Attack of the Theater People (15 page)

His soft, plump lips cushion mine, as if to break a fall, but he pulls away.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“No, it’s—”

“I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s okay. I just can’t…I’ve got…” He hesitates.

No, it can’t be. He has AIDS. I just got the kiss of death. How could I be so reckless, so stupid? I have to get tested and…Wait a sec, can you get AIDS from kissing? They say you can’t, but are they sure?

“…a boyfriend.”

Respiration resumes. “Oh.”

His head droops like a sunflower, his floppy curls casting a shadow across his face. “I would if I could. But I can’t.”

Why am I only attracted to guys who are unavailable to me? First Doug, then Chad, now Gavin. Does my subconscious actively seek them out because of some kind of internalized homophobia? Or self-loathing? Am I not worthy of love?

Or is it self-preservation? After all, in the age of AIDS, rejection keeps you alive.

I console myself with that thought as I spend New Year’s Eve alone reading about Eddie Sanders’s libidinous, preplague sexcapades. It was just ten years ago, but gay Manhattan in the 1970s seems like a land before time, a paradise lost, a coke-infused fantasy with a cast of thousands fucking to a disco beat. And I’m mad as hell that I missed the party, that by the time I arrived love was wrapped in plastic like leftovers. I’m young. I’m alive. I want to dive into another man’s body and never come up for air.

Instead, I’m going to spend my twenty-first birthday with my friends, channeling my sexual frustrations into full-throated renditions of show tunes at our favorite piano bar, Something for the Boys. After so many years of drinking there illegally, I guess it’s appropriate, but, for a gay bar, Something for the Boys feels awfully…I don’t know…dickless.

The night of the party, I’m just stepping out of the shower when the phone rings. I hop across the apartment the way you do when you don’t want to drip on the floor. Not that it works.

The phone slips out of my hand and lands with a clunk.

“Hold on! Hold on! I’m here!” I shout. My towel falls off as I reach for the phone, which shouldn’t matter because Natie’s still skiing with Ziba, and why should I care if I’m naked in front of him, anyway? I guess I have body issues.

I place the phone against my ear and begin the conversation. “Sorry.”

“Edward? Chad.”

Funny, the last time we talked
he
was wearing a towel. It’s kismet.

“Have you heard the news?” he says.

“What news?”

“The Hibbert and Howard merger went through and the stock closed today at fifty-eight.”

“Is that good?”

“Considering I bought it at twenty-two this morning, fuck, yeah. How about that dinner I promised?”

“Sure! When?”

“I’ll see you at eight o’clock. Do you know Caprice?”

“No, but if you hum a few bars I can fake it.”

I love making him laugh.

“It’s on Seventieth and Lexington. I know the chef.”

It amazes me how he automatically assumes I’m not doing anything, like I’d just drop everything for the mere privilege of sharing molecules with him. But I can’t just blow off my friends for the possibility of a cash bonus and an after-dinner tryst.

“Eight it is,” I say.

Twenty-two

Okay, one drink.
Maybe an appetizer. Then I’ll leave around nine, which’ll get me downtown for a fashionably late entrance by 9:30—9:45 max. I mean, it’s not like any of my friends will be on time anyway. I call Paula to let her know I’ll be late, but I get the answering machine.

I’m uncharacteristically early for my sort-of-maybe-not-sure-if-it’s-a-date with Chad, so I wait in the bar and watch the dining room, which is full of blond wood and blond women, both polished to a shine. You’d think that after all the society parties I’ve worked I’d feel comfortable in these surroundings. But repeated exposure to the lifestyles of the rich and fatuous has made me keenly aware of my lowly station in the world: my cheap haircut, my scabby cuticles, my genuine fake Rolex I bought on the street. In my neighborhood, the locals look at your shoes and want to kill you for them. Here they look at your shoes and you want to kill yourself.

Chad enters, Achilles freshly returned from battle and a celebratory fuck with his boyfriend Patroclus. The hostess greets him like he’s a movie star and leads us to his “usual table” in the corner.

