The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (4 page)

My best friend, Becky, went to Collegiate, too. I think all the rich people, including Jim’s and Becky’s families, got together and built the private school so that their kids could be properly, privately educated so as not to end up dumbbells like the rest of us.

I’d already planned to spend the night with Becky and go to Collegiate’s fun night with her and Jennifer, another really rich kid whose mother I later ended up being the maid for.

When we arrived, most of the boys were dicking around, acting aloof with the girls. Jim was with Eddie. He didn’t care, he came right up to me and said, “You wanna go swing?”

“Swing” of course meant sit on the swings and kiss, which is what we ended up doing for about an hour. Be still my schoolgirl heart! That night I was as smitten with Jim as he was with me.

Jim was wearing a beautiful gold watch, and I was admiring it so that I could touch him more. I was holding his wrist, admiring his watch when suddenly the devil must have risen up from hallowed earth and inhabited me. My burning love for Jim turned into embarrassed, shy, evil intentions. “Oh yes, this watch is beautiful, Jimmy, it’s a real beauty, is it a Twist-O-Flex?” I asked.

Twist-O-Flex was a newly invented watch of the 1960s, with a very limber, linked, highly flexible wristband. I knew that this watch was indeed
not
an inexpensive Twist-O-Flex, but with Lucifer lurking in my psyche, I had no will of my own.

“Jim, may I hold your watch?” I asked as slyly as a henhouse fox. He slipped it from his wrist. “It’s so gorgeous, Jim,” I said softly, coyly, like sugar butter soup. Jim cooed and looked doe-eyed as I admired his fetching gold watch, and then SNAP like a horse’s neck at a rodeo. “Jim, is this a Twist-O-Flex?” I grabbed the band with both hands and maniacally twisted the watch into a mangled pretzel, crackle-twist, twist, torque, crackle, crackle. There! The princess of darkness had done her work.

As quickly as I’d snapped into the Antichrist, I snapped back. There was Jim, looking shocked. His beautiful, contorted gold watch lay in the palm of his hand where I’d quickly deposited it after my “fit.”

No words were or could be spoken for several minutes.

“You nut!” he finally said. “Certifiable!” He began to laugh. “You’re out of your mind and that’s why . . . I love you.”

Oh my lord, why can’t I find a “Jim” these days? A Jim who thinks I’m gorgeous and extraordinary even when I’m in the middle of a demonic grand mal seizure?

We had so much fun that night. I vowed to love Jim forever and never again flirt with his brother, Hale . . . until the following Saturday at the skating rink.

This is how it went for the next two years. His love for me was too overwhelming, and the more I tried to love him back as strongly, the more it triggered the diabolical spirit within my soul, and I would do or say something ridiculous to spoil it and push him away.

Jim was a handsome boy, really handsome, with blue eyes and dark hair, beautiful teeth and a wonderful smile. That’s why it’s hard to believe that right in the middle of madly making out in a field behind the swim club pool months later, I took the opportunity to trip Jim and wrestle him to the ground, screaming and teasing that he was the only boy I’d ever kissed who insisted on wearing really pointy-toed Beatle boots! Wild with laughter, I yelled, “Beatle shoes, Beatle shoes, Jim Richie wears Beatle shoes!”

Hale later developed a crush on my sister, and that pretty much ruined the brother-flirt thing for me. Besides, I was starting to fall in love with Jim. I’d not made fun of him, broken any of his possessions, or tripped him in months. I hadn’t laughed like a hyena at his shoes in weeks. My resistance was crumbling, my demon was quelling.

Jim said he was going camping with Eddie at his ranch on Friday and would call me when he returned on Monday. They were going on a survival weekend, which I thought was very macho, very male. But it was fine with me; I was supposed to babysit the kids across the street on Sunday night anyway, and their mom didn’t like me tying up the phone line.

My friend Jennifer called me Saturday morning. She said, “You don’t need to come and clean my mom’s house today. Oh, and by the way, guess who’s dead?”

“I don’t know, who?” I asked.

“Jim and Eddie. Jim and Eddie are dead. They got asphyxiated last night at the ranch.”

To this day I can’t believe the casualness in Jennifer’s voice when she relayed to me the death of Jim and Eddie.

“Gotta go now, are you okay?”
asked Jennifer.

Oh yes, I’m fine, good-bye.

