Now and Yesterday (5 page)

Yet there was ecstasy in those chill harmonies. Tuning into planetary cycles felt like liberation from the strictures of civilization, even if it was civilization that kept us alive.

“Now this is more like existence as I understand it, eh?” said Harold, as they stood in the roofless ruins of the Inca temple, looking out over the Urubamba Valley, shading their eyes with their hands, squinting.

“ ‘High reef of the human dawn,' ” said Peter, quoting Neruda, from one of the scores of books they'd devoured in preparation for the trip to Peru. It was early morning, before the day tourists arrived; they'd spent the night at the site's tiny guesthouse. Morning brightness pressed down to meet the jutting peak they stood upon.

“We've always been here and we always will be, Peter.”

That moment did feel eternal—and moments are perhaps the only places where one can look for eternity. Peter knew from the start that Harold had heard the same thunder in Elmhurst, Queens, that he had heard in the mountains up north, and that was the bedrock of their bond. And that thunder was in bed with them that night in Peru, as they made love beneath overlaundered blankets on a squeaky bed in a drafty hotel room in Aguas Calientes; and it was with them on all the other nights they ever spent together, including the last, when Peter sat up faithfully past midnight with a nurse and Harold's sister, in that same room in Brooklyn Heights where he now stood, and Harold, shortly before the end, mute and skeletal, woke from a nap and looked at Peter in wonder, still in command of some vital bit of knowledge, though the rest of his faculties had slipped away weeks before.

When Peter confessed to Jonathan, at the housewarming, that he'd been feeling lonely, despite all the dates with young men, Jonathan nodded gently.

“Look,” he said, “it will take a while to find someone on your wavelength.”

“It's been twenty years.”

“Yes, and it may never happen again.”

They were in the new bathroom. Peter ran his fingers over a band of golden antique tesserae that had been set into a wall of watery green glass tile.

“I feel . . . exiled from my own life,” he said.

“Coraggio,”
whispered Jonathan.

Peter gave Jonathan a little kiss on the cheek and marveled how good his friend smelled. The fragrance was Black Tourmaline, Jonathan said. It had been designed to encapsulate the talismanic qualities of the mineral black tourmaline, which was used to ward off evil energies. Peter hoped the talisman would work. Among the other things that Jonathan told him as they chatted in the bathroom was that a couple of recent PSA tests and a prostate exam—his first, now that he was in his early sixties—had “turned up something.” A bit had been snipped and was being biopsied. Jonathan was hoping for the best. He was going in for a scan the very next day.

E
ven before the party was over, Will had tidied up Jonathan's kitchen. When Jonathan appeared to announce that the last guests were gone, Will had finished turning the bar back into a breakfast nook.

“Golly,” said Jonathan. The sink and counters were clear and the dishwasher was churning.

“The leftover food's in the refrigerator,” said Will. “I stacked all the glasses in their trays, back by the service door. And . . . you recycle, don't you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“That's what I thought. So the bottles are in the trash room, in that big blue bin.” Will looked around. “I think that's everything.”

“Awesome. You're the best bartender ever,” said Jonathan. “Sorry people stayed so late.”

“No problem,” said Will.

It was just after midnight. The housewarming had gone on much longer than Jonathan planned for. He pulled off his cap and rubbed his head.

“Sure I can't give you a few hors d'oeuvres to take home?” said Jonathan. “Some crab?”

“Oh, no—but thank you,” said Will.

Jonathan handed him a small white envelope.

“I stuck in a little extra. You did a really great job, Will.”

“Thanks, it was fun.”

“Thank
you
. I was so glad to get your number and the glowing recommendation.”

“Yeah, he's a great guy.”

“You know, he always throws this little Christmas party. Maybe he can use you. . . .”

“He's already asked me—you know, to bartend.”

“Wonderful, wonderful.”

“You have great friends.”

“Thanks, yeah, they're a good bunch. I'm a lucky man.”

“How long have you been in New York?”

“Ooh—thirty-some years, now. Since the seventies.”

“I guess it takes time to build up a network of friends like that.”

“Well, sure,” said Jonathan tentatively, not sure where Will was going. “I mean, friends happen. All you have to do is be ready.”

Will made a mock-cowering face.

“I
guess
I'm ready,” he said. “I just got here, in New York.”

“Oh, from where?”

“L.A. I went to school in San Francisco. My family's from Santa Barbara.”

“Uh-huh. And what are your plans?”

“A job, a life.”

