I give him a little salute. “Say hello to Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks for me. I think Jeff has them, too.”
“Really? Awesome!”
And then Luke is gone, trotting out after Jeff onto Commercial Street.
I take one last sip of my Diet Coke through my straw, making that sucking sound against the bottom of the paper cup. I pick a few crumbs off the plate in front of me, placing them in my mouth, one by one. A gull lands on a post not far from me, folding in its wings against its body. It stares resolutely at me. I look away.
“If you ask me,” comes a voice to my right, “that guy is a shmuck.”
I glance over. At the next table is a guy I recognize from the gym. A real hottie, in fact, with dark eyes and a closely shaven head, and very round biceps that stand out against his tank top like small grapefruits. I don’t know his name, but apparently he witnessed the entire scene between Jeff, Luke, and me.
“Excuse me?” I ask. “What guy?”
“That Jeff O’Brien.” The hottie nods toward the street. “You came in here with that kid, and he took off with him.”
“Oh,” I say, embarrassed. “It’s not like that.”
“Whatever.” The guy takes a bite of his hamburger. “I shouldn’t say anything. It’s none of my business.”
“No, really, Luke and I—there’s nothing between us. And Jeff’s just taking him back to show him his movie posters.”
The hottie practically spits out his burger. “What, were his etchings in storage?”
I smirk. “It’s really okay.”
He wipes his mouth with his napkin and stands, reaching across his table toward mine and extending his hand. “I’m Gale,” he says.
“Henry,” I say, shaking his hand.
“Seen you at the gym,” Gale says, sitting back down.
“Seen you too.”
Had I ever. This guy has a fucking amazing body. He must do two hundred chin ups and then, for good measure—or maybe just to show off—he flips himself over the bar a few times. And when he does a leg press, I sometimes have to force myself to look away, so hot are those bulging calves.
Yet for such a well-muscled body, it’s a delicate one, too, in a way. Gale can’t be more than five-seven, and his waist is tiny. Twenty-eight, probably. Maybe even twenty-
seven
. His features are soft and pretty, almost like a girl’s. Not really my type—but there’s no denying this guy is hotness personified.
I don’t know why I feel I need to defend Jeff, but I do. “Jeff is just a natural-born flirt,” I tell Gale. “I’m totally used to it. And that kid…well, I knew all along it was Jeff he wanted to meet.”
Gale shrugs. “I still think it was rude. But it’s none of my business.”
“Jeff’s my best friend,” I go on. “He seems shallow, but he’s not. Please don’t think badly of him. Inside, he’s a sweetheart, and he’d do anything for somebody he cares about. Really.”
“Okay,” Gale says, smiling. “I believe you.”
“Good.” I laugh. “I can’t have people thinking badly of him. I’m going to be the best man at his wedding.”
“At his wedding? And meanwhile he’s taking this twinkie back to his place?”
“It’s…a long story.”
“No, it’s not,” Gale says, shaking his head. “Non-monogamy rules the gay world.”
“Not
my
gay world,” I tell him.
He arches an eyebrow at me. “Really? Is that true, Henry? Are you really one of those rare believers in monogamy?”
I laugh awkwardly. Why am I talking so much? I don’t even know this guy. But I continue, just the same. Talking, in fact, suddenly feels good. “Well, I believe in it for me, anyway,” I explain. “If other guys can make open relationships work, then good for them. I just never could.”
And never
would
, I suddenly think, if it were
me
marrying Lloyd. If Lloyd was
my
lover, there’s no way I’d be bringing some twinkie in off the street for a quickie.
“Well, Henry, I’m glad to hear it,” Gale is saying. He stands up, carries his tray to the trash, and slides the remains of his lunch into the barrel. Then he turns and walks back over to me. He stands in front of the picnic table where I’m sitting. “In fact,” he says, “hearing that makes me want to ask you out to dinner. How about it?”
I stare up at him, momentarily unable to speak. “Yeah, sure,” I say finally.
“When?” Gale asks.
“Anytime,” I reply, still looking up into his big round brown eyes.
“Well, tomorrow’s no good,” Gale says.
“No?” I ask.
He grins knowingly. “You told the kid you were going out of town.”
I can’t resist smiling myself. “Well, I think my plans might change.”
Gale’s grin broadens. “When will you know for certain?”
“Right now.” I stand, realizing I’m a couple of heads taller than he is. But height hardly matters—not when I’m caught in the gaze of those soft brown eyes. “What time do you want to meet,” I ask, “and where?”