Caprice is one of those places where the waiter gives a litany of incomprehensible ingredients so exhaustive it sounds like he’s under federal mandate to disclose them: “
Tonight we have a vodka-infused portobello cake in a peanut–pine nut sauce, with charred chard and a persimmon risotto made by monks who’ve taken a vow of silence.
” What arrives is a miniature tower of food so painstakingly constructed it’s obvious that someone’s hands have been all over it. The tower stands alone on the hubcap-sized plate, like a grain silo on a lonely prairie.

Chad orders a bottle of champagne. Champagne! I mean, to not finish the bottle would be rude. I wonder if I should just slip away for a moment and call Something for the Boys, but I’m afraid to leave this table. First off, I can’t imagine that anyone answering the phone at a gay piano bar would be able to hear over a chorus of men belting out, “I Enjoy Being a Girl.” More important, I don’t want to do anything that will break the spell.

For Chad is charm personified: attentive, relaxed, and real. He wants to know all about me, laughing at my exploits as Eddie Sanders and Eddie Zander, asking question after question about my past and planning our bright future together—professionally, of course, but who knows where that might lead? Like a detective searching for clues, I parse fragments of what he says to make my deduction:

“I feel like we understand each other” + “It’s hard to find someone you trust” + “That suit looks good on you” = “I want you. Let’s have sex in the bathroom.”

We don’t get nearly that intimate, but I do get drunk enough to ask about his crooked nose. Did he break it in a fight? An accident?

Chad replies by sticking the tip of his thumb in his mouth and hooking his finger over the bridge.

“Thumb sucker,” he says. “Until I was seven. Don’t tell anyone.”

It makes me adore him all the more.

It’s after eleven when we finally stumble out of the restaurant, laughing at nothing as we share a cab downtown, which gives me less than twenty blocks to figure out how to make him love me.

As we turn onto Sutton Place, Chad arches to reach his back pocket, his knee grazing mine, sending a little shudder up my spine. He pulls out his wallet and hands me a wad of cash.

“For a job well done,” he says. The bill on top is a hundred and there appear to be four more underneath.

“Wow. Thanks.”

The cab stops.

“I’d invite you up, but the doorman…”

That’s it. I’ve had it with him and his nosy doorman. What is the point of living in an expensive apartment if you can’t invite a horny twenty-one-year-old upstairs to have sex?

“I understand,” I say.

Wuss.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s just that, in my business, I can’t afford to be…well, you know.”

But that’s exactly why we should be together. In a world of AIDS and
Bowers v. Hardwick
, Chad’s repressed sexuality and my celibacy are a perfect match. It’s safe, contained. And all I’d ever need.

But am I all he’d ever need? Maybe he’s not inviting me up because he’d rather date someone whose abs aren’t insulated by a protective layer of fat, nature’s bubble wrap. I disgust him. That’s it, starting tomorrow I’m going macrobiotic.

Chad smiles, and I feel the earth turn toward the sun. “Listen,” he coos, “you keep finding winners like this and I’ll take you to the Caymans with me. You got anything coming up?”

Yes, in my lap.

“The bash mitzvahs start again next weekend,” I say. “And we’re doing your firm’s Super Bowl party, but I’m just working the door. You guys only wanted female motivators.”

“I’ll see you there, then,” he says. “In the meantime, keep your ears open. Even if it turns out to be a dog like Pharmicare.”

My vision goes into freeze-frame. “Pharmicare? What about Pharmicare?”

“Didn’t you hear? It was in the paper. The FDA didn’t approve that diet drug.”

“What? Why?”

He laughs.

“What is it? Tell me.”

“It caused ‘excessive anal leakage.’”

“What the hell is excessive anal leakage?”

“Gas followed by mass.”

I’m going to lose it. Right here in the taxi. The driver will have to drive straight to Bellevue.

Chad continues: “After that, the stock went into a fuckin’ free fall. It’s gonna be years before it recovers.”

That makes two of us.

After he leaves I lie down on the seat, curling into a fetal position while I try to absorb the realization that I invested $1,500 in volcanic diarrhea, my Juilliard dream literally disappearing down the toilet.

Plus I have to pay for the fucking cab.

With its brick facade
and arched doorway, Something for the Boys might have once possessed charm, but now it looks tired and battle scarred, the architectural equivalent of the frail, hollow-cheeked men who haunt these twisting streets of Greenwich Village. From the street I can hear the voices of men singing “I Am What I Am.”