“Perfect. In that order? What kind of job are you looking for?”

“Magazines.”

“Editing?”

“Editing, writing. I did a few things for
San Francisco Magazine
.”

“What kind of things?”

“Movie reviews, restaurant reviews. Celebrity interviews.”

“Oh? What celebrities?”

“Music, mostly. People who played the big venues—Beyoncé, Carole King, Ringo Starr.”

“Hmm, cool. Well, with those clips you should certainly be able to find
some
thing.”

“I hope so.”

“You will. Just keep pushing.”

Thirty minutes later, Will was standing in RecRoom, a lounge-y gay bar in Hell's Kitchen, themed like a '60s suburban basement recreation room. A stop there was technically on Will's way home to Astoria, since he had to go up to Times Square, anyway, to catch the 7, and RecRoom wasn't all that far away from the subway. He was tired and craved some lively company after the gig at Jonathan's place.

He had gotten a beer and parked himself in a strategic position across from the bar, at the end of a high wood-paneled counter, near a vintage ceramic lamp with a grasscloth shade. The place was indeed lively but not packed, since this was a weekday night, and the crowd was as expected: no one over thirty-five, everyone in neat shirts and sweaters, sporting neat-but-not-too-neat hairdos. A Rihanna remix, cranked up to the max, was working hard to displace every cubic inch of space not already occupied by people, furniture, and drinks.

“Hey,” said a skinny boy wearing a narrow tie, who was suddenly standing next to Will.

“Hey,” said Will, smiling.

“Scott,” said the boy.

“Hi, Scott, Jonathan,” said Will.

“Hi, Jonathan.”

“I like your tie.”

“Thanks! I love this song!”

“Yeah, it's great!”

And they said nothing further to each other, as Scott was suddenly off chatting with another boy, and anyway, Will was focused on a handsome guy with longish hair, at the bar, with whom he had shared a look a few minutes before, when they were both ordering drinks. The guy, who was chatting with friends, knew Will was watching, and Will knew that lots of other guys were watching him.

Will stood out, even in a crowd like this. He was more than cute; he was handsome in a square-jaw, strong-nose kind of way. Just over six feet tall, with a shock of styled-but-not-too-styled black hair, he possessed a bright, easy smile that dimpled his cheeks and made him look approachable—like he was having fun. Having pulled off, in the cab on the way to RecRoom, the button-front shirt he'd worn for Jonathan's party, he was now in a tight gray T-shirt that emphasized the gray-blue of his eyes and revealed the differential between his broad shoulders and narrow, athletic waist.

And he
was
having fun. After only six months in New York, he still found gay life in the city
lots
of fun, even the parts of it that were glitzy, or tawdry, or palpably bridge-and-tunnel. He liked the energy in New York, and, at twenty-eight, he was ready for anything.

“Hi!” screamed a boy in a little hat, holding a tumbler with a straw.

“Hello,” said Will.

“Hi, hi! Aren't you Romy's friend?” The friends whom the boy had been talking with, nearby, watched eagerly for the outcome of this exchange.

“Umm, nope,” said Will.

“Romy—Haitian Romy! Romaine!”

“Sorry.”

“Oh—OK.” And the boy went back to his friends.

Will took another sip of his beer. He liked the vibe at RecRoom—it was relaxed, unforced. He liked that the place seemed designed to make you feel at home, among family and friends, which was much better than the supposedly super-hip gay bars that made you feel like you were part of a performance installation in an art gallery or trendy retail establishment; or the ones that were so popular with the older generation and had become a kind of national gay-bar vernacular, the garages, warehouses, and bunkers that made you feel like you needed an anonymous hookup, even if that wasn't necessarily what you came for. Will had heard that there were even a few bars of an earlier vintage, from the '50s and '60s, still grinding away, somewhere in New York: the Village piano bars peddling good times behind semi-closed doors, gin-and-Judy-style, and the clubbier, uptown establishments with discreetly unmarked doors, that were more like old-school cocktail parties, for the jacket-and-tie crowd. Will had no idea what kind of feelings those places might evoke, but they did sound like weird fun—living history! The city as museum! Will wasn't quite sure, in fact, what he was looking for, when he went out—friends? Fuckbuddies? A boyfriend? At least this was a real place to go, instead of the computer.

