The Men from the Boys (44 page)

I turn around and face him. The pinkness of his scalp shows through his white hair. He looks at me wide-eyed and greedy, and I can see right through his skin. I can see his wife and four daughters and the large glass windows of his Hyannis Port home. I can see his BMW, his Labrador retriever, his gay porno magazines stuffed in the back of a drawer.

“I'm not straight,” I snap at him, turning to walk away. But then I stop, surprising myself. “In fact,” I tell him, “I'm as queer as they come.” His pink face grows pale as my voice rises in intensity and speed. “I'm ACT UP. I'm Queer Nation. You should've seen me in drag a couple Halloweens ago. Very feminine, very pretty. No real straight guy would ever put on a bra. That's because straight guys are boring. I wouldn't be straight if you paid me a million dollars. Ten million dollars!”

I walk up close to him. “Look, I don't mean to ruin your fantasy. It's hot, if you don't think too much about the implications. But you need to get a grip, girl. Live in the real world. These guys you blow—they aren't straight. They're as gay as I am. As
you
are.” I smile. “I'm just trying to do you a favor, mister. You can't have it only your way. Believe me when I tell you: the world doesn't always follow your lead.”

I leave him flabbergasted in the bushes. Suddenly the way out is clear and obvious: why didn't I see it before? I return to Javitz's car, start it up, head home.

I drive to the beach at Herring Cove. There are hundreds of people here, gay men and lesbians and straight families with kids. They toss beach balls back and forth, they dip their toes timidly in the water, they blare their radios and portable CD players with everything from Bach to Blondie. But they make little impression on me as I walk. I stop to watch a seabird running ahead of the surf. It leaves little three-toed prints in the sand that keep getting washed away with every new lap of the tide. I think about Lloyd. I think about Eduardo. I think about Javitz.

This was all supposed to be much easier than it is. We were changing the rules, making our lives more authentic, honoring the love as it came, the friendships as they were made. We were fashioning new families out of whole cloth, tearing out the stitches that were tight, mismatched, weaving in only those that were beautiful and fitting. We were making our lives happier, more honest, more enduring.

Suddenly I'm alone on the beach. The people all have vanished, replaced only by the gulls and the steady beat of the surf. I feel myself settle into calm. I walk for miles, it seems. Occasionally the artificial world interrupts: a child's ball crossing my path, a dog barking, a shout of hello from someone I once knew. But it doesn't distract me from my course. I just keep walking, and at the end of the journey, I feel tired and good. I go back to the house as the sun begins to set, as the shouts and the whoops from the season's first big party night get carried along by the night breezes. Javitz is asleep; Chanel is in the kitchen, whipping up a spicy Spanish dish for dinner. I sit down in front of my computer and begin to write. I write about choices and fears, about passion and truth, about love and being alone, about everything—and everything in its season.

Boston, November 1994

Thanksgiving dinner: Lloyd and I, Javitz, Chanel, Tommy, Melissa and Rose.

“Pass the sweet potatoes,” Lloyd calls out.

“I made them with cinnamon,” Melissa tells him, sending over the bowl.

“Yummm.”

“We've got rhubarb pie for later,” I say. “Tommy made it.”

“Tommy made it?”

“Hey, way to go, Tommy boy.”

He blushes.

“Shouldn't we say grace?” Rose asks.

“Yes,” Lloyd says. “We should. Look at all this food. We should be grateful.”

“I'm grateful that Jeff and Javitz got up at five a.m. to baste the turkey,” Chanel says. “I can't imagine Jeff getting up at five a.m.”

“Well, I did,” I tell her.

“And me just out of the hospital,” Javitz says, hand over heart, batting his lashes like a simple southern Jewish belle.

“Instead of grace, how about if we all say what we're all thankful for?” Melissa suggests.

“All right.”

“Okay.”

“I already said I was thankful for Jeff and Javitz and this turkey,” Chanel says. “That, and single lesbians.”

Everybody laughs—except Melissa, I notice. Melissa must be thinking about Wendy, who last year sat with us around this table. This year, no one mentions her name.

