Ladies' Man (29 page)

"You freaked?" He smiled at me. I snapped to. "No! No! I mean, yeah! But not, hey, listen, man, I don't care what anybody's into as long as it's cool and they don't interfere with me getting mine."

"Gee, Kenny, that means a lot coming from you." He smirked and started eating.

"Hey, no, Donny, I didn't mean… Hey, gimme a break, huh? Christ." I cringed. "I musta sounded like a real jerk on Christopher Street."

"Nah." He wiped his lips with two fingers under his napkin. "More like a fucking schmuck."

"Shit, how could you let me goon like that?" I couldn't help grinning. It was inappropriate but I couldn't help it. A cousin of mine had died when I was twelve. When I heard the news I couldn't help grinning then either.

Donny shrugged. "I just didn't think that was the right place to tell you, you know… I dunno… I thought it was funny."

I couldn't stop running through my brain all the things I'd said. Every time a newly recalled wisecrack came up I felt like twitching. For- some reason this felt many times heavier than realizing that Donny was a faggot My eyes went into a glassy lock again.

"C'mon, eat your veal." Donny jutted his chin at my food, fighting an amused smile.

"Damn, I remember when I had you on the horn, Thursday night. I said we'd go out and get laid. That must have felt weird for you, huh?"

"Nah, I fuck girls too. I was married, Kenny, remember?"

"Oh, yeah, so there's hope for you yet, huh? This is blowing my mind, Donny." I laughed, holding my forehead. "How do you feel telling me?"

"Relieved." He speared a scallop. "I wouldn't even bother telling you if I didn't dig you, man. And I was nervous about it too. Because you threw me."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, at first I figured
you
were gay, man. You're not, are you?"

"Me?" I touched my chest.

"I didn't think so from the way you were talking tonight, but Wednesday and Thursday I wasn't sure. And when we were up in your crib Thursday night, it seemed like you were coming on to me."

I dropped my jaw. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"You know, when you took off your shirt and started doing sit-ups and the like… I thought that was pretty crude myself. And then when you went into the bedroom right after—I mean, I'm not stupid, Kenny, I mean, you kept saying how
good
I looked and shit."

That was so not the story that I didn't know how to explain without it coming out phony.

"But I was really doing sit-ups and I was freaking out about La Donna." I started eating to show him it was hardly worth explaining. "And the funny thing about me mentioning that
you
looked so good was that I wanted you to say that
I
looked good. Did you ever hear of fishing for compliments? That's probably why I started doing sit-ups, too. I been workin' out for years and you know I'm insecure like anybody else, man, and you know… like that."

"Whew." Donny shook his head, grimly staring at his food. He looked relieved. "That's wild, 'cause I was real pissed, man, real bummed out. I thought you just wanted to ball. See, that's what happens when people don't talk to each other. Everybody gets crazy on their own wavelength. And that's another thing, whether you're straight or gay, man, I'm not interested in coming on to you, you know?"

"I'm that bad, huh?" I was fishing again.

"No, man. Just the opposite. You're in pretty good shape; that's one of the reasons. At first, you know, straights basically look like shit for the most part but, ah, you're not my type and besides, we're friends, man."

"Well, I never," I lisped.
Who's
friends. "G'head, make fun, dipshit." He smirked. We buried our noses in dinner. So my man here swung to the left. Marron. It was a wig. but not a major wig. Maybe because it wasn't that major a wig for him. Also, he didn't want no nut off me. I would've picked it up if he did. So what was the story here? What did he want, friendship? It seemed that way. Suddenly I felt very nervous, rushed, as if someone had shoved a sixty-page contract under my nose written in Micronesian and was jabbering at me to read, initial and sign it in blood in thirty seconds. "And you got to be kidding. You're talking to Kenny Watchyurstep. Friends. Slowly, slowly. We ate quietly for a while, only talking to order coffee."

"When did you get into it, Donny?" I asked, hoping that the question didn't sound like an interview. Trying to maintain a light, casual tone like when I asked Mrs. Macready the age of her mongoloid son.

"What, guys? Not until after my marriage broke up. I mean, I did shit when I was a kid, everybody did."

"Not me," I drawled.

"Not you," he smirked. "Anyways, I dunno, I used to read muscle development magazines and shit. A lot of guys start that way. I bought
Health and Strength
along with the paper. I was thinking about barbells, barbells, but, ah, I was having trouble with Barbara, my wife, around sex. We weren't hitting it off. I mean, nothing else was working either, so it wasn't surprising, but sometimes when we were fucking, in order to come I would fantasize about being in bed with a guy, about balling in bed with a guy. And sometimes I jerked off thinking about a guy. I never had a face and I never thought of any guy I knew… more it was just the idea of a cock instead of a cunt."

