How's Your Romance?: Concluding the "Buddies" Cycle (8 page)

I was riding my train of thought with such concentration that I didn’t realize that I had reached a conclusive stop and opened my mouth at the same time:

“You’re a little gold digger,” I blurted out.

J. coolly considered me. Vince was once more fondling Fleabiscuit. Cosgrove was back in the kitchen.

Silence.

Finally, Cosgrove came out with his risotto of greens and sea scallops, cooked to a T. As he and I had made sure that Vince’s glass was never left empty, the guest of honor was soon buzzed, which led him to confide in us his dating secrets. These included how to tell gash from brides; how to speed a princess; and how all women want to be fucked by their fathers.

“Not their main and true father,” he added. “The husband of their mother. But someone
like
that, with the power to love them or not when they were, like, four years old. That totally huge guy who can give or take
everything
from them, you know? And they don’t care what he looks like. He’s got the tall and the making rules and the heavy dark thing to him. That’s daddy to them, and they need daddy so.”

Cosgrove distributed the plates, his face blank.

“No, sure, they don’t admit to it.” He laughed. “Start with whispering in their ear, the puppy kissing, the daddy talking. My pal Red, he always backs off at the time. He don’t have the script. But it’s not poetry, it’s anything, like. Just so you’re gentle, ’cause they’ll do anything to get that from daddy. Daddy love runs the world, you know.”

“Does anyone like the food?” Cosgrove asked, patiently.

“Delicious,” said J.

“Yeah, it’s so … Then you work them to the bed, always daddy and his girl, using how bigger you are to sweeten them along. No forcing, but always control. They love it so like that, give you anything you want.”

My brother Jim has this quality: a talking blueprint for the seduction of females. To such men as Vince and Jim, a date is successful when a woman is cajoled, persuaded, lured into sex; a date who shows up wanting it takes all the fun out of it, robs them of their male magic. But then, given the byzantine etiquette of heterosexual courtship, what woman ever shows up wanting it? This is one reason why gay romance is easier to manage than straight. When a gay date shows up, he’s counting on having sex. It’s all over but the shouting.

“Vince,” said J., “tell them about the flip.”

Smiling, Vince set aside his empty plate and took a sip of beer. “Oh yeah,” he said. “The flip, huh?” More chuckling. “See, even prime gash don’t really want to give it up to you, not right up front. They got to be wiggled into it, somehow, kind of daddied-up. Hands all over ’em when you’re standing behind, nudging them with your little wonder. Steamy liplock, which if you do it right is a form of fucking. But all with the greatest respect. They could be the cheapest ho in Clancy’s, you treat ’em like a royal queen. Look ’em over with, like, you can’t believe this loveliness. It’s an honor, you know? Say, ‘Baby, let me flip you.’ Say, ‘You got the flops, I feel it in your skin. Let me give you a look-see.’”

“Would anyone like more lemon squeeze on their fish?” asked Cosgrove.

“The look-see, well, that’s your plain old eat-’em-out, which also gets you to the bed, where grease and condoms are displayed.” Another sip of beer. “That prepares the romantic mood, so you got to remember to lay them out in advance. You know what I mean?”

He was looking at me, and I nodded. “In the theatre,” I said, “they call that a ‘pre-set.’”

“They do that live in a theatre somewhere? Fuck shows?”

“Vince,” J. put in, “tell them about Shona.”

Cosgrove asked, “Vince, would you like seconds?” And Vince, without missing a measure, extended his plate to be taken off and refilled.

“Shona lady?” Vince went on, nodding rhetorically. “
Loves
the flip, but she also loves pretending she don’t got the flops. I say, ‘You got the flops, sweet love,’ and she’s like, ‘Not yet, taste a bit more.’” He grinned again. “You got to eat her out so total it’s like—”

“Vince!”
Cosgrove yelled from the kitchen.

Vince paused.

Cosgrove appeared at the kitchen doorway. “Do you like what I made or not?”

“Sure, I like it. What for did you cry out at me?”

Cosgrove said nothing and did not move.

“It’s like when ol’ Red Backhaus gets perturbed all a sudden, and what’d I do? I apologize, just the same.”

“Go on, Vince,” J. urged him. “Shona gets eaten.”

