The Best Little Boy in the World (14 page)

Darlene came out, a tough, forty-year-old cocktail waitress type, and everyone crowded around the wooden stage. There was room for everyone to get right up close. Darlene did her thing, which I managed to survive, until she came to the part that drew people to fairs like this one, the only part I really remember. She had everything off and had worked up a good sweat, and now she went to each of us in turn and grabbed our heads and stuck our noses....

That was the scene I flashed to as I walked in the door, but I walked in. The room had a very high ceiling, black walls that were only flimsy partitions set up on the huge warehouse floor. There was a filthy carpet, worn bare, some ultraviolet lights, some unlit spotlights that looked like stage equipment, and one beat-up legless couch on the floor to my right. Two boys were sitting on the couch, one ugly and faggoty, talking on the phone, the other blond and normal-looking, looking up to see who had come in.

I asked for Randy, the name of the boy in the ad. The blond boy said Randy was out on a call and that he was Billy. Would he do? I stammered that I didn't know what I wanted to do, but that I had read the ad in the paper and that I just wanted to talk to someone and here is twenty dollars, I said, putting a crisp twenty on the arm of the couch. Their eyebrows lifted a bit.

The other boy was off the phone. I was sure it was he, and not Billy, who was wearing the perfume I smelled. It wasn't a sweet smell, but rather an unpleasant mildewy kind of smell. I was trying to avoid his eyes.

It must have been obvious to both of them that this was not a routine job. The faggoty one asked whether I wouldn't be more comfortable if Billy and I went into one of the private rooms. Private rooms? I sort of shrugged assent. Billy led me through a canvas-covered door that looked as though it had come from a stage set and into a cubbyhole off the main room. The cubbyhole was entirely bare. The same "carpet" covered the floor; but it looked even worse, and there were stains on it.

Billy sat with his back against the wall, and I followed. I assumed that ordinarily what happened in that cubbyhole was that the customer "had sex" with Billy, just how I wasn't sure, but

I didn't feel like it. Billy, though about nineteen and blond, which were two steps in the direction of Cheyenne, Wyoming, was sending out the wrong kinds of vibrations. Billy's fingernails were bitten to the limit, and his fingers were strangely red and pulpy, almost as though he had just soaked them for two days in a bucket of water. He just didn't look healthy. Well, if nothing else, he looked as though he had been sitting inside a dimly ultraviolet warehouse too long.

Still, I was not sure I didn't like him, and I was determined to make progress. He listened to my story and did not believe it. I suppose if at age nineteen this boy had already done everything there is to do, COD, no less, then it would be a little hard for him to imagine a twenty-three-year-old (I had just turned twenty-three, seconds are ticking, seconds are ticking) who had never slept with anybody, of either sex, ever. He had met, aged nineteen, guys who liked to get fucked with their heads in the freezer, guys who wanted him to piss on them, guys who wanted him to take them over his knee and spank them, guys who wanted to lie down and jerk off with the heel of his boot in their stomachs—but I am not sure he had ever had anyone come up to his "office" with a story like mine. Innocence was not his field.

For twenty bucks he was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. He said I should relax, it was easy to come out, and that I would do very well on Christopher Street. Is it possible that that was the first time I had ever thought about the expression "come out"? I suddenly had frightening visions of some sort of coming-out party where everyone got dressed up in, God forbid, drag. Or at least where I was the center of attention and everyone would be introduced to me, and I would have to make a little speech or tap dance or something. In any case, Billy didn't mind my not wanting to do whatever you do in a cubbyhole like that and offered instead to show me all the bars, like Danny's, on Christopher Street. I should come back that evening.

I said I would, said good-bye and thanks, and went home. I spent a busy Sunday afternoon doing nothing. I just sat in my chair by the phone trying frantically to decide whether I should really do it. I kept changing my mind. I kept trying to figure out what it was about Billy that bothered me. I kept worrying that I might meet someone down there that I knew from the real world. There was really nothing to think about, of course; I was just scared.