“How about seven-thirty at Café Heaven?”
“Good deal,” I say. We shake. Gale’s hand is small in my own, but his grip is firm and masculine.
“See you tomorrow night then,” he says, heading out.
“Yeah, see you tomorrow night,” I echo.
I watch him hop on his bike and ride away. Those amazing calves flex as he pumps the pedals, and his butt looks pretty damn good, too, as it lifts off the seat.
I carry my own tray to the trash. My eyes find those of the gull, who’s still sitting there staring at me.
“You can go now,” I whisper. “Everything’s done here.”
The bird spreads its wings and flaps away.
I smile to myself, and head home.
W
hen do we stop dreaming?
Do we still dream at sixty? At seventy? At eighty? Do we still hope to find what we haven’t yet found? Do we never give up?
I get into bed and stare at the ceiling, thinking about Gale.
My future husband.
I laugh to myself and shift the pillows behind my head.
Outside, it’s started to rain. I can hear the steady tap-tap-tapping against the skylights. Inevitably my thoughts drift back to a year and a half ago. Few things in life were ever sweeter than falling asleep next to Joey on a rainy night. He’d always nod off before I did, breathing softly in my ear. I’d just lie there, inhaling the fragrance of his air, listening to the rain on the roof. Sometimes I’d hold off from falling asleep, just wanting to savor the moment, as if I knew it was too good to last.
Why does it always come back to Joey? Or Daniel? Or Lloyd? Why do I grieve my former lovers so, even after I make a date with a hot little jock? Why is being alone so goddamn
hard
?
Two months after Joey dumped me, the phone rang, and somehow I knew it was him. “I’m leaving Provincetown,” he said to me. “I can’t seem to make it here.” He was moving to New York. Did I want to meet him for coffee before he left?
I felt the blood quicken in my veins. “Yes,” I said, hoping.
I cleaned my apartment, just in case. I told myself it was entirely possible that Joey might want to come back here. Maybe for one last quickie. Maybe after we fell into each other’s arms over coffee and decided how foolish we’d been to ever break up.
We met at a coffee joint in the West End. Joey was wearing clothes I didn’t remember. A yellow polo shirt, a pair of khakis I’d never seen, and red tennis shoes that clashed with his shirt. In two months, I wondered, had he bought a whole new wardrobe? Had he discarded everything that I had known, chucked every last bit of our life together?
We ordered our coffees. Standing at the counter, we made small talk. “How’s the guesthouse?” he asked. I told him fine. I asked about his mother. “She’s fine,” he told me. “How are Jeff and Lloyd?” They were fine, too, I told him.
I wanted to scream.
For God’s sake, Joey, how can we be standing here talking like mere acquaintances on the street when I’ve licked lint out of your navel?
But we kept our faces composed and our voices level. I asked him why he decided on New York.
“I’m seeing someone there,” he told me.
It was then that our coffees arrived. The girl behind the counter attempted to fit a lid onto mine, but as she did so, she spilled a little, burning her hand. She put it quickly to her mouth, and Joey asked her if she was all right. “I’ll live,” she said.
That’s when it hit me.
I’m seeing someone
.
“I didn’t know,” I told him as we walked out to the benches, my legs threatening to turn to jelly. “Did you meet him here?”
“Yes,” Joey said, “at Tea Dance.”
Where
we
had met, too. Where most boyfriends are met in Provincetown. I searched Joey’s eyes for something, for
anything
. Had he forgotten?
What is the process in which emotions become memories? At what point does the feeling recede, the passion dissolve, and the details become merely data stored by the brain? For me, it has yet to occur, but Joey seemed to be moving along just fine.
Still, unlike the night we broke up, I remained composed. “I wish you all the luck,” I told him. “What I want is for you to be happy.”
“Thank you, Henry.”
I felt absurd for having taken so long fixing my hair before I came over here. I was an idiot for trying on four shirts before deciding on the one I was wearing. Suddenly I wished I hadn’t shaved, and that the apartment I was planning to return to wasn’t quite so spic and span.
“I didn’t go looking for a new relationship,” Joey said suddenly, defending himself even without any accusation from me. “It just happened. And it feels right.”
