Men Who Love Men (15 page)

“No,” I say. “I just needed some air.”

“Okay.”

I decide to ask him something. “Hey, Jeff. Be honest with me.”

“Never anything but.”

“Yeah, whatever. But tell me the truth. Have you slept with Luke yet?”

“Nope. Don’t intend to.”

“Well, he’s watching you.” My eyes flicker upward, to the bay window directly over my head. Since coming outside, I’ve noticed Luke’s arms emerge once or twice, shaking out rugs and blankets. From that room he has a perfect view of his shirtless idol.

Jeff is nonchalant. “I’m aware of it,” he says, keeping his attention on his roses.

“Still don’t feel fucking his hot li’l ass would be right?”

“Still feel that way, yes.”

I smile. “Okay. Just checking.”

For some reason, I take comfort in the fact that they haven’t hooked up. It’s petty, I know. But that’s me: Petty Henry.

“Hey Jeff,” I say again.

“Yes, buddy?”

“Remember what you told me about getting hair in your ears?”

He gives me a bemused look over his shoulder. “No. Remind me.”

“You told me when you first noticed hair growing in your ears that you freaked out.”

He sighs. “Oh yes. One of the curses of getting older.”

“That’s what you said.” I smirk. “Well, it’s happened to me now, too.”

Jeff laughs. “Welcome to middle age, buddy.”

“Every morning now I have to add that to my grooming routine. Pluck, pluck, pluck. If not, I’d look like Eddie Munster.” I pause. “Or my father.”

“It’s a never-ending battle.”

“How often do you pluck?”

Jeff sets down his shears and comes over to sit beside me on the bench. Up close his ears look as smooth as a baby’s.

“Laser hair removal,” he says simply. “Cost a fucking fortune but it was worth it. No more plucking.”

I smile. “So that explains it. And the fact that the lines around your eyes are gone…?”

“Good moisturizer.”

“Fuck you. Ann Marie gets you free Botox.”

“Me?” He blinks innocently. “Botox?”

I give him a severe look. “And the lean waist? Liposuction?”

Jeff laughs. “Buddy, that’s two hundred crunches a day at the gym.”

“Be honest,” I urge him.

He laughs harder. “Henry, what’s this all about?”

“This,” I tell him, reaching down into the pocket of my cargo shorts and withdrawing a photograph. I found it this morning in a drawer. It was the one I used for escort ads online and in the local gay paper. It shows me standing against a brick wall, head back, chest thrust forward. My abs are perfectly sculpted, reflecting the light. Neither my waist nor my age had yet exceeded thirty.

“Hey, it’s Hank,” Jeff says, taking the picture from me.

Hank was my escort name. I thought it was studlier than Henry. Hank rapped on the doors of hotel rooms and was admitted by clients who immediately fell on their knees in front of him. What a heady couple of years that was. All my life I’d been a skinny geek, and suddenly I was this lean, ripped muscle god who guys paid to lick and service. What the hell happened to that guy? How did he turn into an old man with hair in his ears, skinny and fat at the same time? My arms have shrunk, my waist has filled out.

“It sucks,” I say to Jeff.

He smiles, still looking at the photograph. “There was a time I really agreed with you,” he says. “I hated getting older. It’s not easy anywhere, but in gay life it’s particularly difficult.” He moves his eyes over to me. “But that’s when I was still going out, still doing the circuit, jumping from P-town to Montreal to Miami to Palm Springs. There was always another party, and always another set of boys just entering the scene. I felt like I had to keep up with them.” He smiles, looking off toward the horizon. “But thankfully, there comes a point when all that no longer matters quite so much…”

I scoff. “I’d believe you, Jeff, if you weren’t going in for laser hair removal and Botox.”

He laughs. “Oh, I didn’t say I was totally over it. If I can still get away with it, why not?” He puts his arm around me. “But lately…” His voice trails off. “Maybe it’s the wedding again. Sometimes I think it’s enough just to have looked this way once.” He holds up the photo, and we both gaze at it. “That was you once, Henry. Maybe it’s enough just to remember our youth, and not keep trying to relive it.”

I take the photo back from him. “Well, I’m not yet ready to throw in the towel,” I say. “You had a lot more years out there than I did, Jeff. I didn’t get my fill. I want to get back in shape. I want to look good again. I want to get back out there.” I smile. “Give me the name of the laser doctor.”

