The Men from the Boys (36 page)

“All I'm looking for is a cup of coffee,” I whine. “Isn't there
anything
open?”

“We'll have coffee at Cafe Express,” Javitz promises, “but first we've got to walk out onto the beach.”

“The
beach?”

“It's glorious in snowstorms,” he says. His eyes are wild, his hair caught by the wind, his cheeks red and full of life. I groan.

Finally, there's somebody in the road ahead of us. “Hey, Ernie —hey, David,” a man calls over, bundled in a scarf and earmuffs. “Great weather this time of year, huh?”

They all laugh. Next we pass two women sitting on the post office steps. “Hi, guys,” they say, waving mittened hands.

“Hey, Bets—hey, Sue,” Ernie says, waving back. “Don't forget dinner at my house tomorrow night. David's cooking.”

“I
am?”
Javitz asks.

“You are,” Ernie says.

I smile at their camaraderie. Javitz is so clearly happy with his move, I can't resent it any longer. And I feel less excluded, being here, traipsing through the snow with them.

“Jeff, don't worry,” Ernie assures me. “Just as soon as you get used to the off-season rhythm, it'll be Memorial Day and everything will start up again.”

“I gather you year-rounders
prefer
the off-season rhythm,” I say, winking at Javitz. ,

“That's what I moved here for,” Javitz says. “Remember, Ernie? Remember that weekend last fall when I came up here?”

“Girl, how could I forget?”

“It was then that I really made up my mind.” He pauses, looking at me. “Made up my mind to
consider
moving here, I mean.”

I frown. “Yeah, yeah, just tell the story.”

“We took a long walk across the breakwater, bundled up in scarves and coats. I never imagined how glorious the wind could be on the breakwater in the fall. Afterward we stopped for dinner and we didn't have to wait for a table. The owner came over and sat with us awhile. Then we drove out to Herring Cove and watched the waves crash against the shore. So calm, so peaceful. Big skies, no people.”

We're at the beach now, too, the strip of sand behind Commercial Street along the harbor, just past MacMillan Wharf. It's high tide: the waves are big and white. The snow swirls in gusts. The sea holds such power in the winter, much more so than in the summer. It is fierce and fighting, not warm and seductive. We stand there and watch it crash against the cold sand.

“
This
is why I moved here,” Javitz says softly. “These waves.”

“You said it, girl,” Ernie agrees.

This morning, when I awoke, I missed Boston feverishly. What was I going to do with my time here? I missed the movies at the Brattle, the free outdoor concerts in Copley Square, the Thai and Indian and Ethiopian restaurants. The night before, the vegetables at the Provincetown A&P had depressed me terribly: withered and dry, the remnants of last week's shipment. Provincetown during the summer had meant fun and dancing and partying and tricking. Provincetown in the snow made me feel lost and alone, abandoned and adrift.

But now, standing here watching the waves, I'm feeling a little differently. “I think I understand,” I tell Javitz. “A little better, anyway.”

Ernie puts his arm around me. “It takes some getting used to, Jeff, but you'll get it. I really think you will. Hey, you've got it easy. It's April. Think about those of us who were here in December, and January, and February. Not everyone makes it.”

“What happens to those who don't?” I ask.

Ernie just laughs. Javitz raises an eyebrow. “Living in Provincetown year-round,” he says, “is what separates the men from the boys.”

We all smile. It's time for coffee. We push through the wind back to Cafe Express. In the summer, it's impossible to get a table here. Now, we share the place with only a couple of men in their late fifties, both smoking. Javitz lights up as well. Everyone smokes in Provincetown in the winter. I don't even raise an issue of it. A cloud of blue-gray smoke hangs over the whole cafe.

The waiter brings over our coffees. He's handsome: dark and bearded, my age or a little older. Funny how I haven't seen many boys since I arrived here. I find myself holding the eyes of the waiter. It's a little unnerving, cruising somebody possibly older than I am. Unnerving, but exciting, too. Haven't done that since—well, Javitz.

