A stepbrother who became a born-again Christian.
Just like Kirk Cameron.
I look back at the screen. Leo is teasing Kirk. They’re roughhousing in the bedroom. How many gay guys of a certain age used to fantasize about those two hotties getting it on?
It’s just the way Luke described it.
And what did he say about the guy who adopted him? He was a lawyer! Just like the father on the show! And where was
Growing Pains
set? Long Island! Where Luke claims to come from!
I’m immediately at my computer, Googling
Growing Pains
. Yes, here it is: character profiles. I click on the one for “Luke.”
“Holy shit,” I say to myself as I read what’s written there.
In his last appearance, “Luke” was depicted as going off with his real father to run a truckstop in Tucson. Exactly what our Luke claims for himself! And the cincher is the character’s last name,
Brower
. Though we’ve known him as West, he’s admitted it was a made-up name—and somehow Brower is ringing a bell for me. I dig out Luke’s binder of short stories from under a pile of papers. Sure enough, in that piece, the narrator’s last name is Brower.
Can it be possible?
He’s taken on the identity of a character from an old TV show!
But he’s also given him considerably more backstory—with all that talk about an uncle who looked like the Penguin and the lecherous guys who gave him rides when he was hitchhiking.
I sit there at my desk staring out the window. The sun is setting in a dazzling display of reds and golds and greens. What was in this kid’s head to imagine himself as a television character?
Sometimes,
he once told me about the people he saw on the screen,
it seems like they’re your best friends.
In that one instance, at least, I believe he was speaking the truth.
“I
wasn’t sure you’d call,” Luke says to me.
We’re sitting on the pier, in the same place we sat several weeks ago, not long after we met. It seems a lifetime ago. Luke looks smaller today, younger, huddled in a dark blue hooded sweatshirt. It’s cold out here on the pier. The wind whips in off the harbor with a chilling force. Summer is definitely over. Winter is whistling down the road.
“I wasn’t sure I would either,” I tell him.
But I did. I called and asked him to meet me here. Lloyd was right. I needed some kind of closure. I don’t know what to expect—even if I should be expecting anything at all. Still, I’ve made love to this young man. I’ve read his words, glimpsed into his soul. Might there still be a chance to find out who he really is?
Sitting on the bench beside Luke, I stuff my hands deep down into my pockets. I don’t say anything else for the moment. I want him to take the lead. I want to see where he goes.
“Well,” Luke says, possibly a bit unnerved by my silence. “I’m glad you called, Henry. I hated thinking that I had totally fucked it up with you.”
“Gee,” I say, a small smile cracking the edges of my lips, “whatever would make you think that?”
Luke gives me a very earnest face. “Henry, you’ve got to believe me. I was upset because I was sure Jeff had told you what happened, about how I tried to…” His voice trails off. “How I humiliated myself in front of him. But I didn’t care about that. What I cared about was the possibility that I might have lost you forever.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it is. So, you see, I was quite upset, and it was all about
you
, Henry, and that’s when Lloyd tried to comfort me and—”
“I know the rest,” I tell him.
He looks at me with those imploring eyes of his. “All along, my real feelings have always been for
you
, Henry.”
I look at him kindly. “I’m not sure you know what your real feelings are, Luke. Or if they’re even yours.”
He looks at me oddly.
“Maybe they’re Becky Sharp’s,” I say. “Or some other character from a movie or a television show.”
He stiffens. “I’m being honest with you about how I feel.”
I shrug. “Maybe you are. But still, that doesn’t tell me what I want to know.”
He makes a face. “What do you want to know then?”
“Let’s start with your real name. You’ve admitted you made up ‘West.’ Did you make up ‘Luke’ too?”
He laughs. “What are you driving at, Henry?”
“I want to know who you are. Who you
really
are.”
“Why?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” I admit. “Maybe because I’m tired of living with dreams and fantasies. I’m tired of not knowing who people are, or how they feel, or why they’re in my life.”
He gives me an arrogant smile. “Maybe you’re tired of not knowing who
you
are, Henry, or how
you
feel.”
“That too.” I’m nodding my head in agreement. “Definitely that too.” I narrow my eyes at him. “But at least I haven’t pretended to be a character from some Eighties sitcom.”
He looks at me sharply. “How did you—?” Then a small smile creeps across his face. “I see you’ve been watching TV Land.”
I smirk. “It’s one of my favorite things to do, though I don’t claim to have the encyclopedic knowledge of television classics that you do.”
His smile grows. “Okay then. How about if I told you my name was George Burnett? Or David Healy? Or Joey Russo?”