I wanted to ask him to be more specific. What did he do—take it or give it? I couldn't ask, but I wanted as much bizarre information as I could get, as if the mote aberrations I could collect on him the less relevant he would be to me, the safer I would feel around him.

"Anyway, after we broke up I kept the apartment on Carmine Street. I dated some chicks but, ah, nothing. I would walk around the Village and, like you said, I never seen so many faggots in my life, and I would peek into all the bars and, shit, and I knew what was happening, but I couldn't bring myself. I couldn't imagine picking up a guy and bringing him home, and the idea of kissing a guy on the lips grossed me out a lot more than a blowjob, you know? But one night I was lonely, by myself again, horny. I did some hash and some Scotch and walked over to this bar, Evans, that ain't there anymore, and you know, I was young, attractive, then. I'm still considered hot shit. I could hustle still if I wanted. But, anyway, so I'm in there, some guy comes up to me and I'm shitting pickles, man." He laughed, shaking his head. "He bought me a drink. I told him my name was Ar-mond Duhaney, can you dig it? The guy was hip. He knew. He invited me up to his joint, but I wouldn't. I was too scared, so he drove me home. We stopped under the highway and he blew me."

"When was this?" There was a court reporter in my head:

"I was twenty-three. Seven years ago. Christ, seven years ago. I wound up living with that guy for a few months. He was a real good dude, real tender, understanding. I was considered a catch because I was young and cherry. He was older, thirty, thirty-one, like us now."

"Please, don't remind me." The line came out phony and forced.

,- "After a while I started hanging out at the bars, the clubs. Guys were hitting on me all the time, but Ron, man, fucking Ron was always there to make sure I didn't mess around so I split. You can't do bars and monogamy at the same time. Oil and water. See, he brought me down there to show me off. I lived with a few more guys over the years but, ah, I dunno, I prefer being a free agent, I guess." He glanced at his empty coffee cup. He wasn't smiling. "And I trick a lot, man. Sometimes I score every night for weeks, sometimes two, three times a night. I won't even leave the bar. Depends what kind of mood I'm in, you know, and I run with chicks, too, man, now and then."

"You're bisexual." I was showing off. He was blowing me away. I felt as if I had never known him at all. I also realized that I'd found somebody as depressed as I was. But I was going back to school which made me better. . "Donny." I paused as the waiter refilled our cups.

"Can I ask you something? Did you and Maynard…"

"Did we get it on?"

"I mean, was Maynard…"

"Fuckin' Maynard… Yeah, Maynard was gay, is gay. He was like me, though. He didn't know which end was up. One time we got drunk in the playground one night. I drank too much and passed out on the bench by the basketball court. When I woke up my legs were across Maynard's lap and he had his hand in my .fly. I jumped sixty-two feet in the air. I was so scared I ran home. I didn't talk to him for weeks. And Maynard, poor Maynard, he didn't know what the fuck wa going on. He was drunk.' He… I don't think he'd ever done that before, and we never really talked about it, and you
know
how tight me and him used to be." He tossed his napkin on the table in disgust. "It was never the same after that. He was more scared of me than I was of him. Next fall I went to NYU and I almost never saw him after that—and I loved the cat, Kenny. That's how fucked up people are."

I took my cigarettes and offered him one, which he declined.

"Last time I saw Maynard was after I got into guys. I was into it about six months. I was twenty-four. I went up to see him in the Bronx. At that time he was married, had a kid already. He ran his father's record store on Williamsbridge Road. I walked in. He almost died. It was six years later and he was still uptight. I was the last person he wanted to see in the
world
, but I didn't know that because I was so excited about the new me, and I was looking at him trying to get across the changes I been through without spelling it out, and I
knew
that he knew that I knew that he knew blah blah blah—nothin', man. He didn't wanna know about nothin'. He was into the family, the kid, the hearth, the home. He was full of shit and he knew it. I dunno. The next year he broke up with her and took off for Morocco. I dunno what he's into now. Candy says he's a travel agent, good for him." Donny shrugged. "Wherever he's at now, good for him… you know? I mean, fuck it,
everybody's gotta live their life the way they want, the way they can handle it."

"Does Candy know?"

"About me?" He smiled. "Are you fuckin' kiddin' me? Candy would shit a giraffe."

We laughed and slapped palms. I had enough on him now so that I could finally relax.

