped on him quickly, as if they were recovering a fumbled football. The man went down hard. He struggled on the ground and the policeman, a large, heavy man, lay flat on top of him and bent his arms back roughly until he could get his wrists into handcuffs. When the handcuffs were locked the man suddenly stopped struggling and went limp, and then he sobbed with great animal cries. The police officers pulled him to his feet. His forehead was bleeding and he shook his head, trying to keep the blood out of his eyes.
“Show’s over, folks!” the policewoman yelled. “Let’s move on now!”
The crowd started to break up. First the people on the outside started to move and then a few at the center turned and pushed their way to the outside, and I left also. I went back into the bar and picked up my drink and looked for my friends. They were all standing by the piano.
“Did you see what happened outside?” I asked.
“If you’ve seen one crazy you’ve seen them all,” Terry said.
“Not quite. This one had AIDS. He said he wanted to spread it.”
Peter’s eyes followed an attractive young man who walked across the room. “Too young, no dick, and I don’t like redheads,” Peter said. He looked back at me. “That happened to someone I knew,” he said. “He had AIDS and he went really crazy. He had to be put away.”
“If that ever happens to me, I hope somebody shoots me,” I said.
“It would be a pleasure,” Peter told me.
As we spoke the disco downstairs started and Peter picked up his glass. “I’m going down for a while,” he said, and he told me that he would see me later. My other friends went with him, and after they left I said hello to someone who had been sitting at the piano watching us.
“Sit,” the guy said, patting the stool next to him, and I did.
A young man with dark, curly hair walked in from the bar. He wore a white tank top that showed his muscular arms and shoulders and that was tight around his small waist.
“Hi! My name’s Rico,” he said to us. He spoke with a heavy Spanish accent.
“Just Rico?” I said.
“Just Rico.”
“Gene.” I held out my hand. He did not take it but instead bent over and kissed my neck.
“Is he your boyfriend?” he asked me. The young man whom I had just met and I smiled at each other.
“No,” I said.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Yes,” I said. I lied.
“I’m looking for someone,” Rico said. “I want a boyfriend,” he added, and he started to walk away.
“Wait!” I said. “Save my seat. I know just the person.”
Rico sat on my stool with his back to the piano, watching the crowd, and I ran down the stairs to the disco. Peter was leaning against the bar watching a shirtless black man dancing with himself in a mirror on a square column.
“C’mon, I want you to meet somebody,” I said.
“I’m busy.”
“Forget him. I’ve got a live one for you—a Puerto Rican with a huge cock.”
“This better be good,” Peter said and he followed me, carrying his drink.
“Peter, this is Rico,” I said upstairs. “Rico, Peter.” Rico kissed Peter’s neck and nuzzled him a little, and Peter lifted his eyebrows at me over Rico’s head. The two of them stayed at the piano with me for a while and then moved to an empty comer of the room, and a few minutes later I watched them put down their glasses, still half-full, and push their way through the crowd to the door.
I said good-bye to the man at the piano and left then too. The doorman gave me a kiss, and I stood talking with him for a few minutes.
“I hear there was a nut case here earlier,” he said.
“Yeah.” I stood back to allow some people to pass between us. “He had AIDS,” I said when the people were inside.
“I heard.”
“It’s sad,” I said.
“It is sad. But if anybody’s going to act like that, they should be locked up.”
“He probably will be,” I said, and I said good-bye and crossed the street. It was a warm night and the sidewalk was crowded. There was a brown stain on the concrete where the man’s head had hit it, and when I stopped to look I was bumped from behind.
I saw Peter and the others the next day at cocktail hour, as I did almost every day. It was Monday and Peter was wearing a suit. I was wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans.
“So, you didn’t go to work today?” he asked.
“I went in this morning, but my secretary was out sick so I said that I had a dentist’s appointment and left at lunchtime.”
“What’d you do?”
“Went to the pier, of course,” I said.
“I’ll bet all the beauties were out today,” Peter said.
“They sure were. I’m going crazy with this look but don’t touch business.”
“I think you carry that to extremes,” Terry said. “It isn’t necessary to give up sex, you just have to be careful.”
“That’s the trouble. I can’t be careful.”
Another friend heard the end of the conversation. “You complaining again, Gene?” he said.
“I’m just getting tired of the old right hand,” I said.
“Use your left,” Peter said.
“Use both hands,” someone said.
“He wishes,” Peter said, and everyone laughed.
If they only knew, I thought. “How was Rico?” I asked.
“He was a ten,” Peter said. “Puerto Rican, built, and with the biggest dick you have ever seen.”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” I said.
“He has beautiful soft skin,” Peter added.
“Did you let him spend the night?” someone asked.
“I did not,” Peter said.
“If you’re through with him, I’ll take him,” someone else said.
“I am not through with him,” Peter said. “In fact, I’m meeting him tonight.”
I hushed the crowd around us and raised my glass. “That’s two nights with the same man, guys,” I said. “Here’s to a record!” I took a drink from my glass.
“Get over it,” Peter said.
The next night was the first workday evening any of us could remember that Peter did not come in to the bar at all. He was always there by five-thirty, and often we all had dinner together, but that night we waited for him until almost eight. “Well,” I finally said, “I don’t know where he is, but I’m hungry and I’m tired and I’ve got a busy day tomorrow. Who’s going to dinner?” Some friends said that they had to leave, and one who had been cruising someone across the bar said he wanted to stay for a while, but three of us went up the street to a new restaurant and intimidated a straight waiter.
Peter did not come in the next night either, or the night after that, but when I arrived on Friday he was already there, surrounded by our friends. I ordered a drink and waited for a pause in the conversation.
“What happened to the Ten?” I asked.