I shake my head. “I wouldn’t buy it. I’m not sure exactly who played them or where, but I’d wager, if I searched hard enough, I’d find all of them on the Internet Movie and TV Database.”
Luke laughs. “That you would.” He laughs again, harder. “And every one of them, I can assure you, is far, far more interesting than Frank Hall of Lewiston, Maine.”
“Ah,” I say, extending my hand. “At last. Hello, Frank. My name is Henry.”
We shake.
“And I suspect,” I add, still shaking his hand, “that Frank Hall’s life is far more interesting than you think.”
He drops my hand. “And what makes you suspect that?”
“I’ve read your work, Frank. I know the hurt you carry around with you.”
“Oh,” he says, eyeing me. “You do?”
“Yes. And if you’d allow it, I’d like to know more.”
He’s still looking at me strangely. “Know more about what?”
“Your health, for one.” I reach for his hand, but he moves it to his face, deftly avoiding contact with me. “You write about Darryl being sick, but I think it may be you.”
He says nothing. He just keeps staring at me.
“And your father,” I say. “That was perhaps the most disturbing suggestion of all in your work…”
“Henry,” Frank Hall says to me.
I look at him, listening.
“I made all that shit up.”
It’s my turn to remain silent.
“Really,” he says, smiling again. “I did. I figured this was the kind of shit the sells. Pain and death and parental abuse.” He lets out a whoop of a laugh, one that frightens me, causes me to sit back on the bench. “It’s what they call ‘literary fiction.’ Not like that commercial puke Jeff puts out.”
“Don’t start degrading Jeff’s work again,” I tell him.
“Look, Henry, all you need to know about me is that I’m in love with you. Isn’t that enough?”
I look at him for a long time. How long I’ve wanted to hear those words from someone.
I’m in love with you, Henry.
But I look over at him and say, “No. It’s not enough.”
“Why not?” Luke—or Frank—seems exasperated. “I’d have thought you’d say that was the most important thing to know about someone.”
I shake my head. “Maybe a week ago I’d have said that. Not anymore.”
“I don’t understand you, Henry.”
“You know, Frank,” I say, “there was a time when I called myself a different name, too.” I lift my chin, puff out my chest. “Frank, meet Hank. Remember I told you I was an escort for a while?”
“Sure.”
I look off over the water. “I thought Henry Weiner wasn’t good enough, or interesting enough, or sexy enough. So I invented this character named Hank. He didn’t last very long. But still, there was always this belief way down deep that Henry just didn’t cut it. Henry was just not good enough.”
“Not good enough for what?” he asks.
“For everything!” I gesture around me. “For anything!”
Finally—a bit of understanding, a trace of honest emotion on the face of the young man sitting next to me. The cocky smile slowly fades from his face as he joins me in looking out over the sea.
“There’s not much to write about in Lewiston, Maine,” he tells me. “So I had this brilliant idea. I’d create a character and I’d live his life. I’d test stories out on people, and if I got a response, if people believed me, I’d know they’d work in my novel.”
I’m nodding. “That’s why your stories always sounded like memorized passages from a book”
“You always saw through me,” Luke says.
“Not always,” I admit. “Because sometimes—sometimes I think you were telling us the truth, even when you were, in fact, not.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve really been as lonely as that boy you described meeting Darryl at a bookstore. You really did want to get out of your hometown as much as that kid with that cat-murdering uncle.”
Frank looks back out over the water. “Even more…”
“Lloyd is perhaps the best judge of character I know,” I tell him. “The fact that he always held out some hope for you says something.” I look into Frank’s eyes. “We’re not so different, you and me. We’ve both been telling the world stories about ourselves in order to distract attention away from who we really are.”
“So who
are
we?”
I shrug. “A couple of lonely guys, just looking for someone to wake up with every morning.”
“Then don’t give up on me, Henry. If you believe the underlying truth of my stories, believe me when I say I really like you. And always have. That day when we first had sex, I treasure it.”
Does he? I look at him. Maybe he does. Maybe, in this moment, he really believes what he is saying to me. Maybe, in fact, he really does like me.
But then I have what Lloyd calls a “psychic moment.” I can’t explain it. It’s just there, a bit of knowledge in my head that I know to be irrefutably true.
“Your name isn’t even Frank Hall, is it?” I ask.
“Names don’t mean anything,” he tells me.
“They do to me.”
I stand up.
“You don’t believe that I love you?” he asks, almost in a panic.
“Actually, I do believe that,” I say.
“Then goddamn it! It’s not enough?”
“No,” I tell him. “It’s not enough.”
“Henry,” the kid says, and there’s real panic in his eyes. “Don’t walk away from me! Please!”
