Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle (22 page)

“Deep, deep,” I commented, “runs the hoax of the closet.”

It was rather a large gathering for a dinner party, but Dennis Savage had given Peter the recipe for Forty Spices Meat Loaf and Bavarian Potato Stew, which, with a Caesar salad and Tiramisù Cake, serves twelve. Peter has one of those weird New York apartments shaped like a drunken corral, but it has a sizable living-room section, so we filled our plates buffet-style and sat around on chairs or the carpet as Virgil and Cosgrove made their presentation. Armed with clipboards and pens perched behind the ear, they were in their suits for that managerial look, Cosgrove sporting my Nicole Miller cartoon tie that everyone mistakes for a Roz Chast and that gives him tremendous confidence.

“Now, each guest will have his own copy to take home and fill out,” Virgil announced. “But let us explore some sample questions. If someone in the audience would . . . Ah, you, sir,” he said, heading toward Dennis Savage.

“A little too much of the basil and tarragon,” Dennis Savage called out to Peter, about the meat loaf. “But masterly on the turmeric.” I believe this is called “stalling.”

“Yes, if you will, sir,” Virgil insisted, as Dennis Savage tried to look as if he were in downtown St. Louis. “We’ll start at the top and run through—”

“Why don’t you go around the room?” I suggested. “Then everyone gets a chance.”

The others, especially Dennis Savage, chorused out yeses, so Cosgrove, happy with his forms at the center of attention, directed a question to Lanning, one of Peter’s old college buddies. (Princeton, what else?)

“ ‘What sex act have you never tried?’ ”

Hesitating, Lanning lost the floor to Greg, who exclaimed, “I’ve never rimmed a Martian! No, wait, there was that night in—”

“How about you?” Virgil asked Dennis Savage.

“How about
what
me?”

“Shouldn’t you be answering the question, so gently and true?”

Watching the two of them and sensing that something was up, Peter said, “I can’t wait to take the test.”

“Then
you
answer him” was Dennis Savage’s suggestion.

Peter looked expectant, so Virgil turned to him and read out, “ ‘Would you characterize yourself as (a) monogamous, (b) promiscuous, or (c) a lonely masturbating troll?’ ”

Lanning let out a low whistle, and Carlo said, “They play for keeps around here.”

“Now you,” Virgil prompted Dennis Savage.

“I want my own question.”

Cosgrove popped up with “ ‘As the head of a home for wayward boys, you enforce discipline by (a) delegating the responsibility to hall monitors, (b) personally conducting all-nude paddling sessions, (c) choosing the three most lovely—’ ”

“Stop!” Dennis Savage commanded. “This is not socialized behavior.”

“Food’s good,” said Carlo, and there were general noises of assent.

“Give him a simple one,” Virgil told Cosgrove.

“Okay. The first question in the whole form is ‘Describe your coupling status.’ ”

Dennis Savage grumbled, “It’ll be ‘merry widow’ in about two minutes.”

“Very funny,” said Virgil.

“Why don’t we all play at once?” Greg asked. “Just throw the questions out and everyone will take a shot.”

Cries of “Yes,” and a “Hear, hear” from Peter.

So the kids fired them out. “Name the three most attractive men in history,” for instance; and everyone had a bash at that, followed by stimulating little controversies. And there was “You are invited to appear in a porn movie with any partner of your choice. (A) Name your co-star, and (b) What acts do you perform?” That provoked a very cascade of answers. There was an amusing moment when at the question “Have you ever hustled?” everyone looked at Carlo and he said, “Not only hustled, I got busted for it last month. But they dropped the charges.” There was a tender moment, when Cosgrove read out “Who was the person you most wanted and never had?” and Peter’s Princeton crew sighed, exchanged glances, and, as one man, murmured, “Oakley Enders.” This turned out to be the captain of the lacrosse team or something.

Anyway, we continued investigating the questionnaire in a lighthearted manner, though Virgil kept eyeing Dennis Savage with a touch of menace; and then we all went to Peter’s piano and sang the Beatles songbook while Peter, Dennis Savage, and Carlo straightened the place up and the kids huddled in a corner discussing our answers to their questions. At length, we’d gone into overtime, and the Princeton group and Carlo left en masse. So the rest of us took a last glass of wine and sat down to dish the event.

