Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle (4 page)

“More than you?”

“I was on the sidelines of a lot of it, as I recall. But Tom always had such incredible men around him. They weren’t just lookers,
they came fully equipped with a
scene
. Remember that body-builder who was half back? Raymond? God, he was heavy. Some demon with all the parts you wanted, remember? White man’s talk and black man’s size. Really
dense
rap. You didn’t know
what
he was, there. For a pair of bills—or for free, if Tom wanted to oblige you—Raymond would come over as the moving man who forgot his dolly or something when he was moving you in that day. Remember? He’d be kind of sticking around, and then he’d say he thinks he’s got a heavy case of the sex tingles. And there’s only one cure for that. And first you have to test him for the tingles, test these various bodily sectors, you know. Like are you picking up sex crackle in his cock hairs if you stroke them. You remember that? And the only cure? Snap, crackle, pop was the cure. Raymond. Jesus. Tom Driggers made the one-night stand into like . . . like an opera, you know?”

“What went wrong between him and Dennis Savage, do you recall?”

He shook his head. “So long ago, now. You visit Tom?”

“Just today.”

“I paid my respects last time. I don’t want to go again and see him like that. He was so handsome. That dreamy way he had of moving, like he’d just got up from a night of fabulous sex. Eyes half-closed. He had it, Tom Driggers. He could’ve walked right into his own movie, now, couldn’t he?”

“He came about as close as anyone does, I’ll say that.”

“They had to shut him down,” Carlo said. “He had a client list like with cardinals and mayors in it. He was creating too much hotness. Going on like that, he would have exploded the whole city. You know this entire life is based on people lying about their dreams. Especially cardinals and mayors.”

Dennis Savage stormed in. “This coterie has become too ingrown and decadent,” he cried. “It delights in nonsense. It’s virulent. It’s insane. It’s like that English family that was devouring the population.”

“The Thatchers?” I asked.

“No, centuries ago. They lived in a cave, and it was all incest and cannibalism. They would raid the neighboring towns or drag people off the road. You notice how long it takes the kids to set up a simple spaghetti-and-salad dinner? They’re still at it! First they had to go to the store for black olives for the sauce. Then they had to go to the store for garlic.
Then
they noticed that we’re out of lettuce! So they get back from the store with lettuce, and lo, we’re out of
spaghetti!”

He collapsed on the couch.

“Play some music?” he asked. “To calm my nerves.”

“The Phantom of the Opera?”

“Yes, please. The love duet.”

I cued it up on the CD player.

“Everything’s out of control,” he continued, as the music began. “We’ve got to get with a more soothing program. We’ve . . . What’s wrong with your record? That isn’t English.”

“It’s the Japanese cast. I thought a cosmopolitan boy like you would—”

“That’s
exactly
the game they’re playing upstairs! Is everyone
crazy?
The Japanese cast of
The Phantom of the Opera?
What, you don’t have it in Hebrew?”

“I’ve
Les Mis
in Hebrew, with the incomparable Dudu Fisher.”

“Saint Michael, Saint Timothy, Saint Acteon!” he cried out. “Shield me! Preserve me!”

“Is there really a Saint Acteon?”

Carlo rubbed Dennis Savage’s neck, and Dennis Savage buried his head in Carlo’s shoulder. “If you knew what they’re doing up there. They called me out of the kitchen into the bedroom. ‘Cooking break,’ they call it. And Virgil leaped off the bed and threw me on the floor and pretended to bite my neck. And our bewitching little Cosgrove was laughing insanely the whole time.”

“Guess we have a vampire in the family,” I said.

“It happens,” said Carlo.

“And Virgil keeps calling me ‘snarky.’ Where’d that word come from?”

“Sounds like L.A.,” said Carlo.
“Snarky.”

Cosgrove came in just then, went into the bedroom, and called for me.

“What’s going on with his teeth?” Carlo asked. “How come they’re sticking out?”

“Don’t go in there,” said Dennis Savage. “He’s going to swoop down and drink your blood. There’s one just like that in my place.” He ruefully shook his head. “First it was juice-in-a-box—now this!”

I opened the bedroom door and peered in. Cosgrove, still doing the teeth, was standing on the bed.

“Are you a vampire?” I asked.

He slowly nodded.

“Are you going to swoop down and drink my blood?”

He slowly nodded.

I closed the door.

“Well,” I told the others. “I’ve got one, too.”

“Please come in,” Cosgrove called through the door. “It’s very important.”

“I’ll go,” said Carlo.

“Is it okay if Carlo comes instead?” I yelled.

“Better!”

So Carlo went into the bedroom and there was some noise and laughter and Carlo came out bearing Cosgrove in the fireman’s carry and they flopped down together on the couch.

“Now Mr. Smith is a vampire, too! We’re the Lost Boys!”

“I’m going to have Roast Cosgrove for dinner,” said Carlo.

“No,” said Cosgrove, in delighted alarm.

Carlo stroked Cosgrove’s hair and looked at him a long time, and said, “I’m going to spank you to make you tender, and then I’ll eat you up, as slow as can be.”

Whereupon Virgil joined us.

“Dinner’s almost ready. All I have to do is wet the macaroni product.”

