The Men from the Boys (30 page)

“What's that?”

“I want it to include you.”

“Families come, families go,” I say.

“Not my family.”

I start to cry. “Please don't ever laugh at me like that again.”

“I'm sorry. I promise.”

“Does your next chapter include Lloyd?” I ask, pulling out from him to look up into his eyes.

I see pain there. I'm not the only one who fears losing Lloyd.

“I hope so, darling. I truly hope so.”

“Why can't we all be together? Why does everything have to change?”

“Who knows?” He gently frees me from his embrace. I'm not sure I wanted it to break quite yet, but that's okay. Javitz has resumed walking, lighting a cigarette but this time opening a window and aiming his smoke into the night. “Maybe it's because of Adam and Eve. Original sin and all that. Maybe it's all the karma built up from all our previous lives. Maybe it's American capitalism, teaching us never to be satisfied, to always want more.”

He holds aloft a paper cup of champagne. “Maybe it's just the way things are,” he says.

“To change,” I propose.

He smiles.

“To change.”

We both drink.

“Now,” he says, “if you plan on helping me move, be here at eight o'clock tomorrow morning.” He pauses. “That goes double for Lloyd.”

Provincetown, August 1994

Provincetown storms in the summer are fast, furious, and very loud—much the same as Provincetown boys in the summer. This storm has caught us by complete surprise. We have no umbrellas, no caps on our heads. It tears down the street like a sports car out of control, veering this way and that, crashing into street posts and knocking over trash cans. We had not heeded the distant roll of thunder we heard when we left the house, that dull echo of things to come. The sky was slate gray, but we assumed we could make it back before the rain. The air was heavy, thick with unpopped moisture.

We were in the video store when the first resounding clap of thunder made Eduardo's eyes light up. “Did I ever tell you thunderstorms turn me on?” he asked.

“Ah,” I said, grinning ear to ear, “now the fantasies start tumbling out.”

So it doesn't surprise me that we've started to kiss standing here under an awning in the center of Commercial Street. Boys can kiss here; it's not like any other town in the world. Passersby will smile indulgently at the sight of two boys kissing. And in the midst of a rainstorm, it somehow takes on an even greater poignancy, a heightened appreciation for the passion between men.

“Are we attracting attention?” Eduardo lifts his upper lip from mine for just a moment.

“I think so,” I mumble.

“Good,” he says, and gets back into his work.

The rain whips under the awning, getting our lower legs wet. We yelp a bit, but don't stop kissing.

“I can't wait to fuck,” Eduardo says. I can feel his hard dick pressing into my thigh. “God, Jeff, I never thought I could love sex this much.”

Me either, I realize—except I
did
love sex this much with Lloyd once, a hundred sweet years ago.

This week is the last chance for Eduardo and me to be together. Next week he's off to school, settling into a new apartment in Boston. Oh, we'll see each other there, but I know he's scared that I'm going to disappear out of his life. Tonight, Javitz is out with Ernie; we'll have the house to ourselves. I figured we'd make dinner, rent a video, maybe even bake brownies. He's never seen
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
so that's the one we settled on. “Every gay man
must
see this movie,” I told him. “You're not officially queer until you've seen it.”

“Just don't do your Bette Davis imitation,” he insisted.

I popped my eyes and clipped my words. “Whatevah you want, Ed-wah-do.”

“Oh,
God
...”

Eduardo hates it when I launch into my Bette Davis routine. Lloyd thinks it's because I represent “father energy” to Eduardo, so it's a little disillusioning for him to see me acting queeny. “But that's homophobic,” I told him. “He's
twenty-two,”
Lloyd countered.

I've managed to spend the entire month of August here in Provincetown. Lloyd hasn't been with me very often. This weekend he's at a conference in New York. But he's taking all next week off, a long-delayed vacation. “Think you'll have any time for me?” he asked, half-teasingty. He knows how much time I've been spending with Eduardo.

When we got to the video store,
Baby Jane
had already been checked out. “Can we get
When Harry Met Sally
instead?” Eduardo asked.