“I will, but first let me ask you a question, Henry.” He studies me with those piercing blue eyes of his. “
Why
do you want to get back out there?”

“Because I didn’t get my fair share.”

Jeff laughs. “And how do we determine what is fair?”

“Oh, come on, Jeff. You know what I’m talking about. It sucks to be thirty-three. No longer the young and fresh and nubile boys of summer—but not yet ready to go gracefully offstage like you middle-agers.”

He glowers comically. “Watch it, Henry.”

“You know what I’m talking about, Jeff. You wrote about it in
The Boys of Summer
. It’s set when you were thirty-three.”

“When the protagonist is thirty-three,” he corrects me.

“Whatever. It just sucks trying to keep up, because it’s impossible to keep up when new young bodies are always waiting in the wings.”

Jeff folds his arms across his chest. “So how do you try to keep up?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I try to be aware of new trends, new fashions.” I smile. “Like camouflage shorts. I realized the boys were wearing camouflage shorts instead of the cutoff denim shorts, so I switched.”

Jeff shakes his head. “They’re on their way out. I hear corduroy is the next big thing.”

“Really?”

He gives me an exasperated face. “
Who the hell knows!
I was being sarcastic! The point is, Henry, you can’t keep up with trends. They’re impossible to keep track of.”

I pout. “I don’t want to look like some dated old fossil. Remember that guy Kenneth we’d see on the dance floor? He was older even than you.”

He gives me an eyebrow. “I told you to watch it, Henry.”

I smirk. “The
point is
, Jeff,” I say, mimicking him, “we all thought Kenneth such a tragic figure. He’d be out there dancing in his love beads and freedom rings and spandex bike shorts and we thought, ‘Poor guy. He’s stuck in 1989.’” I lean in close to make my point. “
I do not want to be Kenneth
.”

“I thought you liked Kenneth. Didn’t he hire Hank?”

“Yes.” I sigh. “Kenneth was very sweet. But that doesn’t make him any less sad. Or any less a cautionary tale for the rest of us.”

“Then what are you out there buying camouflage shorts for?”

“Hey, at least I’m not still wearing spandex bike shorts. I’m trying to move with the times.”

“I don’t think that’s always the best strategy, actually,” Jeff says. “So what ever happened to Kenneth?”

“Who knows? He’s probably still wearing those spandex shorts dancing in some club in Worcester.”

“And if it makes him happy, so what?”

I look at Jeff with some frustration. “You are
not
taking me seriously.”

“Because you can’t possibly
be
serious, Henry.” He scowls. “You’ve said it yourself. If you try to keep up with the kiddies, you’ll fail. Because you’re
not
a kid.”

“But I don’t want to be an old fossil, either.”

He sighs dramatically. “You’re
thirty-three
, Henry. You’ve got a few more years before fossildom hits. Trust me.”

“
You’ve
managed pretty well,” I tell him. “Lots of guys your age have let themselves go, but you still get twinkies like Luke looking at you.”

He grins. Flattery always puts Jeff in a more generous frame of mind. “Henry, tell me again why all this is so important to you. And don’t give me any song and dance about how you didn’t get your fair share.”

I’m quiet, thinking.

“Well?” Jeff asks. “Why are you so obsessed with trying to stay young?”

I turn my face to look at him. “So I can meet Mr. Right,” I say definitively.

Jeff smiles wryly. “And you think Mr. Right will only accept you without ear hair and love handles?”

I shrug. “I think it’ll be easier to attract his attention, anyway.”

“I think if he’s really Mr. Right, he’s going to be looking for other things.”

“Oh, please, Jeff. I could take that coming from Lloyd. But you…” I look him deep in the eyes. “Do you really think you could give it all up, Jeff? The other men? The way you feel now…is it forever? Could you really concentrate only on Lloyd?”

“Well, I already do. Lloyd has always been my primary focus.”

“What I mean is, could you give up all the outside sex for good? Could you,
really
?”

He squints his eyes at me. “Are you including three-ways that Lloyd and I do together?”

“Yes. Could you accept a sex life that consisted of just you and Lloyd?”

He thinks for a moment. “Probably not,” he admits.

I smile. “At least you’re honest.”

Jeff eyes me critically. “Could you accept an emotional life that was just you and Mr. Right, whoever he might be?”

