Some Men Are Lookers: A Continuation of the "Buddies" Cycle (44 page)

“Don’t worry about it,” Cosgrove urged, sitting next to him. “He’s just a platypus.”

“Is what I did so wrong?” J. asked me.

“No,” I said. “You had the right. But it messed everything up, and we’re being angry and selfish about it.”

“I don’t know who my friends are,” he said.

“Look who’s talking.”

And lo, there was another entrée, that of Carlo. He’d brought a bag of red Delicious apples, because now that he’s working again (as a bartender; he says the customers tip like crazy) he likes to play the sport.

J. didn’t jump up at the sight of Carlo the way he used to, but we aren’t getting much jumping from him on any count nowadays. Carlo saw him and said, “I ought to pound you for walking,” and J. got up and held out his hand, and Carlo just grabbed him. But as he held him tight he said, “I’m going to scold you, you watch. I’m going to make you understand about something here.”

“His name’s James Fenimore Castaway now,” Cosgrove told Carlo as he released J.

“His . . . did
what?”

“I call him J.,” I said.

“Think I’ll just call him Sparky” was Carlo’s solution. “Had a dog by that name some years back. Follow me to school and like that. Wait for me all day. Walk me home. You’re going to search far and wide for faithfulness on that level, I can say that to you.”

Cosgrove said, “I could call my new puppy Sparky.”

Carlo looked at me.

“I said he could have a dog.”

“Or wait,” Cosgrove went on. “Maybe I would call him Fleabiscuit, because he’s just about the weirdest little puppy in the town.”

“Is he going to stay like this?” J. asked. “Forever? Because, all right, I went away, but does that mean I can’t ever come back? They teased me and tormented me and they killed my dog. This was real life, and doesn’t anyone feel sorry for me about that?”

“You dumped him,” I said. “What do you want from him now?”

“He wouldn’t even shake my hand!”

“Everybody leaves you,” I said.

“Huh?” Carlo put in.

“I didn’t leave,” said J. “I just went visiting.”

“When can I buy Fleabiscuit?” said Cosgrove. “Now, or in a half hour?”

“Do you swear to buy a Highland White and
only
a Highland White?” I said.

“I will only buy Fleabiscuit.”

“That’s not the right answer.”

So I sorted him out and, with misgivings—the perennial state of life in these parts, it seems—handed him the plastic. One of Cosgrove’s quirkiest talents is the ability to imitate any signature on sight, and lending him one of my cards is easier than taking one out in his name—even admitting that, gods know, the card companies continually pester you with opportunities to bless your loved ones with their very own credit power. I wonder if they realize how many of these go to gay boy friends.

“J.’s not wearing socks,” Carlo observed.

“I don’t even have any. I’m a refugee now.”

“Yeah, you got big. What’s all that muscle there?” Stepping up, Carlo examined J.’s upper torso. “There’s lean and mean all over you, suddenly,” Carlo said, running his hands up and down J.’s sides. “Where’ve you been, now?”

“Cash made me go to the gym with him.”

“Shit, scope those delts on a kid!”

J. fought loose and backed away, furious. “I’m not a kid anymore,” he cried. “When do you find that out, at last? I’m thirty years old!” Soothing his shoulder joints as if Carlo had hurt them, he went on, “I’m not your doll to play with—you and Cash and his friends. I have feelings more than you know.”

Carlo was still, looking at J.; then Carlo said, “I would slamfuck you for a photographer I know, on your back, hands tied at the wrists. I’d get two, three hundred, and you would definitely have feelings then, my boyo.”

Well, I figured this was the right time to hustle Cosgrove and J. out to buy the dog—“A Highland White or I’ll kill you,” I warned them—and then I washed apples for Carlo and me and played him some music. He likes César Franck’s Symphony in d minor.

Then:

“Guess I been all pressured up without knowing it, and I unloaded on . . . what’s his name today?”

“James Fenimore Castaway.”