“A life and a job” is what he had told Jonathan he was seeking, but a boyfriend was somewhere in there, too. Will had grown up in the sunny embrace of upper-middle-class comfort in Santa Barbara, and through college and afterward had remained close to his tight-knit family, especially his mom and two younger sisters. After graduating with a degree in English, he had stuck around Berkeley and drifted among a series of genteel but not precisely career-track jobs in magazine publishing. He went out with other gay guys sometimes, but often preferred to hang out with his girlfriends or spend time with his family—that was fun, easy. And it had been easy to drift on like this, year after year, since the parents were always happy to help out with some rent, or a car, or a skiing trip. Yet during the previous year Will had begun to feel a sort of disturbing compression between his current life and whatever was supposed to come next, as well as an alarming decompression between his sunny childhood and the present, which was distinctly cloudy. His most recent job, the one in Los Angeles he had left to come to New York for, had put a question in Will's mind and focused it with a clarity that felt both exciting and scary:
Where the hell am I supposed to be going with my life?

It was a job that Will aced: executive assistant to the very pressured head of a magazine publishing company, a woman he liked and respected, who took a liking to him. Though full of tense moments resulting from huge responsibilities, the job allowed Will to “overdeliver,” as his boss liked to say, through good judgment, attention to detail, and willingness to remain on-duty after hours. The boss valued Will's efforts, and he came to value the opportunity to serve and observe someone so fiercely dedicated to her company and its mission—someone whose own personal mission seemed fused with the arc of her career. Working for this woman, Will came to think he should have a mission, too—but wondered why he didn't already have one, and if twenty-eight was too late to discover one.

Once, Will asked his boss if she had always been so driven.

“No. I was always smart,” she said. “I had good habits—you know, work hard, keep your promises, all that. But I remember clearly, one day on my first job, at a company in New York, going up in the elevator with some coworkers—we were all entry-level— and somebody joked about ‘Who cares how good that report is? Let's just get it off our desks by noon.' And I said, ‘
I
fucking care'—and it felt like such a powerful thing to say, so adult. And that thing above all, Will, is the key to success.”

“I see,” said Will. The ideas were not new to him; his parents had told him as much. But somehow, in the passionate words of his boss, the ideas took on urgency.

“And I look for this quality, now, whenever I do a deal or hire someone,” she continued.

“You do?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “And I saw it in you.”

“You did?”

It was a powerful moment for Will, and he planned the move to New York as a kind of catalyst for his life, even if he had no exact plan to follow.

Later, when his boss asked if he was moving to New York “with anyone or to be with anyone,” he felt sad to say no. It suddenly felt odd, though he'd already attended the weddings of several high school and college friends, that he had not yet been in love himself, really
in love
. During his mid- and late twenties he'd dated two or three guys semi-seriously, but wound up wondering, months later, what he had ever seen in them, besides good looks. Still, no sweat, nothing lost. Then there was a relationship that lasted for two years, with a handsome man slightly older than Will, a movie studio executive with a glass penthouse in Century City and a fifty-five-foot Ferretti docked at Marina del Rey. They were trophy boyfriends for each other, and Will understood that, and then the excitement of the first few months gave way to more domestic concerns and questions about the future. When he and the movie guy broke up, that
did
seem like a loss, though Will couldn't figure out exactly why, beyond the generic reason of incompatibility he gave his sisters and girlfriends. It should have worked, Will thought, and he didn't know what directions might be open to him, other than trophy-ism, until he started interviewing music stars for his magazine assignments. Many of these were true artists and big spirits, despite all the celebrity, who were telling Will that love did matter, that it was possible and changed everything. It wasn't only about looks and it started with
you
.

Did people still have that kind of love? Was it possible for him, or had his generation been programmed away from it? The laxness of his California gay friends in finding “the one” finally proved too annoying. “Oh, something'll happen, someday,” they laughed. “Eff love, anyway—who cares?” Which sounded wrong to Will. Happily echoing his boss he said, “
I
fucking care.”

The music in RecRoom shifted from R&B to trip-hop to classic disco. Will felt himself happily swaying along.

The long-haired guy, still over by the bar, caught Will's eye again, then moved off, with a knowing look, toward the hallway where the phones and restrooms were. Will followed, and found the guy in one of the small one-at-a-time restrooms, the door to which he had left ajar. Will slipped in and shut the door behind him. Without a word Will pressed the guy into the wall and the two began kissing. It was a warm, hungry embrace, amplified by the groping of pecs and crotches, which quickly led to cocks out and then a brief turn each, on knees, with cock in mouth. Then, after more kissing, the other guy took hold of Will's cock and jerked him off, in less than a minute.