I don’t have an answer. And, as it turns out, I’m saved from having to provide one, because Luke has come outside, sauntering toward us, his eyes locked, of course, on Jeff.

“I’ve finished the beds upstairs, Henry,” he announces, not looking at me. “Anything else for this morning?”

“We’ve got a new guest,” I tell him. “He just checked into Room 5. He’ll need towels.”

“He’s got ‘em.” Luke turns his eyes finally to me. “It’s Martin.”

There’s a strange look on Luke’s face. “Yeah, I know,” I say, wondering why there’s a flicker of a smile now playing on the boy’s lips.

“How’s the novel coming?” Jeff asks.

That’s all Luke needs. He returns his gaze to Jeff, launching into a fevered description of his writing, how every day, as soon as he finishes his chores, he holes up in his basement room and lets the words flow. “I don’t stop,” he says. “I always keep in mind what you advised me. My pen rarely leaves the paper. I just write write write and worry about grammar and punctuation and all that stuff later.”

Jeff grins. “Writing is a forward motion. Rewriting is a backward motion. And when you try to go forward and backward at the same time—”

“You go nowhere,” Luke finishes.

Clearly they’ve had some little heart-to-hearts on the nature of the writer’s craft. I wonder where these little chats have taken place, and how closely together the two of them have sat, and how difficult it’s been for Jeff to restrain himself from flipping Luke over and fucking him hard.

Jeff stands now. “Well,” he says, “when slave-driver Henry gives you the green light, you get back to writing.” He stretches—just to show off his abs, I bet. “As for me, I’ve got some more pruning to do around back. When are you going to show me a draft?”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Jeff has always steadfastly refused to read other people’s work, believing if he said yes to one he’d be obliged to say yes to everyone, and soon would be inundated with amateur manuscripts. I had warned Luke it would never happen, and here Jeff now is, making the offer right in front of me. Luke makes sure to swing his gaze past me before he responds to Jeff.

“Really, Jeff?” he asks. “Do you really mean it? You’d read my work?”

Jeff smiles benevolently. “Sure, buddy. Give me your ten best pages.”

“Oh, man, thank you, Jeff! I will!”

Jeff winks and disappears around the corner of the house.

“He’s so generous,” Luke says, still looking after him.

I grunt. “My warning still holds,” I tell him. “If you try scheming with Jeff, you’ll quickly find you’ve met your match.”

Luke turns his eyes to me. “Henry, can’t we be friends again?”

“To be honest, Luke, I’m not sure we ever were.”

He approaches me. Still sitting on the bench, my face is level with his torso.

“Henry,” Luke purrs, “I still think you’re way hot.”

My tongue darts out and I begin lapping up the beads of sweat on his stomach before I realize it’s just a fantasy. I close my eyes so I can’t see his skin.

“Really I do, Henry,” Luke says.

“I told you,” I say, eyes still closed. “No sex with employees. It’s a house rule.”

“But getting blown by guests is allowed?”

I open my eyes fast. “What are you talking about?”

Luke sits beside me on the bench. “Martin.”

I stare at him. “What do you mean,
Martin
?”

“I was there the night at the dick dock when he sucked your cock.”

“Oh, fuck.” So it was Martin. And Luke had watched the whole thing.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I won’t say anything to Lloyd.”

“Lloyd already knows.” Goddamn it. The kid thinks he has something on me. I’ve got to dismiss that notion right away. “It’s no big deal. Who cares?”

“I thought it was pretty hot to watch,” Luke says, surely loving my discomfort. “You and Martin make a very hot pair.”

I think he’s being sarcastic, but I’m not sure. I can’t tell when the kid is being authentic, if ever. But surely Martin isn’t his type…

“I like hot daddies,” he says, as if reading my mind. “Martin’s quite handsome. I love his salt-and-pepper beard. And he has amazing eyes.”

“I don’t want you gossiping about guests,” I warn him.

Luke places a hand over his heart. “Oh, never, Henry. Trust me.”

“That’s just it,” I say, standing. “I don’t.” I start to walk away, then turn back. “Okay, you’re done for the morning. Run off and start your writing writing writing.”

“Thanks, boss,” Luke says.

I head back inside. All of this is just fucking
great
. Now I have to face Martin. And not only is he staying here again, but he’s moved to town! He’ll talk, and soon everyone will know that I was under the dock.