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Authors: William J. Mann

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BOOK: Where The Boys Are
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“Sounds like a lot of fun.”
I shake my head in amusement. “That’s just it. It is. Part of the appeal of the circuit scene—of gay male culture in general—is that it allows men to remain boys. I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that says that’s always such a bad thing. It’s actually really wonderful, but there’s a flip side to the Peter Pan syndrome, which is immaturity and irresponsibility. The fear of growing up, growing old.”
“You talk like a writer,” Anthony observes.
I feel my face flush. That speech is, in fact, part of an essay I’ve been writing in my head for over a year, but which I’ve never been able to get down onto paper. “Don’t ever give me a soapbox,” I say, “because I’ll take it every time.”
“No,
really.”
Anthony looks at me seriously. “I
like
talking to you, Jeff. You’ve really thought stuff through. I’ve never met anybody like you.”
The waiter arrives with our breakfasts. Anthony licks his lips and rubs his hands together, salting his eggs heavily, breaking the yolks and spreading them all over the whites. He pours at least a cup of maple syrup over his pancakes. He eats ravenously. I watch him a minute before carefully starting myself.
“So tell me about being independently wealthy,” Anthony says between bites, a dribble of syrup on his chin. “Do you come from money?”
“Oh, God, no.” I practically choke on my rye toast. “Money is
definitely
not from where I come.” I pause. I hate moments like these, but they always seem to work themselves into conversations whenever I meet someone new. They’ll ask what I do, I’ll say “nothing,” and then they’ll ask how it works. A logical progression of thought. Except that I don’t want to get into the answer too deeply. “A friend died a few years ago,” I explain. “He left me some money.”
“Was this friend your lover?” Anthony asks softly.
I sigh. “Once, a long time ago.” I hesitate. “But later... we evolved into something else... something beyond that. It’s hard to describe what we were to each other. We were family, but even more than the way family is usually defined by straights.”
“So you were close, then.”
“Yeah.” I smile at him warmly. “You can definitely say we were close.”
Anthony opens his eyes wide. “Well, it must have been quite a lot of money he left you if you don’t have to work.”
“It
was
more than I expected,” I admit.
Truth was, both Lloyd and I had been stunned by the total amount of Javitz’s estate. For a working-class community-college professor, he’d socked away a good chunk of cash. Plus there was his annuity, not to mention the several life insurance plans of which he’d made us joint beneficiaries. Long had I dreamed of financial security, and Javitz had been privy to many hair-pulling moments when I’d dodged creditors’ calls or torn up credit cards. But the irony of achieving such financial freedom at the cost of losing the greatest friend I’ve ever known is almost too much to bear. What good is financial security when your emotional ground is pulled out from under your feet?
“Actually,” I admit, letting out a long breath, “the money won’t last much longer. I
do
need to do something eventually.
Some
kind of work.”
“And what kind of work would that be?”
I smile. I don’t like talking about my writing, but it’s preferable to talking about Javitz. “You’ve already hit on it,” I tell him. “In a past life, I was a writer. A journalist. I worked for a newspaper and then went freelance. Did some writing on my own.” I laugh, looking across the room at some indefinable point. “Once I actually thought I’d write something important. A novel or a screenplay or something grand like that.”
“Maybe you still will.”
“Yeah, and maybe Tom Cruise will come out of the closet.” Time to move on to another topic, I decide. “And what do
you
do?” I ask. I love flipping the conversation around.
Anthony’s finishing his eggs, wiping up the yolk with the remnants of his pancakes. He doesn’t look up as he answers. “Nothing at the moment,” he says, echoing me. “But I am not independently wealthy. Not anywhere
near
it.”
I smile. I’m really beginning to feel some warmth toward this guy. I’ve always liked people without privilege. I’ve never much cared for middle-class guys whose daddies set them up with trust funds and bank accounts and credit cards. My weakness is always for guys like myself, from blue-collar families and working-class backgrounds.
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“Near Chicago.” Anthony wipes his mouth with a napkin and tosses it onto his now-empty plate. “But I’ve moved around a lot since.”
“Like where?”
Anthony averts his eyes. “Oh, too many places to get into.”
I frown a little. “So what brought you to New York?”
He shrugs. “Same thing that brings anybody here, I guess. I thought maybe I could find something to do with myself, some kind of career.”
“And what kind of career do you want?”
“Not sure.”
I look at him. “Well, what did you do before you came here?”
“Odd jobs. Nothing for very long.”
Okay,
I think.
Is this guy being deliberately vague on details?
The old investigative journalist in me is starting to sense some stonewalling. So I ask, “Did you go to school for anything in particular?”
Anthony smiles. “Yeah. I got a degree. Just a two-year college, but it was a degree.”
“A degree in what?” This is like pulling teeth.
“Office management.”
“Well, that’s something.” I decide to leave the last piece of toast (too many carbs) and motion to the waiter, who quickly snatches up both our plates. “What about your family?” I ask. “Where are they?”
Anthony looks away from me. “I don’t see my family anymore.”
I study him. “Was it the gay thing? Coming out?”
He just shrugs.
“Well,” I offer, “if it’s any consolation, it took mine a while, too, but they’ve come around.”
“Mine will
never
come around,” Anthony says plainly. And
decisively
—as if it’s as far as he’ll go on the subject.
“Okay.” I had zoned Javitz off-limits; he can do the same with his family. I take a sip of coffee. “So can you at least tell me where were you living before you came here?”
“Albany.” Anthony drains the last of his coffee and waves the waiter away when he attempts to refill it.
“What did you do in Albany?”
“This and that. Nothing important. I was only there a very short time.”