“No!” I barked. “I'm tired of all that heterosexual pablum Hollywood forces down my throat.” I decided on an impromptu queer-culture lesson. “You know, it didn't used to be that way. When Marlene Dietrich made love to Cary Grant, it wasn't hetero—it was
universal.
But Billy Crystal and what's-her-name—” I looked over at Eduardo. He was grinning. “You just said that to get me going, didn't you?”

He knows how to do that. I kissed him hard right there in the video store.

So we rented
Rebecca
instead. “Oh, you'll love this movie,” I promised, but Eduardo wasn't so sure. “It's Hitchcock's only really romantic film. Trust me.”

Now the rain stops. The sun comes out. “Damn,” Eduardo says, pulling his lips from mine.

“Let's go home, watch our movie,” I say. We step out into the wet street.

“Old movies aren't very realistic,” he tells me.

“Yeah, so?” I ask him. “Why is it that such a premium is placed on reality these days? Why do we judge a film based on how real it seems? Why has that become a criterion? How about how emotional it is? How compelling? How
beautiful?”

“I don't feel those things unless I can feel something's real.”

“That's the problem with you younger gay men these days. Everything's got to be palpable.”

“I don't know that word. Did you use it just to make me feel ignorant?”

“No. It means obvious. Easy to grasp. Touchable.
Real.”

“Yeah. My kind of movie.”

I sigh. “Maybe we
should've
rented
When Harry Met Sally.”

“It was a great movie.”

“Please. Hetero propaganda.”

“You know? I think you are the first person I ever met who I can honestly call heterophobic.”

I'm in his face. “When there is no longer any such thing as homophobia, I'll worry about any slights to straights.”

He just shakes his head at me..

I smirk. “You protest, but deep down you really like that about me. How queer-centered I am.”

He just laughs. “Oh, Jeff. You want to live your whole life in a gay ghetto. You live in Provincetown in the summer, the South End the rest of the year. You write for mostly gay publications. All your friends are gay. Well, not me. When I move back to Boston this fall, I'm moving in with my straight friend Sandy in Somerville.”

“You're just going to the other extreme. You won't associate with anything gay—” I remember something I'd read the other day. “There's a new gay magazine starting in New York. They're looking for a designer. But you probably wouldn't apply, would you?”

“I don't want to limit how I identify myself, how I market myself. That's your way, Jeff.”

“You Gen Xers, you think you know—” I stop. There, on his bike, swerving to avoid the puddles in the street, is Raphael. My sweet little Quebecois from last summer. His head is buzzed this year, but it's him all right. The pouting lips, the cute upturned nose, the milk-chocolate skin, the jet black eyes.

“What? Who is it?” Eduardo asks.

“My love from last summer,” I moon. Raphael is only a few yards away. He recognizes me. He slows to a stop.

“Alo, Zhef,” he says, softening the J of my name. His eyes look into me.

“Raphael,” I say. “How are you?” My heart thuds. I'm afraid he notices.

“I am fine. Are you here for anothair summair?”

“Yes. Yet another.” I laugh. “Oh. Raphael. This is Eduardo.”

“Hello,” Eduardo says.

Raphael smiles at him. “Alo, Eduardo.” Their eyes lock for several seconds, and then they both laugh awkwardly, as if some unspoken communication had just passed between them. For a second, I'm jealous. Hey, knock that off. He's mine. You're mine. Whatever.

“Well, I must get go-wing,” Raphael says. “Tell me. How is Zhaveetz ?”

“He's fine,” I tell him.

“Give him my regards,” Raphael calls, pedaling off. “Good-bye, Eduardo. It was very nice to meet you. Enjoy what is left of all thees.
Bon soir,
Zhef.”

Then he's gone. I sigh like a lovesick puppy.
“That,”
I say to Eduardo, “was
Raphael.”
I say his name as he might: soft and long and full of air.

“What did he mean, ‘Enjoy what is left of all this'?”

“The summer, I guess.” We resume walking. “Ah, yes. Such pretty memories. He was so sweet, such a fun few days.” I pause. “At least I know he's gotten on with his life.”

“Fuck you, Jeff,” Eduardo says. I just grin.