He laughed without quite laughing. “He was so sweet and truly loving. He was so responsive and interested. What happened to him?”

“You know,” I said, flashing on Zuleto and Candio, “you could be any father alive, saying that, any father in the world.”

“He isn’t fun anymore.”

Filing the record back in the symphony shelf, I said, “No, actually, he’s not.”

“So what happened?”

“I guess he finally grew up. All kids are amusing, but some adults aren’t, and I guess we got one of the duds.”

“That’s hard to work with.”

“Maybe Cash did this to him?”

Carlo shook his head. “He was like this sometime before.” Suddenly he chuckled. “Fleabiscuit?”

I shrugged.

“That Cosgrove’s the real Little Kiwi now,” he said.

“What’s ‘punish-fucking’?”

Carlo bit a chunk of apple, chewed, and swallowed it before answering. When he turned to me his eyes were lit up, guarded. He’s wary of me sometimes.

“How come you ask?” he says.

“It’s part of J.’s litany of abuses under the regime of Cash. ‘Blow-fucking’ is another. Are these arcane practices, or am I really just up in my balloon?”

He thought it over, half-smiling. “Well,” he finally said, “your punish-fucking is a San Francisco practice. Doggy position, bottom on his knees. Top guy spanks him while he pumps. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. It’s popular S&M because you can do it without . . . you know . . .”

“Pulleys, a vast crucifix, and six dwarfs?”

“Blow-fucking, that’s a table for three. Guy on his face, top slides in, they fuck for a bit so the sap starts rising. Then the top turns on his back so the fucked guy is facing up, and the third man slips right in there and starts slurping. If you remember to sizzle up the fucked guy beforehand, the whole show can get really hot.”

“Wow.”

“But let’s not credit Cash with this. It’s been happening all over for decades, right?”

“Not to Virgil.”

“You sorry for him or what?”

“Well, whose side
are you
on?”

“I don’t know who I like anymore, except you and Cosgrove. People aren’t always as nice to me as they might be.”

“Maybe everyone’s tired of trying to live up to your idea of a noble young man. Maybe everyone’s exhausted.”

He heard that and he didn’t like it. “What are you saying again?”

“We tried, my brave lad, and we failed, is what I’m saying. Stonewall wasn’t perfectable. Men took a scope at you and said, Oh, I think I’ll do that, too. I want that body, and that smile, and that tall, and that . . . Everyone can be gorgeous, right? Just say yes. Gaze in the mirror, looks to kill. Who’s that,
me?
With those triceps and that smile that appears at one fell swoop to be dangerous yet kind, not to mention the sleek black hair with the Superman wave just there at the—”

He had lurched up and grabbed me, and I said, “You have no right to hurt me for saying that.”

“I’m not going to hurt you, but you just stop now.”

“It’s my fault, too.”

“Stop talking,” he said, holding me. “Be my friend.”

“I wrote about it. I glamorized it and made it believable. I invented it. This is all fiction, and I lied.” I held on to him and I said, “Save me.”

“Big Steve died a year ago this week,” he told me. “That says why I’m in a state, yelling at The Kid Himself, who I do nothing but adore. My old buddy Steve took it quietly, hid away. Didn’t want anyone to see him all wrecked. But I was in on it. I kept the secret for him, because he was one of my favorite guys. He was so great. So loving and fine, Big Steve. You remember. A stunning guy. So stunning to see. Some big monster man that you dreamed about when you were ten. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Sure you do. We’ll all remember him.”

We had broken apart, very upset, reaching for each other’s hands, looking away. There’s no protocol for this.

“I intend to stick around,” I finally got out, “and I’m remembering everything.”

“Yeah, you will.” He smiled. “I know that’s your style.”

“Rip.”

“Come on, Bud, or we’re getting all glum around here. Come on.”

“How’d you get so tall, anyway? Why couldn’t I do that?”

“It’s some Dakota thing.”

“No, I mean . . . I mean, who made you so nice? Every son of a bitch in town has been busting himself to be as like you as possible, and you just got it all, and yet . . . what is this?”

