When the Stars Come Out (4 page)

The book—the book he once thought of as a career maker, an

award-winner—might as well be a work of fiction, for all it would

matter. His idea had bumped into reality and shattered. People

who swallowed words like “asexual” would never allow themselves

to be sexual beings. They could be leaders on arms control, the environment, war, peace, education, Social Security, Medicaid, health care, the pork barrel, the Brady Bill, NAFTA, and the nuances of

constitutional law—and, on occasion, they could even guide their

elected employers through a whole-scale defense of “traditional

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R o b B y r n e s

marriage,” trading a defense of their sexuality for votes—but they would never,
ever
. . .

With a groan, Noah sank back into the train seat, trying to force

away his frustration, and thought,
Why is this so fucking hard?
It was a question directed equally at himself and his reluctant subjects.

When he was honest with himself, Noah Abraham recognized

that a strong streak of self-righteousness ran through him. He

blamed that equally on nature (especially those genes from his fa-

ther) and nurture (especially the upbringing by his father). When

he was honest with himself, Noah Abraham blamed a lot of things

on his father.

When he was dishonest with himself, he blamed his father even

more.

He had been condemned to a life of openness and affluence.

From an objective standpoint, that easy life made The Project so

much more difficult for Noah. After all, if Noah was self-righteous, it was because his father had made life so easy. Maybe, just
maybe,
if he had a bit more fear, he could somehow wrap his head around G.

C. and the men and women who lived like G. C.

He put the tape recorder back in his bag and stared out the win-

dow, contemplating the adversities he faced because, ironically, his life held almost no adversity. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a young man unsteadily returning down the swaying aisle from the

café car, flashing Noah a smile as he passed, which only served to remind him of yet another personal advantage. If it wasn’t enough

that he was confident, intelligent, politically conscious, healthy, blessed with family money, and openly and comfortably gay, he also suffered with another intolerable lack of adversity: the knowledge that most people considered him quite good looking.

Gay, rich, smart, and good looking. Curse upon curse upon

curse upon curse.

Noah didn’t think twice about his desirability. He knew better,

after almost fifteen years as an openly gay man. He knew he wasn’t considered traditionally “handsome”: that designation went to the

Adonises with the square jaws, broad shoulders, and height. But he was universally considered “cute,” and that was enough to guarantee him attention every time he wanted it, and often when he didn’t.

At five foot seven, he was on the slightly shorter side of male physi-W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

29

ology, but even that seemed to work to his advantage. The rest of

the package—the olive complexion, deep brown eyes, full head of

wavy dark hair, trim frame, and even those dimples that lit up his face when he smiled—sealed the deal.

Over the years, Noah had not been the only person to speculate

that perhaps he had been adopted. After all, his parents were not

only taller, they were also not quite as “cute.” But that speculation was put to rest by old family photographs, with their evidence of his remarkable resemblance to his maternal grandfather. Noah, of

course, was disappointed, because if he had been adopted it would

have meant that there had been one tiny bit of adversity in his life.

But no. His family had even ruined
that
fantasy with those photographs. He was half Abraham and half Feldman, and he would

have to live with that burden.

He wanted to struggle, but couldn’t find anything to struggle

against . . . so he chose to struggle with himself. As well as those people who displeased him: the closeted completelashuels of Washing-

ton, DC.

Noah noticed with a start that the young man who had smiled at

him moments earlier was now sitting in the row of seats across the aisle. He gave him a polite nod, turned up his iPod, and turned to look back out the window, watching the fields and swamps and

small villages of Maryland pass by.

At the moment Noah’s train was departing Philadelphia’s Thirtieth

Street Station, Bart Gustafson awoke, tangled in sheets. He looked around the room in confusion before remembering that he was

not at home in Southampton, but rather on a sleeper-sofa some-

where near Lincoln Center. He stretched, feeling an unfamiliar

stiffness in his back brought on by the thin mattress.

“Jon?!” he called out to his host as he staggered to the kitchen.

Jon wasn’t there, but the coffee maker was turned on and the urn

was half full. He poured a mug and sat, taking in the view of the

traffic backed up on West Sixty-Fifth Street.

He wasn’t disappointed that his host was out of the apartment.

He was a nice enough man, but he was also close friends with Bart’s employer . . . which meant that most of their conversation revolved 30

R o b B y r n e s

around his employer. Bart didn’t take many days off from his job,

though, and talking about his boss on a rare vacation day didn’t

serve his vacation purposes.

The previous night had been a case in point. After Bart arrived

back at the apartment—far too early, thanks to the unwanted at-

tention of the bartender at The Penthouse—Jon had kept him up

until after midnight reminiscing about “the old days.” While Bart

certainly appreciated the free place to crash while he was in Man-

hattan, he was beginning to wonder if it was worth it, since the point of his getaway was to
get away
.

Okay, he thought, as he refilled his coffee mug, it was Wednes-

day, the second day of his brief vacation, and he was in Manhattan, which meant he could not—under any circumstance—spend the

day in front of the television. And, to the extent he could avoid it, he would also try not to talk about work or work-related people.

He drained his coffee and walked to the shower, determined to

make a vacation for himself.

“You shouldn’t have come.” Thus spoke Max Abraham.

“I
had
to come.”

Max shrugged. “Eh. So how’s life?”

“That’s not the big news here, is it?” Noah sat in the cold plastic chair next to his father’s bed. “How are you?”

Max raised one of his bushy eyebrows in his son’s direction. “My

life continues. All in all, I suppose that’s big news. It’s certainly
good
news. For me, at least.”