“I'm thankful for my health, my heart, my soul, and the love of friends,” Lloyd says.

“Aww ...”

“I'm gonna cry.”

“I'm thankful for Rose,” Melissa says simply.

Rose reaches over and takes her hand. “I'm thankful that Javitz is sitting with us here today instead of lying in that musty old hospital bed.”

We all nod. Tommy and Lloyd raise their water glasses and clink a toast.

“I'm thankful for every
day,”
Javitz says, uncharacteristically subdued.

I smile at him.

“I'm thankful for being queer,” Tommy says.

“Hey, hey.”

“Hear, hear.”

And me? What shall I be thankful for? I look over at Lloyd. His green eyes are still looking at me, as they have all day, as they have since last week, since the day he spoke those horrible words.

It began pleasantly, inauspiciously, enough. “It's going to be a nice day after all,” I said just before he landed the bomb, watching through the skylight as the sun burned away the rainclouds.

It was a lazy late Sunday morning. Our room was still filled with nowers—daisies and white roses from Javitz, lilies from Chanel, chrysanthemums and irises from Melissa and Rose. We had come back from my father's funeral to find the house bedecked with flowers. Mr. Tompkins had started to eat the lilies, but otherwise they were fresh and fragrant. The flowers from our family made me cry for the first time. I sat down on the kitchen floor and Lloyd wrapped his arms around me. If only my father had once asked about my life today—if only he hadn't retreated behind the withering glare of my mother.

But on this Sunday morning, as we both slept in late, I felt much more alive than I had in weeks. Outside there was an excited chattering of birds, roused by the unexpected appearance of the sun. “Come on,” I said to Lloyd, poking him softly. “Come on.”

“Please,” he murmured, “please don't-I don't want to ...”

“Don't want to what? Make love?” I looked at him with big eyes. “Lloyd, it's been ...”

He sat up, his eyes crusty with sleep, his face creased from the contours of the pillow. He looked at me. He spoke the words. “Jeff,” he said, “there's no more passion.”

In that moment, the world bumped a little as it turned on its axis. In that moment, a hole ripped through the fabric of time and space, and I became clairvoyant. I could see weeks, months, years, into the future. I could see myself alone on a beach, Javitz dead and Lloyd very far away. But I closed my eyes against it: I could not bear to look. I waited until the portal had closed, until the world began to turn smoothly once again. The anarchy of the present, however frightening, was preferable to the certainty of the future.

I looked at him queerly, and I made a little laugh in disbelief. “What do you mean? That's not true. What are you talking about?”

He buried his face in my lap, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Us. The passion between us.”

“There's passion between us,” I insisted. I touched his face. “Dog. Come on. Of course there's passion.”

“Not like there was with Eduardo.”

Lloyd's voice brings me back now, calling to me from across the table. “What about you, Cat? You haven't told us what you're thankful for.”

Suddenly I feel very sad. Here we all are, gathered together in the home Lloyd and I have made, a fire in the wood-burning stove, Mr. Tompkins under the table waiting for scraps. Everyone's laughing, carrying on. There's no call for sadness, not today, not when Javitz is home from the hospital and we're all together. But I feel sad nonetheless.

“Cat?” Lloyd asks. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I lie. “I'm thankful for life. For my life. Our lives.”

“How profound!” Chanel laughs.

“You always know just how to grab a guy, Jeff,” Tommy says.

“I'm not going to touch that line,” Javitz says, and guffaws—in that laugh of his that I'll never forget, not in a hundred years.

I'm still looking at Lloyd. He smiles. I smile back. But I'm remembering his words: will I ever forget them?

“Okay, let's eat,” Rose says, digging into her plate.

Lloyd keeps looking at me. We hold our gaze for several seconds. Between us, at the head of the table, is Javitz. I realize he's looking at me, too, and at Lloyd. The three of us share a moment, a soft, silent look that passes around from each of us to the others. Then we blink back whatever it was and join in with the feast.