“Big Steve is gone and I was tough on Little Kiwi, and that’s two bad things in my day.”

“No, what am I saying here? How come . . .”

“Maybe you would square it for me with The Kid Himself—”

Pounding at the door. As I turned, Carlo grabbed me again and said, “Would you do that for me?”

“Sure.”

He still would not let me go. “I have to say this first,” he explained. “He matters to me even the way he is now.”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

I promised; and it was Dennis Savage, with a letter. From Billy. A farewell note. Short and sweet. He felt extra, so he walked.

Dennis Savage said, “I know for certain this is someone’s fault, but I don’t know whom to get mad at.”

“Look how he knows about ‘whom,’ ” said Carlo. “Class.”

“Oh,
you.”

“Everyone’s down on me today.”

“At a time like this,” Dennis Savage fussed; but he was calming down. He may have been, in part, relieved at this Turn of the Wheel. Just a guess.

“What if he begged and pleaded?” I asked Dennis Savage. “Would you fit him back in?”

He was cautious. “What if
who
—”

“Virgil.”

He just waved that away with his hand: Oh, no. He had his time. He made his move. He must abide by the consequences of his act.

“Billy left a letter,” Carlo said, just beginning to comprehend the sequence of events, “and then he vanished?”

“Poof” is how Dennis Savage described it.

“Billy is gone because why?”

“Because that fucking renegade walked back in here as if he
owned
the place, and everybody was treating him like the prodigal son. So Billy hitched up his pride and walked out rather than be pushed!”

“Glory,” said Carlo, amazed.

Then the kids came in, bearing a doggy portage cage, a doggy basket, a red rubber ball, seven boxes of Milk-Bone biscuits, a doggy blanket, a shoulder harness, a doggy coat, seven wind-up doggy fascinator toys, a chew bone, and Fleabiscuit, a male Highland White puppy so shy that as soon as they put him on the floor he ran yipping into the bedroom and hid under the bed.

In the excitement of our unloading the props and coaxing Fleabiscuit out, Dennis Savage slipped away.

So we have a dog. He remains shy and stays, for the most part, under the bed, though Cosgrove says he comes out and frolics when no one else is around. I said, “You’re house-training him, aren’t you?”; and Cosgrove said, “Of course,” with immense decision; but I could tell by the look he gave J. that he didn’t know what I was talking about.

He is devoted to the dog, and has set up a tiny apartment for him under the bed, with a blanket and a toy tray. Still, though I see Fleabiscuit when he and Cosgrove go out for and return from their walks, and though late at night when I can’t sleep I occasionally hear the crunching of biscuits, the dog is fundamentally invisible company.

This has its exasperating side. One day I came in to an empty
house with an air of a Presence in it. Could something be lurking in a closet?

In the bedroom, on a hunch, I called out, “Cosgrove!”

“I’m right here,” he announced from under the bed, “visiting with Fleabiscuit.”

“All right, that’s
it!
From now on—”

“No, I just wanted to see what it’s like,” he cried, squirming out. “Please be nice.”

“Some dog you picked out. Tell him to come forth.”

“Fleabiscuit! Appear!”

Fleabiscuit yipped but stayed put.

“This is not a fit dog for a gay household,” I said. “He should be bold, emotive, Stonewallesque.”

“Fleabiscuit,” Cosgrove wheedled, “come on, now.”

Fleabiscuit snuffled but did not move.

“I know,” said Cosgrove, running to the kitchen. He came back with a Milk-Bone. “Watch this,” he said, then whispered, “He thinks they’re cookies.”

Cosgrove left the biscuit on the floor in front of the bed and began calling Fleabiscuit again. After a while a little nose appeared, then two paws—then the dog darted out to snap up the biscuit and Cosgrove caught him, shouting, “It’s Fleabiscuit the Great!”

“I don’t see what’s so great about him,” I said, as the dog tried to lick Cosgrove’s face while eating the biscuit.