Noah smiled as he watched that bushy eyebrow hiked up on his

father’s forehead. For a moment, he wasn’t just Max Abraham, fa-

ther, but Max Abraham, New York City icon. In his frequent eager-

ness to be his own man, Noah sometimes forgot that he also

enjoyed his status as the son of one of New York’s most recogniz-

able celebrities.

Max Abraham was one of the more flamboyant members of the

New York City legal community. For several decades, he had repre-

sented actors, captains of industry, mob figures, cardinals, and

politicians, and while it was true that his reputation for self-promotion exceeded that of his reputation for legal skills, he had managed to make untold millions of dollars in the process. Through pluck and

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

31

nerve—and knowing when to call in the experts to shore himself

up—he had managed to become so well known that not only was

he a regular feature of the New York social scene, he was a recur-

ring character on
Saturday Night Live
known as “Famous Lawyer Abe Maxham.” Pure coincidence, the show’s producers claimed,

when Max threatened to sue. Pure coincidence . . . right down to those uncontrollable eyebrows.

Of course there had been no lawsuit. Max had bluffed, but

would have never followed through. The
Saturday Night Live
parody validated his status as an iconic New Yorker, a status Max valued

dearly. The lawsuit had been nothing more than a strategy to par-

ley the SNL caricature into a few additional mentions on Page Six.

It had worked—those things usually did—and even that morning

as he rested in his hospital bed, Max was strategizing on how best to publicize his heart attack without scaring off potential clients.

“You gave us quite a scare,” Noah said.

“I gave
you
a scare?” Again, an eyebrow hoisted. “Let me tell you about scary, Noah. Scary is when you’re afraid your life might be

determined by whether or not those asshole Manhattan drivers will

get out of the way to let your ambulance up Third Avenue.
That
is scary.”

Noah laughed. His father had been guilty of many things over

the years—bad parent, worse husband—but his sense of humor al-

ways bought him forgiveness.

“And anyway,” Max continued, “with a little luck I’ll be out of

here in a few days.”

“You
should
get out of here. This hospital cramps your style.”

In truth, he thought his father didn’t look so bad for a man who

had just suffered a heart attack and might undergo surgery. A bit

pale and drawn, but that was understandable. Looking at him, Noah

felt reassured that he would be around, making him crazy, for an-

other couple of decades.

Max leaned toward Noah. “So tell me how the book is going.”

“It’s not.” Noah let out a long sigh. “No one wants to talk. Not on the record. And when they
do
talk, it’s . . . it’s sad. Self-loathing jus-tifications for why they won’t come out, why they’d rather enable

the enemy than—”

“Stop right there.” Max punctuated his command with a sweep-

ing hand-gesture. “Who is the enemy?”

32

R o b B y r n e s

“Anti-gay politicians. The ones they usually work for.”

Despite his recent heart attack, the argumentative lawyer in Max

began to take over.

“Define ‘anti-gay.’”

Max was good, but—on this topic—Noah knew he was better.

He began ticking off legislation. “The Federal Marriage Amend-

ment. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ Um . . . opposition to AIDS funding and information. Equating homosexuality with bestiality and pe-dophilia . . . Do I have to go on?”

“You have some good examples, Noah. And I’m not arguing

with you. But is everyone who supports ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ anti-gay?”

“Yes.”

“Bill Clinton was anti-gay?”

“That was different. He was forced—”

“Yes!” Max rose from his prone position, and Noah could almost

see him in a suit and tie, gesturing to hold the attention of the jury, instead of lying in a pale blue hospital gown under an industrial-grade sheet. “Yes, Clinton was
forced
. But he
did it
. He
conceded
. And in the process he both lost a battle
and
a war.”

“If he didn’t, it would have been worse.”

“I’m not arguing with you against Clinton. Come on; you know

that I’m friends with Bill and Hillary. Love them! All I’m saying is that you might want to remember that in politics, as in life, the

palette has very little black and white, but a lot of shades of gray.”

“The world doesn’t look like that to me.”

He sighed. “You’re young.”

“Thirty-four. Almost thirty-five.”

“Young.” Max grabbed a glass of water from the bedside table,

drank, and continued. “Gays are the new Jews. I think you should

fight for equality, but I don’t think you should assume that everyone is going to get it, or that it’s going to be easy. Take it from a Jew born in the Holocaust era. To me, it’s insane to think that a lot of people didn’t ‘get it’ about Jews just a few generations ago. It’s better now . . . not perfect, but better. It will be better for you, too, but you have to realize that a lot of people—even a lot of
gay
people—

are going to have a learning curve.”

Noah shook his head. “It had better be a steep curve. Most of us

don’t want to wait, Dad.”

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33

“Ah . . .” Max closed his eyes and slumped back against the pil-

low. “The impatience of youth.”

“I’m thirty-four,” Noah reminded him. Again.

“Youth. You will learn.”

Despite the fact that he had rushed two hundred miles to his

bedside, Noah began to remember why they kept their distance

from each other. Max Abraham was the ultimate negotiator, always

willing to open with a compromise rather than stand on principle.

Noah Abraham was someone altogether different. The only conso-

lation, Noah thought, was that the negotiator and the idealist were mostly on the same side.

“How about,” Noah said, “we change the subject.”

His father smiled. “So I’m right?”

“Dad, I’m going to tell you that you’re right. You are one-hundred-percent correct. And do you know why I’m going to tell you that?”

“Because I just had a heart attack.”

“You are a very smart man.”

Max laughed. “Play to your advantages, then take the victory

and don’t look back.”

This time Noah laughed along with the fleshy, temporarily gray-

ish man with the bushy eyebrows and the salt-and-pepper hair who,

by some accident of biology, was his father. And he realized that