“Well, yeah, she does. She can play you just as you play her, you know. She’s rising to it, getting set for daddy time, and she’s all flopsed up and so hungry she’s just swinging away on your dick. Oh, thank you, my man.” This to Cosgrove, for his food. “And I always start ’em eyes down, but the great moment is when you flip ’em for the ice-cream treat of eye contact big-time. If you fix their legs right, you can kiss ’em while fucking, which is so racy, you know? That is what I call the flip, a noble thing between man and woman, and if it wasn’t for marriage fucking up the chicks’ heads, we would all have a beautiful time.”

I had noticed that Vince used certain adjectives—all positive ones, like “wonderful,” “lovely,” and “beautiful”—as if making love with them. They came out slow and breathless, with his melting-eyes smile, and I could see why women might like him. He was crude with us, but to a working-class female, used to the strenuous style of the neighborhood guys, Vince might come off as flatteringly extrasensory, with his absurd language of love and his father fantasy. My brother Jim was no different in the long run: and Jim made out like a bandit.

I didn’t give J. the slightest chance of restructuring Vince’s sex life with a homosexual episode. I know the sound a hetero makes when trying to intellectualize his grunting, and Vince, for my money, was straight. Yes, there was all that suspiciously fond stuff about Red Backhaus. But remember the two construction workers I spoke of in the Introduction? That’s testosterone jostling, loving but not
flesh
-loving. The pair could fuck and it still wouldn’t be gay. They could even kiss. But let one comment on the quality of the other’s skin tone and you have 60–40 crossover.

After our Vince-meeting dinner came cappuccino, from our own cappuccino maker, another of Cosgrove’s prides.
*
He also treated us to his prize car-chase and talk-show fight clips, which Vince particularly responded to. I risked a few fifi remarks. Fleabiscuit came out a few times to romp and hide. We got a high on, especially Vince, who was chain-guzzling his beer. With me at the piano, J. and Cosgrove reprised their old cabaret act, improvisationally updating their version of “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” with

You say
‘
Cauc
ă
sus
,’
and I say
‘
Cauc
ā
sus
’;

You like the Blur boys, but I like Oasis.

I thought that was brilliant, and so did Vince, who had no idea what the Caucasus, Blur, or Oasis might be. J. and Cosgrove, so long divided, embraced and kissed; Vince looked on unmoved. Not pretending it didn’t exist: uninterested in it. So what did all this mean?

J. left with Vince. At the door, Vince told Cosgrove and me, “You guys should be in show business.”

And Cosgrove said, “We are.”

2

T
HERE
A
RE
O
NLY
T
HREE
K
INDS OF
L
OVE

T
HERE ARE IN FACT
many kinds of love, almost as many kinds as there are people. There’s blind love, summertime love, desperation love, love on the rebound, least-horrible-available-partner love, imaginary love, academic love, weekend love, puppy love, career-move love, voodoo love, love for revenge.

Nevertheless, three kinds in particular seem to me essential to gay life:
Hungry Love, Buddy Love,
and
True Love.
Some gays taste of them all, over and over. Others specialize. A goodly number of gays may never know the roaring, frustrated ecstasy of hungry love, preferring the spacious intimacy of buddy love. And who among us has penetrated true love in all its baffling contours? With this chapter, I hope to solve some small mysteries and at length flirt with a few of love’s conundrums as they pertain to gay life. Now back to our story:

It was that spring of 1997, when something like thirty-five Broadway musicals opened within a single week, and Peter thought we could pursue the introduction of Lars Erich Blücher to our circle with one of those theatre evenings. The chosen show was
Titanic,
then still in its troubled previews; and a friend of Lars Erich’s, not in the actual theatre party, was to host an after-theatre dinner.

“Someone’s not welcome at the entertainment but invited to prepare the reception?” Dennis Savage asked me.

“Peter says it’s this odd thing,” I replied while fastening Cosgrove’s tie, which bore the ghoulish figure of Edvard Munch’s
The Scream.
He’d found it at the Museum of Modern Art Shop, the one that used to be on Fifth Avenue. “Lars Erich’s friends are apparently so devoted to him that they supply whatever is wanted. Money, trips to where, parties.”

“This guy must really be something, huh?”

“Too much so, in a way,” I said, combing Cosgrove’s hair. “I’ve known lookers who were smart and interesting, but has there ever been someone
so
beautiful who’s
this
big and
that
fascinating? You can’t be just in love with that, you have to be in idolatry.
There!
”

Standing behind Cosgrove, I presented him to Dennis Savage. “Neat,” I said, my hands on his shoulders. “Tailored,” moving down his sides.
“Charmant,”
at his waist.