I decided to call Billy and ask some more questions, like whether I would have to talk to people and what I would have to do—just to get some more assurance from Billy that I should really go through with it and "come out," which somehow seemed to preclude "turning back." You only do it once. This Sunday night with Billy the kid?

Billy answered the phone, or at least I thought it was he. "Is this Billy?" No, he said, it was Randy, Billy would be back in a little while. I called back in a little while and Billy answered the phone, or at least I thought it was he, and he said, yeah, this was Billy. I said it was Neil calling about tonight. (That was the name I had used.) Who? Neil, remember? I was down there this afternoon? Oh, Neil! Yes, Randy had told him about me.
Randy
? But I was there with
Billy,
I said. No!
I'm
Billy, he explained. You were with Randy, with the blond hair.

I hung up. I was certain that I had been there with a blond boy who said Randy wasn't around but he was Billy and would he do—and now they were doing some kind of strange schizoid superwhammy on my fragile head. I changed my plans. This Sunday night I would watch
Bonanza.
Maybe next Sunday I would come out.

Several evenings thereafter, on my own, I went down to Christopher Street, which is not the easiest place in the world to find if you don't ask anybody, and you don't for a minute imagine that I would have asked anybody, do you? I walked up and down the length of that street, past Danny's every time, but I did not see many people. The ones I did see were like as not gay, but not the kind of guest you would want at your coming-out party—emaciated or emasculated or bizarre or forty-five trying for twenty.

I went too early. The New York bars don't get going, by and large, until eleven or twelve, and I was going around nine or ten. Too eager. Danny's was not crowded at that hour. I know, because it has huge glass picture windows where it should have had heavy gray don't-notice-me walls. I didn't go in. I just walked by like any tourist and glanced in each time.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," I hear you say. "You must be some kinda supershy wimp. Just go inna goddamn queer bar and see what happens. Worst thing, nothing happens. What's ta lose?"

I hear you say that because, looking back on it all, I hear myself saying that. I have come so far in two years that it is becoming difficult for me to remember just how strong my feelings and fears were. One thing I do remember quite clearly: While I was shy, and paranoid on anything remotely connected to sex, I was no wimp. So watch it.

Why not just go in? Well, not counting the fact that there were huge picture windows, which had to be insane, there were more subtle reasons. Which of the two doors do you go in? Does it matter? If you go in the exit door, everyone will look at you and know that you don't know what you're doing. If you go in the right one, everyone will look at you, anyway: When was the last time a Yale sweat shirt and track shoes walked into a place like this? And that's another thing. I wasn't wearing a Yale sweat shirt and track shoes, but what
do
you wear to a gay bar? By and large, in New York, you wear jeans. I didn't happen to own a pair of jeans, cowboy that I was, because I could never find jeans that fit well, which was a source of mild embarrassment. I had run so much cross country in high school that my calf muscles were larger than standard tapered jeans. Remember tapered jeans? I was wearing some businessman-type slacks, and everyone would have looked at me as if I didn't belong. Where would I put my hands if everyone looked at me? And where would I put my eyes? That was what it all boiled down to, I guess. I had a feeling that everyone would be looking at me from all sides, and where would
I
have looked? At the ceiling? Ridiculous. At the floor? Yes, but then why come in at all? What good is knowing every crack and sawdust fleck on the floor of a gay bar? Look back at them? God only knows what that could invite. And I had this thing about not looking back at queers, because I didn't want to be stereotyped queer, I just wanted to be a cowboy.

I found and answered one of the
East Village Other
personals that sounded human. A student who was gay and looking to make new friends. An attractive student, the ad said, with a box number to write to. I wrote something about how I had never done anything like this before and asked him to give me a call. Unless he had connections, my phone number and first name alone would not enable him to trace me. I would have a chance when he called to think out my next move.

He did indeed call and suggested we meet at Googie's, a mixed bar he liked in the Village. Mixed? I asked. Yes, some straight, some gay—that's how the Village is. Oh. He sounded all right so I said okay. He would be carrying a black umbrella and wearing a black turtleneck, he said. What kind of person puts ads in the newspaper to make friends? I didn't tell him what I would be wearing, just in case I wanted to call it off when I saw him coming.