“I want a relationship, it’s true,” I tell him. “I’ve spent the last year of my life spinning my wheels as I looked for one. I was running after this one and that one, transferring my emotions as often as I changed my socks. I was willing to chase down anyone—
anyone
—if I thought maybe they might like me. But now…”
The kid on the bench—whatever his name is—looks up at me, waiting for me to finish.
“Now, I want something more than that.”
“Like what?”
“Something that’s real. Something that seems to be impossible for you, my friend.”
The young man on the bench turns his face away from me.
“Good luck to you,” I tell him. “I hope you realize that there’s plenty to write about in Lewiston—or wherever it is you really come from. More than you ever believed possible.”
I leave him sitting there staring out over the harbor. I walk off the pier, heading into town, where I spot Ellie, the miniskirted transvestite street singer. Once, in another life, she was a fire-breathing Baptist preacher. Now she’s dragging her wagon, tottering on her high heels, and warbling:
The record shows, I took the blows, and did it my way!
Up and down this street, character after character passes, each one a brand-new creation. The middle-aged woman who dares hold her girlfriend’s hand in public for the first time. The leather-man who walks proudly, his enormous codpiece preceding him. The painter standing on the side of the road at his easel, who was told in art school he had no talent, but who flourishes here, liberated from the tyranny of rules and tradition. In this place that celebrates reinvention, our previous lives are immaterial. Here, we become who we want to be.
If only the boy I’d just left could understand that. And trust it.
Did he really make it all up? All those stories that haunted me? Those nightmarish images and dark scenarios?
I realize all at once that it doesn’t matter anymore. It is a liberating feeling. I can’t stop the smile from pushing across my face.
Walking past Ellie, I give her a hearty salute. She waves back in solidarity. We are new creatures, she and I. We have been reborn.
I have not felt this good, this solid, since—well, I can’t even remember. I feel alive. I feel inspired. I feel—dare I say it?—
complete
.
“Henry!”
I turn. On his bike, heading toward me, is Jeff. He slows as he approaches and comes to a stop in front of me.
“Lloyd said you were meeting Luke,” he says. There’s concern on his face. “Everything go okay?”
“Just fine.” I smile at him. “It went far, far better than I could ever have imagined.”
Jeff gets off his bike, pushing it as we walk the street. “So are you two friends again?”
I smile. “Jeff, he and I were never friends.”
He sighs, not really following my meaning. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Actually, never better.” I zip up my jacket. “What great air, don’t you think? I love the first brisk winds of fall. People wish they could bottle the air here, you know. They want to take it back with them to wherever they call home. Do you know how lucky we are to live here, Jeff?”
He smiles. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“I’m seeing Gale tonight,” I tell him. “I wasn’t sure I should go through with it, but now I think I should.”
“And why’s that?”
“I need to tell him I was wrong.”
Jeff gives me a puzzled look. “Wrong about what?”
“I was pushing him to go faster than he was ready for. And in truth, I wasn’t ready myself.” I laugh, spreading my arms wide as we walk down the street. “Do you know how wonderful it is to be single?”
“Henry,” Jeff says, leaning in. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I told you. Never better!”
Jeff smirks. “So Henry Weiner is happy to be a single man?”
“Ecstatic.” I turn to him. “If I had gotten into a relationship with any one of these guys—or, in the case of Evan and Curt, any two—well, it would have come undone just as fast as my relationships with Joey or Daniel or Shane did. Don’t you see, Jeff? I was caught in a vicious pattern, but now I have the luxury of getting to know myself on my own! To get myself ready for Mr. Right, whenever he might come along.”
“Uh, excuse me,” Jeff says, crossing his arms over his chest and stopping in the road in front of me, “but isn’t this what Lloyd and I have been telling you all along?”
I smile. “Yes, it is. But only now can I really see things clearly.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jeff looks me up and down. “If that’s the case, then how come you’re still wearing those clothes?”
My exuberance comes to a sudden stop. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”
Jeff just grins and gestures to my outfit. I look down at myself. I’m wearing my number 9 T-shirt under a black jacket with
ABERCROMBIE ATHLETIC DEPT
stenciled on the back. I’m also wearing the new white belt I bought for myself this morning. I think I look pretty
stylin
’.
“Henry,” Jeff says, putting his arm around me and pulling me close, “I’m all for you revamping yourself. But let me give you a bit of advice. The fastest way to looking old and tired is trying too hard to look young.”
“
What?
”
He smiles. “It hit me the other day when I was in Boston trying on a pair of sunglasses.” He looks around to make sure no one can overhear him. “I looked at the label. They were these huge goofy things I see a lot of the kids wearing—and they were from the Mary-Kate and Ashley line.”