Back at the house, Eduardo's quiet. I notice a thin wrapped gift sitting on the table. “Who's this for?” I ask.

“Why don't you open it and see?”

I look at him blankly. “Why did you give me a gift?”

“I don't know,” he says, a little distant. “The end of the summer. Maybe because you lost what I gave you for your birthday.”

I think about that star out there sometimes. I think about it under the sand, waiting for me. Every once in a while I get the urge to go and dig for it, spend the entire day sifting through the sand.

“Open your gift,” Eduardo urges.

So I do. It's a book.
The Giving Tree
by Shel Silverstein. I remember reading this as a kid, a classic children's book. “Once there was a tree,” it begins, “and she loved a little boy.” Every day the boy goes to swing on the tree's branches and jump in its leaves. But then the boy grows up and tells the tree he's too old to play with her anymore. He wants to build a house, not climb trees. So the tree gives him her branches, and of course, the tree is happy. That old tree spent her whole life always giving something to the boy and is even glad to be chopped down so he can build a boat and fetch his love from across the sea. Finally, when the boy has become an old man, the tree—now just a lonely only stump—has one last gift to give. “Well, boy,” the tree says, “come and rest.”

“ ‘And the tree was happy,' ” I finish reading, out loud.

“Read the inscription.”

He's written: “Only great passions can bring us to great things. I love you. Eduardo.”

“Where did you get that?” I ask. “That quote?” Might I have said it to him? Javitz?

“It came from me.” He smiles.
“That's
where I got it.”

I don't know what to say. I look up at him and I want to say the right thing, but I'm not sure what that is. I know what I
want
to say—but I'm not sure I dare. Finally he spares me the choice and speaks instead.

“Please tell me I'll never be just an anecdote like Raphael. Promise me you'll never point me out on the street and say, ‘There goes Eduardo, my love from last summer. So sweet, such fun times.' ”

“Oh, Eduardo,” I say, pulling him to me.

I kiss him. He's stiff for a moment, then relaxes. I can say no words, articulate nothing of how I feel. All I can do is this: kiss him and touch him, make love to him right here on the kitchen floor.

But he stops me. “No,” he says. “Not yet.”

He leads me into the living room by the hand. “We're going to make dinner, and we're going to watch a movie, and
then
we're going to make love.”

“All right,” I say, enjoying his assertiveness.

We make spaghetti with a thick tomato-basil-cream sauce. We uncork a bottle of wine. We watch the film huddled together in a black and silver glow. The dreamy, haunting opening: “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderly again,” and the long sweeping shot up the road to the charred ruins of the great old house.

Of course Eduardo clucks over the obviously fake cliff from which Olivier is about to jump. And he says it's completely unrealistic that a man of Olivier's station would pursue a simple paid companion like Joan Fontaine. But at the moment it seems that they will never see each other again, just as Joan's nasty employer prepares to whisk her away without being able to say good-bye to Olivier, we're both caught up in the magic. I look over at Eduardo: his eyes shine with moisture. Of course, they
do
find each other, and Olivier proposes marriage, and all is right with the fairy tale.

Except—and I seize the remote and rewind the tape, playing the scene again.

“What are you doing?” Eduardo asks.

Olivier and Fontaine move backwards in grainy, jerky movements. Then I hit play.

“I was crying all morning thinking I'd never see you again,” Fontaine says, all doe-eyed and dewy.

“Bless you for that,” Olivier says, touching her cheek. “I'll remind you of that someday.” His adoring eyes never leave her face. “You won't believe me. Pity you have to grow up.”

Turns out, Eduardo adores the movie. His hands grip mine during the climactic fire scene as Judith Anderson looms large among the flames. I've seen it a dozen times. I prefer watching Eduardo, his eyes big and wondrous, and I marvel at how truly beautiful he is. Not beautiful like the boys at tea dance, all big and buff and glossy, but beautiful in a way that's all his own: real and sincere. How safe, how completely at home I feel with him. I never thought it could happen, not with anyone other than Lloyd. I hear Javitz's voice inside my head: “Then tell him, darling. Tell him how you feel.”