I pull my eyes away from him and sip my coffee. “I don't want to fit in too well,” I announce. “I'm only here for a little while.”

Ernie winks. “Girl, you're gonna love it so much you're never gonna leave.”

Javitz eyes me. “Would that be so horrible?”

“You're forgetting something,” I tell him.

“What's that?”

“Lloyd.”

Javitz leers. “Oh, no, darling. I'd never forget Lloyd.”

“Excuse me if I seem to be speaking out of turn, Jeff,” Ernie says, “but it seems to me that boyfriend of yours just can't seem to make up his mind what he wants.”

“You're right, Ernie,” I agree. “And I guess I'm just a little too impatient.”

“Patience is a virtue, so they say,” Javitz observes airily.

I laugh. “I've forgotten how to be patient because it no longer seems as if I have anything to anticipate.”

Ernie sits back in his chair. “Did I hear right, Lady Jane? You have nothing to anticipate?”

“It's just that my future right now seems so unclear.”

“Girl,”
Ernie says, leaning forward, “do you understand who you're talking to? What the hell do
I
have to anticipate?”

“Hey, listen. I don't know what my future is any more than you do. I could be—”

“What?” Ernie says, cutting me off. He seems honestly indignant now. “Run over by a bus? Hit by a Mack truck? Struck by a meteor?” He sniffs in overplayed disgust. “You negatives or think-you' re-negatives are always coming up with some godawful apoca- lyptic scenario to prove life is just as tenuous for you. And maybe it is. Maybe tomorrow you'll trip over your own two feet coming down the stairs and break your fucking neck and die. Boy, wouldn't I feel bad
then.
But damn it, Jeff, you can still plan for tomorrow even while you're moping around over your boyfriend. You can still
daydream.
That's the difference. I no longer have the luxury of indulging in daydreams.”

Quiet descends on the table as swiftly and as chillingly as the snow outside. Javitz just lets out a long sigh. Finally I say, “You're right, Ernie. I was being an asshole.”

“Aw, no you weren't,” he says, shaking his head, a little embarrassed by his outburst. “I just get a little testy every now and then. You have every right to get uptight about your life. Nobody's got it easy.”

“I think,” Javitz weighs in, “the key word here is ‘empathy.' ”

“Ernie has a point,” I say. “Unless something catastrophic happens, I assume I'll be here five years from now, with Lloyd or without him. You two can't say that with as much certainty.”

“But to be empathic is to understand we all experience many different kinds of deaths, all the time.” Javitz smiles. “Darling, it was very refreshing to hear you refer to my potential death so calmly and rationally. You've never done that before.”

“Sure I have.”

“No, you haven't. When I was in the hospital last December and was obsessed with dying, you never once entertained the thought.” He pauses. “At least, you never articulated the thought.”

“But I knew you weren't going to die.”

“Not then. But I will.”

We're at the edge, the border I know is there and won't cross. Why does he do this? “I know you will,” I acknowledge irritably. “I just said that.”

I cannot imagine a world without Javitz. It is even harder to imagine than a world without Lloyd. Neither can I imagine a world in which Javitz is not sick. It's as if I expect that Javitz will just go on living with the virus for the rest of both our lives. He'll get sick, as he always has, and we'll go to the hospital, and he'll get better, as he always has, and then we'll be in Provincetown again, sitting here around this table, drinking coffee. How absurd, because my intelligent mind knows he'll die long before I do, that there will come a time when Javitz is no longer in my life. But to visualize such a reality is impossible.

“I'm just glad you're here, Jeff,” he says, reaching over, taking my hand in his. “I'm glad you were here so I could show you the waves in winter the way Ernie once showed them to me.”

“See what Lloyd's missing?” I quip.

“Oh, don't get me going,” Javitz warns. But it's too late. He lights a cigarette, inhales deeply, and then blows the smoke over his shoulder. “Let me tell you about Lloyd. And you know I love him. More than the sun above and the waves of the sea. You know that.”

“Oh, I have a feeling this is going to be good,” Ernie says.