Up came the black turtleneck, right on time. (I was early, of course.) He was a little on the heavy side, nondescript, not terribly gay-looking or -talking, and nothing to be afraid of, so I met his eyes and nodded when he asked whether I was Neil, and we went in for a couple of beers. Would I like to come back to the black turtleneck's place for another drink?

No, I would most emphatically not. As we had been talking, I had quickly come to like him less. Of course, it was my fault, not his. He was polite, friendly, interested: a very nice homosexual theater student at NYU who wanted my tough young cowboy body. It just didn't work.

I tried to be as polite as I could and said no thank you. He was upset. Partly, I think, because he wanted me or, worse, the part of me we simply never discuss. Partly, I imagine, because I had just finished telling him that I had never in my life had sex with any human being—so my refusal was as much as telling his turtleneck ego that even a lifelong horniness would not be enough to make me jump into bed with the likes of him. He said something very homosexual-sounding—"Oh, don't I please you?"—which simply reaffirmed my resolve, and we walked in opposite directions: I back home to feel sorry for myself; he, no doubt, to Danny's to find someone else for the night.

I bought a new issue of the
East Village Other—
all of a sudden I was a regular reader, though I had never been to the East Village in my life—and I spotted a new cluster of model ads with a common phone number. I had been working late, as usual, in my carpeted little midtown office, and was now sitting in my swivel seat of respectability and professionalism, touch-toning the number of a male hustler. Of course I had checked to see that no one else was in the office.

Mike answered the phone as advertised. I had become somewhat bolder through my succession of unsuccesses—at least no physical or emotional harm had come from those earlier attempts—and way down deep I am really a practical business type, so I just said, "Look. I know this will sound strange, but I am gay, except that I haven't been able to find anybody I like and I've never done anything. I don't really know what to do. I'm twenty-three, and I'm pretty good-looking, and I would just like to meet you for a beer or something to talk."

Well, what do you know! I did it!

Mike was a little hesitant—hustlers have to be careful, or they may show up at the appointed place to find a small gang of faggot haters with short metal chains—but he agreed to meet me at ten o'clock outside Max's Kansas City.

Mike was already standing in a doorway next to Max's when I showed up in the charcoal pinstriped suit I was still wearing from work. I had told him I would probably be the only one around wearing a suit, for which I apologized, so it would be easy to recognize me, and it was.

Mike and I were both relieved when we met and shook hands. Mike was a regular guy. My age, about 160 pounds with a strong handshake, a rugged, handsome face, wearing a thick-knit crew-neck sweater and jeans and boots. He didn't talk like a preppie, but he didn't talk like a faggot, either. He talked like a bright, likable, regular guy. We went inside for a pitcher of beer.

I had finally lucked out. I have met a lot of hustlers of various kinds over the last two years, and many of them are really fucked up. It is, after all, not the profession that Joe College is most likely to choose, even if it is one he is well cut out for. And Mike, of course, like anyone, had his share of problems. But he knew himself, he knew what he was doing, and I knew I could trust him.

The first thing he told me was that his real name was Dick Warren, that he just used Mike in the ads. I took the opportunity to explain that I had done the same thing and told him my real name. And then I told him everything else.

Dick liked me, and I liked him. He told me he had been worried about coming to meet me, because the story sounded kind of strange over the phone and he was afraid he was being set up. I told him I was really glad he had taken the chance. I asked him, well, essentially, I asked him what such a nice guy was doing in a job like this.

He had gone for a year of college, he said, but didn't like it. He liked to be outdoors, to work with his hands. He had had some construction jobs and had worked up in Alaska for a while; but now he needed the money, and this line of work wasn't as bad as I might think, though he was looking to make a change. He could take care of himself, he told me, and he didn't mind having sex with older men. He just didn't think about it much while it was happening, and he wouldn't let them do things he didn't want to do. Some of the guys he met were really attractive men in their thirties and forties who had made it big in business or wherever, and Dick had made some pretty good connections this way.