“Why don’t you just call it spaghetti?” asked Dennis Savage. “Why is everything in this family done in high-tech?”

“That’s what they call it on the box, you snarky man who won’t visit your friend in his dying hour.”

“He’s not my friend,” Dennis Savage replied, in earnest.

“You could go there and say, ‘I’m still mad at you but I’m sorry that you’re a wounded warrior.’ ”

“Or,” Cosgrove put in, “you could say, ‘I want you to die, you gob of spit!’ ”

“Cosgrove, that’s not nice,” said Virgil.

Cosgrove, aghast and penitent, scrambled out of Carlo’s grasp and went up to Virgil. “I didn’t mean it. It was my worst joke ever. Please be nice.”

Virgil put his arms around Cosgrove and held on real tight, boy-close, and Carlo didn’t say anything but his eyes were hot slits and I believe that had he been nude we would have seen steam rising from the end of his cock, and Dennis Savage turned away, blushing, and I asked him, “Aren’t you used to us yet?”

Dennis Savage always remarks that although he’s never bored, nothing ever seems to happen. So Cosgrove’s suit was an event, as was his study of
G
tterd
mmerung
in preparation for his debut at the opera. And I must admit that for someone who in terms of intelligence and education is utter riffraff, he certainly did survey Wagner’s apocalyptic faerie with an eye for the logical paradox.

It was our most restful period together since he moved in. As I worked at my desk, Cosgrove sat listening to the Fonit-Cetra CDs of the Furtwangler-Flagstad recording through my headphones, wearing one of my old pairs of eyeglasses with the lenses pushed out, for that omniscient look—essential when dealing with the end of the world—and occasionally stopping the music to question an inherent contradiction.

“If the Ring makes you all-powerful,” he asked, “how come Siegfried takes it from Brünnhilde so easily?” And: “If Brünnhilde loves Siegfried so much, how come she wants him dead? Maybe he was mean to her, but he didn’t know what he was doing.”

Scholars have been debating these points for a century; I did my best. But on the subject of Tom Driggers, Dennis Savage wasn’t doing half as well with Virgil, whose questions were searching and reproachful and, no matter how much Dennis Savage ordered him to stop, relentless. Dennis Savage would come downstairs in the refugee’s irate despair and warn me not to answer the door in case he was being pursued. Useless; by now our lives have stretched so intimately beyond the norm that we all hold keys to one another’s living quarters, and feelings, and fears. But then, everything in gay life stretches beyond what the world recognizes as normal. We shape our own norms: and violate them.

Tom Driggers held on, waiting to reconcile with Dennis Savage, and Dennis Savage wouldn’t budge. Carlo went back to the hospital, and he said there was no one in the room,

“Including Tom Driggers,” said Dennis Savage.

“No,” I replied. “Tom is very much a presence even at this moment of his dimming out. Because he’s still hungry.”

“Is there sex after AIDS?”

“He’s hungry for friendship.”

Dennis Savage looked at me, estimating the possibilities. “You’re the last person I expected to hit on me about this. Or anything.”

“I’m not hitting. I’m observing.”

Dennis Savage turned to Carlo. “You think I should go to him, don’t you?”

Carlo smiled. “I think you should do what you want.”

Dennis Savage threw himself across my couch and lay there brooding.

“Where are the Tuffys?” I asked.

“They decided to make a meat loaf. Dinner should be ready in about eight years.”

A good, long silence.

“Okay,” said Dennis Savage.

Another silence, this one pregnant.

“Okay, I’ll tell you. Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? We’re waiting for the tale to spill out, aren’t we? Oh, and you”—me, this is—“get your tape recorder on.”

“Electronic belts running through the walls of this apartment are activated by the sound of the human voice,” I told him. “It’s all automatically fed into a word processor and shipped directly to the typesetter. Editors, binders, and artists converge. Presto, the book is in the stores, and your blood flows before the world’s eyes.”

“I had such a case on him,” said Dennis Savage. “Such a damn case. And he was available, you understand. Unlimited sexual access. But I could never get in touch with him
personally
, somehow. That was so strange to me. We all know about that time when the guy you’ve been fucking throws himself into your arms and bleats about how wonderful you are to him. You’re reaching someone, not just pleasuring him but . . . or when they try to toss it off and they gulp, and some even start weeping. I like that the best.” He turned to Carlo. “Right?”

“That will truly be known to happen here and there.”

“Well, not with Tom Driggers, try as I might. It was just Grrr, whirr, thank you, sir, every time. Oh, he liked me. He just didn’t . . .”

Carlo nodded.

“Are your tape belts running?” Dennis Savage asked me. “Am I on?”

“Every word.”

“I’d hate to be misquoted. So we were like that for years. Years of that, can you imagine? Flesh on flesh, and I cannot do better than that smooth, taut, overgrown boy; and maybe he can do better than me, but he likes it so much he starts to howl, and when he gushes he creams maybe a quart, quart and a half. I mean, what . . . what more is there than . . . what?”

He looked at us.

“Sometimes I ask myself, Why doesn’t he want to know me better? Why is it only the Night Before? I would see men having breakfast together Saturday and Sunday mornings. I used to go out
for brunch just to watch them! Okay, I let down the sexual revolution. I wanted something . . .”