“You know,” said Peter, “this whole thing is really about the
tension between what you get in life and what you really wanted instead.”

Dennis Savage, looking at Virgil, quietly sang, to a strain from
Follies:

Beavis wants to do what Butt-head does,
Butt-head wants to be what Beavis was.

“Well, now, what do you fresh young entrepreneurs intend with this survey of yours?” Peter asked them.

“We’ll sell it to
Hard Copy,”
said Cosgrove.

“One question we never got to ask,” said Virgil, “is ‘What do you fear most?’ ”

“What’s that doing in a sex survey?” asked Dennis Savage.

“I knew you’d evade it.”

“Oh, but I wonder, though,” said Peter. “Well, truly, this tension we speak of. Does it . . . Do straights have the same problem?”

“Speaking of that,” I said, “did you consider asking your new boy friend to the party?”

“Yes, wasn’t I
dying
to show him off, at least? But I knew Carlo would . . . well, he’d steal Konstantin from me. No—no, he couldn’t stop himself.”

There was a pause, which Cosgrove enlivened by blowing bubbles in his wine while humming “What I Did for Love.” Virgil, who usually sings along, was silent.

“You know, Konstantin is very intrigued by . . . well, how we live. He asks such questions! I took him by the office, and my breakfast place and . . . well, didn’t I show him your building?”

“Where we live?” Dennis Savage asked. “Why?”

“What is it?” Peter went on. “A sexual thing? A social thing? Or both? Could he be using sex to . . . become smarter? He wants to know everyone’s name. My friends. My boss, even.”

“Maybe he’s after your job,” I said.

“Am I in love with him? How would one know?” He seemed urgent about it. “How would one
know
?”

I said, “That’s a question they should put in the sex survey.”

Cosgrove was playing with his zipper; Virgil was returning Dennis Savage’s stare. I got up to signal everyone that it was time to leave Peter Keene’s apartment.

“I know there are questions and answers,” said Peter, rising with me. The others ignored us. “It seems so
even
, yes, but then it’s so deep and one is wondering, and how would one know?”

That’s the story’s first beginning. The second beginning, which happened at the same time as the first, took off when Cosgrove returned from the barbershop virtually bald. In my generation, you figured out Your Best Look by about age nineteen, and that style you maintained for life. To Cosgrove’s generation, hair is like clothing: part of the fashion statement, ever subject to change. This time, Cosgrove decided on a high-concept buzz cut; in my day, we called it “falling asleep in the barber chair.”

Boys and girls, can I let you in on a little fashion tip?
Nobody looks good without hair
.

Besides—as I pointed out to Cosgrove the moment he came in—his near scalping made him extremely vulnerable to remarks from Dennis Savage, who had smarted under Cosgrove’s jokes about
his
trendy haircut.

“I forgot about that!” cried Cosgrove, in a panic.

And “Here he comes now,” I added: for the doorbell rang to announce a visit I’d been greatly looking forward to, that of Dennis Savage’s sister’s children, Monica and Alfie, who were staying with their uncle for a week while their parents toured Europe. Cosgrove raced into the bedroom to find a hat as Dennis Savage paraded in with his charges. Monica, age nine, was too hip and contemptuous of everything for my taste, but Alfie, five, was still enchanted and fascinating, a miniature human being who had not yet learned to select what to show of himself and was therefore guileless, trusting, and touchingly vulnerable.

“At first I didn’t want to come,” Alfie told me. “Because
Gramma Tomjoy is sending me a T-Rex, and it could come any day now. A
real
T-Rex!”

“No, Alfie,” said Monica.

“Yes, it is, too, real. Gramma Tomjoy sent it by parcel post!”

With the disgusted patience of a princess correcting a gauche but well-connected courtier, Monica told him, “You can’t send animals through the mail even if this
was
a live T-Rex, and this can’t be because there
aren’t
any!”