“I let him stay for a couple of nights and then threw him out.”
“At least he got orange juice,” someone said.
“Yes, but I made him buy it,” Peter said, and everyone laughed.
2
I spent the next three weeks in Los Angeles, and then a few days in Mexico. My firm was opening a small office in L.A., and I was asked to go out to help set it up and to work with the local client that was the major reason for the new office, and although I knew it would be exhausting I agreed to go. I spent several evenings in the bars there, and I made a few friends, but when most of the men I met realized that I was interested only in some temporary companionship and not in sex they drifted away. There were a couple of attractive young men who thought that I was good mate material, and they allowed me to buy them drinks and were broadly affectionate, but I did not encourage them. Occasionally I took a tanned, blond, surfer type with muscles and dimples and high cheekbones to dinner, but it was always a commercial transaction: I received a few hours of companionship from someone who, if not the best conversationalist, was at least pleasing to look at, and they received a dinner. One of the dinner companions was friendlier than the others and I took him out several times but always refused his invitations to go home with him afterward. I assumed that he was looking for something more permanent than a few dinners and I knew I could not offer it, and one evening, when I was very tired and had drunk too much wine, after he asked me again to go home with him I told him what I thought were the precise responsibilities of each of us in the transaction we had entered into. I was startled when the young man started to cry and then threw his napkin onto his plate and shouted, “You’re a cold son of a bitch!” and jumped up and ran out. After that I ate alone.
I arrived back in New York late one Saturday afternoon, and although I was very tired and knew I should rest I stopped at my apartment only long enough to leave my suitcase in the front hall. The friend who had been watering the plants and caring for the apartment had bundled the mail into neat packets and left it on a table by the door, but I opened none of it. I was in the bar within two hours of the time the plane touched the ground at LaGuardia and my friends and I were all happy to see each other.
“Well, hello stranger,” one of them said, and another said, “What, no tan?”
“Where’s Peter?” I asked.
“If you can answer that question, you win the prize,” Terry said, and for the next few minutes I was told about Peter. He had not been in once while I had been away. People had left messages with his secretary, who had said that he was fine as far as she knew, and people had left messages on his answering machine, but Peter had not returned the calls and he had not responded to several written invitations to the kind of parties and dinners that he usually loved because, with his sharp tongue and vast knowledge of sexual trivia, he was usually the object of everyone’s attention.
“Don’t worry,” I said, although I was worried. “He’ll be around again,” and someone added, “They always are,” and the conversation moved on.
I went home early. I had been in the same clothes for more than twelve hours and I was exhausted and wanted to take a shower. Later, when I was comfortable again, I went through the mail while I listened to my messages. There were several calls from someone with whom I had once had a brief affair, and I called him back first.
“What’s up?” I said.
“I need a date,” he told me.
“I’m too tired. I just got in.”
“Not for tonight. For tomorrow night.”
I was silent.
“Someone gave me an invitation to the Saint. It’s even free.”
“Come on, Andy. You know I don’t go there anymore.”
“Please,” Andy said. “I’ve never been and I don’t want to go alone.”
I remembered a time of long, drug-heavy nights when we would all dance until dawn, bathed in an atmosphere sharp with poppers and glowing with love, love for the music, love for ourselves, love for life, and then, sometimes, if we were still* coordinated enough, we would go to the baths in a group. There, after an hour or two, and two or three men, we would drift to the snack bar and exchange stories over thick slices of chocolate cake and large paper cups of milk, and the thought of it all, now that several members of that group were dead, was not pleasant.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Please,” Andy begged.
“I’m sorry, but no,” I said.
“I won’t go unless you do,” Andy said.
“I’m sorry.”
Andy was quiet. “Okay,” he said after a few seconds, and then after a few seconds more, “How was California?”
We spoke for a while longer before saying good-bye, and then as I walked away from the phone I began to feel sorry that I had disappointed someone who had never disappointed me. “But that’s life,” I said to myself, and I called a local Mexican restaurant that delivered and started opening the mail. There was
a familiar white envelope in one of the bundles, and it held an invitation to the same party that Andy had asked me to attend. I sat and remembered and heard the music and felt the smooth floor under my feet and saw the lights, and I thought about the times I had liked best, when the disc jockey would play long, sweet sets of music at the end of the evening and we would dance slowly, drugged and swaying with exhaustion, until it was time to go out into the morning.
I called Andy back and said that I would go.
“Great!” Andy said. “I’ll stop over and pick you up at ten.”
“Ten! For what?”
“The invitation says eleven,” Andy told me.
“Midnight should be early enough,” I said.
“Midnight! I won’t get to meet anybody who’s there for the party.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
I had thoroughly changed my mind by the next evening, and as I walked toward the familiar door with Andy beside me I knew it was a mistake. I did not recognize any of the doormen and as I walked down the black hall I could feel the presence of friends with whom I had once danced through the night and into the morning and who now danced in a different universe, and when I walked out into the main room I thought I might cry but I fought the feeling back until it went away.
It was crowded. I did not recognize any of the bartenders either.
“Well, this is it,” I said.
“It’s like something out of Satyricon,” Andy said.
“Petronius?”
“No, Fellini.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I want to dance,” Andy said, so I led him up the stairs to that familiar place under the stars. It was filled with shirtless, sweaty bodies as if nothing had changed, and I observed that the bodies looked the same as they always had. Only the faces were different.
We danced. I danced mechanically, poorly. I did not like the D.J.’s selections, or perhaps I just could not follow his thoughts. It was different without drugs. While Andy danced he stared at the other dancers or looked up at the lights. Someone bumped me from behind and I ignored it, but then it happened again, still with no apology, and I turned around.
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