Children walk around like zombies just like adults after death, like someone has hit you with something hard, right between your eyes, stunning you into numbness and unreality. I stumbled around this way all day and into the night. On Sunday I was lying on the sofa across the street, babysitting, when the news came on. My charges were long since asleep, so I was alone when the story of Jim and Eddie came on the 10 o’clock news. As the reporter smirked and told the story of the two Wichita boys from prominent families who had been asphyxiated, the film footage began to show two bodies being carried from the little shack where Jim and Eddie had holed up that night and lit the gas stove for heat. The faulty gas stove with no safety in case the flame went out.

You couldn’t identify which one was Jim and which was Eddie. Blankets were over their bodies. Then I saw something specific, and I knew. The very bad Beatle boots were peeking from one of the blankets. Very pointy Beatle shoes on a camping trip? How absurd.

Hey Jim? Why in the hell are you wearing Beatle boots on a camping trip? Who’s gonna trip you now?

I thought I, myself, would die that night. Partly because of lost love and partly because of all the stupid, mean, evil, thoughtless dumb things I’d done to Jim during our four-year juvenile relationship.

I didn’t stop crying until I arrived at the double funeral for Jim and Eddie. Double caskets, double families, friends, and guests. Eddie’s mother wore a black dress, black stockings, gloves, and handbag, and a dramatic black hat, draped with a gossamer veil. She nearly fainted several times as she walked down the long aisle of the Catholic church. Handsome men flanked her and caught her at each falter.

By contrast, Jim’s mother was dressed in a cream-colored suit. Her hair was styled, yet simple. She had a lovely crocheted handbag, and she smiled a lovely, soft smile as she walked down the aisle to her family’s place. She emanated something very powerful—hope and spirituality and knowledge. A certainty that life does not end when our fragile bodies do.

I’ll never forget the contrast between Eddie’s mother and Jim’s. Jim’s mama was radiant in her faith.

You are
muy linda
, I said telepathically to Mrs. Richie that day. You are truly the embodiment of your son’s vast ability to love.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

—SHAKESPEARE

The Art of
Queers

I
’VE NEVER gone for bisexual men. I just figure they can’t make up their minds, and indecisive men don’t interest me. I have, however, been heartbroken by one gay man whom I found myself hopelessly in love with when I was 14.

My gay love’s name was Jeffrey, and our affair took place at Kansas University when I went to art school for the summer. I was 14. He was 18. I was in love with him. He didn’t know I existed.

It was a fine arts school, featuring artists, musicians, and dancers. Although Jeffrey was a ballet dancer and ran about in tights, it was impossible to detect he was gay.

I knew nothing about people being gay. Literally. I didn’t know it existed. It sounds impossible in this day when even five-year-olds know the definition. Other than hearing an occasional playground fight ending in “You’re a queer!” (which I thought meant “odd”), I’d never heard of a word that would telegraph man-on-man love. Gay, queer, and homosexual didn’t exist in my vocabulary. When I was 12, I once shouted out of the backseat of my 16-year-old sister’s car, “Hey you queer hoppers!” as she drove by the only homosexual nightclub in Wichita. I had no idea what it meant, but she and her friends were laughing and being obnoxious and were delighted to see some “queers” emerging from the “Chances Are.” I thought I was yelling at guys they had crushes on! I liked the word “queer.” It sounded funny, and yelling it at men was exhilarating, but it had no connection to the concept of men loving men. And even if someone had told me what queer actually meant, it would have fallen into the same category as when my friend Sarah’s sister instructed us on the activities involved with 69.

It would have been far too horrifying for me to comprehend.

When Connie told Sarah and me that girls sucked on men’s penises until junk flew out of them, well, jeez! Sarah and I were forced to stab our fingers with a jackknife, press our blood together, and take an oath that “I hereby swear to God I will never put a boy’s dick in my mouth and suck on it until junk flies out, and furthermore, no boy’s face will ever come within two feet of my vagina.”

This was serious business! Sarah’s sister Connie had gotten married at 14 to a guy who was, like, 20! Apparently that was legal in Kansas. Connie knew all the ropes, all the tricks of the sex trade. She’d done it all! And she spilled it all to me and Sarah. Except for the queer stuff. She had no data about queers, and we didn’t ask because we didn’t know queers existed.