I raise my eyebrows and smile with a tinge of exasperation. “You are definitely coming across as a man of mystery, Anthony Sabe.”
He smiles. “There’s just not a lot to tell.”
Oh, I imagine there is, that there’s
much
more to Anthony than he’s willing to admit. No one spends their entire twenties doing nothing of importance, moving from city to city, jumping from job to job...
Or maybe they did. I pause, considering my own myopia. I’ve always hung around with
achievers:
people with ambition, direction. Until my recent aimlessness, I myself had been fiercely driven to succeed. I consider that my own current situation might offer a clue in understanding Anthony. Maybe guys like him
do
exist; I’ve just never met one until now. Maybe our aimless energies attracted us to each other.
But no. There’s something more going on than just that. Anthony might lack ambition and direction, but he’s far too bright to have spent an entire decade as an adult that way. Anthony’s no slacker, no vagabond. He’s hiding something. Look at that body. It implies a gym membership somewhere, and those things cost money.
Aha!
My eyes light up looking across the table at him. Maybe he’d been a
kept boy.
Sure, that’s it. Wealthy older man pays Anthony’s way all through his twenties. Then, on the cusp of thirty, he gets tossed out, replaced by some new, younger twink. Hadn’t Anthony just said he’d been out six months? Maybe he didn’t mean out as
gay,
but out as an
independent
gay man.
No
, I think to myself, watching him fiddle with his coffee cup. That’s not it, either. I narrow my eyes as I study the young man across the table. It may be a few years since I’ve done any actual investigative reporting, but my instincts are still as sharp as ever. I’ve always trusted those instincts, and rarely have they failed me. Anthony’s not a liar. There’s absolutely nothing disingenuous about him, nothing cagey. If he says he’s only been out for six months, I should take him at his word.
Still, to go through your entire twenties without a relationship? There was no girlfriend, he said—
“Are you two finished?”
It’s a woman, nosing over us, trying to get a jump on our table.
“Not quite,” I tell her, keeping my eyes on Anthony.
I return to my thoughts. No girlfriend ... but might there have been a
wife?
Anthony’s transfixed again by the glitter on his hands. Denying a girlfriend isn’t the same as lying about a wife. Is that it? Had he left a family behind? Were there kids, too? The image seems
very
incongruous, I have to admit: Anthony seems far too much like a kid himself to have any of his own.
I can’t deny that my curiosity is piqued. Who
is
this guy?
Anthony looks up and smiles over at me. Damn, those dimples again.
“I like you, Jeff,” he says.
I smile automatically in return. “You do? How come?”
“Well, you’re awfully handsome, to start.”
I wink. “I need a better answer than that.”
“Okay. You’re funny. And you ask a lot of questions. That means you’re interested in other people, not just stuck on yourself.”
I lean my chin on my hand. “Some would say otherwise, but go on.”
“There are people who talk only about themselves—or worse, about nothing in particular.” Anthony rolls his eyes. I listen carefully, for every statement might be a clue to who he is and where he’s from. “You know what I mean? They’ll talk about the weather or what’s for dinner or the stupid television or who’s got cigarettes. They never ask you anything about
you
. I like people who
really
ask you stuff. That’s how I want to be. If I’m going to talk to you, I want to get to
know you
. There’s so much more to somebody than just what they show outside.”
The waiter comes by to ask if everything is okay. I assure him it is. He places the check down on the table and the woman is immediately back. “Are you finished
now?”
she asks.
I look at her, annoyed. She’s about my age, pretty, with a chubby boyfriend in tow. “If it’s okay with you,” I tell her, “I’d like to have these last two sips of coffee that are left in my cup.”
She snorts, turning back to her boyfriend. I hear “faggots” under her breath.
“Excuse me; I didn’t hear you,” I say, starting to stand, feeling the sudden pump of adrenalin.
“She didn’t say anything,” the boyfriend says meekly.
“What did she say, Jeff?” Anthony asks.
I settle back down. The anger subsides as quickly as it rose. The host seats the couple far away from us at the other side of the restaurant.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
“What did she say, Jeff?”
I’m just shaking my head. “No matter where you go, even here in fucking Chelsea, there’s always someone ready to get down on fags.”
“Did she call us that?”
“Forget it.” Lloyd would be counseling me to send her love. But I can’t help it. I hope she chokes on her bagel. “Let’s just take a walk.”
I open my wallet. Anthony offers to pay his share, but I won’t let him, prompting him to sit back in his chair and beam over at me. I pull out a twenty and a ten from my money clip and wink.
“Let’s go. I need to get some air.”
Ninth Avenue is cold, but it feels good after being closed in with all those bodies. The dance floor is one thing; cramped cafés reeking of bacon grease and populated with snot-nosed homophobes are decidedly another. I take a long, deep breath. The first couple of blocks we walk in silence.
I’m not sure what will happen next. I kind of like this guy, and I have to admit I’m intrigued. I’d love to have more time to figure him out, to slowly extract his story bit by bit. It’s what I loved most as a writer: interviewing people, discovering their experiences, their values, and sometimes, when I was lucky, their secrets.
But fate has deigned to merely cross our paths, nothing more. After all, Anthony’s in New York, poised for some new life, and I’m heading back to Boston. I really can’t afford to get involved with someone right now; the drama with Lloyd is way too complicated. Besides, I know from experience that spending more than a day with a trick can often have disastrous results. I still smart over how much I’d come to care for Eduardo, my summer love of five years ago. No, it’s best just to shake hands with Anthony and walk away. Wish him good luck and a happy New Year, and quickly hop on the subway.
BOOK: Where The Boys Are
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