“But it’s true! She reeked of Porcelana.”
“How can they live so long?” Lee wondered.
“How can they have so much money?” another added.
Marcos pulled on his coat. “Honey, I dunno what the secret is, but I want it. Come on, baby. Let’s ou-tray.”
Lee gave up on his static-distorted locks. Moussed up, it resembled a Brillo pad. Pulled down it merely looked stringy. Cut short, it at least stayed out of the way. It was useless. He’d never have A-gay hair.
Lee and Marcos walked down the ornate lobby of the Waldorf and into the street. “We are outta here!” Marcos sighed. “C’mon, baby. I gotta be clubbin’.”
“Just let me button my coat.”
“Oh, do that in the cab. Our chariot awaits.”
Lee couldn’t admit to Marcos that he wanted to hang out a while and see if he could spot the video guy he’d almost managed to converse with, but he needed to share cab fare.
They scooted into the first of yellow cars lined up outside the entrance to the Waldorf. Luckily, the driver caught most of the green lights going downtown. As they whooshed through the glowing streets, Marcos bubbled with anticipation of his night to come. “Those child’s be workin’ it. I’m gonna feature
ce soir
.”
Lee smiled, hoping a bit of Marcos’ cheer would rub off. “Well, I’d love to join you, but ...”
“Well, I’d love to join you too, but if you wear those raggedy clothes, ye shall not be admitted to the boites I’m hittin’. And I would love to invite you over again to wear some of my gear, but I am not in the rental business.”
“Thanks anyway, but I have to get up in the morning.” Lee had a job interview with a different catering company with less prestige, but a much more relaxed staff, he’d been told.
The cab stopped at Horatio Street. Marcos was out in a flash and handed Lee a five-dollar bill.
“Have fun!” Lee called out.
“Oh, honey, I define fun!” With a snap and a wave, Marcos was off to “feature” at Boy Bar, followed by Cave Canem, followed by Save the Robots.
Instead of taking the Christopher Street PATH station, Lee walked around Sheridan Square once, looking for trouble, but finding no one daring. At the #1 train stairwell, the warm gush of stale air coming from below meant that he might make the latest train and connect to the PATH at the World Trade Center stop. Something about that station’s cavernous immensity spooked him, but the trains ran more frequently down there, even late at night.
A few others had raced past Lee to catch it, but he knew with his luck he’d trip all over himself, be tempted to jump the turnstile, only to get caught by a transit cop or lose a limb in a car door. He was too tired to rush, and actually wanted to quietly savor his last few minutes of that night in Manhattan.
Despite being exhausted, frustrated, and hungry again, he rested easily, picked a free column, and scrunched down to sit against it on the dirty tiled floor. What did it matter how good he looked? Sometimes, all he had to do was tell himself,
You’re not just miserable, you’re miserable in New York City.
He settled down to the next day’s edition of the
Post
. The headline read: BRONX SHOOTING SPREE. Maybe somebody else’s grisly nightmare would amuse him.
His eyes were distracted from the paper by a familiar tuxedo-clad figure; the recently admired video assistant, whose black overcoat gave him a debonair look. His bow tie was missing from his unbuttoned collar. Their eyes met. He grinned.
“You look familiar,” Lee looked up, trying not to disclose his extreme enthusiasm.
“Got any cherries?” the guy smiled. Walking up to the column, he stood close, enough for Lee to enjoy a face-to-groin view of his tux pants.
Lee stood, dropping his newspaper into his bag. “I thought I might see you.”
“Oh yeah?” The fluorescent light gave his cocoa skin a pallid cast.
“Yeah, I saw you on the train before.”
“What, here?”
“No, the PATH. You going to World Trade?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.” He lived in Jersey? This was a sure bet, at least for a long train ride or two. Lee relaxed. No other guys would jostle their way between this potential suitor. Nobody else was taking a cab home in their direction.
“Thought you were a musician,” Lee said. “Y’know. The monkey suit.”
“I’m so obviously ‘the help?’”
“Sorry, but there was a bit too much worker’s fatigue around your eyes.”
“Oh.”
“Very unmistakable,” Lee said. “Besides, you didn’t look drunk.”
“Wonder what night that was?”
Lee blushed. The guy’s deep voice wasn’t just sexy, but casually masculine, with only a slight hint of urbane sarcasm. “Does it pay good?”
“What? Shooting weddings? Oh, yeah. It’s alright.”
He looked into Lee’s eyes with more interest than a straight man would, and at much closer range. A good sign, yet he seemed almost arrogant. Lee slowly planned his talk, but something silly came out instead.
“I’m craving eggs.”
“Huh?”
“Eggs. This old man kept asking for eggs. ‘Veah’z da heggs? Veah’z da heggs?’ As if everybody had eggs with coffee and dessert at midnight.”
The guy grunted half a laugh. “Yeah, they’re wild.” Lee watched him set down his shoulder bag. Relief. At least he wasn’t planning on walking away.
Ask him about himself. Stop talking stupid.
“You do a lot of weddings?”
“About three a week.”
“Must get pretty boring. I mean, how many times can you watch the bride throw the bouquet before you before you wish you could just run right up and catch it yourself!”