I had a slight inkling about lesbians, not the sexual part or what they were called, just the love part. My pediatrician had lived with her nurse for 30 years. My mom called them old maids, but I could tell that they were really in love with each other. I just thought “old maids” meant two women who’d lived together for a long time without getting married to men. Then there was one of my cousins, who had bigger biceps than my dad, cropped hair, and who strutted around like a dude. I just thought she was really athletic, which she was. My concept of dykes and old maids was skewed, and it certainly didn’t involve sex.

But back to Jeffrey. He was about six foot three, I’d say, with black hair and cobalt blue eyes, the lethal combination of features that I can’t resist. He didn’t look at all feminine. In fact he was extremely masculine and charismatic. Ahhh, I would skip classes to watch Jeffrey dance or eat his lunch or just walk across the green-grassed campus. When he would walk past me directly and speak to me, I’d manage to eke out a barely audible “Hi,” and when he said “Hi” back to me what he was really saying was “Hi Kirstie, I’m madly in love with you . . . Let’s glissade our way through life and make stunning black-haired, blue-eyed dancer babies.” At least, that’s what I thought I heard him saying.

I’d known Jeffrey for eight days when he suddenly disappeared. He was nowhere to be found, and believe me, I looked and looked . . . and looked. No one knew of my torrid affair with Jeffrey, not even Jeffrey. So I had no one to talk to.

But there were two savvy girls across the hall from me in the dorm, Mary and Linda, who seemed to know everything about everyone. Although they were only 16 themselves, they were light-years ahead of me regarding life and sex and men.

“Whatever happened to that ballet guy, Jeffrey?” I cautiously asked with calculated casualness. “You mean that black-haired queer?” asked Linda. There’s that
word
again. What’s with that? Queer to me meant strange, odd, eccentric.

“Yes, where’d he go?” I asked.

“He went back to New York, I heard, to be with his lover,” said Mary.

This was devastating news, although I feigned indifference until I just had to know . . . “Is she a famous ballerina, too?”

“Hahaha,” they both laughed. “ ‘She’ is a ‘he’ and yes, he’s a dancer, too.”

What???!!! What?! What??? What . . . what? What! What??!!
I took a breather—
WHAT???!!!
What a lousy way to learn what queers were. What a crummy way to find out the dancing man of my dreams was the lover of another man.

After I’d gotten over Jeffrey, round about Thursday, I set my eyes on another guy, Ken. He was the total opposite of Jeffrey. He was a musician with lightish brown hair and lightish brown eyes, sort of an average beige-looking kind of straight guy.

Oh hell, you know what? Ken isn’t even worth the ink and paper. Suffice it to say, he was just your average lower-level heartbreaker with a little dick, probably. I never got around to inspecting it . . . All I really remember is that I looked like a complete idiot at that art school. I had short, stupid hair, ridiculously cheap, unfashionable clothes, and was a massive goon ball. The only time I felt pretty at art school was when Jeffrey had said hello and flashed that big, beautiful gay smile.

The awesome outcome of my eight-day love affair with Jeffrey was that I formed superhuman gaydar. To this day I can spot a man who fancies the penis a mile away. I can even spot the ones who have imbibed in the wiener yet enjoyed the occasional vagina, rendering them bisexual. This sense of mine is laser accurate.

I prefer my men 100 percent straight, but wherever Jeffrey is now, he should know that although he broke my heart and abandoned me without saying good-bye, he gave me the skills to spot a queer from the moon.

Very sorry can’t come. Stop.

Lie follows by post.

—CHARLES BERESFORD, TELEGRAM REPLY TO A DINNER INVITATION

The Art of
Male Visitors

I
BEGAN HAVING male visitors when I was 14. My first visitor was a handsome, platinum-haired (from too much chlorine) swimmer named Kim. I was hugely crushing on him when I got the bright idea to phone him and invite him for the long weekend with a big school dance as the finale. Kim was 16 and god knows, I barely knew him. All I knew was that he was a swell swimmer and always wore Dante, this girl-dizzying cologne.

I had returned from art school, where I apparently learned all the ropes regarding men. I’d already had my heart broken by a gay ballet dancer. I’d already been humiliated by a redneck asshole. I felt like I was savvy enough to take on a weekend visitor. I’d also had many boys at art school fancy me and kiss me and ask me to write to them. So in my mind, men were “old hat,” and caring for them and finessing them into loving me was pretty evident. I’d left for art school a child and returned a woman.