The Best Little Boy in the World (15 page)

The words he was saying weren't all that convincing, because even now, having some friends who you wouldn't believe hustle but who do—would you believe a kid who hustled his tuition through Columbia Law School?—even now it's hard for me to understand. But the way he was saying them was convincing.

I had gotten only a few hours' sleep the night before and had gone through my share of two pitchers of beer, but I had never been more awake and keyed up than I was that evening. Do you understand? I really liked Dick, and Dick liked me, and he was gay, too! It had taken me a dozen years from conscious desire to expected fulfillment, but, more or less, I was there.

Hallelujah.

Dick asked whether I would like to go someplace—he probably sensed that I was too embarrassed and scared to take the lead— and since I had a friend staying with me for a couple of weeks, I said we could take a hotel room. I had my deck of credit cards, so we went to the Americana. Thirty bucks for the room? I would have paid $500. Which is not to say I was all smiles and eagerness at the check-in counter. It was that hotel in New Haven all over again, as far as paranoia was concerned. "No baggage, sir?" What was worse? I wonder. Taking a hotel room alone to fool your roommates into thinking you poked little girls, or taking a hotel room to make it with a guy? I was sure the Americana desk clerk saw right through me (Dick was waiting in the lobby), but I got the key anyway. I realize now that the desk clerk would probably have given two bellhops to skip up to that room and jump into bed with us, but at the time I had not developed much skill in telling who liked what.

I have been wondering ever since I started writing this book how I would handle descriptions of sex, which is, after all, rather central to the story. How can I write it in a way you can understand? Or at least in a way that does not seem repulsive to you? If it seemed repulsive, it would be a lousy description (except for the parts that repulse me, too), because I am not writing about
your
having sex with Dick, but about
my
doing it. And I want you to know how happy and good a thing it was. Let's leave it at this for now: I won't inflict anything on you that doesn't advance the story—that is, nothing thrown in just to turn me on. But as much as I don't want my parents to have a son who writes dirty books, a certain amount of grit is required.

After some pausing and looking around the room and switching on the Admiral defense mechanism and looking to see whether there was a 25-cent vibrator machine under the bed and whether the door was securely bolted and everything else to delay actually
doing
it for the first time in my life, I sat down on the bed next to Dick, facing some asinine late movie. Dick really was a handsome guy, and I really was rather drunk, and with a little help from him we were soon hugging and rolling around and wrestling around and just feeling each other's muscles and gradually getting our clothes off.

It was great. Really, there have been few times since when I have had such good sex. Partly, of course, because the first time is always best. Partly, Dick was hunkier than many of the kids I've been to bed with since. Mainly, I didn't know what I was supposed to do, so I just did what came naturally: wrestling around the way I had in camp and in high school and with Brook. Only now it didn't just last a couple of minutes, and now I didn't have to feel paranoid, and now I knew I was with someone who liked it too, and now we had all our clothes off, and now we were doing some things. I wouldn't have done with Brook.

But not many things, and that, too, was what was so good about it. We weren't kissing (cowboys don't kiss!); we weren't putting our things, God forbid, in each other's mouths, or anywhere else, though we were touching them and rubbing them and touching in other places where I had never been touched before, and touching so lightly as to drive my ticklish, nervous, hypertense body wild and into a vain attempt to pin Dick to get him to stop, and then wrestling around some more.

Perhaps the innocence of it all appealed to Dick. Being the rugged outdoors type, perhaps he didn't go for kissing, either, though I am sure that this was the first time in ages, or ever, that he had had sex without
doing
anything, for crying out loud. Dick's experience as a hustler had led him to be very flexible. A good hustler, I suppose, does whatever he thinks his customer wants, is into, within reason.

The important thing was that it was not until later in my "development" that I realized Dick and I hadn't been
doing
anything. We were doing everything I wanted to do, and not feeling that there were other things Dick wanted to do, I wasn't self-conscious about just wrestling around.

We messed around for hours, and I wasn't even aware of, or at least I was not thinking about, the fact that generally what happens is you reach an orgasm and then quit for a while. Neither of us reached an orgasm, as a matter of fact, and eventually we went to sleep, around five. I had to be at work at nine for a meeting I had called of the people working for me. I was feeling guilty enough about what I was doing not to want to give it official recognition by allowing it to interfere with my real life. I left Dick with my phone number, waking him long enough to say I had to go but would call him, and THANK YOU VERY MUCH! I would have been happy to pay him, but he said I was a friend, not a customer.

I got to the office, grungy as hell, exhausted, gravel under my eyelids, my ugly left thing aching just a little (it goes away when I get hard, so Dick never even saw it)—and, naturally, feeling pretty good, all things considered. I walked from the elevator to my office too quickly for the few people there that early to notice how awful I looked, and then did my best with electric shaver and Wash 'N Dry to come out looking like my normal presentable—but-overworked self.

At the end of the day I went home and called Brook in New Haven with a progress report. "Good for you!" Brook said. He would look forward to hearing more soon. Then I called to talk with Dick and to make plans to get together the next night. Someone else answered and said that Mike was not around. "No, the Mike whose real name is Dick Warren is out, but I'll take a message for him if you like." I left my name and number and went to sleep. He must have been out on a job, because he didn't call.

It took me a couple of days to get him. I couldn't tell whether he was calling me back when I was out or whether he just wasn't calling back. I began to feel as though I were being betrayed or at least mistreated, and then I finally caught him in and asked him to go out for a cheeseburger with me after work. He was hesitant, and I, neither then nor now much for subtlety, asked him why— didn't he want to see me again? Weren't we friends? I mean, you're not going to leave me
now,
are you?