I smiled at him, sipping my coffee, burning my tongue. I don’t remember what else we said. Nonsense stuff, really. About the real-estate market, about mutual funds and mutual friends. When we’d run out of even those topics, Joey stood, extending his hand and saying good-bye. But I wasn’t quite ready to separate from him forever. I stood as well, and told him I was going his way, so we might as well walk together. His presence was comforting to me after so long apart, if slightly unreal—and unsettling, too, because Joey was different, with his new clothes and his new lover. But it was preferable to being apart from him, for this time I sensed it would be forever. We walked a few blocks, and again Joey put out his hand to me to say good-bye. “I’ll walk a little further,” I said. So we walked on in silence, the only sound the squeak of his new sneakers. Still, it was something.
“Why don’t we part here?” Joey said finally, firmly, as we approached the center of town. I knew I could go no further with him, so I nodded. We hugged, at his initiation. No last cry of yearning bubbled up to escape from my lips, just a simple, “Thanks.” I felt, fleetingly, the warmth of his body once again, a body I knew every inch of, even parts Joey himself had never seen.
He continued down Commercial Street, while I hurried up to Bradford so I could peer down from the next block and catch a glimpse of him crossing the street, a flash of yellow and red in a crowd of people. That’s the last time I saw him. For all our time together, that’s the image that stays in my mind.
I didn’t go looking for a new relationship. It just happened. And it feels right.
So why hasn’t it just happened for me? I
have
been looking. Over and over again. Lloyd thinks that’s why I haven’t found a lover since Joey. I’ve been looking too hard. It’s when you’re
not
looking, he says, that you find it.
And I wasn’t looking when I met Gale. He approached
me
.
Maybe this is it. Finally.
But so had Luke approached me, and I hadn’t been looking then, either. And look how that turned out.
I try not to project anything about Gale. I try to beat back the urge to fantasize, to hope. That’s what always does me in. I start hoping, wishing, praying—and then it falls apart.
I wonder, for just the briefest of moments, what happened between Jeff and Luke. I skipped the dinner with Eliot and Oscar, even though they’re friends from way back and I haven’t seen them in a year. I just wasn’t in the mood to be chatty tonight—or to see Jeff’s rosy post-coitus glow. Instead, I slipped into my apartment and kept the lights turned off so no one could see that I was home. With the blinds closed I watched
All in the Family
, the episode where Archie gets locked in the basement. Buoyed by my meeting with Gale, I was able to laugh—and my laughter almost allowed me to resist the urge for a dish of ice cream. Resistance, of course, proved futile, so while the end credits ran, I snuck downstairs to the guesthouse kitchen and absconded with an unopened pint of Cherry Garcia. I ate two thirds of it straight from the carton watching reruns of
The Match Game
. Gotta love that Charles Nelson Reilly.
So I remain in the dark about what actually transpired between Jeff and Luke. But I can surmise this much: Jeff’s not the sort to let tricks hang around too long after sex, so I imagine the kid was sent on his way about thirty minutes after both had shot their loads, with maybe a couple of movie posters rolled up in his backpack as consolation prizes. If Luke had been hoping to weasel his way into Jeff’s life in order to jumpstart his own writing career, no doubt he was keenly disappointed. I know Jeff all too well.
Jeff. Jeffrey Michael O’Brien. I lie here wide awake shaking my head as I think about him. Even as he plans his goddamn wedding, he’s rolling around in bed with boys he picks up off the street.
Well, at least I had Luke first.
“Damn,” I say, sitting up in bed.
I can’t sleep. I punch my pillow, resettle myself on my side. But the silence of the room overwhelms me. The rain has stopped. Gone is the steady, reassuring beat against the glass of the skylights. I find myself thinking, as I do quite often lately when I can’t fall asleep, about Joey’s new boyfriend. Except that he’s not so new, at least not anymore. Surely by now they’ve settled into a routine, with their own set of little code words and habits, like Joey and I used to have. Does Joey still call hair in the shower drain “goopers”? And has the boyfriend figured out the best way to make sure Joey starts his day in a good mood is to get up before him and make sure there are no goopers in the drain?
The new boyfriend is blond. And a goy. I know, because Jeff saw the two of them in New York at Gay Pride. Until then, I’d been insistent that I didn’t want to know what the boyfriend looked like. But of course, on another level, I was
desperate
to know. So after feigning disinterest for about a minute and a half, I begged Jeff to tell me.
“Tall, blond, pretty hunky,” he reported.
“God damn it,” I muttered.
“Body’s definitely better than the face,” Jeff assessed. “Kind of a heavy brow, a little Herman Munsterish.”
“Oh, that’s much better.”
“But awesome pecs and bis though.”