Provincetown, May 1995

When I walk in and see Eduardo sitting beside Javitz's bed, his hands dangling awkwardly between his legs, I know I would never have seen him again if not for this chance of fate.

“Hi,” I say, coming into the room. Javitz had asked for root beer; I'd gone to the A&P to get some. Ernie had been here then. He must have let Eduardo in.

I set the root beer down beside Javitz's bed. “Hello, darling,” he says to me. “Look who came by to pay his respects.”

Eduardo smiles, looking up at me with those empty eyes. “Hi, Jeff.”

“We've had a nice talk, haven't we?” Javitz says. “He's told me all about his new job.”

“Well, it's an internship,” Eduardo corrects.

“Whatever, darling. But now I'm ready for a nap again. It's all I seem to be doing these days.”

“Okay,” Eduardo says. “I just wanted to come by. I've—missed you.” He stands, bending down to kiss Javitz good-bye.

“And I've missed
you,”
Javitz tells him.

I walk with Eduardo down the stairs. We're quiet. I expect he'll leave quickly now, make some excuse, dodge out of here as fast as he can. But he turns to face me.

“What did the tests show?”

“What did he tell you they showed?”

“Nothing.”

“He's right.” I walk into the living room. “He's got to go up to Beth Israel. They need to do an MRI. Maybe a spinal tap.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“Eduardo, he has AIDS.”

He sits down on the couch. I sit opposite him in a chair.

“How's Tommy?” I ask.

“He's good.” Eduardo looks over at me. “I'm sorry you guys had that argument.”

“Was that what it was?” I ask. “I couldn't quite figure out what that encounter was.”

“He's going through a lot of shit, as I'm sure you can imagine.”

“He hates me,” I say simply.

Eduardo sighs. “He's just ...”

“He hates me.” I smile. “Do you?”

“No,” he says, as if that were the silliest thing in the world. “I don't hate you.”

“I'm glad about that, at least.”

“Oh, Jeff. What do you want from me? What do you want me to say?”

“I'm not sure.” I smile. “I guess I'm just trying to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“What happened. With us, with you, with me. I don't think I want anything from you, Eduardo. I might have, just a few weeks ago. But now—now, I think I just want to understand.” I look over at him. Such a small, thin child, sitting terrified on the edge of the seat. “Do you love Tommy?” I ask quietly.

“Yes,” he says, gathering himself. “Yes, I do. He's been wonderful to me. When we first met, I was pretty scared, confused. I was starting school, feeling overwhelmed, intimidated. He gave me incredible support.”

“Maybe he'll get you to move to the South End now that you work for a gay newspaper.” I smile, trying to get him to do so as well.

Eduardo shifts a little uncomfortably. “It's just an internship. After school I want to get a job with Condé Nast.”

“Of course,” I say, and I can't help laughing.

“Jeff, it's different with Tommy.”

“How is it different?”

“Tommy needs me.”

“And I didn't. Is that it?”

“Tommy's my best friend. He's—so unlike any man I've ever known. We can be at a party together and we're just there, together. I can be off all night talking to someone, and he'll be off doing his thing, but then we leave together. Always. That's the way it is. It's very—”

“Very what?”

“He's my
best friend,”
he repeats.

“So you don't have sex?”

“Not everything has to be about sex, Jeff.”

“No,” I agree. “But it's good when some things are.”

Eduardo shakes his head, and there's a hint of a smile. “You'll never change.”

“Oh, don't say that,” I reply, and I mean it. “I hope I've changed some since you saw me last.”

“I hope so, too.” We hold each other's eyes for several seconds. He begins to smirk. “Yes, even though it's none of your business.”

“Yes, what?”

“We do have sex.”

I smile. “With or without your cock ring?”

Now he can't help smiling as well. “Jeff ...” he warns.

“So tell me about school. How it went.”

He looks at me a moment, as if he doesn't quite know what to make of me or my question. Then it appears he decides to trust me, for now. “My teachers really liked my stuff,” he says, leaning back into the cushions of the couch. “You know those posters showing the guy looking up at the Hancock tower, plastered all over town?”