“Yes, it
is
coming,” Alfie replied, growing unhappy, though Cosgrove’s reentrance, in my New York City Opera baseball cap, proved a helpful distraction. Cosgrove and Alfie hit it off immediately, especially when it turned out they shared a passion for Rice Krispies treats, though neither had ever actually eaten or even seen one.

“That’s baby food,” Monica pointed out, giving Cosgrove a second look. “You cook it off the back of a
cereal
box! Aren’t you too old for baby food?”

Cosgrove glanced at me to see how bold he was permitted to get in, uh, debate with Monica, but suddenly Alfie, sensing an ally in Cosgrove, asked him, “Isn’t a T-Rex a live animal?”

“Yes,” said Cosgrove. “I know several.”

“You
do?
I’m getting a T-Rex of my own! From Gramma Tomjoy? I’m going to take it to school with me, so if those big boys try to harm me . . .”

“Be sure he’s carefully trained first,” Cosgrove advised him. “A T-Rex can get quite rowdy, you know.”

Monica said, “There . . . is . . . no . . . such—”

“Eat shit and die, you sluthead,” said Cosgrove, which had Monica thunderously silent, Alfie in awe, and Dennis Savage tut-tutting.

“Try to play nice, children,” he urged, and I reminded Cosgrove that Monica was, after all, a guest in our home. Mistake: Because Cosgrove, feeling betrayed, whipped the cap off to clock me one with it and Dennis Savage instantly seized upon Cosgrove’s haircut with a glad little cry.

“Is someone auditioning for
The Yul Brynner Story
, I wonder?” he asked.

“All right,” I said, “no jokes about haircuts, at least till Monica and Alfie leave. And don’t give me that whimsical look. We have to show a united air of authority with all these people of revolutionary age around. No divisiveness.”

Dennis Savage made a vaguely concurring gesture as Alfie told Cosgrove, “I don’t trust haircuts, but can I wear your cap now?” Cosgrove gave it to him, and Alfie beamed. “I’m all grown up,” he said.

In fact, Alfie adopted Cosgrove, even hauling his sleeping bag downstairs to spend the nights with us. The next morning, I’d find him and Cosgrove preparing breakfast together, Alfie walking around in the bag like a manta ray floating through an aquarium.

“It’s nice and toasty like this,” he explained.

For his part, Cosgrove found himself, for the first time ever, with an adherent looking up to him, and the experience was a heady one. They became inseparable, Alfie tagging along on Cosgrove’s chores as Cosgrove lectured on matters of both spiritual and temporal nature. Cosgrove never patronized Alfie or answered a question with “You’re too young to understand” or told him he couldn’t have seconds on Frozfruit pops. Alfie was especially captivated by Cosgrove’s whoopee cushion (which I had hid, this time so ingeniously that it must have taken Cosgrove a whole twenty-eight seconds before he found it), not least when they passed a slow morning stalking, and at length bagging, the wary Monica.

Dennis Savage referred to the two children as “i nevodi,” which is Venetian dialect for a word that English lacks, meaning “sibling’s progeny of either gender.” They were the darlings of the building, Monica becoming the toast of the doormen’s lunch room and Alfie intimately befriending Silver Prince, the Highland White in 8-C. This was handy, for it meant we could occasionally park i nevodi with neighbors—as we did, for instance, the night of Peter’s dinner party.

Otherwise, Cosgrove kept Alfie busy and Monica was a constant reader. Still, there were times when Dennis Savage and I had to drop everything and entertain them, particularly on one rainy afternoon when the television was empty and both nevodi rebelled against another of my Oz readings.

“I can see I must tell a story,” said Cosgrove, moving in like Johnny Carson for the opening monologue. “Perhaps a tale of the Whistling Candymouse of Summertown.”

“The what?” said Dennis Savage.

“There . . . is . . . no . . . such—”

“This would be the episode,” Cosgrove went on, as he settled in on the couch between Alfie and Monica, “in which Alfie meets the Candymouse.”

“Yes!” cried Alfie. “Was
I
there?”

“It’s all so fake,” said Monica.

“And yet,” said Cosgrove. “One fine day, Alfie went off to school—”

“He doesn’t go to school yet,” Monica put in.