“And I understand his need to go searching for his path,” Javitz goes on. “In fact, I applaud him for doing so. I admit up-front what I am about to say is completely selfish.”

“Go on,” I urge.

“He said one thing to me when you both helped me move that weekend. He turned to me just before you left and whispered in my ear. ‘Don't worry,' he said. ‘No matter how far apart we are, when you need me, I'll be there.' ”

“How sweet.”

Javitz stubs out his cigarette. “Was it?
When I need him.
When will that be, in his mind? When I'm too sick to get out of bed? When I'm down to sixty pounds and can't get up even to shit? Oh, I'm very reassured that Dr. Lloyd Griffith will be here to change my bedpan. But that's not when I need him. I need him now. When we can have fun. When I'm still living. I don't need him when I'm dying. I can hire a nurse.”

“You miss him as much as I do,” I tell him.

He smiles over at me. “I meant it when I said I was glad you were here, Jeff, so I could show you the waves.”

“It's all so fucking confusing,” I say. “I can't understand what happened to us.”

“Well,” he says, eyes over the brim of his coffee cup, “at least you can't go on anymore about how straights have it easier. How's your sister-in-law doing?”

I sigh. “I'm not sure. I talked to my mother last night. They found my brother, you know.”

“Where?”

“In a motel just outside of town. That's where he's living. It's a big scandal. I mean, he's the history teacher at the high school!”

“Heteros,” Ernie sniffs. “Have they no shame?”

“It's wild. Kevin was the only one of us who always played by the rules. Who lived the life Mom and Dad wanted. Now look. My mother actually
thanked
me last night.”

“For what?”

“For not causing her stress. Said I was the only one of her kids she didn't have to worry about.”

We all enjoy a big laugh over that. Outside the snow whoops and howls, rattling the windows. I wonder if I'll make it to Memorial Day. Will I still be here then? Maybe Lloyd will have called; maybe we'll have some new place to call home. Or maybe I'm here through the summer again, and the fall, too, and the winter beyond that. “Think about those of us who were here in December, and January, and February,” Ernie had said. “Not everyone makes it.”

Of course not: that's what separates the men from the boys.

Boston, October 1994

The day began as a celebration with Lloyd, but this is where I find myself now: behind a clump of bushes in a ravine, my heart beating wildly in my ears, a filthy twenty-dollar bill smoldering in my pocket, and the flashing lights of a police car reddening my eyes.

“Great, just great,” I mutter under my breath.

The man standing beside me—my “john”—just grins through uneven brown teeth.

“Just great,” I say again.

It's a police clampdown. I'd heard Javitz tell of such things. “If you're ever questioned, just say you were in the woods peeing,” he instructed. “It's a lesser offense. And never come out of the woods with someone else.”

“Go on,” I tell the brown-toothed man, nodding for him to walk ahead of me through the bushes. “Go
on.”

He shushes me, still grinning, as if this were all some silly joke.

And maybe it is. What else could it be? The whole thing is absurd. Why I came out in the first place, looking for it, traveling all the way down the Mass Pike to find this rest stop Javitz told me about. Why I decided to take this man's money. Hey, a hustler worth his salt wouldn't have taken any cash before services rendered. Am I supposed to give it back now that the cops interrupted the blow job?

It's almost too pathetic. This was supposed to be a celebration weekend for Lloyd and me—our first weekend back in Boston together since closing the summer house in Provincetown. I knew all along about Lloyd's plans to go to the ashram in New York tomorrow. That was fine. I just didn't expect him to change his plans and go this afternoon, so he could be there in time for their sunrise meditation service. Maybe if I hadn't been in such a bad mood all day he wouldn't have gone. Maybe I started it. After all, I did call Eduardo this morning, just as I have for the past two weeks, and once again his straight friend Sandy told me he wasn't home. Lloyd asked why I persevered. “It's obvious he wants to get on with his life,” he observed.

So I wasn't all that celebratory. “What do you want to do?” Lloyd asked. “Should we get a movie? Do you want to invite Javitz for dinner?”