“Right.” They both laughed, a bit loud. Two girls in tight skirts and short jackets looked at them. They both stopped talking a few seconds, each waiting for the other to speak.
“Well, at least all those weddings give you ideas on how to do your own.”
“Ha.” The handsome guy leaned against the column. The shift of the light increased the shadow of his nose. Lee noticed the slight stubble on his face as he said, “I’m not the marrying type.”
“Oh,” Lee smiled. “I can’t say I’m disappointed to hear that.”
With a great rumbling and squeaking of wheels, the train arrived.
They walked up the stairs and around a construction project through the silent mini-mall, where they changed trains under the World Trade Center and toward the phalanx of escalators to New Jersey’s PATH.
“Hold on, I gotta get some money.” He approached a bank machine, inserted his card, waited. “Use the bank in Jersey and they charge me a dollar.”
“What a rip-off.”
“This place. You come through here in the morning?”
“Not much these days.”
“Man, it’s amazing. Pouring with people.”
“Yeah, now I mostly just see it like this. Empty.”
He looked around with what Lee thought might be a mischievous glance. “Hey, is there a rest room somewhere? Man, I gotta piss.”
“Closed.”
“I’ll find a corner somewhere.”
“Oh, they got cameras everywhere.”
“Hmm. Oh well.” He smiled. “I’ll just have to hold it in.” He grinned mischievously, cupping his crotch. Lee blushed.
The two men descended the escalator together, paid their fares and waited in the nearly empty PATH train, which rumbled toward starting a few times, faltered, then finally the doors closed with the loud ‘bing-bong’ that had long ago begun to annoy Lee. That night, he smiled at the tones.
As they spoke, leaning close to hear above the rumbling, Lee learned that his name was Cal, short for Calvin Deason. They chatted about video, rich people, and work. As Lee leaned in, he looked down at Cal’s thighs. Once, the train lurched and Cal’s lips brushed his ear.
“Do you have family?” Lee asked, hoping he wasn’t quizzing too much.
“Uh, yeah, my parents live in Boston.”
They approached Grove Street. “Well, I get off here.” Lee stood.
“Me too.” Lee’s stomach did a small flip-flop. He distinctly remembered watching Cal stay on the train at the Grove Street stop, but he wasn’t about to question him. Maybe this was a really good thing. Maybe he wasn’t going home that time. Maybe he did want Lee to take him home. His thoughts jumped about distractedly as they strolled through the quiet Jersey City streets.
Lee stopped at his corner. “Well, I go this way five more blocks. Think I’m gonna make some ‘heggs.’”
“Sounds good. I always get hungry again by the time I get home.”
Lee held his door keys tightly in his coat pocket. Cal’s brown eyes glistened in the street light. They stood looking at each other a moment. A car alarm screamed somewhere down the block.
“Do you ... um ... are you hungry?” Lee took his hand out of his pocket and pointed to his apartment with his door key.
“Yeah, sure.” For a moment Cal’s face lost its ruddy angular stance and became quite vulnerable. “Sure, that’d be nice.” He unzipped his tux fly and walked toward a corrugated metal shopfront gate. “But I have got to piss now or fall down doin’ it.”
Lee chuckled, stealing a glimpse as Cal unleashed against the wall.
“It’s okay. You can watch!”
“Why, thank you.”
In his twenty-four years (the first nineteen of which were virginal), other than Brian, Lee had rarely slept with a guy who could truly make love. Many of them knew how to fuck, some could easily get off, but none stirred him with such grace and lyrical devotion. Cal’s lovemaking felt like warm molasses dripping over his body, and Lee couldn’t stop licking.
Perhaps it was the mixture of tall black father and lithe pale mother that gave him such a charged combination. Lee pondered Cal’s heritage as he rubbed and licked his stomach muscles, and watched them contract and flex as he smoothly slid his cock in and out between Lee’s legs in a simulated fuck. There wasn’t an inch of Cal’s body that didn’t quiver with every grazing of Lee’s tongue or fingers. His rugged face betrayed a delicate sensitivity.
What really hooked Lee on Cal was his smooth caramel skin. He could loop his tongue on a non-stop trail from Cal’s lip to chin to Adam’s apple, down past his collar bone, take a sidetrack to an erect nipple, graze across the ridge of his sternum, ride up and down contracting belly muscles, lose some spit in his naval crevice and travel on down to rock hard pleasure, up and down, his mouth full. He could trail his wet tongue further down to his inner thigh and scrotum and down deep between his cheeks to a rosebud tang, all this in one ride without a pit stop to remove stray hairs from his teeth. Unlike Lee’s one-time attempt to shave down to smoothness like the much too influential porn stars, Cal was a complete natural bare beauty, save his underarms and pubic thatch. But to Lee, somehow those curls were easier to pull from his teeth than any white guy’s hair.
His energy also surprised Lee. Cal vibrated, he shared at every moment. Lee thought New York men often paralleled their career motives with their bed habits; quick to pounce on opportunity, quicker still to get to the point, and very goal-oriented. Watching a man hurriedly finish himself off at his side didn’t do it. Despite his college appreciation of John Cage’s theories on music, he would never apply them to sex. Two solos occurring in the same space at the same time did not make a duet.