“Very handsome,” said Dennis Savage neutrally.

“And yet I come like night,” Cosgrove diabolically intoned.

“That isn’t Byron, surely,” I said.

“It’s a Cosgrove original.”

We three met Lars Erich and Peter outside the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, where the former assured us that the saga of the world’s greatest ship was celebrated in German- as in English-speaking countries.

“Georg Heym, ‘Die Seefahrer’!” he cried. “‘Aber wir trieben dahin, hinaus in den Abend der Meere’”: Yet on we drifted, out into the evening of the sea. “It is quite the story to put to a musical, ja? So much at stake, so much love and life! It is thrilling to be here, more to know of Peter’s coterie. But I, too, have friends, which we are meeting later at a soirée.”

Lars Erich troubled to draw Dennis Savage out—“What are you doing as a career?” and so on—while Cosgrove explained J.’s new life to Peter and I stepped back a bit and took stock.

One, Peter was underpowered, almost quiet. Not tired because of an exacting schedule, not too busy listening to talk: without force, as if something had been drained out of him.

Two, Lars Erich was wearing unreproachable slacks and impressive dress shoes, but his top was a Very Designer form-hugging thing in off-white that wasn’t see-through but looked as if it should be. Quite classy but so hot: as if Lars Erich won’t be one thing without being another thing as well.

Three, Cosgrove was discussing J.’s travails—or was it schemes?—as if they were events in a television series, something one views rather than experiences.

Four, I was visualizing myself as a contestant in one of those pageants where you get a chance to hope for something important, such as World Peace. All I hoped for was for my friends to be happy: meaning that the Family would hold together.

Inside, we sat up close, thrown right into the heart of this resplendent show, the last of the great operettas, in which grace, wit, and comedy (and a grand theme) accompany the Big Sing that too many cheaply operatic musicals have debased for us.
Titanic
is the real thing—and Cosgrove knew it at once, when the prelude of water music moved from gentle to rough, like a date that slips past teasing into rape. Just after, the action begins not with the expected harbor scene but with the ship’s architect wandering on in front of the curtain, phlegmatic, optimistic, concerned … and Cosgrove turned to me and
nodded.

I never fail to get a kick out of the uncanny sense of
communitas
that live theatre provides: all those people, silent and motionless in the dark, yet at their quickest as they fix upon the stage to absorb a single entertainment each in his fashion. Of course, it was in the theatre where I signed my gay contract; I’m sentimental. Still, theatregoing is gay life in miniature, isn’t it?—all in the same playhouse, each admiring the show in his unique way.

Cosgrove certainly admired this one. As the first-act curtain fell on the now famous view of the little model of a
Titanic
crossing the stage to meet the (unseen) iceberg, Cosgrove almost jumped out of his seat with excitement. During the intermission, he tried singing snatches of the score as the rest of us milled about and exchanged the odd pleasantry with acquaintances. Peter and Lars Erich were huddling and cooing in that new-kids-on-the-block manner that I find a bit irritating, though I did enjoy watching Lars Erich angling his torso this way and that to display his shockingly expansive V-slope. Peter couldn’t keep his hands off the guy.

“I just love having a Lars Erich Blücher in our gang,” Dennis Savage was whispering to me. “Everyone should have three names and a nineteen-inch waist and quote Hammacher Schlemmer, or whoever that was.”

“Georg Heym.”

“Okay,” said Cosgrove. “It’s all ready.” And he sang:

You say ‘angelic,’ and I say ‘satanic’;

You crave a boat ride—oh, let’s take
Titanic
!

“Is that from this show?” I asked.

“Perhaps it was in the interscherzo.”

“
What
interscherzo?” Dennis Savage countered. Then he impulsively tousled Cosgrove’s hair, and blushed.

“The crab’s going soft!” Cosgrove crowed. “At last I win!”

There came, just then, a sharp report, like the slap of something against something, and we all looked around. Yet we saw nothing but these two tall guys staring at each other: Peter and Lars Erich. Peter had his hand to his cheek, and Lars Erich had grabbed him close. His voice menacingly low even as he smiled, Lars Erich said, “Na so werden wir zu Kumpels then, and you see what becomes if I do not like what I am hearing.”