"So what's this thing with La Donna? Who's La Donna? Gimme one of those." He grabbed a cigarette.

"Who… is… La Donna. That's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, Donny."

"You break up? I heard you're livin' with her. You're not, you are, what."

"Well, she walked on me, what, Tuesday? We were, living together, eight, nine months. It's
hard
, Donny, it's hard to make a go of it sometimes. I can't even talk about it anymore, it makes me sick.
I
make me sick. Maybe I should be a faggot, then I'd have better luck."

"You want her back?" Donny squinted every time he took a puff.

"Yes. No. I don't want the bullshit we had, and I would love to say fuck it. No, I
don't
want her back, but…"

I felt tired, bored with my own bullshit. "Awright, you wanna know what the lick is? The straight poop is that if we were to go back now I wouldn't want her to sing, to do anything. I would just want her to hug and kiss me full time." I made a face. "It's shit. I would want her to be my partner in isolation. Do you know what I mean?"

Donny nodded "sure."

"And sometimes like now I have moments of clarity and I know it's better that we split—for both of us. No one needs that crap, but, ah…" I shrugged. "I'm a weak person, Donny. I get lonely. When I get lonely my head gets lodged up my large intestine. I don't give a shit about clarity. I just want my baby. I don't care if it kills us both."

We sat there, both of us looking at our fingernails.

"But I'll tell you one thing that's worse than being lonely without her, Donny, and that's being lonely with her. When I'm with her and I know she's pulled out on me in her head, when I think maybe she's hip to me, then I really get crazy. I get horny, of all things, and I
wind up chasing her. The more I chase, the more she withdraws, and I wind up feeling like Dracula around sex."

"Why don't you just get laid on the outside?"

"I can't, man. I'm not built like that. I need it all in one place. And I'm not talkin' about romance. Fuck romance, romance is the shits, there's gotta be something else besides romance. I'm walking around with a big friggin' cannonball hole in my guts from romance." Tin hip, my man." Donny ditched his cigarette. "But it feels like it's either nothing, you know, a jump-jerk-and-squirt deal or I get into a year-long scorpion dance."

"It doesn't
have
to be that way, Kenny."

"Yeah, so I hear, but like last night, I picked up this girl, you know, and how do you say to somebody, 'Look, I just want to ball. I don't want to get heavy.' And she starts telling me all these sob stories about her childhood, how she got rucked over by her mother and shit. I
hate
that, man. I
cannot
tolerate people who walk around crying about what is no more, but she's coining on to me with these my mother did this, and my mother did that. I mean
everybody's
got horror stories from back then. Christ, you wanna hear horror stories? You wanna hear bad one-liners? My mother said to me once, 'Don't ever let your father know what type of person you really are 'cause it would kill him.' How about
that
one? I was
seven
, Donny, okay? Both of them. They would always torture me, tell me how I tore out everybody's heart, how they saved to buy me toys and clothes, and how I was a little ingrate, how I would never appreciate it. They used to call me a little torturer. I had a chronic blink when I was a kid and my old lady would pull her hair and cry and ask why I tortured her by blinking like that. See, that was supposed to stop the blink. And I was a little mope when I was a kid and was a little depressed—no big surprise but then they would get on my ass about that. I was torturing them with my moodiness. They would say shit like, This room was filled with sunshine until you walked in like a dark cloud'—real fuckin' poetry. And that made me even
more
depressed and they would intensify the torture angle, how I was torturing them and how they loved me, and
what
could they do to make me more happy, more human—'We try
everything, everything
! We love you so much.' I would freak out and feel like I wanted to die. One time when I was ten I wigged and started screaming at my old lady, '
Please, Please
, don't love me so much, I don't deserve it.' And she looked at me and said 'You don't want me to love you so much? Okay.' And she didn't speak to me for ten days. All she ever said to me was 'Drink your milk or 'Go to sleep.' Whenever I tried to kiss her goodnight she held tike newspaper between us and made like I wasn't there, and when I got home from school she wouldn't even look at me until I fucking cracked up. I started screaming, crying, begging, man,
begging
her to talk to me. And she says to me, 'Just remember these last few days whenever you get to feel like you don't want me to love you so much.' So don't fuckin' tell me horror stories about childhood." I lit a cigarette and tossed the bum-ing match into the ashtray. "And that was called
love
, man, that was in the name of love. So no wonder I get horny when La Donna pulls away. That's not horniness. That's nostalgia, man. That's old-timer's day." I spit a tiny dry shred of meat on the tablecloth.