The door opens and out springs Hung, arm in arm with a guy who looks a lot like me, except cuter. The upgrade has the unmistakably muscular frame of a gymnast or a dancer, his shoulders and thighs stretching the fabric of his leather jacket and tight jeans. If Michael Bennett were directing a musical about me, this is who’d he’d cast.

“Edward!”

“I know,” I say, “I’m so late.”

“What happened?”

“I had a…work thing.”

“
Whell
, Miss Paula’s
furious
. Kelly came all the way down here with bloody feet, y’know.”

“Shit. Are they inside?”

“No, everyone’s gone. You missed it. Some deaf guy sang ‘Till There Was You.’”

“That was so moving,” says And-Starring-as-Edward. “Even with a condom next to his neck.”

“Oh! Where are my manners?” Hung says. “Edward, this is Tom.”

“Todd.”

“Same alphabet.” Hung tosses his scarf over his shoulder. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to find out whether it’s better to be ribbed or tickled.” He kisses the air in front of my face. “Happy birthday, sweetie.”

I stand alone on the street, wondering whether I should still go in. The windows of the bar glow invitingly, but without my friends, I’d only be going in for one reason. And I just can’t imagine doing that. I mean, some of these guys are walking time bombs. How does Hung do it? Does he ask if they have HIV? Or does he just assume they do? And what’s really safe, anyway?

I turn around and go home.

The days slush by. Everyone’s mad at me and I don’t blame them. Why do I do such stupid things? I knew there was no way I could meet Chad and get down to the Village in time but I still went. I couldn’t help myself. I’m like a big walking id. My brain ought to sue me for neglect.

What’s worse, Natie won’t be home until Sunday, and I have no idea how to contact him. Still, I’ve got plenty of party-motivator gigs coming up. Surely there’ll be more insider information to trade on, right?

Right?

My first chance comes that Saturday at the bash mitzvah of Tamara Katz. Given their surname, Tamara’s parents have decided on a
Cats
theme. A Katz mitzvah. They’ve even re-created the junkyard set in a SoHo warehouse. A very hard to find SoHo warehouse.

I come dashing in, panicked and panting.

“Where the hell have you been?” Sandra screeches.

“I—”

“Never mind, we don’t have time. Like I don’t have enough to deal with, with this new photographer. Here. Hurry up.” She tosses me a costume.

I’m not sure which feline I’m supposed to be—Pointlesstheater or Bourgeoispleaser—and I don’t care. The only thing worse than sitting through
Cats
is having to pretend you’re in it. There’s only enough time to draw on some whiskers, then take my place “backstage,” a curtained-off area next to an oversize prop stove.

“Nice of you to show up,” Javier hisses.

I pull my tail between my legs and wank it, just in time to notice the shocked faces of Leon and Nancy Katz.

Over the PA comes the announcement to which I’ve grown accustomed, as if it really were for me: “And now,
La Vie de la Fête
Productions is proud to present everyone’s favorite emcee, British MTV’s hottest new veejay, Eddieeeeeee Sanders!”

I enter, swinging my tail in a jaunty manner that hopefully communicates I’m aware how stupid I look, then leap onto the trunk of a prop car that sits beneath a marquee featuring the yellow-eyed logo with the word
Katz
. I notice immediately that the applause is less enthusiastic than usual, and, just as I’m about to crow Eddie’s trademark, “’Ello, America!” it starts:

Boos.

My heart lurches in my chest like I’ve popped the clutch. Instantly I’m covered in sweat. I’ve performed for audiences that were indifferent (in high school I sang at a nursing home while a man had a stroke), but boos? I don’t know what to do. For some reason the kids have turned on me. The parents murmur to one another, as confused as I am.

Sandra sticks her head out through the curtain.

“Edwid!” she hisses. “Get off!”

I jump off the trunk and hurry offstage to jeers that give new meaning to the term
catcalls
. Sandra grabs my mike and hands it to Javier, who hastily introduces Mr. and Mrs. Katz. The crowd applauds, and the evening continues as planned. Without me.

“What’s going on?” Sandra says. “Why did they react like that?”

As if on cue, the reason steps through the curtain.