I was no longer listening. All that mattered was that Joey’s new boyfriend had a monster face. I now refer to him as Herman. I have no idea what his real name is, and I don’t care to know. Herman suits him just fine.
My arm is going stiff lying on my side.
“Fuck.”
I sit up again, letting out a long sigh. I know now it’s impossible to fall asleep without chemical assistance. I throw off the sheet and place my feet against the hardwood floor. Even before I make it to the bathroom I remember that I’ve used up all my sleeping pills. Insomnia has been a rather frequent visitor to my room these past several months.
“Damn,” I say, flicking on the light and looking at myself in the mirror.
What I notice first are the bags around my eyes. When did they become so prominent? When did I start looking so old? Then my gaze drops down to the tiretube of flesh jiggling above the waistband of my Calvin Klein boxer briefs. What the hell was Gale
thinking
when he asked me out? If he’d seen me like this—the real me—he’d never have gotten such an absurd idea. Like I’m going to want to take my shirt off in front of Mr. Four-Percent-Body-Fat!
I decide to try some of that Sleepytime tea Lloyd keeps downstairs for guests. No caffeine but plenty of chamomile. It’s not Ambien, but it’s something.
I creak open the door and start down the stairs to Nirvana’s common room. I don’t want to wake any guests; the last thing I want right now is to make small talk with a couple of horny middle-aged guys from Pittsburgh or a large baby dyke from Ottawa. We’ve got a full house tonight, and each and every one of them was wide eyed and eager to start exploring Provincetown when I checked them in this afternoon. They all got my very best Chamber-of-Commerce spiel, recommending restaurants and explaining shuttle schedules. But now, at half past twelve in the morning, I’m not in the mood to play tour guide.
I’m in luck. The common room is empty. I hurry over to the bar, where in just six hours I’ll be putting out blueberry muffins and croissants (reheated from yesterday’s batch, no way I’m getting up an hour early now to whip up some new ones). I fumble around in the darkness, not wanting to switch on a light, searching for the little baskets where we keep tea bags and sugar packets.
“And what are you lurking about for at this time of night, Mr. Weiner?”
I jump, even though I know the voice.
“Lloyd,” I say, not bothering to look up. “I can’t sleep. I need some of that tea. Or better yet, if you have some Ambien lying around…”
“No need for all those toxic chemicals,” Lloyd tells me. He easily finds the basket with the tea and motions me to follow him into the small kitchen area. It’s thankfully separated off from the common room by a solid oak door. Once inside, Lloyd flicks on the overhead light. I blink, my eyes adjusting, while he drops a tea bag into a mug filled with water and pops it into the microwave. “So, tell me, Henry,” Lloyd says, while the tea spins slowly inside, brewing, “what’s keeping you awake and prowling the halls?”
“Oh, nothing much,” I say. “Except my entire life.”
Lloyd smiles. The microwave beeps. He carefully removes the mug of tea and sets it down in front of me. “Honey?” he asks. I shake my head no—too many calories. He tells me to wait a couple of minutes before drinking. “It’s hot.”
I look over at him. Nothing in the world feels better than being taken care of by Lloyd Griffith. He always knows just what to say, what to offer, how to be. Once, I really believed we were right for each other. Maybe I still believe that. Jeff doesn’t appreciate Lloyd the way I do. Jeff’s always too busy, always rushing off somewhere, to just sit and
be
, the way Lloyd prefers. Jeff never pauses long enough to listen to Lloyd’s soothing, wise words and truly take them in. He’s never admitted as much, but I think Lloyd agrees with me about the whole monogamy thing—that if Jeff didn’t insist on remaining a tramp, he’d reel him in, and they’d have a lovely, one-on-one, monogamous relationship.
He could have had it with me—but the one blind spot in Lloyd’s wisdom is his love for Jeff. What he puts up with from that man! Today, while Lloyd was probably here at the guesthouse, Jeff was back in their bed fucking Luke’s hot little butt. As much as Jeff is my friend, I really don’t see what keeps Lloyd so attached to him. They’re day and night, black and white. And now they’re getting married.
“Your entire life,” Lloyd says, sitting down at the table opposite me. “That’s a lot of territory.”
“Not really,” I tell him, holding my hands against the sides of the hot cup. “My life is pretty small, in fact. There’s the guesthouse, you, Jeff, Ann Marie, J. R., visits to my parents a few times a year…that about sums up my life.”
“Oh, we’re reducing Henry Weiner to exteriors again, are we?”