That last little feeling-sorry-for-myself thought I kept to myself as he reassured me. I just didn't understand, he said: He did like me; but he had to earn some bread, and he couldn't afford to spend another night with me, because he didn't want to take my money.

I fell over myself with understanding and relief, saying for Christ's sake I would be
glad
to help him out because I would still be getting by
far
the better end of things—and as the subject of money was awkward for both of us, let's just not
think
about it, and
please
meet me for a goddamn cheeseburger.

He did, wearing the same clothes as before. Maybe he couldn't afford much of a wardrobe, I thought. We had a relaxed, pleasant meal, cheeseburgers and beer. I gave him a check for $50 and said let's not even talk about it, just leave it at this: I liked him a lot, and he had done me a world of good, for which I was very grateful.

We went back to the Americana and played a rerun, only, as you would guess, slightly less "passionate," if you can use that word when nothing is
happening,
because it was less of an adventure. But I liked it, I thanked Dick and said I hoped I would see him again, and I left to go to work.

It might be awhile before I saw him again, Dick told me, because he was going down to Haiti with someone; he wouldn't tell me exactly why, and he didn't know when he would be back.

I can't say I was crushed when I sensed I would likely not see Dick again. I did like him a lot; but the hustler thing bothered me, and I realized that if the second time wasn't quite as good as the first, the third time might not quite equal the second. I was beginning to feel a little more confident about the whole thing, also. (To my amazement, Dick had said I was real good sex—but I didn't
do
anything!—and he said he didn't believe I'd never been to bed with anyone before. Since then, I should quickly add, I have gotten only mixed reviews.) And I had no way to know then that I had really lucked out with Dick, that such attractive, together guys were not easily found. Well, I knew it had taken me twelve years to find Dick, that's true. But all it had taken was a phone call, and there were other numbers in the
East Village Other,
and, apparently, according to Dick, my experiences on Christopher Street and at Danny's weren't entirely representative.

To be sure, he had not been nearly as helpful as he could have been, because I was too stupid to ask him some very practical questions. Where do you go, when, and would you mind coming with me the first time so I have a friendly pair of eyes to look at and someone to ask dumb questions—and do you have any friends I should meet? Nonetheless, I felt a certain confidence and resolve. There was no stopping the kid now. It was Wyoming or bust. Hell, I was good sex! Dick, himself as good-looking as they come, liked me and said I had a dynamite body (but maybe I should buy a pair of jeans). I would just jolly well make it.

I decided I had had it with New York, I had had it with working fourteen-hour days, and I could not come out in the city in which my parents lived. I told IBM I wanted to take the summer off and then to be assigned to a job I knew was coming open in the Boston area. IBM is good about that sort of thing, and they made it possible.

Guess who was living in Boston. Hank! Hank was entering Harvard Law School, which neatly fit my plan for him to become a U.S. Senator. He was living with his girlfriend in Cambridge. And Brook! Brook had finished Yale and was starting work in Roxbury as some kind of community organizer.

I took an apartment not far from Hank's and spent a lot of time helping to usher in the summer, walking all over Cambridge and Boston, looking up old friends from Yale, digging in. I liked the Boston area immediately. ,

Within two weeks, Hank had introduced me to a friend of his who ran a coffeehouse in Harvard Square, an old high school friend from St. Louis who I thought just might be gay. My in. Hank said, no, so far as he knew, his friend wasn't gay. Well, then, what about Hank's friend's friend, whom we had met in the coffeehouse, one Oscar Lipschitz? Oscar was gay, no? Hank didn't know but promised to try to find out.

And here's to Mr. and Mrs. Lipschitz, wherever they are, for naming their only son Oscar. What's short for Oscar, who, now that I think of it, was quite short himself? Had they not done it, Oscar might have been out poking little girls at the very time I needed him to show me the scene.

The last thing I mean to do is to make fun of Oscar, who is a terribly nice guy. He teaches underprivileged kids English. His students love him. He is definitely the kind of person of whom the world needs more. I highlight his name and his height because I presume these two factors had a lot to do with his turning out gay. ("Life ain't easy for a boy named Sue," goes the song.) And I am naturally intrigued by the general subject of what makes people gay. Of course, no one knows for sure, and different people are gay for different reasons—but some patterns do seem to emerge.

I am not suggesting that any short person named Oscar Lipschitz would wind up wanting to put my thing in his mouth. I am just saying the obvious: people are affected by their circumstances from birth—their color, their parents' natures, their heights, their names. Like "the boy named Sue" in the song, Oscar Lipschitz could certainly have grown up tough and ornery and mean—except that there must have been other circumstances, such as, perhaps, his height, that caused him to develop differently. Perhaps because he was small, he couldn't fight back when kids teased him, and he began to feel inferior and to idolize the same kids I idolized, if for different reasons.

There is nothing predictive in what I'm saying, except perhaps to the extent that there may be a greater
probability
, if still a fairly small one, that short people with funny names, or tall people without fathers, or medium people who were overly sheltered will turn out gay.

Anyway, Hank told me that he had asked his friend at the coffeehouse. Oscar was indeed gay. The next time I ran into Oscar I let it be known that, well, that I thought I probably wanted to meet some, uh, gay people, and, well... Oscar took it from there. He put me more or less at ease as we walked back to my apartment and there spent several hours telling me all about Boston's gay scene and about his own way of handling it. He said he would be glad to show me around to all the places and to introduce me to some other people.